The Light Within Us

by theOwtcast

Rating: teen
Tags: Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Changelings, Violence, Pharynx, Slice of Life, Thorax
Length: 216083

Be careful what you wish for; you might get exponentially more. Someone really should have warned Thorax what he was getting himself into by wanting friendship so badly.

He wished for friendship.
He wished for acceptance.
He wished for peace.
He got more than he bargained for.
He got the throne he’d never cared for and the whole hive to watch over, and now King Thorax must lead his kind into a new era of peace and harmony such as the changelings had never known before. So much is at stake, not just for him or his people, but for the whole world; he cannot allow himself to fail.

Good thing he knows what he’s doing.

…he does, right?

Edit 2-Jan-22: made it into the Featured slot! Thanks guys!

Published 2022-01-01 22:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2025-02-10 18:30:22 UTC

Friction

I wasn’t left alone for long after returning to the throne room. Not that I’d intended to be alone; I’d approached Psycho right after the speech and asked him to give me an update on how the drones were doing, and he’d done so while we flew back to the top of the hive. Urtica had followed at first, chuckling excitedly at the piece of parchment in her hooves that I’d seen her scribble things on during my speech, but she’d left us close to the top. Psycho’s monologue got interrupted only a couple of minutes upon our landing next to the throne shards, when a dozen of black drones flew up and positioned themselves in a loose formation around us, their piercing glares fixed on me, evoking more memories of another life that I’d rather forget.

“Can I help you?” I asked, hoping to break some of the tension and switch my mindset out of feeling inferior.

“We wanna talk to you,” one of them said.

“Sure! I’m listening.”

“You said a few minutes ago that you didn’t see the need to maintain the changeling army.”

“Yes.” Uh-oh. It’s happening already, isn’t it? I snuck a glance at Psycho; he was still here, keeping a close eye on the group. He must have sensed trouble before I had!

“And if we understood you correctly, that effectively meant that you were disbanding the army right then and there. You weren’t just asking for our opinion, were you?”

“Uh, that’s right.”

“And yet, you asked for our opinion on whether we’d like to paint or sing or whatever you had in your namby-pamby ponylike mind that we should start doing.”

“And what’s wrong with painting or singing? I’m sure if you just tried it-”

He gagged. “And what, become a pathetic pony? We’re changelings, for Hive’s sake! We don’t stoop down to the level of our prey!”

“They’re not our prey anymore-”

“They should be! The day we stoop down to their level and be ‘friends’ is the day we stop being changelings, and it disgusts me to see how many of those… ugh, grubs… down there did that without a second thought!”

“Why do you think you’re ‘stooping down to their level’ by accepting friendship?”

“What else would you call it?”

“It’s a wonderful feeling! If only you’d try-”

“Not a chance in Tartarus! I can’t believe I’m still bothering to talk to you! C’mon guys,” he said, turning to the rest of the group, “let’s go find Chrysalis and join her! Or better yet, help her come back and rip this clown apart! I can’t believe we thought coming here would accomplish anything…”

“Good luck finding her,” Psycho barked at them as they took to the air.

The one who had spoken to me landed in front of Psycho while the rest remained hovering in place.

“What’s wrong, oh loyalest of servants?” he spat out. “Afraid we might succeed?”

“Not at all, in fact, I’ve got teams looking for her right now. You know first-hoof how hard it is to find a changeling who doesn’t want to be found, don’t you? I’ll take any help I can get in bringing Chrysalis to justice, even if I have to resort to relying on the likes of you!”

“Hm. You wouldn’t have talked like that yesterday, would you, Mister First Not-commander?”

“I learned my lesson this morning, not that it’s any of your business what I would or wouldn’t say, Cockroach.”

“And a fine lesson it is,” Cockroach snorted. “Too bad… I was kind of hoping this cringeworthy blue carapace of yours was a disguise intended to throw our beloved king here off guard, but guess I was wrong! See you at the sharp end of my fangs, morons!”

“Do as you wish,” Psycho retorted as Cockroach was rejoining his peers in the air, “but I’m warning you not to stray too far from the hive or attempt any funny business or you’ll face consequences! Right, Thorax?”

“Uh…”

“There you go.”

“Heh, we’ll see.” With that, Cockroach and his squad flew away.

“Why’d you have to imply that they’d get punished?” I asked Psycho when the last black drone was out of sight. “You know I’d rather resolve this without punishing anyone! I haven’t even decided what to do with Chrysalis if we find her!”

“Thorax, unless you somehow figure out a way to get them to transform, I’m going to keep assuming threats and punishment are the only language they understand, even if the ‘punishment’ part has lost most if not all of its intimidation effect with you at the throne. No offense.”

“None taken, but I really don’t want to be seen as a wrathful tyrant! Was that really necessary?”

“Yes, and Pharynx will tell you the same thing when he gets here. I know I never gave you a reason to trust me, but you trust him, don’t you?”

My heart skipped a beat at the mention of my brother’s name.

“Yeah, now that you mention it, when is he coming back?”

“No idea. Last time I checked, he hadn’t yet reported to Elytra. Mind if I go check on the cocoon-releasing teams? I’ll swing by the communication hub while I’m at it. Oh, and looks like you’re wanted again.”

I turned around and saw a few colorful drones hovering at a respectful distance.

“Okay, do what you need. I think I can handle things here now.”

When he left, I invited the newly-arrived drones to come closer. They did, but instead of speaking up, they simply eyed one another hesitantly, as if they hadn’t decided which one of them should speak up.

“Fine, I’ll go,” one of them muttered just as I was starting to think they might need some encouragement. She stepped forward and bowed, and the others hurriedly bowed in turn. “Your Highness-”

“Please,” I interrupted her, trying not to show my annoyance over this kind of behavior, to somewhat questionable success. Why hadn’t I told them in the speech that they could drop the bowing and all that? It was starting to look like I was going to have to repeat that every time someling came to me! “Just call me Thorax, and there’s no need to bow! Now, you wanted to see me?”

“Yes, um… about your speech… We discussed your suggestions and we might have a few ideas, if you’ll approve of them.”

“Already?”

“Well, word spreads quickly about things that affect the whole hive, and what you did today was impossible to miss,” she shrugged. “Knowing who took the throne, some of us started to wonder if we’d be getting this kind of change. So, yeah… we kind of already got to the point of figuring out what we’d like to try a hoof at if permitted by the time you told us we could.”

“So let’s hear it!”

But the only sounds coming from them were silence and tense shuffling, even after the spokesling of this group tilted her head at me to signal the rest to come forward. I groaned inwardly. Why was everyling so hesitant and stuck-up all of a sudden? They’d never acted like that around me before! Then it hit me: they’d never acted like that around me before, but they must have around Chrysalis! Gee, and I’d thought I’d had it bad…

Instead of waiting for one of them to step forward, I approached the whole group and sat down in an attempt to look less imposing. Less threatening? I didn’t see myself as threatening at all, but with this new body, I might have to rethink my criteria.

“Will this make it easier for you?” I asked with a hint of a smile that I hoped was encouraging enough.

“Um… maybe…” one of them finally said. “If I may… I was wondering if you’d be willing to let me plant a garden somewhere?”

Finally! I grinned, and some of the tension in her posture melted away.

“You see,” she continued, “I posed as a gardener in Baltimare a few years ago, and I didn’t care much for growing plants at first, but I realized over time that the job was really relaxing… maybe a little more than I should have allowed myself at the time… Anyway, I kind of miss doing that, so if you would be so kind to grant me a patch of land anywhere, no matter how small…”

“I think there’s a huge wasteland around us that could use a bit of livening up. Think you can do something about it?”

Her face burst into a grin. “Really? I mean, thank you! Thank you thank you thank you! Um, is it okay if Thorn joins me?” She pointed at one of the other drones.

“Antenna…” he protested under his breath.

“Anyone who wants may join you,” I said. “Just between us, don’t be surprised if I drop by every once in a while too!”

“You’re interested in gardening?!” Thorn asked.

I shrugged. “I’m far from an expert, but I did grow some flowers in the Crystal Empire-”

“What kind?”

“Buttercups.”

“Oh. Uh, we’ll make sure to include some of those, okay Antenna?”

“Uh-huh! C’mon, let’s get to it!”

When they left, another drone raised a hoof.

“Yes?”

“Will you permit scientific experiments in the hive? Aside from anything you request to be analyzed or invented, that is.”

“Why not? Were you planning to start a fire?”

“No, of course not! I just- I just thought, if ponies can do it as they please, maybe we can too? But if you think it’s too dangerous-”

“Relax- um, I didn’t get your name…”

“Sleuth.”

“Relax, Sleuth, I was just attempting a joke. Yes, you may conduct experiments, but try not to get ahead of yourself and blow something up. It’s okay to start small if you haven’t done that kind of thing before, and I don’t think we’re in a hurry to come up with any new inventions.”

“Wow.” There was something peculiar about the way he’d said it. I tilted my head.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” he said. “Just amazed by how different your attitude is to Chrysalis’ when those drones found that weird ointment. Nevermind… I should probably get going… and thanks.”

“Sure, you’re welcome…” Ointment? Could it be the one I thought it was? I decided to find him or Psycho later and ask about it.

I watched him as he trotted off, then turned my attention back to the two drones still in front of me. The one who had spoken first nodded to the one who had so far been silent.

“I don’t have an idea of my own,” she said, “ but I like your idea for an arts-and-crafts group. Do you have any definite plans for it yet?”

“Well, I’d like it to include a wide variety of creative activities, and I’d leave it to the participants to decide what they want to do and how they want to do it, and it’d probably be a good thing if they had someling they could ask for help, but aside from that, I didn’t have the time yet to go into more detailed planning. Why?”

“I’d like to lead that group, or supervise, or however you prefer to call it.”

“I think we can work something out, but I can’t promise you’ll be the only one interested in the position.”

“That’s okay! It might actually be a good thing to have more of us, so we can work in shifts and always have one of us available!”

“Good idea! Though I’m not sure if we have any tools of the trade to actually start the group yet…”

“I’ll see what I can find,” she said and flew off, leaving me alone with the drone that had first dared to approach me.
“So…” she said, smirking. “Pretty big step up from being a janitor, huh Thorax?”

“I guess so…” I eyed her curiously. She was unusually comfortable around me compared to the other reformed drones; how had she gotten there so quickly?

“Don’t you recognize me?”

I blinked at her.

“Sorry, no… but your voice is vaguely familiar, though I can’t place it…”

“I’m Proboscis.”

Oh. I slapped myself. “Of course! I… uh… you weren’t brown the last time I saw you…”

“Relax, I’m not your supervisor anymore! I shouldn’t be surprised that you didn’t know who I am. Like you said, I wasn’t brown before, and this is probably the first time I’m not yelling and hissing at you.”

I chuckled nervously.

“Wow, I must have treated you worse than I realize if you’re still this tense around me!”

“You were doing your job, and I was…” I sighed. “I was constantly distracted by wanting something better than what I had.”

“And you found it.”

Indeed, I had. But those happy days had been in the Crystal Empire, which wasn’t my home anymore. I was here now, introducing my greatest wish into reality though I’d never expected to live to see it happen! This should have been the happiest day of my life, so why weren’t my spirits on top of the world? Was it simply the initial reaction to the big change in my life? Probably, but what if it wasn’t? What if I never found the same happiness I’d briefly had on the other end of the world?

“Thorax?”

Her prodding snapped me back into here and today.

“You alright?” she asked. “You zoned out for a minute there.”

“Yeah, I’m fine… just thinking about things…”

“Well, at least that didn’t change!”

We both chuckled.

“So, how can I help you?”

“I do have some practical things to discuss, but first, I want to apologize.”

“Oh, you don’t have to-”

“Yes I do! And I want to apologize! You’re not nearly the first one who was ever assigned janitor duty as punishment, and dare I say, you might not have even been the most useless worker, but I still hated you because of those crazy fantasies you had. Remember how I used to say that, if I had a nearly-drained cocoon for every time I heard you whine about friendship, I’d never go hungry? Well, you were right all along, and the only cocoon I needed to stop being hungry was my own when I realized how wrong I’d been… how wrong we’d all been. Chrysalis only wanted us to survive long enough to die in her name, and you taught us to live! So yeah… I’m sorry I didn’t listen…”

“It’s okay… I know how hard it was. I never blamed you…”

She glared at me for a few moments, clearly not convinced.

“...okay, maybe I was frustrated by the whole system and by getting yelled at and beaten up all the time, but you weren’t the only one doing it, in fact, you weren’t nearly the worst one! And anway, those days are over and I’m trying to leave the pain behind me, and by the looks of it, so are you, so no worries!”

She shrugged. “If you say so…”

Another group of drones buzzed in, then came to a halt when they saw I was busy.

“Oh…” one of them said. “We saw Mystique leave the throne room and thought… We can come back later…”

“No worries, Hornet,” Proboscis said. “I can wait that long.”

“King Thorax,” Hornet said, landing in front of me and giving a slight bow, “we wanted to thank you for deposing Chrysalis and disbanding the army in favor of other activities.”

That caught me off guard even though all of these drones were colorful and, presumably, had accepted the new ways.

“Uh, you’re welcome, but isn’t it obvious that you-”

“We’ve transformed, yes, but you probably don’t know the background of why it was so easy for so many of us to make that decision all at once.”

I raised an eyebrow. Okay, she did have a point; I hadn’t expected things to go this well, and when they had, I must have… well, I must have assumed it had been the ecstasy of the moment of witnessing how much love I’d unleashed. But if there was more to it than that…

“I’m listening,” I said.

“The hive hasn’t been the same after you left. Chrysalis was constantly furious and demanding all kinds of impossible things, and that was just the beginning. If you thought she was nasty before, well, you haven’t seen nothing- okay, maybe you did, but the rest of us… We never realized how much rage she’d been letting out by torturing you, and suddenly you were gone and all of that shifted onto us.”

I cringed at the revelation. A gasp escaped my lips, and I was about to apologize for involuntarily bringing it on them, but Hornet wasn’t done talking.

“I admit, some of it might have been directed at your escape and the hunters’ ongoing failure to find you, which she couldn’t for the time being unleash on those directly responsible, but suddenly every smallest mistake was grounds for the kind of punishment you were routinely getting.” She shuddered. “I thought you were screaming so much because you were a hopeless wimp who couldn’t take a simple blast of magic… If I’d known-” Her voice cracked and tears welled up in her eyes. “If I’d known what you were going through every time, I would have been the first to stand against it… And I wasn’t the only one. None of us ever said anything for fear of being overheard, but we knew. We could see it in each others’ eyes that everyling who had had the taste of the ordeal was fed up and seriously considering following you into exile. Then you returned… Seeing how much love you’d gathered through sharing, how incomparably better our lives could be… that was the last straw.”

I stared at her wide-eyed. “I… I don’t know what to say...”

“So there you go. We owe you everything, and we’re sorry for not listening before! We’re still a long way from understanding friendship the way you do, including why it was always so important to you that you’d rather be tortured every day than to give it up, but this time, we’ll listen like we should have listened long ago, and we’ll do our best to learn.”

“Thank you,” I said, tearing up myself. “That’s all I ever wanted!”

“And we won’t disappoint! Now, we’re supposed to be opening cocoons and letting ponies out but we really wanted to say this. Mind if we get back to work?”

“Sure!”

Proboscis and I remained sitting in silence for a short while after Hornet and her entourage left. I needed a moment to process what I’d been told, and I suspected she’d decided to let me recover from the confession. Unless she’d been on the receiving end at some point too and needed a moment to push the awakened memories away?

“Sorry,” I said eventually. “You said you wanted to discuss some practical matters?”

“Yes. I was wondering what’s going to happen with the cleaning-and-maintenance department under the new regime.”

“...I haven’t really considered it yet,” I admitted. “I suppose we’ll have to keep it running somehow even if your most permanent janitor has unexpectedly been relegated to a different function altogether…”

“The ‘most permanent janitor’ has been missing for over a year prior to the reassignment to the ‘different function altogether’, in case you missed the memo,” she said dryly. “We managed without you. Do you mind if I remain the supervisor? I’ve been one for so long that I have no idea what else I’d want to do!”

“I’m fine with that if you are. Uh, how are you going to find enough workers now that the army is disbanded and there won’t be any lazy drones coming up for penalty chores?”

“I don’t know. That’s pretty much why I came here.”

“Oh. Well, if we can get the drones to stop seeing janitor duty as a disgrace, which it isn’t in Equestria for example and they have enough janitors to go around, maybe that’ll solve the problem?”

“To an extent, yes, but I still don’t see a whole lot of them crowding my office demanding to be sent to scrub floors if they can sing and dance and paint stuff and whatever else you’re going to introduce to the hive.”

I pondered this for a moment.

“What if everyling pitched in? Say, make a roster for every section of sleeping burrows and rotate all drones sleeping in their respective section, and assign any permanent janitor drones to cover public areas. I was going to do away with security clearances anyway, so you won’t have to keep track of who is allowed where. If you don’t have enough janitors to do the work, borrow workers from the sleeping sections, and modify the rosters in such a way that no drone is getting disproportionately more work than others unless they request it. You can sign me up too from time to time if necessary, but I can’t promise that I won’t be needed elsewhere. Would that help?”

“Absolutely! It should also solve the issue of janitor duty being seen as a disgrace.”

“I’m just not sure what to do with any drones who refuse to cooperate…”

She waved it off. “Don’t worry about it. I may not be a First Commander anymore, but I still know how to kick insubordinate rumps!”

“You were First Commander?!”

“Yes, until the failed invasion of Abyssinia decades ago. Your egg wouldn’t have even been laid then… Long story short, the army I led got defeated spectacularly, and the only reason why Chrysalis decided not to execute me upon return to the hive is because I’d managed to kill the Abyssinian crown prince and his wife. As in, personally killed them. So instead of getting blasted into pieces, I got stripped of rank and relegated to janitor duty for life. Eventually she cooled down somewhat and I was allowed a promotion there too, so here I am.”

“And Succubus succeeded you?”

“Yes, though I wouldn’t have chosen her if it were my decision. She was vain and got too self-confident and careless over the years like I’d predicted would happen. That carelessness must have been the reason she got killed; she’d been so focused on the pack of maulwurfs in front of her that it never occurred to her that one or two might be behind her…”

“...and Pharynx finished the job and claimed her rank,” I mused. “Gee, Proboscis, I can lift your punishment! You don’t have to be a commander to janitors anymore!”

“Nah, I’ve grown to like it over the years! And like I said, I can’t think of anything else I’d want to do!” She got up. “Okay, I think I’ve taken enough of your time, so I’ll go now. I have some rosters to put together, and you’ve got another drone waiting for a word with you.”

I turned around, and sure enough, there was a black drone hovering above the pile of throne fragments. This one was alone, and I happened to know him.

“What do you want, Screech?” I asked, trying not to sound too exasperated.

“Nice speech there,” he said.

“Uh, thanks?”

“But I have a question.”

I waited for him to continue.

“You said we could do anything we wanted.”

“Yes?”

“I want to beat ponies up and hunt them for food. Permission granted?”

“Of course not!”

“Why, if that’s what I want to do and you said we could do anything?”

“I said you could do anything as long as it isn’t violent or harmful!”

“Ain’t that a surprise? My favorite training dummy becomes king and says we can’t do bad things because it’s not nice! What are you, afraid I’d keep using you as a training dummy?”

“Screech…”

“Hah! You know what? I so would! Come here, maggot, I’ve never had a deer-shaped training dummy and I wanna practice ripping off some antlers!”

I started to back away instinctively and braced for impact as he threw himself at me with bared fangs and a hissing tongue. I thought I was done with when a blue mist suddenly tackled him at the last moment! He hissed and thrashed, but Psycho had already subdued him before I’d had the time to process what had happened.

“Let go of me! Get off!” he sputtered.

“Shut up!”

“You just had to barge in, didn’t you?”

“Are you done making a scene or do I need to break your legs?”

“Watch it, big boy over there might cry if you disobey His Majesty’s nonviolent wishes! Or do you suddenly no longer care for his wittle feewings?”

That earned him a stomp on the head.

“OW!”

“I’m willing to take that chance,” Psycho sneered. “You done now? I can do this all day, just give me an excuse!”

“Guys, please…” I said.

“Oh look, here come the tears-” Another stomp interrupted his mockery. “Ow! Stop it!”

“Will you behave?”

“Ugh, fine! Just get off of me already!”

He did, and Screech got up with a scowl and a poorly-suppressed moan.

“Consider yourself lucky that Thorax is watching or you’d be needing a medic! As it is, you’re on janitor duty for a month, starting in the morning.”

“Uh, Psycho?” I tried again.

“And if I refuse?” Screech countered.

“Then I’ll find you and drag you there by the ears and you’ll be on janitor duty for six months instead of one. Fail to show up again and I’ll make sure Thorax isn’t watching when I come get you!”

“Psycho…” Why was I still bothering?

“My my, are we touchy today!”

“Don’t push your luck! One month starting tomorrow, and get out of my sight while I’m still in a good mood!”

He finally got the message and grumbled himself away.

“Sorry about that,” Psycho said to me. “I know you said ‘no violence’, but this guy was asking for it.”

“Fine,” I sighed, “but try to find a peaceful solution next time, please?”

“I’ll try to think of something. No promises, though. These guys don’t understand nice. Not that I’m much of an expert on nice, either, but at least I’m trying now. Anyway, I just talked to your brother. He’s still in the Crystal Empire but he might make it here by tomorrow evening if he hurries up and catches the last train out.”

I could have hugged Psycho at that moment; this was one of the best news today! Pharynx was alive and well after all! I hadn’t realized how worried I’d been about him until now; Chrysalis’ attitude about him must have affected me to the core! Part of me had feared I’d find Pharynx to be badly injured or even dead, but he was fine and on his way home, and chances were I’d see him again tomorrow! Oh, I couldn’t wait to hug him; I missed him beyond words!

“Thank you so much, Psycho! How has he been since I saw him last? Tell me everything!”

He sighed. “That… could take a while. Why don’t we have a seat?”

We did, and he began his tale of Pharynx’s mission to find me. He talked about what Pharynx had been telling Chrysalis and what Chrysalis had suspected him to really be up to. He talked about her concerns that her most trusted soldier had gone corrupt and about all the side-paths she’d taken to uncover the truth, about all the two-faced games she’d had his teammates play, all the rope she’d been giving him to hang himself with. He talked about the lack of evidence to support the theory I was still alive, about the switch of focus to an entirely different mission, and about a sudden revelation that I’d been around all along and the reawakened suspicions of my brother’s part in all of it. He talked about Chrysalis’ fury and about a convoluted plan to force the truth into the open.

I listened with amazement and growing dread; though Chrysalis had hinted at it during our showdown in the throne room earlier today, I’d had no idea how far Pharynx would have gone to protect the one thing he’d had no excuse to protect, and my heart hurt deeply now that I knew how bad a punishment he’d faced for it! Though I’d never in my wildest dreams imagine anyone defeating - truly defeating - and overthrowing Chrysalis, least of all that I would be the one to pull it off, I was beginning to be glad things had played out that way before it was too late. The weight of the crown and the impending hardships of running a kingdom completely unprepared for the task were a small price to pay if it meant my brother would get to keep his life!

But there were still a lot of things that Psycho’s tale had merely touched on, and I wanted to know everything! When he was done with the gross outline of the events, I began asking for details. My questions came with no regard for logical order or chronology; I simply asked whatever came up in my mind at any given moment. Some of it did come in clusters pertaining to a single event or train of thought, but not nearly enough to keep track of what I’d asked and what I still wanted cleared up, and it took a long while. I hadn’t realized the moon was already high up in the sky until a drone interrupted us, asking Psycho for assistance with something.

Now that I was finally alone, the magnitude of what I’d done and what I was trying to do hit me in the face again, but so did the realization that I was too tired to keep pushing myself to do more, and anyway, most drones would have probably fallen asleep by now. Better to follow their example and take a nap! I could continue what I was doing tomorrow! I wished I’d had the time to reach out to the other lands with a declaration of peace today, but it had gotten lost in the rush of dealing with everything else, so I decided to tackle that first thing in the morning, preferably with Urtica’s help, as I hadn’t the faintest idea what that kind of official correspondence was supposed to look like.

I headed into the hive’s interior and tracked the hallways further down. I’d been wrong about most drones being asleep; many teams were releasing the cocooned creatures and helping them come to their senses as I passed by. Psycho must have taken my orders on the matter seriously! It looked like they were barely halfway finished, and the drones were probably going to be too exhausted to continue pretty soon unless more were due to relieve them, but if it helped our soon-to-be-free-again prisoners, the exhaustion was going to be worth it!

About halfway to my sleeping burrow, I turned a corner and collided with a black drone, causing us both to stumble and nearly fall on our rumps.

“Whoa, sorry!” I said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, whatever- hey, you’re Thorax, aren’t you?” Unexpectedly, there was no malice in her voice, only the kind of emptiness that was unnervingly familiar from a past life.

“Yes. I don’t think I know you, do I?”

“I doubt it. My name’s Grim and I just returned from Canterlot. Never thought I’d find this…”

I recognized the name from Psycho’s recounting of Pharynx’s adventures.

“No offense, but you’re kind of living up to your name at the moment.”

“None taken.”

“Anything I can do about it?”

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “Apex told me what happened… what you did and… and what you’ve been doing since and… well, I’m still half expecting to wake up in Luna’s bed and in her form, trying to forget the crazy dream I just had… but that’s not going to happen, is it?”

“Believe it or not, I’ve kind of been doing the same thing myself,” I chuckled.

“Heh… so assuming this isn’t a dream, I guess I’m going to have to think of something to do with my life, aren’t I? Except that I can’t think of anything… fighting was my whole life until yesterday, but even if you hadn’t disbanded the army, I don’t think I’d care to remain a soldier. I’m fed up with it… fed up with fighting and serving Chrysalis and with everything…”

“She hurt you, didn’t she?”

She looked away. “Not physically, but…” She sighed again. “Nevermind.”

“Want to talk about it? Or at least tell me if there’s something I can do to make you feel better!”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but why do you care? I just came back from a mission to replace an alicorn princess who turned out to be on friendly terms with you, and before that, I was in one of the teams sent to capture you!”

“I know all that, but I don’t like to hold a grudge, and you’re feeling bad about something and I don’t like it when others are feeling bad.”

She pondered this.

“Fair enough,” she said eventually. “I guess it fits in with what we were told about you. But I still don’t know how you can help me… unless… maybe…”

“Yes?”

“I don’t suppose you know if the hatchery needs more guards?”

“The hatchery?” Where had that come from? “I don’t know, but I guess I can find out… Why? Were you thinking of taking care of the eggs?”

“If you’ll let me… or at least let me try? I can’t promise it wouldn’t be too- I mean, I can’t make any promises as to how long I could keep it up.”

“You almost said you couldn’t promise it wouldn’t be too painful, didn’t you?”

“How did you know- ugh, scratch that. You’ve probably been in this state far longer and more often than me and can smell it from a hundred miles away.”

“Uh, maybe?” The unsaid suddenly clicked. “Oh dear, you lost your eggs, didn’t you? I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to-”

“No, it’s not that, at least not in the sense you mean it.”

“...I don’t follow.”

“I’ve wanted eggs all my life, and I worked tirelessly to earn the privilege to lay them, but got sent to find you before I could exercise that privilege, and… well, I made a big mess of something in the course of the mission - I mean, a really big colossal mess - and Chrysalis revoked that privilege for life… so, yeah.”

So that was what this was about! I slapped myself and burst into laughter.

“Thorax?”

I composed myself quickly under her confused stare.

“Sorry, uh… You actually have nothing to worry about. I always hated the egg-laying-privilege thing and want to put an end to it, and I would have said so in the speech I held today, but I was kind of overwhelmed with everything that happened, and Psycho gathered up everyling for the speech before I was ready, and I had to improvise, and, well, I forgot. I probably forgot to say a bunch of other things I wanted to, now that I think about it… Anyway, everyling is now free to have as many eggs as they want, whenever they want, with whoever they want!”

Grim’s face brightened drastically at my words. “Really?! I’m not dreaming, am I?”

“You’re not dreaming! Go ahead, find yourself a mate and lay those eggs you’ve been waiting for! I’m sure you’ll be a great mother!”

“Hold on, I get to raise them, too?!”

“Of course!”

She was crying with joy and relief now. My eyes welled up with happy tears too. I’d never seen a drone so happy!

“Oh, thank you so much!” she exclaimed, wrapping me in a hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“No problem!”

While she held me, I thought I saw pink ripples swirling around in the corner of my eye. Then she released me and I realized I’d been right; Grim was radiating tendrils of love that grew in strength rapidly until they enveloped her whole and formed a magical cocoon around her. The cocoon burst open shortly thereafter, releasing a new Grim, now blessed with hues of green and orange glistening on her chitin.

“Wow…” she muttered, looking herself over. “That felt… weird… but a good kind of weird… Uh, I don’t suppose you’d mind me tending to the hatchery until I have my own eggs to look after?”

“Not at all! Enjoy your new life!”

She bowed lightly and trotted off somewhere, trailing a bright, warm aura of love behind her. I allowed myself a moment to bask in it, then resumed my way to my sleeping burrow.

But when I got there, I found it filled with crates and bags and all kinds of stuff. Confused, I looked around again. Was I in the right place? It looked more or less the same as I remembered it, and I didn’t think I’d made a wrong turn somewhere, but how could I be sure? I hadn’t been here in over a year, after all!

A drone poked a sleepy head out of a nearby burrow.

“Thorax?” he mumbled. “What are you doing here?”

“Is that you, Cornicle? I think I’m lost. This is supposed to be my burrow, right?”

“It was. It got repurposed after you left. You were going to get executed and Chrysalis figured Pharynx would finally claim the First Commander’s quarters afterwards unless it turned out he needed to get executed too, so there was no need to keep it waiting for you guys.”

“Oh. Uh, where am I supposed to sleep now?”

“I dunno. Chrysalis’ personal quarters, maybe?”

I cringed at the idea.

“Eh, you’ll think of something,” he shrugged and returned to his burrow.

Okay, that was awkward. Why hadn’t it occurred to me that the burrow would have been reassigned or repurposed? It wouldn’t have been the first time such a thing had happened! I must have been more tired than I realized!

But that still didn’t solve the problem of where to sleep. I checked the burrow again; sure enough, it was filled to the brim, and I wasn’t in the mood for sleeping in a tiny disguise. Curling up on the hallway floor didn’t seem a whole lot better, and I really, really didn’t want anything to do with Chrysalis’ personal quarters, even if I had an idea where to look for them!

Oh well, the night was warm enough, and there had to be an opening to the outside nearby. I found it and flew up, back to the throne room, and curled up to sleep next to the fragments of the shattered throne. Not the most comfortable setup I’d ever had, but at least Psycho shouldn’t have too much trouble finding me if he needed to before morning.

Declaration of Peace

“Is he supposed to be here?”

“What should we do with him?”

“Just leave him!”

“On the floor?”

“Didn’t you prepare a room?”

“Yeah, so?”

“We should move him there!”

“And how do you propose to do it without waking him up?”

The hushed conversation found its way to whatever half-conscious part of my mind was up and running.

“Huh?” I mumbled, cracking an eye open to a half-dozen green and blue faces outlined against the bright sky.

“Great job, Shadow! Couldn’t you have shouted a little louder?”

“But- I- ugh!”

“Guys, please!” I protested. “No need to argue! I should have probably been up already anyway!”

“That doesn’t give them the excuse to bother you while you sleep!”

“It’s okay, Psycho,” I said, getting up on my hooves. “They were whispering, and there’s no need to reprimand them for every single thing they do. Now, where’s Urtica? I’m going to need her help with something.”

“She should be in the archive. You know where that is?”

“I think so… a few levels below the castle, right?”

“No, we moved it into the castle after you left the hive. Chrysalis thought you might have taken advantage of a disguise to go there and learn potentially sensitive information that you could reveal to the enemy and wanted to have better control over who’s coming in in case any other drones started getting ideas.”

“Oh. So where is it now?”

“We merged a few chambers of the lowermost levels of the castle, southeast side.”

“Okay, thanks!”

Like Psycho had said, Urtica was in the archive, arranging some scrolls. I felt awkward and self-conscious setting hoof in that place for the first time in my life, it having been off-limits to everyling save for the highest-ranking drones, but Urtica didn’t give me much time to dwell on it. She noticed me within seconds, dropped what she’d been doing - literally, as the scrolls she’d held fell onto the ground and pulled a few more along with them - and buzzed down to meet me.

“Good morning, Urt-”

“Good morning, Your Highness- uh, I mean Thorax! So sorry! I know you said to loosen up, but old habits tend to slip through, and I’m going to need a long time to get rid of these habits! Oh, you might want to know that I managed to catch your whole speech in short script and will immortalize it for the history books as soon as I find the ceremonial scrolls, which I kinda sorta seem to have misplaced at some point, but don’t worry, I’ll find them! Amazing speech, by the way! I loved everything about it!”

“Thanks, but I really don’t think-”

“And I heard you made Grim’s day last evening! I can’t believe it - we’re gonna get so many super cute little nymphs when everyling hears what you told her! The whole hive could be crawling with them! Ooh, I wanna snuggle them right now-” Suddenly, her outburst of energy stopped and she landed slowly onto the floor in front of me, fidgeting her hoof and looking at a random corner as if it were the last thing she’d ever get to see. “Ahem. Please forgive me! I… I get carried away sometimes…”

“It’s alright! I’d rather have that than iron discipline!”

“Oooo...kay... Um. How may I help you?”

“I’m looking to reach out to other lands and let them know that I’d like to end any ongoing battles and animosity and offer an alliance if they want one, but I’ve never needed to do anything even remotely close and don’t know what a declaration of peace or whatever it’s called should look like or where to begin. You’re more likely to have been in contact with that kind of thing at some point. Can you help me?”

“Oh… I see…” She bit her lip. “Well, I’ve never had to actually write any kind of diplomatic correspondence - Chrysalis never cared for that - but we do have some peace treaties and alliance contracts between other lands that we… uh, obtained… um… at various points in time, er, ahem… and I suppose I could read them to refresh my memory of what they look like and what terminology they use. That might work! Uh, I think… Can you give me a couple of hours?”

“Okay, no problem!”

“May I ask which lands we’re writing to, in case I have enough time to draft an outline?”

“Every land that the changelings have been at odds with. And yes, I understand that probably means every land in the known world.”

“It’s more than ‘probably’, I’m afraid, but writing it out is the least of it. I’m more concerned about getting their leaders to want to listen and about convincing them that this isn’t some kind of elaborate scheme to throw them off guard and then stab them in the back.”

“Yeah, I’ve been worried about the same thing,” I admitted.

“And I don’t even know how we stand with the bits and gems anymore now that Chrysalis compartmentalized literally everything to crazy levels.”

“What do you mean?”

“After you left, she didn’t want to risk any other drones taking advantage of their clearance level in case they turned against her and she failed to stop them before they left, so everything not strictly within anyling’s current assignments became very off-limits. I only kept basic track of the Treasury’s dealings before that, but have been forbidden to even trot past the entrance to the Treasury section ever since, and I have high clearance!”

“I’ve been told something along those lines already, yes. What I meant is, what do bits and gems have to do with the declaration of peace?”

“Oh. That.” She chuckled sheepishly. “I meant that griffons almost never want to hear anyone out unless they’ll get bits in return, so you might want to provide the courier with a money bag. It’s similar with diamond dogs, except that they’re more interested in gems. And, uh, dragons might not outright demand gems, but they’re ill-tempered by default and a stash of gems might appease them or even save the courier from getting eaten if he or she runs into a particularly cranky dragon. Also, bits might help the courier get out of sticky situations in Klugetown if you’re going to send one there, which I don’t think I’d recommend because they’re about as bad as we used to be, only with more material tastes.”

“I see,” I said, wishing there was an easier way to do this. “So… I guess I better go check our supplies of bits and gems while you’re doing your thing, huh?”

“Unless you have more pressing matters! It’s not mine to order you around!”

“It’s alright, I’m probably going to have to check on the Treasury sooner or later anyway, so might as well do it now. Where are they?”

“Three levels above us, northern hallway!”

I followed her directions and found a green drone slumped against a rock that apparently served as a table of sorts, shuffling some scrolls and pencils around in a routine of utter boredom. He straightened himself up when I entered so quickly that I thought he’d launch himself through the ceiling, and half his pencils tumbled onto the floor.

“King Thorax! Uh, sorry, Your Highness, I wasn’t expecting you this morning! I, um…” He slapped himself and bowed at the same speed as when standing up a second ago, sending a scroll or two flying in the process. “Treasury Supervisor Bandit at your service!”

I sighed and rubbed my temple. How many more times was I going to have to tell everyling to drop the high titles and just act naturally?

“Is something wrong, Your Highness?” he asked cautiously.

“Yes! I’d appreciate it if you all would stop calling me ‘Your Highness’ all the time and bowing whenever I’m within a thousand miles! Uh, sorry! I didn’t mean to yell at you! It just… it’s so unnerving…”

“Wow… I thought they were exaggerating, but you really are as different from Chrysalis as they say! She never once apologized for anything, and I served her for decades! In fact, she’s been going out of her way lately to find every single mistake we’ve made! Let me tell you, I’ve been glad she’s gone ever since I heard, and especially now!”

“I’ll take that as a compliment… I think…”

“It was meant as one. But with how busy the hive is this morning, you’re not here to make small talk, are you? How can I help?”

“I’m about to send out declarations of peace, and Urtica said I’d probably need bits and gems to get the griffons and diamond dogs to listen, and that having some for the dragons and Klugetown - whatever that is - might be a good idea too.”

“I see.” He looked away and scratched at the ground.

“That bad?”

“That depends. If you just want to give them enough to heed the declaration and leave the couriers alone, yeah, we have that much and it’ll only make a minor dent in our reserves. That part doesn’t worry me. What does worry me is that, if you get into negotiations with any of the lands we’ve been at war with, not just griffons or diamond dogs, they could demand that we return every material thing we ever stole from them as a sign of good will. You can probably figure out that repaying such colossal amounts would take centuries, and that’s assuming we can find a way to earn money to compensate for what got spent in the meantime. If we don’t, we might as well skin ourselves alive!”

“I thought we used to steal love, not money and such things?”

“Haven’t you ever been on a long-term mission? Or trained for one?”

“No, I was only ever deployed to Princess Cadance’s wedding, and even that took Pharynx some doing to convince Chrysalis to include me, not that I wanted to. I also got kicked out from basic training some years prior to that due to incompetence. Why?”

“Love was our primary target, or more accurately, the creatures we could drain of love were our primary targets. But most of the said creatures had some items of value on their person at the time of capture, and Chrysalis didn’t like to let that go to waste if she could use it. Most of the loot served as starting funds for infiltrators, and they delivered their unspent earnings here to finance future infiltrators. Sometimes we’d use money to buy things on the black market if stealing wasn’t an option, but don’t ask me the details on that. I was only expected to count the cash as ordered and keep an eye on what’s kept here.”

“‘Here’, as in, in this room?”

“No, this is just an antechamber that I use as an office. Follow me.”

He led me through a gate hidden behind a boulder into a large chamber. Much like the archive, it was tall enough to span several levels, and as far as I could see, the only entrance seemed to be the one we’d passed through. There were many nooks and niches everywhere so I couldn’t be sure, but it made sense to have only one entrance unless every single one was guarded. And I had no doubt it’d have to be guarded even from changelings, as countless shelves were filled to the brim with bits, diamonds, golden trinkets, jewelry, and many other things shining and glistening in what little light had found its way into this place! I didn’t know how greedy griffons and diamond dogs were, but no doubt they’d kill for even just one of these shelves!

“Whoa,” I said, dumbfounded. “I didn’t even know we had a treasury until today, and just look at this!”

“I admit, it is a lot to look at if you’ve never seen it before,” he said, “but what you see here isn’t really that much. This room would be painfully empty if we had to give an average starting sum to every infiltrator out there at once, so imagine having to reimburse the stolen goods as a condition of negotiating peace!”

“Okay, I get it. If the matter comes up in negotiations, I’ll try to at least soften the blow, but I can’t promise anything. Now, can you count the money for the griffons and the diamond dogs?”

“And dragons and Klugetowners. Of course. Come back in an hour and it’ll be ready.”

Now that things had been set in motion, I didn’t have any immediate ideas for how to fill the time while waiting for the result, so I decided to go back to the throne room to see of anyling needed me. If not, maybe this would be a good time to take a stroll around the hive and familiarize myself with the parts that had previously been off-limits to me and to remind myself of the parts I’d known well.

It turned out that my tour of the hive would have to wait; a single green-and-pink drone was pacing next to the throne shards, mumbling to herself.

“Oh,” she said upon noticing me and stopped pacing.

“Have you been waiting long? I’m sorry… I guess I should have left a note where I was going…”

“It’s okay! I, um, needed some time to, uh, figure out how to approach the matter…”

“You have a problem with something?”

“No- uh, yes- I mean-” She took a breath to compose herself. “Well, I don’t have a problem in a sense I imagine you mean it, but I do have a confession to make, and you’ll probably have a problem with me when you hear what I have to say.”

“You… didn’t hurt anyone, did you?”

“No, it’s not that simple… actually, it is simple but… Ugh, why does this have to be so hard?!”

“Would it be easier if we sat down?”

She shrugged. “Eh, probably not, but whatever.”

I took that as a sign that she was willing to take my suggestion, sat down next to the pile of shards, and motioned her to join me, which she did, though still fidgeting and avoiding eye contact.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

She fidgeted some more, then sighed and said, “Remember when you arrived at the Crystal Empire?”

“Yes, what about it?”

“I was there before you - myself and one other drone - posing as earth ponies who decided to live there. It was our assignment as infiltrators, and, well… when you got noticed and the city went into lockdown, we reported it to Chrysalis. We-”

“You’re Feisty?”

“How did you know?!”

“Psycho filled me in on what I missed. He didn’t have the time to go into too much detail, but he did mention you and Blade keeping track of my movement.”

“For the record, we were under orders!”

“I get that!” I put a hoof on her shoulder. “And I’m not holding a grudge against either of you! Everything turned out fine in the end, didn’t it?”

“You’re not just saying that to lull me into a false sense of security, are you? ...of course you aren’t…” she added, rubbing her temples. “I mean, I watched you for months and I can’t imagine you being mad at anyone… It’s just, it feels weird not being at least yelled at for spying on your superiors…”

“I wasn’t your superior back then!”

“But you are now! And you know what? Like I said, Blade and I were under orders to spy on you, and it was easy at first because we truly believed it was necessary! Then, over time, we started to notice you looking healthier… happier… you were doing way better than the two of us, and you shouldn’t have if everything we’d been taught about changelings was true! We three were in the same environment, exposed to the same food source, and you weren’t taking advantage of it nearly as much as Blade and me, maybe not even at all, and you were said to be a useless wimp, so how in the name of eggshells did you manage to get from a starving wreck to something any drone would be jealous of, and in so little time? We gradually started doubting everything we thought we knew, but we still kept a close eye on you and reported everything to Chrysalis even when we were all but certain it was wrong of us!”

“I see,” I mused. “Yes, I can understand why you were so worked up about telling me.”

“So… are you going to punish us?”

“No, why would I?”

“How about because we betrayed you?!”

“The way I see it, you were keeping yourselves safe. Chrysalis is intimidating even on a good day, and believe me, you wouldn’t have wanted to draw her wrath onto yourselves!”

“But you did exactly that when you left the hive!”

“That was different! I’d drawn her wrath onto myself years before, not to mention the disdain of pretty much every drone! Either Chrysalis would have lost her patience with me for good, or some group of bullies would have gotten carried away in beating me up when Pharynx wasn’t around to stop them! I didn’t have much to lose, and I could gain so much! You and Blade, on the other hoof, were in good standing with her and would have lost everything by opposing her will, and I can’t see how you could have benefitted from it!”

“Then what’s with all those paintings you made near the end? The ones depicting ponies’ and changelings’ future in unity?”

“Such a unity only makes sense if someone lives to see it! And if you know about the paintings, then you had to have picked up on me saying it before now!”

“Fair enough,” she shrugged. “But that still doesn’t make me feel any better about not accepting your ways until we heard what you did and returned to the hive.”

“About that… is Pharynx here yet?”

“I didn’t see him, but we got informed first thing in the morning, before we were due to go to work as our pony aliases, and we dropped everything and rushed back right away. Pharynx’s team might not have been in position to receive incoming hails until some time later, and considering the roles they were playing, they might have been unable to hit the road without at least wrapping a few things up, which would have taken time. Blade and I just invented a family emergency as a quick excuse to our bosses and cleared out. Even our gear is still there.”

Okay, so chances were I’d have to wait for Pharynx a little longer… not unexpected if Psycho’s estimate had been correct, but Feisty being here so soon had gotten my hopes up. Okay, Thorax, all in due time…

“Just out of curiosity, did I ever come across your aliases?”

“We made an effort not to cross paths with you, and I was successful, but you bought a saddlebag from Blade last week. Oh, and he said you can get a full refund and keep the saddlebag! I’m pretty sure he can also adjust it to your new body if it doesn’t fit anymore!”

I chuckled. “Thanks, but I’m afraid it got left behind in the Crystal Empire.”

“Well, maybe you’ll pick it up one day!”

“Yeah, maybe I will…”

We sat in silence for a moment.

“So, you’re definitely not punishing us, then?”

“I’m definitely not punishing you!”

“We’re not even getting yelled at?”

“I suppose I could try if you really really want me to, but it’ll probably end up pathetic, or comical at best.”

“Might have known… but you are okay with us making it up to you differently, right?”

“Are you thinking anything specific?”

“Blade has been helping release the cocooned ponies ever since we got back and transformed, and I’ll join him, but everypony will get released eventually, and I overheard mentions of something called a ‘feelings forum’?”

“Yes, I have an idea to form an open group that everyling can come to and express their feelings, ask for advice or help with a problem, and so on, but it hasn’t started yet.”

“You’ll probably need a moderator for that. Is it okay if I play the part at least some of the time? I may not be a perfect choice but I’m willing to learn! Unless you already have someling in mind, that is.”

“I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Sure, if you think you can handle it!”

“I’ll do my best! Thank you!”

She cantered off and I was left wondering whether or not it was too early to go check on Bandit and Urtica. It probably was, but what should I do to pass the time until they finished their assignments? I didn’t see the point of starting anything even mildly ambitious, as I could end up getting caught in it for hours and maybe even forgetting that I had unfinished business in the archive and the treasury!

I groaned inwardly. Why did leadership have to be so complicated? How did Princess Cadance or Princess Celestia manage everything? If it weren’t for them, I’d have thought this was why Chrysalis had been permanently stuck in a furious state!

I wished for probably a thousandth time since my ascension than I was still just a random little drone with hardly any real responsibilities, that I could still afford to go about my business without a care in the world, that I could have passed the proverbial crown to someling else… That way, I could at least take a walk around without feeling self-conscious or wondering what important things were waiting for me to tackle them and feeling guilty for not doing them at that very moment!

But I had to do something; just sitting here panicking was the worst thing I could be doing! If only Sunburst were here, or Spike, or Pharynx… I could ask them what to do, and they’d listen and probably come up with some good advice! Okay, maybe not Pharynx - he’d most likely just groan and roll his eyes at my incompetence and storm off after a minute or two - but Spike and Sunburst would surely be of great help! But none of them were here, and I was still stuck in my panicked indecision… if only I could walk it off! But wouldn’t the drones disapprove of their leader’s leisurely moment when there was so much work to be done?

Oh, what the heck. I still had a lot of catching up to do, so why not take a scenic route to the treasury and thus combine a moment of relaxation with a purposeful goal? For all I knew, something could come up on my route that would need addressing! And the drones wouldn’t really expect me to explain my presence wherever I went, right? Well, not anymore, anyway… probably…

Nothing much happened at first, save for a few colorful drones who bowed to me in passing, making me flinch and start feeling awkward again, and a group of black ones who hissed at me and grumbled something among themselves that I couldn’t make out exactly but guessed I wouldn’t have preferred to know the details. At least none of them got physically violent… for now, anyway.

Then, in one of many hallways, I heard voices coming from one of the burrows. They sounded almost arguing, though I couldn’t make out the exact words. I moved closer.

“...said we could do what we want!”

“I know, but we can’t do this with just the few of us!”

“Can’t we find anyling more? I’m sure we could if you’d just-”

“I’m not looking for any more members until we get permission!”

“Yeah that’s great, but how do you expect to get permission with so few members?”

“Tibia has a point, Whisper. You can’t pester the king for permissions without knowing whether or not what you want is feasible!”

“Thorax won’t mind, Gallow! Haven’t you seen him?”

By now, I was right at the burrow in question, so I stuck my head inside.

“I wouldn’t mind what?” I asked.

All four colorful drones recoiled in surprise at the uninvited guest, then went completely silent in the way that was becoming the running theme of an overly cautious approach that I’d often resorted to myself in the past. I came in and sat with them; the burrow was just about big enough to accommodate me without the need to downsize myself.

“Guys, I heard you debating whether or not to ask for permission for something, and let me point out again that I have no problem with being approached with whatever question you have.”

I got vaguely assenting murmurs in reply.

“Well? Any of you care to tell me what this is about?”

“Eh, fine, since you heard us,” one of them sighed; judging by her voice, I took her to be Whisper. “We have an idea to start a choir, or maybe an orchestra, or both, but we don’t know of anyling else who’d be interested.”

“And why did you think I wouldn’t approve?”

None of them said anything, but the floor became unusually interesting to a couple of them all of a sudden.

“Look, I get it that this is a big change after Chrysalis and that you’re not used to the hive being so casual, but if you’re looking to pursue music, I think it’s safe to assume that you’d like the new ways to take root, so why not help it a little by voicing your wishes? For all you know, there could be at least a dozen groups like yourselves, sitting alone in burrows because they don’t know there are others with the same interests! Now that I think about it, it might be a good idea to set up notice boards around the hive where everyling could put announcements!”

“Does that mean we have your permission, even though there isn’t enough of us to consider ourselves a choir?”

“Of course! Hey, if you want, you can even build a few notice boards to help move things along, not just for yourselves, but also for other drones with the same kind of problem!”

They looked at one another and nodded.

“Sure thing!” Gallow exclaimed and got up. “C’mon guys, let’s get to it!”

They followed him out of the burrow, and I got back on my way too. Urtica may not have had the time to prepare her thing yet, but Bandit would have probably counted out the bits by now, so I decided to go there first.

He was just coming out of the treasury proper when I came into his office, and somehow, I managed to startle him again.

“Oh… you’re here…” he said, composing himself. “I’ve just about finished filling the bags for you. How did you time yourself so perfectly?”

“Pure chance, I guess,” I shrugged. “So, where are the bags?”

“A moment, please.” He disappeared into the treasury and came back out dragging a bag of coins, then went in again and returned with a bag of gems, which was slightly smaller than the one with the coins, but still of considerable size. He placed them next to each other in front of me, wiped sweat from his forehead, then went back for two smaller bags that he carried on his back and set down near the other two. “There you go: twenty thousand bits for the griffons, gems of roughly the same value for the diamond dogs, and half that for the dragons and the Klugetowners each.”

“That much?!”

“The couriers might need that much depending on how big a trouble they run into with the dragons and Klugetowners, and as for the griffons and diamond dogs, I don’t think they’d want to listen for much less than that, at least when it comes to news of this magnitude. If you wanted to ask a griffon for directions, then one or two bits would have been more than enough in most cases. Explanations of things would cost more, the exact amount depending on the topic and level of detail you want and the griffon is able to provide, and assistance with a task would cost even more, sometimes depending more on how willing or unwilling they are than on how skilled your particular griffon is with what you want him or her to do… you get the idea. This is a really big thing that will affect all of Griffonstone and most if not all griffons will want to grab their share even though the news is good. Pretty much the same with diamond dogs, except they still have some remnants of a hierarchy and the gems will probably all end up in the bigshots’ paws.”

“Remnants of a hierarchy?” I wasn’t sure what he’d meant, but then one of Sunburst’s lessons flashed in my mind. “Oh, right, griffons are pretty much leaderless, aren’t they?”

“Their last king died ages ago and, the last time I checked, it didn’t look like there could be a new one anytime soon, yeah. Or ever, if you want my opinion.”

“So who should the courier look for if there’s no leader?”

“Dunno, Your High- Thorax, I’m just here to guard the riches. You’d better ask Urtica.”

“Thanks! Um,” I pointed to the bags, “should I take these with me or can I just tell the couriers to drop by on their way out?”

“Either way works for me!”

“I’ll send the couriers, then.”

“Which ones should I expect and what are their clearance codes?”

What? “I don’t even know yet who the couriers are or if we even have drones designated for that purpose! I’ll… just… send whoever, I guess, and trust them to do as they’re told.”

“...so, no clearance codes, then?”

“I’ve pretty much decided already to get rid of all that anyway,” I shrugged. “But if it makes you feel better about it, I can come with them this time.”

He pondered this. “Yeah, I think I can live with that,” he said.

“Okay then! See you later!”

Now that I was in the neighborhood, I decided I might as well check on Urtica, and hopefully I wouldn’t be too much of a nuisance; I didn’t expect her to be done yet. This kind of thing had to be long and complicated, right? Would I understand any of it? What if I, or Urtica, or both of us accidentally made an error in composing the declaration? Probably not that much of a big deal if the error was something minor that would only have the recipients laugh and roll their eyes at our incompetence, but what if we angered them or made them get a completely wrong idea about our intentions? As in, an utterly, unbelievably wrong idea, one that would lead to increased tensions and ultimately make me seriously consider violent methods of resolving the misunderstanding? But that would only make things worse! There had to be a civil way to deal with complications, otherwise there was no point in me trying to do everything I’d been trying to do! If the ponies could solve issues non-violently, then I should be able to do it too! But how?

Listen to yourself, Thorax. Picturing worst-case scenarios when you’ve barely started doing anything? Pull yourself together! You’ve been through worse; you’ll think of something!

If only confidence could be activated on demand… or at least, if only it would stop disappearing at the worst possible moment!

But I was at the archive by now, and Urtica was waiting for me.

“Oh good, you’re here already!” she chirped. “I was wondering whether I should come get you or just wait for you here!”

“Nothing’s wrong, I hope?”

“Well, no, uh, maybe, I mean, I’ve got some good news and some teeny tiny slightly bad news.”

Uh-oh. I’d known this wasn’t going to be that easy!

“Tell me,” I sighed.

“The good news is that I’ve managed to use what I had to piece together something that I think might be usable. If you like it, of course! The bad news, well…” She gulped and my heart sank a little further. “I’m afraid some of the documents I intended to rely the most heavily on are not quite complete because they’re, uh, damaged.”

Oh no… “Deliberately?”

“No, actually… I vaguely remember noticing them being in such a state a while ago, a few years before the Canterlot invasion in fact… I mean, they’re old and the hive structure has been known to act out from time to time, and it’s not like we took special care to preserve every single scroll at all cost…”

“Are they originals or copies?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Urtica, I get it that the rightful owners of those scrolls wouldn’t have given them to us willingly! Someling had to have stolen them, but if the point was to simply find out what a scroll says, the drone assigned to the task could have simply transcribed it rather than grabbing it and risking to get chased if the theft was discovered too soon.”

“Interesting strategy, but I don’t think our soldiers were ever running around with spare scrolls and pencils for that purpose, though I won’t deny that a few treaties I’ve run into do look like hastily-done copies, so they might have resorted to something like you’re suggesting. Either way, I’m not sure if anyone would let us near the originals even now, and I get the impression that you wouldn’t condone obtaining them the old-fashioned way, so to speak.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that, Urtica. The point was that we’ll have to return the documents we stole, and it won’t look good if we show up with torn-up scrolls.”

“Oh! That… would be… problematic…”

“Okay, let’s discuss that later. You said you had something usable?”

“Yes, here it is!” She passed me a piece of parchment. “I hope it’s good enough! I had to make a few terminological assumptions, but we can always adjust the details, of course!” She chuckled nervously. “Or we can ditch the whole thing and start over if you don’t like what I’ve come up with!”

I started reading. It said:

Office of King Thorax, HRH

Badlands Hive

Changeling Kingdom

To: (ponies, griffons, dragons, etc.)

Re: Declaration of Peace

I, King Thorax of the Changelings, newly appointed to the Changeling Throne following the deposal of Queen Chrysalis, hereby decree that the changeling kind has abandoned all belligerency and ceased all offensive and invasive actions towards other lands as well as towards all non-changeling individuals, and that all illegal changeling agents in foreign lands have been recalled to their homeland. My aim is to end the mutual hostility between our peoples and establish friendly relations between our lands, and I am open to discussions on how best to achieve that goal, as well as negotiate an alliance if (species) is so inclined.

The current whereabouts and intentions of the former Queen are not known at present, but she is to be held responsible for her actions against other lands as well as against her own former subjects, and I hope her actions will not interfere with our efforts towards peace.

Changeling Hive, 17th September 1005 CE

(signature, hoofprint)

“Hmm, yes, I think this’ll do,” I said. “Only, what does ‘HRH’ mean?”

“It stands for ‘His Royal Highness’. That’s the standard way to write names of royalty in official documents.”

I buried my face in my hooves and groaned.

“Great… and just when I was starting to hope I’d get everyling to stop acting all stuck-up around me! How am I supposed to get used to being referred to as ‘King’ and ‘Royal Highness’ and who-knows-what else every few seconds?!”

“I’m… I’m sure you’ll get used to it eventually… but hey, just because paperwork needs to state your full title, doesn’t mean you have to put up with it in everyday face-to-face communication with your subjects if it makes you uncomfortable!”

“I guess you’re right… Okay, I don’t think I have much to add to the declaration, so can you write a copy for every land it needs to go to, including Equestria and the Crystal Empire? Princesses Celestia and Cadance already promised an alliance before they left, but it probably won’t hurt to send an official scroll regardless. I need to find Psycho to help me look for couriers now!”

“On it!”

Bumpy Road

I’d barely left the archive when Psycho came up, trotting down one of the side-hallways.

“Oh, there you are,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Something wrong?”

“Aside from a couple of brawls between groups of reformed drones and unreformed ones-”

“Brawls?! What happened? Is everyling okay?”

“Relax, they’re fine, mostly just scratches and bruises. One got bitten and two sprained a leg, but the medics say they’ll be good as new in a few days tops. I’m pretty sure you can guess what led to the whole thing.”

“Some don’t want to accept the new ways and the others don’t want to go back, right?”

“Right. And don’t worry, I sorted them out without breaking any appendages.”

“Whatever you did, I hope they took it seriously? No more brawling in the future?”

“The reformed ones did, but they weren’t the ones who started the fights, so no surprise there. There was significantly more eye-rolling on the unreformed side. I want to think I’ve convinced them to behave, but can’t promise anything. You know what we used to be like!”

I nodded.

“Anyway, on to further matters. Everyling deployed on missions away from the hive has been contacted as of two hours ago and instructed to return, the uncocooning is progressing without complications and is expected to be done by evening, and the preliminary search for Chrysalis produced no results.”

“Not even a clue where she might have gone?”

“No.”

“You did check for possible disguises, right?”

“That’s standard procedure! No, we didn’t find anything to suggest she might be lurking around in disguise.”

I sighed. “Well, can’t say I’m surprised. She could be anywhere by now, and who knows what she’s planning!”

“That’s easy,” he snorted. “She’s plotting revenge or I’ll eat my helmet!”

“Probably, but maybe she’ll come around at some point and decide to rejoin us peacefully…”

“Yeah, that’ll be the day!”

“It could happen! Granted, I find it hard to imagine her even remotely remorseful, but I used to feel the same about everyling, and look at us now!”

“Whatever.” He didn’t sound convinced, and truth be told, I couldn’t blame him.

“At least the deployed drones are returning! When can we expect them back?”

“They’re scattered all over the world and most are alone or in small teams, so they’ll be trickling back, those aren’t back already, that is. The furthest ones are a few days away. They’ll be reporting in daily as they go!”

“Good! I hope they won’t run into trouble!”

“They’ve been doing this for years, Thorax! They can take care of themselves!”

“Are any of them reformed yet?”

“Only some of those who have returned. The rest aren’t. Elytra and I have kept things vague lest they try to track down Chrysalis with the intention of joining her. Not even Pharynx knows you’re the king!”

“Really?! How much does he know?”

“Only that Chrysalis got overthrown and that we have a king now. I didn’t go into detail, not even about the reformation. I went as far as being disguised as my old self while talking to him.”

I chuckled. “Well, won’t he be surprised when he gets here! Do we know where he is now?”

“No, his team has maintained communicator silence ever since I told him to come back here.”

“Do you think Cadance and Shining could have gotten to him?”

“Not likely. They’re probably still crossing Equestria.”

“They teleported away.”

“They did?” He pondered this. “Hmm… I don’t think they could have gotten all the way to the Crystal Empire in a single jump even with alicorn magic, but that’s arguing semantics as several consecutive jumps would have only taken seconds… Did you tell them your brother was on that team?”

“I didn’t know it then! You brought me those scrolls after they all left, remember?”

“Right. They could have still missed each other, depending on which train they caught. If they opted for the train.”

Knots were beginning to form in my stomach. What if Pharynx had failed to leave the Empire in time? What if Cadance and Shining had found him? No doubt Shining would attack his family’s impostors, and no doubt Pharynx would fight back! But there were only a few drones close enough for him to rely on, and Shining had the whole army! Would either side care to talk it out? What if Pharynx got captured? What if he got killed? I couldn’t imagine life without him! What would I do? How would I go on? How could I go on knowing that a stupid oversight had killed my brother?

“I have to go to the Crystal Empire,” I gasped, spreading my wings.

“For what?”

“Pharynx could be in danger! I have to help him!”

“How? You’re days away by flight, and you don’t even know for sure what’s going on! You could even miss each other without realizing it!”

“So I should just stand idly by and do nothing to help him?!”

“Thorax, listen to yourself. You’re the king now, and you’re responsible for the whole hive, not just your brother, especially now that we’re adjusting to a completely new system! You’re needed here! And Pharynx is tough! Whatever trouble you’re imagining him in, he’s probably been in similar situations twenty times already and knows exactly what to do!”

“I know… but he’s my brother…”

He groaned. “Okay, how about this. If Pharynx and the rest of his team aren’t back by this time tomorrow, send one of the drones in the direction of the Crystal Empire to see if they can figure out where the holdup is. Will that make you feel better?”

“Maybe-” His suggestion reminded me of what I’d been preparing for in the course of this morning. “Hold on. I’ve been setting up a declaration of peace to send to other lands, and I’ve told Urtica to make a copy to go to the Crystal Empire as well even though they already know what happened! I was just about to go looking for couriers to deliver the scrolls! If Pharynx isn’t back in due time, the courier going there could check on him!”

“Finally,” Psycho muttered.

“Hey, I’m just worried for Pharynx! Don’t you have any family you’d go to great lengths for?”

“I’ve got a few broodmates but we’ve never been very close. We were always too focused on becoming good soldiers and serving Chrysalis to make an effort to get along with one another beyond what was required to keep us from getting distracted from contributing to the army. Most drones I know would tell you the same about their broodmates, too. You and Pharynx have actually always had a relationship unusual for changelings.”

“Well, now that you’re not expected to blindly obey to my every whim, maybe you can get to know your broodmates better, too!”

He snorted. “Not likely. Half of them are still unreformed!”

“But not necessarily forever! C’mon Psycho, don’t be so grumpy!”

“Whatever. I think they’re as likely to reform as you’re likely to get any land out there to listen to you. Not counting Equestria, I mean.”

“About that. Can you help me find some couriers I can trust to deliver the scrolls as instructed? A few of them should preferably be strong enough to carry money bags over long distances.”

“Money bags? What for?”

“Urtica suggested that the ones heading to the griffons and the diamond dogs should take some bits and gems to get them to listen to what we have to say and that the ones going to the dragons and Klugetown could use some money and gems to get themselves out of trouble if necessary.”

Psycho frowned.

“And you took her advice?”

“Yes… You sound like I shouldn’t have?”

“How much were you planning to give them?”

“I just came up to Bandit and he counted twenty thousand bits for griffons and-”

“How much?! And you’re okay with that?!”

“Well, uh… it does sound like a lot of money, but I guess if it helps win them over…”

“Did either of them care to mention that the lands you’re not giving any money to would think it unfair and accuse you of bribing the griffons and diamond dogs into an alliance and that they’ll be less likely to honor that declaration and maybe even turn on us unless they get their share of money too?”

“Um…”

“And even if they don’t get furious about it, twenty thousand bits is too much no matter how you call it! The griffons should accept far less!”

“But Bandit said they wouldn’t-”

“Bandit hasn’t set hoof out of his office for longer than you’ve been alive! His criteria are outdated!”

“Oh…”

“How much did he count for the diamond dogs?”

“Gems that amount to around twenty thousand bits.”

“And the dragons?”

“About half that. Klugetown too.”

“We’re gonna need a word with him. Coming?”

I shrugged. What choice did I have? Unlike Psycho, I clearly didn’t know what I was doing here! He had to have a better idea how to handle this!

“Which lands exactly are you sending the declaration to?” he asked as we were heading for the treasury.

“Pretty much every land. Urtica said I was right in assuming we’re enemies with everyone and I want to end that, and also form alliances if possible.”

“Whom are you offering an alliance?”

“Any and all of them that are interested. Why?”

“So, you haven’t made a selection of lands you don’t want to be allies with?”

“...no… I don’t think we’re in a position to be picky, and anyway, I may not even know of every single land out there, to be honest…”

He stopped in his tracks. “Wait, you’re going in blind?! How are you going to negotiate anything if you don’t know who you’re negotiating it with and what they want?”

“Uh… I guess I was going to ask Urtica or someling else for a crash course as and when the need arised…”

“Why am I not surprised?” he mumbled to himself.

We continued walking.

“What about Klugetown?” he asked. “Do you actually want to be allies with them for some reason or did they just come up as candidates for wanting money in exchange to hear us out?”

“I don’t even know where Klugetown is or who lives there. All I know is that Urtica said they’re about as bad as we used to be.”

“She’s right, and if you want my advice, I wouldn’t offer them an alliance. You can’t be allies with the whole world, Thorax. We’d be better off with the likes of Equestria. Can’t say I’m exactly thrilled about a possible alliance with Griffonstone or the Dragon Lands, but I doubt they’d be interested anyway, so…” He gave a noncommittal shrug.

“Okay, I get it, but what are you suggesting, that I shouldn’t send them anything? Not even a declaration of peace?”

“I didn’t say that. The declaration would probably be a good thing, at least to let them know that things are changing here in more ways than just new default anatomy and a new figure at the throne, and to have them find out about it from us rather than in a roundabout way. It might make a difference between life and death to any drone who happens to be in their territory even if they won’t want to have anything to do with us otherwise, and telling them ourselves wouldn’t give them the idea that they’re being deliberately ignored with who-knows-what in mind. As for giving any of them money…” He gestured to the treasury we were approaching. “...that’s what we’re here to discuss.”

We went in and Bandit sprang to his hooves, but this time, he didn’t look startled out of his carapace.

“Thorax, you’re he- Psycho? You’re one of the couriers?”

“We need to talk, Bandit,” Psycho snapped at him. “Twenty thousand bits for the griffons? What’s wrong with you?”

“I…”

“When was the last time you were told to give away that much?”

“Uh…”

“Actually, three times as much if we count the others?”

Bandit gulped. “I swear, I gave my best estimate-”

“Based on what?”

“I-I-I was an… inf-f-f-filtrator i-i-in Griffons-s-s-s-stone-”

“Was that before or after Celestia was born?”

“Guys, please!” I exclaimed. “Can we do this without arguing?”

They both looked at me as if they’d forgotten I was there. They… hadn’t forgotten, had they?

“...fine,” Psycho relented. “Bandit, we think the current arrangement with the money won’t do. We need to figure out something else.”

“Like what?”

“First of all, cut down on what you’ve already set aside for the griffons and whatnot. Thorax, you think five thousand would be a good enough upper limit if we’re giving them anything?”

“I guess…” I had no idea either way, but he might, having been Acting First Commander in Pharynx’s absence.

“Second, if we’re giving something to one land, then we’ll have to give the same amount to all the other lands, or half of them will get offended. Do we have that much?”

Bandit pondered this. “In bits and gems? We probably would, but that’ll leave hardly any bits for our own use, and I’m pretty sure none of us can guarantee that we absolutely won’t need them. There are objects and artifacts we could sell for additional money, but it can’t be done at a moment’s notice even on the black market, even if we assume we’ll remain in good standing - I mean, what counts as good standing to them - now that we’re reformed.”

“On the contrary,” I added, “if things work out the way I want them to, then changeling could end up mingling freely with other creatures and even buying things. I wonder how they’d feel about getting to own money for their personal use, maybe even about earning money for themselves…”

“Then we won’t get anywhere by giving out five-thousand-bit bags,” Psycho agreed. “Even though I doubt your idea of everyling owning and earning money like ponies do is going to happen in the predictable future.”

“So… half that?”

“Still too much. I’m thinking one thousand bits, tops. That way we can theoretically distribute some bits to the entire adult population of the hive - not enough to be actually usable for much, though, so we might as well skip it for now - and there might still be something left in the treasury for public expenses.”

“Is that how ponies do it?”

“More or less,” Bandit said. “I can go into detail if you care to listen and have the time. So, I should start counting bits again? How many bags will that be?”

Psycho and I exchanged glances.

“We’ll need to check with Urtica,” I said. “We have to go over those declarations anyway.”

“One more thing,” Psycho said. “We need to decide how to call this. ‘Here’s some cash, now listen to us’ would work with griffons, but most other lands don’t work that way.”

“You mean, something to make them want to accept that bag, or something to convince them that we’re giving it away for all the right reasons?”

“Something like that.”

“How about... reimbursement of some of the stolen goods as a sign of good will, or something along those lines?”

“Yeah, that might work,” Psycho mused. “It won’t guarantee it, and some might still see it as a trap, but I haven’t got any better ideas.”

“Me neither,” Bandit said. “So unless Urtica has any suggestions, I guess it’s as good as anything.”

“That settles it, then,” I said. “Now, to handle Urtica’s part.”

Psycho and I got underway. Neither of us said a single word the whole way to the archive. I wasn’t entirely sure how Psycho felt about my blunder and the need to guide me through correcting it step-by-step; his love aura was hard to decipher, and his posture and silence wasn’t helping any. Was he second-guessing his decision to side with me now that I’d made a possibly major mess-up of my first attempt at international relations? I couldn’t blame him if he was! What I’d done could be explained as nothing more than lack of training and experience, and he’d probably say something along those lines if I were to ask his opinion, but would he say it truthfully or merely out of politeness? What if it hadn’t been the lack of experience? What if I was just plain incompetent, unfit to rule? I couldn’t expect others to keep salvaging my bad ideas forever, and what kind of a leader would I be if I expected others to make decisions on my behalf in order to keep me from messing things up again? I hadn’t asked for the throne, and I was sure my life would be much easier and so much more enjoyable without that responsibility, but now that I was here, it felt just… wrong… to give it up to someone else no matter how capable a leader they might be! It felt as if I would disappoint - even betray - my subjects, and I didn’t want to do that!

Was I getting delusional? Had power gotten into my head already? Goodness, I hoped not! I knew too well what power-hunger and ideas of grandeur could lead to and didn’t want to find myself plunging into it! But what if it was too late already? Could I have crossed the point of no return; could I already be doomed to become the next Chrysalis if given enough time? Had she once been like me, hopeful and benevolent, before the same corruption had claimed her, twisting her over the centuries and depriving her of everything good she’d had in herself until nothing remained but the rotten embodiment of darkness that I knew and cowered before?

Quit it, Thorax! It’s not going to happen! Celestia has lived for centuries too, and she’s never strayed! Luna may have strayed, yes, but she found the light again! Even if it does happen to you, it might not be permanent!

But Chrysalis had never found that light. Had she ever had it? Had she buried all knowledge and evidence of that light in a darkness-driven fit of shame or whatever else would have made her resort to such an act, or had the light never existed at all? Either way, could she be cured? She wasn’t a pony, so I had no promise that the thing that had saved Luna would work on her! But if that was the case, and if I was to invariably succumb to darkness-

Okay, stop it already! It’s not going to happen! You’re not going to let it happen! And you’ve got friends who won’t let it happen! If it does come to that, they’ll find a way to help you!

“Thorax? You okay?”

“Huh- Oh, sorry, Psycho… I…” I took a deep breath and let it out; it helped snap me out of it. For now, anyway. “I guess I started overthinking things. You wanted to say something?”

“Just that you walked right past the archive like it doesn’t exist.” He pointed behind us, to the archive entrance. “What’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing. Just overthinking things, like I said.”

He eyed me for a moment longer, then shrugged, apparently having decided not to press the issue. I went into the archive and he followed.

Urtica was sitting at a rock-turned-writing desk similar to the one in Bandit’s office, fully engaged in writing a scroll I assumed was a copy of the declaration. About a dozen scrolls were piled up on the floor on one side of the writing rock, and at least twice as many were on the other side. She finished the scroll in front of her, laid it onto the smaller pile, and crossed an item off a list before finally noticing us.

“You’re here already? I’m sorry, I haven’t had the time to finish all of the messages!”

“It’s okay, we figured you wouldn’t have,” I said. “How far did you get?”

“I’ve done Equestria and its autonomous principalities, the Crystal Empire, Zebrica, and Yakyakistan.”

“Okay, good. We have a slight change of plans for what some of the messages should look like, and fortunately, you haven’t gotten to any of them.”

“I’m listening.”

“The part about ending hostility stays the same in everything, but we won’t be offering an alliance to Klugetown and… What did we say, Psycho? Griffonstone and Dragon Lands?”

“The Storm Kingdom and Diamond Dogland. Griffonstone and the Dragon Lands can stay if you really want them to.”

“What’s the Storm Kingdom? You haven’t mentioned it at all until now!”

“Something closely tied to Klugetown and not a bit less hostile.”

“Okay then, I guess those.”

Urtica put a mark next to some of the items on her list. “Got it!”

Psycho took the list and counted the items on it.

“I’ll go get the couriers. Will you two be here?”

“I definitely will,” Urtica said, “and I’m going to need Thorax’s hoofprint and signature on each scroll before we send them out.”

“Then I’ll stay here too. Unless I’m more needed elsewhere?”

“Nah, I think the others can wait. This shouldn’t take insanely long.”

He left. Urtica had by then started on the next scroll, but paused a moment to pass me a quill and a sponge soaked in ink. Good thing I’d seen Cadance and Shining use a similar sponge a couple of times back in the Crystal Empire, or I wouldn’t know what to do with it!

I took one of the finished scrolls in my magic. This one was for Neighpon, one of Equestria’s autonomous principalities if my memory of Sunburst’s lessons served me well. I read it; as expected, Urtica had copied the prearranged text to the letter, and I touched my hoof against the sponge and left a print on the scroll, then signed it over the hoofprint. The next scroll was for Bitaly, then for the Crystal Empire, then the Griffish Isles, then Maretonia, and so on. I found no fault in any of them, and each got their own hoofprint and signature in due course. Stamping and signing them slowed down as I ran out of finished scrolls so I offered to write a few myself, but Urtica said there weren’t many left to go and assured me she could handle it. So, I waited patiently for her to finish each scroll and pass it to me, all the while trying not to drive myself into another fit of overthinking whatever random thing I got caught on this time. Somehow, it worked.

We were at the second-to-last scroll when Psycho returned with his company of couriers, some of them already equipped with Bandit’s money bags. The rest, I assumed, would get their bags once Bandit finished counting the money.

I told the couriers what their assignment was and implored them to put their own safety first, even if it meant returning to the hive with an undelivered scroll. No scroll was worth dying for, and messages could always be delivered at a later time if the first attempt got thwarted! They voiced no objections, so I assigned each of them a scroll and sent them on their way. A few still had to wait for the money bags, and the rest headed out immediately.

“Well, that’s that,” I sighed when they were all gone. “I have to admit, I didn’t think this would be so complicated, and I’m not talking about the text of the declaration!”

“Welcome to diplomacy,” Psycho muttered.

“Is every decision I’ll have to make going to have so many aspects to consider?”

“Not every, but plenty of them will.”

“I might have known… Urtica, is there anything here in the archive that I could read in order to learn leadership more quickly? I don’t want to have to rely on others to warn me that I’m about to make a big mess of things whenever something like this comes up! Not that I don’t appreciate your help, but-”

“We understand, Thorax,” she said. “Hmm… not sure about a guide on leadership, but there are some logs on observed behavior of certain royal figures… They were meant for ensuring disguise credibility in case Chrysalis decided to have the said leaders replaced, but if you can infer the thought process behind the decisions they made that were noted in the logs, I guess that’s as good as anything I can give you.”

“Oh well, I might as well try it,” I said. “Can I take them out of the archive?”

“Sure! I don’t expect we’ll really need them anymore so no worries if anything happens to them! Not that I think anything will! I’m sure you’ll treat them with care!”

She dashed off and disappeared in the maze of shelves. A couple of minutes later, she was back with a bunch of scrolls.
“There you go!” she said as I took them in my magic. “There are more if you want! All you have to do is ask!”

“Thanks! I’ll, um, be on my way now.”

“Do you need me for anything else?” Psycho asked when we left the archive.

“Not at the moment. I’ll be in the throne room if you need me, unless something happens.”

“Alright then.” We parted ways, me heading further up, him disappearing in the maze of tunnels and passages.

When I got to the throne room, I found a couple of drones standing about.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“No, we were just thinking of tidying this place up, if you don’t mind. It’s about time we cleared up the mess!”

“Oh…” I looked around and chuckled; there was a pretty big mess, now that I thought about it, and the throne shards were still piled up unceremoniously and awaiting… what? Disposal? A decision on what they’d best be used for? My permission to do something with them? “Yeah, go ahead!”

“Please tell us if we’re disturbing you at any point and we’ll see what we can do about it!”

I nodded and sat down next to the pile of shards, setting the scrolls down nearby. The two drones started sweeping, and I watched them for a moment, wondering whether this had been their own idea of Proboscis’ orders and reminiscing on the days when I’d been in their place. Well, whatever else was going on in my life now, at least I’d gotten rid of the bullying that had been an everyday occurrence then, and even if some of the drones still disagreed with and disapproved of the way I intended to lead the hive, I didn’t have to submit myself to their hatred anymore.

I looked at the scrolls again. Would they help me overcome my difficulties and teach me to be a better leader? Would the knowledge gained from them be useful in winning over the unwilling of my subjects? Could it help win over the other lands?

Only one way to find out.

I selected a scroll at random and started reading.

Together Again

“He’s here,” Psycho announced a couple of hours later, calling my attention off the scroll and onto the drone he’d brought with him.

Though momentarily annoyed by the interruption, seeing the newcomer filled my heart with indescribable relief, and I forgot about the scrolls, about the demolished throne room, the hive, the difficulties I’d faced and the challenges that were yet to come. The rest of the world might as well have crumbled into oblivion; nothing mattered anymore save for this one individual I owed so much to!

As if in trance, I dropped the scroll held in my magic, sprang to my hooves, and ran up to him to embrace him in a tight, long-overdue hug.

“Oh, Pharynx,” I whispered, my eyes welling up with happy tears as I unloaded the richest, warmest stream of love onto him, “I’m so glad you’re back and alright!”

He tensed for a moment, as if unsure what was going on and what to do about it. Then I remembered: Psycho hadn’t told him about me! He had no idea it was his brother hugging him! It took him a moment to recover, but then he pushed me away and looked at me as if he’d seen the impossible… okay, admittedly, ‘the impossible’ wasn’t very far off.

“Thorax?!” he exclaimed.

“Surprise!” I chimed, grinning widely.

I didn’t get much further when his initial shock faded and he tensed up again, stubbornly refusing to believe who I really was. I couldn’t blame him; according to Psycho, Chrysalis had grown very suspicious about his motives and intentions in regard to me and his loyalty to her, and had used me as bait in an attempt to trick him into revealing himself. Pharynx was neiter naive nor stupid; he must have gotten wise to her schemes one way or another, or sensed something wasn’t right at the very least, and gone into overprotective mode! Not having witnessed the ordeal that had ended in her deposal and my ascension, he still suspected foul play! But how to get him to believe me? This wasn’t going to be easy…

Unsurprisingly, simply telling him I wasn’t Chrysalis in disguise did absolutely nothing to resolve the matter. Oh well, it had been worth a try! But what to try next?

An idea popped into my head mercifully quickly: Psycho had mentioned a peculiar ointment found in a zebra’s hut in the Everfree Forest in the early days of the hunt for me, and the description of its properties had sounded uncannily familiar. Though I hadn’t yet had the time to examine the substance that the hunters had brought here to be studied in an attempt to figure out how to counter its disguise-undoing effect, I had no doubt this was the same thing the zebra had offered to treat my injuries with after an encounter with a couple of timberwolves, which had quickly led to the discovery of its effect on a changeling’s disguise! If I applied it onto myself now, Pharynx would realize I was who I claimed to be! But would he recognize the ointment for what it was? While waiting for Psycho to bring the jar, I realized the only way to ensure that would be to trigger the effect on Pharynx, but how to get him to cooperate if he was still suspicious?

Apparently, all it had taken was to ask. Okay, all it had taken was to shapeshift into my old form, thus implying I intended to demonstrate the effect on myself too, and then to ask him to do the same. It hadn’t gone without a fair share of suspicious glaring on his part, but before long, we both stood there undisguised and covered in greenish ointment. Good thing Psycho had brought us a cloth to clean ourselves up with! Or had he borrowed it from the drones cleaning up the throne room?

Though some of his suspicion melted away at this, Pharynx still wasn’t entirely convinced, and I had to resort to recounting a couple of things that had happened to us years ago with no one else around to witness it. That finally worked, and thank goodness it had, as I had no idea what else I could say or do to convince him!

We both had a lot of questions for each other to fill in the blanks in what we knew of the other’s adventures while separated, and we filled in those blanks readily. It was such a thrill to talk to him again after all this time, and how wonderful it felt to share with him everything I’d learned and accomplished! Heck, just seeing him again was music to my eyes; I hadn’t realized how immensely I’d missed him! Even better was that, for the first time in probably forever, we had a normal conversation, one that didn’t consist of him yelling and criticizing me for whichever mistake or a series of mistakes was on today’s menu and me cowering and whimpering at the onslaught; we talked like equals, and though he still retained a good measure of his signature grumpiness and sarcasm, I never once got a slightest hint of annoyance, let alone malice! Had the long separation done that? The promise of punishment hanging over our heads? The relief of being reunited? Whatever it was, the end result was amazing and warmed my heart blissfully! If only we could have had this in the old days; no doubt it would have helped us find a common language, and I’d never have doubted the love he’d had for me! I’d never thought the day would come, but for a brief moment as I described my ascension, I could have sworn I saw a glint of pride and awe in his eyes! He stifled it quickly, but I was sure I would never forget that moment: my big brother, my reluctant guardian ever since we’d broken out of our eggs, was finally proud of me!

Everything was fine until I told him we’d been unable to find the runaway Chrysalis yet and he asked to have his First Commander authority restored so he could lead the search parties.

“Hold on a minute…” he said after I informed him of one of my first decisions as king. “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?!”

Well, so much about conversations on equal grounds. He looked to be ready to explode, and I could almost see flames coming out of his ears! I tried explaining my reasoning to him, but he wouldn’t listen! He just kept insisting that we were in bigger danger than ever before, and nothing I said made a difference anymore! Not even Psycho had been that stubborn!

Okay, think, Thorax, think… What to tell him?

A chance presented itself to mention the sharing of love and the activities that I’d started or at least given permission for. One of them had to catch his interest! Or maybe he’d have an idea for an activity of his own? But my hopes were crushed; he merely scoffed at the idea and even accused me of undermining our changelinghood in favor of pony ways! Where had that pride and civil manners disappeared? I was clutching at straws by now!

“I’m sure you’ll feel differently once you share love!” Please do it, Pharynx! You have no idea how much it would mean to me!

“And become like the rest of you?” he spat back. “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!” he bellowed, storming off into a nearby hallway. “And don’t come to me crying when you realize the colossal extent of the mistakes you’re making!”

“Pharynx…” I called after him feebly, but he was already gone.

I just stood there for a while, completely at a loss about what to do. Where had it all gone so wrong? We’d finally had a normal conversation for once, without a hint of grudges or grievances, and he’d seemed glad to see I’d defeated Chrysalis and taken her place! Even more, most of the changelings had chosen to follow my example and to side with me instead of her! He wasn’t going to have to protect me constantly anymore, and could instead do whatever he fancied, so why wasn’t he happy? If I didn’t know better, I’d think he wanted trouble! But why would he? He’d spent his whole life getting the hive rid of trouble, so why would he want more trouble now that there was hardly any of it left?

Should I go after him, try to talk some sense into him? But where had he gone? And even if I managed to find him reasonably quickly, what would I tell him? I’d already exhausted all ideas, and all it had done was to fuel his anger! It didn’t make sense! If Psycho and so many other drones I’d never expected it from could have shared love and accepted peace and harmony, why couldn’t Pharynx? If he’d done so much for me already, why couldn’t he do just one more thing?

Was this the one-thing-too-many for him?

No. I refused to believe it! Why get himself injured and disgraced and labelled as traitor and why risk execution for helping me, only to refuse the benefits I’d ensured for our kind? There had to be something else going on! But what? And how to get him to tell me? How would I even get him to talk to me at all? I’d tried while he was still here, and he’d just left! True, I wouldn’t have known what else to say, but I would have listened! That had to count for something, right? Except that he hadn’t wanted to talk any more than he’d cared to listen! He’d just yelled and growled like in the old days! How were we supposed to get anywhere with that?

Crestfallen and unable to think of what to do about him, I returned to my scrolls.

The one I’d been reading still lay exactly where I’d dropped it, unrolled at the paragraph I’d gotten to before Pharynx’s arrival. I took it in my magic again and resumed reading.

Some time later - must have been at least an hour, maybe even two - I realized I was still staring at that same paragraph, reading it over and over and over again but failing to remember a single word. I barely even remembered who the scroll was about anymore! Pharynx’s attitude must have affected me more than I realized!

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Okay, Thorax, you can do this. Calm down and forget about Pharynx. It could have been the initial shock; he could still come around and accept your ways.

I returned to the scroll. I’d started reading it with the idea of figuring out something about diplomacy, but could it help me deal with Pharynx too? I hadn’t found anything especially helpful on either account so far, but maybe I just had to keep reading!

A little while later, I realized it was still no use. I set that scroll aside for now and took another, then one more only to get the same result every time! What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I remember a few simple sentences, Pharynx or no Pharynx? I groaned and extinguished my magic, letting the scrolls fall down, and only then I realized how dark it was. I took in my surroundings; the drones cleaning the throne room were nowhere to be seen, and the moon was high up in the sky! How had I not noticed?!

Obviously there was little point in insisting on reading the scrolls now despite the moonlight providing enough illumination. Even if I weren’t distracted by trying to figure out the cause of Pharynx’s attitude, it was late enough that sheer tiredness would hinder my progress. I was going to have to continue tomorrow, or at least, at the soonest convenience if matters of higher urgency turned up before I was done with the scrolls. The best thing I could do now was to lie down and get some sleep. With any luck, the solution to dealing with Pharynx would come to me once I was fresh and rested! Okay, probably not if my previous track record with him was any indication, but why not hold out some hope?

Then I remembered I’d been so involved in other things that I’d forgotten to check where I was supposed to sleep now. Was Psycho still awake at this hour? If he was, where would I find him? Come to think of it, where would I find him if he wasn’t awake? I had no idea where his sleeping burrow was! First Commander’s quarters, maybe? Yeah right, that was sure helpful to someling who didn’t know where to look for it! Somewhere in the castle? Possibly, but that was still a pretty big thing to search in the middle of the night… and the night was pretty warm and pleasant…

Oh, whatever. I could just sleep here one more night!

I tucked the scrolls into a gap between some throne shards at the bottom of the pile and curled up to sleep. I’d barely closed my eyes when some pretty intense prodding - punching, almost - startled me back into reality.

I looked at the source of the commotion and was met with my brother’s seething face.

“What have you done to our burrow?” he hissed. “Or my burrow now or whatever?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s full of junk! What happened?”

“Oh… that… um…”

“Well?!”

“Cornicle told me it got repurposed when you were sent after me. I wasn’t expected to need it anymore, and Chrysalis must have figured you’d either move to the one designated for First Commanders or… well… or that you wouldn’t need one…”

He snorted. “Figures. So, what, you fell asleep working or were you too lazy to move for the night?”

I tilted my head at him.

“You did claim Chrysalis’ bedchamber, didn’t you?” he asked.

“I haven’t gotten around to claiming any chambers or burrows yet. I was thinking of clearing out our old burrow, but there were more pressing matters-”

He facehoofed. “Thorax, you’re a king now! You can’t sleep around the commoners!”

“The ‘commoners’?”

“You know what I mean!”

“You didn’t have a problem with sleeping around ‘the commoners’ as you put it when you were First Commander!”

“That was different!”

“How?”

“What does it matter? C’mon Thorax, get up!” He grabbed my ear and pulled at it.

“Why? Ow!” I stood up and he released my ear. “Where are we going?”

“Chrysalis’ bedchamber. You need to start showing some dignity!”

“By sleeping there?”

“No, by hosting a literary debate.” He rolled his eyes. “When have you ever heard of royalty sleeping on the floor next to a pile of rocks?”

“Uh…”

“Exactly. Now what are you standing about for? Move it!”

“Where to?”

He looked stuck in indecision between facehoofing again, yelling at me, slapping me into focus, and any combination of the above.

“What? I don’t know where her bedchamber is…”

That helped him settle for a combination of a groan and an eye roll.

“You didn’t even check the place out?”

“Well, I… I had more pressing matters to attend to, and-”

“‘More pressing matters’? That’s, what, making sure everyling knows the exact schedule of their singing practice?”

“The discussion with the drones wanting to assemble a choir only took a couple of minutes!”

“And yet, I counted seven notices about it posted around on my way to our burrow alone, along with some other notices, and you still don’t know where you’re supposed to sleep! Since when do we have notice boards, anyway?”

“I might have suggested it this morning… didn’t think they’d be up already…”

“Well they are, so I hope you’re happy.”

“You don’t sound happy…”

“Thorax, this is my ‘happy’, in case you forgot.”

“You know, you could be happier-”

“Okay, shut up! Just shut up about that or I’ll beat you up so hard that you’ll turn black again without a disguise!”

I winced.

“Well, you coming or what?”

“Do I have to?”

“...now what?”

“I… you won’t understand…”

“Let me guess. You’re afraid she’ll jump you.”

“No… yes… maybe… I mean, it isn’t so much her jumping me, but rather the feeling that I don’t belong there… and the memories of her… and, uh, it just generally feels wrong…”

“But being at her throne doesn’t?”

“Her throne got blown up. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Since when are you so nitpicky?”

“I am?”

“Ugh, this isn’t getting anywhere… Just come along, will you?”

I hung my head with a sigh and relented. He led me into one of the hallways I hadn’t tried before. I would have probably gotten around to exploring that part of the hive sooner or later anyway even without being prompted, except that Psycho would have probably decided to familiarize me with the area pretty soon if Pharynx hadn’t beaten him to it. He’d mentioned something about having prepared Chrysalis’ bedchamber for me, hadn’t he? Or had I misinterpreted that remark in my half-awake state?

Either way, as uncomfortable as I was with the prospect of claiming Chrysalis’ bedchamber, part of me couldn’t help but wonder what it looked like. Undoubtedly it was bigger and fancier than any sleeping burrow assigned to the regular drones, but I could only guess at anything beyond that! I didn’t know for sure, but I imagined few drones would have had the clearance to go there; I certainly hadn’t! Had Pharynx? He’d never said anything either way, but was it because he hadn’t thought it wise or necessary, or because he hadn’t known anything about the place other than its location?

Pharynx came to a halt sooner than I’d expected and gestured at a gate that was mostly nondescript save for a somewhat bigger size than that of most burrows and caverns, but not overtly so. I peered inside. The cavern was spacious, about half the size of the Crystal Castle’s throne room, which wasn’t as big as some of the other caverns in the hive I knew of, but it was easily the biggest one intended for personal use, and there was little doubt about its purpose: though the walls were stripped of any decorative elements that might have once stood proudly on their shelf-like bulges, they still had the air of bearing witness to something sinister and intimately rotten; the floor and ceiling were cleaned to perfection, likely to remove all trace of the cocoons that had to have been here and of the messy aftermath of releasing the creatures inside, and in the centre of the cavern stood a roughly conical, stump-like rock with a peculiar cocoon on top. This cocoon, unlike all the others I’d seen in my lifetime, was empty of creatures alive or dead, perfectly smooth and symmetrical, and affixed to the rock beneath it in such a way that the slime in the middle lay directly on the rock’s upper surface and the blanket of resinous shell was stretched over it and attached to the rim of the underlying rock to create something similar to the upholstery I’d seen on some of the chairs in ponies’ homes.

I came closer and poked at the strange cocoon. It yielded under my hoof and wobbled slightly when released, much like any ordinary cocoon would, and though it looked fragile, it didn’t break, in fact, it felt sturdy enough to withstand a much bigger force than I’d presented it with. Other than that, nothing happened, and I let out a breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. What had I been expecting? That it’d explode and kill me and everyling else in sight?

“What now?” Pharynx said from behind me. “Never seen a bed before?”

“This is a bed?”

“What’s it look like? Of course it’s a bed!”

I looked at it again. Okay, it was about the right size… and it might be comfortable too, in a weird way… Not that I was itching to try it! No matter how I looked at the bed, something about it was vaguely disturbing…

This was Chrysalis’ bed, I reminded myself. Pharynx, and probably Psycho too, wanted me to sleep on it, and that image alone was disturbing enough! But something told me there was more to it than plain old reluctance to use an object that had belonged to the queen who had caused me so much pain and anguish. Had her bed absorbed her hatred the same way cocoons normally conducted love? Was her rotten aura imbued in the whole room and every object within it like an unseen dark guardian against any who dared take this malignant sanctum from its rightful owner and claim it for themselves?

But stifling as the aura of the room was, Pharynx still expected me to claim this space as my own. Couldn’t he feel the overwhelming darkness?

“What are you waiting for, an invitation?” he grumbled, and some of the dark aura seemed to fade. Had his presence dispelled it, or had it only been a product of my anxious imagination?

“Oh! I, um…”

“Ugh, I’ll die and rot away waiting for you to make up your mind! Is the First Commander’s bedchamber available? I’ll sleep there since you’ve so considerately written off our old burrow!”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, sure,” I said absent-mindedly.

He trotted off and I remained standing next to the bed a little longer, staring at it, trying to convince myself to give it a try because, obviously, I was going to have to do it sooner or later, when-

SMACK!

“Hey!” Psycho protested; just as I turned around to the source of the sounds, I saw him open his wings to keep himself from crashing into a wall that he’d been catapulted head-first into, and he flew back in the direction he’d come from.

I ran out into the hallway. There, at the entrance to another chamber, stood Pharynx and Psycho, blue face scowling at the black one, purple eyes vowing murder to the red ones. One looked ready for the slightest excuse to make ample use of his fangs and the other was undeterred by no longer having his own.

“What’s going on here?” I asked, not really expecting to get a reply.

“Your brother needs to learn some manners, Thorax,” said Psycho, not taking his glare off Pharynx.

“And this fleabag needs to learn to respect boundaries!” Pharynx retorted.

“Since when is this your bedchamber?”

“Just because I chose against using it doesn’t mean it wasn’t mine!”

“Maybe it was once, but you lost it when Chrysalis stripped you of rank!”

“And you think you were officially promoted to replace me? Get a grip!”

“Guys, please!” I tried again. “Can’t you share the room?”

They both looked at me as if I’d told them to level the hive and bring us a pack of timberwolves to dance with.

“Not even for one night?” I smiled sheepishly.

“No,” they growled in unison, then continued the scowling contest.

“But one of you will have to give up the room if you don’t want to share!”

The only thing that had done was to intensify the steam coming out of their ears.

“Guys?”

No effect.

I groaned and rubbed my temple. What to do now? Pharynx was my brother, and Psycho had abandoned his hatred towards me and proven himself a capable and trustworthy assistant; I didn’t want to kick either one of them out of the room they both wanted! But I was going to have to do it if they couldn’t sort it out between themselves! If only there was a way to make them both satisfied!

“Guys!” I exclaimed. “Can you please please please put up with it until morning? Then we can discuss it when we’re all fresh and rested…”

“No, Pharynx insisted. Psycho simply huffed.

“Okay, uh… how about this? Psycho, you stay in this room tonight, and Pharynx, you share the room with me, and we’ll discuss the matter tomorrow?”

That did the trick, at least temporarily. They gave each other a quick scowl and trotted off in opposite directions, Pharynx to Chrysalis’ - mine, now - room, Psycho back into this one. I sighed in relief.

Pharynx was already curled up on the floor when I returned to my room.

“Uh, Pharynx? You wanna take the bed tonight?”

“What, it’s not warm enough for you? Or soft enough?”

“No, it’s just… I have this thing about sleeping where Chrysalis used to sleep…”

“Well tough luck, it’s yours now!”

“You sure you don’t-”

“No.”

“Fine…” I sighed and reluctantly laid on the cocoon. It wasn’t really uncomfortable, but I still preferred my old bed in the Crystal Empire, or even the floor, and now that Pharynx had gone silent, that awful aura had returned. Was it real or simply a figment of my imagination filling in the vacuum? Either way, it wasn’t letting me sleep.

I kept stirring and trying to doze off until Pharynx’s breathing went steady enough to suggest he was sound asleep, then I got an idea. I got off the bed as quietly as I could, lifted him carefully in my magic and moved him onto the bed, then curled up on the floor and closed my eyes. This was much better!

I’d barely begun to sink into the realm of dreams when I felt something pull at my tail and lift me off the ground. I snapped my eyes open to the upside-down room and Pharynx with my tail in his mouth, flying around.

“Hey! What gives? Put me down!”

He did.

“...ow.” I’d landed on my antlers and tipped over on my back, but it didn’t feel like anything was broken. Pharynx landed next to me as I was turning myself right-side-up. “What were you doing?”

“Putting you where you belong,” he said.

“But I don’t like that thing! Can’t you-”

He hissed in my face.

“Okay, okay, fine!”

He curled up on the floor again, but not before staring me into returning to bed and making sure I decided to stay there. I sighed in defeat. This was going to be a long night…

Author's Note

This chapter was due yesterday, but I was tired after coming from work and finishing house chores and just collapsed onto the couch, and later forgot about it. Sorry :fluttershysad:

Stigma

A few days later, Psycho brought a drone to me. She was one of the couriers I’d dispatched with a copy of the declaration of peace, but I couldn’t remember where exactly I’d sent her to, and I wasn’t sure that I even knew her name!

“I have returned from Canterlot,” she said, offering me a scroll. I thought at first that she hadn’t succeeded in delivering it, but she had more to say. “Princesses Celestia and Luna sent their reply.”

I accepted the scroll. “Thank you! Did you run into any trouble on the way?”

“Well, uh… maybe… but it’s my fault, really!” She chuckled nervously. “No need to get upset at the ponies!”

“Why? What happened?”

“I… maaaaay have made a slight error in my approach…”

I waited for her to elaborate.

“...am I going to get punished?”

“No, don’t worry! Whatever happened, you can tell me!”

“Uh, okay… You know, going to Canterlot isn’t really the most pleasant feeling in the world after what we did there… and it’s barely been a week since you took command, so… I figured the ponies there wouldn’t be very happy to see a changeling roaming about even if it’s a reformed one…”

“You disguised yourself, didn’t you?”

“Yes… and everything was fine until I was taken to Celestia… she was here when all this happened so I assumed there’d be no trouble when I dropped the disguise but… uh, how shall I put it… Do you know that Royal Guards posted to the throne room have really impressive reflexes?”

I cringed. Yes, I could imagine them having impressive reflexes to the sight of something shapeshifting in front of them!

“Did they hurt you?” I asked, looking her over for any signs of injuries.

“No no no, I’m fine! ...okay, there are things I like far better than getting tackled and dogpiled by a dozen guards, and I tend to get nervous in changeling-proofed cages, but at least that knockout blast wasn’t that bad…”

I facehoofed. How much worse could this get?!

“...but then I woke up and they were really really polite, almost apologetic,” she said. “Heck, I wasn’t even in the cage anymore by then!”

“Well, at least they figured out you weren’t there with foul intentions!”

“Yes, but I still made an unnecessary mess of things and I wouldn’t be surprised if I undermined your efforts-”

“Zygoma!”

She recoiled and yelped as my brother marched into the throne room, seething at her.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he spat at her.

“I… uh… er…”

“Why aren’t you bowing with your face pressed to the floor?” he roared on. “Are you reporting a failure to your King or are you sharing stories with your pony drinking buddy?”

She only managed a whimper.

“Pharynx-” I started, but didn’t get any further.

“You think just because Chrysalis isn’t here, you can throw discipline in the wind and disrespect the-”

“Pharynx!” I raised my voice, getting between him and Zygoma. “Leave her alone!”

“How can you tolerate that kind of behavior?!”

“I’m not a bloodthirsty tyrant, Pharynx! I don’t like it when others are cowering before me!”

“Oh right, it’s your flower-loving, wimpy self again,” he groaned. “Haven’t you gotten past that already?”

“Why?”

“Ugh, don’t you see you’re dooming the hive with it?”

“But everyling’s happier now, and if ponies can thrive like this-”

He snorted. “We’ll discuss this yet,” he growled at Zygoma, and stormed off.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him!”

“No, it’s fine,” she said timidly, “he has a point. I guess I got a little carried away with how everything’s been getting friendlier here! Uh, permission to leave?”

“Okay,” I sighed. “And don’t take Pharynx’s outburst personally. I’m… I’m sure he means well…”

She bowed and disappeared into the nearest hallway. I just stood there for a moment, wondering if I should try to catch up with her to remind her that she didn’t have to bow to me no matter what Pharynx said, but figured she was probably on the other end of the hive by now. I’d have to catch Pharynx and tell him not to do that anymore! In the meantime, I had a scroll to read.

I sat down roughly where the pile of Chrysalis’ throne shards had been. They’d gotten cleared away a couple of days ago, and nothing had yet been done with the space that had freed up, but I’d gotten kind of used to sitting there. At this rate, there might one day be a new throne at this very spot, but if the decision to add one was mine to make, which it probably was, it might not happen for quite a while yet. It was just one of those things that people usually called ‘royally magnificent’ or ‘highly honorable’ or ‘totally awesome’ but the very idea of me needing such a thing, and being expected to need it, made my chitin crawl! At least noling had yet started insisting that I should get myself an actual, physical throne! I didn’t even want the proverbial one! And yet, there it was, and I had to put up with it and would have to keep putting up with it for the rest of my life. Gosh, would I ever get used to it?

One step at a time, I reminded myself. One step at a time. The throne might feel natural years from now, or it might not, but I couldn’t rush it. I couldn’t get there today no matter what I did, but I could try to distract myself from the thoughts that would inevitably lead to a panic attack by keeping myself busy with whatever needed my attention in the now. Like this scroll, for example.

It said:

Office of Princess Celestia, HRH/Office of Princess Luna, HRH
Castle of the Sun and the Moon
120 Harmony Avenue, Canterlot, Equestria
To: King Thorax, HRH, of the Changelings
Re: Declaration of Peace

Dear King Thorax,

We are overjoyed to see that you have established your authority in the eyes of your subjects and begun to take concrete steps to ensure a better future for them and the rest of the world. We trust your ability to usher in a new era and believe the leaders of other lands will soon see it too if they haven’t already.

In regard to your offer to establish friendly relations and negotiate an alliance, we would be honored to welcome you and any delegates you wish to bring. No effort will be spared in ensuring that your visit to Canterlot is a safe and pleasant one. We suggest 5th of October as the start of negotiations but are open to rescheduling if you would prefer a different date.

With kindest regards,
Princess Celestia
Princess Luna

I read the scroll again to help the words sink in. Princesses Celestia and Luna had honored their word! I wasn’t dreaming; the hive’s first peaceful alliance - possibly our first alliance of any kind - could be forged any day now! It felt like I was finally getting somewhere in clearing our infamous reputation! Even better, once Equestria broke the ice, other lands could follow suit, and we could be forging more alliances in no time!

So why wasn’t I as happy as I’d imagined I’d be?

I read the scroll once again, more slowly this time, and tried to picture what would happen when I got there. I didn’t have any kind of fixed schedule yet, so the suggested date was as good as any other. The Princesses’ stance on my intentions had been approving and encouraging from the start, so no surprise there. But what about their subjects? Wouldn’t they have their doubts, even outright objections? Especially since I was due to meet with the Princesses in Canterlot if I’d understood the scroll correctly? The invasion may have happened a couple of years ago, but would that have been enough time for the ponies to recover and move on?

And what about me? They’d said they trusted my ability to pull this off, but was that trust grounded in something more substantial than wishful thinking? After all, I had absolutely zero experience in the matter and about as much theoretical knowledge! I could check if Urtica had anything helpful - the scrolls she’d given me earlier had been a disappointment - but the meeting was in about two weeks; how much could I realistically learn in that time, assuming no matters of greater urgency interfered? And sure, Celestia and Luna may not try to take advantage of me, but what about any other leaders? I’d assumed this was going to be just between us, but they’d never explicitly said so! What if they invited some of their own allies too, and by that, I meant someone other than Cadance and Shining Armor, someone I’d never met or even heard of before, someone I wouldn’t know what to expect from? They’d probably have the best intentions by trying to introduce me to more than one ally at once, but would I be able to handle the situation? The future of the hive rested on my shoulders, and I had no idea what to do! I didn’t even know whom to ask for help, or even if there was anyling in the hive I could rely on!

And whom to trust the hive to in my absence? Several drones had by now proven to be valuable assistants, but I had no idea how many of them would handle the pressure of running the entire hive even for a couple of days! Granted, I didn’t exactly know what I was doing either, but it felt wrong to unload that responsibility on anyone just like that! Pharynx would probably manage just fine, but he presented a different kind of problem: how to put him in charge without risking that the entire hive be reversed to its previous state by the time I got back?

Oh well, there were still about two weeks left until I was due in Canterlot. I still had the time to figure it out. I wasn’t entirely convinced, but things were overall going in the direction I wanted them to go, so a bit of optimism wouldn’t hurt!

I went to find Zygoma to send her to Canterlot with a reply that I agreed to the suggested date. Oh, and to deliver the message without disguising herself this time!

The dawn of the big day shone pleasantly as I flew towards the Equestrian capital, the warm rays of Celestia’s sun caressing my face, whisking away the nightly chill and bringing with them the soft whisper of hope. Everything was going to be fine, the rising sun seemed to say; Equestria would see the change of heart in their former enemies, the ponies would trust their beloved Princesses that there was no reason to fear us any longer, and unity was only a hoofstep away. So peaceful was the morning, so soothing the landscape, that I could almost believe it! How could anything go wrong on such a gorgeous day? The ponies would undoubtedly be in a good mood, ready to forget our troubled past; Urtica was right there by my side to assist with the technicalities, and I wasn’t even going to need Grim and Banshee to keep me safe from the angry mob or Spiracle to tend to any injuries I sustained! I couldn’t wait to see the look on Pharynx’s face when I told him that the ‘protective trio’ he’d insisted on sending with me had proven unnecessary! In fact, the day was so beautiful that it wasn’t hard to imagine him and Psycho finally getting along and supervising the hive together, without the strife and backstabbing like I’d begged them to before leaving for Equestria!

Then Canterlot came into sight, and doubts once again cast a shadow over my hopes.

Images of my first visit to the city flashed in my mind. That day had started out just as glorious as this one, undoubtedly due to the hard work of the pegasi to ensure that no cloud obscured the early summer sun, and flowers had been in bloom and the birds singing and chirping blissfully almost like today. Part of me had wondered then whether any of it was the unicorns’ and earth ponies’ doing intended to enhance the experience of the momentous occasion, and though I’d learned since that this was what the normal world looked like, the sheer beauty of everything around me had never again been so overwhelming as on that day! Had some of that wonder only existed in my head, sparked by the awe at the unimaginable contrast to the dull, severe caverns and passages of the hive and to the screaming emptiness of the surrounding wasteland? Maybe so, but now that I was more accustomed to some actual life around me, the day looked like it would easily match that first one in magical beauty!

Except for one shadow creeping in, slowly but steadily with every passing moment.

The day of the wedding had started out as an epitome of perfection, but that perfection of beauty and ambient had done nothing to ease the blow of the invading swarm; the magic had turned to blood, the heartfelt songs had given way to screams of terror, and the sweet love had died away, leaving behind the cold murkiness of fear. One city had been struck, but the blow had rippled throughout Equestria, and though many days had passed since, the wounds still ran deep and unhealing, and for some, no magic in the world could ease the pain that my kind had caused them.

Many of these ponies, as I’d learned later, had sworn to never forget what had happened on that day, and no matter what, to never, ever forgive the ones who had made it happen. And now, I was heading to the very heart that had been broken so painfully, right to the deepest wounds still gaping open, wounds that had sworn never to heal!

The shadow pushed on deeper into my heart, veiling my hopes into an ever-thicker blanket of doubt.

What was I doing here? I asked myself as I flew on closer to the city. How could I of all people heal those wounds? What was it that made me so special? How was I supposed to undo that much damage? How could I hope to succeed when so many before me had failed? And if I couldn’t help them overcome the past, how would I ever convince them to embrace the future? How could I possibly show them the brightness of that future if they insisted to look at it through the darkness of the past?

Relax, I told myself, it might not be so bad after all. News of our reformation would have reached them by now, and Celestia and Luna would have surely informed their subjects that there’s nothing to worry about! They already made sure to welcome you with a beautiful day; you’ll see they’re eager to get to know you and to give you a second chance!

Then why was that shadow still clenching my heart?

I knew why when we got close enough to make out the particulars of the city’s collective aura. Whether or not some primeval part of me had sensed it before my conscious mind could detect the finer nuances, I didn’t know, but when I finally got there, I had all the answers I needed and all the justification in the world for the shadow’s stifling persistence! The aura was as bad as during the invasion, only a different flavor of bad: traces of the cold, murky fear still lingered, but the bulk of the aura now screamed with burning fury and ice-hot hatred, leaving hardly any room for the bright warmth that I’d hoped to see!

I almost turned around and fled; nothing good could come of us being here! The Princesses would understand! And Pharynx had said this would happen; why hadn’t I listened? I should have listened to him; now I was at risk of not only getting beaten up by any ponies who may have noticed me arriving already - I was used to such things happening, having been through the ordeal too many times - but the drones accompanying me could find themselves on the receiving end too! No matter how trained they were, there was no way the four of them could stand up to the entire army of ponies!

They’d noticed it, too.

“Uh, Thorax?” Urtica said. “I don’t mean to question your judgment, but things aren’t looking too good over there…”

“Yeah, you sure this isn’t a trap?” Banshee added. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but, you know, shouldn’t we cut our losses and get out while we still can?”

Grim and Spiracle nodded. I almost agreed, but something stopped me. A sliver of bright warmth called to me from the ice-hot inferno, barely noticeable, but once I got a hold of it, I couldn’t let it go! Feeble as it was, it pierced a hole in the thick shadow still stifling my hopes, enough to breathe some life into them, and its song drew me closer despite every sensible fibre in me warning not to answer its call with so much that could go wrong! Though outvoted so fiercely, the voice of that call had all my attention now, and though drowned in many other voices, I knew with dead certainty who it belonged to.

“No,” I said, assured by the one voice among the million. “Celestia is waiting for us, and I trust her to keep her promise.”

As soon as we crossed the city limits, I thought I was going to eat my own words.

The ponies noticed us right away, civilians and Royal Guards alike. Ice-hot hatred flared up in them like never before, though the Guards were trying to keep it under control, presumably because they were under orders to ensure our safety and didn’t want any distractions. The civilians had no such restraints, and many of them started shouting, lit up their horns, or flew up to intercept us. Grim and Banshee positioned themselves in front of me in a perfectly-coordinated maneuver, and Urtica and Spiracle joined in on either side of me, albeit reluctantly. This puzzled me momentarily until I remembered them admitting they hadn’t been deployed to combat missions in years, and seeing how many ponies were very opposed to my arrival, I wished I hadn’t refused Pharynx’s insistence on more guards! But that wouldn’t have helped in the long run, I reminded myself; we were here to demonstrate our new peaceful ways, not to display force reminiscent of the old days!

A blast of magic hit Urtica’s flank and sent her tumbling head over hooves away from me before regaining focus, and a group of pegasi swarmed Banshee and Grim, who were both trying their best to shake them off without killing them, but there were too many ponies for them to really do anything even though the Royal Guards had by now begun some attempt at riot control! I had to help them!

Just as I’d changed my trajectory to rush head-first into the fight without the faintest idea what to do once I got involved, a colossal fly-trap flew in and closed one of its traps around me, swatting a few pegasi away as it went.

“What are you doing?” it yelled. “You’re gonna get yourself killed!”

“Spiracle? Is that you? Let me go!”

“No way!” Swat. “Pharynx said to-” Swat swat. “-protect you, and I do not-” Swat. “-want to know what happens-” Swat swat swat. “-if I bring him your dead body!”

I was going to remind him that I could just blast his trap open or turn into something small enough to get out when a flash of blinding light filled the sky, and all the fighting stopped instantly. The light then quickly faded, revealing its source, and the multitude of ponies bowed to her as she soared on to approach us.

My three undisguised companions needed a moment to realize what was going on, but when they did, they abandoned their battle stances and released the ponies they were holding, and bowed their heads gracefully to the newcomer just like the airborne ponies around us had done. The fly-trap quickly released me, reverted into Spiracle, and followed suit.

“King Thorax,” Princess Celestia said, “please accept my sincerest apologies for the way my subjects have welcomed you to our city!”

“It’s alright, Princess. I understand too well the stigma that my kind carries in the eyes of other creatures, and even our reformation is unlikely to change that in an instant.”

“I’m beginning to see how true that sentiment is. My sister has warned me of it upon witnessing the ponies’ dreams after your impending arrival was announced to them, and I have increased the Royal Guard presence in response to her concerns, though I see now that I underestimated the extent of the problem. In the light of this incident, our discussions will be all the more important!”

I nodded.

“Now, allow me to escort you to the castle. Would you prefer an aerial tour or a stroll through the streets?”

“Hmm… staying airborne may keep us out of trouble more easily, but I don’t expect that’ll be an issue in your presence, and if getting physically closer to the ponies would help them realize we’re not a threat anymore…”

“Very well.” She nodded to the nearby guard and he descended to street level, signalling his grounded peers to clear the way for us. We touched down and were quickly joined by a few guards in a loose formation as an additional measure to the cordon of guards on either side of the road that separated us from the civilians.

I didn’t exactly like having a military wall between myself and those I needed to convince about my kind’s newfound pacifism, but after what had just happened, it was probably a sensible thing to do, even if the ice-hot flavor of the city’s collective aura had dulled down enough that there may not be any further excesses of an angry mob. There still could be if the loudest haters were allowed a chance to rile the crowd, so I held back from protesting against the security measures. We were just going to have to take this one step at a time no matter how badly I wanted friendship to bud between ponies and changelings!

“Tell me,” Celestia spoke soon after we touched down and began our stroll, “have you had any success in finding more allies?”

“Not exactly. Other than you, only Princess Cadance and Shining Armor sent a positive reply to the declaration. A couple of couriers returned with no reply whatsoever, and most got ridiculed, accused of scheming, even attacked. One or two barely escaped with their lives, I’m afraid.”

She nodded as if she’d expected to hear that. “They will in due time, I trust. And how are your subjects handling the big change?”

Referring to them as my ‘subjects’ still gave me a cringe reflex regularly, but I tried to suppress it.

“It’s a mixed bag,” I said. “Most have accepted the new ways on the first day, some needed a bit of convincing over the following days, but there are still some who won’t budge. They haven’t attempted anything drastic yet, but I can’t promise they never will if they stay like that, and I’m running out of ideas what to do about them.”

“I’m sure you’ll win them over eventually, but in the meantime, don’t take it to heart. Every land has individuals one could call troublesome and it has nothing to do with how good or bad the leader is.”

“I understand, Princess; I used to be one under Chrysalis’ rule! It just feels like what they’re doing could undermine my efforts to establish peaceful relations with other lands, and that’s hard enough as it is…”

“Yes, your situation is somewhat specific, and while it wouldn’t be right of me to speak for other lands, I have every confidence that, as soon as my subjects come to realize that most of you are truly reformed, the few still clinging to the old ways won’t be so much of a problem in their eyes!”

“How so?”

“They’re still generalizing based on their previous experience with the changelings, but when they get to know you as individuals, they’ll come to realize that stereotypes can’t apply to all even if they may still fit someone, and that your past doesn’t define who you are now.”

“Forgive me if I’m prying, but that sounded like… personal experience?”

“You are right. My sister had to battle the demons of her past after returning from her long banishment. What you are facing today reminds me of her struggle to overcome her own stigma of Nightmare Moon.”

I could slap myself! “Of course! She told me about it the last time she visited my dreams! How could I have forgotten?”

Celestia chuckled. “I’ll take it as a sign that she has succeeded, then.”

“Speaking of Princess Luna, where is she? I got the impression I was to meet with both of you…”

“She will meet us at the castle. There were a couple of last-minute details she had to take care of.”

As if on cue, the younger alicorn descended from the sky to meet us, even though we weren’t at the castle yet.

“Greetings, King Thorax, and welcome to Canterlot,” she said. “Please forgive my late arrival. I do not mean to disrespect. I was delayed.”

“It’s good to see you again, Princess… uh, both of you, I mean, if I didn’t say it already… and, uh, no offense taken.”

She eyed my entourage. “Your brother does not accompany you?”

“He stayed in the hive. Kept rambling about needing to protect it and wanting to make sure Chrysalis doesn’t reclaim the throne in my absence… that kind of stuff… Anyway, he used to be First Commander, so I figured he’d know how to keep things in order until I return… not to mention that he’s still unreformed-”

“Your brother refuses to acknowledge your rule?” Celestia gasped.

“I wouldn’t say that. I think he doesn’t mind me being the king, he just has a very different idea of how I should go about it. Much closer to how things used to be, actually…”

“I do not mean to interfere,” Luna interjected, “but was it really a good idea to leave such a person in charge?”

“I assigned a reformed drone to share the responsibility with him and am hoping that’ll keep his old-fashioned instincts reined in, at least for a few days…”

“If you say so,” she shrugged. “May we have the honor of getting to know your companions?”

“Of course! This is Urtica, the hive archivist, Banshee and Grim, the security detail that Pharynx assigned to me for the duration of this visit, and Spiracle, one of the medics.” The drones nodded in turn as I introduced each one.

“Pleased to meet you all,” Celestia said to them. “Though this meeting was set up primarily for our discussions with King Thorax, we’d like you all to enjoy your stay here. If there is anything you’d like, please, don’t hesitate to speak up!”

“Actually…” Grim said, looking hesitantly at Banshee and then at me. “There is something we’d like - Banshee and me at least - and we hope it won’t make everything too awkward, but we feel like it’ll have to be done sooner or later, so maybe it’s best we get it out of the way now.”

Celestia’s posture stiffened a little, though she concealed it pretty well, but her love aura lost some of its brightness. Curiously, Luna remained mostly unfazed by the ambiguous way Grim had phrased her plea. I certainly wouldn’t be if they hadn’t brought it up on the way here! Could it be that Luna knew too?

“I’m listening,” Celestia said.

“Princess Celestia, Princess Luna,” Banshee began, “Grim and I are the ones who abducted and replaced you during the last attack on Equestria. We were assigned to the roles and wouldn’t have been given a choice either way, but it didn’t matter because we thought we were doing the right thing by obeying the Queen’s orders. Before that, we were deployed to hunt for Thorax until he was presumed dead, and we didn’t see anything wrong in that, either. But a lot has changed since then and we began to realize that a lot of things we’d done in the past was wrong… Thorax made us realize it.”

“It’s no accident that we’re the ones accompanying Thorax to Canterlot today,” Grim continued. “We asked Pharynx to choose us. Okay, we begged and pestered until he gave in - apparently he’d had someling else in mind - but we refused to give up because this is the best chance we may ever get to ask your forgiveness.”

“We come to you as two individuals who have wronged you personally, and if that’s the extent to which you’ll consider forgiving us in the predictable future, then so be it. But in doing so, we hope to set an example for the other drones to admit their own misdeeds towards other creatures as well, and hopefully serve as proof to our former enemies that our plea for friendship is genuine.”

A moment of silence followed until Luna’s chuckle broke it. “I must say, sister, she does sound a little like you. I can see why she was chosen for the task,” she said.

“What?! That’s not why- I mean I wasn’t trying to- we weren’t trying to- we just wanted to be respectful-”

Now Celestia chuckled too. “No need to get flustered, Banshee; we understand and hold no grudge. You are forgiven.”

Luna nodded. The two drones let out a slight whew. Celestia motioned us to continue our stroll to the castle.

“Tell me, my little changelings,” she said as we walked, “what do the four of you do now that there will be no more wars to prepare for?”

The four of them exchanged hesitant glances. Assuming it was because they hadn’t expected to catch the Princesses’ interest like this, I gave them an encouraging nod.

“Uh, like Thorax said, I’m an archivist,” Urtica said when noling else had displayed an ambition to be the first to speak up. “I did that under Chrysalis and it just stuck. Most other non-combative officials got to keep their jobs too, probably due to lack of suitable replacements- uh, not that I’m complaining! I like my work! Oh, and no awkward confessions from me! I wasn’t even in the first invasion of Canterlot!”

“Aren’t you going to confess to guarding military secrets?” I asked jokingly.

“I didn’t bring them there! I just- oh, you’re teasing me. Heheh… I’ll just… um…”

“And I used to be a medic in the old days,” Spiracle said. “Still am. I was in the Canterlot invasion force for the wedding, but most of what I did revolved around treating the injured drones. I didn’t get around to doing much damage.”

“How did you choose to be a healer?” Luna asked.

“I didn’t. None of us got to choose our functions and assignments in the old regime. We mostly ended up doing what we showed the most talent for in military training.”

“I am not sure I understand how that relates to becoming a healer.”

“Basic treatment of injuries is taught in military training because a medic may be too busy in the battlefield to treat everyling, or because he himself could be injured or killed, and on the other hoof, infiltrators have to be able to rely on themselves if they get sick or injured because requesting medical assistance from institutions in their area of deployment runs the risk of blowing their cover. A medic may still be deployed to treat a sick or injured infiltrator if the infiltrator can’t handle it themselves and their position is strategically too important to abandon it and no other infiltrators are immediately available to take over. I was marginally passable in combative and infiltrative skills but showed a decent understanding of the medical portion of the training, so here I am.”

“I see,” Luna said. “But you have an opportunity now to partake in activities other than your healing duty, do you now?”

“Well, yes, but I kind of like being a medic, and the only other thing I could think of was to reunite with my mate, who happens to be Banshee here.”

Banshee blushed.

“So it is not a coincidence that you were the one to accompany Thorax here, rather than another healer?”

“Actually, it is. Pharynx showed up in the infirmary one day and asked for volunteers, and I raised a hoof. I didn’t know then that Banshee and Grim were planning to weasel their way into the entourage.”

“Well, it’s not like I have anything better to do!” Banshee protested. “And I wanted to apologize!”

“You haven’t found your new purpose?” Celestia interjected.

“Not in the sense of having duties to the hive, but Spiracle and I are planning to raise our nymphs now that Thorax has abolished the old practice. Grim started working in the hatchery recently and has helped track down our nymphs, but we’re still getting to know one another and giving them space to decide whether or not they want to live with us as a family.”

The Princesses looked confused so I explained the egg-laying privilege of the drones deemed worthy enough and the separation of eggs from the parents to ensure loyalty to the Queen.

“Why am I not surprised that Chrysalis would come up with something like that?” Celestia muttered.

“How many nymphs do you have?” Luna asked.

“Three,” Spiracle said. “Ocellus, Nettle, and Cicada.”

“We earned the privilege twice, both times with each other, which is pretty uncommon,” Banshee added, then sighed heavily. “There would have been five more, but we just found out that an earthquake destroyed four eggs of our first clutch and only Ocellus’ egg survived, and one of the larvae from the second clutch was blind so a hatchery guard killed it.”

“Killed it?” Luna gasped. “Why?”

“It was standard practice with impaired drones. Without the eyesight, it couldn’t serve the Queen and would only be a liability to the hive.”

“That won’t be happening anymore,” I interjected, seeing the horror and disgust in the Princesses’ eyes. “I made sure every single hatchery worker understands that! We’ll find a way to heal or work around the drones’ physical impairments and make sure they have a happy and fulfilled life! I just wish it weren’t too late for some…”

Banshee and Spiracle nodded appreciatively even though I’d already told them that when expressing my condolences for their loss when they mentioned it during our flight here. The Princesses did the same.

We were at the castle’s gates now. Urtica was going to accompany me to the discussions, and the other three settled down to wait. We were about to enter the castle when two ponies and a dragon materialized next to us.

“Are we late? Oh good, you’re here! Sorry we’re late!” Twilight exclaimed.

“It’s my fault,” Starlight added sheepishly. “I overslept. Sorry!”

Spike waved at me. I grinned and waved back.

“It’s quite alright, girls,” Celestia said. “We haven’t started yet.”

“Great! I’d hate to have missed this!” Twilight rambled on. “I know I almost messed up with the yaks, but now I’m more experienced and hopefully better prepared - at least I think I’m more experienced and better prepared - and I’ve met you before and we’re friends already so it shouldn’t be too hard- I mean, I hope we’re friends and I hope I won’t mess up and derail the whole thing and start a war-”

“Twilight, breathe,” Spike interrupted her. “Uh, sorry about that, guys. I think she’s been up all night going over the notes for the gazillionth time.”

“I was not!” she protested. “I went to bed at four AM! That was five hours ago!”

Starlight tried to suppress a snicker and failed. “Yep, typical Twilight! You kept me awake with all the pacing and blabbering, for the record, so please cut down on the lectures next time I oversleep an important event.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. Can you spend time with Thorax’s companions? Befriend them, give them a tour, whatever they want.”

“Sure!” She went to join them.

“Shall we get started?” Celestia asked.

The rest of us agreed and she opened the castle gates.

Author's Note

Happy Pride Month! I most likely won’t publish any Pride-related stories this year due to lack of inspiration on the matter, but I expect to be able to squeeze the next chapter of this story into the end of June (there won’t be anything Pride-related there either, just a regular chapter), unless 24-hour shifts mess me up and I forget. There's a cluster of them around that time :twilightoops:

On a semi-unrelated note, there was a Pride march in my area today, so I attended and did some filming. The video is compiling at the moment, and I can add it here when it’s done if anyone is interested to watch. Don’t worry, I always put English subtitles in them, though it’s the middle of the night here as I type this, so subtitles might have to wait until tomorrow :twilightsheepish:

Edit 6-Jun-2022:
I made two videos in the end - one that includes mostly the speeches aside from a few inserts from the march's route through the city, and one where I just filmed the people as they passed by near the end of the route (minus the very beginning of the parade because by the time I got to the suitable spot and managed to set up, they had already passed by). I also added some music for the second one and something tells me you guys might appreciate the selection :twilightsheepish:

Welcome Home

“Hey Pharynx, I’m back!”

He stopped trotting down the hallway just long enough to barely look at me.

“I can see that,” he retorted and kept moving.

I joined him.

“Well?” I asked eventually.

“Well what?”

“Aren’t you curious about how it went?”

“Let me guess. You had a cuddling session that lasted all morning, and then you sang songs and picked flowers.”

“Uh-”

“No? Then obviously nopony managed to get to you past the bodyguards, or your antlers would be sticking out of your other end.”

What?! “Pharynx!”

“Are you saying that you suddenly, miraculously developed adequate combat skills out of nowhere despite being an utter failure all your life?”

“No, I-”

“There you go.”

“Ugh, why-” I rubbed my temple. “Can’t you ever talk about anything other than fighting?”

“So you’re telling me there was no fighting? No resistance to your arrival whatsoever?”

“Well, uh…”

He waited for me to continue with that annoying, come-on-admit-I-was-right half-frown, half-smirk that he’d often sported while listening to how my attempts to befriend other drones had gone when we were younger.

I groaned, knowing there was no moving forward until I admitted everything. “Alright, fine! Half of Canterlot attacked on sight, but Celestia stopped them!”

“And the other half?”

“Earth ponies unable to reach us in the air and Royal Guards under orders to not attack us.”

“Told you.”

“It was only at the beginning! They calmed down later!”

“Of course they would. You were leaving! You know, good riddance?”

“No, I mean just after Celestia showed up, and all the way until the end. Starlight spent the day entertaining Banshee, Grim, and Spiracle, showed them the whole city, and there were no incidents whatsoever!”

“This Starlight is the one with insanely strong magic, right? Almost alicorn level?”

“Yes, why?”

“So don’t you think the puny mortals of Canterlot were just afraid of getting fried if they hit her by accident and she returned fire? And I think even you understand why they wouldn’t disobey Celestia right in her face!”

“Why do you always have to see the worst in everyone and everything?”

“And why do you always have to delude yourself with rainbows-and-sunshine scenarios that have no chance of playing out?”

“They do play out, Pharynx, and you’ll see it if you just give it a chance!”

“Oh yeah? Give me one example when it worked!”

“Me getting Crystal Empire citizenship, finding friends there, thriving there, defeating Chrysalis - okay, that last one wasn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows until the end, but-”

He facehoofed. “Don’t remind me. I still can’t believe what eyesores everyling became! The only thing it’ll do is help the enemies see us better!”

“What enemies?! Pharynx, I just signed a peace treaty with what used to be our strongest enemies!”

“Strongest enemies, maybe, but not nearly the only ones, and the rest of them will be a tough shell to crack if they unite against us! Heck, they don’t even need to unite! All they have to do is to happen to show up at roughly the same time!”

“Why would they do that? I sent them declarations of peace!”

“Thorax, you’re so irreparably naive that I can’t believe we’re related…”

I sighed. We’d been through such conversations countless times and he’d always come out on top in the past. It was hardly surprising, as I’d had no proof then that my ideals could work, but they had worked in the end! That should have been all the proof he’d ever need, and he was still refusing to see it! What was I going to do with him?

“What else did you negotiate?” he asked eventually.

“Huh?”

“You didn’t spend all that time just sitting there signing a ‘Best Friends Forever and Ever’ scroll and sprucing up the signatures to make them look cute and fancy. Even you couldn’t go that far. Are there any concrete benefits for us or did you let them sneak enslavement in pretty wrapping onto us?”

I tilted my head at him. What did he mean by ‘enslavement in pretty wrapping’?

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, quit staring like an idiot and just tell me what was decided!”

“Okay, um, there are several points. Equestria will release all drones held in their prisons and return them to us. We already released the cocooned ponies, so this’ll make us even. The Princesses will work on changing the public perception of us, which is something I’d already started on a smaller scale while living in the Crystal Empire, but it’ll be an ongoing process now and will require our cooperation. As long as we don’t do anything illegal, we’ll be free to stay in Equestria for as long as we want, but we agreed that this may not be the safest thing to do this soon after the reformation, so don’t expect drones flocking back to the cities they used to infiltrate. The ponies will extend their railways to reach the hive, but construction won’t be completed overnight, so I expect it’ll be a while before hordes of tourists start showing up here. Mail delivery should work sooner than that, though, so we won’t be cut off from the rest of the world like before. I also gave them the scarab communicator that Grim and Banshee had left behind and taught them how to use it in case of an emergency. We will help each other in emergencies, mind you.”

He mulled it over. “Hm. You almost make it sound sensible.”

“Almost?”

“The communicators are supposed to be a military secret. I get it that we aren’t using them right now as you recalled everyling to the hive, but I still think giving them away was a mistake. What if they use it against us?”

“How? It’s just a communicator!”

“They’re creative! They’ll figure something out!”

“But why would they do that? We’re planning to forge an alliance in the near future!”

“I hope something will kill me before that happens…” he muttered.

“Pharynx!”

“What? I spent my whole life fighting against ponies and tricking them into submission and now I’m supposed to be best buddies with them? Forget it!”

“But there are obvious-”

“-benefits to sharing love over stealing it, blah blah, you’ve said it a million times already! I don’t care!”

“Can’t you just once trust your little brother?”

We were at the entrance to my bedroom now and he waved his hoof around, mostly at the gates of the royal bedchamber and the First Commander’s bedchamber.

“Trust?! I can’t even trust you to sort out who sleeps where! Didn’t you say ages ago that you’ll discuss with Psycho and me which of us gets the First Commander’s quarters and which has to move out? You said we’d discuss it ‘in the morning’ but Psycho is still using that room and I’m still bunking with you and you never said a word to suggest that you care if we like that arrangement!”

“You’re right… I’m sorry. It… it slipped my mind… Wanna discuss it now?”

“Thorax, it’s almost midnight, and you know as well as I do that it won’t be settled in two minutes.”

“Okay… so, bunking with me one more night, then?”

“Eh. Whatever.”

We went in and settled down in our usual spots. I noticed pretty soon that the slime bubble that served as my bed was somewhat… bouncier, for the lack of a better word… than usual. I poked and prodded at it, as if that would provide any answers.

“What?” Pharynx said, looking at me intently.

“Did something happen to this while I was away? It feels different…” Now that I’d said it, I noticed the sinister aura was gone! Not just faded below the threshold of my passive senses, but completely and undeniably gone as if it had never existed!

“I did some agility drills here and tripped and the thing broke.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “You tripped.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Pharynx, you don’t trip. I’ve never seen you do anything clumsy! What really happened?”

He muttered something that sounded like, “You kept whining about it so I threw it out and made another.”

“Really?! Aww, that’s so sweet of you!” I hopped down and hugged him. “Thanks!”

He pushed me away.

“So, uh…” I said. “What else did you do while I was away?”

“Take a guess. I’ll give you thirty-seven attempts.”

“Why thirty-seven?”

“Because it’s gotta be that hard!”

I let out an exasperated sigh. “You wouldn’t know what happened to Antenna’s plants?”

“Yes, they grow way faster than any normal plant has a right to.”

“That’s because she managed to get hold of a potion that speeds up growth. It’s not exactly something you can find on every step.”

“But plants are, thanks to that stupid potion! Who told her she could get it and why did she have to use it on every single thing that sprouted out of the ground?”

“I told her, and she did it because this place could use a little livening up.”

“Didn’t you already ‘liven the place up’ plenty enough with that freakshow of the way everyling looks like?”

“You think I had a say in how we’d end up looking? I had no idea it was going to happen until it did!”

He rolled his eyes, then closed them and laid his head down on his forelegs.

“So what happened?”

“To what?”

“To the plants. Do you know why a lot of them are destroyed?”

He opened his eyes again and raised his head. “Because how do you expect me to see the enemies from far enough away to do something about them if there’s a whole jungle for them to hide in?”

“It was you?! Pharynx! How could you? Antenna worked so hard on them!”

“Then tell her to find a different pastime if you want to spare her feelings!”

“Why don’t you leave the plants alone instead?”

“And put the hive in danger?”

“What danger?! We haven’t been attacked in… uh, how long?”

“That’s because anyone with common sense knew to avoid Chrysalis if they wanted to live. Oh, and there used to be this powerful magic-controlling throne thingy that made many strategies against us impossible! Too bad it isn’t there anymore!” He scowled. “I wonder who blew it up and why!”

“My friends’ lives were on the line! I had to do something!”

“And now every single one of your subjects is the one whose life is on the line because of it, and yours too, by the way! Way to go, Your Highness!”

I groaned. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

“Only that I sent Brutus, Cockroach, Screech, Heathen, Vampire, and Carnage to the infirmary a few hours after you left. They’re probably still there.”

Uh-oh. “...what did you do?”

“I went easy on them. Psycho said you didn’t want any killing.”

I facehoofed. “No, I- Why did you do… whatever you did?”

“Because they were starting a campaign for rejoining Chrysalis or bringing her back here to reclaim her crown. Or both.”

“...okay, I… I guess I can’t blame you for dealing with that, but couldn’t you have found a less drastic way to do it?”

“This was the less drastic way.”

I stared at him.

“Non-lethal, remember? I mean, it’s not like you were getting anywhere by asking them to please be a goodie-goodie-ponyhooves, pretty please!”

“Please tell me you didn’t hurt anyling else!”

“No need. They got the message after the first half-dozen. And not because you just said please! Now will you fall asleep already or do I have to bite you into unconsciousness?”

“Fine… good night, Pharynx!”

“Mmmh.”

A few routine days had passed until a black cloud appeared on the northern horizon. I first saw it while receiving news from a couple of couriers about Neighpon and Abyssinia’s response to the peace declaration. Neither land had shown much interest in starting any negotiations, apparently, so I dismissed the couriers, wondering if there was anything I could have done to spark a little enthusiasm for befriending us in any of the lands beside Equestria and, presumably, the Crystal Empire, whose reply I had yet to receive. I didn’t really expect an aha moment or a surge of inspiration, but when it didn’t come anyway, I sighed and looked at the sky, as if that would give me the answer I was looking for.

The black cloud had grown considerably and moved closer.

As if on cue, Pharynx wandered into the throne room, took one look north, and propelled himself into the air.

“Told you this would happen!” he yelled at me as he flew toward the incoming cloud. “But no, you just won’t listen!”

An invasion? It couldn’t be! Equestria was north and they were as good as our allies now! Why would they have sent an army? But what if Pharynx was right? What if Celestia and Luna had only pretended to want a peace treaty so they could launch a surprise attack? I dismissed that idea right away; they’d been genuine, I was sure of it! But who could be invading from the north, then? Griffons, maybe? But did they even have an army? Dragons? Not likely; they were supposed to be big enough that I’d recognize their individual shapes from this far away, and anyway, they should be coming in from the east! Unless they’d sent smaller dragons and opted for a different direction in order to confuse us?

And what should I do? I wasn’t ready for this!

I needed a minute to stop hyperventilating, and by the time I did, the cloud was close enough that I could make out shapes of the creatures that comprised it.

Oh. Changelings. They must have been the ponies’ prisoners, released and sent home! I hadn’t expected it to happen this soon!

I also hadn’t expected to see Pharynx so deflated as he was while leading the swarm to me. Could it be that he was embarrassed by having misjudged the situation? I wanted to dismiss the idea; Pharynx never got embarrassed! Furious, yes. Grumpy, definitely. But embarrassed? This had to be a first!

Of course, he’d never admit it. If anyone dared suggest such a thing, he’d rip their head off! He may not do that to me, but I was sure he’d come up with an alternative just as unpleasant if I tried to ask, so forgetting that I’d noticed anything amiss about him was probably the safer option.

Either way, the drones had by now gathered around me, most of them still airborne as the throne room was too small to accommodate them all, and Pharynx positioned himself close to me but not too close, probably wanting to make it clear to the newcomers who was in charge here while remaining at hoof in case any of them tried anything.

Okay, so I was expected to say something, by the looks of it… a bit of a heads-up wouldn’t have hurt, but oh well. If I’d improvised the first time addressing my subjects and survived, I could pull this one off, too!

...or so I kept telling myself.

“Hello, everyone,” I began, “and welcome back to the hive! You must have noticed already that there have been some changes around here recently. I’m not sure how much you’ve been told, but for any of you who don’t know yet, Chrysalis has been overthrown and is on the run. I’m Thorax, and I’m your new king.”

I wasn’t sure how much of my discomfort with the said title showed, but noling took it as an opening to berate my impertinence or get physically violent. This wasn’t to say that they all appeared satisfied; a fair number of them grumbled among themselves, and though most were showing no response either way, some still nodded or shrugged as if willing to hear me out. Better than nothing, right?

“The leadership of the hive isn’t the only thing that’s changed,” I continued. “We’re introducing a new lifestyle and a new set of values, but the most important change, one that started it all, is that we’ve learned to share love through friendship, and because of that, we no longer have the need to steal that love from others.”

“That’s it, I’m done,” one of the drones shot back, eliciting nods from some of the others. “I’ll take my chances with Chrysalis! Even being locked up was better than this idiocy!”

He started to fly off, followed by the group that had agreed with him, but Pharynx intercepted them.

“Get back there and behave yourself, Rascal!” he growled. “All of you! You will listen to your king, or I’ll find those timberwolves and have them finish the job!”

Rascal…

Images flashed in my mind again: a trek through the Everfree Forest interrupted by a team of drones hunting for me, and a pair of timberwolves arriving just in time to provide me a way out… a glimpse of a bloody scene and a lingering timberwolf just barely deprived of my flesh… and the next day, a fall from Canterlot and a fight against a drone as injured as I’d been… my fangs spouting venom into his bloodstream as he pinned me to the ground… a group of Royal Guards carrying him away as I watched hidden in a bush… No wonder Rascal wanted nothing to do with me! Self-defense or not, it was my fault that he’d been imprisoned when his place in the dungeons should have been mine!

The dungeons had taken a toll on him. His wounds of that fateful day had healed, but he’d since earned a different kind of wound, one invisible to the naked eye and even hidden from a changeling’s senses unless one knew where to look. He was doing a pretty good job of not showing it and acting like his old self, but the emptiness in his eyes told me everything: along with his freedom, he’d lost all hope. It had wilted and died away, and now, he was an empty shadow of the vigorous drone he’d once been. I’d only known him for two brief encounters, but this gaping hole in him hurt me more than I could have guessed at that brief moment when instinct had led me to drive my fangs into his flesh and substituted him for myself before the Royal Guards in an act of self-preservation!

He’d grown thinner, paler. The obvious explanation would be that he’d had little access to love, but I suspected the lost hope was the main reason. I’d needed Pharynx’s remark to recognize him, and I’d needed it because he was ih a state that had been my fault! Whether or not I would have gotten to where I was now had I acted differently, it was no excuse!

I flew up to him.

“Rascal,” I said, “I’m not sure if you remember what happened-”

“I do remember,” he retorted. “I didn’t at first but it came back to me after a few months. Guess the brain doesn’t have anything better to do when you’re locked up in prison so it starts digging out suppressed memories, but you wouldn’t know anything about it, now would you?”

“You’re right, I don’t know what it’s like to spend over a year in prison. I’ve only ever been locked up overnight once or twice. I can only guess what you’ve been through-”

“Then stop wasting my time, traitor!” He started to fly off again.

“Wait!” I exclaimed.

He turned back and raised an irritated eyebrow.

“Look, I didn’t like biting you, and I wouldn’t have left you to get captured if I saw another choice, but that still doesn’t make it right, even if I acted in self-defense. What I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry.” I saw Pharynx facehoof in the corner of my eye but decided to ignore him for the moment. “You have every right to be upset with me, and if there’s anything I can-”

“Upset? Don’t flatter yourself, traitor! Being upset would imply that I had better expectations of you! You’re just as bad as I remember if not worse!”

“Watch your tongue,” Pharynx growled.

“I’ll say what I want!” Rascal shot back. “You won’t silence me again! When I find Chrysalis-”

“You will not go looking for Chrysalis!” Pharynx retorted.

“Or what, tough guy?”

“Or I’ll silence you permanently,” he hissed. “And I’ll do it in a way that’ll make you beg to be put back in prison!”

Rascal simply scoffed to that and disappeared into one of the hallways. Many other drones followed suit, most of them grumbling and looking daggers at Pharynx and me, until about half of the original swarm remained.

“Anyling else wanna cause trouble?” Pharynx spoke out. “No? Good. You’ll keep it that way if you know what’s good for you!”

I put a hoof on his shoulder, hoping he’d get the message and calm down. He did, though not without casting me a quick glare first.

“Uh, um… sorry about that…” I said to the remaining drones. “Where were we?”

“You said something about sharing love,” a drone said. “Can it really feed us? Seems a bit counterintuitive…”

“I know, but I came to realize while living with ponies that even the tiniest amount of love is much more filling when shared than when taken by force!”

“Honestly, I’m so hungry that I’d try anything if it’ll make the slightest difference,” another drone interjected. Several others nodded and murmured in agreement.

“How does it work?” another asked.

“It’s simple. Each of you has something you hold dear in life, something you couldn’t bear to lose, even if you don’t want to admit it to anyone including yourself. Years of training drills and iron discipline have suppressed it, maybe buried it so deep that you forgot it exists, but it’s there, still within you.” Many drones stared at me blankly, but a few gave a slow nod, as if coming to an understanding or encouraging me to continue. “You need to reach in to that something, let it out of the darkness it’s buried within, let it breathe, let it thrive, let it give you power. Recognize the feeling it evokes in you, embrace it, savor it. Don’t hold back; let that feeling grow, let it shine, let it overwhelm you until nothing else in the world exists but that feeling.” Some drones were beginning to catch on, others were glowing, but a few hadn’t yet begun to make any progress. “Feel it grow, encourage it, don’t shy away; embrace it, be proud of it! It’s what marks your true selves; give it the freedom it deserves, sing its song for all the world to hear!”

It was working! Almost everyling had caught on by now, and some were already popping out of their magical cocoons, reformed and colorful and full of bright, warm love they’d been stifling all their lives, unaware that what they’d hunted for in others could have existed within them all along if only they’d dared to allow it!

The throne room erupted with cheers and excited babbling; the myriad of colors danced around, drones hugging one another, admiring their new bodies, even hugging me every so often! The only things missing were a DJ booth, Pinkie Pie, and her party cannon! Oh, and a smile on Pharynx’s face, but that was too much to hope for under any circumstances.

Eventually the collective ecstasy dulled down and the drones went to start their new life in the peaceful hive. Pharynx left too, grumbling something about this being so sappy that I’d broken my personal record. Only one drone remained, still unreformed, peeking gingerly from behind a rock.

“Can I help you?” I asked, coming closer.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I overheard a couple of drones talk about raising their eggs… is that one of the aspects of the new lifestyle that you mentioned?”

“Yes, eggs will no longer be separated from their parents, and everyling is allowed to have them with whomever they want, whenever they want! Was that what you wanted to know?”

“Well, uh… yes and no… I was actually wondering if there’s a way to find out what happened with the eggs that were already laid…”

“Oh, right, that! Your nymphs’ names should be listed in your service record, and they should have their own records if they’re old enough-”

“I don’t think they’re old enough,” she said bitterly. “I’m not sure if they’re even alive…”

“What do you mean?”

“I got sent to infiltrate a city just after I laid eggs, and got captured on the first day… at first I was too distraught by what Chrysalis would do to me if I managed to return to the hive to think about anything else, but then a few other drones got captured too and brought to the same prison I was in, and I heard rumors about them having heard that Chrysalis smashed some eggs because their mother had messed up bad and proven herself unworthy of producing the next generation of warriors, and I couldn’t help but wonder if they were talking about me-”

“You’re Coxa, aren’t you?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.

“Yes…” her voice quivered. “H-how did you know?”

Oh dear… how to tell her? Her fears had already led her to guess the truth! She’d suffered enough; I didn’t have the heart to make it even worse! But I had to tell her! If not from me, she’d find out from someling else! But how to break it to her gently?

“Your Highness?” she whispered hesitantly, snapping me out of my trance.

“I’m sorry,” I sighed, hanging my head. Sorry for zoning out on you, sorry for what you’ve been through, sorry for the worries that plagued your mind… and above all else, I’m sorry for your loss.

She caught on to every unspoken meaning. “No…” she whispered, slumping onto the ground and bursting into tears. I sat down next to her and embraced her in a pathetic attempt to console the incurable wound on her heart; I held her for a long time as she wept bitterly for her unborn nymphs, for the faces she would never see and voices she would never hear, for the lives that had never gotten a chance to become the continuation of her own.

“It’s my fault,” she sobbed. “I should have been more careful, I-”

“It’s not your fault,” I insisted. “You couldn’t have known, you couldn’t predict the future…”

“But I should have known! I should have tried harder! It’s my fault they’re dead!”

“It isn’t, Coxa. It’s never been your fault and it never will be! She could have forgiven you, or decided on a different punishment, or settled for the one you were already getting! I don’t like to cast blame, but the only one to blame here is the one who stomped her hoof on a clutch of innocent, defenseless eggs!”

“She did it because I failed her-”

“Is failing her really a bad thing?”

She stopped sobbing abruptly and looked at me for the first time since hearing the devastating news. Her bloodshot eyes fixed on me, looking for an explanation of something they’d never considered.

“Think about it, Coxa. She waged wars against the whole world, she treated us like slaves and tools to satisfy her hunger for power, and she never asked herself how we felt. She taught us to hate other creatures for the love they had so we wouldn’t want to become like them, full of love and capable of sustaining one another. She wanted us starving and believing we could never sate our hunger but by doing her bidding, and she liked to turn us against one another so we’d compete for privileges that are taken for granted literally everywhere else. You saw for yourself just now how much better everyling’s lives became when they dared to allow themselves the things that should have never been denied to them in the first place! Do you really think you owe Chrysalis anything?”

“Well, when you put it that way… but it still won’t bring my eggs back!” She teared up again.

“It won’t, and you have every right to grieve, but don’t for one moment think that you were the one who caused their deaths. You did not! Remember that, and let go of the guilt you’re imposing on yourself!”

She sat there in silence for another while. I didn’t press further; it was a lot to take in, and she was going to need time to process it all and to come to terms with it, and rushing would do nothing to help the matter. When she was ready, she would take the next step on her own.

Eventually she calmed down for the time being and pulled herself a little away awkwardly, but remained close enough for a heartfelt conversation, even another hug if she needed it.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“About your eggs?”

“Yes.”

“I, um… I was told to… to clean them up… after the fact.”

“You?! Weren’t you a low-clearance janitor back then?”

“I was.”

“So why send you to do it? Why not just tell a hatchery guard when it was among their duties anyway?”

“If you know that I was a low-clearance janitor, then you probably also know why.”

She nodded. “What does that have to do with it? I mean, the hatchery was beyond your clearance level and outside of Proboscis’ jurisdiction, so how did she get around to giving orders about it?”

“Chrysalis gave the order, not Proboscis. She was always looking for ways to punish me for my friendly nature and to threaten me into obeying her, and I guess this qualified. What she consistently failed to understand is that with everything she and most drones were putting me through on an everyday basis, I had very little reason to embrace her ways. In fact, I often thought of leaving the hive because of it all, but didn’t know how to pull it off without getting caught and punished… and because I still held on to the last sliver of hope that I’d find a friend in the hive if I just tried a little harder…” I sighed. “Your eggs were the last straw. I guess Chrysalis did succeed with me there, in a way, but not the way she wanted. It made me realize my hope of getting the other changelings to become friendly was futile, but instead of giving it up and becoming a soldier, I finally decided to try elsewhere, come what may, and improvised my way out as soon as I stopped crying for your eggs.”

“Did it pay off?”

“Yes, in the end, but it took a long time and a lot of grief and hardship to get there. I almost died a few times, almost got captured more than once - both by ponies and by the hunters Chrysalis sent after me - but I had a fair share of luck, too. Things got easier after I made my first friend but it still took a while before I stopped facing obstacles on every step. I won’t deny it, Coxa; it was incredibly hard, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat for the same reasons, as many times as I’d have to!”

“You make it sound so wonderful, and I think not without reason… I just wish my nymphs were here to see it…”

“Me too… and I wish they hadn’t had to die to set it all in motion…”

She said nothing. I looked at her and saw tears in her eyes again, not as overwhelming as before, but still painful to watch. I pushed myself to think of a way to comfort her, but then she got up and smiled weakly.

“Well, this was… thanks you for your kind words, Your Highness-”

“Just Thorax, please,” I interjected.

“-but I shouldn’t take up any more of your time… and… I think I need to be alone now.”

“If you need anything - a conversation, a hug, anything really - you can always come to me,” I said. “Or if you’d prefer someling else, I know of a drone with a similar situation.”

That caught her attention and she stopped retreating momentarily.

“She didn’t have her eggs destroyed, but she wanted them all her life and worked tirelessly for many years to earn the privilege, only to have it permanently revoked when her subordinates on a mission messed up. Her name is Grim and you can find her in the nursery, which is what the hatchery got converted into now that drones are starting to raise their own nymphs. There’s also a feelings forum for anyling who wants to share their feelings or ask others for help, held on most afternoons in the former Armory 17. Ask Feisty for details; she runs the meetings.”

“Thanks… I think I’ll do that...”

She left, and just as I was about to return to Proboscis’ weekly report that I’d been reading before the arrival of the couriers and the released prisoners, Elytra stormed in, nearly knocking me over.

“Whoa, sorry!” she exclaimed. “Princess Twilight activated the communicator and is asking for you!”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I galloped to the communication hub and arrived there in record time, a little out of breath and almost falling over my own forehooves.

“Twilight… sorry you waited… what happened-”

“Easy, Thorax!” she said. “There’s no emergency. I tried to tell that drone but she ran off before I could.”

“Whew, you had me worried there for a minute…”

“I can see that, and I’m sorry. I didn’t want to wait for an actual emergency to test how this thing works, but I do have something to tell you, so I figured I might as well do it by testing the communicator.”

“Oh. Huh, good idea. What is it?”

“Remember those ponies that died in their cocoons in the hive? The ones you released to us along with the surviving ponies and some of the animals when you took command?”

I nodded.

“We’ve just tracked down all of their families and I think you said something about wanting to apologize-”

“Yes, thanks! I’ll be at your castle right away!”

Grief

“Good morning. May we speak to a relative of Ms Lilac Lush?”

“Who are you? Actually, what are you?”

“Oh, right. My name is Thorax, and I’m the new king of changelings-”

“How dare you come here knocking after what you monsters did to my mother?!”

“Please, sir, if you’ll let me explain-”

“I don’t wanna hear it! Go back to wherever you crawled out from and never show your face here again!”

“But sir-”

“Get lost!”

“Good morning. Mrs Silk Finesse, I presume?”

“Yes, what’s this about?”

“I’m here about your husband, Ma’am.”

“My husband is dead. Killed by changelings- wait, you’re one of them, aren’t you?”

“Uh, yes, I’m-”

“-an inconsiderate, bloodthirsty beast is what you are! You killed him and now you want to, what, talk like it’s no big deal?!”

“Ma’am, I’m very-”

“Are you here to kill me too?!”

“No, we-”

“Get out or I’m calling the Royal Guards!”

“Ma’am-”

“OUT!”

“What’s a changeling doin’ on my farm?!”

“Ms Sugar Plum? I’m here to-”

“You ain’t gettin’ any of our love, y’hear?! Killing little Juicy Plum wasn’t enough for you? Came back for more, now?!”

“I’m sorry-”

“You’ll be sorry alright when I stuff you in a jam press! I ought to stuff you in a jam press this instant for what you did and I don’t care if Celestia signed a million treaties with you! The next blood spilled here will be changeling blood, y’hear?!”

“My wife was everything to me and now she’s never coming back because of you! And you think an apology is gonna fix it?! Are you out of your mind?!”

“Forgive you for killing my sister? Yeah, I can forgive you. As soon as I rip your head off! Hey! Get back here!”

“You took my only son away from me! How can you ever expect me to forgive that?!”

“Can you raise the dead? Didn’t think so. Stop wasting my time or Celestia help me!”

“I may not have been as close to Aunt Raindrop as much as I should have been, but if you think it’ll make it easier to convince me to shrug it off and pretend nothing happened, you’re out of your mind! And don’t think I haven’t seen through that one’s disguise, geniuses! Just wait till Princess Twilight finds out you’ve been impersonating her again; bet she’ll think twice before agreeing to any alliances with irredeemable freaks!”

“It’s no use, Twilight,” I sighed as we were leaving yet another city with no success whatsoever in being heard. “I didn’t expect to be forgiven right away, but they don’t even want to let me apologize! That last one didn’t even believe you’re you!”

“I’m starting to see why you got so nervous about doing this after we started out. It was like you flipped a switch and I couldn’t figure out where all that previous enthusiasm and determination went! You knew, didn’t you?”

“That this would turn into a disaster? Not in the sense of predicting the future, but with our reputation, I’d be surprised if we’d gotten polite and considerate treatment. I mean, the mob would have ripped my delegates and me apart last week in Canterlot if Celestia hadn’t interfered, and they were prepared for our visit and assured there was nothing to be afraid of! These ponies all lost a family member; they have every reason to be furious!”

“I know, but that doesn’t justify yelling and death threats!”

“I’m sure they know it on a theoretical level, but consider what we’ve been doing to them for centuries. They probably think violence is the only language we know, and it wasn’t very far from the truth until recently, and the change was so abrupt that they haven’t yet realized it happened-”

“Are you defending them?!”

“No. I’m trying to figure out where the problem is so we can sort it out. Except that we’re the problem - my kind, I mean. If we hadn’t been insufferable pests, none of this would be necessary! All those ponies would still be alive if it weren’t for us!” I stopped walking and hung my head. “Oh, who am I fooling, Twilight? They’re never going to forgive us!”

“They will! You just need to, uh, give them more time, like you said! They’ll get there much sooner if they weren’t personally… affected… I’m not helping, am I?”

“Well, at least we pretty much agree on where the root of the problem is.”

She tapped her chin, humming.

“What if I went to talk to them instead of standing in the background?” she offered. “They should be more willing to listen to a pony! Or you could disguise yourself as a pony until you get them to trust you-”

“-and then shatter that trust the instant I reveal my true self,” I interjected. “That’s not gonna work. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but the only way the apology will make sense is if it comes from a changeling who isn’t pretending to be something else; everything other than that comes off as an act with possibly all kinds of intentions behind it. It would be best if the very drone who had abducted a particular pony were the one delivering the apology to that pony’s family, but I’m afraid Psycho has been unable to track down any of them. I’m not sure whether the prey hunters in question don’t remember their victims or don’t want to admit it was them for whatever reason, but there it is. Noling ever kept track of prey hunters’ victims.”

“So now you have to be the one apologizing even though you haven’t abducted a single pony all your life.”

“I would have gone either way. It was my idea in the first place, and I think my presence would have added weight to an apology given by a former prey hunter. I was going to leave it up to the prey hunters to decide if they wanted to go and wouldn’t have held it against them if they’d refused… but none of them were found…”

“They could still remember, or gather up the courage, or resolve whatever their reasons were to keep quiet about it.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

We walked on in silence. We’d been at this for a few days, travelling all over Equestria to visit the families of the deceased ponies, and we only had a little further to go, only a couple more families to visit. We’d met no understanding along the way, what little hope I’d had in the beginning was by now thoroughly crushed, and I didn’t think the remaining visits would go any differently. Still, I pressed on, intending to finish what I’d started, and grateful to Twilight for sticking around despite her own royal duties undoubtedly piling up in her absence. Her planning and organization skills had provided us with the most efficient route and her magic had saved us from out-of-control grieving relatives a couple of times, not to mention that she was a wonderful companion! I couldn’t have done this without her!

Eventually she slowed down for no obvious reason.

“Am I crazy,” she said, “or have those pigeons been following us for a while?”

I looked into the sky and, sure enough, two pigeons were flying about. Something struck me as odd about them so I flew up, expecting them to go away, but instead, they burst into flames that revealed Grim and Spiracle.

“Uh, hi Thorax,” they said, smiling awkwardly.

“What are you doing here?”

“Pharynx sent us,” Grim said.

“Of course he did,” I sighed. “Guess I should have known he wouldn’t listen when I told him I could handle this!”

“I’m sure he had the best intentions,” Spiracle said, and we landed.

“Did you guys volunteer again?”

“No, he just came up to us and told us what was up. No offense, but I would have declined this time. Ocellus just moved in with us and now she’ll be alone with Banshee until I come back.”

“What about Cicada and Nettle?”

“Still undecided. I was looking forward to getting to know Ocellus better, but… oh well, duty calls…”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “Twilight and I have been doing fine without your help, so if you want to return to the hive a little early, you have my permission.”

They exchanged a quick glance.

“About that…” Grim said hesitantly.

“Why am I getting the feeling I won’t like what you’re going to tell me?” I muttered.

“We kinda sorta got in a fight in Fillydelphia to cover your exit…”

“...and Meteor Shower wanted to report you so we maaay have become the nearest Royal Guards…”

“...and we maaay have lured the angry mob in Detrot away by looking like you two…”

“...and distracted that griffon in Salt Lick City by pretending you threw a couple of coins to him…”

“...and that roadblock we improvised at Plum Delicious Orchards worked better than expected…”

Twilight and I both stared at them wide-eyed, then at each other, and then we facehoofed in unison.

“...too much?” Grim whispered, casting a glance at Spiracle, who was starting to look like he’d swallowed a live frog.

“Oh boy…” Twilight muttered. “We might as well start apologizing all over again…”

“What were you thinking?!” I asked the two drones. “I thought we were past that stuff!”

“Sorry,” they said, hanging their heads. They looked like they meant it, too.

“I know you had the best intentions,” I continued, “but you can’t keep doing that! The ponies will never trust us if we stick to our old behavior!”

“Then, how do you want us to deal with that kind of situation?”

“Talk it out. Explain what’s going on sincerely and calmly, and don’t allow yourselves to get provoked into resorting to the old-style tricks. Can you do that?”

“Uh… we’ll try…”

“Thorax?” Twilight interjected. “That sounds good in theory, and great if it works, but it might not always work. I mean, look at how we fared, and we haven’t done anything hostile! It might be a good idea to have a backup plan.”

“Then try harder! There has to be a peaceful approach that could work!”

“Even if they’re being attacked and there’s no time to attempt civil discussions?”

“Well, I, uh… I suppose they could try to run and make a second attempt later, when things have cooled down a little… but we can’t keep acting like savages! That’ll never earn us a better reputation!”

“If you say so…” she said, not sounding convinced.

“Shall we keep going?” I asked after an awkward moment of silence. “All four of us, I mean. You two might as well stop pretending you’re not there.”

They nodded and we got underway.

“So you’ve been tailing me all along?” I asked.

“After Ponyville, yes,” Spiracle said. “We knew that was going to be your first stop, and you were discussing your approach with Twil- uh, Princess Twilight, long enough for us to catch up. Then you spent enough time hanging out with Spike to allow us to sneak into the castle, go over your schedule, and memorize it.”

“It wasn’t that long!”

“The schedule was easy,” Grim said. “Predictable, even. Princess Twilight, if you ever need to create a plan or schedule that an adversary could take advantage of, you might want to devise a way to encrypt it or at least hold back from arranging it so neatly that your every step can be traced before you even take it.”

Twilight’s eye twitched at the suggestion and she grinned awkwardly. “Duly noted!” she chirped, but the murkiness of her love aura made it unmistakably obvious that she dreaded the suggestion more than the risk of an adversary getting wise to her plans.

Don’t snap now, Twilight… we need you…

“At least it seems to have helped them catch up with us every time,” I said hurriedly before she could start losing it completely, and judging by her rate of breathing, she was dangerously close. “So it worked out fine in the end!”

She put a hoof to her chest, took a deep breath, and slowly let it out. Her aura normalized to an extent.

“You’re right,” she said. “No harm done, and I’ll know to pay attention to that from now on.”

We walked in silence some more.

“Okay, we have another griffon to visit,” Twilight said as a village came into view beyond a copse. “The last pony family on our list lives in that village, and coincidentally, the griffon lives on the outskirts of the same village, supposedly in a treehouse… uh… there, probably.” She pointed to a dead tree; the ‘treehouse’ sitting on its branches looked more like a cardboard box pulled out of a dumpster and placed onto a nest than like something that deserved to be considered a proper house, but if the griffon liked it that way, who was I to judge?

There were no stairs or ladders so we flew up, and I knocked on the door… at least I thought it was a door… Either way, it opened a crack, and a vulture head squeezed itself halfway out.

“What?” it croaked.

“Hello,” I answered. “Uh, we’d like to talk to Mr Garry if he’s available.”

“Got bits?”

I’d thought this kind of thing was a weird exaggeration when Urtica and Bandit had first told me about this griffish trait, but I’d begun to see how accurate it was after Mantis returned from Griffonstone and reported that, once the griffons had ripped the money bag apart while it was still in his mouth and nearly killed one another fighting for every last coin that had poured out of it, not a single one of them had cared to even tell him that they didn’t care about the declaration of peace I’d sent, and he’d had to make that deduction on his own. I’d wanted to scream at that moment, but now that Glenn from Salt Lick City had demanded bits before agreeing to talk to me, getting the same opening from Garry left me completely unfazed. I absent-mindedly passed him a few bits and the door opened a little more.

“What?” Garry repeated.

“We believe you had a brother named Greg who lived in Bitsburgh. Is that right?”

“What’s it to you?”

“You do know that he was abducted by changelings-”

“Yes, and he died in that hive of theirs or whatever it’s called. So?”

I cast a quick glance at Twilight and the two drones. This guy had lost a brother, and he was acting like nothing had happened! I couldn’t believe it!

“Uh, my name is Thorax,” I said to Garry after failing to get any kind of helpful reaction from my three companions, “and I’m the new changeling king. I-”

“Congratulations,” he said dryly. “You gonna tell me something that wasn’t in the newspapers?”

“Yes, I was getting to it. I, uh, I want to express my sincere condolences for your loss and, in the name of all changelings, I want to apologize for your brother’s death.”

“You want forgiveness, huh?” He stroked his beak. “Yeah, I think we can arrange something. How much are you offering?”

I stared at him blankly. “Uh… excuse me?”

“You know, bits?” He shook his claw and the coins I’d given him clinked softly.

Had I heard him right? “I’m sorry, you want… bits… in exchange for forgiveness?”

“Why so aghast? Greg was a useless lump of feathers his whole life. Why not get something good out of him at last?”

And just when I was beginning to think I knew what to expect of them… “I’m sorry, but you seem to have misunderstood. I came to you with a genuine apology and expected that forgiveness, if you were willing to give it, would come without conditions such as money-”

“Then this conversation is over.” He slammed the door so hard that some of the twigs got dislodged from the nest and it was a miracle that the wall hadn’t done the same.

I stared at the door for a few moments, then turned to the others.

“Seriously?! A price of forgiveness, literally?”

Grim shrugged. “That’s the way griffons are.”

“Then why didn’t Glenn ask for money? Why chase us with a broken bottle?”

“Parental instincts?” Twilight shrugged. “I mean, he did lose a daughter. That could make a difference even with someone who doesn’t care about anyone else.”

Grim nodded.

“But you guys still managed to distract him with a few bits?”

“Two one-hundred-bit coins, actually. It may not be much in the context, and I doubt any griffon would have settled for just that as the final price if you’d offered to pay for their deceased relatives, but all it had to do was distract him long enough to lose track of where you went, and it worked. Though I imagine he’s not going to be happy when he realizes he can’t find those bits…”

“He’s probably noticed already,” Twilight mused. “Remind me to check with the authorities if he’s reported them stolen. I’m going to have some interesting explaining to do if he has…”

“Oops,” Spiracle said. “Sorry, Princess!”

“It’s alright, you were improvising a way to protect your king. But just to avoid any further international incidents, may I ask that you think of something else next time?”

They smiled sheepishly.

“Alright then, next order of business: Arpeggio’s family. They’re the last ones. Ready to visit them?”

“They’ll probably yell at us too,” I groaned. “Let’s get it over with…”

Twilight checked her notes for the exact address and led us through the village to a medium-sized house that would have been nondescript if it weren’t for shuttered windows and a mournful melody echoing from inside, and a deeply bitter love aura matching the music. I knocked; the music stopped, and a little later, an elderly mare with weary, bloodshot eyes opened the door.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your music. You are Mrs Ballad Verse, I believe?”

She nodded. “You’re changelings… and Princess Twilight? Not a changeling in disguise?”

“That’s right. We-”

“Come inside.” She opened the door wider and stepped out of the way.

Caught off guard, I glanced at the others. This was a first… but I wasn’t going to squander the opportunity! I came in as invited, and my companions duly followed.

Ballad led us into the living room, withdrew the curtains to give us some light, and moved the violin she’d been playing so we could sit down. There was just about enough room for all of us if Grim and Spiracle squeezed in next to me on the couch. Twilight took a sofa, and there was another sofa left vacant for Ballad.

“Can I get you something?” she asked. “Tea, cookies?”

We politely refused.

She sat down on the empty sofa, saying nothing. I hesitated. After having been shouted at and threatened and thrown stuff at for several days, I’d been ready for a similar treatment here, but this politeness? I had no idea what to say! But I had to say something! I couldn’t just sit here all afternoon!

“I, uh… just to make sure we’re in the right place, you had a son named Arpeggio?”

“Yes. I’ve been told he died in your hive. If you’re here for the funeral, I’m afraid you’ve missed it.”

“Twilight told me. I would have come, but I didn’t expect any of the families would want a changeling at their loved ones’ funerals, many were overlapping, and the hive was in chaos following the change of leadership… and all that sounds like a bunch of excuses… Anyway, I came here to apologize.”

“For missing the funeral?”

“No, for- well, that too, I guess, but actually I want to apologize for your son’s death. My kind had no right to abduct and drain him no matter how hungry they were, and though I never touched him personally, I feel partially responsible too. If I’d acted sooner, Arpeggio and many others might still be alive!”

“I forgive you,” she said.

“I know nothing will- hold on, did you say… you forgive us?”

“I did. Is that not what you wanted?”

“Well, I was hoping for it, but we had eighty-three families to visit, you happen to be the last, and you’re the only one who hasn’t lashed out at us! By now I didn’t think you’d be any different from the others!”

She nodded and took a photo from the nearby table, slowly as if the slightest bit of carelessness would rip the world apart, and stared at it in silence as her love aura intensified with painful bitterness and cherishing light all intertwined in a severe harmony not unlike the one she’d poured into the strings of her violin just before our arrival.

“I wasn’t sure if I would forgive you,” she said eventually, stroking the photo frame with a gentle hoof, not taking her eyes off it. “For the longest time, I thought I wouldn’t. I loved Arpeggio dearly and his loss hurts so deeply that it would be an understatement to say that the sun could scorch the earth and all the life on it and I’d never notice, and there’s nothing that could heal the wound his death left on my heart. Can you imagine such pain?”

“I can sense it in your aura,” I said, unsure that the question wasn’t rhetorical, “but I’m guessing it’s infinitely worse for you.”

“Fair enough. When I was told-” Her voice cracked and her eyes filled with tears; she took a few deep breaths to steady herself. “When they told me, it was so unbearable that I fainted, and when I woke up again, I screamed and cried and kicked at everything within my reach and I wanted to find those bastards who took my son and I wanted to rip them apart for what they did to him… if you’d shown up that day, there’s no force in the world that would have stopped me from killing you. The funeral had to be postponed a few days until I regained some semblance of a composure, and even that took every spell and potion my doctor could think of. I wasn’t myself… I probably never will be. And I thought I’d never be within a hundred miles of a changeling and restrain myself from killing him, or at the very least, yelling my heart out at him until… I don’t know what anymore.” She sighed. “You’re probably wondering by now how we’re sitting here talking like old friends.”

“I’m guessing you realized your son’s death wasn’t the fault of every changeling?” Twilight said.

“Yes and no, Princess. Tell me, have you been looking for families of just the deceased ponies, or of the surviving ones as well?”

“Just the deceased ones,” Spiracle said. “We already apologized to the survivors upon releasing them, so there was no need to do it again, plus there’s an awful lot of them and it would take months at least.”

Ballad nodded as if she’d expected that answer. “Then you might not have realized that I also have a daughter, and she was taken shortly after Arpeggio. She went looking for him and didn’t come back. She took a friend, who went missing too, and my husband and I never knew what had happened until Nightingale came back and told us that she’d fallen prey to the changelings and that they released her with very profuse apologies. They looked and acted nothing like what we knew about the changelings, but somehow, she was sure they were genuinely sorry for what they’d done. She came home weak and miserable - she’s still in the hospital, actually, and won’t be coming home for another while - but despite what they did to her and the consequences she’s still enduring, she never stopped insisting that you guys have really changed, and neither did Primrose Bliss - that’s her friend, and she came back in even worse condition than my Nightingale.”

She offered us the photo and I took it in my magic.

“That’s them,” she said. “That’s my children.”

“I recognize Nightingale,” Grim said, looking at the photo. “I released her from her cocoon. I’m glad she made it back to her family.”

“May I?” Spiracle asked.

I passed him the photo.

“Hmm,” he mused. “It’s been a while, but I think Arpeggio might have been given to me for an inspection. All, uh… captured ponies… were getting routinely checked up because Chrysalis thought some of them might have sacrificed themselves to smuggle something harmful into the hive. The throne would have neutralized anything magic-based, but she didn’t want to risk missing anything non-magical if the ponies had somehow figured out that magic wouldn’t work. Nothing was ever found, but we had to do it anyway.”

Ballad’s face went sour, and Spiracle stiffened up when he realized how it must have sounded to her.

“Uh, we used magic for it!” he said hurriedly. “None of the prey cocoons ever got opened!”

“Ooookay… I’ll try not to hold a grudge against you for it… it was before you transformed, right?”

“Yes, of course! We’re not doing it anymore! I certainly never will!”

“Did your daughter know about Arpeggio?” Twilight said, breaking the awkward silence that had followed. “Upon being released, I mean.”

“They caught a glimpse of something that looked like dead bodies in a room they passed by, but I don’t think they realized one of them could be Arpeggio. I’m sure they would have said something if they had. But they must have been too weak to go looking for him, and they must have at least suspected, as neither looked surprised when…” She sighed. “If I know my daughter at all, she would have still hoped until then, as we all were, but even learning that her hopes had been futile didn’t change her attitude. She’s devastated, but she never once stopped believing that you guys have turned a new leaf, and couldn’t bring herself to be truly mad at you. So, you see, if my Nighty could find it in herself to forgive you, I decided I would try to do the same. I wasn’t sure if I truly could, but now that I’ve met you, I think she’s right. I still don’t know why I trust you to be genuinely sorry, but I do.” A tear rolled down her face and she hugged the photo that I’d just given back to her. “It won’t bring Arpeggio back, and it might not cure Nighty and Primrose, but if forgiving you is the first step towards making sure nopony else suffers the same fate, then it’s my duty to take it.”

“Thank you,” I said, wondering if it would be okay to hug her.

“No, thank you,” she replied. “I raised my children to be kind and honorable, and looking at Nighty, I believe I’ve succeeded. I see the same kindness in you, thanks to her. The world needs more of that and it warms my heart to see it blooming where I thought it could never exist. If others could see it too, there might be some hope for a better future, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” I said, and was starting to believe it again. “I too like to think there’s hope for a better future.”

Author's Note

By pure chance, this chapter is getting published a day before the 10th anniversary of my uncle's death. It was due to a heart attack so no one to blame for it (as opposed to what happened to the ponies in the chapter), but we didn't even know he was having health issues so it caught us all unprepared, and grandma and grandpa (his parents) were still alive at the time and took it especially hard, as you might imagine; grandpa talked about hanging himself and grandma died barely six months later.

The next chapter will be less gloomy, though :twilightsheepish:

Northern Heart

Upon returning to the hive, the first thing we saw was Pharynx yelling at a group of unreformed drones, holding them at spearpoint.

“What’s going on here?!” I asked.

“They were about to desert the hive!”

“Why?”

“Why?!” one of them retorted. “Because what you’re doing is unbearable, that’s why!”

“Yeah, Chrysalis was much better!” another added. “Who put an incompetent fool like you in charge? We want the Queen back!”

“Bet she would come back if someling gets the incompetent fool out of the way!” snarled the third.

The rest of the group took it as their cue to a hissing pounce; Grim and Spiracle each tackled one out of the way and Pharynx stabbed one in the shoulder, but the others were all over me before I could scream at Pharynx. I wasn’t harmed, though; they were pulled off of me the next second and the oversized spider tossed them into the distance, then reverted to his usual form and bit the ones Grim and Spiracle were wrestling with.

“What have you done?!” I exclaimed, galloping to the stabbed drone.

“What? He was gonna kill you,” Pharynx shot back as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

“That doesn’t justify stabbing him! Spiracle!”

“On it!” He joined us and gave the drone a quick check-up. “It’s okay, he’ll live. But I better take him to the infirmary just in case.”

I nodded, and he and Grim picked the drone up and flew him away.

“Pharynx?” I couldn’t let this slide and he had to have known it!

“Oh, cut the drama already,” he snorted. “I wasn’t aiming for a vital area!”

“That’s not an excuse! You know I don’t condone that kind of behavior! Where did you even get the spear? I thought Psycho threw them out!”

“Psycho can’t throw out what he can’t find.”

I facehoofed. “Pharynx, you know I said no weapons…”

“Then how do you expect me to keep renegades in check? Or to defend the hive from outside forces?”

“Can’t you at least try to convince them?”

“You think they listen to words?”

“Have you tried?”

“I don’t have to! If they cared about words, they’d have joined the rainbow-colored clown force already!”

“You can’t know that for sure! And they’re not clowns!”

He sneered. “Prove it!”

“This isn’t some kind of competition, Pharynx!”

“You’re just saying that because you know I would have won!”

“What- No, I- just- Ugh, why are you doing this?!”

“Doing what? Disciplining insubordinate grubs for you?”

“I told you already, you can’t do that!”

“Even if it’s the only thing that works?”

I groaned. “Look, this conversation isn’t getting anywhere, and as much as I hate the idea of punishing you, I can’t ignore what you just did.”

“So you’re gonna, what, make me paint flowers because you know I hate it?”

“That’s not a punishment,” I said flatly. “I’d prefer something you’re more likely to see as a tangible way to benefit the hive.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“You think you could ask Proboscis to put you on one of the cleaning teams?” I asked.

“You want me to be a janitor?! I should have known you’d try to get back at me for that sooner or later!”

“No, that’s not what-”

“How long am I supposed to disgrace myself by parading around with a broom?”

“Uh, I don’t know… maybe a month or two?”

He grunted and turned away from me.

“It’s not that bad once you get used to it!”

“I don’t want to get used to it!”

“Please, Pharynx? At least try…”

“Ugh, you should have blasted me with one of those torture spells!” he shot back as he took to the air, and I was left to stand alone among the shrubs and saplings that still hadn’t fully recovered from my brother’s recent act of vandalism.

I didn’t like having to do this to Pharynx, but I couldn’t pretend nothing had happened! He could have done something else to keep that drone away from me if he’d wanted! It didn’t have to be a spear into the shoulder! What if Spiracle couldn’t help the guy? If he were to end up crippled, I could easily be expected to punish Pharynx more severely! But I didn’t want to punish him at all! Why couldn’t he have kept it at reasonable levels?

I let out a frustrated sigh and decided to check the infirmary. Spiracle would probably know a little more about his patient’s condition by now! Maybe he could ease my worries about the whole thing?

But before I could get moving, a drone came from the north and landed in front of me.

“Courier Scarab reporting in,” he said. “Crystal Empire assignment completed successfully. Princess Cadance sends her reply.”

He gave me a scroll and flew away.

My heart skipped a beat at the mention of my former overlady and I felt a deep nostalgia for the days I’d spent under her rule. She would know what to do in my situation! She had, after all, dealt with a similar problem about halfway through my tenure in the Crystal Empire! Could I ask her for advice on what to do and how not to feel bad about it?

I opened the scroll.

Office of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, HRH/Office of Prince-Captain Shining Armor, HRH
Crystal Castle
10110 Crystal Empire
To: King Thorax, HRH, of the Changelings
Re: Declaration of Peace

Dear Thorax,

We’re delighted to see you taking your new responsibilities seriously! Your hopes have come true, and like a true leader, you’re wasting no time in turning your vision into reality, just like we always knew you would! We couldn’t be prouder if you were our own son! We just know your reign will be as happy and prosperous as you deserve!

That being said, allow us to help you achieve that goal by upholding our end of the friendship you started between the changelings and the Crystal Empire. We’re ready and willing to sign a peace treaty and to formally forge an alliance with your kingdom at the soonest convenience. Visit us in the Crystal Empire whenever you want, Thorax, and bring as many changelings as you want. The doors of our castle will always be open for you, and the many friends you made here can’t wait to congratulate you in person!

Hoping to see you soon,
Cadance
Shining Armor

I couldn’t believe it! They wanted me there already, and we were about to forge an alliance! My efforts hadn’t been in vain; the Changeling Kingdom was about to be blessed with another alliance with the ponies! I couldn’t wait to get there!

But first, I had to find a couple of drones to tag along with me. I wondered if I could get a few more to come too, but I wasn’t sure at this point if any would be interested. Oh, and before I left, I still had to pay a visit to the infirmary, check on Pharynx, and get up to speed on what had been going on in my absence. Hopefully nothing too bad had happened, and just as hopefully, it would stay that way!

“Thorax? Is that really you? I can’t believe it!”

“It’s good to see you too, Paladin!”

“Wow! Princess Cadance and Shining weren’t kidding when they said you looked like a polar opposite of your old self!” He snickered, then quickly composed himself, resumed his formal stance and expression, and bowed. “I mean, you honor us by your presence, Your Majesty!”

I facehoofed and started to groan, but it turned into a chuckle. “Oh, cut it out, Paladin! That’s not my thing and you know it!”

“Hey, you can’t blame a Royal Guard for adhering to protocol,” he shrugged. “Seriously, buddy, it’s good to see you!”

“It’s good to be back,” I sighed, looking around me at the outskirts of the Crystal Empire and the city’s outer limit. “It feels like I’m back in another lifetime! Who would have guessed what would happen after I ran off that night…”

“Your life really turned upside-down, didn’t it?”

“Upside-down and inside-out is an understatement! But at least I don’t have to worry about Chrysalis hunting me down anymore, and I got my biggest wish, so I shouldn’t complain, right?”

“Right you are! So, who are your friends?”

“Blade and Feisty. They kind of have some unfinished business here.” I nodded to them, and they turned into a pair of earth ponies and trotted off. “Turns out there was more than one changeling here until recently.”

His eyes went wide. “Them…? I could have sworn I- uh, Thorax, are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Relax, I know what they’re doing and why. We discussed it on the way here and I wouldn’t have given the okay if I had a problem with it.”

“Well, if you’re vouching for them not to cause trouble, I guess I can trust you.”

“So, where are Cadance and Shining? They kind of invited me here…”

“I know. Word spread fast about your peace declaration. As far as I figured out, they didn’t want to impose a schedule on you so they didn’t know exactly when you’d arrive, but they were pretty sure you would, though I don’t think they realized it would happen so soon. But they are looking forward to seeing you again, and we’ve been instructed to take you to the castle if you show up unannounced.”

“Oh. Okay then, let’s go there! Uh, was I supposed to tell them when I’d be coming?”

“Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure they would have said so.”

We got moving.

“So what’s new in the Crystal Empire?”

“Oh, same old, mostly. Cadance and Shining’s impostors didn’t get to do much damage in the few days they spent here, but you already know that much, don’t you?”

“They didn’t go into detail, but yeah, that’s the impression I got. They must have been too busy looking for me.”

“They knew you were here?!”

“Yeah, Blade and Feisty reported it.”

“So how come didn’t Chrysalis come for you?”

I told him about Pharynx’s assignment and the trap set up for him.

“I can’t believe I almost met the guy! Too bad he was cooped up in his offi- uh, in Shining’s office, pretty much from dawn to dusk every day… Anyway, did he pass the test?”

“The trap failed. I was away before he got to run into me. I got the impression that he’d have been executed along with me otherwise.”

“Good thing you beat Chrysalis to it!”

“Yeah…” Except that I wouldn’t have beaten her if it weren’t for trying to save Pharynx…

“Anyway,” Paladin continued, “Flurry’s growing nicely! I hear she won’t be needing diapers for much longer! On the downside, she’s getting more creative with decorating the walls with her breakfast and she keeps surprising everypony with figuring out all kinds of spells on her own without needing a book to learn them!”

“That must be her aunt’s influence!”

“You bet! Hey, I wonder if she’ll recognize you now!”

“If she doesn’t, I can always shapeshift into something more familiar to her.” I demonstrated the trick. Everypony nearby noticed right away and swarmed me.

“It’s Thorax! Welcome back!”

“We heard about your heroics!”

“What’s it like to lead a kingdom?”

“Three cheers for Thorax!”

“Tell us how you did it! Please?”

I tried to answer some of the questions, but more kept coming faster than I could keep track, and the resulting cacophony was beginning to push me into a fit of panic. The multitude of ponies still gathering up around me wasn’t helping any, and before long, half the city must have arrived and the ones nearest to me managed to knock me over! Paladin had tried to keep them in order, but he got lost in the crowd pretty soon too, and probably didn’t know anymore where to conjure up a shield to save me from the hordes.

“Alright, everypony, that’s enough!” a regal voice said from above. “I know you can’t wait to see Thorax, but how about giving him some breathing space?”

That helped, and the crowd settled down and curbed their enthusiasm.

“Thanks, Princess,” I said, getting up and reverting to my own form… my new own form.

“Don’t mention it,” she said, landing next to me. “Welcome back! I know it hasn’t been that long, but we’ve missed you!”

“I’ve missed you too! I’ve missed the whole Crystal Empire!”

Shining appeared in the crowd and trotted closer.

“Welcome, Thorax,” he said with a warm smile. “You caught us by surprise there. Good thing Sentinel saw you while flying by and came to tell us!”

“So that’s how you got here so quickly!”

“That, and the fact that we weren’t doing anything else at the moment,” Cadance said. “Would you like to come to the castle now?”

“Sure!”

We got underway.

“Your room is waiting for you, just like you left it, except that the bed is made. How long are you staying?”

“I’m not sure… It’s great to be here again, but I don’t want to be away from the hive for too long at this point…”

“Well, it’s almost sundown, so you’re staying at least until tomorrow, and we’ll be glad to have you for longer if you can spare some time!”

“Thank you! We’ll negotiate the peace treaty tomorrow, then?”

“Of course,” Cadance agreed. “Auntie Celestia told me about the particulars of the Canterlot treaty. We were thinking of going with something similar ourselves unless you have any objections.”

“No, I like the way that one’s arranged.”

“Then I’ll have Gleaming Quill prepare a draft and we’ll go over it after breakfast. That should leave you more time to hang out with your friends later than if we were starting from scratch.”

“I can see them?!” This was getting better by the minute!

“Why not?” Shining asked. “You’re not expecting us to make you sit in boring meetings the whole time and to not even give you a moment to say hi to your friends, are you?”

“Well… I kind of assumed the meetings would have a recess or two in which I’d get to see them, or that I’d arrange a quick get-together after I’m done with official duties before I have to leave…”

“None of that,” Cadance scolded. “Your friends are what gave you the strength to grow as a person and to defeat Chrysalis, they can’t wait to see you again, and I know you want the same! We’ll make sure you have plenty of time to catch up!”

“Thanks, but I’ll keep it within polite limits. As much as I’d like to stay here indefinitely, I shouldn’t overstay my welcome, and the situation in the hive is… well… let’s just say I don’t trust it to not get out of control…”

“If we finish the treaty-related discussions by lunchtime,” Shining mused, “that should leave you the whole afternoon for leisure. Gleaming will need a couple of hours to go over any changes we make to the draft and create a final version for us to sign anyway. What better way to spend the waiting time than in the company of your friends?”

“Sounds good! I can’t wait!”

We were in the castle itself by then and I almost collided with a flying ball of giggling, pink fluff.

“Hey, Flurry!” I cooed. “Guess who’s back!”

She gave me a puzzled look and babbled something incoherent. I switched to a form she was familiar with, and got a warm, squealing hug in return.

“I tried to prepare her for what you look like now, but she was more interested in building a plushie pyramid,” said a voice behind me.

“I think she’s too young for classes, Sunburst,” I said with a smirk. “Are you doing it because you miss tutoring me?”

He blushed and chuckled. “Well, you were an interesting student…”

“Sunburst,” Cadance interjected, “would you like to escort Thorax to his room? We’ll take Flurry now.”

We agreed; the filly protested a little, but in the end, her mother was preferred over her foalsitters. The royals trotted off in the direction of the dining room, and Sunburst and I went our own path. I reverted to my new form shortly.

“You know, it’ll take a while to get used to you looking like that,” he said.

“I got pretty well used to it myself, though that could just be because I’m normally used to not being stuck in the same form all the time. The royal title is what I’m really struggling with.”

“I used to be uncomfortable with the ‘crystaller’ title,” he said. “I guess it’s just that big-sounding titles need some time to sink in. I’m okay now… but a king is on a whole different level than a crystaller, I guess… it’ll probably take longer for you…”

“I’ve noticed,” I sighed. “Anyway, how are you holding up after that whole thing?”

“Pretty good, actually… almost as if nothing happened… I guess they didn’t get around to feeding on me.”

“You were held in Chrysalis’ chandelier thing. I don’t know the exact rule of conduct for her throne room other than bowing until my face is almost buried into the ground and begging for mercy, but something tells me that chandelier was more of a trophy collection than a food cluster. Not that I mind you being pretty much intact!”

He yawned. “Sorry about that, Flurry’s been very lively and I have some new books that I’ve been reading-”

Now I yawned too.

“Looks like I’m more tired than I thought,” I said. “Maybe it’s best we turn in early.”

“Sure. Big day tomorrow, right? You think we’ll get a moment to just hang out?” Yawn.

“Cadance and Shining just discussed it with me. We think we’ll be done by lunch, and then I’ll be- yawn -free for the rest of the day.”

“See you in the afternoon, then!”

“Uh-huh. Good night, Sunburst!”

I opened the door of my room and went inside. Everything in it seemed smaller than I remembered, and it took me a tired moment to realize that the furniture was alright and that it was me who had changed. All of my paintings were there, smiling at me from the walls in all their colorful glory, and I smiled back at them, wondering whether to take some of them to the hive or to leave them all here to welcome me the next time I visited. Exhaustion soon pushed that dilemma out of my mind, and the bed became the focal point of my attention. I got in; it was a little small for my full size, but I could still fit in well enough if I curled up. The antlers could be tricky, but I figured I’d probably notice if they started destroying things whenever I stirred in my sleep. Hopefully my assumption was right, as I was asleep before I got around to thinking of a backup plan.

When I woke up in the morning, I was somewhat disoriented and confused by seeing the familiar crystal walls and pony furniture bathed in bright light. This was my room in Princess Cadance’s castle… I was in the Crystal Empire… Had it all been a dream? Had I never fled this sanctuary in search of help only to get involved in a mission to save the world? Had the world never needed saving? Had I never become the king of my kind? Here, as I lay in my bed thinking, it all seemed surreal; as realistic as it may have felt, could it have been but a figment of my imagination, a glimpse of what could have been had Chrysalis found a way to reach here? Could I still be living a peaceful life, unburdened by the crown I’d neither wanted nor asked for?

Then I realized my hooves were green.

A closer look at the mirror-like crystal walls revealed a hint of a reflection of my new face. Maybe I’d simply shapeshifted into this in the middle of the night! It didn’t have to mean anything!

Except it did mean everything; an attempt to undo my disguise produced no result… unless I was still dreaming?

Knock it off, Thorax! You know too well it can’t be that easy, and it won’t just suddenly pop you into an alternate timeline no matter how you’re feeling about this one!

Okay, enough crazy theories and wild assumptions. I had some… uh, negotiating?… yes, I had a peace treaty to negotiate today!

I got out of bed and strolled to the dining room. It felt weird to walk down these halls and stairways again after all this time… okay, it hadn’t been that long from an objective standpoint, but it still felt like another lifetime, or a dream of another lifetime. The soothing familiarity of my surroundings warmed my heart; this was where I’d first found a loving home, where I’d made and cultivated my first friendships, where I’d learned so much about the world, where I’d found hobbies and responsibilities, where I’d healed the wounds of the past and refused to let that past haunt me into the future. This was where I’d grown as a person more than ever before; this was where my life had found its purpose!

I’d been happy here, truly happy for the first time in my life. It was thanks to the ponies who lived here and thanks to their friends and relatives that I’d found that happiness, and for that, I would always be grateful! Their love had made me what I was today, and I would never, ever forget that!

Alas, a pang of sadness cast a shadow on my heart as a realization crept in: though I’d shared their love and friendship, though I’d made a mark of this land, though I’d called it home once, it wasn’t home anymore. Welcome as I may be among them, I belonged elsewhere now.

But it was with the well-being of that elsewhere in my mind that I’d come here, and time had come to negotiate a treaty that would ensure that goal. Even better, it would be one step closer to the unity of my two homes and strengthening the bonds of friendship!

I opened the dining room door.

...and nearly collided with Berry as she was pushing a trolley full of dirty plates.

“Oops, sorry!” I exclaimed.

“No, I’m sor- hey, you’re Thorax, aren’t you? They said you were back! I can’t believe it!” She looked me over and chortled. “Wow, you look like… like, uh…”

“Like that half-eaten salad?” I suggested, pointing at the contents of her trolley.

She burst out laughing. “Yeah, totally! I didn’t want to sound offensive, but sweet Celestia, I didn’t expect you to be that colorful! Not that nopony told me, it’s just… you know, gotta see it to believe it?”

“I know, right? It took me a moment to believe it, too!”

“It took all of us a moment,” said a voice behind me. I turned around.

“Oh, Princess, I didn’t see you there!” I fumbled. “Have you been waiting for me?”

“No, we’ve just set up the conference room and I went to see if you were awake yet. What were you doing in the dining room?”

“Oh… uh… I… I’m not sure… I guess I thought you’d be there? I kind of assumed it was breakfast time…”

“You’re right, it is breakfast time, but we hurried it up a little for your sake. You still don’t eat pony food, do you?”

“No. Would it have been easier for you if I did?”

“It’s all the same to us, and if you’re more comfortable with an entirely love-based diet, we have no problem with it.”

“Okay…” Had she forgotten that changelings had no use for physical food, or was that only a figure of speech? I didn’t want to press the issue; it would have probably been rude to get so nitpicky on such trivial matters!

Either way, the conversation on that trivial matter ended, and Cadance invited me to follow her. I was led down a couple of hallways into a room of a size and design not unlike that of the dining room, only there was a podium with a whiteboard on one end, and the central table was equipped with inkwells and stacks of parchment for every seat. Shining was already there, as was the pony I recognized as Princess Cadance’s aide.

I hadn’t realized I was standing frozen in place until Cadance prodded me.

“Thorax? Are you alright?”

“Huh- Oh, sorry… Um, I’m… not yet used to this thing…”

“Don’t worry,” Shining said. “You’ve done this before and everything went fine! Just have a seat and let’s go over the draft. If you have any questions or need a break, just tell us. Okay?”

“Yeah, uh, sure…”

I sat next to them and Gleaming Quill began reading out the draft. She was obviously in her element, and I felt bad whenever my nerves got the best of me and her outstanding performance had to be halted to allow Cadance and Shining to calm me down. What was wrong with me? I’d handled the Canterlot negotiations much better! This was pretty much just agreeing to do one thing after another the same way as in the Canterlot treaty, so why was I losing myself over and over again in fits of panic?

Eventually the last point was addressed and agreed on, Gleaming left the room, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thorax, you know we meant it when we said you could take a break whenever you needed one, don’t you?” Cadance asked.

“Yes,” I sighed. “Only, I don’t think a break would have helped…”

“Twily didn’t say anything about you being so nervous in Canterlot,” Shining interjected. “In fact, she made it sound like you’d handled things perfectly!”

“I can’t explain it,” I told him. “Spike was there so seeing a friendly face must have helped, but you’re my friends too so it can’t be as simple as that… Maybe it’s because I know you so well that I’m too worried about letting you down and blowing the whole thing? Though it can also be that I had Urtica with me then, but now she’s got changeling pox and had to cocoon herself… and I do rely on her an awful lot… or maybe I’m just thinking about stuff back in the hive that I still have to sort out?” I was on the verge of hyperventilating.

“Why don’t you join us for lunch? You don’t have to eat anything if you don’t want to, but I’m guessing a relaxed conversation would do you good.”

I accepted their offer and we went back to the dining room. Once there, they motioned me to enter first; the door was closed so I pushed it open and-

“Surprise!” a group of ponies exclaimed, throwing balloons and confetti into the air. Sunburst was there, and Berry, and the three Royal Guards that had watched me in my early days here, and little Flurry Heart of course. Lunch was on the table behind them - a generous serving as far as I could see - and a ‘Welcome Back, Thorax!’ banner hung on the far wall, decorated with glitter and rainbow-colored flowers.

“Whoa… you did all this for me?!” I said, tearing up a little.

“Well, duh!” Trusty said. “What else were we supposed to do? Yell and grumble?”

“You mean, like you did when he started living here?” Sentinel quipped.

“Hey! I’ve changed and you know it!”

“We know,” I said, “and I’m honored that you threw a party for me.”

Sunburst tilted his head. “You don’t sound too happy.”

I fumbled.

Cadance stepped up. “Thorax has let it slip that things aren’t going as well for him as he’d hoped.”

“Why don’t you tell us about it?” Berry suggested.

We sat down at the table, the ponies helped themselves to food, and as they began to eat, I caught Cadance’s expectant eyes glancing questions at me in between spoonfuls she fed to Flurry. I knew what she meant. I was going to tell them all, but that had been before coming to lunch and seeing the whole setup; they’d worked so hard on this party and their spirits were so high, I didn’t have the heart to throw a wrench in it all by whining about my incompetence as a leader! Surely it could wait until another time!

“Well, what’s been troubling you?” Shining asked eventually.

The tone of his voice almost made me give in; gone was the hatred he’d once harbored towards my kind, gone were the sadistic malice and the hurtful words, and his aura suggested genuine concern. How could I not accept the helping hoof he was offering? I could unburden my soul and he - they - would give me the help I needed, just like they’d done in the not-so-distant past!

But this was a party, albeit one called simply ‘lunch’, and parties were supposed to be happy, carefree, just like the auras of my friends suggested they were feeling. They were, unlike Cadance and Shining, unaware of how much I struggled to keep myself together; they probably thought I was there to celebrate our reunion and nothing more! I had no doubt they’d help me if I asked, but would it be right of me to kill the mood they’d established?

“Nothing,” I lied. “Just the, uh… minor… issues… with royal duties, um… routine stuff, you know? No need to bother you all with that!”

Judging by their blank stares, tilted heads, and raised eyebrows, they were all but convinced, even Flurry. Hardly a surprise, really; I’d never been a good liar, even in the old days when a lie may have saved me from a beating. Unfortunately, the side-effect of this lie was the deflation of the high spirits I’d hoped to preserve, but it felt incredibly awkward to change my story now!

“You know you can tell us,” Sunburst said.

“Oh come on, there’s nothing to tell!” I insisted.

“You sure about that?” Paladin.

“Uh, sure… like I said, nothing I couldn’t handle…”

“Thorax,” Cadance tried, “you do understand we’re trying to help you?”

“Yeah!” Berry interjected. “If Princess here says so, you can count on us!”

“So he couldn’t if the Princess hadn’t said so?” Trusty retorted.

“You know that’s not what I meant!”

“Guys, I appreciate you wanting to help, but-”

“You didn’t say so!”

“Nevermind semantics! Thorax needs help with something-”

“What do you mean, ‘nevermind’? How are we supposed to know what she meant if-”

“That’s not important right now!”

“Then what is?!”

“Guys-” It was useless. They were too busy arguing to pay attention to whether or not I was trying to say something. I slumped onto the table and only Cadance seemed to notice. She opened her mouth, but a knock on the door interrupted her as well as everypony’s arguing, and I sat upright again.

“Come in,” Cadance spoke.

A Royal Guard I’d seen in passing from time to time, but had never been introduced to, opened the door and ushered in Blade and Feisty, now in their own forms. Flurry found them interesting enough to fly out of Cadance’s embrace and do a few laps around the two drones before settling down on Feisty’s back, only to be levitated back to her mother.

“You said to bring our guests here, Princess,” he said to her, gave a slight bow, and withdrew from the room.

“You’re finished?” I asked the drones. “How did it go?” Please start talking with enough detail to distract the ponies from the previous discussion!

“Couldn’t be better!” Feisty said. “Thanks for bringing us!”

“I don’t follow,” Paladin muttered.

Sentinel shoved him. “Shush! Somepony would have briefed you had it been any of your business!”

“It’s not a secret,” I interjected. “Guys, why don’t you sit down and tell us everything?”

They did, albeit a bit hesitant. I gave them an encouraging nod.

“You, uh…” Blade started. “You guys may or may not be aware that Thorax wasn’t the only changeling living in the Crystal Empire recently.”

With the exception of Paladin, they weren’t; they gasped, and Trusty and Sentinel sprang to their hooves.

“Thorax?” Shining spoke, his aura turning cold. “Did you know about that?”

“Not until I claimed the throne and Psycho filled me in. If I had known, do you really think I would have dared to come here, let alone show my true face in public?”

He relaxed. “Fair enough. Go on.”

“Like Thorax said,” Feisty continued, “he wasn’t authorized to know about us. We know that because Chrysalis told us when we reported him having been noticed. We didn’t know at the time who was seen and thought it must have been one of us as we didn’t expect another drone in the area, but she put two and two together.”

“The warning scrolls,” Cadance mused. “We should have changeling-proofed them!”

Shining’s face went sour. “So Chrysalis knew all along Thorax was here? Why didn’t she come get him?”

“She was going to,” I said. “In fact, she almost did. My brother was on the team that replaced you two and Flurry. Chrysalis expected him to run into me sooner or later, only, he didn’t know that. She was doubting his loyalty to her and this was supposed to tell her whose side he was really on, but I ran off for help before he got the chance to see me.”

Cadance and Berry shuddered.

“I’m glad you guys got rid of her,” Sunburst said. “Not that I wasn’t before hearing this, heheh…”

“Anyway,” Blade said. “A good part of our assignment over the last few months was to monitor Thorax’s movement, but we were around for much longer. Remember Firm Stitch and Cornucopia?”

“You replaced them?!” Sentinel exclaimed. “When?”

“Not exactly. They never really existed; it was us all along.”

“But… but that means you were here since before the Crystal Empire disappeared!” Berry said. “Can it be?”

“No, we were deployed here as soon as Chrysalis learned of its return. The infiltrators who were here a thousand years ago managed to get out while Sombra was busy enslaving the crystal ponies. We thought of borrowing their aliases, but after all this time, not even Chrysalis remembered how the Crystal Heart affected changelings and whether or not the earlier teams had had to take extra steps to avoid getting their cover blown during Crystal Fairs, and Urtica couldn’t find any scrolls in the hive’s archive that would help us figure it out, so we decided to play it safe and not be crystal ponies this time.”

“Needless to say,” Feisty added, “we don’t have a mother in Manehattan whose birthday coincides with the Crystal Faire. That was just an excuse for why we couldn’t be at the Faire every year. Same thing with that uncle who got sick right before the crystalling. We also aren’t really siblings.”

“Okay… good to know…” Shining said. “Any more surprises I should know about?”

“We were the only two infiltrators, if that’s what you mean, though there probably would have been more eventually in a city of this size, but deploying everyling at once would have drawn too much attention, and the prey hunters rarely went here because it’s so remote and most ponies’ disappearances would have gotten noticed.”

“So, why exactly are you here now?” Trusty inquired.

“We wanted to apologize to our bosses and to the ponies we called friends for disguise credibility but who were actually… um… source of information…”

“For a moment there I thought you were going to say ‘food source’,” Paladin quipped.

“No, we fed on the collective aura of the whole city, and it was the best meal we could imagine until Thorax came along! Can you imagine that shared love from just one individual is better than love stolen from a whole city?! We’d never have believed it a couple of months ago, but there it is!”

“So these are your actual forms now?” Sentinel asked. “Not a disguise for our comfort?”

“Nope, we’re reformed.”

“We also went to the cave where Thorax was hiding,” Blade said. “The last invasion team used it as a hideout and left their gear there in a hurry. Thorax thought you might be interested to have it.”

Feisty went out of the room and returned with a bag.

“There are some weapons, not that different from your own, but this will be more interesting.” She pulled out four scarab-like contraptions.

“What are they?”

“It’s a communicator,” I said. “You align them to make corners of an imaginary square, the heads facing diagonally outwards, and they establish a connection with another set by your choice. They also glow if a hail went unanswered. Chrysalis used them to issue orders to deployed teams and receive reports from them. I gave a set to Princesses Celestia and Luna and another to Princess Twilight to use in emergencies.”

“Thanks, this will come in useful!” Cadance said.

The ponies were almost done eating by now, and in the silence that followed as they were finishing their desserts, I was beginning to relax a little. This had gone well! They’d forgotten about me having problems!

“What were we discussing before the two changelings showed up?” Sunburst suddenly broke the silence.

...or maybe I’d spoken too soon.

“Oh, nothing important,” I said hurriedly. “Oh, look at the time! It was wonderful seeing you again, but I’m afraid we have to leave now. Royal duty calls!”

I was almost pushing Blade and Feisty out the door the next second.

“Wait!” Cadance said. “You haven’t signed the treaty yet! Let me see if Gleaming has finished writing up the final version!”

Oh, right! I’d almost fled without completing the main reason I was here! Fortunately, Gleaming was just trotting by with the treaty, and I wasted no time in scribbling my name where it was supposed to go, then bidding a hurried farewell to my confused hosts and clearing out at the speed that would have made my old, fugitive self jealous. Blade and Feisty struggled to keep up.

Our timing was accidentally perfect; a train was just about to head south, and our return tickets were ready and waiting in Blade’s saddlebag. Actually, where had he gotten that saddlebag? He hadn’t arrived with one… and come to think about it, it looked awfully familiar…

“There we go,” he said as we settled down in our seats in the train car. “Thorax, I believe I owe you something.”

He gave me the saddlebag. I still wasn’t sure what he meant until I realized it wasn’t empty. I pulled out a rolled-up stack of papers and nearly dropped them in surprise upon seeing what they were.

“How did you-”

“We asked for Cadance’s permission last evening and went to your room before lunch.”

“There’s more,” Feisty said. “Open the other compartment.”

I did, and once again, couldn’t believe my eyes! They hadn’t just grabbed my paintings; they’d also taken my flower!

Bury the Hatchet

The outskirts of the hive welcomed us peacefully this time; the leaves and branches of the budding vegetation swayed gently in the breeze, their contours softened by the fading light of the setting sun, and an odd drone was flying in the distance. It was almost hard to imagine the landscape as it had once been, barren and ominous, and for a moment, I allowed myself to believe this tranquil beauty was the messenger of hope, promising better days about to dawn; no longer would the changeling kind be divided, no longer would they refuse the gift of peace and friendship, no longer would the other lands shun and despise us, and we would finally become what we should have been all along!

Indeed, nothing disturbed the idyllic scenery: no unreformed drones were destroying things or bickering with their reformed peers, no wild beasts were skulking around, and probably to Pharynx’s continued dismay, no foreign armies were marching on to invade the changeling territory! I’d never seen the place so peaceful, so… almost welcoming!

The absence of trouble continued in the hive’s hallways, and I soon dismissed Blade and Feisty and was left on my own. I intended to leave my saddlebag and the paintings in my bedchamber, then carry the flower somewhere outside, probably the throne room, so it could have plenty of sunlight it needed, and after that, I would go looking for Pharynx or Psycho. Either one of them would probably know everything I’d missed that was worth mentioning! Psycho may be a better choice, but I suspected Pharynx’s punishment hadn’t kept him out of touch with whatever was going on, not to mention that I just wanted to see him! Disciplined or not, he was still my brother!

I only got around to setting the saddlebag down on the floor when I became aware of a peculiarly white-hot aura… peculiar because there seemed to be two layers of the white-hotness, but somehow intermixed… and it was coming from above… And I could have imagined it, but there were also sounds coming from above, muffled and barely audible, but I couldn’t ignore them…

Puzzled, I went to look for the source of the strange commotion. I barely left my bedchamber when I remembered my flower was still squeezed into the saddlebag, and doubled back to at least get it out, hoping nothing would happen to it while I was away.

The sounds became louder and clearer as I followed the aura to its source. It wasn’t long until my suspicions were confirmed: some intense arguing was going on! But what about? Too many were yelling to make out individual words!

Well, the shouts seemed to be coming from the same direction as the aura, so they were probably about the same thing. Hardly surprising in and of itself, but the part that worried me was that, as my bedchamber was on one of the topmost levels of the hive, there was hardly more than one possibility as to where exactly the commotion was happening.

I kept going until I arrived at the throne room and was welcomed with quite a sight.

The entire throne room was packed with changelings, so much that some were standing on the remains of the walls or hovering in mid-air, and they were all yelling. It only took a moment to realize they’d formed two distinct groups, one reformed and one not; the reformed ones were gathered around something in the center of the plateau that hadn’t been there before, roughly where Chrysalis’ throne had once stood, the others had them surrounded as far as I could see, and in the empty space separating the two sides, stood Psycho, Antenna, Mystique, and Grim versus Pharynx, Cockroach, and Hyena.

Okay, one question answered but at least a dozen new ones were demanding the same, and it wasn’t going to happen as long as I remained there, staring baffled at whatever this was about. I flew closer to what I assumed were the representatives of each side.

It didn’t look like they’d noticed me, but at least I was able to make out their words.

“I don’t care! Either you take it away or I will!”

“Not going to happen! I’m telling you, it took us-”

“-forever, I get it, so what? It’s pretty to you so it has to stay?”

“What’s wrong with it being pretty?”

“Tell me, Antenna, since you’re so smart: what happens when the darn thing grows larger and the roots clog every hallway in the castle?!”

“The roots will go through the walls, Pharynx, not through empty space!”

“You better be sure about it, ‘cause I see one root and the whole thing is getting chopped down and I don’t care how much you wail at me to leave it alone!”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Try me.”

“You’d cut down a beautiful tree over one little root?!”

“I told you already, if you didn’t want to risk your precious little tree, you shouldn’t have planted it in the middle of the throne room in the first place!”

“Pharynx-”

“That goes to you too, Mystique! Not a single drone in your entire group realized how indescribably stupid that is?! Couldn’t you have done it without the tree?”

“Better yet, Pharynx, they didn’t have to do anything-”

“Shut up, Hyena. Grim, quit standing there and bring me an axe. Or turn into one, just make it big and sharp.”

“I won’t!”

“You will or I’ll rip you apart instead!”

I’d heard enough. “Pharynx!”

“Oh, hi Thorax. Back already?”

“What’s going on here?”

“I’m surrounded by idiots is what’s going on,” he grumbled.

“Thorax,” Psycho interjected, “Antenna has been working with the arts-and-crafts group to build you a unique throne and Pharynx and the renegades want it destroyed.”

“Destroyed is right!” Cockroach protested. “They should have made something worthy of Chrysalis for when she returns! Or better yet, this clown should have surrendered himself to her instead of pulling stunts! Just look at what we ended up with, and that throne is just as bad! The pathetic tree thing is an insult to her!”

“It’s Thorax’s throne, not Chrysalis’!” Antenna retorted.

“A throne…” I mused, still struggling to believe it was real. “You guys made me a throne?”

“Well, yeah, you need one, being a king and all,” Mystique said. “It would have been finished sooner but we needed to find a good sapling to incorporate into the design.”

“The tree is meant to symbolize friendship and how it grows when properly nourished, just like you taught us,” Antenna explained. “Mystique designed the chair piece. The tree itself will need some time to grow and I’ll be shaping it along the way. Do you like it?”

I came closer to the throne and looked it over. The chair piece seemed a little crude at first glance, but it fit in with the tree, and whether or not it would need remodeling or replacing as the tree grew, I was sure they’d thought it over and had a plan in place. It was an unconventional throne alright, all but grandiose at least for the time being, but in spite of that - or maybe because of it - it kind of appealed to me…

I sat down on it. The chair piece was more comfortable than it looked, and spacious enough to lounge on or even sleep in if I were inclined to do so. The emptyish back was slightly awkward, but only temporarily, as the growing tree would fill that gap, plus the tree would provide shade from the sun and shelter from the rain, maybe even welcome birds and their nests into its branches!

“It’s wonderful,” I said and meant it. “I wouldn’t have it any other way! Thanks, whoever took part in building it!”

The unreformed drones grumbled on, but the reformed ones weren’t letting that sour the mood; some of them gathered around Mystique and Antenna for a cheering group hug. Pharynx just stood there, rolling his eyes, except for one or two instances when he briefly abandoned the eye-rolling in order to hiss at any drone who dared approach him.

The crowd dispersed quickly, however; Pharynx caught Grim for a second and muttered something to her, then stormed off. I followed.

“Congratulations on the stupidest throne in the world,” he barked at me before I even fully reached him. “I hope you’re as happy with it as you sounded back there.”

“What’s wrong with the throne? Okay, it feels awkward to have one, but it’s actually kinda cute…”

“Well, it suits you, at the very least.” It didn’t sound like a compliment, and knowing him, probably wasn’t intended as one.

“Why are you so much against it?”

“How much did you catch back there?”

“You were complaining about the roots and-”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t follow…”

“Ugh, are you blind or stupid? Or both? Either the growing roots will compromise structural integrity of the hive, or they’ll block passage through the tunnels, or both! The walls aren’t shifting and changing anymore if you haven’t noticed! How do you expect the hive to repair itself now?”

“But Antenna said-”

“I know what she said! You think she can predict the future? How does she know the roots will behave exactly like she says and never, ever deviate from it?”

“She’s a gardener, she probably knows-”

“-more about plants than a soldier would, alright, I’ll give you that much. But she can’t be completely sure, can she? Nothing is ever foolproof! They should have designed something without the darn tree!”

“But they put an effort into making this one, so please don’t destroy it…”

“We’ll see.” He marched off into one of the tunnels that led into the lower levels of the hive.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To get some sleep. I’ve got a long day of sweeping the dust tomorrow, in case you forgot your own orders.”

“But you sleep here!” I pointed to our bedchamber.

“Since when are janitors supposed to share a bedchamber with royalty?”

“You may temporarily be a janitor, but you’ll always be my brother. Besides, since when are First Commanders supposed to give up usage of their own personal quarters in order to share a burrow with low-clearance janitors?”

“Don’t get all sappy. I was just making sure some other janitor wouldn’t end up tasked with a messy corpse disposal on top of his usual duties.”

“Aww, I knew you cared!”

“Shut up.”

Pharynx wasn’t around when I woke up in the morning. He’d probably gotten up early for his duties, I figured, unless he’d snuck out early in the night and gone to wherever he’d originally intended to sleep. Or unless… well, given what he’d been doing, I wouldn’t put it past him! I rushed to the throne room, trying to not make it too obvious that I had a definite concern on my mind.

I may have done a bad job of hiding my worries, as Grim guessed them as soon as she saw me.

“Good morning, Thorax!” she chirped. “Your throne is in mint condition! There was only one attempt to mess with it overnight but I chased them off!”

Sure enough, there was nothing to worry about after all. The throne was still there, standing… uh, ‘proudly’ didn’t seem like the best word for a throne of such a design… Happily? Shyly? Yes, there was a humble streak in it… Either way, it stood there unharmed, just like Grim had said.

“You spent the whole night here, guarding the throne?”

“Pharynx told me to.”

“He did? Wow…”

“You sound surprised.”

“Didn’t he want to destroy it last night?”

“I’m sure it was a misunderstanding…”

“Grim, he asked you for an axe.”

“Oh, that! I think he just… didn’t like the design… but you turned out to be okay with it, so he must have decided to let you have it.”

“He didn’t sound very supportive afterwards,” I muttered.

Grim shrugged. “Individual tastes?”

“And he changes those as quickly as he can change shape?”

She tilted her head in confusion.

“C’mon, he beats up drones who want to reinstate Chrysalis, then joins the group that demands a new throne for Chrysalis and even represents them, then I show up and say I like the throne and suddenly he’s on my side? I feel like I don’t know him anymore half the time! In fact, it sometimes feels like he’s two different changelings in the same body!”

“Maybe he’s just confused? I mean, you did make some pretty big changes here, and it’s taking everyling some getting used to. I’m sure he’ll come around eventually!”

“I don’t know what to think anymore…”

“Well, for all his erratic behavior, I know one thing.”

I waited for her to continue.

“He loves you, Thorax. Why else would he have risked his life covering for you for so long? I was there! He could be really difficult sometimes, but in hindsight, I think he was worrying his head off for you and wondering how long he could keep up the charade. I think he still hasn’t gotten used to not having to hide whose side he’s really on.”

I considered this. “Yes, you may have something there… but how do I get him to open up?”

“Patience,” she said. “After a lifetime of toughness and exemplary discipline, it’ll take him a while, but I’m sure you’ll get there in the end. Look, I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m due for a shift in the nursery and I hardly slept tonight. Mind if I…?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, and she took to the air. “Oh, and Grim?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks.”

She nodded and flew away.

I barely managed to sit on my throne when Psycho showed up.

“Were we expecting guests?” he asked right away.

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“Some buffalo are here, looking for you.”

That was unexpected… Little Strongheart had told me that her father was still insistent on keeping me banished from their lands, even after Applejack and Braeburn had vouched for me. Apparently he still hadn’t stopped holding a grudge against changelings for attacking their villages for so many generations, and that hadn’t been that long ago… Could he have begun to change his mind?

Well, only one way to find out.

“Where are they?”

“I told them to wait just outside the hive, though given their animosity toward us, I wouldn’t put it past them that they decided they weren’t obliged to listen.”

“They wouldn’t hurt anyling, would they?”

“They nearly leveled Appleloosa a few years ago over some orchard dispute,” he shrugged. “Like I said, I wouldn’t put it past them.”

Wonderful. Why was everyone so bent on destruction?

“Okay, I’ll go see what they want.”

I peered over the edge of the throne room. Half a dozen brown things stood still near one of the biggest ground-level entrances. It was hard to tell what exactly they were from this high up, but they could have easily been the buffalo. At any rate, the said brown specks hadn’t been there earlier, so unless a few drones were masquerading or had placed new objects around overnight, it was safe to assume these were our visitors.

I flew down to them. Chief Thunderhooves was there, along with a couple of buffalo I recognized from my first encounter with them and a few I hadn’t yet met. Their faces were painted in stripes and swirls for some reason, but they were waiting for me, calmly and patiently, and I didn’t sense any alarming aspects of their auras, at least.

“Good morning, and welcome to the Changeling Kingdom!” I said to them. “How can I help you?”

“We’re looking for one named Thorax who calls himself the new king of changelings. Will you take us to him?”

“I’m Thorax. This new body must be confusing you.” I shifted into my old one. “Is this better?”

“If you are the Thorax we know, why did you ignore the banishment of your kind from our lands?”

“I’m sorry, didn’t you banish just me when Little Strongheart brought me to your village? We are referring to that day, aren’t we? That was the only time I set hoof in your territory.”

“I’m referring to the messenger who brought this.” He held out the declaration of peace I’d sent to them. “It was you who sent him, yes?”

“Yes, but I didn’t realize all changelings were banned from buffalo territory now. Little Strongheart never mentioned it in her letters, and if the other changelings knew about it, I’m sure they would have told me. Now that I know about it, I’ll make sure we steer clear of your lands in the future even though we mean no harm.”

His posture relaxed a little. “That may not be necessary,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Appleloosan folk learned of the fate of the vile Chrysalis from Applejack and her friends as they were passing through to Ponyville, and news spread to us shortly before your messenger arrived. Given our prior experience with your kind, I didn’t want to take your message for granted, so I postponed my decision until I could discuss the matter with Applejack and Princess Twilight. We hold great appreciation for them, but I wish to see more before trusting their judgment on this matter.”

That also explained why Little Strongheart wasn’t here; her father must have wanted her to remain safely at home until we convinced him we’d abandoned the old ways. “In that case, how would you like a tour of the hive?”

They accepted, and I reverted to my current form.

It was a long way up made longer by taking a scenic route and occasionally waiting for me to erect stairs to upper levels where flightless creatures with no ability to walk on walls and ceilings would have no way of proceeding further, but I showed them everything: residential areas, former armories and drill chambers turned into activity grounds, a feelings forum meeting that was in session, some of the interior gardens that Antenna and a few others had planted near the gates leading to the hive’s outer surface, the archives, and much more. Finally, we ended up in the throne room.

“Is this your throne?” Chief Thunderhooves asked.

“Yes. It only just got set up yesterday.”

“I must admit I expected something bigger.”

“It will get bigger when the tree grows. Like I said, it’s still new.”

He shrugged. I assumed he was disappointed by my throne, though he was trying not to show it, and he and the others turned their attention to the rest of the throne room. I allowed them a moment to take in the undeniably more breathtaking - and dizzying, judging by how quickly a few of them moved away from the edge - view of the surrounding plains far into the distance.

“Impressive,” the Chief finally said. “Was this your predecessor’s throne room too?”

“Yes.”

“I did not expect her to care for such a magnificent view. Did it give her a feeling of power to sit on top of the world?”

“It probably did, but she didn’t have the view. There used to be walls and a ceiling here, but they blew up when we shared love. Some of the boulders dotting the landscape at ground level are actually fragments of those walls. But even if there were no walls, this used to be a wasteland, so she wouldn’t have had much to bask her eyes on.”

“I doubt that, Thorax. We can almost see our village from here!”

“What is the meaning of this?!”

We turned to the source of the sudden protest.

“Pharynx, meet our guests, Chief-”

“I know who they are! Who told them they could come here?”

“Uh, I’m sure I kind of implied it in the declaration of peace-”

He facehoofed. “You invited them?! What were you thinking?”

“We’re not at war with them; why shouldn’t they come for a visit?”

“You sure about not being at war?”

I tilted my head in confusion. He engulfed himself in green flames and emerged wearing the same swirls and stripes as the buffalo.

“War paint?” he sai, gesturing at his face. “Why come dressed for war if they just want to talk?”

“My apologies,” Chief Thunderhooves said. “We did not know what to expect and the council felt better like this. I trust we don’t need it anymore.”

They wiped off the swirls and stripes as best as they could without water. Pharynx snorted and marched off, then snuck back to retrieve a broom he’d hidden. The buffalo didn’t seem to notice so I ignored him.

“I’m afraid you haven’t been entirely unjustified about the war paint,” I sighed. “As you’ve seen, not all of my subjects are reformed yet. I haven’t had much success in getting them to see reason, but at least they haven’t done anything really harmful even though they’re pretty loud and obstinate.”

“How numerous are they?”

“A minority. A couple of thousand, maybe? I was given a census but never bothered to count the names…”

“If the majority are with you, then we shouldn’t fear the minority.”

“Can I take that as a sign of your willingness to sign a peace treaty sooner or later?”

“We have a tradition of burying the hatchet, but if you want a signed treaty, then we’ll do that too.”

“The… hatchet?” Why was everyone obsessed with chopping tools recently?

“A symbol of war in our people’s tradition. Burying it signifies the end of a war and is as much of a binding contract to us as any signed piece of parchment.”

“Okay then… I’m not very skilled with writing legal documents, and our head archivist is currently indisposed, so burying the hatchet kind of works better, actually…”

One of the buffalo produced a hatchet and waited.

“Uh… forgive me, but is this my cue to do something?” They looked at me sideways so I hurriedly explained, “Sorry. I was considered useless in the old system and haven’t yet had the time to learn the details of foreign cultures such as rituals. Infiltrators would have been taught that, but I wasn’t deemed good enough to become one, so… yeah. I would have tried to prepare myself better if I’d known you were coming!”

Had I offended them? Why hadn’t I spent more time learning?

“Fair enough. You’re supposed to bring your own weapon, or weapons, and we bury them together with our hatchet.”

“Oh… um… I’m afraid I had all our weapons thrown out…” Maybe Pharynx still had some?

I was about to excuse myself and go ask him, not really expecting he’d be thrilled about losing yet another weapon, when Chief Thunderhooves said, “No matter. The point of the ritual is to rid ourselves of the tools of war, symbolically at least, but since you’ve already done that literally, it shall be considered as the fulfilment of your end of the ritual, and it is only up to us to fulfil ours.”

“If you say so,” I shrugged.

“Now, where shall we bury this hatchet?”

Good point. “I’m not sure… Where do hatchets usually get buried?”

“Wherever the decision is made to end the war. The one we buried at the end of the Appleloosan dispute, for example, is in the soil of Braeburn’s orchard.”

“So, in our case, it would be this throne room?”

“That, or the nearest site suitable for the task.”

“Well, if the drones managed to plant a tree here, then we should be able to dig a hole,” I mused. “How about next to the throne?”

The Chief nodded; he and his companions made a small trench at the indicated spot, laid the hatchet in it, covered it up, and stomped the dirt until there was hardly a trace of it ever having been disturbed. Okay, it had been disturbed before in order to plant the tree, but now that the hatchet was there too, just to the side of the tree, it was hard to tell where one hole ended and another began. Probably a good thing, too, as I had little doubt that Pharynx would unearth the hatchet if he knew it was here! Maybe I should ask Antenna to carefully plant some flowers there to conceal the disturbed ground? Oh! The flower I’d brought from the Crystal Empire was still in my bedchamber; I could plant it right above the hatchet! If it remained in the flowerpot, the hatchet wouldn’t get in the way of the roots-

“Goodness!” I slapped myself. “I haven’t offered you anything to eat! I’m afraid we don’t have anything that normally counts as food… Do you think any of the plants growing in and around the hive are edible? I’m sure Antenna will understand…”

“We anticipated you wouldn’t have any food,” one of the buffalo said, “so we brought our own.” He opened a saddlebag and passed some apple fritters to the others.

“Braeburn’s latest harvest,” another of them said. “You want some?”

“Heh, thanks, but they’re your food. I shouldn’t!”

“Then you’ll have to try them when you come to the buffalo territory again.”

“You mean…?”

“I should have lifted your banishment long ago, when my daughter confirmed you were a good person. Heck, I probably shouldn’t have banished you in the first place!”

Award

Not long after the buffalo had left, I noticed something equine-shaped flying in from the north. I assumed it was a changeling at first, until I remembered that all drones were supposed to be accounted for. A closer look revealed it to be a pony, and it was closing in fast.

Too fast.

I only had enough time to leap out of the way before the pony crashed face-first into a boulder, then ricocheted almost onto my throne with a painful oof.

Should I have turned into a pillow for her? Or would that have only injured both of us? Yeah, probably the latter… though I still felt bad about not having done anything to slow her down…

“Goodness!” I exclaimed, running up to her. “Are you alright?”

She rubbed her head, shook herself into focus, and stood up. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her except for the eyes. Had the collision done that?

“Is this the changeling hive?” she asked calmly as if nothing had happened.

“Uh… oh, yes, it is! We don’t get many ponies nowadays, especially so… suddenly…” Quit rambling! “Um, how can I help you?”

“Mail delivery for King Thorax.” She reached into her saddlebag, which had miraculously survived the ordeal and remained on her back, and pulled out a fancy-looking envelope.

Of course! She was a mailmare! Why hadn’t I registered her uniform?

“Thanks, Miss-”

“Have a nice day!” She waved and flew off.

I watched her leave until reasonably satisfied she could make it back to Equestria on her own wingpower, then sat down to read the letter. This was the first one since moving back from the Crystal Empire - the few previous correspondences had been done by scrolls sent via my own couriers on their way back from delivering outgoing stuff - and I thought for a moment that the ponies had established permanent mail delivery channels, or whatever they were called, to the hive. But wasn’t that expected to take longer, and how many drones were likely to be sending and receiving mail so soon? The mailmare had to have gone out of her way to deliver the letter this time! Whatever was in it had to be important!

Intrigued, I started to tear up the envelope with my fangs, only to remember I didn’t have fangs anymore. Tear it up with the horn instead, or maybe the antlers? Weren’t they a little too thick to squeeze under the flap? I could, of course, just shapeshift into- Hold on, I had magic now! Why not use that?

I tugged at the envelope until it came open; it had taken me a moment to orient myself, but in the end, it was actually easier than using the fangs!

The first look at the piece of parchment inside confirmed my suspicions of this being something important. The second look, including a glance through the text, wiped away all doubt.

Office of Princess Celestia, HRH/Office of Princess Luna, HRH, Castle of the Sun and the Moon, Canterlot, Equestria,
Office of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, HRH/Office of Prince-Captain Shining Armor, HRH, Crystal Castle, Crystal Empire,
and
Office of Princess Twilight Sparkle, HRH, Castle of Friendship, Ponyville, Equestria
To: King Thorax of the Changelings, HRH
Re: Award-giving Ceremony

Dear King Thorax,

It is our great honor and pleasure to inform you that the Offices of the Royal Princesses of Equestria and the Crystal Empire have reached a unanimous decision to award you one of the most honorable Equestrian awards, the Pink Heart of Courage, for your selfless actions in defeating a mighty foe and restoring peace and harmony in our lands. The ceremony is to be held on November 10th in the Castle of Friendship in Ponyville, starting at 11 AM, after which a banquet will follow. Bringing many guests is encouraged, and accommodation will be provided as required to anyone arriving in the preceding days.

We look forward to this momentous occasion.

Princess Celestia
Princess Luna
Princess Cadance
Prince Shining Armor
Princess Twilight

We landed in Ponyville late in the evening; after the previous official visit to Canterlot, I didn’t want to risk attracting another angry mob by showing up when the ponies were still expected to be out and about, though for Twilight’s benefit, I hoped to arrive before she herself went to bed. I was counting on her offer of accommodation to be genuine, but just in case, Pharynx had supplied us with a map of usable hideouts in the general area. Hopefully none of us would have to use it!

So far, so good. Nopony seemed to have noticed us, and some of the castle’s windows weren’t dark yet. I knocked on the main door and waited a little.

Nothing. I knocked again.

I was starting to think we’d have to resort to Pharynx’s hideouts when faint hoofsteps echoed from somewhere inside, and the doors opened a crack.

“Who is it at such- oh, good evening, Thorax!” Twilight said and opened the door wider. “...oh. You’ve brought changelings.”

“Is it a problem? The letter you sent said I could-”

“No, it’s alright! Of course we meant you to bring friends! This is a big day for you, after all, and you should have someone to share it with! But, honestly, I wasn’t expecting you at this hour…”

“I wanted to avoid upsetting the ponies if they saw an incoming swarm… and they’re going to be careful not to show up at the ceremony all at once… only as far as the other guests are comfortable…”

“Because of your old reputation?”

“You make it sound like it won’t be an issue.”

“Remember when my friends and I promised to prepare Ponyville for a visit of a friendly changeling, way back when you moved in with Cadance and Shining Armor? Those progress reports we kept sending you weren’t just empty words, and if anypony still had any doubts, your showdown with Chrysalis convinced them.”

“But you were preparing the town for one changeling, and there’s got to be at least twenty of us here-”

“Trust me, they’re ready,” she assured me. “Now, where to put you all? All the guest rooms in the castle save for the ones I reserved for Thorax are already taken by ponies from the Crystal Empire and Starlight’s old village, and even a few buffalo…”

“It’s alright, Princess,” Antenna said. “The rest of us can sleep on hallway floors-”

“NO!” Twilight and her aura both screamed, then quickly composed themselves to an extent. “I mean, you’re my guests, and I can’t expect you to sleep on the floor!”

“But we sleep on the floor all the time,” Sleuth interjected.

They did? I hadn’t realized! How had I failed to realize that my subjects were still in the habit of sleeping on the bare floor?! I must have assumed only Pharynx still did that!

“We’ll discuss that on the way back,” I told him. “Can you at least pass some cushions around, Twilight? They can share the room with me if it’s big enough.”

“I have a better idea. Why don’t we ask my friends to lend a hoof? I’m sure each of them could take at least a couple of drones for the night!”

We agreed hesitantly, and she teleported away with two drones, popped back alone a minute later, and repeated the process until everyling had a place to stay. I was still having second thoughts about it, but she assured me it was alright, as she’d chosen the ponies she trusted: aside from her friends - even Rainbow Dash in her cloud home, as Twilight apparently had a spell that allowed non-pegasi to walk on clouds - she also named Scootaloo, Lyra and Bon Bon, Cheerilee, Cranky and Matilda, Aloe and Lotus, and Thunderlane, whoever they were. Maybe I would get to meet them? Finally, she led me to a room I was supposed to use, where we said goodnight to each other, and soon I was sound asleep.

I woke up to the sight of Rarity looming over me with a scrunched face.

“Huh?” I blurted out.

“Oh! Beg pardon, darling, I was just… erm… checking… something… No need to fret!” she grinned awkwardly, then galloped away with a measuring tape in her magical grip. “Seeyouattheceremony!”

Okay, that was weird. But apparently it was also morning, so it made sense to get up and see if there was anything-

“Who dares disturb Trixie in her great and refreshing sleep?!”

-going on somewhere. Well, at least I wasn’t the only one to have been blessed with Rarity’s unconventional wake-up call. I stuck my head out into the hallway.

“Well well well, look who’s here to stand with Trixie as she receives an award for her great and courageous acts,” she said upon seeing me.

Oh. Right. Of course she’d be getting one too; after all, I hadn’t been the only one to risk my neck with that rescue mission! I should have realized it sooner! But where were Starlight and Discord?

“Takes your breath away, I know,” she continued. “Trixie couldn’t believe it either at first! But come to think about it, it really only makes sense, wouldn’t you say? The three of you at Trixie’s side against hordes of those monsters, fighting against all odds-”

“Trixie, you’re finally up!” Starlight shouted from behind me. “I must have knocked on your door ten times in the past hour alone!”

“Oh, hi Starlight-”

“Hi Thorax,” she said absent-mindedly, then shifted her attention back to Trixie. “Do you want breakfast or not?”

“How do you think Trixie would be her great and powerful self without breakfast?” Trixie hissed.

“Then you might wanna hurry while there’s still some pancakes left. You coming, Thorax?”

“I don’t really eat pancakes-”

“Eh, suit yourself.” She teleported herself and Trixie away.

I sighed. A gentle hoof touched my shoulder and I recoiled in surprise.

“Huh- oh, it’s you, Sunburst. Heh. When did you come here?”

“The train arrived last evening- oh, you mean now. Starlight teleported us. There’s still some time left before the ceremony, and she’s too busy with preparations to hang out, so I figured I’d see if Twilight had any new books. Wait, weren’t you supposed to only arrive this morning?”

“We came late in the evening. Why?”

“I didn’t see you yesterday so I must have assumed… nevermind. The ceremony will start soon enough anyway and, come to think about it, I could easily end up missing it if I go exploring the library, so, would you like to hang out?”

“Sure! What is the time, anyway? I don’t see any clocks…”

“It’s about a quarter past ten.”

“That late?! Wow, the flight here must have been more exhausting than I realized…”

“It’s alright. Twilight wanted a rehearsal, but only Starlight woke up early enough and Discord is still Celestia-knows-where, but we convinced her there was no need as the four of you are only supposed to stand there during the speech. Not much can go wrong with that, right?”

“Probably not, unless she forgets what she’s supposed to say. Hey, why don’t you come in?”

He did, and we sat down on some cushions. The conversation switched to catching up on what I’d missed in the Crystal Empire, but that topic exhausted itself pretty quickly as I’d visited not that long ago, and according to Sunburst, I was going to see a few of my friends again downstairs.

“You ran off pretty abruptly last time,” he said in the end, turning serious. “You know you can tell us anything, right?”

“Yes, but there’s not much to tell… it’s probably just that I need to get used to being in charge… things can get really frustrating sometimes, you know?” I grinned awkwardly.

“If you say so.” He neither looked nor sounded convinced. “So, who are your new friends?”

“Huh?”

“The changelings you brought. A few came along with Twilight’s friends and said you’d asked them to come, therefore it’s safe to assume they’re your friends.”

“Oh, that… well, the invitation said to bring as many guests as I wanted so I kind of just asked the reformed drones I’ve cooperated with recently in one way or another… didn’t expect they’d all be interested, though… unless they were just being polite or thought it was an order…”

“Hey, at least they’re listening to you and you don’t have to resort to threats and such!”

“Heh… yeah, I guess… Hold on, you reminded me of something.” I reached for my saddlebag and levitated out a stack of scrolls. “I found this in an alcove of Chrysalis’ bedchamber and managed to figure out some parts, but most are written in some strange script that I can’t even begin to decipher. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in tackling them when you find some time? It’s okay if you don’t get anywhere. I was just, you know, wondering what they are.”

He accepted them eagerly. “I have yet to see an ancient scroll I couldn’t figure out!”

“Thanks!”

“I should probably take them to my room or I’ll leave them behind… actually, the ceremony will start soon and everypony’s expecting you, so why don’t we go downstairs now and I’ll just drop these off in my room on the way?”

That was what we did.

The large ballroom was already swarming with ponies, most of whom I didn’t recognize, which was expected, but none of the changelings were there, which concerned me a little. I excused myself to Sunburst and went around the room, thinking I might have missed them in the crowd at first glance. No success there; even after circling the room three times, there was no sign of a single one of them, not even the ones Sunburst had seen arrive!

Where was everyling? Had something happened to them?

I was about to take my growing concerns to Twilight when a pony tapped my shoulder.

“Is something wrong, Thorax?” he said. “You look upset.”

I was about to dismiss him politely when something clicked.

“Blade?” I whispered. “Is that you?”

He nodded.

“Why are you in disguise?”

“A precaution. We didn’t know how the ponies would react to us, remember?”

“Yes, but… uh, Twilight said she and her friends have been preparing Ponyville for my visit ever since she met me, and she swears the town’s populace is ready.” I took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m not sure if I’m ready in case she’s wrong, but let’s trust her, shall we? She did invite us, after all.”

He dropped his disguise. A few nearby ponies stopped mid-conversation to look at him. The next moment, a chain reaction of blue flames spread randomly among the crowd, revealing my subjects hidden in plain sight until now. The whole room went silent momentarily, and I felt my heart rise into my throat as the ponies observed the sudden change. I expected outrage any moment now! Bloodshed, too? I hoped not, but with so many ponies and so few changelings… If only Pharynx hadn’t refused to tag along! He could handle the chaos if anyone could!

But the chaos and bloodshed never happened; the ponies simply resumed their conversations, and some of them even invited a nearby drone to join in! The buffalo group on the other side of the room seemed to have claimed a drone’s company too if I was seeing it right! The aura in the room had no malignant flavors, only the bright warmth of genuine love! I allowed myself to breathe again.

Twilight trotted over and asked me to follow her to the stage. Starlight and Trixie were standing in that general area already, obviously better clued in on how to behave and what to expect than I was. As I joined them, there was an explosion of confetti and discolored fruit front-and-centre on the stage, and the fourth member of our rescue team appeared before us, dressed in vibrant yellow suit and red cape, standing on a floating couch, bowing theatrically to the crowd as singing roses rained down on him from a cotton-candy cloud.

“Thank you, thank you!” he exclaimed. “It’s so heartwarming to see such an adoring crowd of fans of yours truly, eternally grateful to the Lord of Chaos for so courageously saving them from the tragic fate of-”

“Ahem!” Twilight interrupted him.

“Aw, you’re no fun, Princess Bookhorse,” he grumbled. A snap of a claw landed him on the stage and removed his props and accessories. “Happy now?”

“Thank you,” she said with a slight hint of annoyance that, judging by Discord’s smirk, hadn’t gone unnoticed. “If we may begin?”

Starlight, Trixie, and I took a step forward, only to be teleported onto the stage with another snap of the chaotic claw. All three of us ended up crammed between Discord and the stage’s back wall.

“Oopsie!” he chirped as Twilight raised a warning eyebrow at him, then stepped aside to give us some space. Starlight and Trixie used this chance to trot around him and end up the nearest to the crowd. I remained where I was, more or less.

Celestia, Luna, and Cadance joined the five of us on the stage, and everyone in the room stood in reverent silence as an orchestra on a balcony above played a glorious melody. The anthem of Equestria? I decided to ask Sunburst later.

When the music ended, Celestia greeted everyone and started a heartfelt speech about our improvised rescue mission and its unexpected climax that, though undeniably favorable over the alternative, I still had mixed feelings about. The other three princesses took over the spotlight when their turns came. If I hadn’t been there to witness the events firsthoof, their words would have left me mesmerized with the heroes’ bravery and determination to prevail against all odds, jealous even, wishing I could do something even remotely as great with half such ease! Why weren’t they telling it as it had happened? They knew we’d all been scared out of our wits and clutching at straws the whole time! The victory especially had been a surprise to everyone, and these four alicorns were making it sound like one could have expected no less from us, as if this kind of thing was something we all did on a daily basis! What were they thinking?! No one with a grain of common sense could look at that story objectively and believe it to have been that easy! Why couldn’t they skip the theatrics and just say honestly that our victory, though welcome, had been just one big freaky accident?

None of it seemed to bother Discord. He was grinning the whole time, even interrupting the speech to cheer at himself or blow up more confetti whenever his name got as little as a passing mention. Trixie smirked most of the time, too, but kept it contained. I couldn’t see Starlight’s face, but her aura wasn’t as bubbly as that of the other two. Was she as uncomfortable with the princesses’ version of the events as I was? Was it just being in the spotlight? Both? Something else, maybe even unrelated to the whole thing?

The speech eventually ended and Spike approached the stage, carrying a pillow with four heart-shaped medals. Each princess levitated one. Starlight and Trixie bowed as Twilight and Luna hung their respective medals around their necks. Celestia started to do the same to Discord, only to stop in her tracks momentarily when he unscrewed his head off the rest of his body, then quickly gave him his medal so he’d put his head back on. At last, Cadance approached me; I bowed like Starlight and Trixie, noticing as I went that the band of my medal looked slightly different from the other three. Cadance ignored or failed to notice my confusion and wrapped the band around my neck. I felt something click together, and her magical aura let loose the medal.

A clasp! Of course! That had to be why Rarity had gone to my room earlier! Somepony must have noticed the size of my antlers and asked her to check if the medal could fit over them! But couldn’t they have said so? Rarity would have been spared an awkward moment, and I could have adjusted my form to fit the medal size! Unless shapeshifting was against protocol?

A thunderous applause filled the room, and Twilight thanked everyone and invited them to the banquet. Uh, invited us to the banquet? Discord dove right in, altering the food to his chaotic tastes as he went, and I decided to tag along with anyone familiar - or unfamiliar, if it turned out that way - who didn’t mind my presence.

Spike came to mind first, but he was already talking to Rarity. Twilight, Cadance, and Shining had continued their royal circle. Starlight? No luck there, either; she was in the middle of an oblivious-to-everything-else discussion with Sunburst on the matters of magic as far as I could understand. So, Sunburst was out of the count, too. Trixie had wasted no time in gathering a small crowd around herself and was too busy bragging about having single-hoofedly defeated swarm upon swarm of changeling soldiers to care if anything was going on beyond her circle of admirers. I couldn’t even notice any drones who hadn’t joined a conversation with a group of ponies or found something else to entertain themselves with!

Alright, who else did I know here? I looked around, did another stroll through the room, and repeated the process a couple of times, and in the end, was left with the conclusion that everypony and everyling, whether or not I was particularly acquainted with them, were too invested in their own interactions to pay attention to me, not that I wanted to impose my presence on anyone… but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try a more direct approach? I joined the nearest group, which happened to be Applejack and Fluttershy explaining friendship to Psycho and Hornet. I remained there for a while but eventually gave up when none of them showed a single sign of having noticed I was even there. The next attempt was… well, I could try Rainbow Dash and that group of pegasi… only it backfired when all of them suddenly stood at attention and fired off a perfect salute as one. Okay, not interested in just hanging out by the looks of it… next? Berry and Paladin drinking with the buffalo? I’d probably disturb them too much. Pinkie dancing with Mystique and Antenna next to a white unicorn’s DJ booth? Probably not worth the effort, and I wasn’t comfortable with dancing in case they did notice me and got the idea to rope me in…

The groups shuffled in the meantime. Spike had joined Celestia and Twilight at some point, Rarity had joined Applejack, Fluttershy, and Starlight in a conversation with Discord, who was now floating around shaped like a five-layer cake, Trixie had lost her entourage and was laughing at something Sunburst had said or done, Cadance and Shining had found a quiet corner just for themselves… And I still couldn’t find even one conversation partner! Frustrated, I decided to get out of the ballroom and catch some air. It wouldn’t help me find anypony to talk to, but at least it might cut down the awkwardness of being the only lone guy in a room full of people. It wasn’t like anyone would notice me missing for a few minutes, right?

I didn’t want to get lost in the maze of the castle’s endless hallways so I decided to spend those few minutes outside. I expected to be alone, but instead, I stumbled upon a black-and-white striped face familiar from a much darker time and place. She’d been studying the bushes around the castle and my arrival interrupted her. Hadn’t she been at the ceremony?

“Oh, um…” I fumbled under her gaze. “Am I intruding? I can go somewhere else…”

“I should not send you away,” she said. “In fact, I’d prefer you to stay.”

“Really? I, uh, I mean, why?”

“You are Thorax, I am told, a changeling with a heart of gold.”

“Well, you could say that, I guess, but I don’t understand… we met once before and you cowered in fear when my disguise failed…”

“I expected to become your food. I’d never dreamed changelings could be good!”

“I understand… What we did in Canterlot really freaked everyone out, didn’t it?”

“My fear stems from long before the swarm tore down Canterlot’s door.” She closed her eyes and her aura got grim and heavy. “A filly I was in a faraway village that met its end by a changeling swarm pillage. Out of nowhere one day they came and put our finest protectors to shame; very quickly it became plain that every zebra would soon be slain. As brave as they could, my parents held ground, so my brother and I would never be found. Afraid of the carnage, I snuck away; that burden I carry still to this day. I crawled under the roots of a tree; I could hear all, but could not see. Hooves galloped as zebra kin fled, and echoing screams fueled my dread. When all was quiet, I dared to come out and backtrack my escaping route. Wherever I went, there was blood on the ground, but not one villager alive to be found. With bitter farewells I went on my way; in the lost village I dared not stay. I wandered the world and honed healer’s trade, until the Everfree my home was made.”

“That’s horrible! I’m so sorry! Of course you were afraid of me that day! But weren’t there other zebra villages nearby where you could go to after the… um…”

She shook her head. “I tried in vain every one that I knew, and found them ravaged and desolate too.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. “For whatever it’s worth, a lot of us have changed, and I’m doing my best to get the rest of my subjects to abandon the old ways…”

“So I’ve been told, and it means a great deal; the nightmares could soon leave forever, I feel! Some of them, alas, still linger on. That is why out of the ballroom I’ve gone: to calm myself and clear my head, lest I do something to turn this day bad.”

“Oh… thanks, but I’m sure all of us would have understood if you’d just told us…”

“It’s been a long time but you finally know my story. I learned yours, too, and I want to say I’m sorry. Chasing you away was wrong of me to do; you could have helped me and I could have helped you!”

“There’s no reason why we can’t make up for it-”

The castle door opened and Spike and Pinkie came out.

“There you are, Mr Disappeary Guest of Honor!” Pinkie squeaked. “Why did you go away? Do you have any idea how long we’ve been looking for you?! Everypony’s looking for you! And those who aren’t are trying to calm down the changelings!” She got in my face and, for a moment, I thought her eyeballs would hop out of their sockets and hit me in the face. “Do you know how hard it is to calm down a swarm of panicking changelings?!”

“I-”

“Very hard! Have you ever tried to calm down just one?! Well I did! There was this reeeeeeeally scared one in the Crystal Empire and- oh, wait, that was you. Nevermind! Coming back now?”

“Yes, just give me a-”

“Okie dokie lokie!” She hopped back into the castle, la-la-la-ing a cheerful tune. She closed the door behind herself, then opened it again, and hissed, “Don’t make us wait for you!” before disappearing once again.

“So,” Spike prodded me out of staring at the castle doors, “I see you and Zecora found each other without my help, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought you might not care to listen to my explanation,” she said, “so I asked Spike to help prepare the situation.”

“And I told her it wouldn’t be necessary but promised to tell you to look for her. Didn’t expect you’d beat me to it!”

“It’s fine. What matters is that we resolved the issue! Zecora, would you like to join me at the rest of the party? I can introduce you to more friendly changelings!”

“To join you would be an honor and pleasure, and your kindness I will always treasure.”

I assumed that was a yes.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Spike exclaimed. “We’re gonna miss the cakes! Speaking of which, Discord made something he called a lovecake… not sure if it’s actual love energy or some imitation, but it does look kinda convincing… knowing him, it’s as likely as not to be the real thing… You think he can actually manipulate love like you guys?”

“I don’t know, Spike. I’ve never seen him do it, but just like you said, I wouldn’t put it past him. Let’s find out!”

Riots

“Owwwww… my head…”

“What happened?”

“Where are we?”

“Why is everything shaking and spinning?”

“I think I’m gonna be sick…”

“What was in that cake?”

“Can you please be quiet?!”

I didn’t have an answer to any of my companions’ questions. I wished I did; I could have asked any of those questions myself! Unfortunately, I was in no condition to look for answers. My head was spinning and pulsating with pain, and my guts were attempting to turn themselves inside out, and I didn’t know whether I should hope to rein them in or just let them do whatever they wanted to and come back later to pick them up. Just keeping my eyes open was hard enough, and I wasn’t even trying to focus on anything around me! As far as I could tell in my pathetic state, it almost looked like we were on a moving train, but why would we-

Wait. We were on a moving train! But how had we gotten here, and-

Ow. Easy there, Thorax! No sudden movements or your head will explode again!

Keeping still, I convinced myself to open my eyes again and scan my surroundings. Sure enough, we seemed to be in a train car, every single one of us sprawled helpless on a seat, moaning and howling miserably, but that was about as much as I could tell. Even if I could get up to look through a window, it was dark outside.

“Guys, wha- mmmmmph…” Okay, maybe talking was a bad idea until further notice. I tried anyway. “Were… were we… are we sick…”

“Beats me… I just remember a party…”

“I remember a cake… did we eat a cake?”

“We did… Discord made a lovecake… I don’t think he got it right…”

“You sure that was Discord?”

“Who else would conjure up a rainbow-colored trope of dancing elephants and a singing pineapple?”

“You saw that too? So I wasn’t hallucinating…”

“This isn’t helping, guys… why would we feel like this after a lovecake…”

“I think he put lust in it, not love…”

“What are you talking about, Spiracle?”

“I’m talking about the intoxicating effect feeding on lust has on changelings, Thorax. Didn’t you know about it?”

“How would I? I’ve never been exposed to lust prior to running away, and was only ever feeding on what the crystal ponies were offering me, none of which was lust. I didn’t even know we could feed on it…”

“Well we can, but it’s not a good idea. Ever seen a drunk pony?”

“No, but I heard a few stories…”

“That’s pretty close to what happens when we eat lust. The thing’s loosely related to romantic love and has a similar taste to it, and can even ease hunger to an extent, but the after-effects… downright crippling if you cross the line…”

“So we’re… what’s the term… hungover?”

“You could say so, Antenna.”

“That explains so much…”

“I better not ask what you mean by that…”

“Don’t…”

“I just wanna know why Discord did it…”

“As if he needs a reason…”

“It could have been an accident…”

“Didn’t you see him smirk as he passed us the slices? He knew exactly what he was doing…”

“But how would he know?”

“He’s gotta be older than Chrysalis… if he hasn’t figured it out at some point, I dunno-”

The train came to a halt and some of us nearly fell off our seats-turned-beds. A conductor trotted in.

“Last stop, everyone,” he announced.

“Where are we?” Mystique asked. “How did we get on a train?”

“We’re in Appleloosa,” the conductor said, ignoring the rest of her question. “You need to disembark now.”

We got up on unsteady hooves and wobbled out onto the platform. Unsurprisingly, nopony was there to meet us, and the train left after the conductor emptied it of my saddlebag that I’d completely ignored until then.

“Now what?” Hornet muttered.

“Let’s find someplace to spend the night,” I said. “I don’t think we’re in any condition to fly to the hive right now…”

Easier said than done. We barely managed to drag ourselves off the platform, so instead of putting some distance between ourselves and the town like I’d hoped, we simply circled around the station building and slumped down onto the ground, hoping we could avoid the awkward situation of being found there in the morning, or at least to be able to explain ourselves. For now, sleep was in order.

“Spiracle?” I asked as the drones were beginning to snore.

“Mmm?”

“We will feel better in the morning, right?”

“Heck if I know…”

“But you’re the medic…”

“Mmh. Lust isn’t predictable like cider. Maybe. Probably.”

We didn’t feel better in the morning. Maybe we did, but not enough to say we were alright and as good as new and ready to take on whatever the day decided to throw at us, or whatever other phrases existed to describe the feeling. Everyling was reluctant to move on until Psycho suggested that some exercise might help snap us out of it, and after some persuading from both of us, we finally got them to start walking south. I had to promise to take it slowly and allow for frequent breaks, but it was an easy promise, as I didn’t think we could do it any other way in this condition. I certainly couldn’t!

Psycho’s strategy worked to an extent. Walking did clear our heads, and after a couple of hours, most of us felt ready to try flying. Or was it simply that we were finally getting Discord’s cake out of our systems, as Spiracle had suggested at some point? Either way, it felt good to be marginally ourselves again, even if it would take some time yet to fully get there. At this rate, we were more likely to reach the hive first.

We didn’t get quite that far.

A single drone, freaked out and out of breath, intercepted us just beyond the point where the jungle’s foliage gave way to empty airspace above the wasteland. She looked like she’d made a run through a battlefield, just barely dodged a thousand spears, and fallen into every trench.

“Thorax!” she exclaimed. “Thank goodness you’re back! I was afraid I wouldn’t find you!”

“What’s going on, Retina?”

“They’re fighting all over the hive! You’ve got to sort them out! We can’t take it much longer!”

“Slow down… who’s fighting?”

“It started when the renegades tried to break your throne and Grim saw them… she tried sending them to Proboscis but the incidents kept piling up… it’s gone out of control and I don’t know how much longer we can keep it up! Please, you’ve got to hurry!”

Well, so much for not having a headache. I dashed after her, unsure of what in the name of eggshells she expected me to do if all my efforts so far had failed. Unless the issue was that I hadn’t been around enough to try harder? I had been running about a whole lot recently! Could it be that things had escalated because the drones found it hard to be loyal to a king who was never there? Had I set my priorities wrong? Should I have waited with making the first steps to change our reputation in other lands until later, and instead focused on earning everyling’s trust first? Why had I assumed that I had enough trust to tackle international relations before dealing with internal affairs? How was I going to fix this mess now? Could I still fix it?

“How long has this been going on?”

“The last wave? Ever since you left for Ponyville. It was random and sporadic at first but now the fights are breaking out everywhere, all the time!”

“The renegades starting them every time?”

“Yes.”

“So… what ends the fights?” Blade asked.

Retina halted abruptly and gave him a blank stare.

“I mean,” he continued, “if the fights have been starting for the past few days, then they would have had to end at some point and start over later or you’d have all killed each other by now, or at the very least, you’d be talking about one huge fight, not multiple ones. So how do the fights stop?”

“As of today, mostly by everyling on one side getting knocked out. I don’t know how we’ve managed to go without fatalities so far!”

“And before that?”

She hesitated for a moment. “Pharynx,” she said in the end.

Hearing his name froze my heart. What had he done now? He was unreformed, therefore probably considered a renegade even if he wasn’t acting like a typical one! Had he taken the opportunity to side with the other unreformed drones in my absence? Had he killed - no, wait, Retina had said there were no fatalities - had he injured other drones? Had he commandeered a rampage? Was I going to have to punish him again, just when I’d started to hope I could terminate his janitor duty? But it had been hard enough to do it once already; how was I supposed to bring myself to punish him again or to extend his punishment, no matter how justified the reasons? How was I supposed to bring myself to punish so many drones when I regularly struggled to exact punishment on anyling?

Oh no. What if Pharynx was injured? Retina had said he’d been ending the fights at first… that implied he wasn’t doing it anymore... Could it be because he was unable to?

“W-what happened?” I stammered out.

“He was just showing up out of nowhere, hissing and growling at both sides until they would stop, then beating everyling up when hissing and growling became ineffective. I saw him do it in a battle disguise a couple of times, too. Then he just… stopped. Just like that, no obvious reason. He sees a group fighting and just trots past them and disappears somewhere into the wasteland. Don’t ask me where. I’ve been too busy to follow, and it didn’t look like I’d get anywhere by asking him about it.”

Okay, that was… strangely unlike Pharynx, and yet, exactly like him. He’d never been one to confide in anyling, except for the occasional venting in my presence in the old days, which he probably wouldn’t have done had it occurred to him that I could be paying attention to stuff beyond my clearance level, but why attack both renegades and non-renegades? He would have normally sided with one against the other! Something didn’t add up.

“Retina, would it be possible that we’re dealing with not just Pharynx, but someling disguised as him? Someling trying to get him in trouble?”

“I… hmm. The theory makes sense, but something tells me it’s him all the time. You’ll be able to tell, won’t you? You know him better than any of us!”

“Maybe.” I wasn’t so sure.

We were at the hive by then, and sure enough, a few dozen drones were engaged in an intense fight in the throne room, so intense that individual drones were getting thrown or catapulted off the plateau every few seconds, the conscious ones going back immediately, the unconscious ones mostly getting caught by whichever of their peers happened to be airborne and near enough, and my throne looked to be just barely defended against getting set on fire.

“It’s this bad?!” I exclaimed.

“Didn’t I just tell you?”

“...I guess I thought you were exaggerating…”

“I’m not. Grim is holding the fort here… just barely… and Apex’s team was trying to defend your bedchamber the last time I saw him, Feisty had to end two feelings forum sessions halfway through, Cornicle barely managed to hide the arts and crafts supplies before the chamber got swarmed, the infirmary is packed full of casualties-”

“Okay, I get it,” I moaned, rubbing my forehead and wishing for the time when nausea and an exploding headache made worse by train motion were my biggest problems. “Any ideas?”

The drones returning with me from Ponyville exchanged glances.

“If we create a protective cordon around the throne,” Hornet said, “do you think you could outyell them to get their attention and then command them to stop fighting or start giving out punishments or whatever you think is best?”

“Maybe,” I shrugged, “but what would be best? I don’t want to overdo it and basically become the next Chrysalis!”

“I’m sure we’re in no danger of that,” Blade said.

“You may be right, but what do I tell them?!” I was beginning to hyperventilate.

“Relax,” Mystique said. “Improvise if you want, or repeat something you said before on a similar occasion. But relax first, I mean it!”

“How will something I said before work now if it didn’t work then?”

“I’m not saying it will, but you never know. Maybe they just need to hear it enough times?”

The theory didn’t sound as convincing as I would have preferred, but there was some sense in it, in a way. I remembered my own first days under a system drastically different from the one I’d grown up in. How many times had I needed to hear Cadance and Sunburst insist that I was a good person before finally allowing myself to believe they could be right? How long had I been refusing to accept the love they’d been openly offering - almost forcing upon me - thinking I didn’t deserve it and fearing it would hurt them no matter how careful I was not to cross the line? Maybe these drones needed that kind of persistent nudging in the right direction, too! It couldn’t hurt to try, right? Especially since I didn’t have a better idea?

I landed onto the throne, but the surrounding chaos was so intense that the others couldn’t even get close to the ground properly, let alone form a protective cordon as per Hornet’s suggestion. They tried, but every time one managed to land, another got roped into a hoof-fight, and as soon as they got roped out of it, another would get forced into the air again to avoid being trampled. This went on for a while, and if anyling had noticed my return by now, they weren’t showing it.

Time to attract their attention already.

“Everyone, please…” I said, to no avail. “Um, can you stop for a moment?” Nothing. “Hello?” Still being ignored. I groaned and rubbed my forehead. “Ugh, will you stop fighting for one second?!”

I might as well have been talking to a pile of rocks. At least rocks wouldn’t be ripping each others’ throats out! I had to do something to snap them out of it! But what? If only there was some kind of instant fix-all such as the one that had ousted Chrysalis…

Maybe there was! I had no promise it would work when words had failed, but there was still one thing no changeling could ignore! It was worth a try, at least!

I unleashed a pulse of concentrated love energy, similar to the outpouring that had triggered my ascension, only shorter and softer, as I didn’t want to throw everyling off the plateau. The idea was to only get their attention, and it worked: I was left slightly light-headed, possibly as a sort of lingering after-effect of the recent hangover if not from the outburst itself, but everyling in sight stopped fighting as if dazed and turned to the source of the unexpected love surge.

Okay, maybe I was more than a little light-headed. I made a mental note to talk to Spiracle about it later. Right now, I needed to purge the ice-hot rage from my kingdom!

Except that I still wasn’t sure what to say to make an impact.

“Didn’t I ask you not to fight?” I blurted out.

“They started it!” a reformed drone exclaimed.

“And why should we care what you asked of us?” a renegade retorted, ignoring the other drone.

“Because he’s your king, that’s why,” Grim growled.

“He isn’t! I only acknowledge one leader and her name is Chrysalis!”

“So where is she now, you idiot?” another reformed drone mocked the renegade.

“Not where she belongs, that’s for sure! We’re gonna kick that useless maggot out of here so she can return to her rightful place!”

“Watch your tongue!” Psycho hissed. “I’m this close to doubling your hole count!”

“Can we please not resort to violence again?”

“What’s wrong, wimp? Afraid of getting your rump kicked a millionth time?”

“I wanna have the honor of kicking his rump off that joke of a throne!”

“I wanna have the honor of ripping his head off!”

“What are we waiting for? Get him!”

The group of renegades rushed forward but the reformed drones quickly formed a tight cordon in front of the throne. A few nearby ones adopted battle disguises.

“Not another step,” Psycho growled.

“Try to stop us,” a renegade smirked, charging forward with a battle cry.

The cordon braced for impact and I flinched, closing my eyes firmly shut in anticipation of a bloodshed. If only I could have stopped them! How could I have failed so miserably? It was my duty to establish and maintain peace and harmony among my subjects, and I’d failed! I’d failed at one of the most fundamental principles of my philosophy and the cornerstone of my reign! How could I have allowed it to happen? Did I really deserve to call myself king after this?

Then I realized everything was way too quiet.

I opened my eyes and needed a moment to make sense of what I was seeing. Every single drone in the throne room, reformed or otherwise, was frozen in place, some standing, some suspended in mid-air, some in positions of combat or impending combat, all of them glowing in a steady aura of blue magic. It almost looked like something had triggered another mass metamorphosis or some kind of a mass outburst of magic, but not quite. Then it hit me: it was my own levitation spell holding them in place, similarly to how Chrysalis had held me in her magical grip at the climax of my attempt to rescue the ponies she’d captured! I must have done it instinctively to keep them from killing one another!

I released my hold on the drones standing calmly, separated the ones who were fighting, and set them gently on the ground. This time, they remained there, grumbling and seething, but apparently resigned to withholding from further excesses, at least for the time being.

As relieving as it may have been to end the fight, I was under no illusion it would last. The momentary truce was undoubtedly only the product of realization I could physically manipulate them at will, and once they had some time to process my previously-unseen ability, the fighting would continue unless I figured out how to deal with the root of the problem. I wanted to tackle it now, or at least to make a start in what would hopefully be the right direction, but I was so tired, and frustrated, and this headache wasn’t letting up… none of which would be of any help in resolving the issue, and could even make it worse!

As much as I hated putting this off even longer, I had to admit to myself that it might be a better choice. A good night’s sleep could be what I needed in more sense than one; it may not do wonders, but if it restored some of my energy, that was better than nothing.

Assuming, of course, that I could get that sleep uninterrupted. Judging by what I’d been welcomed with and what was possibly still going on elsewhere in the hive, I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much.

“Look,” I said. “I know many of you have your grievances about one thing or another, and I won’t dismiss them outright like you may be thinking I’ve been doing ever since I took the throne. I promise I’ll hear you out, but right now, none of us seem to be in a state of mind that would allow us to do something constructive about it. Can you please hold back from lashing out at one another for the night and go to bed?”

“What bed?” a drone interjected.

“Yes, I’m sorry, I only just realized that you haven’t abandoned the habit of sleeping on the bare floor. Gosh, I really should pay more attention to you, shouldn’t I?” I smiled nervously. “Anyway, you don’t have to keep doing that. Build yourselves cocoon-like bubbles or moss nests to sleep in, or use pony mattresses if we have any, or invent something entirely new if you have an idea… of course, if any of you actually want to keep sleeping on the bare floor, I won’t forbid it, though I do recommend beds…”

Murmurs spread through the crowd; they sounded approving for the most part, but a fair number of drones, mostly unreformed ones, groaned and rolled their eyes at the suggestion. Whether they were disapproving of the beds themselves or of the fact that I’d been the one to make that suggestion, it was hard to tell, but it probably didn’t matter much.

“So you’ll sort this mess out in the morning?” Elytra asked.

“Yes, or at least I’ll begin then. Something tells me it could take a while, depending on how many of you have something to say. But yes, I do think we’ll be much better off resolving the issue once we take a break and cool down a little.”

The drones were apparently satisfied enough with that decision, as they started to mill towards the exit tunnels or fly away and down to the lower levels. It still wasn’t going without grumbling on the renegades’ part, but at least they weren’t starting any more fights, at least for now. Soon I was left alone with Grim and the drones who had accompanied me to Ponyville.

“Go on,” Grim said, “get some rest. The night may actually be peaceful after this and I hope I didn’t just jinx it. We’ll be alright.”

I took her advice, but there was one thing still on my mind. “I didn’t see Pharynx today. Any idea where he is and what he’s doing?”

“Honestly, your guess is as good as anyling’s at this point. All I know is that he’s been spending a lot of time ignoring his janitor duties to be in the wasteland, but for what purpose is beyond me.”

“Thanks anyway. He will be back in the hive at this hour, I hope?”

She shrugged. “It’s been completely random as far as I noticed.”

I thanked her again and said goodnight to all of them. I found my bedchamber relatively unscathed despite some signs of struggle having taken place there, but thankfully, there wasn’t much of importance there that could have been destroyed in the skirmish. Pharynx wasn’t there, and though I wanted to see him and talk to him, with no clue about when he might return, I decided there was little sense in waiting for him, so I set my saddlebag down on the ground and collapsed onto the bed.

Opposing Views

I woke up barely rested and with nervous knots in my stomach even before I remembered what I was supposed to deal with today, the said knots twisting themselves tighter as soon as I did remember. I wished I could attribute the unpleasant feeling to a nightmare or at least to my general tendency to worry, but I’d had no dreams tonight, pleasant or otherwise, and there was plenty enough going on around here to justify worrying.

At least my headache was gone. For now, anyway.

I rubbed my eyes and stirred. This was going to be a demanding day and I didn’t want to be the one who would have to face all the dissatisfied drones and try to find some kind of a solution all of them would approve of, or at least a compromise they could all live with, but unfortunately, I didn’t have a say in the matter. Destiny had chosen me to turn their lives upside-down and tear down everything they’d been taught to believe, and I’d done that gladly thinking I was doing the right thing, but destroying the old meant that I had to replace it with something new, which again I’d done gladly, thinking I’d brought something better. Would I have done it had I known my idea of ‘something better’ would have caused so much strife?

Yes, I had to admit it to myself, I would have. I still believed the change brought forth was for the better despite the difficulties and setbacks; the challenges were only temporary! They had to be! I could still figure out what to do to overcome them! They couldn’t be too different from what I’d faced while searching for my first friends! If I’d succeeded then, I could succeed now! Destiny had chosen me to bring the blessing of friendship to my kind, and it wouldn’t have done so unless I had what it takes to find a way!

Of course, I wouldn’t mind if Destiny had made it any easier for me to do what it- Wait, what was that big blob of resin doing in my… bedchamber... Wait a minute, that was my bed! When had I fallen off? And how hadn’t I noticed that I’d rolled almost all the way to the wall?!

Okay, maybe I hadn’t had a nightmare, but I definitely hadn’t slept well! No wonder I wasn’t feeling rested if I’d spent the night tossing and turning so hard that I’d fallen off the bed and moved this far away from it! Would it affect my likelihood of finding a solution to the problem the hive was dealing with? I didn’t know, but the very thought was enough to shatter my self-confidence!

Okay, Thorax, calm down and take deep, slow breaths. You can do this! The Harmony believes in you! It wouldn’t have set you up for this if it didn’t!

Yeah, not working. Whatever spell I’d had on myself a minute ago was now broken.

I forced myself to get up. The day wasn’t going to wait for me, and if I was lucky, maybe noling would want to see me yet and I’d have some time to prepare for whatever they would present me with.

One look at the throne room killed that hope. Two groups of drones, one of renegades and one of the reformed ones, both of considerable size, were there already, obviously waiting for me and spending the wait making a show of ignoring each other. The tension in their auras was worse than in the midst of last evening’s fight.

Here goes nothing… I swallowed a lump in my throat and stepped out of the hallway.

“Good morning,” I said hesitantly when all eyes locked on to me. “You’re all here for-”

“For getting you to sort them out,” a reformed drone barked, pointing at the renegades, who scowled and hissed in reply.

“You need to get sorted out!” Cockroach growled.

“Why don’t you all calm down and start from the beginning?” I said. “One at a time, please.”

“Fine.” One of the reformed drones stepped forward. “I think you already know what the problem is, but let me spell it out to you just in case. It’s these guys! They’ve been a royal pain in the flank ever since we transformed and it’s getting worse by the minute! All they do is rampage about and wreak havoc! We’ve been trying to have a peaceful life like you want us to, and it would be a great change of pace after Chrysalis if we could only get to actually do that! But whatever we start on, they show up and interfere and disrupt our efforts! They even tore down a lot of what we’ve built! I have yet to see a planter or a notice board that hasn’t been wrecked within an hour!”

“Serves you right when you waste your lives on pointless dawdling!” a renegade retorted. “This would never have happened under Chrysalis! She would have kept you all in check and so busy doing drills that you wouldn’t have time or energy for these idiocies!”

“There’s more to life than fighting enemies and creating more enemies so you can fight them!” Elytra exclaimed.

“I agree! There’s also showing to your enemies that you’re superior to them in every way!”

“Superior?! You can’t seriously think that!”

“I know it! But guess what? Now we’re not doing any of it because some idiot of a traitor got brainwashed into thinking we’d be better off by becoming weak and pathetic like our enemies!”

“How can you find it weak and-”

“And guess what else? We are weak and pathetic! I’m ashamed of what we’ve become and it’s thanks to you idiots who fell for-” He pointed a hoof at me. “-that fool’s delusions of sappy, rainbow-colored so-called bliss that will in reality be the end of us all! And don’t get me started on feeding! What - just what - makes you think you’ll be less hungry if you give away all your food?! Sorry to burst your bubble, but it doesn’t work like that! Never has and never will! You wanna eat, you have to hunt down your food just like hawks and timberwolves! You don’t see them hugging their prey, do you? That’s because they’d die of starvation if they did! And so will you idiots if you don’t stop this nonsense!”

“You’re such an expert on food matters all of a sudden, aren’t you? Have you tried sharing love to know it doesn’t work?”

“I don’t have to! I’m smart enough to tell it’s pointless!”

“Then how do you explain us not only surviving, but thriving on shared love and refusing to go back?”

“Because you’re so brainwashed you don’t even realize how stupid you’ve gotten!”

“Excuse me,” I interjected, “can you stop insulting them and just say what you came here to discuss with me?”

“Discuss with you?” he scoffed. “We have nothing to discuss with retarded usurpers! We’re here only to make sure they-” He pointed to the reformed drones. “-don’t give you ideas even crazier than your own!”

Don’t snap at him, I told myself.

“Don’t know about the rest of you,” another renegade interjected, “but I’m here to make sure they don’t kick us out of our own land! If anyling needs to get kicked out, it’s them, and then we’ll bring Chrysalis back so she can hunt down and punish the traitors!”

“It’s our land too, you dimwit!”

“Not for much longer, cuddleclown! You’re a disgrace to the changeling kind and the hive needs to get purged of you!”

“Guys, can we please not throw insults?”

“You’re the ones the hive needs to get purged of, you stubborn, entitled, self-centered freaks!”

“Freaks?! I’ll show you freaks!”

“Guys, please calm down-”

My plea got drowned out in the cacophony of threats and curses; if anyling had even registered it, they’d chosen to ignore it and do the exact opposite. The ice-hot flavor of their auras grew rapidly with each passing second and every insult uttered, until it exploded almost tangibly when Hyena decided she’d had enough and sank her fangs in the nearest reformed drone. He yelped and fell unconscious; the reformed drones rushed to retaliate as the renegades took Hyena’s act as a signal to do away with whatever restraints they still had, and before I knew it, the throne room was a warzone worse than Canterlot!

I watched helplessly as the chaos unfolded beyond my worst nightmares, willing myself to think of something to tell them, some way to get them to see reason, and failing miserably to even get them to acknowledge my presence. How could I have allowed this to happen? I should have known! I should have figured getting them in the same room at the same time would end in disaster! The exact details of the disaster didn’t even matter; it had been bound to happen and I should have known it! Just because unreformed drones were a minority now didn’t mean they couldn’t stir up Tartarus; they’d spent their whole lives training to do just that and, unlike the reformed ones, had no qualms about disregarding my nonviolence rules and putting their training to use!

If only I could get them to stop, just to stop for a moment, just enough to cool down and start acting reasonably again! Maybe if I could, they’d be willing to listen and partake in a civil conversation instead of this madness! Except at this rate, I’d have to physically separate them and-

That’s it! I’d done that last evening and it had worked! Maybe it would work again! It was worth a try!

I focused my magic. I’d never deliberately levitated this many objects, or creatures, or anything, and it wasn’t helping any that all of them were in motion, but I got them in the end and broke them up, then set them on the ground to-

-watch as they shrugged off the interruption without a glance at what could have caused it and continued right where they’d left off. Seriously?! This didn’t even count as a warning anymore? Or a request, or anything for that matter? As much as I disagreed with the renegades on pretty much everything, it was hard to deny that Chrysalis wouldn’t have allowed such obvious disregard of her command to go without consequences. Very painful consequences.

Well, it wasn’t like I’d be glad to routinely resort to manipulating them like that. It felt wrong, almost like depriving them of their freedom, the ‘almost’ part simply because the deprivation of freedom would only last as long as I maintained the spell. Maybe it was a good thing the approach had become ineffective so quickly, before I grew to rely on it too much...

The bad thing was that I’d moved back to zero progress. Worse than zero, even; by the looks of it, it was only a matter of moment when the throne room would get its very own lake of blood and the hive its first post-reformation fatality! And it was equally likely that the fatality would be on either of the two sides! There could even be fatalities on both sides! Didn’t they care about that at least, about not killing their peers, even if they were in disagreement? Even the reformed drones? Did nothing matter to them anymore? Had it ever even mattered, if only for a little while? I’d thought they’d reformed and gotten past their savage tendencies, but was it all a lie?

No… I couldn’t believe it! They’d sided with me, and still claimed to be on my side, and there had to be some truth in it if they were trying to keep the renegades from restoring Chrysalis to power! But why were they going about it in all the wrong ways? They’d promised me they wouldn’t resort to violence anymore! So why all this?!

“Enough!” I cried before I could stop myself. Miraculously, everyling stopped fighting, but I was so worked up that I barely noticed. “What is wrong with you?! I get that the renegades are acting out, but a lot of you are reformed! You said you were done with the old ways! That you would pursue friendship from now on! Does this look like friendship to you?! Or like a calm and civil discussion that we agreed to have just last evening? Do you even want my help?! Because it looks like you couldn’t care less! You’re just as bad as the renegades!”

I stormed off into the nearest hallway, trying to hide the tears that were about to start pouring down my contorted face. My facial muscles hurt as they maintained the pained grimace, but what hurt more was how the reformed drones had betrayed my trust in them. What was I going to do? They’d said they wanted me as their king, they’d said they’d follow my command and learn from my example, but did I still have a reason to believe any of it had been true? Maybe the intention was there, or had once been, but how to make use of it if they couldn’t bring themselves to stop relapsing into the behavior they’d vowed to leave behind?

Was this how it was going to be from now on? Were all my efforts to bring out the best in changelings destined to fail? Did anything I wanted or tried to do even matter?

I didn’t know anymore. I wanted to believe; goodness, how I wanted to convince myself that this was only a temporary hiccup and that all would turn out well eventually, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t… I just couldn’t.

I walked on through the hive, not paying much attention to where I was going, unsure of how much, if anything, it would accomplish. If I was lucky, it would help me calm down and clear my head; if not, I’d end up right where I’d started or even worse off. As far as I knew, I could run into more fights and again fail to resolve the issue if not create a bigger one! As if I wasn’t already feeling bad enough for having failed as a king! And that had to be saying something, considering I hadn’t even wanted the title!

Wait. Did that make any sense or was I rambling gibberish? What did my leadership skills have to do with my desire to lead?

Did my lack of ambition make me a horrible leader? Was that it, even though I’d wanted everything I’d introduced into the hive after earning my title, except the title itself? Would things start getting better if I kept making an effort but relinquished the title? Could I even relinquish the title?

I was about to go discuss it with Urtica when I came across another drone, one I’d been wanting to talk to regardless of this more recent conundrum. Actually, could he help me about that one, too?

“Hi, Pharynx,” I said to him. “Where have you been yesterday? I didn’t see you…”

“What do you think?”

“Um… cleaning something?”

He gave a slight snort and continued on his way. I followed.

“Sorry,” I tried again. “I know you don’t like being a janitor, but it won’t last for very long now, and you’ll be free to do whatever you-”

He stopped in his tracks and turned to face me. “What do you want?”

“I was just trying to talk to you… you know, you’re my brother and I’ve-”

“Quit rambling. What do you want?”

“Well, if I have to want something to be eligible for talking to you… I was wondering… could you… maybe… could you help me with something?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

He rolled his eyes. “On whether or not I can help you. What is it?”

“You, uh, might have noticed that the renegades have been causing trouble recently and the reformed drones have been forced to fight them…”

“Good, they still remember how to do that.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“Okay, I admit they’ve gotten rusty since you terminated their training, but at least they’re making an effort.”

“But they shouldn’t be fighting at all!”

“You’d rather have the renegades rip them to pieces?”

“No! I’d rather they didn’t fight at all!”

“Well, good luck with that,” he shrugged, trotting off again.

“Pharynx!”

“What?”

“Aren’t you going to help?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Why do you want me to help you?”

“Please?”

“What is it exactly that you’d want me to do, Thorax?”

“I don’t know… can you talk to them or something? You know, convince them to stop fighting?”

“Didn’t you try to do that?”

“…yes…”

“And how’s it working out so far?”

“I can’t get them to be in the same room for two minutes without fighting-”

“So how am I supposed to have better luck?”

“You used to be First Commander… they listened to you undeservedly…”

He snorted again. “Heh, ‘used to’ is right…”

“So… could you do that again?”

“Get them to listen? Forget it! If they won’t listen to the king, why should they care about what a failed-First-Commander-turned-janitor has to say?”

“Maybe I don’t have to be the king-”

He about-faced and fixed me with an incredulous glare. “What did you say?!”

“I’ve been thinking. Do I really need to be the king, Pharynx? Couldn’t I just step down and keep introducing friendship to them like an ordinary drone? I never expected to be a leader, let alone wanted to be one, and it’s not like they’re listening to me anyway!”

“Are you out of your mind?!” Something in the tone of his voice sent cold shivers down my carapace.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want Chrysalis to take over again after everything you’ve been through?!”

“But she’s gone-”

“You’re more naive than I thought! Yes, she may have left the premises after you defeated her, but if I know her at all, she’ll have kept a close eye on what’s going on here, wherever she is, and as soon as word spreads that you’re no longer the king, she’ll come running to seize the throne by whatever means necessary before someling else can do it! And she’ll have neither forgotten nor forgiven so many drones siding with you! As soon as her position here is secured, she’ll execute you, me, and every reformed drone she can get hold of!”

“You can’t seriously-”

“Losing so many drones at once will be a terrible blow to the hive no matter who the leader is, and it’ll leave her weak, but she’s had to have had similar setbacks in all the centuries she’s been alive! She’ll know how to restore her lost power and will get there no matter how long it takes, and all your efforts will have been for nothing! Is that what you want?”

I sighed. “No, but do you really think-”

“Yes, I really think it would happen. I think it so hard I’d bet both our lives on it, so don’t you dare give up your title if you want to live!”

“Okay, I won’t,” I sighed, “but if I’m keeping the title, can’t you at least try to help me talk the renegades down?”

“Wasted effort, Thorax! I told you already they won’t listen! Now leave me alone; the badlands perimeter isn’t gonna defend itself!” He buzzed his wings and flew down a tunnel.

“Pharynx, wait-”

“Quit wasting my time! Not happening!”

I groaned inwardly. Now what?

Alone

Several days passed. The rift between the reformed drones and the renegades kept growing; fights broke out more and more often, producing more casualties and testing the medics’ limits at handling the already-overcrowded infirmary. The renegades still complained about the recent change in command and threatened to restore the old system by any means necessary, so much that I’d started to wonder what was still keeping them from just leaving in search for their preferred leader without waiting for my approval. Maybe the reformed drones were making sure they didn’t, but why hadn’t Psycho or anyling else made even the slightest mention of it? Had they assumed I already knew everything there was to know on the matter? Or was everything happening so spontaneously that they hadn’t even realized it had happened?

The reformed drones didn’t seem to notice their efforts make any real difference, either. To them, it was pure self-defense if they cared to fight back, or a trip to the infirmary if they didn’t; sometimes, it was both. They still sought my advice on how to make the renegades leave them alone, but despite my best intentions and efforts, I was still clueless about the cause for such strife and especially about possible ways to end it! Though the drones still kept coming, they must have caught on, as I wasn’t seeing quite as many of them now as I had at the beginning. The full infirmary could only partially explain such a decline in interest; I’d discussed it with Spiracle and he reminded me the infirmary, even as full as it was, was still too small to accommodate the number of drones that weren’t coming to complain to me about the renegades. Unless they were all too busy fighting to drop by for a talk?

Proboscis was having serious trouble retaining her workforce, both in numbers and in the amount of work they were able to do with so much going on. Mystique had resorted to allowing only small artistic projects for the sake of easy transport of the pieces whenever the renegades hit the arts-and-crafts chamber. The choir was said to have ceased practices until further notice. Antenna was too afraid of getting beaten up to even go water her plants.

Pharynx was still roaming the badlands all day and only returning to the hive to sleep. Sometimes not even that.

I was still struggling to keep the hive from falling apart.

Could the renegades have been right in a way? Was I doing my subjects a disservice by insisting they should accept friendship in place of violence? The friendship part of the whole thing had only been partially successful, after all! True, the reformed drones were actually getting along now, which kept my hopes from completely dying away, but I couldn’t ignore the constant strife stirred up by the ones who remained unconvinced! How had Chrysalis managed to instill hatred in every single drone throughout the many centuries of her lifetime and to keep them blindly obedient to her until I came along? Was tyranny really the only thing that could work on changelings? I didn’t want to go down that path, but at the rate everything was going, there were moments when it felt like I would soon be left with no other choice!

And then, everything would fall apart because I was utterly useless when it came to issuing stern commands. Polite conversations and civil compromises, yes, I could do that. But yelling and forcing my will? Forget it! That was Pharynx’s strength, not mine! Chrysalis’ strength, too. The only thing I could ever do with yelling was to cower and submit myself to whatever the yelling demanded!

But even if the politest plea was made, was it any better than the furious yelling if I consistently left them no choice but to comply? Or to either have them comply or leave me disappointed in them, whatever. Was I already a tyrant, even if an unconventional one? Should I have sent the renegades away when they’d refused to transform? Did keeping them here, under my command, count as tyranny, even though I had the best intentions? Would I have done better to give them the freedom to form a new hive somewhere else with Chrysalis as its queen?

My heart screamed a resolute no; doing that would mean most lands in the world would still have an enemy, even if a weak and decimated one at present, but one that could grow in power over the years and restore its infamous glory! My pony friends would still be in danger, even though they had an ally now that they hadn’t had before! Keeping the renegades under my command at least gave me a feeling I could do something about them if they were to step out of line! I couldn’t do that if they were under Chrysalis’ command!

Then why was I having second thoughts?

The obvious explanation was that I simply didn’t feel ready for and capable of dealing with such conflict, a feeling proven true by my ongoing failure to establish peace among my subjects. But was it just that, or was there another reason, one more subtle and obscure? Was my subconscious mind trying to tell me something I couldn’t yet hear? Was it something I didn’t want to hear?

And what about Pharynx? I’d asked him what to do but only got told what not to do! How was that supposed to be helpful? Okay, I could see the logic behind why giving up the throne would be a bad idea, assuming his theory held water, and though it arguably prevented the situation from getting any worse, it still did nothing to improve it, and I needed improvement right now! Attempts to continue the discussion were failing as consistently as the attempts to end the strife between drones; I barely saw any of him anymore, even at bedtime, and on the few occasions when I did manage to randomly run into him, he mostly growled and grumbled and ignored my presence. I had managed to get a little more than a grunt from him a couple of times, admittedly, but only just, and he’d made sure to disappear from the premises every time. I still managed to glimpse an increasingly annoyed aura from him, and though I couldn’t tell where the annoyance was coming from - unless it was from me and my laughable leadership skills - it seemed to be taking a toll on him, or overwhelming him as he would more likely put it: a few drones had reported him destroying Antenna’s plants and the arts-and-crafts group’s paintings. I’d refused to believe it at first, but later on that same day, I’d caught him red-fanged as he ripped up some vines and moss beds. I was still finding him destroying stuff afterwards, but no matter how hard I protested and tried to convince him to stop, the most I managed to get was a snort and an eye roll!

Though cause and effect were kind of blurry, my self-confidence suffered no matter how I spun it: was Pharynx acting out because I was a horrible leader, or did I have to thank worrying over his behavior for my streak of failures? And how was I supposed to expect my subjects to heed my wishes if I couldn’t even get my own brother to cooperate?

And if I couldn’t rely on my own brother to help me, who could I rely on?

A possible answer presented itself out of the blue as I wandered aimlessly through the hive’s hallways after yet another of failed attempts to restore some semblance of peace. I wound up near one of the former armories - or had it been a training area? - just as a couple of drones were going in and getting greeted by Feisty like old friends. At first I thought nothing of it, but then I realized where I was and got the urge to slap myself for such blatant absent-mindedness; how had I forgotten this was where the feelings forum sessions were held? They were one of the things in the new hive that I was proud of, not because they’d been my idea, but because the drones liked it so much that they made a point to hold the sessions despite the difficult times the hive was experiencing, even if a couple had had to be cut short due to the renegades’ interference! How had I not thought of coming here to talk about my latest problem? My subjects’ trust didn’t exactly explain it, even if the reformed drones had never openly questioned my judgment. Was I afraid of being given bad advice? Of being ridiculed? Or was I simply ashamed that I was going to have to ask them for help when this matter was supposed to be mine to tackle?

Necessity prevailed in the end. The hostility between drones wasn’t showing any intentions of letting up anytime soon and I was out of ideas; maybe some words of comfort or a fresh perspective could help me out? It was worth a try, especially because I was worrying so much that it could easily affect my judgment in the matters I still had to deal with on top of the constant fighting if it hadn’t already!

The lingering whisper in the back of my mind, scolding me for the impertinence of taking some leisure time when everything around me was falling apart, got shushed for the time being by its reasonable counterpart reminding me that this wasn’t leisure time but an attempt to deal with a crisis. No doubt the nervous whisper would awaken eventually, but until it did, this was my chance to really focus on finding a solution and listening to suggestions! With any luck, my search would end here, and I could silence the whispers of doom permanently, or at least for a very, very long time!

I stepped into the cavern.

I hadn’t been here since the first few sessions; not that I hadn’t wanted to, but my other duties had interfered, so I’d kept postponing my visits until a hypothetical later time when I’d hoped to provide some help to a drone in need… I hadn’t expected I’d be the one seeking help! Knowing my track record, I really should have known better!

The cavern had changed in the meantime. Not in the usual sense when the hive was concerned, though; the architecture had remained much the same, but the walls and the floor were no longer bare like in the old days. There were moss beds and colorful cushions scattered about, and little potted plants in the walls’ recesses, and drawings, and scented candles - where had we gotten those from? - and a few chiming mobiles hanging near the entrance, and a large gong on a slight podium-like elevation of the floor. The drones were sitting or lounging about, already engaged in conversation, and I hoped to enter unobtrusively lest I startle them or cause them discomfort. One might argue that I wasn’t likely to cause discomfort to anyone, but that probably depended on how one were to define ‘discomfort’, but I was probably overestimating the likelihood of that outcome-

Great, now I was starting to talk like Sunburst. Or Starlight, or Princess Twilight. They probably wouldn’t have felt so awkward in my place, though.

I’d hoped my arrival wouldn’t attract much attention at least until their conversation ended, but the drones noticed me right away and dropped everything to come greet me.

“Thorax!” Feisty exclaimed. “What a nice surprise, seeing you here! It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Too long, I’m afraid-”

“We’ve missed you!” another drone chirped.

“Gee, I-”

“We thought you’d never come again!”

“I-”

“We thought you were too busy dealing with the renegades!”

“Uh…”

“But you figured out how to deal with them, right? You’ve dealt with them and now you have the time to devote to the feelings forum and to help us poor souls who still have problems! Ooh, thank you, thank you!”

I cringed and swallowed a lump in my throat. These drones still believed in me, and I was about to disappoint them! Should I have announced my intention to participate in a session, at least to Feisty, so she could relay to the group that I needed help? Would that have been any less of a disappointment to them? Were they too about to stop trusting me?

“Now, now,” Feisty interjected. “Let’s settle down, everyone, and give Thorax some breathing room! We can thank him for dealing with the renegades one at a time! Say, Thorax, how did you do it?”

Many eagerly expectant eyes were fixed on me, accompanied by encouraging smiles. I wanted to crumble in shame. What to tell them?

Say it already!

“I, uh… I appreciate your trust in me, and it means a great deal, but…” Their eyes and smiles went a little bit wider and I felt beads of sweat trickling down my forehead. “...but I’m afraid you got a little ahead of yourselves…”

“What do you mean?” Zygoma gasped.

“I mean…” I sighed and hung my head. “I haven't sorted out the renegades yet. Please don’t hate me! I keep trying but I’m all out of ideas what to do… it feels like the more I try, the worse it gets… everyling seems to have such high expectations of me but I haven’t the faintest idea what I’m doing… I’m sorry, everyone! I’m trying my best, but… but…” I buried my face in my hooves.

A few moments of intense silence passed as I held my breath as a last-ditch effort to keep myself from sobbing. If they turned on me now… Instead, I felt gentle hooves on my shoulders.

“That’s what the feelings forum is for,” said Feisty. “To help those who need help, and we’d be honored to help you.”

“Yeah, we’re sorry,” another drone added. “You’re an inspiration to us all, and we admire you so much that we never imagined you could be struggling!”

“But we’re here now,” another joined in, “just like you’ve been there for us, and we’ll help you figure it out!”

“Aww, thanks, guys! I knew I could count on you!”

We shared a heartfelt hug that helped restore some of my spirits. Not all of my spirits, not even close, but every little bit was an improvement! How could I have ever doubted them?

The group hug eventually broke up and the drones returned to the spots they’d occupied prior to my arrival. I remained where I was, sitting on the bare floor.

“Alright,” Feisty said, “ the next item on today’s agenda will be the renegades and how to help Thorax deal with them. Would anyling like to begin?”

“What’s to say?” a drone exclaimed. “They’re rude, they’re violent, they won’t stop pestering us, they destroy everything they come across-”

“Exactly! They tore up a quilt I was making! It took me two full weeks to get it right, and then Screech and his gang show up and rip it to pieces! Now I’ll have to start all over again, but what’s the point? I just know they’ll do it again and again until I want to kill myself!”

“I know! See that vase over there?” another pointed to a broken-and-glued-together piece of pottery on one of the shelves. “That’s the fifth one they broke this week! I haven’t got any intact ones left!”

“Thorax, do you remember that changeling revealer ointment that a couple of our drones found in Everfree?” Sleuth asked. “Well, they broke that jar! Deliberately! How am I supposed to keep studying the ointment when the last remaining bits of it are contaminated with ceramic shards and dust particles?”

“I can ask Zecora if she can send more-”

“You think the potion is the problem?!” another drone interjected. “These brutes beat up my sister yesterday because she was whistling to herself!”

“Your sister isn’t the only one who got beaten up! I’m fresh out of the infirmary, and I don’t even know what I did to tick them off!”

“You were probably guilty for existing! I barely managed to save my eggs the other day! What could a few eggs have done to them?! Thorax, you’ve got to do something!”

“I know! I’m trying-”

“Please!” She grabbed me by the shoulders. “Please, do something!”

Sleuth pulled her gently away. “Come now, Gossamer, you’re not helping,” he said.

“Indeed,” Feisty spoke up. “We all know the renegades are trouble… much like we all used to be, except some of us have gotten past our violent urges… But Thorax is having a hard time reining them in, so unless we come up with ideas on how to get the renegades to cooperate, things aren’t going to get any better. Does anyling have a constructive suggestion?”

They all looked at one another in a way that suggested none of them had one.

“Anyone?” Feisty tried again. “Anything?”

All she got was more silence. Okay, I may have gotten ahead of myself with that newfound optimism-

“Uh…” a drone finally broke the awkward silence. “I’m guessing you tried telling them to behave themselves, right?”

“More times than I can count,” I sighed. “I’ve been trying ever since I took over and it’s never worked. In fact, you could say it’s working less than it used to because, in the beginning, they at least bothered to hear me out before doing as they pleased…”

“You mind if we beat them up? As in, ambush them or something?”

I winced at the suggestion. “I don’t want violence! Isn’t it bad enough that they’re forcing you all to fight back as a last resort? If we organize an attack against them, it’ll only mean we’re no better than them! Is that what you want? There has to be another way!”

They went silent again.

Something stirred in my mind as I watched them.

“Gossamer,” I asked, “you said they attacked your eggs, didn’t you?”

“Yes?”

“Who’s guarding the eggs now?” Please let it be some arrangement that’ll give me an idea…

She raised a rock lying next to her. Underneath was a hole, in which lay four eggs stuck together with resinous slime, probably for ease of transport. “I am. I’ve decided to never let them out of my sight.”

Though glad to see her eggs safe, I deflated at the revelation. It hadn’t inspired an idea! Maybe I just needed to mull it over, and something would come of it eventually? Too bad ‘eventually’ wasn’t good enough, even if I could count on a delayed inspiration, which I had no promise would dawn on me! I needed something now!

“Why don’t we just execute the renegades and be done with it?” another drone suggested.

I couldn’t have heard that right! “I’m sorry, did you say… ‘execute’ them?”

“Yes.”

“As in, kill them?”

“Yes…” She didn’t sound so sure anymore.

“Absolutely not! We’re done executing people!”

“Even if the lot of them would transform after they see you execute the first few?” she smiled sheepishly, sounding even less sure.

“Even if I somehow managed to convince myself to agree to kill anyone,” I told her, shuddering at the thought, “what promise do I have that any of the others will try to save themselves by transforming last-minute?”

She bit her lip and looked at the ground.

“...what about torturing them?” Cornicle asked hesitantly. “You won’t kill them, but if it hurts enough-”

“No! That’s just as savage as killing them! Maybe even worse!”

“But-”

“Have you ever been tortured?”

“Uh, no…”

“Well I have! Almost every day, in fact! I know exactly what it’s like and wouldn’t wish it on anyone, no matter what they did, and I certainly wouldn’t deliberately subject them to such horrors!”

He too winced and looked away. “Sorry…”

I felt a hoof touch my shoulder.

“Are you okay, Thorax?” Zygoma asked, looking at me wide-eyed.

I realized I was hyperventilating and willed myself to stop. “Yes… no… I…” I rubbed my face and sighed. “I’m sorry, I was hoping you could help me find a civil solution to the problem, but all I’ve gotten so far that I haven’t tried already is something Chrysalis would have come up with… There has to be a better way, I can’t believe there isn’t…”

“Because if there isn’t,” Feisty interjected, “then your reign is founded on an illusion or a lie, even if a good-willed one, and as such, is destined to fail?”

“Something like that, I guess, but it’s not about me. I never even wanted to be a king! It’s about all of you, and about everything I know you can have and deserve to have but will in all likelihood lose if I can’t make this work!”

“Then let’s try harder,” Gossamer said. “If you say it’s possible, then it has to be, and it’s up to us to figure it out!”

The others murmured in agreement and we got back to discussing options. It was sensible for a while: suggestions included civil discussions, setting up clear boundaries, or rewarding good behavior, to name a few; too bad I’d already tried every single one of those things with absolutely no success! A couple of questionable suggestions popped up too, such as punishing the renegades, which I’d technically done but they were persistently failing to report to Proboscis for their assignments, or allowing them to leave the hive, which I had moral and practical qualms about. The group saw my reasons and didn’t press further, thankfully, but I got the impression they too were running out of ideas.

The discussion was indeed dying down by now. Most drones were just sitting in thoughtful silence, and only a few already-tackled suggestions repeated themselves almost absent-mindedly. It only went downwards from there: a few started coming up with ideas I couldn’t seriously consider, ideas that Chrysalis herself may have found too drastic! Imprisoning the renegades for life? An open war against them? What was up with these guys?! Worst of all, they weren’t even seeing the absurdity of what they were advocating for!

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Thorax,” one of them said in the end, “but why did you even ask us for help if you’re going to reject every suggestion?”

“I wasn’t going to,” I told him, “but as it happens, either I’ve already tried it or it goes against everything we’re hoping to achieve!”

“Everything you’re hoping to achieve, you mean?”

“What?!” Gossamer exclaimed. “Are you a renegade in disguise?”

“Why, because we don’t share every single opinion? I’m not a renegade, if you must know, but after today, I’m starting to wonder why I sided with him! Chrysalis at least knew what she wanted and how to get it!”

“You can’t compare someone who’s ruled for centuries to someone who’s just starting out!” Zygoma protested.

“Why not? The guy’s a joke!”

A gong sounded and we all turned to Feisty.

“We seem to have completely run out of ideas and are letting our frustration over the matter get the better of us,” she said. “This will not solve anything! Why don’t we adjourn and come back in a few days, unless any of you wish to discuss something else? We might get more ideas in the meantime!”

Noling was interested in staying there anymore; I wished it hadn’t ended like that, but all things considered, taking a break was probably the best we could do under the circumstances. We definitely needed to cool off a little! As for getting more ideas, I wasn’t so sure it was going to happen. I’d already spent plenty of time trying to come up with something, and though fresh perspective should have helped, I feared it had only done the opposite. As we were leaving, I saw a couple of drones join the one who had expressed his misgivings about me, and it looked like they were agreeing on something. I was too far away to hear them, but I was pretty sure I could guess what they were talking about.

Wonderful… if I was right, not only was I no closer to solving the renegade problem, but some of my reformed subjects were no longer trying to pretend to not have lost trust in me! I had to do something, quick, or the renegades could prevail and bring Chrysalis back!

But what could I do? I’d already exhausted every idea I’d had, and asking for help had done nothing!

Was there anyling else I could ask for help? Psycho, Grim, or some other drone I’d relied on recently? But I’d asked them all already and they hadn’t known either! Some other group in a feelings forum? What promise did I have it would end any differently from this one?

Pharynx? Not likely. He hadn’t helped the first ten times I’d asked him, and for all I knew, he could be leading the renegades or at least helping them! He was still unreformed, after all!

As much as I hated to admit it, there was no one to ask for help. I was alone.

Old Friend

I wandered through the hive aimlessly again, lost in thought. Well, ‘thoughts’ may not have been the best word; I was mostly just sulking over my incompetence as a leader. If only the renegades weren’t so stubborn; we could have at least settled for a compromise, a truce of sorts, if actual harmony was too much to ask for! Except, I was to blame, too. A leader - a proper leader, one deserving of the title - would have known how to deal with such issues and resolved them long ago! And while my failure could partly be explained by being new at this, it still didn’t excuse me, and there was no guarantee that I would get better eventually! At this rate, would there even be an ‘eventually’? Or would this unrelenting strife doom the entire hive before I could find a way to end it?

I was so engrossed in imagining worst-case scenarios and blaming myself for them that it took me a while to notice something was off about the hive.

The hallway was devoid of plants and paintings; this alone didn’t have to mean much, as this particular hallway was deep within the hive’s interior where natural sunlight wouldn’t come, therefore there would have been little point in planting anything in it, and even without the renegades destroying everything, the reformed drones wouldn’t have had enough time yet to decorate every single available surface. We had started to improve, but there was no denying that a considerable portion of the hive was still gloomy like in the old days. Even I hadn’t yet found the time to decorate my own bedchamber, and I had paintings readily available! They were still rolled up and waiting in my saddlebag!

Nothing to worry about here, then, by the looks of it. Except, when I reached a hallway opening to the outside, that one was just as barren. Not a plant in sight, not even a sprout, and I knew Antenna had made an effort to plant flowers and moss everywhere! Maybe she’d missed a spot? I wanted to ignore it and move on, but something about it was nagging at me even as I proceeded into further hallways. Some of them led outside, too, but again, there was no vegetation, no paintings, nothing!

Not even changelings.

I walked on, an uneasy feeling growing in me. Something wasn’t right, and it felt like there was more to it than missing plants, and more disturbing than the renegades! But what was going on?

Eventually I stumbled upon another hallway leading outside, and my heart skipped a beat when I saw floral shapes outlined against the sky. Finally! I trotted over, wanting to relieve my worries in this little garden; but when I got there, the shapes were just as dark as they’d appeared from the other end of the tunnel. I touched a vine and everything disintegrated into the wind.

I let out a soft gasp. What had happened here? Had the renegades charred the plants? But even if they had, there was nothing I could do about it. I turned around-

-and almost collided with a group of drones, all of them reformed, frowning at me. Where had they even come from?

“Uh… hello?” I said.

No response from any of them except for the unmoving frowns.

“Did any of you see what happened?”

Still nothing. They might as well have been statues!

“Um… I’m sorry… do you mind if I…?” I squeezed past them. They still remained silent, but their glares remained obstinately fixed on me.

“Oookaaay… um… gotta go…” I fumbled, and when none of them responded in any way, I moved into the next tunnel.

That too was full of silent, unmoving, frowning changelings.

“Guys?” I started hesitantly. “Is something wrong?”

These drones were no more eager to reply than the first ones. This was getting… well, maybe not creepy, but certainly unnerving… I walked past them, feeling their eyes on me and wondering what could have put them all in such a state. I would have asked but it didn’t look like any of them would have been interested to tell me. I had to come across someling looking and acting normally sooner or later! Maybe they would be able to explain?

But no normal drones came up along the way, not even the renegades; not even a hint of a normal changeling, whether or not they knew what was going on with the others!

I continued walking. Every now and then, I came across a dead plant, even in the deep-interior hallways, where noling would have put them. Every now and then, a changeling would pop up almost out of nowhere and give me the silent glare that I didn’t know what to make of. Sometimes, there were whole groups of drones acting like grim statues. Most were reformed, some were not, but it didn’t seem to matter; for once, they all behaved as one, and though I’d been hoping such a thing would happen, I’d never imagined it like this! This non-behavior was even worse than fighting and vandalism! What was wrong with them?!

Hallway after hallway, cavern after cavern, I kept running into the same thing. Frozen changelings, withered plants, then drones and plants together in their eerie state; the pattern repeated itself endlessly, sometimes with slight variations in sequence, but not a single odd element stood out: no plants thriving, no drones going about their business, nothing! There wasn’t even anything else that would stand out from the rest: no paintings on the walls, no music, no chatter of drones unseen, not even a stray remnant of the old days such as a cocoon or a discarded training dummy! Wait, why was I expecting those? Had someling mentioned to me that the renegades were doing those things again? Had I assumed they were doing it, or that they were about to start?

A hallway opened into the throne room, and I gasped in surprise when I realized where I was; I must have completely lost track of where I’d been going! Even more, I almost hadn’t recognized the throne room! Most of the plateau was overgrown in vines and brambles, all of them charred and insubstantial like the others I’d come across; I touched one and it fizzled apart. Where no plants occupied a spot on the ground, a changeling filled the empty space, and these drones too bore that heavy glare of disapproval that I’d been looking at for the past… how long? It seemed like an eternity! But it couldn’t have been that long, could it? I’d only been wandering through the hive a little! I couldn’t have traversed a great distance; I didn’t have time for that lately! I’d just been to… uh, why couldn’t I remember where I’d been? An arts-and-crafts workshop, maybe? The archive, discussing something with Urtica? Checking on whatever Pharynx was supposed to be doing? I didn’t know! How had I gotten so bad at this that I couldn’t even recall my own movement?! At least I knew I was in the throne room now… except it looked nothing like its usual self… in fact, the throne itself was the only thing in sight I could still recognize! The rest was nothing but cursed plants and an army of drones whose glares could freeze blood! Even the sky above us was ominously heavy like I’d never seen it before, just as disturbing and menacing as everything below it!

Hesitantly and with knots forming in my throat, I stepped into the throne room. I trod between the grim plants and changelings as their glares, their heavy auras, their very presence, weighed down my every step and made every breath a struggle. It took an eternity and beyond-supreme effort, but I finally made it to the throne in the end. I wasn’t sure why I’d felt it so vitally important to get there, but the compulsion to do so hadn’t even left me an option to consider remaining where I’d been, at the entrance to the throne room, not quite outside it but not quite within either, as the threshold had beckoned to be crossed even though my heart would have been content otherwise. What was it that dictated my actions and steered my every step onto paths I dared not take?

I’d made it to the throne, but some unseen force stopped me just before I could sit on it. The aura around me shifted dramatically, but not to bring relief: the ominous darkness of a second ago had become but a pale shadow of the utter doom it now spelled! My breath froze. How could it have gone so wrong so quickly? What was the ‘it’ looming over us?

I remained frozen in place for a second or two, then turned around, dreading what I would see. Nothing happened for another moment; then, one of the reformed changelings in the crowd dissolved like the charred plants, and an unreformed drone was left in his place, bearing that same malignant glare like all the others.

One by one, the other drones poofed away in rapid succession, only to be replaced by an unreformed version of themselves. The dead plants were caught in the chain reaction too as the transformation rippled outwards from that first changeling, and though some plants remained untouched, most unleashed an unreformed changeling of their own in the process. Soon, the entire throne room was filled to the brim with unreformed drones, and their eyes burned unbearably!

I stared transfixed at the sight before me when something shifted again, something that added a layer of dread to an already-dreadful aura around me, but not quite as tangible as to allow me to guess at the cause.

I really should have been able to guess.

When I finally snapped out of my trance and brought myself to take in my surroundings, everything fell into place as I saw who was standing behind my throne. No, in front of it! But hadn’t I been looking there a moment ago? How had I only seen her upon turning around? When had the world turned in on itself like that? Was I losing my mind?

She cast me a piercing glare and her lips parted in a triumphant, bloodthirsty smirk; her horn glowed and, though no visible blast shot from it like one would expect it to, my throne blew up in a million pieces, and yet, I was left completely unscathed despite standing right next to it. Everything was gone: the seat, the sapling, even the ground beneath it… so how come hadn’t I fallen into the crater?

Chrysalis licked her lips and pranced; her eyes glowed white and mine went wide in anticipation of the greatest pain imaginable… only to witness the fallen queen disintegrate as the white light spread from her eyes through the rapidly-forming cracks in her entire body, and as she vanished, so did all the changelings and plants that had crowded the throne room. The apocalyptic aura cleared and so did the skies, revealing a starry night and the soft flavor of relief for the soul.

I looked around me in awe. The throne room had never looked so peaceful, so hopeful; even more, my throne stood once again proudly - truly proudly - in its usual place, the sapling having sprouted more branches and leaves, and there was a proper little garden of flowers around it too! But all this thriving vegetation wasn’t enough to conceal a lone figure standing behind the resurrected throne, waiting patiently to be noticed before stepping out into full view.

“So we meet again, young Thorax,” she said, her soothing voice a melody of salvation to my weary heart. “I had hoped these circumstances would not repeat themselves!”

“I’m afraid that’s easier said than done, Princess Luna,” I sighed, “even after all that’s happened.”

“Something is troubling you.” It was both a question and a statement.

“Is it that obvious?”

“Nightmares do not come in happy times; they need to be provoked. Pray tell, what has happened this time? Your dream is somewhat… unclear on the exact cause.”

“You know how I’ve been making an effort to befriend other lands and clear the changelings of their infamous reputation?”

She nodded. “An endeavour most admirable, indeed.”

“Well, it turns out I should have focused on my subjects a little more. I was away from them a good deal, and the still-unreformed drones took advantage of the situation and they’re terrorizing everyling else! I’ve been trying to get them to stop, but nothing’s worked so far!”

“Do not blame yourself for their actions, dear Thorax, and do not lose faith in yourself. A leader’s path is difficult; a new leader’s more so until he learns his way. To expect to reach perfection in a day is a foolish idea! Your subjects may be unruly but it shall pass! It may have begun in your absence, but who is to say it would not have happened had you remained within your kingdom at all times?”

“It might have, but maybe it wouldn’t have escalated so far!”

“The other changelings, did they not resist?”

“They did and they still do, but the harder we try to rein in the renegades, the more violent they become, and I’d been hoping to end violence! Now, not only is the violence worse than during Chrysalis’ reign, the renegades are openly hoping to bring her back, and I don’t know whom to ask for help anymore! None of the reformed changelings could suggest anything helpful!”

“What about your friends?”

For a moment, I wasn’t sure what she was talking about.

“Do you not have friends anymore?”

“Yes, but… I just told you, Princess, no one in the hive could help!”

“And the ones not in the hive?”

Not in the hive… Of course! How could I have been so stupid?! I had friends in Equestria, some of which were world-renowned heroes! They had to have been in this kind of situation many times! They were sure to know what to do, or at the very least, to snap me out of my vicious circle of self-depreciation! Heck, maybe their emotional support alone would be enough to restore my common sense and I’d find the solution on my own!

Apparently the realization showed plainly on my face, or whatever the dreamscape equivalent was, as Luna smiled.

“Thank you, Princess! I can’t believe it was right in front of me all along and I couldn’t see it! I can’t believe I forgot I had friends! I’ll write to them first thing in the morning!”

She nodded. “I presume you will look to Ponyville or the Crystal Empire first, but keep Canterlot in mind as well. I too am more than willing to help, and so is my sister, I am sure. Alas, you will have to look for us in the waking world. I wish to help you now, but doing so may necessitate a lengthy discussion in order to fully understand the situation at hoof, and it would be wise for Celestia to partake if she chooses to and can spare the time. I regret I cannot stay with you for much longer; I feel many of my subjects’ dreams calling to me even at this moment. I cannot abandon them!”

“Uh, sure, go then… I understand! And thanks!”

She faded out of existence and my dream went with her. I opened my eyes to the sight of Pharynx eyeing me curiously, almost as if I’d grown a few dozen pairs of antlers in addition to the ones I already had.

“What?” I asked in confusion.

He simply snorted and left our bedchamber.

Where was he going? Was it morning already? Princess Luna had made it sound like the night wasn’t over yet, but if that was the case, what was Pharynx doing awake at this hour? Had I woken him up by talking in my sleep or by tossing and turning?

It didn’t matter, probably. Sometimes I wondered why I was making an effort to understand him when it was nearly impossible! It had been a little easier in the old days, but now… I shook my head in frustration.

At least I could check if it was morning yet.

I got off my bed and trod down the hallways, much like in the dream, except that the hive looked normal, or as normal as it could with the renegades rampaging about. The paintings on the walls were mostly torn up, some of the pottery smashed, and there were no plants to be seen, but the hallways had looked exactly the same yesterday, and the collective love aura was tainted with all kinds of flavors hinting at hatred and anger, but there were no ominously sinister undertones just waiting to send cold chills down one’s carapace. I couldn’t even hear any noises suggestive of an ongoing fight! No drones were standing about, either; they were all probably asleep, as I should have been at this hour. Probably this hour.

Definitely this hour, I corrected myself as I stepped into the throne room. The sky was dark and starry, without a hint of an impending dawn! It must have been just around midnight or a little after! It was pointless to try to do anything other than sleep!

With that in mind and a hope to get some rest while I could, I returned to my bedchamber and curled up on my bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. I shifted and adjusted my position every few minutes, tried to think of something relaxing, willed myself to doze off, but it was no use. It was almost as if Luna’s arrival into my dreamscape had cursed me against falling asleep again tonight! Except it couldn’t have been that; she wouldn’t have done such a thing, and I’d never had that problem before!

So I spent the night wide awake, mulling things over yet thinking of nothing in particular, and if anyone were to ask me about it, I’d be unable to repeat a single thing that had crossed my mind.

Pharynx never returned. I may or may not have wondered where he was.

Eventually, after what I guessed to be hours close to dawn, I gave up trying and got up for good. If I hadn’t fallen asleep by then, there was little sense in hoping I would! Instead, I went to the archive, found a piece of parchment and a quill, and sat down to write a letter.

Dear Spike,

How are you doing? We didn’t get to hang out much the last time I was in Ponyville, did we? I’m afraid I don’t remember much of that party… The drones think Discord had something to do with it, and though I don’t like to cast blame based on assumptions and gut feelings, they made it sound pretty convincing… I hope Discord won’t take offense if it wasn’t his doing… Nevermind. I digress. What I really wanted to ask you is, would you be willing to meet up with me one of these days? I need someone to talk to about something and letters may not be the most practical way to do it. It’s okay if you’re busy, I’m not forcing you to anything, and I’m sorry for using you all the time and offering nothing in return… I can’t even promise to stay and just hang out with you like friends should be doing, as there are… things… I have to keep an eye on over here… but as soon as that’s sorted out, I’ll make it up to you! It’s been too long!

See you soon?

Thorax

I read through the text a few times to make sure it made sense, then rolled up the parchment and went looking for a courier.

The courier returned a couple of anxious days later; I hadn’t made any progress with the renegades or Pharynx in the meantime and was by now putting all my hopes into Spike and his availability to help me. I was itching to read his reply so much that I nearly ripped the scroll out of the courier’s mouth! It said:

Dear Thorax,

You and I had a great time at that party! I’m sorry you don’t remember it, but the drones may be right as it turns out. Your courier arrived just as Discord, Big Mac, and I were finishing an Ogres and Oubliettes game so I asked Discord about it, and though getting a straight answer out of him is a proper challenge most of the time, he as good as confirmed having messed with that cake you guys were eating. Not sure if you should yell at him for it, though; he might take it as a compliment!

The rest of your letter makes it sound like something’s wrong, isn’t it? No worries, I’m happy to help! Just drop by whenever you can spare a moment and we’ll talk about whatever’s troubling you. Or if you’d rather that I come to the hive, that works too. You didn’t say which you’d prefer and, as things stand right now, it’s all the same to me.

See you soon!

Spike

Dear, sweet, wonderful Spike! I owed him more and more every day! I’d known I could count on him this time too! But where to meet? I had my misgivings about leaving the hive again, especially with the renegades’ rampaging, but would inviting him over be any better? It might, as he’d get to witness the problem firsthoof, but was it worth risking his safety?

Luckily, Psycho was just passing by. Now that I was asking for opinions left and right, it wouldn’t hurt to ask for one more!

“Hey, Psycho,” I halted him. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes?”

“Suppose I had a reason to travel to Equestria for a few days, but that I didn’t have to because the guy I’m meeting offered to come here instead. Would I do better to go or to invite him over in our current situation?”

“That depends,” he said after a moment.

“On what?”

“On why you’re meeting with this guy, and also on whether you’re asking for permission to leave, a tactical analysis, or an estimated effect on your public image.”

“Uh…”

“Okay, let’s make it easier. Is it something that can benefit the hive?”

“Yes, that’s the main point.”

“Then your public image should be unaffected either way.”

“I’m not concerned about that…” I muttered.

“Does your guy have a preference?”

“He says not, but… I don’t want the renegades to beat him up… you think you can hold the fort for a few days without me?”

“No offense, Thorax, but you’re not making that much of a difference against the renegades. It might be a different story if they knew where Chrysalis is, in which case I’d tell you to stay here, but they don’t know her whereabouts any better than we do, and if they want to bring her back, they’ll have to find her first, which I don’t think is likely to happen while they’re busy fighting with us.”

“Okay, if you think… but what if something else happens that I’ll have to handle?”

“We’ll manage. Go on, do your thing. Do you need guards?”

“No, I’ll be fine… I think… You sure it won’t be a problem-”

He stifled me. “Just go,” he said with an eye roll.

Wrong Timing

I arrived in Ponyville without problems. Despite my assurances to Psycho, I’d been nervous something might happen now that I was travelling alone even though I hadn’t minded it the last time. Another side-effect of everything that was going on in the hive? Or had Pharynx gotten to me? He’d intercepted me on my way out and had a fit about not bringing bodyguards or weapons or something and I could have sworn he’d have gone with me regardless of what I said or did! Instead, just as I’d begun to resign myself to the fate of having him looking over my shoulder and hissing everypony away from me, he’d suddenly stopped mid-rant, squinted into the distance, and flown off without so much as a word of explanation. I couldn’t see what had caught his attention so, chalking it up to his usual inexplicable behavior, I’d taken my leave before something else decided to halt me.

Maybe I should have brought him along? He’d undoubtedly have made the visit awkward and strained even if he’d agree to restrain himself from lashing out at anypony who dared to as little as look at me, let alone approach and chat, but maybe Spike or somepony would have a suggestion on what to do about him, too? Oh well, I could always ask, assuming the advice about the renegades wouldn’t be applicable to him, and they didn’t necessarily have to meet him to give advice! Not that I didn’t want Spike and my pony friends to meet my brother, but that wasn’t an emergency, and there’d probably be plenty of chances for it later!

I headed for Twilight’s castle, assuming Spike would most likely be there, but instead, I caught sight of him in what looked to be the town square. Curiously, he was holding a long scroll, and a bunch of ponies were setting up decorations in the immediate area. Twilight and Starlight were helping too.

I landed next to him as he was inspecting a fire pit.

“Okay, that’s working,” he muttered to himself, then checked his scroll. “Next should be- Ah! Thorax? What the- I mean, hi, I wasn’t expecting you… today… When did you get here?”

“Only this second. Didn’t you tell me to drop by whenever I could?”

“Yeah, but… nevermind. I… guess I… wasn’t expecting you so soon… eheheh…” His eyes darted around and he rubbed the back of his neck. Meanwhile, Twilight and Starlight had noticed me and were looking questions at each other. And why were their auras getting murky all of a sudden?

“Is this a bad time?” I asked Spike.

“What?! No! Why would it be a bad time?” His eye twitched.

“Because you’re obviously preparing for some kind of celebration, and it doesn’t look like it’s meant for me, even if you hadn’t just said you weren’t expecting me right now.” And your and the ponies’ auras are suggestive of confusion and mild panic. “If I’m intruding, you know you can tell me, right?”

“Yeah! Sure! I know I can tell you everything because we’re friends and all that, and friends tell each other stuff, and… yeah…” He was sweating by now and sporting the fakest of fake grins, and I was starting to ask myself how to proceed. Just leaving would be awkward for everyone involved, but would it be less rude to play dumb or to reveal to him that I wasn’t convinced and make him tell me whatever he was trying to hide? But how to get him to tell me?

“...and, uh,” he continued, “this is… not really a celebration, it’s… uh… a friend’s birthday! Yeah, so we’re setting up a party, you know?”

“Yes, there’s a birthday party here later,” Twilight said hurriedly, joining us. “And we were… trying to get it done in time!” She chuckled awkwardly and shot a glance at Spike. “But it would be… rude of us to, uh, exploit you for the work, so, would you like to come to the castle? Spike and Starlight will join us later!”

Spike and Starlight hurriedly nodded.

“Right!” Spike exclaimed. “I’ll just, um… finish up something here… and I’ll come after you two real quick!”

“Okay then,” I shrugged. “I’ll see you, uh, in the castle, I guess…”

I turned around to tell Twilight I was ready to go, but she was already moving away at a brisk trot, apparently not having realized that I wasn’t following yet. I rushed to catch up.

“So, Thorax,” she said, “I know you’ve been in the castle before, but that was just to spend one night and get your medal, wasn’t it?”

“Yes…”

“How would you like a tour?”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that… I’m sure you have more important things to do…”

“No, not really! I mean, other than helping with that… birthday party… but they didn’t really need me to help out! I kind of volunteered to… to pass the time!”

She was lying too now? Would it be rude of me to ask why? And even if it wouldn’t, would she be willing to tell me? I decided to wait a bit, play along, and try to figure out the matter as I went. Maybe an opportune moment would come up to ask a little more directly?

“Well, I don’t want to trouble you…”

“Come on, I’d be delighted to show you around! I’ve been preparing a tour for you ever since I met you and made that promise that Ponyville would always be a safe haven to you along with the Crystal Empire! Of course, I didn’t expect you to become a king before I could give you the tour… Celestia, how time flies…”

Okay, that at least sounded genuine…

“Will Spike know where to find us?”

“Of course! He lives there; he knows the castle like the back of his claw!”

“Okay… if you say so… I guess a tour would be nice…”

“Great!”

She lit up her horn, and before I realized what was happening, there was a flash of purple magic and we were suddenly in front of the castle’s main entrance. I needed a moment to orient myself.

“Thorax?” she asked with a hint of concern in her voice.

“I’ll never get used to teleporting,” I groaned, then shook myself into focus. “Uh, nevermind. Where were we?”

Her face and aura brightened as she opened the castle doors to let us in and started reciting a detailed description of the castle’s creation, basic layout, composition, magical properties, and cultural significance, all of which got covered in the main hallway. I listened with unbridled awe at how detailed she’d arranged the presentation! Even Sunburst hadn’t gotten that thorough at any point while teaching me about pony society! To be honest, Twilight’s lecture may have been a bit too detailed for an average audience, as I caught myself trying to understand some technical detail or other at several points while she, oblivious to my momentary puzzlement, continued her speech, and I was left struggling to catch up with what I’d missed. Her aura was so bright and warm that I didn’t have the heart to interrupt her! After a while, she proceeded to show me around room by room, and there was something to be heard about each of them! Okay, she may have skipped a broom closet or two, but every other room had at least one point of interest to be shared with me! She made it all sound intriguing, and her pleasant, warm aura made the experience that much more enjoyable, but the castle was huge and seemed even bigger from the inside than from the outside; I couldn’t help but wonder how long the tour was supposed to take. A week? At this rate, maybe longer than that, unless things were to get less interesting once we reached the bedrooms. Unless she had a list of distinguished guests who had stayed there and was to say a few words about each of them and the business that had brought them here? The way this was going, I wouldn’t put it past her!

Oh dear. If this was the norm for giving tours, what was a hypothetical tour of the hive supposed to look like? Certainly longer than the one I’d given to the buffalo! Had they left disappointed? And if tours were really supposed to be this detailed, how was I supposed to pull it off with any future visitors? We’d never be done!

All that, of course, assuming we’d get any visitors in the future. If we kept our current trend, they’d all be afraid to show up, and the few that would gather up the guts would probably get chased away! Had I forgotten what I was here for? Twilight was so ecstatic with the ordeal that I still didn’t have the heart to interrupt her even for a question related to the tour itself, but couldn’t this have waited for some other time? Or couldn’t she have gone with the abridged version, assuming there was one? What if this was the abridged version? I really needed to find Spike!

Actually, could Twilight help me instead?

I started working up the nerve to break the spell and ask her, but as it turned out a few rooms down the line, I didn’t have to. Spike himself showed up! Finally! How long had it been? An hour? Two? Nevermind; he was here and that was all that mattered! We could finally discuss my problem! Unless Twilight intended to shrug off the interruption and continue with the tour as if nothing had happened?

“Hey guys,” Spike said. “Sorry it took so long… I had some… things… to take care of.”

“It’s fine,” I said hurriedly. “How did you find us?”

He snickered. “After Twilight’s endless rehearsing, adjusting, re-rehearsing, re-adjusting, and re-re-rehearsing the tour- wait, was that enough ‘re-’s in ‘rehearsing’? - anyway, after all that and my forced volunteering as a critic throughout the process, I knew exactly where you guys would be! Eh, give or take a couple of rooms.”

“Oh.” Wait, forced volunteering?

“Is the… birthday party… coming along fine?” Twilight interjected.

“Actually… can I borrow you for a second?” He grabbed her by a hoof and pulled her out of the room. “Sorry Thorax!”

“But-”

Great. Now they were both gone and I was left by myself in a random… uh, what was this? Tea room? Why did ponies need a special room to drink tea? I didn’t remember the Crystal Castle having one! And couldn’t tea be drunk anywhere? Did they simply need a fancy name for a surplus room when there were many similar ones in the castle? And what did it matter? If Twilight wanted to have a tea room, a breakfast room, a chair room, and a plushie room, that was her right! She’d earned this castle!

If only she had a talk-to-a-friend room…

Okay, maybe I was freaking out for no reason. Maybe Spike just had to tell Twilight something that wasn’t meant for everyone’s ears, or maybe he needed her help with something that would be done quickly, and they’d be back in a moment. No reason to lose my mind!

Then where had their auras gone to?

Come on, I told myself, just because they may have gone somewhere doesn’t mean they won’t be back quickly! Pull yourself together! They know you’re here and will come back!

Convincing myself to drop the panic act, I sat down in one of the chairs. Twilight wouldn’t mind, would she? Probably not… at the very least, I had no intention of causing damage to the furniture, and the chair was sturdy enough to hold several changelings, though I had to admit I’d seen more comfortable ones, not that this one was uncomfortable as such, just… a little disappointing, that was all. Unless it simply wasn’t meant for someone of my size? I shifted into my old, black self; I probably wouldn’t have experimented like that in Twilight’s presence, but being alone made it only slightly less awkward. Anyway, the level of comfort was about the same in both forms, so I switched back into my new self before somepony came in. Not that anyone did...

Minutes ticked away and my waiting remained unrewarded. On one hoof, I didn’t really mind; the peace and silence was a welcome break from the chaos back at home. But on the other hoof, the chaos wasn’t going to end unless I put a stop to it, and I was wasting valuable time by sitting here like a discarded cocoon! I couldn’t relax knowing what was happening in the hive, no matter how much I willed myself to resist the panic! Eventually I got up from the chair and went pacing around the room. It wasn’t going to help in any meaningful way, but I just had to divert my nervous energy into something!

Spike still wasn’t showing up, and neither was Twilight. Where could they have gone?! This was getting ridiculous!

Had something happened to them?

I wanted to dismiss that idea; this was their home, and Equestria was a nonviolent, low-crime land uninvolved in any wars as far as I knew, therefore, it was unlikely they’d been attacked. Had they had an accident? That was possible, and though I didn’t think it likely, the idea wasn’t leaving my mind.

Should I go look for them?

Again, two conflicted sides fought for dominance in my mind. If they were in trouble, they may need help, and maybe I could provide that help or at least go looking for somepony who could! But if they weren’t in trouble? What if something completely harmless had delayed them? What if they got angry at me for interfering? What if they got so angry that they decided to send me away? What if they stopped calling me a friend if I-

Okay, stop it! Just stop! That won’t happen!

But I could still do something to offend them… friends or not, I wasn’t sure about the exact protocol I was expected to follow! Was I expected to follow a protocol?

But what would some protocol matter if something had happened?

Though still torn between being a polite guest and checking on my hosts, the fear for their safety prevailed even though I didn’t know what I expected to be jeopardizing them, and I opened the tea room doors and stepped into the hallway, only to realize I didn’t know where to go looking for them. Even if I had any ideas, I probably wouldn’t know how to get there! Twilight had yet to show me at least half of the castle, and now that she wasn’t around to point out every little detail of the architecture, everything looked the same as everything else and I had no idea how I was supposed to get my bearings! Even the hive was easier to navigate! How would I know where I’d been and where I was supposed to go? I couldn’t even rely on love auras to act as a beacon of sorts; I could sense several, all coming from different directions, and all of them were tense, some even murky! If any of them were my friends, their auras looked nothing like they had when I’d last seen them! How was I supposed to make any sense of that?

Would it help if I tried to follow one of the auras to its source? Even if it turned out to be no one of interest?

In the old days, such a strategy had been vital to the prey hunters when tracking the soon-to-be-food ponies, and sometimes to fighters and infiltrators too. I’d never even been considered for an assignment that would have relied on figuring out the exact location of a source of a love aura, and because of that, I could only tell roughly where an aura was coming from. Not that it would have mattered right now because there weren’t that many auras to distinguish and track, and anyway, I wasn’t yet entirely familiar with the castle’s layout. I ended up making a wrong turn or walking into an empty room on several occasions because I’d misjudged a direction or a distance! Another thing that complicated matters was that the auras’ sources were moving about, which had to be expected in all honesty, but that did nothing to curb my frustration! In due course, I was so frustrated that I could hardly keep up the whole strategy!

So when I pretty much collided with Spike at an intersection, it came as no surprise to me that I’d failed to register his approaching aura.

“Whoa!” he cried on impact. “What the-”

“Sorry!”

“Thorax? What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t I say I’d be right back?”

“Well, yeah, but… I don’t know… I kind of got bored… and worried something happened to you…”

“What would happen to me? I live here!”

“I know… it’s just, you said you’d be back in a minute and I waited for much longer that a minute…”

“Oh. Right. Must have lost track of time, heh…” He glanced around himself.

“Is something wrong?”

“No! Of course not! What could possibly be wrong here? I mean, this is Ponyville and Twilight’s castle… nothing wrong ever happens here, y’know?”

I tilted my head at him. “Didn’t you once tell me that half of Twilight’s world-saving adventures happened at least partly in Ponyville? And that you get a rampaging beast from Everfree Forest on a monthly basis? And that Starlight broke into the castle once and-”

“Okay, okay, I get it, we get our share of excitement, but there’s nothing going on now! Honestly!”

I wasn’t convinced but decided not to push it for the moment. Maybe it would come up in a conversation at some point? “Okay, if you say so,” I shrugged.

“Hey, wanna go back to the tea room?”

“Will you stick around this time?”

“Uh, sure.” He glanced around himself again. “How did you get so far away from it, anyway?”

“I did?”

“Dude, it’s three levels below us and on the other side of the floorplan.”

“Wow… I never realized…” I made a mental note to give up trying to chase auras unsupervised.

“You’re lost?”

“Kind of…”

“And you find your way in that hive of yours just fine?”

“I don’t know the whole hive inside-out, for the record, but I did grow up there and… well, I guess I understand its logic, so to speak. But this castle… I can count on my hooves how many times I’ve been inside, with a hoof or two to spare. It’ll be another while until I can reliably find my way around it.”

“Eh, fair enough. Twilight and I were confused too in the beginning. I just assumed, you know, since the hive is so chaotic, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure this out.”

“It helps if I know where I’m trying to get to, as in, the room is on the tenth level, east side in the surface layer, or something like that. Or at least, take a right, then left, then up the stairs, and fifth door on the right, that sort of thing.”

“I get it. Maybe I should get Twilight to draw a map?”

I chuckled. “That would help, yes!”

We walked in silence for a little while. Spike led the way, still glancing around himself at every turn and intersection. I didn’t think much of it at first, having assumed he was simply making sure we were on the right path, but pretty soon, my nerves calmed down enough to start perceiving the love aura in a little better detail. A few sources of that aura were still moving about seemingly randomly, but since Spike was here and insisting that everything was alright, I decided to ignore those sources. Spike’s aura was still tense, though, and I assumed it had something to do with why he’d left me sitting alone in the tea room for so long. Did it have something to do with that birthday party in the town, too? He’d been acting weird ever since I arrived! Was he too having problems? But we were friends; if he had something on his mind, why didn’t he want to tell me? Was it simply because I’d hinted at needing help and he didn’t want to burden me with his own worries? Didn’t he know I’d gladly help him out any way I could, even if I could do nothing but listen?

“Okay, here we are,” he said eventually, opening a door. “After- you…”

“You!” barked a raspy voice from inside the room. “Finally! Where have you been?!”

Spike cast a panicked glance at me and gulped. Whoever was in that room, was she the reason for everypony’s strange behavior?

“Uh.. hi…”

“I didn’t come all the way to Ponyville to be left waiting!”

“Sorry… I-”

“Where did you go?!”

“Nowhere! I’ve been… here… the whole time…”

The visitor marched out of the room and I finally got to see her: a blue dragoness, roughly my size, spouting smoke from her nostrils and gritting her teeth worse than Pharynx on the day I’d gotten expelled from military training. Her aura wasn’t much less red-hot than Pharynx’s had been on that day, either, but it had only gotten like that a moment ago; I realized one of the auras I’d been attempting to track earlier must have been hers.

“Then why did I have to tear down this castle to find you if you were ‘here the whole time’?!”

“Um…”

“Spike had something important to do,” I interjected in a hope to calm her. “I think-”

“Oh yeah? And what would that be?”

“Uh, I’m not sure exactly, but I came to visit him earlier today and he kind of disappeared and left me to wait-”

The dragoness faceclawed. “So you treat all of your guests like that?! I can’t believe I expected to learn about friendship from you…”

Something clicked in my mind. “Was your visit planned?” I asked her cautiously.

“Of course it was! Didn’t you see how they decorated the whole town?”

“Spike?”

He was by now biting his lip and wringing his tail so hard that I half expected scales to start popping off. A whimper that might have been a ‘yes?’ escaped his mouth.

“Birthday party, huh?” I stated, glaring at him.

“Uh- I- um- well- What was I supposed to say? I thought Ember would kick your flank all the way back to the hive!”

“...what?”

“Don’t you see how tough and intimidating she is? And you’re so gentle you couldn’t bring yourself to slap a rabid timberwolf to save your own life!”

“So what?” she protested. “Just because I’m tough and intimidating means I go around kicking flanks unprovoked? You think someone like that would be even remotely interested in learning to be friendly?”

“Well I couldn’t know that nothing would provoke you or that you’d restrain yourself! And I forgot to tell Thorax to not show up on this particular day, and now that he did, I didn’t want anything to happen to him!”

“So that’s why you’ve been shutting me out all day?”

“Thorax, I-”

“I appreciate your concern, Spike, but just because I’m struggling with the changelings doesn’t mean meeting Ember would have turned disastrous! You could have at least given it a chance!”

On an impulse, I stormed towards the nearest window and, opening it, flew out of the castle. I could hear Spike shouting after me but didn’t care. Something had snapped in me in that hallway and I couldn’t bear listening to him anymore! I couldn’t believe I’d trusted him against my instincts! Even worse, he’d done something similar once before, way back in the Crystal Empire, and I’d trusted him regardless! He was reliable most of the time, but… if he was to keep relapsing into this kind of behavior… but he’d done so much to help me too and I couldn’t ignore that!

Ugh, why did this have to be so complicated?! I needed a place to sit down and clear my head!

I found it on the outskirts of Ponyville, near a lake currently devoid of ponies. I wasn’t in the mood for wondering why the place was abandoned - in fact, it suited me perfectly - and just slumped onto the ground next to the water. My mind was a jumbled mess of images of changelings bickering and fighting among themselves, of ponies looking down on me, of other creatures refusing to heed my pleas for friendship… of Spike acting like I was a gullible fool…

Maybe I was a gullible fool. I shouldn’t have accepted his excuses so readily when I’d known they weren’t true; I shouldn’t have taken it for granted that he’d tell me the truth afterwards at a convenient moment! I should have pressed for an explanation right away! I should have pressed for an explanation… but how? I’d never been any good at the stern approach! If I had, I may not have needed to rely on Pharynx to defend me all my life, I may not have been a target of constant bullying… I may not have had a reason to run away from the hive, and if I hadn’t done that, I’d never have befriended ponies and learned the power of shared love! Ironically, my meekness had turned me into what I was today against all odds, even though it was a hindrance most of the time, and now more than ever, it was time to learn to set it aside when a stern approach was necessary. If only I knew how!

I absent-mindedly kicked a pebble into the water.

Maybe the stern approach was what I needed with the renegades, too? Not the Chrysalis-fury level of sternness, of course - I doubted I could ever go that far even for the purpose of casual imitation - but something halfway: mot meek, but not murderous either, just enough to get the message across when politeness failed? Oh, but how would I figure it out? Pharynx was the master of harshness, but I didn’t see the point of asking him to teach me; he’d been trying and trying and trying to do just that ever since we were nymphs, all the way up until my escape, and I’d never picked up one little thing! True, I hadn’t been interested at the time, but even if I tried harder now, would he be interested to give it one more try? The way things were going with him lately, he’d more likely mock me and refuse, or gloat about me having come to my senses at last, or something along those lines! And even if he agreed to teach me again and I ended up making some progress, what promise did I have that it wouldn’t take my sternness too far?

But whom else to ask for help? Everypony I could think of was either too friendly to give sternness lessons, or I’d never seen them in action and therefore couldn’t know whether or not to take them into consideration, or were presumably too busy!

I kicked another pebble into the water and jumped in apprehension when a loud thud and a roar resounded just as I was expecting a tiny splash from my pebble. It sounded like it had come from somewhere not too far… maybe from behind that small hill? Then, a couple of thuds more and another roar followed. Curious, I flew up to investigate. Pretty soon I sensed an aura from behind the hill: mostly jumbled, but with a noticeable red-hot overall flavor. That explained the roars, at least!

The thuds were explained pretty soon too when a flying boulder nearly crushed me as I passed over the hilltop. Ember the dragoness was there, punching and kicking at the boulders and flinging them around one after another, pouring that red-hot aura into every move she made yet failing to ease its intensity within herself.

Then she noticed me mid-roar and dropped the boulder she’d probably intended to catapult to the moon.

“You’re still here?” she asked, eyeing me half-curiously, half-suspiciously.

“Uh… yes?”

“Why?”

I stared at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“You left because of what Spike did and I got the impression you didn’t have any other business here at the moment. I figured you were already halfway to the hive or wherever.”

“No, I needed to clear my head first, and… well, I didn’t even get to do what I came here to do, so…” I shrugged. “What’s the point of going home?”

“Hm. I could say something like that, too.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She crossed her arms. “No.”

“Oh. Okay… It’s just, you know, it might help you feel better…”

“I don’t do feelings!”

“Your aura would disagree-”

“My what?!”

“Your love aura.”

She stared at me blankly.

“Okay, it’s called love aura because love is the component we changelings feel the strongest, and the one that’s the most important to us, but it reflects an individual’s overall emotional state. Yours is red-hot at the moment, which suggests you’re angry at something… hopefully not me…”

“I’m a dragon! That’s pretty much our default state!”

“But Spike’s a dragon too, and his aura is nothing like that!”

“He was raised by ponies; figures he’d be like them.” She looked into the distance and huffed. “That’s kind of why I came here…”

“Yes?”

“You know how dragons are fierce and competitive?”

“I’ve heard stories, yes.”

“I was like that until not that long ago, then the time came for the old Dragon Lord to step down and a new one to take his place, and Spike helped me win the competition for the throne against all other dragons. He did it out of what I eventually learned was friendship - long story - and it… kind of… started to look like it might not be such a senseless concept as dragons normally see it. I spent a lot of time thinking about it and came to the conclusion it can benefit us, and since Spike was my first contact with friendship, he seemed like a logical choice if I wanted to learn more about it and, with any luck, to figure out how to get the other dragons to give it a try. Somehow I don’t think I got what I came here for…”

“Didn’t he welcome you and-”

“Oh, he welcomed me alright. You saw the decorations. There was a welcome committee and a musical band and everything. He even tried holding a speech in my honor.” She rolled her eyes. “Then I asked about Twilight and he let it slip that she was in the castle so I asked to go there and see her, and we did, except he sat me down in the, what’s it called, dining room? Whatever, he told me to wait a second and disappeared, and I went looking for him-”

“-and eventually you ran into him taking me around. And I didn’t know today would be inconvenient for him and wondered why he coerced Twilight into giving me a tour of the castle and then showing up later only to disappear with her…”

“You went looking for him too?”

“Yeah…”

She burst out laughing. “And he must have been looking for one or both of us during that time! No wonder I couldn’t find him!”

“Twilight and probably a few other ponies must have been looking for us too.”

“How do you know that?”

“I sensed sources of love aura moving around the castle-”

“Oh, right, the freaky changeling sense. Wait a minute… Spike called you Thorax… that wouldn’t be the same ‘King Thorax’ who sent me a declaration of peace a little while ago, would it?”

I smiled sheepishly. “Maybe…”

She snickered. “Might have guessed. You and that courier were acting so polite and timid that I’d never take you for changelings if I hadn’t seen with my own eyes that he could shapeshift and didn’t fizzle into that black thing when Garble bonked him unconscious!”

Garble? Bonked? “Uh…”

“Nevermind,” she said hurriedly.

“Hey, I think we owe Spike an apology,” I said. “At least I do. Or at least an explanation. I mean, the whole thing fell apart for all three of us because of a misunderstanding…”

“...and lying and pretending,” she interjected. “Or do you ignore that out of habit?”

“No, of course not! Okay, he lied to us, but I know him! He must have done that as an attempt of damage control!”

“And we should be apologizing or explaining, why exactly?”

“For jumping to conclusions, if for no other reason.”

She just stared at me with a frown that again reminded me of Pharynx.

“It’s what friends do?” I tried.

“...ugh, fine. But don’t expect me to get all sappy or whatever ponies do when apologizing!”

“You don’t have to, but don’t hide your feelings, either. You’ll feel much better!”

“What, because my aura is too hot for you, wimp?”

I winced.

“...I’m guessing I said something I shouldn’t have?”

“I’ll tell you later. Come on, let’s find Spike!”

Trigger

We’d started for the castle but our path was cut short by noticing Spike in the town square, taking down the decorations with Twilight and Starlight. None of them saw us arrive; hardly surprising, given their deflated auras.

“So how do we do this?” Ember whispered to me.

“Well… we say we’re sorry and… You’ve never apologized for anything?”

She opened her mouth as if to shout, then reconsidered and said, “Dragons don’t do all that ‘apologizing’ thing.”

“It’s not that hard. You just need to be calm and patient and not allow yourself to lose control over your anger, even if he says or does something that flares it up. I’m guessing he won’t mean to insult anyway, and if he has to start over to get the reply right, let him. I’ve found it often helps to tell people how you feel about what they did, but don’t go on the offensive while doing it.”

“That’s the exact opposite of a dragon’s instinctive response,” she groaned. “Fine, let’s get it over with.”

We landed next to Spike and, as he still hadn’t noticed us, I tapped him on the shoulder.

“Oh,” he said when he finally saw us. “You’re back. Go ahead, yell at me. I deserve it!”

Ember looked questions at me and I shook my head slightly, then focused on Spike.

“It’s alright, buddy, we’re not mad at you. We jumped to conclusions-”

“Not mad at him?!” Ember barked, throwing her claws up in the air. “Why would we- uh, I mean, I didn’t like how you handled the situation, but I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. I’m… uh… sorry?”

Spike stared at her blankly. I gave her an encouraging nod.

“I mean, that was stupid and disrespectful of you and I’ll crush you like- ahem, I… I was… erm… offended and upset… but I understand now that I overreacted and, um, will try not to do it again…” She leaned in to me and whispered, “Was that good?”

“It was!”

“Wow…” Spike muttered.

“And I’m sorry too,” I continued. “I shouldn’t have run off like that without giving you a chance to explain yourself!”

“And I should have told you from the start how things stand and let you have a say in how to go about it. From the looks of it, I was fretting over nothing!”

“Told you,” Starlight interjected, then went back to dismantling the fire pit.

“You know what?” Ember exclaimed. “It worked! I’m not angry anymore!”

“Glad to hear it,” Spike said. “Now we can get back to- Oh. The party’s all cleaned up… How did they do it so fast? Sorry Ember, I was going to throw a party in your honor but…” He shrugged. “Wanna just hang out? We can probably still salvage some of that friendship training…”

“Sounds good, but I think someone else wants in, if you can manage it all.”

“Who-” He slapped himself. “Oh, right! Sorry, Thorax! I completely forgot about you! Uh, why don’t we all sit down at Sugarcube Corner?”

We did. Spike ordered a tray of cupcakes for the whole group, which arrived promptly so he dove right in, and Ember chose instead to munch on the tray itself. I wasn’t hungry at the moment so I just sat watching them.

“Ahhh, that’s the stuff…” Spike sighed contentedly after gulping down the fifth cupcake. “Didn’t realize I was so hungry! And Thorax, I don’t think you came all the way here to not tell us what’s troubling you!”

“I was waiting for you to finish eating. You looked a little too invested in those cupcakes to follow a conversation.”

“...you know, you might be onto something there.” He set down the sixth cupcake and pushed it away from himself. “Okay, you have my undivided attention.”

So, finally, I launched into a tirade on everything not going the way it should in the hive, most of which revolved around the renegades, but I also touched on the matters of Pharynx and my overall lack of leadership skills and experience and the resulting concerns about my suitability for the role destiny had thrust upon me. I’d intended to keep it short and to the point, but the floodgates had opened and there was no turning back or stopping what had been unleashed! I may have said the gist of it in the first couple of minutes and that should have been enough to give them the idea of what was going on, but all the accumulated frustrations needed an outlet, and before I knew it, it was getting dark and I was still rambling. I was vaguely aware of Ember having gradually devoured the cupcake tray and moving onto the vase and of Spike helping himself to the remaining cupcakes, but to their credit, they seemed to have survived the ordeal somehow, even if they looked drained by the end. I couldn’t blame them!

“I see your problem,” Ember said after giving it a few moments to make sure I was done. “You’re too gentle. You want them to take you seriously, you’ve got to show some teeth.”

“I know, I kind of figured it out earlier today at some point,” I sighed. “But I don’t know how! And even if I do bring myself to show some teeth, as you put it, how will I know I’m not overdoing it? I don’t want to end up becoming like Chrysalis!”

“Then you gotta practice,” Spike said. “And as luck would have it, I think Ember would be a great teacher! How ‘bout it, Ember? Think your dragons can fend for themselves a little longer while you help out a friend?”

She grinned. “Now we’re talking! Hey Thorax,” she raised her voice, “let’s go kick some pathetic pony flank!”

I winced and everypony within earshot scrammed away screaming. Ember looked around.

“Oops,” she said. “Probably shouldn’t have said that so loud…”

“Why would you want to attack ponies?!”

“That was supposed to be a practice prompt! You were supposed to stop me, or talk me out of it, or something!”

“Oh.”

“Guys,” Spike interjected, “maybe we shouldn’t do this in the middle of the town. The point is to help Thorax become more assertive, not to terrorize the townsfolk.”

“Good idea. Any ideas where we should go?”

“The castle?”

“Won’t Twilight and Starlight object to us rampaging there?”

“Nah, this is nothing compared to some other things they faced. I bet they’ll even want to join us!”

So we went there after Spike paid for the cupcakes and promised to the shop owner to bring a new tray and vase at the soonest convenience.

“Okay, take two,” Spike announced after we’d found a room in the castle. “Ember, go!”

“Thorax!” she growled bloodthirstily. There was no matching malice in her aura, therefore I knew she was putting on a show, but the tone of her voice still sent shivers down my carapace. “See those pathetic ponies there? I’m gonna kick their flanks!”

I flinched involuntarily. “Uh… please leave them alone…”

She faceclawed. “Is that supposed to convince me?!”

“I guess not…”

“Then try again!”

“Leave them alone…” I spoke a little louder.

“I can’t hear you!”

“Sorry…”

“No sorries!”

“Sor- uh, I mean… um…” I gulped.

“What is wrong with you?! You’ll never get anywhere like this!”

I hung my head. “That’s what Pharynx always used to say…”

Spike put a reassuring claw on my foreleg. “It’s okay, Thorax,” he said. “You’ll figure it out, you just need a little more time!”

“I’m not sure it’s that simple… Pharynx spent years trying to teach me to stand up for myself and didn’t get anywhere. What difference will one evening make?”

“How about reversing your roles so Thorax can see what it’s supposed to look like?” Starlight suggested.

“What good will that do? I need him to come up with stubborn replies either way but he already looks ready to hide under the table, and we haven’t even started!”

“Ember’s not far from the truth, and anyway, I know what fierceness looks like, I just can’t bring myself to act that way.”

“How else will you get the renegades to listen? This should have been the first thing you tried and it’s the literally the only one you haven’t!”

“I know, but… are you sure there isn’t a less… violent way?”

“Thorax, being nice is admirable, but there are times when the nice approach just doesn’t work, and this is one of those times.”

“But… what if I go too far with it? I don’t want to become like… like her…”

“I don’t think you’ll ever be at risk for becoming anything even remotely similar to Chrysalis,” she said. “Judging by what I know about her and what I’ve seen of you so far, you simply don’t have it in yourself! Your absolute worst will probably be just about enough to get the renegades to take you seriously with no risk whatsoever of crossing that line you’re so afraid you’ll cross!”

“But if I get used to acting like this, that line could get so close that I may not even realize if I cross it…”

“I seriously doubt you’ll ever run that risk,” Spike said. “We all doubt it. But even if you do, you’ve got friends to keep you in the safe zone. So no worries, okay? Just relax and show those renegades who’s the boss!”

“You can do it!” Starlight said. “I know you can! Didn’t you already do something similar when we were fighting our way through the hive to save our friends from Chrysalis? This is the same thing, only verbal!”

“I did do that,” I mused. “But our friends’ lives were on the line!”

“And this time it’s your subjects’ lives on the line! Aren’t they worth fighting for?”

She was right! This wasn’t unlike the rescue we’d pulled a couple of months ago; the reformed changelings were already suffering considerably and it was up to me to put an end to it! They weren’t even some random drones anymore; I’d developed something of a friendship with some of them, or a pleasant acquaintanceship at the very least! But if I wanted to stand in their defense in any meaningful way, I needed the right mindset, something similar to what had happened during that fateful rescue mission… could I produce that mindset at will? And just as importantly: could I snap out of it at will?

I asked the others about it.

“I think you can,” Twilight said; she’d been watching us silently up to that point. “My friends and I have been in such situations several times. The mindset wasn’t easy to arouse at first, probably in part because we were still struggling with the same thing as you are, but we always managed to find some trigger for it, and the more times it happens, the easier it gets. If Fluttershy could do it when facing a dragon twice the size of my castle, so can you! Ooh, how she blew our minds that day… but I digress. The point is, now that we seem to have found the root of your problem, we can work on it.”

“How?” Starlight asked.

“By helping Thorax find a trigger within himself so he wouldn’t have to rely on external stimuli to get there. But first, I want to test a hypothesis, if you don’t mind.” She got up from her cushion and whispered something to Ember, who grinned mischievously and nodded.

“Hey Spike,” she said, “remember earlier today when I apologized for snapping at you?”

“Yes… what about it?”

“I take it back! Dragons don’t apologize!”

“What-”

“Ember?” I said, incredulous. “I thought it made you feel better!”

“What does it matter how I feel? I made a fool of myself so much that even Twilight the Pony Princess says I’m laughably weak!”

“But-”

“Shut up! I’m not weak and I’m gonna prove it to you!”

Her aura was starting to get seriously red-hot! What had happened?

“I don’t like the sound of that…” Spike muttered.

Ember cracked her knuckles. “Don’t think you’re getting out of this in one piece, shrimp!” she growled. “You insulted me and I’m gonna make you pay!”

“Ember, please-” I tried, hoping to talk some sense into her, but it was too late; Spike was already engulfed head-to-tail in her firebreath!

“No! Stop!” I cried, and as she was showing no intention to obey, I transformed into a huge manticore and, only half-aware of my actions, swung a paw at her, hurling her across the room, where she would have made a dent in the wall if it weren’t made of solid crystal, and the very next second, I was right there on top of her, pinning her to the ground. “What is wrong with you?!” I growled. “If he’s dead, so help me…”

To my surprise, her aura went completely calm and she grinned.

“That’s how you do it,” Twilight said.

“Told you you had it in yourself!” Starlight added.

“What?!” I muttered. “But Spike… she-”

“Relax, buddy, I’m fine!” he said, walking into my sight. “Dragons are fireproof!”

It took me a moment to process the scene, and still dazed, I dispelled the manticore form and got off Ember, who calmly got up and dusted herself off.

“Why did you…?” I asked her.

“Because Twilight told me.”

“Yes, I had to improvise a little,” Twilight explained. “I wasn’t sure if you were aware of dragons’ fire-resistance, which could have blown the experiment, but I decided to count on you to forget that detail in the heat of the moment. You see, I had to create a scenario that would trigger your righteous anger, and since Spike is your first friend, it was likely that simulating a danger to him would do the trick.”

“Oh… wow, it worked! It actually worked! But what would you have done if I’d realized Spike wasn’t really in danger?”

“Then Starlight or I would have been Ember’s next target. I took the chance while you were distracted to tell Starlight to put up a shield if Ember comes at her next.”

“And if the shield had failed?”

“It wouldn’t have,” Starlight said. “My magic is strong enough. I know, I tested it.”

I decided I didn’t want to know the details.

“So now that you know that you can indeed be tough,” Twilight continued, “I think you can use this experience to deal with those renegades. If you need a trigger, just imagine you’re doing it to save Spike or any other of your friends!”

“And remember to demonstrate that you mean it,” Ember added. “If they come at you with fierceness at level ten, you have to crank yours up to eleven! And no backing off!”

“Isn’t that too much?”

“You won’t accomplish anything unless you make sure they’re the weaker ones.”

“But don’t overdo it,” Spike said. “Going eleven against their ten is okay, but if they come at you with a three, then you only need to give them a four, maybe five if you’re not sure, but no more than that, or you’ll end up on the path to where you keep saying you don’t want to be.”

“Not that we expect you’ll ever do it willingly,” Starlight quickly added.

“What about not willingly, then?”

She grinned sheepishly. “Eh… I guess it could happen from time to time in the beginning until you figure it out and learn to fine-tune yourself…”

“Great,” I groaned. “I’ll have to practice that now, won’t I?”

“Maybe not,” Ember said. “From what you told us, it sounds like they’re already pretty far gone, so you might have to go all out right away. Even if it isn’t quite that bad yet, it’s an ongoing problem, so overdoing it the next time they give you trouble could speed things up, make them realize more easily that you’re no longer a wimp they can push around as they wish, and get them to calm down entirely instead of needing a series of reminders every time they do something they shouldn’t, which again would require your constant supervision of them to make sure they don’t miss a lesson.”

“Because that’s how dragons do it?” Spike quipped.

“No, because that’s how winners do it,” she quipped back. “Dragons just happen to be one of them. Well, some dragons, anyway!”

“Heh,” he sighed. “I’m more of a pathetic pony…”

I picked him up and hugged him. “You may be more like a pony than a typical dragon, but I love you just the way you are!”

“Aww, pfffsh…”

“And who knows?” Ember said. “When you grow up, you might just put the rest of us to shame!”

We all converged into a group hug. I wasn’t sure who initiated it, but it didn’t matter; I would never refuse participation in a group hug, and it would never stop being one of the best feelings imaginable! Ember seemed to disagree, judging by her frustrated groan, but that groan wasn’t nearly as sour as the ones I routinely received from Pharynx while attempting to hug him!

“Okay,” Ember said when we released one another, “this has been great, and I think I kind of got a close enough glimpse of friendship for the time being, so I’ll be on my way if you don’t mind.”

“You could spend the night here,” Twilight offered.

“Thanks, but… I think I’d better go.” She walked over to the window and opened it after some fumbling. “Maybe next time,” she added before taking off into the night.

“Bye! Hope to see you soon!” Twilight shouted after her, waving.

“Safe journey!” Spike joined in.

“Maybe I should go home too,” I said after a moment.

“Aw come on, you just got here!” Spike protested.

“He’s been here all day,” Starlight said, “you just ignored him.”

“Heh… yeah…”

“You’re welcome to stay overnight if you want,” Twilight offered again. “Just because Ember refused doesn’t mean you have to!”

I considered it. “Well, I am kind of tired and would probably have to rest somewhere on the way back anyway… might as well do it here…”

“Great!” Spike exclaimed. “There’s an unoccupied bedroom right next to mine! We can put you there!”

“Sure thing! Um, is it bedtime already?”

“More or less, yeah, we usually go to bed at this hour. But if you want, we can stay up late, or hang out in the morning, or both!”

I chuckled. “Let’s just go with the flow, shall we?”

“Yessir! C’mon, the room’s this way!”

I trotted after him. As we were turning a corner, I heard Twilight say, “Shoot, I never finished giving him that tour!”

Rampaging Beast

The night hours ticked slowly by as I lay awake in bed, trying in vain to fall asleep. It hadn’t looked at first like I’d have that problem again; the day’s events had worn me out, and as Spike and I had settled in a guest room to hang out a little after what seemed like forever, I’d even had to stifle a few yawns! Spike had been notably more energetic at the time but not for long: he’d started to teach me the basics of Ogres and Oubliettes, only to fall soundly asleep within minutes! So I’d taken him to his room and laid him gently in his basket, then gone to bed myself… except, now that I could finally sleep, well… I couldn’t. My mind kept producing one scenario after another, all of them in the context of the renegades I had to confront, and no matter how things went in each scenario, it constantly felt like I was failing or setting myself up for a delayed failure… Was I being too strict? Too gentle? Was I coming up with wrong incentives to get them to listen? And which of those scenarios was the closest to what was going to happen when I finally returned to the hive?

For once, I was jealous of Spike. Even with all the burdens and responsibilities he had to carry, he somehow managed to pull through every time!

He also didn’t seem to have any difficulties falling asleep. Probably staying asleep, too. I had dozed off a few times, only to wake up soon thereafter with a new troubling what-if scenario or five. Whatever his trick was, I wished I could copy it! As it was, the only thing I could do was to struggle against myself.

Dawn found me at last, still in that tormented state, with nothing to show for my struggles but a messy tangle of blankets and probably bags under my eyes, and I came to the gloomy realization that any further attempts to catch at least a short nap were doomed to fail. Besides, I really needed to get on my way; the hive needed me!

Actually, did it? Or was that just a pathetic attempt to delude myself into thinking I was making any difference in the world?

I got out of bed and tidied up the warzone of blankets, then snuck out of the guest room and into the hallway. The castle was quiet and peaceful as I trod along, with a steady aura of ponies dreaming of happy things, beautiful things, untormented by nightmares or worries of their kingdoms crumbling before their eyes while being powerless to stop it… Luna wouldn’t need to save them from their inner demons tonight; she could focus her efforts elsewhere.

Could she have helped me tonight? Or would I have had to be fully asleep for her to do anything? At least I wasn’t distracting her from her own subjects tonight, and she had helped me several times before… I didn’t want to impose such high expectations on her, whether or not she was aware of them!

A flicker of an aura suddenly stirred on the other side of a door I was passing by; hoofsteps sounded beyond the same door and it opened to reveal a half-awake Twilight with a somewhat messy mane.

“Thorax?” she mumbled. “What’s happening?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said hurriedly, before she could get worried. “It’s just dawn, and I couldn’t sleep, so…” I shrugged.

“I think I might have some lavender extract around here somewhere… Luna says it helps with insomnia…”

“Thanks, but… I was thinking… the night’s pretty much over anyway, and I’ve really been away from the hive long enough so… I hope I’m not being too rude, but would you mind if I leave?”

“Now?”

“Well… if it’s okay with you… Nothing personal, just… you know…”

She nodded. “Royal duties, of course, I understand. Spike and Starlight won’t wake up for a while anyway, and they’ll understand too. I’ll tell them.”

“Thank you,” I said, embracing her in an awkward hug. “I’ll do my best to find time for a purely casual visit one of these days, I promise! If you’ll have me, that is…”

“What are you talking about? Of course we’ll have you! Safe journey, and say hi to those lovely drones I met earlier!”

Nothing much happened on my journey back, save for a quick nap on the outskirts of Appleloosa and another on a branch in the jungle when fatigue had finally gotten to me, and I was safely home again. Things had gotten no better in my absence: the red-hot aura was blazing so furiously that I could easily sense it from almost beyond the border of the badlands! I hurried closer, feeling my heart rise into my throat again. What were they up to this time? Did I even want to know?

In the throne room, I found a lot of them arguing, once again oblivious to my arrival. I must have expected a bloodbath, and though their auras and venomous glares screamed that they were all this close to turning my fears into reality, they were only arguing! I couldn’t believe it! Had they finally learned some self-control? It felt almost too good to be true, but if this was to prove to be even the slightest bit of an improvement, I could hug them all and put up a celebration! Could it be? Maybe I wouldn’t even have to resort to doing it Ember’s way, at least for the time being!

Oh, who was I fooling? That collective aura looked hopeless enough regardless of the outward manifestations; this couldn’t go smoothly yet!

But what were they arguing about? I couldn’t make any sense of the cacophony! Try as I might, the best I managed to make out of it was ‘we have to fight it, you idiots!’ and something that sounded vaguely like ‘Thorax would never allow it!’, but that narrowed things down about as much as if they hadn’t said anything. I tried getting any nearby drone’s attention, but that didn’t work either. I was pretty sure Pharynx noticed my attempts but he seemed to be deliberately ignoring me. Surprise, surprise, I reminded myself with an eye roll.

Okay, the nice approach wasn’t working, again. I decided to try Ember’s advice, or at least as close to it as I could bring myself to get.

“Can you stop arguing for a moment?” I shouted with what I hoped was enough force. It wasn’t.

If you need a trigger, imagine you’re trying to save Spike, Twilight had said. Maybe it was time to put that theory to the test! I tried to picture my friend in the heat of that red-hot aura, and actually felt something stirring in me! If I could get it to wake up and take over-

“SHUT UP!” my brother suddenly bellowed to the top of his lungs, louder than I’d ever heard him, loud enough that his voice must have reached the Crystal Empire! More importantly than blowing my mind as well as eardrums, it had worked! The throne room was completely silent save for the shuffling of hooves and all eyes were on the two of us.

“Ahem. Thank you, Pharynx,” I said, and he snorted and turned away. Oookay… first things first, and Pharynx was a mystery all by himself anyway… “What is going on here? Why are you all arguing?”

“Congratulations, Your Highness, you only now noticed not everything has been sunshine and rainbows in this ridiculous little fantasy you’re trying to create?” one of the renegades sneered.

“I know what’s been going on,” I said firmly; though Pharynx’s deafening command for silence had deflated some of that spirit of righteous anger that had begun to rise within me, some of it still remained, and against my deepest instincts, I encouraged it to grow stronger, fed it the contempt and venom in the renegade’s words to help it grow faster; it was starting to look like I was going to need every bit of it! “And it stops right now. I don’t know whether you have a problem with me, the way I want to run the hive, or both, but it doesn’t matter. I should have never allowed it to get this far out of control but that’s a mistake I don’t intend to repeat!”

“Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it, oh mighty one?”

Uh-oh. I had no idea! But I couldn’t let him see it! Think, Thorax, think!

“What are you gonna do, huh?” the guy taunted me as he flew up above the others so he could get in my face. “Beg us into submission?”

A drop of venom on the tip of his fangs snapped me out of it. If they come at you with fierceness at level ten, you have to crank yours up to eleven and no backing off, Ember had said. This had to be a ten!

I transformed into a manticore of twice the normal size and swatted the renegade into the distance just like I’d done with Ember, only this guy careened off so far that he became a mere speck on the horizon. The red-hot aura all around me dissolved instantly and was replaced with something jumbled but with a considerable component of murky chill that I’d never expected, let alone wanted, to produce in anyone.

Surprise and fear, if I could read an aura at all.

Had I crossed the line?! Goodness, I hoped not! This could just be a reaction to the kind of behavior everyling had grown accustomed to not expect from me… but what if it wasn’t? What if they would have responded the same if Pharynx or Chrysalis had done the deed?

I’m sorry, uh… whatever your name is… please don’t be mad at me! I’m new to all this assertiveness thing! Just tell me if I’ve gone too far and I promise I’ll never do it again!

“Well, look who finally decided to climb out of the gutter,” Pharynx quipped. Psycho smirked and Grim attempted to hide a chuckle.

I reverted into myself and looked at them incredulously. At them, and at the renegades, who had all mysteriously calmed down in the meantime, and were looking like they might stay that way, at least for now.

“Wait a minute, guys… you’re okay with me acting like that?!”

“Yeah, we are,” Grim said. “Those guys really had it coming, if I may say so.”

“And I’m glad someone finally succeeded where I kept failing all these years,” Pharynx muttered. “Assuming you don’t relapse into stupidity again…”

“...oookay,” I said after a moment of awkward silence. “Anyling care to tell me what you were arguing about this time?”

They all started talking over one another again. I rubbed my temple as a mild headache was starting to form. So much for getting them to behave for more than a few seconds… Now what? Surely I wasn’t supposed to turn into a manticore again and start hitting everyling in sight?

“Guys, please!” I moaned. “One at a time!”

By some unexplained miracle, the throne room went relatively silent again. Could it be an aftereffect of what I’d done to that brazen renegade a minute ago? I didn’t want to put too much hope in seeing it last longer, but… if only it would! It would make things a whole lot easier for me until I came up with a less violent way to calm them down!

Hornet stepped forward.

“A maulwurf was sighted in the badlands shortly after you left for Ponyville,” she said. “It hasn’t yet come so close to the hive to trigger a full alert, assuming you haven’t done away with the alert protocols at some point when I wasn’t paying attention, but it does seem to be getting closer and it’s probably only a matter of time until it decides to invite itself here.”

“We’ve been worried,” another drone continued. “And with you away for the time being, we weren’t sure how to proceed.”

“I told you how to proceed a thousand times, but you wouldn’t listen!” Pharynx barked.

“That’s because Thorax probably wouldn’t approve!”

“So what? We could have gotten rid of the pest several times over before he came back, and then he could disapprove all he wants!”

“But there has to be another way!”

“Then why didn’t you think of one if you’re so smart?”

“It’s hard to think with all this arguing!”

“So hard that you couldn’t think of finding a quiet little corner where your brilliant mind wouldn’t get distracted?”

“There aren’t any! You think I haven’t tried?”

“Guys,” I interjected, “can we please calm down for one minute?! Pharynx, please tell me your plan wasn’t to kill the maulwurf…”

“Well, it wasn’t a mandatory outcome, at any rate,” he shrugged.

I buried my face in my hooves and groaned.

“Told you!” the drone exclaimed, and a red-hot surge flashed in Pharynx’s aura.

“So? As if I didn’t know he wouldn’t let us force the thing away!”

“Can’t you even consider a non-violent approach first?” I asked him.

“Would a maulwurf?”

“You can’t know until you try!”

He groaned and rolled his eyes. “...and here we go. Congratulations Thorax, you’ve plunged so deep into stupidity that you’ve set a new record!”

“Do you have a suggestion on what to do about it? Other than killing it or beating it up, I mean.”

“That depends on whether you’re merely suicidal or trying to get everyling killed.”

“...I’ll take it as a no, then.” I sighed. “Anyling else have any suggestions?”

Save for half the renegades rolling their eyes and a few reformed ones whispering among themselves, I got no reply.

“Well…” Zygoma said eventually. “...if you don’t want to kill it, the next best thing would be to get it to go away…”

Finally something! “Anything specific in mind?”

“I’m not sure… maybe if we could lure it away somehow… except there’s not much we could do it with. Food could work, or maybe a suitable mate-”

“If you’re suggesting we bring in another maulwurf…” Pharynx growled.

“I’m not! I wasn’t even gonna suggest that one of us pretends to be the other maulwurf! Though that might actually work…” she mused.

“Whether or not it might, I’m not comfortable with sending any of us to do it,” I said. “So that leaves the food, I guess.”

“Are you crazy?” Pharynx interjected. “The hive is the biggest buffet table in the entire wasteland even with all the plants you had us sprouting around! How in the name of eggshells do you propose to make something else more attractive?”

“Uh, there’s a jungle up north-” Sleuth said.

“And it’s way over there, and we’re right here under the thing’s snout!”

“Didn’t you just say they eat plants?”

“They’re omnivores, Mister Paid-Attention-In-Training, so don’t get it in your head that it’ll shrug us off just because there’s a moss salad sitting around everywhere!”

I considered this. “What if we rearranged the vegetation in such a way that there’s less of it in the hive itself and more of it in the wasteland?”

“I don’t think we have enough plants to make that much of a difference,” Antenna said. “I did plant a lot, but we’d probably have to use it all up to get the maulwurf interested enough to draw its attention away from the hive.”

“And if we set up a trail of plants leading to the jungle?”

“Eh, maybe… but it would still sacrifice most of what we’ve grown, and we’d have to rearrange the plants already growing in the wasteland if we don’t want the maulwurf to stray from the path we lay out for it…”

“It’s a lot of work, but I think it’s worth a try. Can you do it?”

She let out a sigh. “I won’t lie, Thorax, I’ve grown really attached to my plants. I’d hate to see them go… but if it’s for the good of the hive… I’ll do it.”

“Thanks-”

“Don’t either of you see the flaw in that strategy?” Pharynx exclaimed.

“What flaw?”

“Flaws, actually. Plural. One, you have no guarantee it’ll work. What’s your backup plan if it doesn’t? I’ll bet my fangs you have no idea! Two, you can’t do that in the span of a few seconds, and I don’t think Sparkle the Pony Princess herself could either, even with all that fancy magic! The maulwurf could get to you before you’ve even started, and what then? And what is the hive supposed to do in the meantime? Be a sitting duck and pray the beast doesn’t show up?”

“The drones could hide inside-”

“Third, even assuming that nothing goes wrong and the maulwurf falls for it, what’s stopping it from coming back later? And what’s stopping other maulwurfs from dropping by at any time? It could happen two days from now and you’ll have nothing left to lure them away with!”

“How likely is that?!”

He groaned and rubbed his forehead. “I’m wasting my time here…” With that, he buzzed his wings and was gone from the throne room.

I stared after him, confused. Why did he always have to be so paranoid?

“How often do we usually get maulwurfs?” I asked noling in particular. Noling saw it fit to answer, either. Did they even know?

I was about to ask that when Hornet blurted out that same question at me.

“How would I? I wasn’t authorized to know anything and hardly ever had an excuse to get out into the open. The only way I could have known a maulwurf was attacking was if it had breached the section of the hive I happened to be in-”

“Okay, yeah, I get it. Sorry. I keep forgetting you were, uh…”

“Insignificant and disposable,” I suggested.

“...well, if you want to call it that… anyway, you’re right, you wouldn’t have known. There isn’t really a pattern, to be honest. I remember a sequence of several within a month, and there was a period when we didn’t get any for over a year, but most of the time there’s a few months’ peace between sightings and that’s as close an estimate as I can give you. I should also point out that we never allowed them the time to get anywhere close to the hive. A team always got deployed immediately upon sighting and the whole thing was usually over in about an hour, sometimes even less.”

“Were you… killing them?”

“Sometimes, if they were especially stubborn. But it wasn’t always necessary; it was possible to chase them off, or even to catch one for advanced combat training… okay, you’re probably not interested in that…”

“So, bottom like, Pharynx could be overreacting?”

“...that depends on the maulwurf,” she shrugged.

“Okay, but, uh… how do I put it? If I were to tell you to rearrange our plants to lure the maulwurf away, given your overall experience with them, would you urge me to reconsider or would you trust your chances to not have to rely on force as the backup plan?”

She considered this. “So, I would be allowed to fight if the luring away fails?”

“Yes.” I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t expect anyling to agree to go get eaten…

“Then what the heck, I’d give it a try and keep my eyes open.”

“Would anyling disagree?” I spoke to the whole crowd.

Half of them raised a hoof, mostly renegades.

“Which of you are not disagreeing on the grounds that you’d rather fight?”

There were many groans and grumbles but all of the renegades and some of the reformed drones lowered their hooves, and only a dozen or so reformed hooves remained in the air.

“Okay, that settles it,” I declared. “Antenna, Grim, start uprooting the plants or picking leaves or whatever you think would work best. Hornet, Psycho, plan a route along which to position the plants and select a team to help move them. If you need anything, you know where to find me!”

Threats Old and New

A couple of days later, I was discussing some maintenance issue with Proboscis when Pharynx flew into the throne room with a large bag in tow, interrupting the conversation. Unfazed by the effect his arrival had had on us, he turned the bag over and two unicorns dropped out.

“Trespassers,” he declared.

“Hey! We were just-”

“Starlight, Sunburst?! What are you guys doing here?”

“Visiting you… at least we were attempting a visit when this guy ambushed us. What’s going on? The advice Ember gave you didn’t work?”

“It gave me a start but it’ll probably be a while until I get some solid results. Please excuse Pharynx, he-”

“Wait a minute…” Sunburst took a closer look at his captor and got a snarl in return. “You’re Pharynx?!”

“What’s it to you?”

“Thorax told us so much about you-”

He rolled his eyes. “Well ain’t that wonderful.”

“-and I was hoping to meet you one day-”

“We met already.”

Sunburst stared blankly from one of us to the other, then adjusted his glasses. “I’m sorry, I don’t seem to remember-”

“Good.”

“Huh?”

“He bit you,” I explained. “I don’t know the details, but you stumbled upon each other soon after I’d left for Ponyville to get Twilight’s help against the impostors, and you must have done something to make him think you were a threat. The venom wiped your memory of the incident.”

“Did I meet him too?” Starlight interjected.

“Not that I know of…”

“What does it matter? You gonna deal with them already or what?”

“Why would I? They’re my friends!”

“How do we know they weren’t the ones to unleash the maulwurf?”

Sunburst opened his eyes wide. “There’s a maulwurf here?”

“What’s a maulwurf?” Starlight asked.

“Pharynx, they’ve been helping me ever since I started living with the ponies. They still are. Why would they send us a maulwurf?”

“Because they’re enemies of the Changeling Kingdom!”

“Former enemies, maybe, but let me remind you that I forged a peace treaty with Equestria-”

“-and a whole lot that’ll do when they stop trusting Celestia blindly and start rioting against us, maybe even organize an invasion in spite of what their precious princesses say! How do you think we’ll fare then? You disbanded our army, your subjects are at each others’ throats so much that they won’t even notice an incoming threat, and we don’t even have the throne suppression field anymore because some genius had to destroy it!”

“Hey!” Starlight protested. “He was trying to save us!”

“Why should I care about you?”

“Pharynx…” I warned.

“Maybe because we took care of him while you weren’t around to do it yourself?”

The reply came in the form of a violent hiss and bared fangs leaking venom.

“Pharynx, stop!” I cried, getting between him and the two ponies. “Leave them alone! It’s not your fault that I was out of your reach! It’s not their fault, either!”

“Fine,” he spat after a moment of tense glaring. “I have better things to do than watch you not get rid of them anyway!”

He stormed off to the edge of the throne room and flew off, though not before hissing at a drone uprooting some vines for the maulwurf lure, who winced in response and turned into a shovel, then tipped over and fell out of sight. A thud and a muffled ‘ow’ mixed with the hum of transformation magic sounded a moment later, and Proboscis was already descending the hive’s outer wall to the unfortunate drone and returned carrying him a moment later.

“I’ll take him to the infirmary,” she said. “Go ahead and talk to your friends. We can finish that discussion later, it’s not urgent.”

“I’m sorry about this,” I said to them when Proboscis and the injured drone were gone.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sunburst said. “Starlight told me about your renegade problem so we expected some friction here, but if I’d know you were dealing with a maulwurf too-”

“Yeah, about that,” Starlight interjected. “What the hay is a maulwurf?”

“It’s an ill-tempered mole-like beast about the size of a fully-grown timberwolf,” he explained. “It’s not native to Equestria but it still somehow managed to develop complete resistance to magic, at least unicorn magic… not sure about changeling magic, though…” He looked at me inquiringly.

“I’m not sure either, though based on some conversations I’ve overheard, I’m guessing changeling magic wouldn’t be of much help.”

Starlight grimaced. “Sounds bad… Why didn’t you tell us about the maulwurf?”

“Because I didn’t know it was here until I came back from Ponyville. But we’re working on luring it away, so it shouldn’t be a problem for much longer. I think… Anyway, what’s new?”

“We do have some news for you, actually.” Sunburst reached for a saddlebag that had fallen out of Pharynx’s bag along with the two of them, rummaged through it, and pulled out a couple of scrolls and a notebook. “Remember those scrolls you brought me a little while ago and asked if I could take a look?”

“Yes… you did, then?”

“I did, and whoa boy, that was…” he said. “That was quite something, to put it mildly! Never in my wildest fantasies have I imagined I might one day get my hooves on anything remotely as fascinating… I mean, I doubt I’d find anything of the kind in the darkest corner of the restricted section of the Canterlot Archives! Can you imagine such a beautifully and challengingly complex- uh, well, you brought it, after all, so I’m guessing you at least might have a vague idea…”

“I don’t. I told you, I can’t even read any of them. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Oh. Um, maybe you did and I forgot…” He chuckled sheepishly. “Where did you find them, anyway?”

“In an annex of Chrysalis’ bedchamber.”

He exchanged glances with Starlight. “That…”

“That explains so much,” she said what Sunburst must have been thinking too. Their auras turned murky and chilly for a moment.

“Guys, you’re worrying me. What’s on the scrolls?”

“Dark magic,” Sunburst said eventually. “Eldritch dark magic, written in a kind of runic ritual script usually associated with dark magic, except this was a variant I’m not completely familiar with so some guesswork was involved, but anyway, it’s not much of a surprise that you couldn’t read it. The runes are one layer of keeping the meaning of the text behind them unknown to undeserving eyes, and as such, you won’t find them routinely taught anywhere, not even in magic schools without strict supervision and prior assessments of mental state and motives for learning such a thing, even regular reassessments depending on how deeply you delve into the matter… Anyway, I was deemed mentally stable enough and without ulterior motives and allowed to learn as much about dark magic and dark runes as anypony in Celestia’s magic school was able to teach me, but still hit a snag with these even though I thought I knew everything there was to know about dark runes. On a theoretical level, of course.”

“Of course,” I said.

“I had to ask Twilight and Starlight for help translating the parts where I hit a snag, and though they don’t know much more about dark magic than I do, we were still able to guess our way through most of the tricky parts.”

“So… what do the spells do?”

“Several things. A few seem relatively benign but others are… disturbing, to say the least.”

“Let’s start with the benign ones, maybe?”

“I figured as much. Now, I can’t guarantee everything is one hundred percent accurate because of the assumptions we had to make, so excuse us if something sounds weird.”

I nodded.

“For example,” he continued, “one of them seems to induce a state akin to hibernation, except it looks to be designed to keep the target conscious for the duration of the spell. I thought at first it had something to do with cocoons, either the prey or the healing variant, but the consciousness part doesn’t fit, and I’m missing any references to a receptacle-like structure for the target. Does that ring any bells to you?”

“No, not really, and the slime we fill the cocoons with causes unconsciousness, so that part doesn’t fit either.”

“Okay, nevermind, we can put that down as a misinterpretation and get back to it later,” Starlight suggested. “There’s no ticking clock on any of this.”

“Right. Okay, the next one…” He skimmed through his notebook. “This one is incomplete… this one too… Then there’s one that transforms rocks? Or is it earth? We had to guess that part.”

“Oh, I think I know that one!” I focused my magic and extended a part of a nearby wall, then returned it to the way it had been. “Is that it?”

Their mouths hung open. Sunburst blinked and Starlight checked one of the scrolls.

“It fits pretty well,” she mused, staring at the text. “And you can do that?! Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Because I only just learned it recently! It was on a scroll on the same pile where I found the ones I brought to you, only written in normal Ponish.”

“I see,” she said. “May I see that scroll too?”

“Uh-huh! It’s, uh, in my bedchamber… or what used to be Chrysalis’ bedchamber… I would have probably repurposed it for something else, but the drones assumed I’d claim it and proceeded to set it up for me without asking first, and my old sleeping burrow turned out to have already been repurposed a while before, so I kind of just rolled with it… Would you like to see it?”

“Yeah, sure,” Starlight said. Sunburst nodded.

I led them there. “It’s not much by pony standards, and you’ll probably find it weird, but it serves its purpose, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I haven’t had much time to redecorate. Pharynx tore down Chrysalis’ bed and built another because I kept tossing and turning on hers - the slime retained some of her aura - and then he couldn’t sleep as a result, but the rest of it is almost exactly the way it was when I first saw it. Except for one thing.” I took down the walls I’d built at the entrance to the hidden annex. “Psycho said he’d removed some trophies she used to keep here, but that was before I got to see the room for the first time, he didn’t specify what the trophies were, and I decided I’d rather not know. Anyway, this is where the scrolls were.” Only two were left on the table and I grabbed one and sat down with my friends. “This is the construction spell, or at least that’s how I call it.”

They read it together and compared it with the version written in runes and with their own notes, hardly saying a word in the process, which was surprisingly quick.

“Interesting,” Sunburst stated. “The version in Ponish seems to be a pretty stripped-down and simplified one.”

“Either that, or the other one is a more complex derivative,” Starlight said.

“Yes. I wonder now…” He stroked his goatee. “Can you thaumic-date the two?”

I had no idea what that meant but apparently Starlight did. She took both scrolls in her magic and hit them with a spell that looked impressive to my untrained eyes.

“The complex spell is thousands of years old,” she said after the fact. “The simple one, a little over a century but not by much.”

“Okay, so Chrysalis - I’m going to assume it was her - needed two versions of the same spell,” I mused. “But why? What does one spell do that the other doesn’t?”

“From what I can tell, the complex spell is supposed to last longer, though now that we’ve seen what the simple one does, I’m not sure how that would work…”

Starlight’s ears perked up, and this time, I thought I knew what idea struck her.

“That’s because you didn’t get to see much of the hive.”

“...you’ve lost me,” he said.

“The hive used to shift and change randomly,” I explained. “It doesn’t anymore, at least as far as I’m aware of. The throne room and a few other areas were the only permanently static parts. I never thought much of it and assumed it was simply the hive’s default state and that the throne room was kept static through some kind of spell, but if it was actually the other way around…”

“When did the hive stop shifting?”

“A couple of weeks after we transformed, or thereabouts. I thought that was what triggered the change in the hive’s behavior, but it could have been just the spell wearing off… How often would it need refreshing?”

“About two or three times a month, I think. Hmm… it fits… but I’d recommend against refreshing it again. It’s dark magic, and that thing’s risky.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. I’m only just grasping the basics, and all that shifting was complicating things unnecessarily even in the old days, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who thinks so. But wait, what about the simplified spell? Is that dangerous, too?”

“It doesn’t appear to be at first glance, but I’ll have to deconstruct the matrix to be sure. Not even those other spells were obvious as dark magic at first glance. Only the matrix syntax looked a bit unconventional until we dug deeper. That’s what fascinated me so much about it all; most dark magic users don’t bother to hide the nature of their spells and sometimes even take it as a badge of honor. I thought the intention here was to fool a casual observer, but now that we’ve confirmed Chrysalis was using the things, it’s possible she had to do it in order to fool the throne’s suppression field. I guess we’ll never know now that you’ve destroyed the only known object on which we can test that theory.”

“Maybe we can learn something from analyzing the throne fragments,” Starlight suggested. “They may not be active anymore but the magic they contained had to have left a trace! If we can-”

“I’m afraid it’s a little late for that,” I said. “We threw them all away. I didn’t think we’d need them so I said it was okay… If only you’d asked sooner!”

“Oh well, don’t beat yourself about it. It’s not the first unsolved mystery in the world and it won’t be the last. Besides, it’s probably of purely academic interest by now.”

“If you say so… And the other spells?”

“One looks like mind control, possibly what she used on Shining Armor during the invasion of Canterlot.”

“She actually has that?! Why didn’t she use it on me just after I ran off? It would have saved her the trouble of sending out all those hunters… Not that I’m complaining that she didn’t…”

“She couldn’t. The spell is crude and requires physical proximity to initiate, and even that only makes the target docile and obedient. There’s no way to mentally command the target into an action. Plus, for all the little practical use, casting and maintaining it takes an insane amount of energy, so it was more like a last resort than something one can base the whole strategy around.”

“It also looks like a work in progress,” Starlight added. “A couple of scrolls are full of stuff that looks like dead-ended upgrades to the spell. She probably would have polished it into something terrifying given enough time. Good thing you stopped her!”

“Or at least postponed the inevitable,” I said.

“Thorax is right, Starlight. If Chrysalis is skilled enough to invent complex spells and mask their dark-magic origin, then she’ll be able to pick up from memory and finish it sooner or later, depending on what else she has to deal with wherever she is right now.”

We needed a moment to let that sink in.

“Any more spells I don’t want to know about?” I asked, wishing them to say no.

“Yes, several… though they kind of form a set of similar spells…” He bit his lip and looked at the ground. “Though you actually know about them already first-hoof so I’m not exactly telling you anything new…”

“What are you talking about?”

He sighed. “There’s a couple dozen of torture spells in there-”

“More?!” I gasped.

He looked at me blankly. I told him about the scroll of the readable versions of such spells and described them as best as I could, adding a mention of Pharynx taking them away somewhere in spite of my protests.

“...oh.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Starlight muttered, and I wasn’t sure whether she was referring to the spells’ existence, Pharynx’s act, or both. “Got any other scrolls in normal Ponish?”

“No, these were the only ones.”

“First good news today, and I can’t believe I’m saying it.” She joined Sunburst in analyzing what I’d told them about the missing spells and comparing it to the other ones.

“Okay, it looks like there’s dark magic in both versions,” Sunburst stated and was interrupted by my gasp. “You… didn’t use it, did you?”

“I didn’t realize what they were so I tried one a few times… why are you looking at me like that?”

“A few times?”

“Nothing happened when I hit a wall and that table with it so Pharynx suggested I try it on him.” I winced at the memory. “If his behavior all this time is to punish me for what followed, I can’t blame him…”

“But weren’t you subjected to those spells yourself? Couldn’t you have recognized them on the scroll?”

“It’s hard to think straight when you’re on the receiving end, and I don’t have enough experience with magic to guess the purpose of a spell just by reading it. Though, to be honest, I could have paid more attention to that scribbled text at the margins… I don’t speak Olde Equin but it’s not that hard to guess what ‘crucio’ means…”

They nodded solemnly and kept reading.

“Will I have consequences? For using dark magic?”

“Probably not from that one instance, and I doubt you’re in the least inclined to keep using it, so no worries.”

“And Pharynx?”

“Has he used the spells too?”

“Not as far as I know… I meant for getting hit with it…”

“You were hit with them more times than he was, and you don’t seem to have suffered any corruption because of it, therefore it’s unlikely that he’ll be affected, unless he’s developed a habit of casting those spells.”

They continued their analysis. I decided to wait before asking any further questions.

“Like I said, it’s dark magic alright,” Sunburst said in the end, “and the version you brought to me is designed to elicit a stronger response than the one you just described, provided your description is accurate.”

“Either that, or your version is the watered-down one,” Starlight added, “depending on which existed first. Let me thaumic-date this one.” She did that spell again. “It’s… less than a year old…”

“Well, Chrysalis could have written it down at any time-”

“You don’t understand. Thaumic dating reveals when the spell in question was first conceived in its usable form, not when a particular copy of it was scribbled down somewhere. The spells you described just now must be accurate enough as they came back as centuries old, which we could have guessed since you were getting blasted with them all your life. So, something in the past year must have ticked off every nerve in Chrysalis’ body if she decided her preexisting torture spells weren’t painful enough and she needed a stronger set…”

“...and I’m pretty sure I know what that is, or better said, who that is.” I took the scroll in my magic and stared at it as if in trance. Was this the dark-magic corruption that Sunburst had mentioned? Was no amount of pain enough to satisfy her lust for vengeance? “The spells she already had were unbearable enough,” I muttered. “Nevermind that I’m the wimp. Pharynx is the toughest guy I’ve ever known, and to say that the spell I cast on him was too much for him to take…” My face distorted in a pained grimace. “I’d never heard him scream so desperately and I wasn’t even trying to hurt him… If he couldn’t take it, no one can… and I don’t want to find out how much worse these new spells are… I don’t want anyone to find out, ever…”

Something dark and ominous welled up inside me along with the tears I didn’t much care to suppress. Had Chrysalis already used those spells on someone? Had she completed them and committed them to memory, ready to be unleashed at a moment’s notice, or were they still unfinished? The scroll was no longer with her, but did she remember enough of it that it wouldn’t matter? It probably didn’t matter, as she knew every nuance of the spells’ ancestors… but if anyone else came in possession of that dreadful knowledge… The scroll was in my reach; I could make sure only one being could still unleash its abominable power, even if I could do nothing to take it from that one being herself…

I allowed that ominous, painful dread inside me to burst out and fuel my magic; my horn and antlers lit up and engulfed the cursed scroll in flames and kept at it until the parchment dissolved into ashes at my hooves and mixed with the tears dripping down my face. Only then did I feel some semblance of relief, though I knew that as long as Chrysalis drew breath, that relief could never fully blossom.

Starlight and Sunburst understood, apparently. I’d just destroyed a figment of something that was their passion, something they’d never get a chance to study in closer detail, but they hadn’t tried to stop me. I could see in their eyes a flicker of regret for the lost knowledge, but that flicker died out quickly, quenched by a silent realization that no good could be gained by keeping the scroll in existence.

We sat there in silence a while longer. I was grateful for that; I needed a moment to process everything they’d told me, and they probably needed a moment for the implications of what I’d told them to sink in.

“That scroll was meant for me,” I mused. “There’s no other explanation. She’d already made a habit of blasting me with those other spells and had nothing more to throw at me for betraying her. She needed something worse than her worst.”

Starlight touched my hoof. “I’m glad you ousted her, for you and for the rest of the world,” she said. “If she can do that to her own subject simply because he’s trying to find a better way for his kind…”

“...then no one in the world is safe,” I agreed. “I know. I must have known all along, I just… didn’t want to believe it… even though it was staring me in the face… but I always thought I was the problem…”

“The only way in which you were ‘a problem’ is that you didn’t give in to a monster,” Sunburst said, “and that’s only a problem if you have to endure that monster. You weren’t truly a problem and you never will be!”

I nodded in gratitude. We shared another moment of silence.

“So what’s on that other scroll?” Starlight asked.

“Huh?”

“There’s another scroll on the table and you haven’t touched it. What is it? Another spell?”

“Oh! No, it’s, uh…” I levitated the scroll to her. “It’s Chrysalis’ hit list, if I understood it correctly.”

She skimmed through it. “It seems to be spanning for centuries, judging by the names… I’m surprised it doesn’t reach as far as Starswirl or Clover the Clever… and the amount of exclamation marks next to your name is as impressive as the rest of the list… But why is Pharynx on the list too and why with a question mark? Didn’t you say he was her second-in-command?”

“He was until I escaped. Then she started doubting his loyalty but didn’t have proof of anything even though he was by then making plans and improvising ways to keep me in the safe zone as long as possible without anyling finding out. He seems to have succeeded because we managed to sneak into the hive on a rescue mission and she still-”

“Hey, Thorax?” Blade interrupted me. When had he arrived, and how had none of us noticed? “Can I talk to you for a moment?” He pointed towards the exit.

“Uh, yeah, sure.” I glanced back at my friends. “Sorry, I’ll be right back.”

I sensed a hint of murkiness in Blade’s aura as I followed him into the hallway, not enough to think he was afraid in the full sense of the word, but something had definitely gotten him concerned at least.

“What’s wrong?” I asked when we were out of my friends’ earshot, though I wasn’t sure why they couldn’t be trusted to know what had happened. Oh well, I was about to find out.

“The maulwurf’s already at the hive,” he said. “We haven’t even begun laying down the lure and it’s too late now!”

“Whoa, hold on… By ‘at the hive’, do you mean approaching too quickly to make any use of the lure, or-”

A muffled thud sounded from somewhere below. Judging by Blade’s wince, only one thing was likely to have caused it!

“No, I mean it’s… at the hive… as in, trying to breach in as of a second ago…”

I fought the urge to scream and hyperventilate. Now what?!

“How didn’t it get noticed sooner?” I squeaked.

“It kind of was… Psycho rounded everyling up and ordered them back into the hive, and the maulwurf got close while we were retreating. He and Hornet are looking for volunteers to fight it but we need your permission first-”

Another thud interrupted him.

“Um, yes, uh, good idea…” I agreed hurriedly so he wouldn’t notice just how hard I was panicking. “Uh, put the hive on full alert, and send out a defense team when they’re ready… and in the meantime, noling is leaving the hive… um, see if you can transfer the eggs and nymphs somewhere safe, or at least as safe as possible under the circumstances?”

He nodded and galloped off. I hurried back to my bedchamber. I wanted to ask him why I hadn’t been told about the maulwurf any sooner - this was an emergency, and my discussion with Starlight and Sunburst could have waited until a little later - but answering those could wait until later too! I had to tell my friends what was going on! Maybe they could offer some advice?

“Thorax, what’s going on?” Sunburst asked as soon as I was stepping through the gate of the annex. “We heard banging-”

“The maulwurf is here!”

“What?!”

“Come on!” I motioned them to follow and we galloped out into the hallway. “I put the hive on alert and no one is to get out into the open until a defense team chases the maulwurf away, but I could use your help-”

“You have a defense team now?” Starlight interjected.

“Psycho and Hornet are assembling one. Sunburst, do you know any-”

“Why not Pharynx?” Starlight insisted.

Her question caught me off guard and I slowed down to a near-halt, staring at her blankly.

“He used to be a First Commander, right? Why not put him on the job?”

“Starlight, he’s been acting unpredictably ever since I took the throne. I’m not even sure he cares anymore-”

“Yeah he does!”

“I don’t know… if I had to guess, I’d say he doesn’t…”

“Did you ask him?”

“What’s the point? He never gives a straight answer anyway unless it’s to berate me…”

“Then why is he still sticking around?”

“Uh…”

“And not only sticking around, but from what I’ve seen of him, it kind of looks like he’s still trying to do his old job. You know, defending the hive, telling you how to do it better than what you’ve been doing… I don’t think he’s doing it out of pure spite. In fact, I bet he’s trying to get to you and is only grumpy because he keeps failing to be heard. You know, feeling left out and unappreciated…?”

That… I had to admit it made so much more sense than petty rebellion… How had I not seen it myself?

“Starlight does have a point,” Sunburst added. “You guys have different opinions on how things should be done, opinions that stem from your personalities, and each of you is right in some aspects, but you’re at one end of the extreme and he’s at the other and, frankly, what the hive needs is somewhere halfway.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“You guys should cooperate. You should handle the stuff you’re good at when the situation demands it and take the others’ advice for the rest. The maulwurf is Pharynx’s area of expertise and you should have agreed to the strategy he proposed from the beginning. I’m not saying Psycho and Hornet would do a bad job - they probably wouldn’t if they were soldiers - but having Pharynx handle it would have helped with his attitude and gotten the two of you closer.”

“Hmm… it makes sense, but… isn’t there another way to deal with a maulwurf? Something you would do?”

“This is how I’d do it. Maulwurfs may be a rare occurrence in Equestria but they’ve been studied to a reasonable extent nevertheless, enough to know that reasoning with them is unlikely to succeed. You’ve got a maulwurf, you have to use force.” He chuckled at my stupefied glare. “Sorry, Thorax. Not even ponies can do everything without resorting to violence sometimes, and this does call for violence.”

I sighed gravely. “Then let’s get Pharynx if he isn’t already at it!”

The throne room was just up ahead and in a state of chaos with all the drones running about. I saw Hornet and rushed to her.

“How are we standing?” I asked.

“Not good. Psycho and I barely have half a dozen volunteers to go against the thing and even they are reluctant.”

“I would have thought, with all the renegades looking for fights-”

“Nope, they’re just sitting back watching us struggle and mocking us.”

Wonderful. “Even Pharynx can’t knock some sense into them?”

“...isn’t he one of them?”

“What?! He- I- well, he’s still unreformed, but I don’t think he’s truly a renegade…”

“Then why is he always somewhere on his own, rampaging about and sabotaging half the things everyling’s been trying to do around here?”

“I don’t- Look, can we talk about that later? Just tell me where he is and-”

“How am I supposed to know where he is?!”

“You don’t know?!” Calm down, it’s not her fault! “Has anyling else seen him?”

She shrugged and went after her business. I posed the question to several other drones but none could help me. Starlight and Sunburst were close enough the whole time to not need explaining so I just waved a hoof in a random direction.

“Come on!” I urged them. “We gotta find him!”

Firm Hoof

“So I have these ponies to thank for talking some sense into you, huh?” Pharynx asked as we were trotting back to the hive. The rest of the battle team was either having their injuries tended to or standing watch in case the maulwurfs decided to return or any more of them showed up. “Who’d have thought they’d be useful as something more than a food source?”

“You also have ponies to thank for taking care of your brother, in case you forgot,” Starlight reminded him.

“You mean, for spoiling him,” he quipped back. “How will I ever repay you for encouraging him to constantly hug everyone and everything in sight?”

I chuckled. “Come on, I haven’t gone that far! Though, now that you mention it…”

“No. Just no!”

“But it’s been five minutes since my last attempt!” I teased him.

“I swear, if you don’t drop that thought right now, I’m going back there and getting the maulwurfs-”

“Okay, okay, I won’t hug you! For now, at least…”

He looked sideways at me but said nothing.

“Is he always like that?” Sunburst whispered to me.

I nodded in reply. “Believe it or not, this is actually what he’s like on a good day.”

“Okay,” Pharynx said quickly, “if we’re not kicking the ponies out or putting them in cocoons, mind at least telling me why they’re here?”

“Can’t a guy ever have some friends over?” I protested.

“Did you invite them?”

“Not specifically for today-”

“So they have an agenda.”

“-but I told them earlier they can drop by whenever they want- wait, ‘agenda’? What are you talking about, Pharynx? You make it sound like they’re enemies!”

“Am I supposed to believe they just randomly decided to cross half the world because they’re bored with nothing better to do?”

“Actually, we do have something that might be described as ‘an agenda’, though not a hostile one, but that doesn’t mean we can’t-”

Pharynx spun abruptly and blocked his path. “Talk,” he growled.

Sunburst gulped and whimpered at my brother’s murderous glare.

“Leave them alone, Pharynx!” I protested.

“I’ll decide on that when I hear what they want out of you.”

“They don’t want anything! They came to discuss some spells I asked them about!”

He raised an eyebrow at me.

“You know those scrolls we found in the annex of Chrysalis’ bedchamber?”

“Your bedchamber,” he corrected me.

“Whatever. Well, I wanted to know what’s on those illegible scrolls so I took them to Ponyville-”

“You shared classified information with ponies?!”

“They’re my friends, I trust them, and what use of the ‘classified information’ if we don’t know what it is?”

“...fair enough. So these two deciphered the scrolls? What did they find?”

We brought him up to speed. He listened with little interest at first, but his ears perked up at the mention of torture spells, and his aura turned increasingly red-hot as we went into more detail.

“Tell me again, Thorax,” he said in the end. “That time you blasted me. You weren’t especially trying to put your all into that spell? You put what might be described as a normal amount of effort into making it work?”

I nodded.

“I’ll blast her,” he growled. “That thing wasn’t enough for her?”

I opened my mouth to answer him even though I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Don’t answer that,” he interrupted, rubbing his temple. “Of course it wouldn’t. Nothing was ever enough for her and I knew it all along. She was addicted to inflicting pain on others and having you readily available for punishing might have only increased that addiction in the long run. That’s part of why I wanted to turn you into a warrior; I was hoping you’d stop being an unlimited supply of excuses for her to torture you. Of course, she’d probably have switched to someling else eventually, but… At the very least, I was grateful that she’d never decided to use the lethal torture spell on you, but with how stubborn you were, I had no promise that she wouldn’t.”

“The… lethal spell?”

“Crucio Ultima,” Sunburst said. “It was among the others on that scroll, likely the enhanced version of the one Pharynx is referring to.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It looked lethal but I wasn’t sure whether or not that was intended. I could have been looking at a draft of something that was intended to be survivable, in which case she would have removed the lethal component eventually. The rest of it alone was worse than all the other versions combined, which in itself would have explained the ‘ultima’ part of the title. Besides, you have enough on your plate already and we didn’t want to worry you.”

“Even if we’d agreed to tell you, there would have been no time before the maulwurf alert,” Starlight added.

Pharynx got in her face. “You withheld tactical information?!”

“Pharynx, leave them alone!”

“You still trust them after this?!”

“Why not? What were we supposed to gain by knowing that one of the spells was lethal? It’s not like we were going to use it-”

“I wouldn’t be so sure-”

I pretended not to have heard him. “-and it wouldn’t have made any difference! She was going to execute me either way!”

“Yes, by casting Crucio Ultima on you.”

“...no, she asked for her sword when it came to that.”

“That sword was only meant to test my allegiance. If I refused to kill you, she’d have killed us both, otherwise she would have kept you in conscious stasis while casting the full inventory of torture spells for as long as she fancied and then finished you off with Crucio Ultima.”

I stared at him in confusion. “What’s conscious stasis? And where did you get the idea for all that?”

“I pressed Psycho for information, and conscious stasis is that first spell you described.”

“Oh…” Sunburst muttered, then took a scroll from his saddlebag and scribbled something on it. “Fascinating… I wonder now…”

“What?”

“That spell could potentially be used for good things if refined to-”

“The only good thing I can see it used for is keeping Chrysalis alive when I get my fangs on her-”

“Pharynx!” I protested again. “Please don’t get ahead of yourself… she could still come around!”

“That won’t excuse what she tried to do to you and I don’t care who tries to stop me and what consequences I get threatened with,” he growled.

Starlight snickered. “The only problem is that you can’t get your fangs on her because you don’t have fangs anymore…”

“Test my patience and I’ll grow them back!” he snapped.

I sighed. Knowing the length of his fuse, those fangs could be back by tomorrow, no shapeshifting involved!

“You guys have anything else worth noting?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Sunburst mused. “Why?”

“Because the changeling defense forces aren’t going to reestablish themselves and there are renegades that need schooling.”

“You’re going to tackle that now?” I asked. “But you’ve barely started hanging out with Starlight and Sunburst!”

“Didn’t you learn today that trouble doesn’t wait for you to get ready before showing up? Or do you need them to tell you that since apparently nothing I say matters to you?”

“It does matter! But, for the record, yelling and insulting doesn’t help your cause…”

“We’ll see how the others respond to it.” He spread his wings and flew off, leaving us almost at the hive’s proverbial doorstep.

I watched him return in the direction of the battlefield for a few moments, wondering what he was up to this time, then pushed him out of my mind for now and turned my attention to the two ponies. We could finally hang out together in peace!

They exchanged glances. “Uh, so…” Starlight started hesitantly. “This has been… fun, but… we should probably head home now. You seem to have your hooves full, and… uh…”

“Already? But you’ve barely arrived!”

“And had an unplanned adventure in the process,” Sunburst said.

“Oh… but the maulwurfs are gone now! Can’t I at least tempt you with… um… a tour of the hive, maybe?”

“Hmm,” Sunburst mused. “It would be interesting, I suppose. What do you think, Starlight?”

She started to say something when her stomach growled. So did Sunburst’s.

“Oh… dear… Yeah, maybe going home would be a good idea, after all…”

“I can offer you some of our plants! Assuming they’re edible for ponies… they should be if we were going to give them to the maulwurfs without causing them harm… we’ll have to ask Antenna which ones are safe… I’m sure she’d be okay with letting you grab a bite!”

“She’s your gardener?”

“Yes, one of them, at least. Planting stuff was her idea and some of the drones have been joining her from time to time. I’ve been planning to plant some flowers myself but haven’t found the time yet except for helping uproot plants for the maulwurf lure.”

“Which is the exact opposite of what you wanted to do,” Sunburst said. “I bet you’re glad those plants are coming back, huh? They are coming back, aren’t they? They didn’t wilt or anything?”

“Antenna said she’d keep them in good condition for as long as possible so they should be alright. So, dinner and a tour?”

“Okay, dinner and a tour,” Starlight agreed. “But please don’t take after Twilight when it comes to tours! I like you but I don’t want to die of old age before we’re finished!”

Starlight had only just teleported Sunburst and herself away following a daisy snack and the quick tour I’d given them and I was on my way to begin looking for Pharynx or anyling who might know if he’d returned to the hive when I ran into Grim.

“Yes, he’s back,” she said. “He’s rounding up the renegades. I think they’ll be in for a mouthful for disobeying you,” she chuckled.

“Let’s hope it stays a mouthful,” I sighed. “I don’t want Pharynx clogging up the infirmary with them! Especially now that we’ve got maulwurf casualties!”

“Actually, the medics said none of them are too badly injured to continue with their normal routine, though they did recommend to some of them to take it easy for a while.”

“Really? The way things looked over there, I thought at least half of them would need cocooning!”

“Nope!”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I said. “Do you guys need anything?”

“Not that I know of… unless you want to visit the hatchery? I was just going there, and you haven’t been there in a while…”

“Too long! Not that I didn’t want to, it just… kind of got lost in all the other things that were going on… Is everything alright down there?”

“It is, or it was the last time I checked. No promises that the maulwurfs’ rampage didn’t cause any structural damage, though, or lead to injuries among the grubs hiding there at the moment… but if something had happened, I’m sure we would have heard about it by now!”

“Maybe,” I shrugged, following her to the hatchery. “So, are any of the eggs yours yet?”

“No, and it might not happen so quickly after all.”

“Oh? What’s wrong? Anything I can help with?”

“No, nothing like that! I just changed my approach to the matter.”

“As in, you don’t want them as much anymore? Sorry if I’m prying in what’s none of my business…”

“No problem, you’re really easy to talk to! I still want eggs as much as before, but you’re kind of the reason why my approach is different now. Uh, in a good way!”

“What do you mean?”

“You know how it was under Chrysalis. I would have been expected to give up my eggs to her and never see them again, never even know what became of them, not even if they all hatched successfully, not to mention that the privilege to produce eggs was hard to acquire and easy to be revoked so I had to hope I’d get paired up with someling quickly because any mistake could cost me the privilege… That was how it always was with the changelings and I never thought it could be any different, and my maternal instinct was so strong that I couldn’t ignore it even if it meant I could never look at a drone of roughly the right age without my heart breaking because we could share the same blood and I’d never know it… but now, thanks to you, I can keep my eggs and be a mother to my nymphs, all without needing to earn the right to do it so there’s no rush, and I want to be a good mother to them, and part of that includes ensuring they have a good father. So, long story short, I’m putting motherhood on hold until I can find a mate I’ll like and trust, and who’ll like and trust me in return and who’ll take good care of our nymphs.”

“Oh! That makes perfect sense! Uh, this’ll sound awkward, but for a moment there you made it sound like you wanted to, um…”

“To ask you to father my eggs?”

“...kind of…”

“No, I mean, I like you and I’m sure you’d be the best father in the world, but I can’t ask you to commit to a relationship with me if you won’t ever fall in love… and it’s awkward enough because you’re the king…”

“You can tell I’m incapable of romance even though I’ve never told anyone or tried to be in a relationship? Even if I haven’t been sure about it myself for the longest time?”

“Not me. Pharynx mentioned it once while we were hunting for you… if you can call it ‘hunting’ since he was trying not to find you…”

“How did he get the idea? I mean, he’s not wrong but I don’t remember us ever discussing it…”

“A brother would know. You two are closer than you think!”

“Well, he does stick up for me all the time…”

“...and you for him. Don’t tell him, but I’m pretty sure some of the renegades would have ripped him apart for betraying Chrysalis but were too afraid of what you would do to them afterwards even though you’re normally softer than Luna’s pillow.”

I chuckled.

“No, really,” she said. “Luna does have unbelievably soft pillows. I should know, I slept on them while posing as her. Speaking of which, any chance you can pull some royal strings and get her to tell you where she buys them so we can get some for the hive?”

Not a bad idea at all! I’d gladly trade my own cocoon-bed for any pillow, no matter how old and tattered, and I was sure plenty of other drones could do with something cute and comfortable!

“I’ll see what I can do,” I promised.

We were at the hatchery entrance by then and Grim cantered inside.

“Gossamer, we’re back!” she exclaimed.

“I know, Banshee told us when she came to pick up her nymphs,” Gossamer replied. “Hello, Thorax. I hear you’ve had quite an adventure today!”

“‘Adventure’ is right! Though, I’d rather not have a repeat…” A few larvae slithered up to me and I hugged them, getting content chitters in reply. “Aww, hello, little ones! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve missed you!”

“Is it true that Pharynx reformed?”

More larvae slithered up to me and I scooped them in a hug too. “Yep!”

“I’d love to have seen that!”

Grim proceeded to describe the battle and Pharynx’s state of mind that had allowed him to trigger the change in himself. I was too busy snuggling with the steadily-increasing swarm of nymphs and larvae to listen to her story. The little ones were so cute and cuddly, so pure and innocent, I just couldn’t resist! Getting them to share their love and transform way back in the first days of my reign had been easier than I’d expected, and only proved that changelings weren’t inherently and hopelessly evil but had merely been raised as such and never given an opportunity to better themselves! I only needed one look at these grubs to remind myself of that! Why hadn’t I made a point to visit the hatchery at least once while the renegades were rampaging? It would have undoubtedly restored my fading hopes and spirits, and I could have cheered up the grubs as well! I should have come to cheer them up! They were my subjects too, and I shouldn’t have allowed myself to neglect them no matter how busy I’d been elsewhere! I made a vow to never let it happen again, no matter what!

A prodding hoof snapped me out of my reverie.

“Huh, what?” I blurted out, gently removing a couple of larvae off my face.

Grim stood before me, snickering.

“I’m sorry, did you say something? I wasn’t paying attention…”

“I can see that, you big grubpile!” True enough, I was covered head-to-hoof in baby changelings. Where had so many of them come from? “We were thinking to go check if Pharynx had finished rounding up the renegades yet. Wanna come?”

I did, but I’d only just started hugging the grubs! How could I abandon them now?

“We can come back later if you haven’t had your fill yet,” she added, as if reading my mind.

“...okay, um… okay. Sorry, little ones… I’ll be back soon, okay?” Disappointed chittering filled the room. “I promise!”

They reluctantly surrendered to Grim and Gossamer, who carried them gently to their nests until I was once again free to move around. A few still clung stubbornly to my antlers but they too gave in after a bit of convincing. We left the hatchery under supervision of a couple of Grim’s colleagues who weren’t especially interested in Pharynx and headed for the hive’s surface, as Grim claimed there wasn’t a chamber inside the hive big enough to fit them all and Pharynx had refused to hold the same speech twice.

Psycho was already there when we arrived, waiting for Pharynx to finish the roll-call. Quite a number of the reformed drones were there too, mixed in with the renegades. I asked about them.

“They’re the renegades that transformed earlier today, after we defeated the maulwurfs and you left with te ponies.”

“They did? All by themselves?”

“A few of them, yes. Most needed a bit of encouragement from Pharynx when he came back.”

I didn’t know how to feel about that. It was great that they’d learned to share love, but what had Pharynx done? Beaten them into submission? And what was he about to do now?

He started by flinging a scroll to Psycho. I recognized it as the list of unreformed drones Psycho had made just after my ascension. Hopefully it hadn’t become a hit list in the meantime…

“You all know why you’re here,” Pharynx started. “Some of you have had the presence of mind to correct that mistake earlier today. The rest, we’ll see. Now that I’ve officially been restored to the rank of First Commander, I have the authority to punish that mistake as I see fit, and you know me well enough that you can make a pretty good guess what that will entail if you decide to persist in the mistake that brought you here. I can assure you, turning rainbow-colored hasn’t made me any weaker or less unforgiving.”

A couple of renegades shuddered.

“Let me make one thing very clear,” he continued. “You’re all getting punished. Just because you decided to share love earlier today will do nothing to save you, but Thorax wants me to be friendly and merciful so I’ll humor him this one time and allow one chance to the rest of you to follow suit before I change my mind. Here’s the deal: you wanted to be soldiers under Chrysalis so I’m punishing you by enlisting you in the reestablished defense force, one under Thorax, whom you claim to disapprove of, and I’ll make sure to double all the drills in both duration and intensity. It will hurt! Those of you who shared love or will share it in the next five minutes will remain at that. The rest of you will get the same drills, only made harder with random hindrances depending on my creativity on each particular day, plus you’ll be obliged to clean up every mess we make, plus you’re the first ones to get picked for the worst assignments, plus I’ll look the other way whenever someling decides to punish you because you looked at them wrong, plus I’ll be extra quick to notice every slightest mistake you make and discipline you until you until you end up in the infirmary, and you’ve lost cocoon-healing privilege by the way, plus betraying the new Hive will guarantee that you’ll beg me to punish you the way Chrysalis intended to punish Thorax because it would hurt less than what I have in store for you and it would let you die sooner. Am I understood?”

Most drones gulped and nodded, and I decided to have a talk with Pharynx afterwards.

“Four minutes,” Psycho announced.

The renegades stirred nervously, murmuring among themselves. An aura of murky chill spread throughout them. Their eyes darted between Pharynx, me, and their still-unreformed peers as the aura of fear intensified. One by one, they relented; they reached in to their love reserves and allowed them to pour out and envelop them in magical cocoons. The transformation succeeded, even if the reluctance with which they’d triggered it resulted in duller colors than those of drones sharing love genuinely willingly.

Only a couple of drones remained unchanged. Pharynx raised an intrigued eyebrow at them.

“What if we refuse?” said one of them.

“That wasn’t an option,” Pharynx said. “However, if you insist, I can interpret it as a betrayal on your part and proceed with turning you into my personal training dummy as the first phase of your punishment.” He lit up his horn and antlers and I recognized the thaumic pattern of one of the Crucio spells.

The renegade winced and retreated a step. “Okay, okay! You’ve made your point!” he whimpered. “I’ll do it… just… just give me a minute…”

“That’s about as much as you have,” Pharynx warned.

He and the others made it just barely in time and with great effort. Pharynx smirked.

“I thought as much,” he said. “You pretended to be strong and fearsome when the system was backing you up, but in reality you’re weak and pathetic. I bet Thorax would beat you up in two seconds if he cared to try… I’m ashamed of you! Now go to your burrows and have the last good sleep you’ll ever get. Drills start at dawn on the southern side of the hive and end when enough of you have passed out. I won’t personally oversee you all the time, but every single one of you is to obey the other drill instructors with the same passion as if I’m breathing down your necks, as they will report every detail to me. Don’t make us wait for you if you value the integrity of your legs.”

They remained fixed in place, staring at the wall they were standing on.

“Dismissed!” Pharynx barked.

That got them moving. They stumbled into whatever entrance was nearest, some colliding into one another and losing their grip on the wall and sliding down before falling through a random gate, getting hung up on a vine, or reorienting themselves and taking to the air before trying again.

“Pathetic,” Pharynx sighed, shaking his head.

We joined him.

“You think they’ll obey the rules?” Gossamer asked.

“Heh, I’d love to see them not obey!”

“No worries,” Grim reassured her. “They’ll be too busy to cause trouble!”

“I hope they’re right,” I added. “You can probably stop worrying that they’ll break your eggs now.”

“Actually…” Turning sideways, she opened her elytra, and four sleepy larval heads poked out. “I’m more worried about them being a bad influence now-”

My eyes went wide. “They hatched?! Ooh, wonderful! Congratulations! When?”

“Earlier today, around the time when you guys were fighting the maulwurfs.”

“Aww, they’re so cute! Can I hug them?”

“Sure! This is Mayfly, and Dragonfly, and Firefly, and-”

“Sweet Tartarus, Thorax, do you have to hug everyone and everything you come across?!”

“But Pharynx-”

“Don’t you think you have more important business to take care of? Like, I don’t know, discussing security protocols or drafting penal law or-”

“Ugh, fine! Just stop complaining already! Sorry, Gossamer… you don’t mind if I drop by later to hug the little cuties, do you?”

“Why would I mind?”

“Okay then…” I glanced at Pharynx, who was already at one of the gates, rolling his eyes at me lingering around my newest subjects instead of following him. “Um, I didn’t catch the fourth one’s name?”

“Damselfly.”

“Right. I’ll, uh, see you later!” I hurried after Pharynx.

“Here’s the thing,” he started when I caught up with him. “The renegades may be physically reformed but I don’t trust them. I’ve gathered about twice as many genuinely reformed recruits, ones we can assume with reasonable certainty will be loyal to you, and I’ll have them watch the renegades for any funny business. They’ll train together and no renegade will be given an assignment without a trustworthy teammate to keep them in check. I’ve designed the renegades’ training regime in such a way that it leaves them no time off except for sleeping, which will minimize the chance of betrayal, but I’ll have to assign them all to one or more communal sleeping chambers and post guards to watch them. It’s necessary considering their stance on you but will put a considerable dent in our defenses- Thorax, are you listening to me?”

“Huh? Oh, um, yeah, I… uh, go on…”

He looked at me sideways, obviously not believing me. “As I was saying, our defenses will be stretched thin until further notice, and it would help if you could arrange your schedule and foreign visits in such a way that- oh, for hive’s sake, quit daydreaming! This is important!”

“I’m not daydreaming! Look, I know you can organize our defenses better than anyone and am prepared to let you do it without checking every little detail with me - you probably know me well enough to predict how I might feel about particular arrangements and act accordingly - but I wasn’t ignoring you just now. I actually want to discuss something with you and was wondering how to approach the subject.”

“How about opening your mouth and saying it?”

“...fair enough. It’s about the, uh… the punishments you promised to the renegades if-”

“Gee, why am I not surprised? I had to! Nothing else would have worked!”

“You’re probably right, but what I mean is, you don’t actually intend to do anything like that, do you?”

“You think I was bluffing?”

“I kind of hope you were…”

“I don’t bluff.”

“But do you really have to go so hard on them?”

“And risk them getting out of control if they figure out that I’m being gentle? That fear of punishment is one of the main tools for keeping them disciplined, and not just them! Can you imagine the chaos if word got out that I’m not as fierce as I used to be? Noling would obey orders anymore, not to mention the enemies could notice and strike while we’re at our weakest!”

“If you say so… but can’t you at least leave the really bad punishments for when you literally have no other choice and do something less drastic otherwise, maybe pretend as necessary that the punishment you’re giving is the bad one?”

He groaned and rolled his eyes. “Okay, I’ll try to kill the first few quickly.”

“Pharynx!”

“What, no killing? How am I supposed to make a point then?”

“Didn’t you just say you could frighten them into obedience?”

“So now it’s okay to frighten them?”

“If you have to do something, I’d rather that than you killing them!”

“Whatever.” We were at our bedchamber by now. “I’m gonna turn in early. Busy day tomorrow.”

He approached his usual sleeping spot and was about to lie down when I remembered something. “One moment,” I said.

“What?”

“You made a request a while ago and I keep forgetting.” I focused my magic, not caring whether or not the spell had some dark components, and erected a wall in the middle of the bedchamber, splitting it into two smaller rooms with a shared entrance. “You’ve got your own room now! I’m sorry it took me this long to give it to you!”

He stared at me blankly. “Thorax, this is the royal bedchamber. You can’t just split it in half!”

“Why not?”

“I’m the First Commander, I should be in First Commander’s quarters-”

“-but they’re Psycho’s now, and you’re the king’s brother, a prince if you will, therefore you’re entitled to royal quarters.”

He snorted but didn’t argue further.

“So now we have everything, I guess,” I sighed contently.

“Actually, no,” he countered. “You’re missing one thing.”

I was? “What?”

“A crown.”

Author's Note

In the first version of the chapter, Thorax’s conversation with Grim in regard to her eggs had Grim refer to Thorax’s orientation as gay instead of asexual. I changed it thanks to a reader (Daemon Wolf 22, if I remember correctly) saying that it’d be nice to have more asexual representation in stories after I published a story that revolves around Thorax being asexual.

Also, by a happy coincidence, happy Pride Month!

King of All Changelings

Office of King Thorax, HRH
Badlands Hive
Changeling Kingdom
To: (foreign leaders)
Re: Coronation

Dear friends and allies, dear all,

You are cordially invited to the coronation ceremony of Thorax, the recently-appointed leader of the changelings and the torch-bearer of love and benevolence of his kind. The ceremony is to be held on Friday, December 4th, starting at 11.00 hours, in the Throne Room of the changeling hive. A royal banquet shall follow the ceremony, and guests shall be given opportunities to tour the new hive and to socialize with its populace as and when desired.

We will do our best to provide appropriate accommodations to the guests arriving from afar in advance to this momentous occasion and to meet everyone’s needs for the entire duration of their visit. Rest assured that we have abandoned our hostile practices and that no guests will come to harm by honoring this invitation.

With kindest regards,

Banshee, head of the Coronation Organization Committee

Urtica, head archivist of the Changeling Hive

I set down the final draft for the invitations, having read it for the thousandth time, and sighed heavily. The coronation itself was tomorrow and everything was ready: the invitations had been sent and RSVP’d, the decorations finished, the chefs had already begun preparing the food in the kitchen the hive had hastily fashioned for this purpose, the musical numbers were allegedly selected and practiced to perfection but kept a closely guarded secret even from me, Rarity had completed the final of countless designs for my outfit, and Grim had just returned from Canterlot with the crown crafted by one of the best jewellers in the known world.

Everything was ready to go… except for me.

I glanced at the invitation draft again, fighting hard to resist the urge to start reading it for another thousand times as if it would help any! Overthrowing Chrysalis had been a shock to us all, but everyling except me seemed to have recovered from it pretty quickly, even the renegades, even if they disapproved of the big change. I’d thought I’d recovered and gotten used to the idea of being in charge, but I’d been wrong: as soon as Pharynx had set in motion the process of organizing my coronation, the confidence I’d built in the meantime crashed and died, and my old fears and worries awoke again wailing and roaring and destroying everything in their path. He could have at least informed me he was going to do it! Then again, I would have tried to stop him, to talk him out of it; even though I was aware on a rational level that this was the logical next step in my being a leader, on an emotional level, I was painfully not ready for it! Why did it have to be so soon? Why couldn’t he have given me more time? Why did we have to go through it at all?

To solidify your role as the leader, he’d said. To have you officially recognized as the king and to make it that much harder for Chrysalis to try to lay claim of the throne again.

Of course, that made sense on a conscious level. I could feel in everyling’s auras that I’d done something fundamentally good for the hive and I didn’t feel like I was unduly bragging about it whenever the matter got mentioned. But I knew just as well that being a good leader required more than good intentions, and I wasn’t sure that I had whatever the ‘more’ included. Sure, I’d managed things so far… somehow… but was that going to be enough in the future?

At least we could have kept it smaller, more down-to-earth… just us changelings and a few friends hanging out, no great ceremonies polished and rehearsed to perfection, no uptight, high-society manners that made it near-impossible to avoid embarrassing oneself, no fancy decorations that would only be good for one day and useless afterwards, no spectacular speeches…

Gosh, the speech… I was expected to address my subjects and guests with a speech at the end of the ceremony, and I didn’t know what was stringing up my nerves more: that it was expected to be perfect, given the occasion, or that I still had no idea what to say! I must have begun a hundred drafts but all of them flopped within the first few sentences! A few drones had tried to help and ended up with something that tried to sound friendly and optimistic but with an overall tone too similar to battle rallies to be usable for a coronation speech; I couldn’t blame them, as this was what they’d been taught to do for most of their lives, and it was going to take then more than a few days to clear themselves of the deeply-ingrained old habits. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that much time on my hooves, and I had to think of something today and with still enough time to rehearse it, or tomorrow’s speech would end in disaster! Why couldn’t we have at least gone without the speech?

Because every coronation ends with a speech, Pharynx had said. Your subjects have to be shown that you have a vision of how to lead your kingdom and told what you expect from them. No one cares if you’re too nervous to say two sentences, not to mention what it does to your image as the king, so quit freaking out!

If only it were that easy…

Seriously, Thorax, he’d said to my umpteenth panic outburst, if you can’t handle being the king, how in the name of eggshells did you become one? How do you expect to lead a kingdom if you can’t handle a few royal duties?

As hard as it was to admit it, he had a point. I had been performing royal duties for a while now and was kind of starting to get a hang of them… or not, but at least they were less scary than in the beginning, even if I still had a long way to go until any of it started feeling natural, assuming it ever was going to happen. Would it be too bad to consider this just another royal duty? It was more daunting than most of the others, but I’d only have to do it once, so maybe it was better to get it out of the way now than to keep postponing it indefinitely… knowing myself, I’d still freak out over it no matter how much we postponed it! And as much as I didn’t care to be the one to wear the crown, I couldn’t ignore that most of my subjects had chosen me over Chrysalis, and I believed they were better off with me than with her… Was I being egotistical? Selfish?

For some strange reason, forcing myself to see the coronation as just another royal duty helped me calm down somewhat, and I was able to think more clearly. I still didn’t know what I should say or how long my speech was supposed to be, but I wasn’t the first leader to ever be crowned, and according to Pharynx, every new leader had held a speech at their coronation. If only I could find out what their speeches were like! Maybe I could use that to help me!

I went to the archive and asked Urtica about it.

“Yes, of course we have transcripts of coronation speeches!” she said. “No infiltrator would have dared to mess up relaying them to the hive verbatim! Some of it proved valuable for Chrysalis’ plans over the centuries! Not that I expect you to use them for the same purpose but… I’m sorry, why do you need them, if it’s okay to ask?”

“You know I’ve been struggling to put together my own coronation speech-”

“Oh dear, is it still troubling you? I thought you were getting help! You were getting help, weren’t you?”

“Yes, and it was a valiant effort on the part of everyling from several feelings forum sessions, but I don’t think announcing a full-scale invasion of Equestria is the way to go even if the invasion would consist of hugs and cuteness…”

“Yes, I see how that could go wrong… but copying other leaders’ speeches wouldn’t be much better!”

“I’m not trying to copy them, Urtica, I just need a bit of inspiration! Or at least a pointer on what it’s supposed to look like!”

“Oh, right! Sorry! Um, I’ll be right back!” She flew off somewhere into the depths of the archive and returned with a bunch of scrolls. “Let’s see now… King Grover… nah, that probably won’t do it… prince Rutherford, no… Queen Novo, eh, maybe…” She set that one aside. “Sable Spirit, now I forgot that one… uh, not really… Torch, definitely no… oh, here’s Princess Cadance’s! You can probably use that! Oh, and Princess Celestia- wait, that’s in Olde Ponish… I don’t suppose you speak Olde Ponish?”

“No. Maybe Sunburst or Twilight could help but there’s not enough time…”

“Then we can’t use Luna’s, either… and speaking of Twilight, here’s hers! Short but sweet, and I think it’ll help! Okay, what else… hmm… Chief Thunderhooves, now what was that one about- oh, right, a tirade about ancestors and tradition, hardly useful to you… next, Princess Rain Shine, could be something there… King Vorak, ugh, doubt it…”

“Okay, these will probably do,” I told her as she was sifting further through the pile. They’d have to!

“Are you sure? I can keep going through these and bring you whatever else looks promising! I can even try to find someling to help me translate Olde Ponish so you can use Celestia and Luna’s speeches too!”

“That’s very kind of you, but I don’t think I’ll have enough time to go through any more scrolls. I have to leave myself enough time to write something and then rehearse it.”

“Of course! Silly me, heh… but if you still need something later, I’m here all the time, so just drop by and I’ll try to help!”

“Sure, thanks!”

“And don’t worry about it! I’m sure your speech will be the best one in this stash!”

The best in her stash… She was going to archive my speech?! Why had she told me that?! Now my half-contained panic was threatening to go on another rampage! I had only a hoofful of scrolls to help me come up with something passable and only a day to perfect it, and it had to be perfect; I didn’t want future generations of drones and archivists laughing at my blunders immortalized on a piece of parchment!

But as I read through the scrolls, the panic wore off again. The speeches were indeed heartwarming and inspiring, just like the ponies who had spoken them, and through them, I saw the specter of my own speech, elusive at first, but slowly and steadily taking shape as I read on. By the time I finished the last scroll, I knew what I wanted to say: the same I’d wanted all along, I just needed a little reminder and a bit of guidance on how to put it into words.

I set the scrolls aside, took a blank piece of paper, and started writing.

“Are you sure about this tuxedo?” I asked Rarity as she was helping me dress up for the ceremony. “Wasn’t I supposed to wear the black one?”

“Goodness, no! What was I thinking?”

“I think it’s lovely,” Fluttershy said.

“Which one?”

“Um… both… and the ones you designed earlier…”

“Yes, what’s wrong with any of them?” I asked.

“They’re alright… for a more everyday occasion… but this is your coronation ceremony! It only happens once in a lifetime and only to the most worthy among us! You simply must look your absolute best!”

“If you say so…” I shrugged, as if I wasn’t nervous enough already. Loads of visitors had arrived last afternoon and this morning, Pharynx had implemented security measures that the old regime would be jealous of and I’d barely managed to talk him out of wearing full body armor to the ceremony - thank goodness because he was supposed to preside over it and I didn’t want the guests to get the wrong idea - and Twilight was still proofreading my speech. The last thing I needed was to constantly worry if my outfit was perfectly aligned!

“At least you’re not a queen, Thorax,” Starlight said, chuckling. “It’s just a tuxedo and cape. Imagine what you’d have to go through if Rarity had to design a gown for you!”

“Hmph! A tuxedo is no less worthy than a gown, darling, and do you have any idea how long it took me to weave all these amethysts into the cape?!”

“I know, you withdrew from the Manehattan fashion show to give yourself enough time-”

“You did what?!” I gasped. “Oh, Rarity, you didn’t have to do that! If I’d known-”

“Oh, pishposh! It’s just another fashion show! I can participate next year! But this… not everypony gets an opportunity to craft a coronation outfit! Do you have any idea how much that means to a boutique?!”

“Everything,” Spike sighed, gazing dreamily at his crush.

“You guys are done?” I asked Twilight, who had found herself a secluded burrow where she could proofread my speech undisturbed, and Spike had followed her in case she needed assistance.

“Yes,” she said. “I made a few minor edits for style, if that’s okay with you.”

I skimmed through the revised parts. “It’s perfect. Thanks! Um, do you think it’s passable?”

“I wouldn’t have written it better myself,” she reassured me.

“Done what better?” Rainbow asked, dashing into the room and startling me into tripping over the cape that Rarity was about to put on me. Good thing she’d made wing slits in the tuxedo so I could right myself without tearing up her hard work! It hadn’t been enough to keep her from screaming and fainting, but she recovered quickly.

“Watch it!” Twilight scolded her friend.

“Heh, it’s not my fault that I’m so awesomely fast that none of you guys can keep track of me! Oh and Thorax, the sky is perfectly clear now! Bet your changelings can’t do that, huh?”

“No, and we never really felt the need to control weather. It’s warm enough throughout the year, and with the hive being as unpredictable as it was, none of us cared if we didn’t know when the next rain would come. It was just another minor thing.”

“Nothing minor about this party!” Pinkie chimed, hopping into the room, with Applejack trotting in tow. “It’s going to be the bestest, most funtacular funtastic super-duper party changelings have ever seen! I’ve got balloons and streamers and confetti and music and cake! But why did you set up a boring party in another room?”

“It’s called a banquet, Pinkie,” Rarity corrected her. “Coronations are normally among the most formal events in existence, hence the banquet, but Thorax here wanted something to help everyone loosen up, and you’re the best one for the job. So, two different options for how to celebrate, and every guest can pick their preference.”

“Or go back and forth between the banquet and the party,” I added.

“Or that,” she agreed.

“An’ we baked enough food for both!” Applejack said. “Ah just hope none of them griffon cooks planted a fish in none of them pies…”

“Why would they do that?”

“Y’all ever met a griffon?”

“One or two, why?”

“We had one visitin’ Ponyville a while back, and she was mean somethin’ fierce! Got Fluttershy insulted out of her wits, she did, among other things, an’ Ah heard the whole Griffonstone ain’t no better!”

“I’m sure Blade did a background check on them-”

“Ahem, excuse me?” Grim interrupted us from the entrance. “The ceremony starts in fifteen minutes and Pharynx insists that anyone not in their designated seats in the next two minutes will be banned from the ceremony.”

I facehoofed. “Ugh, didn’t I tell him not to pester the guests like that? They’re not soldiers, for crying out loud!”

“It’s a security issue. You do realize there’s one unreformed and furious changeling unaccounted for, don’t you? There’s no telling what she could decide to do and Pharynx doesn’t want to take any chances… and frankly, neither do I.”

“Okay, fine,” I relented. The ponies and Spike were already trotting off, and Rarity only stopped for a brief moment to straighten my cravat, and Fluttershy gave me a quick hug.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You can do this! And just in case you think you can’t, we’ll be there for you!”

I smiled and hugged her back. How had she known I needed reassurance?

“You need to get in position too,” Grim prompted.

“Oh! Yeah, um, sure… okay…”

“Hey, it’s alright! I don’t think she’ll come, not today anyway! She’ll expect heightened security, and she’s all alone now-”

“It’s not her I’m worried about… okay, maybe I am, but it’s more of a background worry… It’s the coronation itself, what it looks like, what it means… Can I uphold the promise I’ll give to my subjects by accepting the crown?”

“You already have.” She put a reassuring hoof on my chest. “No matter what happens today, Thorax, good or bad, know that you’ve made a bigger difference to us that anyone ever could, and the crown is a token of our gratitude and the debt we’ll never be able to fully repay! You’ve earned it and don’t let some trifle keep you from savoring your achievement!”

“Thanks,” I whispered, tearing up a little.

“Let’s go now. A coronation can’t start without a king!”

It was only a short walk from my bedchamber to the throne room, and we spent it in silence, as there wasn’t much left to be said for the moment. She then gave me a reassuring nod and disappeared behind the curtain that had been placed at the entrance to the throne room, and I was left alone for the first time today. As I waited for the ceremony to begin, it hit me once again, harder than ever, that this was the defining moment of my life and destiny: up until now, I may have had some maneuvering space of sorts, some excuse for mess-ups as being new and inexperienced, and I may have been able to delude myself that I may still only be a temporary leader until someling better and more capable came up, but as soon as I walked through that gate and received the crown, none of that would count anymore, and I would be expected to know everything and be prepared for anything… Could I do it? Could I live up to the expectations of my friends and my subjects and the rest of the world? Could I really be the king they deserved? What if I failed? How much would it take them to stop trusting me? What if they rejected everything I’d given them and reverted to the old ways because of one mistake on my part? What if-

The murmuring on the other side of the curtain ceased and my brother began addressing the crowd. As if all of the worrying wasn’t enough, I suddenly realized I had no idea how Pharynx had conceived the speech he’d just begun holding! We’d never rehearsed that, and with everything else that had needed taking care of, I’d forgotten to ask him about it! Knowing him, it would probably set a completely wrong tone and make it look like we hadn’t changed at all! My heart leapt into my throat in anticipation of something resembling a warrior’s manifesto and I couldn’t believe my ears when he instead started talking about the power of friendship and the glory of sharing love! Sure, it had a bit of a military undertone, but he sounded like he actually believed in what he was saying and didn’t mind showing to the world how passionately he embraced it! Could it be that he had in fact embraced my ways genuinely enough to write such a speech all on his own? For once, I didn’t care; listening to him warmed my heart and soothed the nerves that my worries had strung up a minute ago!

...only for those nerves to start screaming again as the curtain before me withdrew and I finally laid my eyes on the throne room. It was decorated with countless flowers, and dozens of flagpoles lined the edge of the plateau, carrying pastel-colored flags with the pattern of gossamer wings and my antlers over an ethereal heart, a design somewhat similar to the previous changeling flag which had featured Chrysalis’ horn and wings on the sickly-green background similar in hue to that of cocoon resin. I’d know the arts-and-crafts group to be working on the new flag, but hadn’t seen it yet, and didn’t think they would have sewn so many already! And the choir had outdone themselves, too: they were humming a wondrously-sounding festive tune that was vaguely familiar…

If any of that would have made me freeze in place, it would have been in awe, but awe wasn’t why I’d forgotten to breathe right now; it was the sight of the throne room chock-full of creatures from all over the world: mostly ponies and changelings, but also yaks, buffalo, dragons, Abyssinians, even a few griffons and zebras! All of their eyes were fixed on me, expecting… what, exactly? To honor my big day? To see me crumble and fall? To simply watch with no particular interest as I… uh, what was I supposed to do now? I’d rehearsed it, for hive’s sake! Was I just supposed to walk up to the podium or did I have to do something else first?

Pharynx took a chance while everyone’s eyes were off him to wave a hoof at me, thus snapping me out of it. Okay, so nothing special on this end, just walking over there and receiving the crown and sitting onto the throne… then the speech, right? Probably…

Okay, Thorax, you can do this… take a step forward and walk there, no big deal… you won’t trip or anything… they’re waiting for you… don’t blow the ceremony!

I took a deep breath and let it out to calm myself, and after putting some effort into releasing the tension in my facial muscles, I spread my wings from under the cape as instructed during rehearsals and began the graceful walk down the carpeted path. The choir transitioned from humming into singing.

As dawn shines on us every morn’
Our fire of friendship is reborn,
And all the love that we have shared
We cherish in every way;

Loyalty binds us and makes us strong,
Honesty shows that we belong,
And Kindness shared will unite us through each day.

The love in our hearts is here to stay,
Never again shall we steal it away;
Our troubled past has come to an end,
Where once there was foe, there will be a friend;
Our king was the first to walk down that path
And follow we shall as long as we draw breath!

I tried not to look around too much while approaching the podium, partly due to the lingering worry that I would trip over myself, but I did manage to notice that most of the guests were unfamiliar to me, which was understandable as we’d invited mostly various dignitaries but kept me from completely relaxing. At least my friends from Ponyville and the Crystal Empire had been assigned seats of honor in the front rows! Maybe seeing them so close to me would calm my panic?

Or maybe Spike would; it was a pleasant surprise to see him standing on the podium, holding a pillow with my crown on it! And what a crown it was! Its appearance had been another thing the Organization Committee had insisted on surprising me with, and now I knew why: such an intricate design was clearly the work of a grand master of the trade, and though no one in their right mind could look at it and not remain awestruck, I would have opted for something not nearly as elaborate if given the choice! How much had they paid for it?

Finally, I was at the podium, and the choir’s song once again turned into a quiet hum.

“Thorax,” Pharynx said, “you have performed a heroic feat and, in doing so, have ended the starvation that plagued our kind and opened the gate into a better life for us. Are you prepared to continue your work to ensure the changelings’ well-being and to secure our place in the world?”

“I am.”

“Do you swear on Harmony and your conscience that you will serve your subjects justly, wisely, and loyally just as they loyally serve you?”

“I do!”

“Then, by the power invested in me as your predecessor’s second-in-command, I present to you this crown as the symbol of your reign. May it be long and prosperous!” He levitated the crown off the pillow and put it on my head. “I now pronounce you Thorax, King of all Changelings!”

The crowd cheered and the choir resumed their song as I sat on the throne.

Hatred made us a vengeful storm
But love in our hearts has been born,
And friends we love like our families
Will always see us through;

Laughter will echo through the skies,
Generosity we will show our allies,
And Friendship’s the only magic that we need.

The love in our hearts will guide our way,
Never again shall we steal it away;
Our troubled past has come to an end,
Where once there was foe, now stands a friend;
Our love and praise is what we sing
To honor our new and rightful King!

The choir went silent and the cheering gradually ceased, and Pharynx nodded to me that I could hold my part of the speech now.

“Dear friends, dear friends-to-be,” I spoke, “this day is long overdue. For countless generations, you have suffered misery and loss at the mercy of Chrysalis and her soldiers, infiltrators, and prey hunters. For countless generations, we knew of nothing but war and hatred. I wish I could give you an explanation of why it had to be that way, why our first Queen could see no other options for her subjects, but I can’t; I can only give an apology on behalf of her and all the soldiers that obeyed her unquestioningly through the ages. I can’t make you accept that apology, but I want you to know that I am truly and very sorry for everything you and your ancestors had to endure from the changeling armies. No matter how much we resent it, the past cannot be changed in a way that would guarantee a favorable outcome, but let that troubled past be a lesson to us; may we remember our mistakes, lest we repeat them!

“This day is long overdue, but it has arrived at last. I hoped for such a day ever since I began my existence in this world. I dreamed of a world where no one would have to suffer and fear for their lives under the malice of another. I dreamed of a world of friendship and unity, of sharing of love; though I never lost hope that such a world would one day exist, I never expected to see it happen in my lifetime, and it never occurred to me that I’d be the one to make it happen. Though I’ll always be grateful to Harmony and Destiny for bestowing me with such an honor, I cannot let it be forgotten that I couldn’t have done it without my friends, who had seen the good in me and given me their trust and support, their love, when they had little reason to. They deserve as much credit and gratitude, actually more than I do, as it wasn’t easy to look past the prejudice and offer a friendly hoof to someone who should by all accounts have been their mortal enemy. They are the real heroes!

“The new era has arrived, but it is up to us to ensure that it remains. I may have made the first step, but I can’t walk alone, and I trust I won’t have to! We all need to work together to ensure a better future, and I know we can do it! We can overcome our differences, settle our disputes, heal the old wounds, and learn to trust and nourish one another! Together, we can help each other grow and better ourselves, to create a world the future generations will be proud of, not just for the good of the changelings, but for the good of all creatures! Let us ignite the fire of friendship, and let us keep it burning for all eternity!”

The crowd cheered again, but not for long; an explosion sounded from somewhere behind me, silencing everyone. Startled, I spun around, expecting Chrysalis or some other villain to reveal themselves, but instead, I saw a rainbow-colored circle spread through the sky and a team of pegasi in blue-and-yellow uniforms whoosh over the throne room and perform a series of stunning spins and swirls and all kinds of complicated aerial maneuvers designed to wow even the most demanding of spectators! But was I seeing it right? Sentinel seemed to be among them! Had she quit the Royal Guard and rejoined the Wonderbolts? Or was this simply somepony of uncanny resemblance to her?

No, it was her! The Wonderbolts finished their performance and landed on the remains of the old wall at the edge of the plateau, and I could see them clearly now! Rainbow Dash was among them, unsurprisingly, but I hadn’t expected to see Sentinel on the team too!

The crowd cheered once again, until Pharynx raised a hoof and invited them to the banquet in a few caverns some levels below. As the crowd was milling toward the exits and presumably the banquet halls, I decided to use this chance to ignore any protocols I was expected to follow and approached Sentinel.

“Hey, you,” she said, waving to the rest of the flying squad not to wait for her. Rainbow Dash remained, however.

“Did you see my rainboom?” she asked.

“I did, it was wonderful!”

“Aw, yeah! We didn’t time it too soon, did we?”

“No, I think not… I’d just finished my speech a few seconds before.”

“Awesome! That was the plan!”

“But how did you end up on the team, Sentinel? Did you quit the Royal Guard?”

“No, this was a one-time thing. Cadance and Shining thought I’d be interested when they heard Rainbow had gotten the Wonderbolts to perform, I said sure, why not, so they arranged it with Spitfire. Okay, I didn’t get to hear your speech, but it’s not every day that you get to actively participate in a friend’s coronation, so…” She shrugged. “I’d say I got a better version of the deal.”

“Is it true that Cadance also provided the crystals in your crown?” Rainbow asked.

“I have no idea! Everyling wanted to keep as much as possible as a surprise even from me… they said the crown came from Canterlot so I’m not sure…”

“Nevermind, I’m hungry! Why are we still hanging around here?”

I couldn’t argue with that. I was supposed to show up at the banquet and mingle with the guests, and they were probably wondering what was taking me so long!

The banquet itself was largely uneventful, and though I would have preferred to stick to my friends, protocol and good manners dictated that I had to be available to anyone who wanted a conversation. This had some interesting moments, as I managed to learn some guests’ reasons for showing up: the ponies unfamiliar to me were mostly nobility and other distinguished individuals I was likely to have some dealings with in the future, the dragons were following Ember’s orders, the yaks had learned of me from the crystal ponies and were considering diplomatic relations, and griffons and Abyssinians were simply curious. Discord pulled some minor pranks but behaved himself otherwise, Trixie attempted a fireworks show and I had to convince Pharynx not to throw her out, especially not physically which had been his intention, and Grim was having a hard time keeping up with Flurry while her parents and Sunburst ate, but that was about the extent of things not going according to plan. Eventually the food and drinks ran out, Luna raised the moon, and the guests left, some for their own lands and some for their assigned sleeping chambers.

Getting to spend some quality time with my friends would have been nice, but they were all already asleep by the time I was done with everything that required my presence, and truth be told, I needed some alone time after today’s events. I went to catch some fresh air in the throne room, expecting to be alone, but found Pharynx and Grim.

“What are you doing here this late?” I asked them.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Pharynx retorted. “We’re doing a security sweep.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. Or would you rather have the throne blow up when you sit on it in the morning because noling bothered to check it was safe after a bazillion creatures stormed through here?”

“Don’t listen to him, Thorax,” Grim interjected. “We haven’t found anything. Did you like the ceremony?”

“You’ve outdone yourselves! But I do have some questions about the crown…”

“I knew it! Don’t worry, the treasury is no worse for wear!”

“You do realize I find that hard to believe, don’t you?”

“Okay, yes, I admit I did sound suspicious, but really, we didn’t pay anything for it!”

I facehoofed. “You just borrowed it indefinitely… I know I forbade stealing love, but it should go without saying that you shouldn’t steal other things either!”

“Stealing? No! I packed ten thousand bits of advance money, but it turns out that both of the jeweller’s daughters were grabbed by our prey hunters in early September, and thanks to your coup, they both came home alive, so the jeweller refused to take a single coin out of gratitude to you! He even pulled some strings with his fellow tradesmare in the Crystal Empire to get some of their crystals because he heard you used to live there! Go ask him if you don’t believe me!”

“So the crystals weren’t Cadance’s idea? Rainbow said they were…”

“Actually, I think they found out about the whole setup somehow and covered the crystal jewelress’ expenses or something,” she mused.

“What does it matter?” Pharynx interjected, continuing the security sweep. “You got your crown and a proper ceremony, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I got more than I expected,” I said. “Like your speech, for example. I’m so glad you put some effort into-”

“Save it! That wasn’t my original speech! I would have gone with something glorious but then that Starlight Glimmer walked in on me while I was rehearsing and asked if she could make a few minor improvements, so I decided to humor her for a bit, but then she started gutting up my speech and I would have gutted her in return if I could break the force field she set up.” He groaned. “The only part that remained intact was ‘We are gathered here today to’ and I was running late for the security sweep by then, so I decided to cut my losses and go with that sappy version. At least it fits you, so... “ He shrugged. “Okay, all clear. Dismissed!”

Every flag and flagpole except for one burst into blue flames and revealed a bunch of soldiers. I stared dumbfounded as they saluted and trotted off into whichever hallway was nearest.

“What, you didn’t honestly expect me to advertise the full size of the security team?” Pharynx asked.

“I thought they were actual flags…”

“They would have been if Mystique could get the drones to sew fast enough- What do you want, Blade?”

I spun around to face the newcomer.

“Excuse the interruption, but one of our pony guests asked if she could have a word with King Thorax.”

“Tell her to schedule an audience-”

“It’s okay, Pharynx, I’ll see her. Where is she?”

“This way.” Blade led me to one of the guest burrows and withdrew. I went inside and stopped in my tracks when I laid my eyes on the one who had summoned me.

“Soothing Dusk,” I breathed. “And Midnight Haze… I wasn’t expecting you…” Had they been invited? I didn’t think so, and in any case, I wouldn’t have expected them to show up after everything Soothing had been through. Not that I minded seeing them, and best of all, Soothing’s aura was much brighter than the last time I’d seen her!

“Yes, I… kind of surprised myself, actually…” Soothing shuffled nervously, and her sister put a gentle hoof on her shoulder. This time, there was no malice in her aura. “Are you really the same changeling who drained me of love?”

“I am. I’m still sorry for it, I wish I hadn’t-”

“That’s kind of why we made the effort to come here. After you… after word came out that you rescued the alicorn princesses and turned changelings into good guys, I began to wonder if maybe… if maybe I should have believed you when you came to tell me you were sorry, that I maybe should have given you a chance… so I requested an audience with Princess Cadance a few weeks ago and she made good on her promise to help me. One audience turned into a full week of meeting your friends and hearing about your life in the Crystal Empire, and hearing about how you buried yourself in a cave and starved yourself to near-death prior to being found and why you did it made me realize what an unimaginably good guy you really are, and you really did have to be beside yourself with starvation in order to attack a random pony, and I started to feel bad for how I treated you afterwards… so when Princess Cadance wrote to ask if I’d be interested to accompany her and the other Crystal Empire dignitaries to your coronation, I dropped everything and took my sister and… well, here we are.” She smiled nervously. “Midnight and I were closer to the back of the throne room during the ceremony so you probably didn’t notice us, and we only stayed at the banquet long enough to grab a quick meal and came back here because I still get nervous around strangers. But I wanted to tell you how much I admire what you’ve done and what you’re still trying to do, especially now that I got to see the hive and to be told what it was like before, and, uh… I never thought I’d say this, but if draining me was the price we had to pay in order to make it all happen… I guess I can live with it.”

“You mean…?”

She came closer and embraced me in an awkward hug. “I forgive you.”

Author's Note

Best buggo finally gets his well-deserved crown!

Many thanks to Origami for his input on the coronation song :twilightsmile:

New Alliance

“You can’t catch me!”

“We’ll see!”

“Nuh-uh! I’m so small I can crawl into any nook!”

I chuckled. “You do realize that doesn’t mean much to changelings, do you?”

The nymph smirked. “But you’d have to shift and it’ll distract you long enough for me to run off!”

“And there’s enough of us that you can’t keep track!” another quipped.

“Yeah!”

It was hard to argue with that logic with a couple of dozen nymphs scurrying about at my hooves and buzzing all around the nursery, and they were probably right that I couldn’t catch them all, but that wasn’t going to stop me from trying! They’d wanted a game of chase and they were going to get one! They had no idea how many hugs they were in for as soon as I caught them all!

“Ready or not, here I come!”

I pounced at one of the groups of nymphs. They scattered with a gasp; some hid in a pillow pile and others dashed into a tangle of vines. A couple whizzed through the air and I spun around and almost caught one, but then another buzzed right in front of me and I had to skid to a halt to avoid collision.

“Hey!” I protested as they blew raspberries. “Watch it!”

“You’re too gentle!” another taunted from the ceiling, then got lost among maturation cocoons.

Sneaky little guy; he knew I wasn’t going to follow him there, as maturation cocoons were supposed to be left undisturbed as much as possible! I called to him to get out but got no reply, and as the cocoons weren’t swinging, I assumed he was making an effort to avoid harming them and decided to have a conversation with him later. He’d have to come out eventually, and right now, everyling else was waiting to be caught!

The airborne nymphs shifted around as I went at one after another. I caught none, but it didn’t matter; what was the point if the game ended in two minutes? I was simply biding my time either until one of them made a wrong move and flew directly into my grasp, or until I positioned myself for tackling the pillows or the vines, both of which were giggling!

Chance positioned me near the pillows and I dove in, causing a bunch of drones to scatter out, and though I was pretty sure none remained hidden, I tossed the pillows around me for a couple of seconds longer, causing more giggles from the nearby nymphs. One got careless and drifted too close, and I leaned in and ended her escape attempts.

“Aww,” she moaned only half-disappointedly as I nuzzled her and shared some of my aura with her.

Still holding the nymph, I went back at her friends, missing most but catching a few and adding them to my collection. The vines stirred and a couple of gossamer tails poked out, allowing for easy pickings of the unsuspecting youngsters, and each got a nuzzle in compensation for their frustrated squirms.

A couple more nymphs succumbed to my sudden grasp before Gossamer’s arrival put an end to the chase.

“Sorry to interrupt, Thorax,” she said, “but Hornet tells me you have a visitor.”

“Oh? Did I forget I was expecting someone?”

“I don’t think so, but you might want to hurry. I got the impression she’s impatient or something.”

“Aww, but we were just playing!” an uncaught nymph protested, landing next to me.

“I’m sorry, but Thorax has royal duties, and you need your afternoon nap!”

More drones landed in front of me. “But Thorax likes to play with us!”

“Gotcha!” I scooped them all up into a group hug.

“Aww, no fair!”

“Yes fair,” I purred, nuzzling them.

Gossamer chuckled. “Alright, now…”

I finished the nuzzling and set the little cuties back on the ground. “Sorry, I really have to go. But I’ll be back! Now be good little nymphs and take your nap like Auntie Gossamer says so you’ll be well rested for the next play date!”

Reluctantly, they obeyed and followed Gossamer as she gathered up the pillows, and I went to the throne room, expecting the visitor would have been taken there.

I’d been right about where I’d find the visitor, and Hornet had been right about the situation being potentially urgent. Growling and shouting echoed through the hallways even before I got close, and it looked like a fight would have broken out had I arrived a second later.

“Pharynx! Leave her alone!” I exclaimed. “What’s gotten into you?”

“She entered the throne room without permission or escort, not to mention that she showed up completely unannounced!”

I facehoofed. “She doesn’t need to announce her visit, and neither does anyone else! And since when is the throne room off-limits?”

“Well, sorry for doing my job, Your Highness,” he spat. “Are you going to be as careless if Chrysalis shows up?”

“Don’t you think Chrysalis would pick a less conspicuous disguise if she wanted to show up?”

“She’d more likely pick the appearance of someone you’re vaguely familiar with to lower your guard without risking that you see through an improvisation in behavior.” He pointed a hoof. “Like this one.”

“Please calm down…”

“Whatever. I’ve got some recruits to yell at anyway.” With that, he buzzed his wings and disappeared towards ground level.

“Sorry about that, Ember,” I said. “I really thought he’d start behaving himself now that he’s reformed!” At least in the presence of foreign leaders if not in everyday situations…

“No worries, I can hold my own!” She looked me over. “So, where’s your crown?”

“In a box in my bedchamber. I didn’t see a reason to wear it all the time. I’m obvious enough as it is!”

“Too bad… it looked tasty!”

“Uh…”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize we could be needing dragon food so soon… maybe I can find some loose gems somewhere…”

“Don’t sweat it, I’m not hungry. I ate a phoenix on the way here.”

I winced. I knew dragons sometimes ate meat in addition to gems, but that knowledge didn’t make me any less sorry for the unfortunate bird.

“What? It’s just a bird!”

“But it was alive and happy and probably had friends and a family who miss it and wonder what happened and don’t know yet that they’ll never see it again…”

“Wow, you really take things to heart.”

“I can’t help it…”

“But it’s all part of the life cycle! Some animals eat plants, some eat other animals, some eat other things, and there’s even plants that eat animals! You eat love, so do you feel sorry for someone whose love got eaten?”

“Not really now that we share it, but I used to in the old days.”

She groaned. “Okay, fair enough, that was debilitating to whoever you caught, but what’s next? You gonna tell me you feel sorry for a patch of grass that gets eaten?”

“...well, now that you mention it…”

“Seriously?! It’s just grass, it doesn’t feel anything!”

“How do we know that? Just because we can’t feel its emotional aura doesn’t mean it’s not there!”

She faceclawed. “I give up.”

An awkward silence followed.

“So, um… how can I help you?” I asked eventually.

“I came to negotiate an alliance if you’re interested.”

“Really?!”

“Yeah, I figured now that we’re both allies with ponies and starting to introduce the idea of friendship to our subjects, we might as well become allies ourselves.”

I hugged her. “Oh, wonderful!”

“Ugh, this again?”

“Oh, right…” I let go of her. “You don’t like hugs… um, shall we sit down somewhere?”

She picked a section of the old wall for the purpose. I sat close by. The throne would have been a little too far away for convenience, and anyway, I didn’t want to appear commanding.

“So, uh, alliance,” she said. “I’ve only done this once so don’t mind me if I have no idea what we’re supposed to discuss.”

“How did it look like when you negotiated with Equestria?”

“Honestly, I have no idea what to make of that. We were just sitting at a table, talking about stuff, and in the end somepony brought a parchment for us to read and sign. I didn’t even realize we were negotiating anything until that moment. I mean, we must have as some of the things from the chit-chat ended up on that paper, but…” She shrugged. “I must have expected something more pompous and assumed we were just waiting for the pompous thing to begin.”

I chuckled. “No, the ponies like to keep things relaxed and friendly! I do too, honestly, but if you want something pompous, I might be able to arrange it-”

“Don’t bother. I’d get lost in that! I got lost during your coronation ceremony and all I had to do was sit and watch!”

“Okay. Is that why you didn’t stay to negotiate the alliance that day or the day after? Not that I mind seeing you again so soon!”

“Nah, I figured you’d have your hooves full, and the dragons I brought along were starting to lose self-control and I didn’t want them burning any villages on the way back to the Dragon Lands.”

“Okay, heh, keeping an eye on them was probably a good idea,” I agreed. “As a precaution, of course! I didn’t notice anything I’d have to complain about!”

“That’s probably because I dragged them aside before roasting them to avoid making a scene.”

“You needed to do that?!”

“Four times, and only the first time was just one dragon. Or was it five times?”

“Oh… wow…”

Another awkward silence followed.

“So, about those negotiations…” she said. “Do you have an idea what we’re supposed to discuss?”

“Honestly, my own experience was pretty much like yours, except that I expected it to be intimidating rather than pompous,” I admitted. “Okay, the crowd of anti-changeling protesters in the streets was intimidating until Celestia and Luna showed up to greet me, but after that, it felt like talking to old friends!”

“So I guess we’re doomed to improvise!”

“I guess we are… Okay, mind if I start? Would you agree to… how did they phrase it… promote a spirit of friendliness and positive attitude towards changelings among your subjects?”

“Doesn’t that go without saying?”

“Yes, probably, but Twilight had this checklist and I remember something along those lines was the first item on it, so it’s probably important… After all, there can be war alliances with a starting premise very different from this one…”

“Right. Yes, I agree, and would you agree to, uh, whatever you said, except swap ‘dragons’ and ‘changelings’?”

“Of course! See, we’ve already settled one matter! It can’t be that hard, can it?”

“I guess not… What’s the next matter?”

Good point. Maybe I shouldn’t have said this would be easy… “I’m not sure… maybe granting safe passage to changelings in Dragon Lands and vice versa without needing to get permission first? Or whatever it’s called? My couriers complained about barely getting out of there alive, and I’ve got someone here who’d be happiest if he could skin every non-changeling alive as soon as they enter our lands, so it might be a good idea to have some guarantee that won’t happen…”

“Uh-huh, though it’ll take some doing to convince the dragons to adhere to that. Speaking of which, how are you guys progressing with friendship? Any chance you could spare a few drones who have gotten a hang of it to help teach the dragons?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“And do you have any gems that you’d be interested in trading for… uh, something… I’m not even sure what you guys would need that we can offer in exchange…”

“I’m sorry, if there are any gems to be found around here, we haven’t found them yet, or at least noling told me about it and I’m pretty sure they would have...but say that we do find a natural supply of gems somewhere in changeling territory, what could you offer in exchange for them?”

She pondered this. “Now that I think about it, we don’t have much. There’s plenty of rocks here already and I don’t think you’d have much use for lava.”

“You really have nothing else?”

“What do you expect us to have? Too many things are flammable and no dragon would part with their hoard without a fight!”

“Right… heh…”

Another awkward silence sank down on us. Ember broke it by asking, “Anything else we need to arrange for?”

“Well, the ponies agreed to come to our defense if necessary and I agreed to help if they get attacked… I don’t suppose you’d need-”

“Dragons can hold their own in a fight!”

“Sorry…”

“...though I don’t think it’ll be too hard to get them to help defend you guys if I present it right… that’s what you wanted?”

“Only if you’re willing… I don’t want to force you into-”

“What happened to that assertiveness training?”

“Oh. Um…” I sat up straighter and cleared my throat, hoping that would make me appear less meek. “I would appreciate your assistance in case we need to defend our land. ...um, was that good enough?”

“Marginally, but at least you’re trying. Wanna work on it? I can yell at you all you want!”

I winced.

“Nothing personal, of course,” she added. “Just for practice.”

“Maybe some other time? I kind of already have someone who tests my patience all the time… unless you’re in need of venting?”

“Hey, I’m a dragon. I’m always in need of yelling at someone; we can’t go by that! In fact, I’m trying to learn to suppress that urge! Apparently it’s not very friendly even if the others know you’re not trying to kill them!”

“Yeah… Hey, you wanna practice friendliness? I can take you to a feelings forum! I think one is about to start pretty soon! You don’t have to hug if you don’t want to-”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass. I’m already pushing my limits of friendliness and trying to push them even further won’t end well for whoever happens to be nearby. Next time?”

“Sure! I’ll hold you to it!”

“This feels like we’re done negotiating,” she said after a moment. “Are we supposed to write it down now?”

“Actually…” How to put it? I didn’t want to say something that would undo the progress we’d made! “There is one more thing, if I may ask for it…”

“Yes?”

“You know how changelings used to infiltrate other lands to gather strategic information and scout for love sources for the prey hunters?”

She nodded with a hint of reserve in her posture. Had she guessed what I was about to ask?

“Some of those infiltrators were sent to the Dragon Lands recently. Psycho said it was after you took command because Chrysalis wanted to know more about you, and the hive lost contact with them just before I took over. I don’t suppose they’re being held prisoners and you’d be willing to release them or at least to extradite them to us?”

Her face and aura tensed up and she looked into the distance. “I don’t know what happened to them.”

“Not even a guess?”

“Oh, I can guess alright,” she sighed. “I just don’t think you’d like the most probable explanation, and frankly, I don’t like it very much either even though I’m partly responsible for it.”

“They’re dead, aren’t they? Pharynx and Psycho never said it outright but they’ve been acting like they’ve written them off…”

“They’d be guaranteed dead if discovered while my father was Dragon Lord,” she said. “Or even if he just suspected something was off about them. He would usually make them go swimming in lava… or thrown them into lava if they kept refusing. No big deal for a real dragon - we do it all the time - but the changelings in disguise… He loved the way they tasted afterwards… I put an end to the practice of suspicious dragons being brought forth for trial and judgment when I took over because it seemed unnecessarily cruel even though you guys weren’t reformed yet, but I never explicitly forbade other dragons to do as they please. I didn’t personally come across any unreformed changelings since but I can’t promise that the other dragons didn’t kill them without bothering to tell me.”

“Could you ask around?”

“Yes, but don’t hold your breath. There’s a lot of us, whoever did it may not remember or want to share that information, and there’s no telling that something else didn’t get to them.”

I sighed. “I figured as much… explains why everyling acted so evasive when I asked them about it. I think I kind of knew all along, so, uh… thanks for confirming… and thanks for offering to look for them.”

She nodded. “I’d ask about dragons in your keeping but I don’t think we’re missing any.”

“If you are, they’re not here. Releasing the cocoons was the first thing I ordered.”

“So, negotiations done?”

“I guess so! I can’t think of anything else!”

“That was quicker than I expected! Not that I mind not having to sit all day talking about stuff…”

“Even if we only have half an idea of what we’re doing?”

“Eh, good enough.”

“Let’s find Urtica now. We still need to put it on parchment!”

As expected, Urtica was in the archive, shelving some scrolls.

“Oh, hello, Thorax!” she said upon noticing us. “And Dragon Lord Ember! I heard you’ve been trying to spread friendship among the dragons just like Thorax has been doing here! It’s so amazing that so many creatures have been opening up to peaceful ways recently- wow, look at me ramble… How can I help you?”

“Ember and I have just finished negotiating an alliance and-”

“Oh my gosh! An alliance?! How amazing! I never thought in the old days we’d one day be forging alliances left and right, and look at us now! Unbelievable how things can change for the better, don’t you think?”

“Is she always like that?” Ember asked me.

I chuckled. “Yeah, pretty much…”

“Is there a problem?”

“No, of course not! We like you just the way you are!”

“Okay, but do tell me if I get overly excited about something, will you? It can interfere with duties, and I don’t want to disappoint- but wait, I’m rambling again… You said you’ve made an alliance, right?”

“Yes-”

“And you want me to put together a contract so you can formalize the alliance?”

“Yes-”

“Right away! Let me just dig up an unused scroll and… there we go! Now just tell me what you’ve arranged and I’ll write it down in a jiffy!”

We did, and we were just about finishing when I noticed Pharynx trot by in the hallway. He noticed us too and doubled back.

“Didn’t I tell you the archive should be off-limits to outsiders?” he asked me.

“You did and I see no reason for it, and besides, it’s not like I’m showing Ember any classified information or anything!”

“What is she doing here, then?”

“Forging an alliance,” she said in my stead. “Got a problem with it?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Wow, and I thought I was grumpy!”

“Whatever.” He turned around and left. I was about to take it for his usual demeanor and ignore him, but then a sudden darkness in his love aura caught my attention. I peeked out into the hallway.

“Thorax?” Ember called to me.

“Um… Can you handle things on your own for a minute? I’ll be right back.”

“Sure!” Urtica said.

“Uh-huh, we’re almost done anyway,” Ember agreed.

I nodded to them and hurried after Pharynx, and caught up to him as he was about to round a corner.

“What’s wrong?”

“Why do you think something’s wrong?”

“C’mon Pharynx, I can sense your aura!”

“Where in it does it say I want you pestering me?”

“I’m not pestering you, I’m concerned-”

“Why?”

“You’re my brother! Why wouldn’t I be concerned if something’s troubling you?”

He snorted.

“Pharynx, didn’t we agree to tell each other everything from now on?”

“So?”

“So why don’t you tell me what’s wrong and-”

“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong! We forge a new alliance every day and we’re friends with everyone and everything is sunshine and rainbows! Why would anything be wrong?!”

This again? “Pharynx, more allies means fewer enemies, therefore the hive will be safer!”

“I know that.”

“And just because it’s safer doesn’t mean we’ll stop needing you!”

“I know.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“...it was so glorious and thrilling to fight against some of those allies in the old days,” he sighed.

Something stirred in the back of my mind and clicked into place. “You used to want to defeat the Dragon Lord in battle,” I said.

“And to drain Celestia and to turn into a nirik,” he confirmed. “Well, the nirik is impossible - we can only burst into flames for a split second while transforming but we can’t imitate a fire as part of the disguise. I always knew it but somehow hoped I’d find a way around that limitation when I grew older; I was just fooling myself into thinking I could figure out what countless generations before me couldn’t. Draining Celestia would have been possible in the right circumstances but it stopped being an option the second you took command, and now it looks like any chance to even attempt a fight with a Dragon Lord just went out the window.”

“Even though you were picking on her just a minute ago?”

“I didn’t know about the alliance then,” he shrugged.

“You’d be willing to adhere to the terms of that alliance?” I asked, surprised.

“What else do you think I’ve been doing all along, you idiot? I didn’t want to be nice to all those creatures that swarmed the hive at your coronation! My first instinct was to break every bone in their bodies and throw them out! But I was nice because you wanted it! I spent my whole life trying to get you to find your place in the world and earn some respect, and now that you finally did, why would I undermine it all just because it didn’t happen the way I’d imagined it would? Even if I have to ignore my instincts and go against everything I’ve ever known and trained for because that’s somehow the thing that works?”

I hugged him.

“Don’t push it,” he groaned.

“Sorry,” I said, letting go of him. “But hey, I might have an idea. Come with me?”

“This better be worth skipping the combat drills…”

“I think it will,” I said, grinning.

I took him back to the archive.

“Hey, we’re done, we just need to sign it,” Ember said. “What’s he doing here?”

“I’m not sure if you’ve been properly introduced,” I said. “Ember, this is Pharynx, the leader of hive defenses and my brother. Pharynx, meet Dragon Lord Ember.”

Pharynx rolled his eyes. Ember said, “Okay, so?”

“It occurred to me that if we’ve agreed to aid each other in defense as and when requested, no matter how unlikely you are to request our help, we might as well have some mutual training sessions, or at the very least, we could gauge each other’s combative skills and tactics to give us an idea of what each of us can or can’t do if we have to fight together.”

“Don’t you think we already know that from fighting in wars?”

“Well, okay, maybe, but this time you can use it to learn from each other… I think?”

Pharynx facehoofed.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were asking me to beat you up,” Ember said dryly.

“No, not me! Um… I was actually thinking something along the lines of a sparring session between you two…”

“So you want me to beat him up?” Ember asked.

“Wait, you want me to beat her up?!” Pharynx said simultaneously.

“Well, if you’re up for it… it’s okay if you aren’t…”

They glared at each other for a long minute, then smirked mischievously.

“You know what? It is on!” Ember exclaimed, prancing at Pharynx with a roar.

“We’ll see about that!” Pharynx growled back, baring his teeth and assuming a battle stance.

CRASH!

“Um, guys? Why don’t you-” CRASH! “-go outside where you-” CRASH! “-won’t break anything…”

Holidays

A couple of days later, I took a moment of freedom from royal duties that needed immediate attention to relax a little; I needed it! An arts-and-crafts session happened to be in progress and they welcomed me without a second thought. I found myself a nice corner, set up a canvas and watercolors, and looked around. What to paint? It had been a while… Had I painted anything since my return to the hive? Probably not, not even a sketch… I hadn’t had the time, and truth be told, my creativity had been needed elsewhere during these last few months: though our bodies had received a complete overhaul, our home and social structure had remained in dire need of one too, but the matter had been largely settled by now, and with no emergencies looming, I could finally spare a moment to indulge myself with an old hobby.

That hobby had quickly evolved to portray my vision of a better life for changelings, back when such a life was only an unlikely dream. I had endeavoured to put that dream on paper, canvas, or whichever other medium was available, in order to help others realize it was possible, even if I hadn’t considered it likely for many years in the future. But now that the most unlikely outcome had happened, now that I’d brought my dream into reality, was there still any need for further paintings with the same theme?

Nevermind, I decided. I was going to continue! My art may not have needed to provoke thought anymore, so why wouldn’t it instead celebrate what we had become? Like the drones around me, for example; who would have thought they’d be not only painting and sculpting one day, but genuinely enjoying it? That deserved to be immortalized!

I’d just barely finished the outline of the scene when the mailmare from Ponyville trotted in and approached me with a letter.

Dear Thorax,

Congratulations on your alliance with the dragons! I had no idea Ember was interested; I actually expected you’d have to be the one to ask her and to be insistent about it! But be careful, will ya? You’re forging alliances so quickly that there won’t be any more alliances to forge by this time next year! What will you do then?

To answer your question, no, I’m afraid I don’t know for sure when I’ll be able to visit you next. We hardly even got to spend any time together at your coronation and I hoped we would! Not your fault - I know you were busy with too many things, and I should have taken it into consideration and talked Twilight into getting there a day or two sooner - but it’s getting embarrassing! I mean, how many times has it been now? Add to it that Twilight and I have been invited to spend Hearth’s Warming with Cadance and Shining in the Crystal Empire… I don’t suppose you could spare a few days off to join us? I’m sure they’d be happy to have you! Okay, you’re probably busy, I understand if you can’t be there.

Speaking of holidays, do changelings celebrate anything at this time of year? I hope you’ll have fun if you do!

Your friend,

Spike

P.S. Twilight happens to be in the room while I’m writing this and now she wants to know EVERYTHING about changeling holidays! (Send help!)

I trotted to my bedchamber where I knew I had some writing paper and envelopes, then sat down to write a reply.

Dear Spike,

Thank you! I don’t know how nitpicky you want to get, but I kind of did offer an alliance to Ember first. I say ‘kind of’ because it was part of a letter that I sent out to all leaders in the world just after overthrowing Chrysalis. Granted, I didn’t expect much to come of that offer, but the main idea of the letter was to announce that we weren’t a threat anymore, and any diplomatic ties would have been a bonus. She never mentioned that letter as something that influenced her decision, though, so I’m not sure if she even read it or if she remembers what it said, unless she assumed I was offering more than I’d care to uphold. I didn’t ask. Now that we’re allies, what does it matter who made the first step, anyway?

Twilight is going to be disappointed. Aside from celebrating war victories, which isn’t done anymore for obvious reasons, changelings don’t have any holidays at any time of year, or at least we didn’t in the old days, as Chrysalis thought they would be a distraction from our duties with no benefits to the hive. I wouldn’t mind changing that, though! Sunburst told me a little about Hearth’s Warming, but we both thought I’d still be living in the Crystal Empire by the time it came around, and he decided that teaching me about it in detail could wait until the holiday since we had plenty of other things that I needed to know sooner. How is it celebrated? Maybe we can adopt it for ourselves! If ponies don’t mind, of course…

I wish I could join you for the holiday, but Cadance and Shining will probably have their hooves full enough as it is, so I won’t burden them unless they invite me personally. You go on and have fun, though! I’m sure we’ll get to spend some time together eventually too, hopefully soon!

Your friend,

Thorax

The mailmare was still here, having developed a habit of sticking around to pick up any outgoing mail that might get written in reply to the letters she brought in, and I gave her the letter. She didn’t leave right away, instead continuing to chat with the nearby drones. Was she waiting for more letters to be brought to her? It would be so wonderful to find out that my subjects had found some penpals in Equestria! Was the time coming to establish our own postal service?

I returned to my painting.

The painting was nearly finished by the time Spike’s next letter arrived.

Dear Thorax,

Gee, I forgot about those letters! Must have assumed the one Twilight received was a formality, heh… but yeah, it wasn’t really a formality, was it? At least when it comes to other lands… Nice to see someone taking it seriously! Any more alliance offers by any chance?

Twilight is mildly disappointed that you don’t have any holidays to tell her about, but she admits that it’s hardly surprising, given what Chrysalis was like. If you really want to adopt Hearth’s Warming, she’s super excited to teach you all about it! In fact, she’s writing you the basic instructions about the holiday right now and I’ll include them with my letter. (Please don’t ask for anything more detailed - she could write a book about it and, from the looks of it, has already almost filled the entire piece of paper that I limited her to for your convenience! You DO NOT want to be around when she goes into full teacher mode!)

Sorry if the letter is short. Nothing much happened since the last one, and we’ve got a train to catch. If Twilight finishes writing first…

Happy Hearth’s Warming!

Your friend,

Spike

Dear Thorax,

I’m so excited that you want to incorporate pony holidays into changeling culture! If I may say so, Hearth’s Warming is the perfect holiday to begin with and it fits you so well! In case Sunburst hasn’t told you that much already, it commemorates the acts of three ponies, one from each tribe, to convince their tribes’ leaders to overcome the division and hatred that was so deeply ingrained into each tribe that it attracted the windigoes, the ancient spirits that feed on hatred and spread eternal winter, and to bring peace to their tribes, which was the first step in the founding of Equestria. The core values that they established are the foundations on which Equestria stands today. I can actually draw a lot of parallels between their work and what you did with the changelings! But I have to admit I’m not sure how you’ve been unaware of the holiday until Sunburst told you about it, considering how many changelings were infiltrated long-term into Equestria at any given moment. I’d expect you to be more familiar with it, if for no other reason, then to maintain disguise credibility! Do you lack the knowledge due to how you struggled in basic training? Or maybe you’re trying to clear up any misconceptions and/or to fill the gaps in the knowledge that the infiltrators never managed or bothered to fill?

Now, Spike made me promise I wouldn’t write a book on the subject and only gave me this paper for reference as to how detailed I should allow myself to get in order to avoid overwhelming you, and I’ve already used up a better portion of it (how can anypony hope to explain Hearth’s Warming properly on a piece of paper this small?), so I’m left with no choice but to cover the barest of the basics. Forgive me if you already know all of this!

How is Hearth’s Warming celebrated, you ask? There can be some variations that reflect a family’s unique traditions, but some things are generally the same in every family, so I’ll describe those. Families start the holiday by putting the tree up on Hearth’s Warming Eve. The meals at Heart’s Warming are richer and more elaborate than on a normal day, and if thirsty, there’s often a punch bowl to dive into. Everypony exchanges gifts; some families do it in the morning and some families in the evening before the big day. Lastly, to complete the festive environment, you can build a fire, light it up, and sing carols. By the way, did you know that your coronation anthem was based on one of the most popular Hearth’s Warming carols?

Hope this helps! I tried to be short, so sorry if I forgot something, but we can get into greater detail later if you’re interested! Now I have a train to catch! I’ll say hi to Cadance and Sunburst for you!

Happy Hearth’s Warming!

Twilight

I put together a quick thank-you-and-have-fun letter for them, knowing they wouldn’t get it until after they returned from the Crystal Empire, and the mailmare made off with it. Then, I had just about enough time to add the final touches to my painting before heading out to the feelings forum. They had by now gotten in the habit of being held regularly regardless of whether or not anyling needed to discuss a problem, and if none of them needed help on any particular day, the drones would just sit around and talk about anything. Today, assuming there weren’t more pressing matters, I intended to bring up the suggestion to celebrate Hearth’s Warming.

The attendance was high but none of the attendees presented a problem for discussion, so I took my chance. I tried to present the matter in the most positive light I could, hoping it would work, but despite the trends being favorable, the long years of shunning and ridiculing my ideas still cast shadows that sometimes made it hard to expect approval. Like now, for example.

“So,” I asked in the end, “what do you think?”

Half the drones nodded, smiled, or murmured eagerly, apparently liking the idea, or at least finding it interesting enough to give it a try. The others murmured among themselves.

“Why would we have to do that?” one of them asked.

“Well, like I said, to relax and spend time with your friends and families and-”

“Yes, I heard you the first time. What I mean is, don’t you think we’re doing plenty of that already?”

“Compared to what it was like in the old days, yes, you’re probably right, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have days dedicated to relaxing and socializing!”

“And what are we supposed to gain from it?”

“...you’ll be happier?”

The guy snorted.

“I wouldn’t mind,” another drone said. “At least to give it a try. Maybe it’ll surprise you.”

“You of all people?!” the first one exclaimed. “You were one of Chrysalis’ best infiltrators, for hive’s sake!”

“Yes, I was. No point denying that I spent fourteen years in Canterlot. I never liked ponies much, but you know what? I liked Hearth’s Warming. I had no idea what it was about exactly and didn’t care, but I did care about all that intensified aura that always happened around that time. Best guess is that the holiday had something to do with it, and I was as hungry as the rest of you, so…” He shrugged. “Maybe the ponies were doing something right and maybe it’s time to accept that. If I learned anything as an infiltrator, it’s that there’s always something new to learn about things and people. Sometimes you’ll like what you learn and sometimes you won’t, but the thing you learn about doesn’t care how you feel about it being the way it is, and most of the time, you can’t make it change to fit your liking, so it’s best to accept it and move on. We may not be starving anymore, and we may not need a holiday to supply us with love, but I sure as heck won’t turn it away if it does. For all we know, a holiday of some sort could be responsible for the chain of events that led Thorax to learn how to end starvation, and a holiday of some sort could be what’s keeping our love supplies from running dry even if we haven’t realized it yet.”

“Okay, fine, that makes sense,” another drone said. “But why do we have to celebrate a pony thing? Why not something of our own?”

“We don’t have anything of our own, Dagger,” Sleuth said.

“Sure we do! We’ve had war victories and-”

“War victories are a thing of the past and we’re no longer proud of them,” Grim reminded him.

“Then let’s invent something!”

“We’re sure to have our own achievements to celebrate in due course,” I said. “In the meantime, we can celebrate the same things our friends and allies celebrate. Besides, don’t you think there could be an indirect reason for us to celebrate Hearth’s Warming?”

“Really? What?” a voice grumbled from near the entrance.

“Oh, hi, Pharynx! I didn’t see you there! When did you arrive?”

“I didn’t. I was just passing by and heard you trying to sweeten up the hive even more than it already is. I’m wondering what excuse you’ll cook up this time!”

A few drones snickered.

“If the ponies hadn’t learned to overcome their differences and stop hating the tribes other than their own, the windigoes would have consumed their lands, we’d have been left without our main source of food for centuries no matter how I personally feel about the way we used to obtain that food, and even if we’d somehow survived to this day under such conditions, there’s no telling if any of us would have been able to figure out a way to end starvation,” I said. “Instead, the ponies learned to share love, and the love they shared among themselves not only kept them safe from the windigoes, but it kept us alive through the centuries, and its legacy is the reason why we’ve eventually bettered ourselves.”

“Hm. Good save.”

“Wait, you support him?!” Rascal asked Pharynx.

“It’s hard to argue with his logic, but that still doesn’t mean I want everything insufferably cute like I’m sure it’s supposed to get, given where the holiday is coming from.”

I rolled my eyes and chuckled to myself. Typical Pharynx…

“What’s wrong with things being cute?” Antenna protested.

“Don’t you have enough flowers already?”

Everyling started talking at once. I tried to restore some order, but it was no use! Eventually, Feisty hit the gong, which helped somewhat.

“Arguing will get us nowhere,” she said. “Why don’t we try to find a compromise?”

“Yes, thank you,” I said. “Twilight said in her letter that families can have their own traditions in addition to what’s generally done everywhere, so it’s not like there’s just one correct way to celebrate! I’d be fine with letting each of you choose for yourselves how involved you want to be in celebrating if some aspects don’t suit you.”

“Hey, I have an idea,” Elytra exclaimed. “If ponies can have a certain way of celebrating, why don’t we invent our own? We can base it on what ponies do but who says we have to do the exact same thing as them?”

“Do you have anything specific in mind?”

“I might,” she said cryptically.

“Well?” Rascal and Dagger pressed.

“I’m thinking something along the lines of free interpretation of what ponies do. That way it won’t be too different from their thing, and everyling will have a chance to add a personal touch, something they’ll like about the holiday. Could be fun!”

Most drones nodded or murmured in agreement. A few smirked miscievously, and I hoped they hadn’t just invented a way to destroy the holiday for everyling else! What worried me most was that Pharynx was smirking…

“Okay, so I take it that you’ve agreed to do it? We’ve got a little time left until Hearth’s Warming, so get ready!”

The next morning found me in the arts-and-crafts section again. The part of Hearth’s Warming that I looked forward to the most was gift-giving, and I had an idea for something that Pharynx might like that I was pretty sure I could finish in time. As for everything else that Twilight had described, it sounded interesting and I might have attempted to partake in preparing everything, but there was going to be no time; Hearth’s Warming Eve was tonight and I could only do one thing at such short notice! If only I’d inquired about the holiday sooner, then we wouldn’t be in such a rush to prepare everything in one day and we could all do a little bit of everything! Unless there was a rule that forbade doing anything in advance? I’d have to ask the ponies about it!

Luckily, no urgent royal business came up and I was at least able to work on the gift in peace. A few other drones were around too, apparently making their own gifts, and though I was too busy making my own gift to pay much attention to them, I got the impression they were all done in much less time than I expected to. Were they simply taking turns in crafting a single gift? But why would they do that? It was possible that a gift required assistance of a drone skilled in a particular thing, but surely that wouldn’t be the case with all gifts, would it? And judging by what I’d seen when sporadically glancing at their work, none of it seemed complicated at all; in fact, most were just little boxes of different colors! Had they bought finished gifts that only needed to get wrapped up? Or maybe found something worthy of gifting? Surely they wouldn’t have stolen anything… right?

Oh well, I could always ask about it later. For all I knew, someling may have anticipated my idea of introducing Hearth’s Warming into the hive, or maybe they thought they’d need gifts for something sooner or later, and had stockpiled in advance. Just because I’d never seen any potential gifts lying around didn’t mean there hadn’t been any!

The sun had glided almost all the way to the west by the time I finished Pharynx’s gift and wrapped it up. In this whole time, I hadn’t left the arts-and-crafts section even to stretch my legs, and everyling else was long finished. Had they already started celebrating? I wasn’t hearing any singing, but the love aura was bright and warm, so maybe it was just out of earshot! Itching to see what they’d done, I took the gift into my bedchamber and went for a stroll around the hive.

The first out-of-the-ordinary thing I noticed was an oak tree hanging upside-down in one of the larger caverns.

“What the-” I muttered, dumbfounded by the sight.

“Don’t worry, Thorax, it’s just our Hearth’s Warming tree!” Blade said.

“But- what- how-”

He and the drone who had first defended Hearth’s Warming at the feelings forum chuckled.

“...okay… you hung a tree… wow… Is that what ponies do?”

“No,” Blade admitted. “They use a pine or spruce and prop it up right-side-up, or sometimes they use a living tree in a planter, and they decorate it with ornaments. But not many pines grow here and we don’t have the traditional ornaments, though we could improvise something less traditional in a pinch or maybe get enough drones to become ornaments for the day, but you agreed to have us use our own interpretation of Twilight’s instructions, so Menace suggested this instead.”

“The idea popped in my head randomly a few years ago, as a ‘let’s-mess-with-ponies-on-their-holiday’ kind of mischief that we liked to do in the old days, but that would have killed the extra love and likely compromised my disguise, so I held back,” he said. “But now there aren’t such risks so I figured I might as well see what it would look like.”

“Oh… okay…”

“You sound disappointed?”

“No, it’s just that I wasn’t expecting something like this… and I kind of feel sorry for the tree…”

“I thought you might,” Blade said, “so I copied a trick I saw from you in the Crystal Empire and cocooned the roots.”

I flew up and, sure enough, there was a cocoon around the other end of the tree! I couldn’t believe it! They’d actually started doing that too!

“We’ll replant it when the holiday’s over,” Menace said. “If you see a pair of discolored maulwurfs or something carrying a tree across the wasteland a few days from now, that’s probably us.”

“Okay! Well, have fun, and happy Hearth’s Warming!” I said and continued my stroll.

A little further, I caught a glimpse of a group of drones sitting in a circle and exchanging gifts. I’d have thought nothing of it except for the way they were doing it: instead of giving a gift to a drone who then opened it and kept whatever was inside, they had a bunch of fancily-wrapped boxes that they rotated among themselves! Well, that at least explained how they’d been done making the said ‘gifts’ so quickly earlier today…

I continued on. A peculiar scent attracted me to the kitchen, where I found a dozen drones in the process of baking something that resembled heart-shaped cookies but was made of, or covered in, a shiny, vibrant-red substance and decorated with elaborate, colorful swirls.

“They’re not actually edible,” one of the drones told me as I stared at the finished products. “Not in the sense that you’ll get poisoned - all the ingredients are non-toxic - but they don’t taste good and you could break a tooth if you bite into them.”

“What are they?”

“We’ve been calling them gingerbread hearts. The recipe is based on that for gingerbread houses the ponies make and modified for durability rather than edibility. We’ve been wondering if imbuing them with live aura could produce a sort of Hearth’s Warming-like meal that we could get nutrition from. If it fails, at least we’ll use the hearts as decorations.”

“I like the idea! Have you tried it yet?”

“No, we want to finish baking and icing the hearts first. We’ll tell you how it goes!”

I thanked them and left them to their work. Further along the stroll, I saw some more trees hung upside-down and a few more groups exchanging faux-gifts. Nothing wrong with any of it, but I had to admit I’d expected a little more variety over what they chose to do and how they chose to do it, even if some ended up adhering exactly to the pony way of celebrating the holiday due to either deliberate choice or a lack of ideas for anything different, or maybe both in some cases. Had they all spent the rest of that feelings forum setting up standards that everyling was supposed to follow?

Singing voices interrupted that train of thought and I followed them down a hallway. My ears led me to what appeared to be the cluster of bedchambers belonging to Banshee, Spiracle, and their three nymphs. They were all gathered in the central space, around a pile of wooden planks cut, painted, and hammered together to resemble a fire, and each of them was holding a firefly lantern and singing the words ‘carols, carols, carols, carols, carols!’ over and over again.

The eldest nymph was the first to notice me; she yelped and recoiled so hard that she crashed into the ‘fire’ and nearly knocked it over, dropping the lantern and turning into a rock in the process.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you!” I said quickly, taking her in my hooves. “Please relax! I was only passing by and happened to hear you sing!”

“It’s okay, Ocellus,” her mother said. “You can shift back! Sorry, Thorax! She’s shy.”

After a moment of hesitation, the rock returned to her insectoid form and withdrew behind her parents.

“It’s alright. Hi, Ocellus! I’m Thorax. Pleased to meet you!”

She nodded slowly.

“Don’t mind our silly singing,” Spiracle said. “We’ve been singing the usual pony carols all day and got bored eventually.”

“Why would I mind? I said everyling was free to make their own traditions, and if your is to sing one word all over again, who am I to forbid it?”

Ocellus looked at her parents as if she wanted to point out a flaw in my logic, but didn’t say anything, and they didn’t seem to notice. I asked her about it.

“Uh, y-y-you’re the k-king,” she stammered. “You can f-forbid a-a-a-anything, can’t you?”

“I guess I could, but why would I do it if you’re enjoying yourselves and no one’s getting hurt?”

“Yeah,” Banshee chuckled. “Forbidding stuff would be more in Pharynx’s style!”

Oh dear, I’d forgotten about Pharynx, and it was getting pretty dark!

“Um, excuse me, I just remembered something,” I said. “Gotta go! And enjoy the holiday!”

I vaguely remembered Pharynx mentioning something about finishing the soldiers’ drills early due to holiday preparations. I didn’t know whether or not he’d actually meant it, but even if it wasn’t like him to choose anything over battle-related stuff, I hoped he’d have at least made an effort! But where to find him?

A quick glance through one of the openings overlooking the training grounds revealed that either he’d dismissed them or that they were practicing environment-mimicking disguises. I chose to assume the former was the case, but that didn’t help much to figure out Pharynx’s current whereabouts. He wasn’t in either of our bedchambers, and I’d already checked the training grounds, if only from an altitude; the armory and the training gear storage area were other possibilities, but what would he be doing there now? In the end, I went to the throne room on the off-chance that Psycho was still there and could tell me something useful.

I didn’t get to Psycho. There was no need; in the middle of the plateau sat a large trough, a head taller than me and probably wide enough to fit a fully-grown timberwolf, and as I was trying to wrap my mind around its unexpected presence and unclear purpose, Pharynx flew over and emptied a bag into it. Something clattered inside.

“Where have you been all day?” he asked.

“Around, doing the preparations and stuff,” I said vaguely, then pointed at the trough. “What’s this?”

“Punch bowl.”

Really? It didn’t look like what I’d expect of a punch bowl… Eyeing it curiously, I flew up and looked inside. There was no liquid, but the bottom was covered in probably every weapon known to the world: spears, daggers, halberds, crossbows, and an insane amount of whips, clubs, hammers, and maces; there were even some things I didn’t recognize! I cast a bewildered look at my brother.

“What’s all this doing here?!”

“You wanted us to come up with our own interpretation of the things from that letter, didn’t you? Well this is mine.”

“But-”

“What did you expect? That I’d mix up loads of the drink to swim in like Grim and Gossamer did?”

“That would have been better…”

“Well deal with it.”

“At least you could have set it up somewhere other than the throne room!” I picked up one of the unfamiliar objects. “What is all this, anyway?”

“Those are brass knuckles. I stole them from a griffon thug a while back.” He transformed into a griffon, took the thing from me, and slipped it onto his talons. “They’re designed to do heavier damage than a bare claw when you hit someone. Do it right and you can break your opponent’s beak off their face, then they can’t peck at you and will be visibly disgraced and ridiculed until they buy a prosthetic beak.”

I cringed at that. “What if they don’t have the money?”

“Tough luck, then. They should have thought of that before picking a fight.”

I decided not to ask further. “So, why is all this here?”

“Because apparently it’s Hearth’s Warming and I wanted something to enjoy. I don’t get to beat up people much now that the hive’s under new management.”

“You’re still mad about that sparring session with Ember? I’m sorry you lost-”

“I didn’t lose, you interrupted it! I would have easily dodged that fire, and I intend to prove it to you as soon as she can get back and continue where we left off!” He took off the brass knuckles and returned to his own form. “Wanna play referee?”

“Didn’t you just complain about me stopping the fight?”

“I don’t mean with Ember! She’s too busy in the Dragon Lands right now!”

“Then what did you mean?”

“I thought I might involve you in my Hearth’s Warming celebration. Unless you want to fight?”

“No thanks- wait, who’s fighting if not you and Ember?”

“Some of your precious reformed renegades were plotting a little arson so I signed them up for the punch bowl instead. Hornet should be bringing them anytime now!”

“I don’t know, Pharynx…”

“C’mon, it won’t be hard. All you have to do is yell ‘Pharynx wins!’ every time I kill one of them.”

“What?!”

“What?”

“Why would you kill them?!”

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, fine, whenever I knock one of them out. Killjoy…”

“...what if they knock you out?”

“You think a First Commander can’t handle a few lousy recruits?!”

“I know you can, but that doesn’t mean you have to-”

“Well finally!” he exclaimed; I turned around to see Hornet bringing in about two dozen grumpy drones. “What took you so long?”

“Sorry.”

“Okay, who’s first?”

Noling volunteered so Pharynx picked one out at random and dragged him into the punch bowl. The fight was over while I still debated with myself whether to command him to stop the brutality or to allow him to discipline his subordinates as he saw fit… within reasonable limits, whatever counted as ‘reasonable’ in the context… The unconscious former renegade was taken out of the punch bowl and dumped aside, and Pharynx picked the next victim, who quickly fared about as unwell as the first one, and so on until they were all through and Hornet piled them up on a trolley to drag them to the infirmary.

“What, that’s it?” Pharynx said after she left with his unfortunate opponents.

“You didn’t have to be so brutal,” I told him.

“Brutal?” he snorted. “I was just warming up for the real thing!”

“Still, if you’ll want to do this next year, maybe ask for actual volunteers instead of disguising discipline measures as a fighting competition?”

“I thought you were gonna ban this for next year!”

“I want to, but that would mean taking away the only thing that makes my brother happy for a holiday.” It was true; his aura had gotten much brighter than usual! “Just promise me that participation will be entirely voluntary from now on?”

“Eh, whatever.”

“Now come, I have something for you.”

“What?”

“You’ll see!”

I took him to my bedchamber and gave him the gift. He eyed it suspiciously, sniffed it, examined it from all angles as if expecting a nasty prank, and then, not having found anything alarming, he tore up the wrapping and opened the box.

“It’s a blowpipe,” he said. “And darts. And a target thingy. And-” He raised an eyebrow. “-drawings of you, Chrysalis, Psycho, pony princesses, some more ponies, a random drone, and a maulwurf?”

“You slide the drawings into the target thingy.” I showed him. “Then you blow darts at it. It’s for when you’re angry at someone but don’t want to hurt them or they’re too far away or something.”

“And these empty papers?”

“They’re for when you need a face that I haven’t anticipated. You just draw them or ask someling else to do it for you.”

“Interesting.” He looked at the set a little longer, then smirked, put Chrysalis’ face into the target, propped it against the wall, and blew a dart across the room, hitting Chrysalis between the eyes. “Yeah, I could get used to this stuff!”

“Glad you like it!”

“But your picture?”

I shrugged. “I figured you might need it whenever I tell you not to kill someone…”

“Heh!”

He stood there for a moment, looking at the blowpipe, then said, “Didn’t that letter say something about exchanging gifts?”

“It did, why?”

“I didn’t make you anything.”

“It’s okay, I-”

“But maybe there’s something I can compensate with.”

“You don’t have to, really-”

“Shut up.” He put the blowpipe down and approached me. “I’m no good at this so don’t judge me.”

I was about to ask what he meant, but then he embraced me in an awkward hug. Was I dreaming? I couldn’t believe he’d actually done that! I’d always thought he’d sooner die a long and painful death than hug anyone!

“Awwwww…” I hugged him back.

“You’ve got two seconds.”

“Okay…” I felt a happy tear sliding down my face.

“Thorax?”

“Yes?”

“It’s been ten seconds.”

“Uh-huh…”

“Well stop it.”

“Huh?”

“If you don’t let go right now, I’ll pin that target on your face and test the brass knuckles on it!”

“Oh… okay… sorry...”

Author's Note

A Hearth’s Warming chapter at this time of year? Unorthodox, maybe, but its turn came in in-universe time, so why not?

A bit of trivia:
The decorative hearts that the changelings are baking in this chapter are based on a type of traditional Christmas decoration from my country, typically heart-shaped, but other shapes can be found too. They’re often sold as souvenirs as well, in which case they may or may not be Christmas-related. They’re not actually gingerbread, though, and production takes much longer than the one day that the changelings here have at their disposal.

A Small World

Over the next couple of months, the hive settled into a peaceful routine. Hearth’s Warming had gone, the trees had been replanted and the decorations stacked away until next year, but the spirit of friendship remained. Antenna was still lushing up the wasteland, now with some of Proboscis’ crew digging up some riverbeds to eventually redirect one of the rivers from the jungle to feed our growing vegetation; Mystique had expanded the arts-and-crafts sessions, the choir was growing in size and popularity, more drones were deciding to experiment in the kitchen, with results ranging all the way from delightful to disastrous, Pharynx was spending day and night torturing his unfortunate troops and calling it basic training, and the feelings forum brought everyling together regularly. Being in charge was easy in such circumstances, and I was slowly getting used to my duties and growing more confident in enforcing my rule. Not that it needed much enforcing anymore; the vast majority of drones needed little more than a suggestion from me, and most incidents of acting out happened among the former renegades who were now in the military and therefore successfully dealt with by Pharynx every time.

The routine was, in fact, so easy that I found enough time to play with nymphs on a regular basis and do a bit of painting almost every day, as well as caring for my flower, which was now planted in the throne room where I could always enjoy its presence. It was thriving so nicely that I’d even started taking cuttings from it to plant elsewhere! The wasteland was big enough that I wondered if I’d ever be able to call the task done! Not that it ever needed to be considered done…

I also joined the feelings forums regularly. Not many drones showed up with problems anymore, and when they did, it was usually something easy enough to tackle, so the sessions mostly served as a hub of socialization and sharing of love.

One such session sprouted a conversation about our pony friends.

“I just got a letter from Roseluck,” Retina said to Antenna’s musings about what to plant next. “They just had a Winter Wrap Up, maybe I can ask her if she has any leftover seeds she could give you!”

“What’s Winter Wrap Up?” I asked.

“It’s a day of transition from winter to spring,” she explained. “Ponies work in teams to clear the snow and ice, plant seeds, wake up the hibernating animals, bring the southern birds home and build them nests… basically the things that would take weeks in other lands with a similar climate, but ponies have the means to do it in a day, provided they’re well organized of course, which Ponyville had trouble with before Twilight moved there, but she took care of it-”

“Are we going to have something similar next year?” Sleuth interjected, looking at me.

“I’m not sure,” I mused. “It sounds interesting, but isn’t it a little too warm for snow here? I don’t see a reason for us to copy every pony holiday, but if enough of you want, we can think of something similar, I guess?”

The response to the suggestion was lukewarm; most drones just looked at one another, shrugging and murmuring uninterestedly.

“I’ll take it as a no, then?”

Noling objected.

“Oh, good,” Sleuth sighed. “I have no idea how to start on making fake snow!”

“Not to mention that Proboscis would curse you forever for the mess you’ve made!” Nettle quipped.

“She’s not that bad,” Spiracle told him. “Though, I have to agree that she wouldn’t be happy…”

“Wouldn’t the cleaners be more unhappy?” someling added.

“Not if we all pitched in,” I said. “Assuming we ever decided to do some version of a Winter Wrap Up!”

“Yeah, didn’t we all clean up after Hearth’s Warming? I didn’t see anyling complain!”

“Except for the nymphs,” Spiracle chuckled, rubbing his son’s head. “But they have to learn that not everything in life is fun and relaxing; there has to be some responsibility, too, or they’d never appreciate what they have!”

I sighed, reminiscing on the old days for a moment. It wasn’t that long ago that fun and enjoyment had been forbidden; back then, if anyling had suggested that there was more to life than responsibilities and blind following of orders, they wouldn’t have fared well! And it felt so good that those days were over and that the next generation of changelings would never know first-hoof how lucky they were not to have to go through it all!

“So what else is new in Ponyville?” Mystique asked, snapping me out of my reverie.

“Oh, not much,” Retina said. “And I mean it! They’ve actually somehow hit a period of peace and quiet such as normally exists elsewhere but hasn’t been seen in Ponyville for years!”

“Didn’t you mention something about that fashion designer? Some gossip about her ruined mane?”

“Oh, that! Yes, there was some mention of it last month, but Roseluck didn’t say anything now. Maybe it’s growing back?”

“It would be weird if it didn’t,” she agreed, snickering.

“You guys make it sound so interesting,” Tibia moaned.

“Well, they do get their share of excitement, thanks to the Elements of Harmony living in town and the Everfree Forest being so close,” Psycho shrugged.

“I wish I could go there…”

“Actually,” Morpheus interjected, “their mailmare mentioned an upcoming birthday of somepony I know from my last mission to have a kind of obsession with unusual creatures. Maybe we can get Pinkie to hire you to play a monster or two for her-”

“If you do get hired,” Antenna said, “would it be a problem for you to pick up any seeds that Roseluck is willing to send me on your way back?”

“Oh, and can you return the book Banshee borrowed for Ocellus?” Spiracle chimed in.

“And see if Quills and Sofas got a new shipment of pillows-”

More and more drones joined in with requests, and I caught Tibia’s panicked glance as we struggled to keep track of it all. It seemed like everyling had some business in Ponyville! How was one changeling supposed to handle it all?

“And can you take some pictures while you’re there?” another request caught my ears. “I’d love to see what it looks like!”

“Everyling, please!” I exclaimed. “Why don’t you all go there?”

“...we can do that?” Sleuth asked.

“Of course! I’m not restricting anyling to the hive! My only concern is that you might get in trouble, but Ponyville is friendly, so I’m sure it won’t be a problem!”

Most agreed readily, but some still had their doubts.

“What if something does go wrong?” Tibia asked. “Not necessarily in Ponyville, but on the way there or back?”

I considered it. “Okay, not every town is comfortable with us running around yet, I agree, even if the messengers we’ve been sending around didn’t get in trouble. Would you feel better going as a group? I can tag along too; I’ve been meaning to spend some time with Spike!”

“That could work, yes,” she agreed. “But if you go, who will oversee the hive?”

“I’ll stay,” Psycho declared. “I have no particular business in Ponyville at the moment and I’m happy enough where I am. Something tells me Pharynx won’t be any more interested in going, either, unless he deems this whole group incapable of keeping his brother safe.”

“Okay, then! When are we going?”

We arrived in broad daylight this time. Though encouraged by no longer being the only changeling with a penpal from Equestria and by an outright invitation by several other penpals, part of me still couldn’t let go of worrying and coming up with worst-case scenarios and one complication after another, despite another part of me insisting that everything would be fine. It had to be; why else would Pharynx have shown so little reaction to being told a whole group of us was going away just for the fun of it? I’d been sure he’d have at least assigned us a few soldiers! So if Pharynx wasn’t concerned, why should I be?

It turned out he was right. A group of ponies was gathered at the Town Hall, waving at us excitedly. A few pegasi separated from the group to meet with some of us, and after a brief but warm greeting, left with their respective guests each in their own direction. The rest of us landed near the remaining ponies, who wasted no time in finding their friends and sharing greetings of their own.

All of my oldest friends were there.

“Spike!” I squealed, hugging him. “And the rest of you! We finally get to just relax and spend some time together!”

“Heh, it had to happen sometime!” he chuckled.

“Did you travel safely?” Twilight asked.

“Yes, and it somehow seems to take less time than it used to… or maybe it’s just that I’m getting used to it?”

“I think you’re just stretching your wings properly!” Rainbow said. “One day, I’m gonna race you and feel like I have to work for it!”

“Um…”

“What do you say? You think you’ve got what it takes to take on a Wonderbolt?”

“Rainbow!” Rarity scoffed. “Manners when speaking to royalty! So sorry, darling, some of us do tend to get carried away rather more easily than others! You don’t have to race anypony, of course; I’m sure you’d prefer a nice, relaxing spa day after than… ugh… long and dreadfully exhausting flight halfway across the world, don’t you?”

“Actually, we took a break-”

“Or a party!” Pinkie joined in, throwing some confetti in the process. “We still owe you a Welcome to Equestria party and a Becoming King party and an uncocooning party for all those ponies you let go and a First-Ever Changeling Alliance party and a Convince All Renegades to Reform party and all the birthday parties that you missed! Wait till I get my hooves on that party-planning machine! And we’ve already prepared a surprise birthday party for Lyra over there so you can join in and surprise her with the rest of us! Won’t that be fun?”

“Uh…”

“Now I know we already asked one of the changelings to entertain Lyra but who says there has to be just one? And it’ll be even better because more people at the party makes the party better! I mean, what’s a party with just a few guests? Bleh! Boring! But I just know everypony will love to see you there and you can dance and sing with them and eat cake and play pin-the-tail-on-the-pony and it’ll be super-super crazy fun-”

Applejack shoved a hoof into Pinkie’s mouth. “Simmer down, Sally,” she scolded. “Y’all agreed we’d let Thorax here decide what he wanna do, ain’t ya?”

“Mhm…”

“Well, Thorax, what’s it gonna be?”

“I’m not sure… were you girls invited to the party?”

“Um, yes,” Fluttershy breathed, “but we don’t have to go if you’d rather do something else…”

“Yeah, I can fetch Discord and Big Mac if you wanna try some intense Ogres and Oubliettes!”

“Sorry, Spike, Big Mac’s mighty busy plowin’ them fields right now,” Applejack said. “Ah woulda been helpin’ but we got ourselves a friend visitin’ an’ Ah ain’t turning mah back on welcomin’ him to town!”

“Oh… I, uh… didn’t realize this was a bad time… I can come back some other day-”

“Now dontcha start spouting nonsense there, buddy! There’ll always be somethin’ to do at the farm but that don’t mean we can’t make time for friends!”

“If you say so… I wasn’t really expecting to attend a party today, but since the rest of you seem to be going, are you sure they’d be okay with me dropping in… unannounced…” My gaze drifted towards a pony randomly passing by a little away and I instantly forgot what I’d wanted to say and why; it suddenly didn’t matter! “Excuse me,” I muttered, trotting across the town square as if in trance.

“What in tarnation?” Applejack said, but I barely heard her. My eyes and mind were fixed on a stallion I hadn’t expected to run into again, especially in this town! What was he doing here?

He hadn’t noticed me approaching.

“Um, Mr. Grand Pear?”

“...yes?”

“I can’t believe I ran into you here! I was so worried!”

“Forgive me, Your Highness, but I’m not sure that I follow…”

Huh?

“Oh, of course!” I slapped my forehead; how could I have forgotten something so obvious?! “Sorry… I just realized you haven’t seen me like this yet…”

I fizzled into the form of a pegasus that had dropped into his orchard one fateful day and his eyes went wide.

“That was you?!” he gasped, nearly falling over in shock.

“Yes- Are you alright?” I rushed to hold him steady.

“Yes… yes, I think so… just give me a moment…”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have startled you like that-”

“What in tarnation is going on here?!” Applejack cried, galloping over.

“I-”

“Your Highness, I trust you’ve met my granddaughter?”

“I- huh? Applejack?!”

“Y’all know each other?”

“We… met in Vanhoover…”

“Remember that story about how I decided to come back to Ponyville, Applejack? The gentlecolt that convinced me to read your ma’s letters is standing right in front of you! Though, I never thought he might be a changeling…”

I smiled sheepishly. “You’d probably have chased me away…”

“Yes,” he sighed, “I probably would have… would have been another thing I’d regret…”

“An’ mah grandpa gave y’all that flower? Why didn’t ya say anythin’?!”

“I didn’t realize you two were related!”

“AJ?” Rainbow shouted from across the square. “You coming or what?”

Applejack took in a breath as if to shout back, but Grand Pear put a hoof on her shoulder.

“Go on,” he said. “I’d like a moment with His Majesty, if he’s willing.”

“I am, but please, just call me Thorax, okay? I can’t stand all those high titles!”

“As you wish, Your- er, Thorax.”

Applejack returned to the others, glancing at us as she went, and I joined Grand Pear in his stroll.

“Uh, Mr. Grand Pear? Will Applejack be offended that you didn’t want her to tag along?”

“I haven’t known her very long, but from what I’ve seen of her, she would have spoken her mind if she had any objections. And no need to call me ‘mister’!”

“Yeah, probably…”

“And you don’t have to be disguised for my sake, now that I know who you really are!”

I fizzled back into myself.

“So, uh, did you find out about your daughter?”

His heavy sigh was all the answer I needed. “Yes… turns out the rumors were true after all…”

“Oh dear… I’m so sorry!”

“It’s alright… part of me already knew there wasn’t much to hope for when I decided to come back.”

“...I hope she didn’t… suffer?”

“They say timberwolves got them - her and Bright Mac, her husband, I mean.”

“Oh no…” Something left a bitter taste in my mouth and I swallowed hard.

Grand Pear glanced at me. “Something tells me you have a history with them yourself, don’t you?”

“I had a narrow escape once. One of my sisters wasn’t so lucky a few years before that.”

“I’m sorry!”

“Thank you.”

We walked in silence for a little while. “Vanilla Sugar said you tried to visit me once,” he said eventually.

“Yes, I didn’t realize you’d be away…”

“I needed to clear my head after reading Pear Butter’s letters. Tried to let it happen at home, but just couldn’t… everything reminded me of her even though she’d never lived there. I tried to stick to some semblance of a normal life, to pretend everything was alright just like I’d done all those years… thought if I’d done it for so long, I could keep doing it… What a fool I was! I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t face my neighbors, couldn’t bring myself to keep working in the orchard… You might have thought me hopeless on the day when we first met, but that was a good day compared to what followed…”

“I’m so sorry… If I’d known, I’d-”

“Don’t be sorry; I don’t blame you. It hurt… sweet Celestia, how much it hurt… but it had to. It hurt all the way back when I abandoned Pear Butter but I buried that pain as if it would go away if I pretended long enough… and when I finally allowed myself to feel it, all that pent-up pain came crashing down on me… I brought it upon myself, and if anything, I have to thank you for making me face it and do something about it rather than continue to bury it under a life of anger. I don’t even know what I was angry about! Her marrying the wrong stallion? That should have been her choice all along and I should have learned to grin and bear it! Heck, I should have put an end to that feud! I started it over nothing anyway! Maybe I was just angry at myself that I couldn’t face my daughter being her own mare and a better person than I was…”

“At least you realized your mistake-”

“And a fat lot of good that did now that she’s dead!” He sighed. “At least my grandfoals don’t hold a grudge on me, though I can’t fathom how… Must have gotten it from their parents…”

“They never went looking for you?”

“Turns out they didn’t know I existed. They were too young to hear the story from their ma and pa while they still could, and ol’ Granny Smith couldn’t even think of the Pears without getting all worked up anymore, and none of them three ever knew to ask her, but they somehow figured it out when I moved back. Ponies around town must have told them, seeing how they confronted me already knowing everything that mattered and Granny Smith nearly fainted when I walked through her door with them that same evening. Boy, did we have a lot to say to each other, but none of it in raised voices anymore, as if we’d never fought in the first place, except from all the apologies coming from both of us.”

“I’m glad it worked out!”

“Thanks…”

“So you moved back for good?”

“I never should have left!”

“What about your orchard in Vanhoover?”

“I hired a crew of workers to take care of it while I’m still alive. After that, who knows? I have no one but my grandfoals to leave it to. Whether they’ll sell it or keep it going under their supervision is up to them.”

I nodded.

“I’ll still visit every once in a while,” he continued. “The workers will have to get paid and checked up on, and I still have a friend or two in the neighborhood. Wait till Vanilla hears that I have the king of changelings to thank for reuniting with my family and that she’s met him herself!”

“How is she doing?”

“She’s fine. Her life is largely uneventful and she likes it that way. My struggles against the mistake I made must be the closest she’s ever come to excitement in her own life and I’d never seen her so worried, and I’ve known her since she was a filly! You should have seen her relief when I went there to arrange the handling of the orchard!”

We were out of the town proper and approaching an apple orchard. “Is this Applejack’s?”

“It is indeed. Welcome to Sweet Apple Acres! I don’t actually live here with them - I bought a cottage nearby - but I’ve been spending so much time with the Apples that I might as well move in.”

“Why don’t you?”

“They offered, and I almost said yes, but the shame over how I treated my daughter wouldn’t let me,” he sighed. “I feel like I don’t deserve to live under their roof… But enough about me! Didn’t you say you had a brother you weren’t getting along with? Or was that just an attempt to make me feel better?”

“No, Pharynx is real,” I chuckled. “The ‘not getting along’ was mostly thanks to my wanting friendship, which clashed with everything changelings were raised to believe and directly opposed Chrysalis’ wishes. He was her second-in-command, by the way, and having a pacifist for a brother wasn’t making things any easier for him. But I’ve since discovered that his loyalty is for me and not for her, and he only obeyed her orders because he saw it as a way to keep the hive safe. Can you believe that he covered for me when she sent a swarm to hunt me down after I left the hive? It almost got him executed!”

He shuddered. “What saved him?”

“I came back. This coincided with the abduction of the Princesses and the Elements of Harmony, and I and a few others went to the hive to try to save them. We bit off more than we could chew, got captured, and that’s when I found out what Pharynx had done for me. I actually overthrew Chrysalis by pure chance while trying to defend Pharynx…”

“...and because of a bit of love and loyalty at the right place and the right time, the world will never be the same!”

“Yeah, I guess… even if being a leader can be hard sometimes…”

“Applejack says some of your subjects didn’t accept the new order of things easily?”

“She’s right, and Pharynx was actually one of them until I learned to listen to his input. We both want the best for the hive but have different ideas of how to get there. As soon as I learned how to seek common ground instead of forcing my way, everything fell into place.”

“That’s a lesson I refused to learn twenty-six years ago,” he sighed. “But my daughter knew it all along… Speaking of which, are you in a hurry to rejoin your friends? I’d like to show you something.”

“Sure!”

I followed him further through the orchard. It was hard to tell among the countless trees, but if I had to guess, it felt like we were approaching the edge of Applejack’s property. I didn’t pry; sooner or later, I figured, Grand Pear would bring me to our destination.

I recognized it as soon as I saw it, though I didn’t know what purpose it served. There was a small clearing between the trees, and the remains of a rotten wooden fence, a section of which seemed to have been removed, and in the resulting gap, a large rock with two tiny images carved into it stood, with two trees growing around it and each other, forming a canopy that was almost heart-shaped.

“This place has an aura of its own,” I whispered in wonder as the realization hit. “Like an echo of a love… but love tainted with sorrow…”

“This is where they got married,” Grand Pear said. “This is where I gave up on her… where I saw her for the last time… What was I thinking?!”

He slumped onto the ground, crying his heart out, and I sat down to hold and hug him, to help him through this wave of remorse. He leaned into the hug as if the world depended on it; his world was still falling apart at the memory of his daughter, and if I was the rock to hold onto to keep some of that world together, I’d be one for as long as he needed me!

The sun was almost approaching the horizon by the time his tears began to run dry and he found the strength in himself to face the world again.

“Thank you,” he said. “You have no idea how much I needed that!”

“Actually, I might,” I winked.

“Hmm, I suppose so…”

On an impulse, I reached into my saddlebag and carefully took out some of its contents.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Remember that flower you gave me?”

“Yes, what-” His eyes went wide as he recognized the shape of the leaf.

“It was the first gift anyone had ever given me, and I held onto it and later planted it on the outskirts of the Crystal Empire, where it caught root and began to thrive, and I grew so attached to it that I grew more flowers from the leaves of that one and planted them around, and one of those is now in my throne room. I took a few leaves from it to grow more flowers. I intended to give them to my friends today, and I will a little later, but Applejack probably won’t mind much if I give hers to you instead.”

“Wow… I never dreamed… My flower really survived?”

“Yes, and this is its grandchild, in a way.” I dug a little hole in the ground at the base of the rock, tore up the water-filled cocoon around the stem that had sprouted roots since being encased, and planted it. “I think it belongs here.”

“Pear Butter would have liked that,” Grand Pear said with a smile.

We remained there in silence for a little longer, this time respectful, comfortable. I felt Grand Pear’s aura settle down and latch onto the little leaf. By the time we parted ways so I could return to my friends, I knew the little buttercup was in good hooves.

Lineage

I ran into Grim shortly after returning to the hive.

“You’re back already?” she asked. “How did it go? Nothing… bad happened?”

“No, in fact, I got to reunite with somepony I met a while ago!”

“Didn’t you go there to meet them?”

“I went to meet with Spike and his friends, yes, and we did spend time together, but I’m talking about somepony I met while on the run from the hive. Have I ever told you about Grand Pear? You know, the guy who gave me that flower?”

“You mentioned him once or twice, yes. But doesn’t he live in Vanhoover?”

“He used to. He actually started out in Ponyville, though I only found out about it just now, and moved to Vanhoover due to that feud with the Apple family, and his daughter’s marriage didn’t stop him from uprooting himself regardless and leaving her behind.”

“I don’t think I like the guy very much…”

“He regrets it now. That’s why he moved back! His grandfoals forgave him, too!”

“And his daughter?”

I sighed. “She’s been dead for years…”

“Okay, admirable of the foals to not persist in that feud, but she should have been the one to forgive him. You said it was twenty-something years, right? If she had multiple foals, that means her father would have had plenty of time to get his head out of his backside and realize what he’d done! The least he could do was send her a letter every once in a while!”

“And he regrets it! You should have seen him, Grim! He would have given anything to bring her back!”

“Would you forgive him if he was your father?”

“Yes!”

“Even after so much time?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm… yes, I guess you would… You really can’t stay mad at people for very long, can you?”

“No, I’ve always felt it would teach me to hate others if I couldn’t forgive them…”

“...and that attitude brought you where you are now. Gee, I’ve never looked at it that way… I don’t think I could do it so easily in such a situation… and I hope I won’t feel driven to put my nymphs through it…”

“Anything new in that regard?”

“I don’t want to jinx it, but there might be,” she said with a smile.

I hugged her. “Ooh, I’m so happy for you!”

“Whoa, easy there! It’s still a little early to be sure if he’s interested enough!”

“Can I at least know who we’re talking about? Do I know him?”

“I’ll tell you if it gets serious enough. Now, I wanna know how Ponyville was! Mystique said something about you being late to the party?”

“Oh, that…” I chuckled. “It wasn’t until I parted ways with Grand Pear and got halfway back to Ponyville that I realized I’d forgotten to ask where Lyra’s party was being held, and going back to ask him felt awkward, so I had to go looking for them, and by the time I got there, it turned out that Lyra had already set up a celebration just for herself and her marefriend, not having anticipated a town-wide surprise party, so everypony else cut the public party short for their benefit. I got to spend maybe three minutes there before they all went home.”

“Aw, too bad…”

“Not entirely. Spike and the girls took me to the castle afterwards and we had a slumber party. It was fun! Though, I’ve gotta admit I don’t get the appeal of ghost stories…”

“Some people like to get scared for fun. What else did you do? I’ve never been to a slumber party even as an infiltrator and it sounds like it might be interesting!”

“We made cookies, and played guessing games and truth-or-dare, and had a pillow fight, and the girls gave each other makeovers, though Spike and I skipped that part and just talked… What else? Um, we played hide-and-seek but got tired of it pretty soon, and, well, just tired, so we went to bed then. I gave them those leaves in the morning. Completely forgot about them earlier, somehow…”

“It can happen to anyone! So, how did they like them?”

“Most of them were delighted. Rainbow found it a little sappy but accepted the gift anyway, Fluttershy was moved to tears, and Applejack seemed touched although I’d already given her leaf to Grand Pear, or maybe because of that…”

“...I’m confused. Why would you give her leaf to Grand Pear?”

“Didn’t I say? Turns out she’s one of his granddaughters, and that was her mom’s favorite flower!”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Well, they said it was like that…”

“Yeah, well, it probably was, but for someone so honorable to descend from someone so narrow-minded… but I guess it is possible… I mean, look at you!”

“Me?”

“Well, your parents wouldn’t have been assigned to have you if they hadn’t been deemed worthy, and you know what that entailed.”

“I guess, I just never thought about it much. I mean, it’s not like I was ever going to know them, so what did it matter?”

“But you could get to know them now, if either of them is alive!”

“How? I don’t think they would have been told who their sons were, and noling probably remembers anymore-”

“-but there are records in the archive. How else do you think Chrysalis would have avoided inbreeding of her soldiers, and how else do you think we’ve managed to track down the nymphs’ parents after you took the throne?”

She was right; why hadn’t I thought of it? I could actually meet my parents?!

“...but what if they don’t like me? What if they were among the last group of renegades remaining? The ones who only reformed under Pharynx’s threats?”

She put a reassuring hoof on my shoulder. “If that’s the case, I’m sure you’ll know how to cross that bridge when you get there.” She winked. “Even if it means having to ask Pharynx to do the hard part.”

“Pharynx?”

He stopped darting the image of Chrysalis momentarily to glance in my general direction.

“What?”

“Have you ever wondered about our parents?”

“No.”

“Not even a little bit?”

He blew another dart. “Nothing happening in the present so you have to get wound up about the past now?”

“What? No, of course not!”

Pop. “Then what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, it’s just that I’ve been talking to Grim about my time in Ponyville and mentioned Grand Pear.”

“Isn’t he that old croak from Vanhoover?”

“He is, well, he was until recently, but he used to live in Ponyville and now he came back. He’s Applejack’s grandfather-”

“Ah yes, now I remember. He stormed off after daughter dearest married the son of a sworn enemy.” Pop. “What brought him back?”

“Didn’t I tell you that story? You know, the sad stallion who gave me that flower?”

He rolled his eyes. “Figures. So what’s he got to do with our parents?” Pop.

“It’s just something Grim said that reminded her of how children didn’t have to take after their parents…”

“...and you immediately thought of yourself? Even though you never once showed interest in them in your entire life?”

“Actually, she’s the one who mentioned them-”

“Did she, now? Why doesn’t she introduce you to them, then, if she’s so eager to reconcile the royal family?”

“She doesn’t know who they are!”

Pop. “And I do?”

“She said it could be in the archives. I figured, since you had the clearance to go there, you might have gotten curious at some point-”

“And what, gone snooping around for the heck of it just because I can? Even if I wasn’t already busy enough balancing between serving Chrysalis and keeping your rump in one piece, unwarranted snooping was how one got stripped of rank and relegated to the cleaning crew! We didn’t both have to become public disgrace!”

“Okay, fair enough, but you weren’t even interested at a later time?”

“Don’t you think I have better things to do?”

I glanced at the dart-riddled drawing. “You’re not doing anything of vital importance right now…”

He spat out the blowpipe and stood up. “I’m killing time until the recruits regain consciousness! If you’re so obsessed with your lineage all of a sudden, why don’t you go investigate it yourself?”

He stormed off and left me completely at a loss at what to do and even more at what to think. I knew him to not be especially cooperative, but this felt as if he didn’t even care! And how likely was it that he’d never even chanced upon our parents’ service records? Was basic genealogical information even included in service records or were there separate logs for that? Maybe Pharynx couldn’t know anything after all!

It looked like I was going to have to dig through the archive myself after all if I wanted to get to the bottom of it. But that could take forever! Would I even know where to look? Sure, Urtica could help, but she was probably busy enough with her regular duties, and though important to me on a personal level, this wasn’t something the hive depended on, and may not necessarily benefit from in any meaningful way!

Okay, so it would take a while, but not much out of the ordinary was happening for the time being, and even if something did happen before I was done, it wasn’t urgent, so I could always put my research on hold while resolving the more pressing matters. I could easily make time for it by cutting down on something else I did in my free time! I could do this!

Except… what about those unconscious recruits Pharynx had mentioned? Assuming they weren’t just an excuse to get away from me and my pestering, shouldn’t I at least check on them? But Pharynx had developed a habit of insisting the army was his business and not to meddle! Would he see it as a breach of our agreement if I came to at least check if they were okay? Pharynx seemed to be on edge plenty enough already; I didn’t want my best intentions to make things even worse!

Surely he would understand if I just came for a quick look?

A cautious fly-by revealed the training grounds littered with drones lying still all over the drill course and among the punching bags and training dummies. Only a faint aura emanating from them suggested they were alive, but judging by some of their injuries and the state of some of their equipment, a casual observer would have easily been fooled. Spiracle and the other medics were going to have their hooves full… and what had Pharynx been thinking?! Having the troops perfectly trained and ready to face any threat was one thing, but to downright abuse them? I was probably going to have to have a talk with him about it… again…

Some of the recruits were beginning to stir around the same time as a team of medics emerged from one of the hive’s gateways, followed by Pharynx. The healers focused their attention onto the unfortunate soldiers right away, but Pharynx noticed me and greeted me with a scowl and an ever-so-slight fang-baring motion of his lips.

Okay, message received, Pharynx, I’m leaving! At least he’d brought help…

The archive was empty when I got there. I hadn’t intended to arrive while Urtica was away - that would have been an accomplishment of sorts, as she seemed to be in a habit of not leaving the archive unless summoned - but now that she was, I realized I preferred it that way until I found what I was looking for. But where to begin? I hadn’t realized how big the archive was until now that I had to dig through the whole place all by myself!

I decided to start from the far end and work toward the entrance.

Though most of the hive still relied on fire torches to illuminate the dark passages, the archive had by now become one of the areas that used glowing crystals imported from the Crystal Empire instead, as Pharynx had deemed them less of a fire hazard. Their steady glow allowed for easier reading of the scrolls, which I normally wouldn’t mind, but for some reason, today it reminded me of the eerie glow of the cocoon-based lanterns the hive had been littered with in the old days. Maybe it was due to the greenish tint of the resinous slime holding the crystals fixed onto the ceiling, even though the crystals were encased in it only partially? The heavy silence was doing little to dispel the feeling I was involving myself in something forbidden and wrong, even without reminding myself that I was about to do something that, until not that long ago, would have been impossible to me and, had I somehow found a way to bypass that impossibility, would have landed me in a world of trouble.

I stood there before the archive’s far wall, staring at the scrolls arranged neatly into shelf-like niches, willing myself to get on with it. The answer was here; all I had to do was reach out and grab it! Maybe I wouldn’t find it right away, but if I persisted, I was sure to stumble upon it eventually! I could tear the whole place down and noling could stop me!

Noling and nothing, except for the whispers in my own mind.

Not even Pharynx had been allowed to do this… I certainly wouldn’t have, not in a million years…

Except that those millions of years had ended prematurely, I reminded myself. There were to be no secrets here anymore, and I’d made it so! The secrets had already stepped out of their dark pits and helped reunite families! So why shouldn’t they reunite mine?

I reached out with my magic and grabbed the first pile of scrolls, unrolling one to inspect it.

...and wanted to kick myself when I realized I was looking at a character report on Princess Amore. Of course the archive would contain stuff about how to impersonate foreign leaders, and of course some of it would be over a thousand years old! Urtica wouldn’t have thrown it out without permission, probably even now that the permission wasn’t supposed to come from Chrysalis! Oh well, maybe the historians would be interested… But that only reminded me that searching for information about my parents wasn’t going to be as easy as walking up to a bookshelf under T for Thorax or G for genealogy or wherever else it might have been shoved.

At least the system was predictable. Every scroll from that shelf represented a leader or other important historical figure; a smaller shelf adjacent to that one featured the same, except the individuals were still alive. A few more shelves were full of war strategies and I wondered if Pharynx had been expected to learn it all or at least to take a look if he needed to… then again, he could have easily written some of the scrolls himself, judging by the mouthwriting… Then, there were tactical maps of everything, defense system manuals, spearhead schematics, armor schematics, experimental weapon schematics, fortification schematics, assault spells, defensive spells, combat alchemy… How many more combat-related collections was I going to dig through? My head was spinning from the sheer number of creative ways to kill an enemy! And we’d been using all that?!

At some point, I had to sit down and catch my breath. All that science of killing and enslavement, and it was just one wall?! I felt my stomach twisting. No wonder every creature hated us! I’d never been more glad to have put an end to it!

It took a while to compose myself enough to continue, though part of me wanted to drop everything and leave and go back to painting and gardening and playing with nymphs and to never set hoof in here again. Though, if I did that, I’d never find the answer… Luckily, there didn’t seem to be much more combat-related other than training plans and logs of victories and defeats, and it was almost a relief to find that I’d moved onto infiltration tactics, infiltration manuals, and everything else that relied on lies and deception. This wasn’t much better, even if no lives had been lost as a direct consequence of at least some of the missions whose logs I’d found, and I wore myself out into needing another break. Still, for some curious reason, I ignored that and pressed on.

I was halfway through the intercepted correspondence between various members of thestral nobility when the echo of hoofsteps registered in the back of my mind.

“Thorax?” Urtica said. “What are you doing here? And when did you get here?”

Okay, that may not have been an echo of hoofsteps after all… How had I gotten so distracted?

“Uh…”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to sound accusing! You’re welcome to drop by anytime, and if you want to dig through all this, who am I to stop you? I mean, you’re a king, you can do what you want, right?”

“Urtica-”

“And you even removed restrictions of archive usage, so why am I still expecting to find noling here after I leave for a few minutes? And it’s not like we still need to keep a lot of this a secret-”

“Urtica, calm down! You’re not in trouble!”

“...sorry… I’m rambling again… I just didn’t expect to find you here…”

“I would have said hi but didn’t see you.”

“Oh. Um, yeah, some recruits started a fight and Pharynx wanted me to log insubordination into their service records, so I went to the infirmary to make sure I don’t miss anyling… I just got back.”

“Are they alright?”

“The medics say they will be, but there’s enough soldiers involved that our defenses will be stretched thin for a while. Let’s hope for no more maulwurfs in the near future… but I digress. How can I help you?”

“Oh, um… you don’t have to… it’s kind of personal…”

She raised an eyebrow. “You’re in the wrong section for anything even remotely personal. Can I at least help direct you?”

“Fine,” I relented. “A conversation with Grim left me wondering about my parents, and I thought the archive would tell me who they are.”

“It should be stated in your service record,” she said, motioning me to follow. “This way. I actually have business there too, pulling the service records of those delinquent recruits, so maybe we can help each other? I’ve got them listed!”

“Sure!” I might as well help, even if I didn’t like that the soldiers were about to get an unfavorable entry in their records. What was the fight even about? Hopefully Pharynx wasn’t overdoing it just because he could!

Urtica led me into a section I wouldn’t have gotten to in weeks at the rate I’d been going prior to her arrival and we got to work. The scrolls themselves were a royal mess in the sense that there seemed to be no criteria by which they were sorted, and Urtica regretfully informed me that that was indeed the case for the moment, as the near-neverending stream of drones looking to reunite with their nymphs, parents, and cousins had made it impossible to maintain the usual sorting system, and she hadn’t yet gotten around to tidying up, and as an occasional drone still dropped by looking for relatives, she didn’t really see the point yet. Thus, the work was slow and tedious, and in spite of carrying on deep into the night, we barely scratched the surface of both Urtica’s list and the pile of records, finding only a couple of the records she needed but not yet a trace of my own.

At least there turned out to be no royal duties that I needed to take care of at the moment, so I was able to rejoin Urtica first thing in the morning.

She’d already started where we left off last night but had only tracked down one of her scrolls before my arrival. Neither of us wasted time on elaborate explanations and progress reports; a simple shake of her head was enough to tell me she hadn’t stumbled upon my record. I didn’t have anything to contribute so I simply sat down and resumed the mind-numbing task.

Hours passed; Urtica’s pile gradually got bigger, she was nearing the end of her list, and I still had to track down my own record. Did it even exist anymore? I assumed it would have at least been created, but I hadn’t even completed basic military training and it was obvious to anyone with an ounce of brain that I was never going to; had someling simply thrown my record away? Had Chrysalis destroyed it after my escape? Urtica would have probably told me if that was the case, but what if she didn’t know? Surely Chrysalis wouldn’t have bothered to explain her actions to a lowly drone, no matter how high a clearance level that drone may have had!

I was starting to consider asking Urtica about the likelihood of such a thing having happened when she exclaimed “Found it!” at the same time as I unraveled a scroll titled ‘Thorax’.

“This one’s Pharynx’s”, she explained, offering her find. “Maybe…”

“Would you believe that I just found my own?”

“Really?!”

I took both scrolls in my magic. Like every other, they were pretty straightforward: basic information at the top, just under the name, followed by training history and then active service history.

Pharynx’s record was long and full of praise and commendations. Mine looked more like a list of every disciplinary measure known to the world, ending with ‘28th August 1004 CE - betrayed the Queen (desertion); sentenced to death by slow torture’ and a scribbled note ‘9th May 1005 CE - confirmed sighting in Crystal Empire; set trap (see ‘Pharynx’)’. Upon closer inspection, there was a mention of ‘suspected aiding and abetting a traitor (see ‘Thorax’)’ and ‘set trap (see ‘Thorax’, ‘Carapace’, ‘Operation Doom of Equestria’)’ around that time in his record too, followed by ‘pending judgment’...

But none of that mattered right now. Both records stated us to be sons of Pupa and Trouble.

While I was at it, I glanced at our hatching dates. Pharynx’s was in the late evening hours of 15th March 981 CE, and mine was just after midnight on the 17th of the same month. I figured Pinkie would be interested to know.

“Pupa and Trouble,” I mused. “I don’t remember coming across their service records. Do you?”

“No, but there’s still some of the pile to go through. I bet they’ll be there!”

They weren’t.

“Hmmm… we could check the section where we keep the records of deceased drones- Not to say that they are dead! Records of living drones have been known to get misplaced there, and I’ve been finding such misplaced records all the time since you took over! A drone comes looking for their family members and pulls out a heap of records wanting to track down the entire extended family, but part of that family invariably turns out dead, so they just shove the scrolls wherever, not caring how many living records end up in the dead section or vice versa… but that’s neither here nor there. I actually still have Rascal’s record to track down so I’ll have to go looking there anyway!”

“Could we have skipped him without realizing he was on your list?”

“I think I would have noticed with the list being in alphabetical order. You never know, though…”

“Maybe we should have sorted the pile alphabetically while we were doing this? Assuming it would help you get it organized again?”

“Maybe, but I don’t think you’ll be the last one to come looking for family members. Chances are any semblance of order I attempt to establish here in the foreseeable future won’t last long.”

I nodded. “So, should we re-check this section or move onto the deceased one?”

“I vote deceased. I’ve noticed that if I fail to find something in a certain location once, I often miss it when digging through the same place until I go digging somewhere else. Then, assuming I still haven’t found it, after taking a break and returning to the first place I looked, I often find it with so little effort that I want to kick myself because of how obvious it was!”

I wasn’t sure how exactly that worked but didn’t press further. Whether or not the strategy made logical sense, it was probably a good idea to check a section the records were known to get misplaced to, so I followed her there. I did so reluctantly; as optimistic as Urtica sounded, I was suddenly beginning to dread finding my parents’ records.

We found them eventually, all three of them: Rascal’s misplaced, and Pupa and Trouble’s exactly where they were supposed to be.

“I’m sorry, Thorax,” she said as I stared at the two scrolls. “I should have known… I just… I could have been wrong…”

“Why are their names crossed out?”

“Uh, it’s… it’s standard practice… was standard practice… I think it started out as the easiest way to quickly discern whether or not there was a point in reading further, you know, in case it got misplaced, or…” She mumbled something incoherently.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Oh, nothing…”

“Urtica,” I said gently. “You can tell me! You know that, don’t you?”

“...Chrysalis liked how crossing the names out made it obvious that the drones were no longer of any use to her…”

“...because they’re dead.”

“Yes… I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. I’m hardly surprised, really.” I thought of a list of names in her bedchamber annex, one with many names crossed out and some still intact. “I bet she couldn’t wait to cross my name out so hard that she’d rip the parchment, huh?”

“Um, probably… Uh, forgive me if I’m prying, but you seem to be taking this better than I’d expect…”

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “Maybe all the disappointments I’ve had in life left me numb, or maybe it’s because I never knew them. Or maybe… maybe a part of me already knew, even if I didn’t realize it…”

She nodded.

“Um, if you don’t mind, I still need a moment… Is it okay if I take scrolls with me? I promise to give them back soon!”

“Sure! And you can keep them if you want! I’ll just put a reference note in this section… or something…”

I thanked her, expecting to return the scrolls anyway, and took them to the throne room, where I proceeded to read them in detail. As expected from the fact that they’d been granted the privilege to produce offspring, they both turned out to be exceptional subjects by Chrysalis’ standards: mother had been a warrior deployed mostly to battles in faraway lands, and the scroll stated that she’d laid eggs after her swarm’s victory in Zebrica. The same victory that had chased Zecora away from her village, maybe? Unless there had been more than one invasion there in the past couple of decades? I’d have to ask Zecora about it. Father, on the other hoof, had been an infiltrator in Canterlot, and his report on a pegasus from the back of beyond having suddenly caught Celestia’s interest and rumors of her potential to rise into the ranks of nobility had, upon the said pegasus’ ascension to alicornhood, earned him a fateful encounter with the soon-to-be mother of his nymphs. They’d both resumed their duties as soon as physically possible, and their records showed no signs of them having an opportunity to see each other again. They couldn’t have, really: dad had apparently contracted changeling pox a couple of years later and been ordered to quarantine in the Everfree Forest, where he’d presumably either withered and died of the disease itself or been found and eaten by one of its countless beasts. Either way, his body had never been found, not that anyling would have gone looking for him.

Mom, on the other hoof, had met her end at the mercy of a Royal Guard’s spearhead during the failed invasion of Canterlot.

And to think that I’d been there… I could have met her… I might have met her and had some kind of interaction with her, unaware of the bond between us…

Had she known her youngest son had been deployed with her?

Probably not. Who would have told her? I doubted she would have recognized me on her own, either! Maybe, if our undisguised features had been similar enough… but what good would that have done? We wouldn’t have been allowed to stick together, probably not even to see each other from time to time, even if only in passing! In fact, even if we could, she probably wouldn’t have wanted to! She would have been ashamed of her useless, disgraceful spawn for sure! She wouldn’t have been allowed to lay my egg if she hadn’t been loyal enough to Chrysalis to care more for her duty than for her family!

Unless she’d been more like Grim, wanting nymphs even at the cost of never knowing them?

And what about dad? Would there have been a chance for us to meet if he hadn’t succumbed to illness? Would he still have been in Canterlot, maybe had a role in the assault?

What would either of them think of me now? Would they have accepted my rule easily, or would they have joined the renegades? Would knowing I was their son have had any bearing on their opinion?

“Someling took your favorite doll again?”

“Huh?” I spun around to see Pharynx eyeing me suspiciously. When had he arrived? “No, why?”

“Then why are you acting like that?”

I passed him the scrolls. He unraveled them just enough to see who they were about, then rolled them back up and said, “I see.”

“You knew?!”

“Yes.”

“Why did you lie earlier?”

“Because I expected you to start whining again if you found out. I figured if I kept it vague and acted like it was no big deal, you’d let it go eventually and forget about it. Didn’t think you’d bother to actually dig up their records…”

“How did you find out? And when?”

“Assembling the Canterlot invasion swarm required some checking of the service records and you already saw it contains the names of parents and offspring. I saw their names in our records, and later I came across Pupa’s record, and she qualified for deployment so I assigned her to one of the teams, then made sure to put you on a different team so noling would get suspicious about my intentions if they decided to check.”

“You decided to send her there?”

“I was First Commander, it was my duty-”

“She died there, Pharynx!”

“I noticed!”

“...don’t you feel bad about it?”

“What was I to do? It was a war, and someling always doesn’t come back no matter how easy the victory was. It’s not like I knew her or would have been allowed to know her, and if anyling had told me at the time that this-” He gestured around himself. “-would happen, I would have executed him personally for spreading treacherous delusions! I only saw her once - at least I think it was her - and it was only for a few seconds during that sendoff speech. At least I didn’t have to put extra effort into not letting our paths cross too often afterwards…”

“Would it have really been that awkward?”

“It would have been dangerous! Chrysalis couldn’t allow anyling’s loyalty to her to switch to some random drone! She would have kept broodmates from each other too if it were feasible!”

“I know… but don’t you ever wonder what it would have been like if mom had survived?”

“No. What’s the point? It wouldn’t change the past, and we already grew up without her so it’s not like we’d need her… besides, she might not even like what became of the hive, even if it meant she’d be the king’s mother.”

I suppressed a smirk. Such elaborate denying was a stronger ‘yes’ than if he’d admitted it outright…

“And dad?”

He shrugged. “We were nymphs. What could either of us have done? Especially without getting sick ourselves? You know how contagious that thing is!”

“Yes, but… I was wondering, why’d he get quarantined in the Everfree Forest? Weren’t there any… less dangerous places for him to go to?”

“Maybe Chrysalis or Succubus thought he could handle it.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“...okay, I have no proof, but since you’d already started harboring forbidden ideas by the time it happened, maybe it was a way to punish him for siring a nymph that may not have been considered irredeemable at the time but needed some extra effort to get corrected.”

I gasped. “You don’t think-”

“I don’t think they infected him deliberately if that’s what you’re asking. They might not have even wanted him to die. It could just be that they wanted to mess with him a little and it got out of control.”

“Do you think they told him about me while they were at it?”

“No. I wouldn’t put it past Chrysalis to tell him that just before executing him if things had gone down that road, just to add insult to injury and feast on his shame for having failed her, but like I said, you weren’t yet considered irredeemable. You could have still been of some use to her even if your beginnings would have kept you from moving up the hierarchy.”

“...could he have survived?”

“And decided to neither resume his assignment nor return to the hive for new orders, not even to hail the hive and report himself recovered, and just go live wherever? He was neither a traitor nor delusional enough to expect not to be found out!”

“How do you know all that?”

“I checked his file while Chrysalis was parading around Canterlot in a wedding dress.”

“Didn’t you say that was forbidden?”

“Do you really think that would have stopped me? Especially since, as First Commander, I knew everyling’s schedule and could even orchestrate assignments in such a way to give myself more wiggle room.”

“Why am I not surprised?” I sighed, then fell into gloomy silence.

“Now what?” Pharynx asked after a moment.

“Nothing, just thinking about mom and dad…”

“Well they’re dead, so get over it!”

“I know… I just wish I could have known them…”

He rolled his eyes, then started for one of the hallways. “Come on,” he sighed, gesturing to me to follow.

“Where?”

“Some of their teammates should still be alive. Let’s dig them up in the archive and see if they’ve got any stories to tell.”

One Year Older

“Thorax?” Urtica interrupted our process of cross-referencing service records. “Sorry to bother you, but…”

“Yes?”

“Somepony wants to see you.”

“Really? Sure, uh, I’m coming.”

The visitor was waiting at the entrance to the archive.

“Greetings, Your Highness,” she said. “I apologize for any interruptions I may have caused-”

“No problem, Mercury! Gosh, I haven’t seen you in ages! You know there’s no need to call me Your Hi-”

“Who let you in the archive?” Pharynx interjected, growling at the royal messenger. “This is off-limits-”

“Thank you, Pharynx,” I interrupted him, “but I already told you on several occasions that it isn’t off-limits anymore. We don’t want to be rude to our guests!”

“It’s alright, I’m not going to stay long anyway,” Mercury said. “I just came to deliver a message.”

“Oh?”

She gave me a scroll. Unsurprisingly, the message was sealed with Cadance’s stamp and written in her hornwriting. This was unusual; save for a few official letters at the beginning of my reign, we didn’t behave with such formalities towards each other, and as Sunburst and I were already exchanging letters through regular mail, she would usually attach her letter to those or simply ask Sunburst to tell me something. What had happened to make her abandon that practice?

But when I read the letter, my worries evaporated in favor of thrill and eager anticipation.

“Of course!” I exclaimed. “Tell Cadance and Shining we wouldn’t miss Flurry’s birthday party for anything!”

“I am not going!”

“Why?”

“Are you trying to kill me with sugar-infused boredom?”

“Aw come on, Pharynx, they invited you too!”

“You sure you read that right?”

“Believe it or not, some people do want to meet you.”

“They’ve met me at your coronation. Also when I breached their bedroom during that last invasion, but I don’t expect them to remember that.”

“...right. But what I meant is, they want to get to know you.”

“Haven’t you blabbered plenty enough about me to them already?”

“That’s not the same and you know it!”

“And you know we won’t like each other, so why are you still insisting?”

“From your standpoint, they’re our allies, and maintaining familiarity and good relations with them is important for reaping the benefits of that alliance. From my standpoint, other than what I just said, they gave me a home and plenty of love and the foundation on which I built my life as it is today. They were the closest thing I had to a family while I was away, Pharynx! I realized it once in a dream in which you came looking for me there and spent some time with all of us. It was a bit awkward, to tell the truth, but ever since, I’ve been kind of hoping that would actually happen one day in reality, no matter how unlikely it was at the time and no matter how far away from them we live now.”

“Your sappiness keeps surprising me,” he retorted.

“Pleeease?”

“What do you even expect me to do there?”

“Well, for starters, talking would be nice…”

“I have nothing to say to them.”

“Then listen. Maybe you’ll find some common ground!”

“Hmph. Doubt it.”

“Not even with Shining Armor? He’s a soldier too, I’m sure you-”

“Are you forgetting we used to spy on Royal Guards? There’s nothing he can tell me that I don’t already know!”

“How can you be so sure that you haven’t missed anything? Or that there won’t be some other thing any of them can share with you that you don’t even realize you’d care to know?”

“Eugh, next you’re gonna tell me that I’ll be having an intense discussion about love with Cadenza and asking for cooking tips-”

“I wasn’t thinking that specifically, but I wouldn’t mind-”

“Forget it! You’re insufferable!”

“You won’t even make an effort to strengthen our alliance?”

“I don’t need their alliance.”

“Not even if they help us track down Chrysalis?”

“What can they do? Are they gonna blast the whole world hoping to randomly run into her without having her realize what’s coming and doing something about it?”

“I don’t know what their tactics are or if they’re even making an active effort at the moment, but you never know when they might succeed, or how. You haven’t had much luck yourself, have you? The good thing about having allies is that they can help you achieve a mutual goal, sometimes even without needing to ask for help. And after two invasions, I bet they do want to find her!”

He huffed.

“Look, Pharynx, I know being polite is hard for you, but the world is becoming a better place and you’ll need to be able to set your gruffiness aside every once in a while. This is a chance for you to practice politeness and reining in your anger. If it gets too hard, I’ll try to find you a punching bag or something to relieve yourself on. There has to be one in the guards’ training area…”

“...ugh, fine… But I’m not making any promises!”

The Crystal Empire shone brighter than I remembered it. Unlike the last year’s blizzard and starved despair that had tormented me while venturing into the unknown, my arrival now was blessed with warm sun and the thrilling anticipation of seeing my friends again. The ripples of the Crystal Heart’s magic danced across the sky long before the city appeared on the horizon, and the aura of blissful love was just as powerful as when I’d first sensed it!

Only one thing soured the experience: not even the expectation of a glorious feast was enough to get Pharynx to stop grumbling.

“Come on, you’ll like it there!” I said to him for the thousandth time.

“I’ve been there before, in case you forgot,” he retorted. “The amount of cutesy-cuteness was unbearable and I have no reason to think they’ve toned it down any.”

“It can’t be that bad-”

“In fact, they’ve probably overdone it to the point that I’ll rip my own head off as soon as-”

“Pharynx!”

“What?”

“You do realize that attitude won’t make things any easier for you, right?”

“Ugh. Why did you drag me along, again?”

“I told you already-”

“Yeah yeah, friendship something something family blah blah alliance good for the hive, whatever. You haven’t shut up about it ever since what’s-her-name brought that invitation! What I mean is, weren’t they good enough for you? I have an army to train, in case you didn’t realize!”

I glanced at Blade and Feisty flying behind us.

“You know they joined us last-minute because they wanted to see their friends, and you know that Cadance and Shining want to meet my brother and not some random changeling impersonating my brother.”

“As if they’ll know the difference-”

“You also know that Grim and Psycho will be great substitute drill instructors.”

“I’d rather still do it myself,” he grumbled.

“Pharynx,” I sighed, “you know you can’t always have everything the way you want. You’re the one who insisted on teaching me that for years! Well, this is one such time, and you’re an adult and should therefore have at least a basic concept of good manners and self-control, so I suggest you start using it.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Okay, if it makes it any easier, just pretend you’re an infiltrator sent to impersonate someone polite, and scream at me after we get home. Please?”

“I don’t scream.”

“Okay, growl, hiss, turn into a maulwurf and throw rocks around. I don’t care. Just don’t make a scene here…”

He said nothing. I didn’t press the issue, as we were about to land. Blade and Feisty waved goodbye and flew in the direction of Garnet Street, where they’d claimed one of their friends lived. I waved back and touched down next to Spike’s statue with Pharynx in tow. I’d intended to check on the flower I’d planted next to the statue, but got distracted with all the garlands and streamers stretched between the street lights and the bouquets of colorful crystals lined up on the ground. Even the streets and houses seemed extra polished! And as if the scenery wasn’t enough, the crystal ponies were on the verge of exploding their auras into the Crystal Heart! Some of them were even gathered around the castle!

“Whoa,” I breathed. “Is this going to be a public celebration? I didn’t realize!”

“More like public chaos,” Pharynx grumbled. “Imagine the pandemonium if something scared them. I wouldn’t like to be the guy trying to instill order in that! Then again, it would be fun to watch…”

I facehoofed. Typical Pharynx… “Please don’t test that theory,” I moaned.

“Why not? It would be a great way to test our allies’ level of preparedness for an unpredictable situation and gauge their abilities to resolve it!”

“Let’s leave that for another time, shall we? There’s bound to be plenty of opportunities, and if you want to arrange something with Shining Armor, go right ahead… Now, let’s get to the castle. They’re probably expecting-”

A flash and a tingle of magic stopped us in our tracks and interrupted my sentence.

“Thorax! There you are!” Starlight exclaimed, having materialized in front of us. “We’ve been expecting you!”

She lit up her horn again and her magic popped around me, exchanging the open road for the castle’s dining room. Next to me, Pharynx was rolling his eyes, this time out of dizziness rather than his usual annoyance, until he regained enough senses to shake himself into focus.

“Warn me next time before you do that!” he hissed.

“Sorry… I teleport around so much that I forget it makes some people dizzy if they’re not used to it…”

“Don’t mind Pharynx, Starlight, he’s been acting out ever since we got the invitation and I don’t think there’s a chance of him calming down much until we’re back in the hive.”

“I figured as much. Twilight and I have been training in case you want a sparring session against a magic-wielding opponent, Pharynx, if you’re interested. Neither of us are a match to you in brute force, but we’ve got the thaums to make up for it!”

He grinned. “You’re on!”

“Not now,” I warned him as he assumed a battle stance. “You can’t be stressed out from socializing already, we’ve only just arrived! Speaking of Twilight, where is she?”

Starlight scrunched her face. “Uh… one moment.” She disappeared again and returned with the alicorn and her dragon assistant in magical tow. “Sorry, I didn’t realize she’d already gone!”

“We were waiting for you at the train station,” Twilight said. “When did you get here? And how?”

“Only a minute ago. We flew.”

“All the way from the hive?” Spike asked. “Isn’t that a pretty long distance?”

“We boarded a train in Appleloosa,” I explained, “but someling wouldn’t keep still and the other passengers were getting uncomfortable under his glaring and grumbled threats, so I dragged him out of the train car in some village near Detrot and we continued on our own.”

“They started it! What was I supposed to do, sit and wait until they finish plotting revenge?”

“What makes you think they wanted revenge? It’s not that long ago that we stopped being hostile; they probably just haven’t gotten used to us being in plain sight and acting normal!”

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that,” he groaned. “We’ll see who’s laughing when-”

The door opened and our hosts stepped in, accompanied by Sunburst and the girls from Ponyville and, of course, the one-year-old filly, dressed in a cute little frock and flying around from one of her guests to another, babbling excitedly along the way.

“...here we go,” Pharynx muttered under his breath.

Flurry only needed a moment to notice me and even less to propel herself in my very specific direction, attaching herself to my chest in the closest thing to a hug that she could muster on someone of my size. I hugged her back.

“Hi there, birthday girl!” I cooed. “How long has it been that I haven’t seen you? You’ve grown so much!”

“Grown and grown out of the diapers,” Cadance added.

“Already? Congratulations!”

“Bet that’s a relief to the foalsitter,” Pharynx muttered.

Flurry blew a raspberry at him. Pharynx bared his teeth and started to growl in her face, so I quickly put a hoof over his snout and frowned at him to stop. Thankfully, he took the hint.

“...anyway,” I said in an attempt to break the awkward silence that had followed, “you’ve all met Pharynx, right? Please excuse his behavior… he’s, um… a little tired from the trip…”

“More like tired of it,” he corrected me.

“...at least you’re trying?” Starlight suggested.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself! The only reason why I allowed myself to get dragged here is to make Thorax shut up!”

“I don’t suppose you have any punching bags for him to let off some steam?” I asked Shining. Please say yes! This is going worse than I thought!

“Of course,” he said. “This way-”

It wasn’t meant to happen, at least not yet, as Celestia and Luna chose that particular moment to arrive, accompanied by a couple of unicorns I hadn’t met before. After a quick greeting, the four adult princesses struck up a conversation, joined by the other ponies. I took this chance to focus my attention solely on Flurry, and levitated her gift out of my saddlebag. She tore up the wrapping paper and squealed contently at her new toy: a wooden changeling with poseable parts that I’d personally carved and painted. Okay, Mystique had helped with the poseable parts, so it wasn’t entirely my work, but Flurry seemed to like it either way, as she was already trying to get everypony’s attention to it.

Pharynx was still scowling. I was wondering whether or not I should put Flurry down to play so I could try to cheer him up a little, as it could only make things worse, when Sunburst glanced through the window, then at the clock.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but there’s quite a crowd out there, and it’s about time.”

“Oh, right, of course!” Cadance exclaimed. “Thorax, Pharynx, we’re about to present Flurry to our subjects. Would you like to join us?”

I accepted readily and Pharynx grumbled something that may have been a ‘Do I have a choice?’ that everypony assumed was rhetorical, which it probably was, so we headed for one of the staircases to the ground level.

The ponies cheered as the Royal Family stepped out into the street and let Flurry fly freely among them, and I could swear the Crystal Heart’s magic got that much brighter instantly as she graced many of them with her immediate presence and was rewarded with many nuzzles and adoring cooes, to which she responded with blissful babbling and squealing. Occasionally she got a flower tucked into her mane or a toy offered to her, and the rest of us, watching from the sidelines, were left to wonder at how much love and adoration one filly could attract onto herself! Even after so much time in the Crystal Empire, I still hadn’t gotten used to an aura this rich, and it seemed to grow richer by the minute!

Eventually, Flurry decided she had nopony left to demand snuggles and treats from, and returned to her parents, her mane sagging with flowers. Cadance said a few words of thanks to everypony and the visitors from afar for coming to celebrate this joyous day, upon which the crowd cheered again and took their cue to go home, and we returned into the castle.

The dining table was already set when we got there, and Berry brought the meal soon after we took our seats. Pharynx had, surprisingly, calmed down in the meantime and was refraining from brazen comments for the time being. Had he taken a sip of love meant for Flurry while I wasn’t paying attention? Either way, he still wasn’t light-hearted and talkative like the rest of the group, and instead spent most of the time staring at the empty plate in front of him, only now and then glancing around as if on guard duty.

The conversation went on oblivious to his lack of participation. The ponies talked about everyday things: what they were doing recently, what their mutual friends were doing, what they would like to do in the near future, that kind of stuff. Some of the conversation revolved around Flurry and how she’d been doing recently. Cadance and Shining were proud to say that her babbling was starting to get a little more articulate and that they believed she would soon be able to speak somewhat clearly, which prompted a round of cheers and clapping for the little princess, who basked in the extra praise. I also figured out that the two unicorns were actually her grandparents, and they showered their little bundle of joy with unbridled affection, maybe even more than the happy parents!

Everypony’s mood skyrocketed when the cake arrived; Flurry herself got so excited that she nearly knocked the chocolatey treat off the table! Actually, she did knock it off the table, prompting a devastated gasp from Pinkie, but Starlight’s magic saved it at the last moment! Everypony breathed a sigh of relief, and Flurry earned a disapproving frown from Cadance, which caused her to whimper until granny and Luna took it upon themselves to cheer her up and Pinkie gave her a party hat and some balloons.

That did the trick. Twilight lit the candle and Flurry blew it out with gusto, then demanded a repeat or five, and duly got them. I caught Pharynx rolling his eyes at that at some point, but at least he wasn’t frowning as much anymore. Maybe he’d finally found something that amused him? I decided not to inquire, lest I break the spell.

I didn’t realize I was staring at my slice of cake until Sunburst prodded me.

“You’ve been awfully silent and aloof today,” he said. “Is something wrong?”

“...I have?”

“Well, duh,” Pinkie said. “I thought Pharynx was rubbing off on you, but now you’re the grumpier Grumpy Pants than him! What gives?!”

“Oh, I don’t know… must be nothing…”

Spike got out of his chair and approached me. “Thorax. You know you can tell us, right?”

I nodded.

“What’s been going on recently?”

“I’m not sure if a party is the right time to talk about it… I don’t want to kill the mood…”

“You kind of did that already,” Rainbow quipped.

“Rainbow!”

“What?”

“Cantcha ever hold yer tongue back? Come now, sugarcube, y’all tell us what’s troublin’ ya!”

Something in her eyes convinced me it would be alright more than words could. Was it because she’d been in the same boat?

“I, uh… found out the other day that my parents are dead.”

Everypony gasped. Fluttershy started crying and Pinkie hugged her.

“Why, whatever happened, darling?” Rarity asked.

“It’s nothing recent. I just found out about it now because I found their service records in the archive. We weren’t allowed to know who our parents are - or nymphs, for those who had any - while Chrysalis was in charge. It turns out that dad died of changeling pox when Pharynx and I were little, and mom was killed in Canterlot.”

“Did the blast do it?” Shining asked.

“No, the record said a Royal Guard did.”

“Does it say which guard it was?”

“It doesn’t,” Pharynx retorted. “It was a warzone, how were we supposed to keep track?”

“You were there too?”

“No, I stayed behind to oversee the hive in Chrysalis’ absence.”

“Oh, you meant ‘we’ in general. Right, heh…”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Cadance said.

“It’s alright, Princess. Like I said, it didn’t happen recently, and I didn’t even know them.”

“But you’re still hurting!”

“I know it doesn’t make much sense-”

“Consarn it, Thorax, have y’all lost yer marbles? They were yer parents, for Pete’s sake! Just because y’all didn’t know ‘em ain’t mean it can’t hurt!”

“Applejack is right,” Cadance continued. “I don’t remember my own birth parents, but it still hurts to know that I’ll never see them again and that Flurry will never know them, even though I was adopted into the most loving and caring family I could have asked for. The pain dulls over time but it never fully goes away.”

“It did for me,” Pharynx shrugged.

“Then why did you jump at the chance to dig up the archive for their teammates to see if we could get them to tell us stories?”

“Only because it looked like you wouldn’t shut up otherwise!”

“Is that why you broke protocol in the old days and stole a peek in their records without authorization?”

“I found mother by accident!”

“But not dad! You said it yourself that you went looking for his record deliberately!”

“Whoa, hold on a minute,” Rainbow interjected. “Pharynx knew about your parents and didn’t tell you? And you’re okay with that?!”

I shrugged. “We’d have gotten punished for knowing. Things were much worse than they are now.”

“Makes sense that you took my behavior so easily,” Shining mused.

Pharynx’s ears perked up. “What behavior?” he hissed.

Uh-oh… “Pharynx…”

“I didn’t like the fact that a changeling turned up in the area and decided he wanted to live here so I took out my anger on him. Didn’t Thorax tell you?”

I tried to gesture at Shining to stop talking while there was still a chance he could, but Pharynx noticed and pressed my hoof down onto the tabletop. “Let him talk, Thorax,” he growled. “What did you do?”

“I-”

“Shining-”

“Shut up, Thorax. What did you do?!”

“I threw him in prison at first, and later I put him under constant surveillance and restricted his movement and his rights, and insulted and berated him every chance I could-”

“Shining-” I tried again, but Pharynx shoved a hoof in my mouth and stood up onto the table. “What else?”

“And one time, I interrogated him about the hive and pushed him into telling me about you, after which he felt so bad that he tried to impale himself on a halberd-”

Pharynx was at Shining’s throat before he could finish the sentence. “I’ll kill you!”

“I’m sorry for all of this,” I said to Cadance as we finally got to take a break, having barely managed to subdue Pharynx and to get him off Shining with the help of Twilight, Starlight, Celestia, and Luna.

“It’s… well, not alright, but understandable… There were times when I wanted to do it…” she admitted.

“I know, but that doesn’t excuse Pharynx!”

“Look who’s talking,” he protested. “The guy who used a torture spell to end the fight! Didn’t you say a while ago you’d never use it again?”

“You were about to rip Shining’s head off! It was the last resort!”

“He deserved it!”

“He also got punished already, and he realized his mistakes prior to getting punished! No need to kill him!”

“Whatever.”

“You also didn’t have to break his legs.”

“They’ll heal-”

“Or shout obscenities about his mother.”

“Tha mare ran off before we started, for crying out loud! And if she raised her son like that, then she deserves to be insulted!”

“You wouldn’t have said that a year ago…”

“Well I’m sorry if I’ve had it up to here with people treating my brother like garbage!”

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to,” I scolded him.

“I’m not apologizing to that idiot!”

“Mr Pharynx,” Cadance interjected, “I understand your grievances, but my husband has seen the error of his ways and done everything in his power to make it up to Thorax, and I will not stand for you calling him an idiot!”

“See? You’re causing an international incident! Are you trying to spark a war?”

“You’d declare a war, right,” he snorted.

“I wouldn’t, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Cadance and Shining did after this.” I let out an exasperated sigh. “Look, Pharynx, I get that you find it hard to adjust to peacetime, but that peace is my life’s work and I almost died trying to achieve it. Can’t you at least make an effort?”

Just then, the dining room door opened, and Twilight pushed in the wheelchair with her bandaged-up brother sitting in it.

“I asked the others to wait outside,” she said. “Is anyone else hurt?”

“No, I think we’re fine. What did the doctors say?”

“I’ll live,” Shining groaned. “Hurts like all Tartarus and I won’t be doing any drills for a while, but doc doesn’t think there’ll be any permanent damage.”

Cadance started for the door. “I’ll see if we have some painkillers-”

“Already got them, and we stopped by at the pharmacy to get more. Still hurts…”

“...um, if it’s not a problem,” I said to him, “Pharynx has something to tell you.”

“Yeah? What?”

Pharynx said nothing at first so I fixed him a disapproving glare.

“...ugh, fine. Shining, I, uh, shouldn’t have beaten you up. I still hate you for what you did but, erm, I overreacted and, ugh, I’m sorry. Okay?”

“No problem,” Shining rasped. “I had it coming. The original punishment was way too soft. No worries, you’re good.”

Pharynx then turned to me. “Told you. Satisfied?”

“You forgot the rest of it.”

I got an eye roll in return. “Okay, and I shouldn’t have said that about Velvet, either.”

“Said what?”

“Oh! Mrs Velvet, I really don’t think we need to go into all of that-”

“I’m a tougher mare than I look, Your Highness. I won’t fall apart from a few angry words.”

“Still, it wouldn’t be right…”

“But I bet it wouldn’t be the first time,” she insisted. “My husband and I were in the Canterlot Castle when you guys invaded. We saw everything and fought back until we got overwhelmed and cocooned up, and after that day, no hostile behavior coming from a changeling can surprise me. I would have actually tried to help you subdue Pharynx if it weren’t for having to take Flurry to safety… of course, I didn’t expect my son to get incapacitated this badly… but that’s neither here nor there. I’m actually pleasantly surprised by what you’re trying to do, and your brother probably just needs more time, but I’m sure he’ll get there eventually! In fact, from what I’ve seen of him, he’s probably closer to where you want him to be than he started out from, despite what he did to Shining!”

“Uh, thanks?”

“And though I never knew your parents, I’m sure they would have seen the light within you and accepted your ways, even if it may have taken them a while. As a mother, I promise you they’d be proud of their son! Now, if I’m not mistaken, this is also an approximate anniversary of your arrival to the Crystal Empire. Shall we celebrate?”

You Are Cordially Invited...

Though everypony avoided mentioning Pharynx’s outburst afterwards, the remainder of our visit was strained and awkward. I couldn’t blame them. What to do when the rude guest was the brother of someone they had taken in and grown to love as their own and who had since become a leader in his own right? I was sure they wanted to avoid a war as much as I did, but it wasn’t easy, and were we not friends already and had Shining not felt his previous punishment to be too mild, I was sure they wouldn’t have been so considerate! Thanks a lot, Pharynx…

At least he’d calmed down somewhat after the fact.

I didn’t expect him to start rampaging again for the time being, but that was little comfort in the given situation. His calmness wasn’t even remorseful; I could sense in his aura that he was seething inwardly, and he just sat there, scowling and avoiding eye contact with everypony, making a point of ignoring whatever was left of the conversation. Didn’t he realize he was only making things worse? Didn’t he care, at least for the sake of those present who’d had nothing to do with the way Shining had treated me early on and had even opposed it?

I could take it, were it just about me. The adult ponies could take it, and probably Spike, too, even if they shouldn’t have to; they’d faced worse situations and I was sure they had the emotional capacity to push past it and reason enough to acknowledge that someone casually finding out about their brother’s suicide attempt could hardly be expected to take it lightly. But to ruin a filly’s birthday party for it? She just sat there in silent stupor, not having babbled even once since seeing her daddy bandaged up, and try as we might, there was nothing we could do to brighten her mood.

“This is pointless,” I said eventually. “I appreciate the effort you’re putting in restraining yourselves from throwing Pharynx and me out the window, but we’ve really overstayed our welcome. I’m sorry again-”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Shining said. “In hindsight, this was unavoidable and I should have seen it coming. Should have dealt with it before Flurry’s birthday or put it off until afterwards, though…”

“Anything else we should have dealt with already?” Pharynx barked.

“Uh, no, that’s the worst of it.”

“...we should go,” I said again, noticing Pharynx start gritting his teeth a little harder.

Apparently realizing that trying to get me to reconsider would be pointless, Cadance said, “At least let us walk you to the train station?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said half-heartedly, then patted the sulking Flurry. “I’m sorry for ruining your birthday…”

She squirmed and withdrew into herself again.

“What about Blade and Feisty?” Pharynx asked. “We’re leaving them here?”

“Oh, right! Mind if I go looking for them?”

“The last train is about to leave,” Sunburst said. “We have just about enough time to catch it. Not that I want you to go away-”

“It’s alright,” I assured him. “We’ll see each other again, hopefully without complications. Now let me see if I can get to Blade and Feisty in time…”

“On it!” Rainbow exclaimed. “I’ll find them in ten seconds flat!”

“They should be in Garnet-” I started, only to realize I was talking to her receding rainbow-colored trail. “...oh well…”

“Come on,” Pharynx urged.

Shining stayed behind to watch Flurry, being in no condition to walk across the city, and the rest of us trotted in silence to the train station. Rainbow and the two drones caught up about halfway there. Whether they’d caught onto the mood or been told what had happened, I didn’t know, but they kept their distance and refrained from starting a conversation, and I was in a way thankful for it, and yet, at the same time, wished they’d at least tried to snap us out of it. It was probably for the better that they hadn’t; I didn’t think there was much they could do unless they could turn back time and stop Pharynx from lashing out. Then again, Starlight had the magic to do that and hadn’t, so maybe it would have been a bad idea for a reason I couldn’t fathom?

It was a moot point. Livid or not, Pharynx shouldn’t have lost the grip on himself like that! He should have known better!

...then again, maybe I was to blame for not telling him about what Shining had done. But how could I have known Pharynx would find out today? How could I have known that he hadn’t found out already? What would I have done if he’d been told about it in the hive, which should by all standards have been a safe distance, and then dropped everything and stormed out of there with the intention of flying to the other end of the world to exact revenge? I doubted I could chase him that far without needing a break!

I had to discuss things with him… again… but I was too drained of everything right now, Pharynx was still pouting too much to be likely to listen, and there were ponies on the train. So we spent the whole ride in complete silence, all the way up to Appleloosa. At least I’d managed to catch a few hours’ nap by the time we reached the last stop. Had Pharynx? It would have done him good, though I doubted he’d have allowed himself to let his guard down around strangers in a foreign land.

I finally broke the silence as we were flying over the jungle.

“Have you cooled down a little?” I asked tentatively.

“I don’t need cooling down,” he retorted.

“Shining Armor would disagree-”

“He can disagree all he wants! And since you obviously couldn’t be bothered to listen, let me inform you that he wouldn’t disagree!”

“Because of what he said when he came back?”

“So you did listen, wow…”

“I bet he was just trying to be polite. No one likes to have their legs broken no matter what they did-”

“What was I supposed to do? Kiss his hooves and thank him for pushing you into suicide?”

“Of course not, but you could have just told him how you feel about it and left it at that!”

“And you knew I was going to explode about something! If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else!”

“Because you don’t like how cute everything is and how gentle they are?”

“Yes! But no, you just had to drag me along and risk jeopardizing your precious diplomacy!”

“Is that why you did it? Because if you demonstrated how savage you can be, I’d stop bringing you along and ponies wouldn’t invite you to places and events?”

“I didn’t start out with that idea, but it would be a welcome side-effect, yes.”

“Then you’re going to be disappointed. You’re the leader of the hive’s defense forces and the king’s brother - a prince, if you will - and I have no intention of keeping you confined to the hive like I’m ashamed of you.”

He just stared at me, saying nothing, but something stirred in his aura.

“I’m not forbidding you to fight when it’s necessary,” I continued, “but you must accept that we’re no longer at war and start acting accordingly.”

“Hm.”

“If you need anger management lessons, I can arrange-”

“I can manage my anger just fine!”

“Then what was that thing in the Crystal Empire about?”

“Necessary revenge.”

“Call it revenge if you want, but it was neither necessary nor acceptable. Like I said, I’m not going to exclude you from the rest of the world to keep this kind of thing from happening in the future, so either teach yourself some self-control or I’ll find someone to help you do it.”

“And if I refuse?”

“I could give you an order or threaten to transfer you into the cleaning crew again or something, but I’m hoping you’re reasonable enough to see the benefits of that approach yourself. Or strategy, if you prefer to call it that.”

“Heh. Good thing I’m reasonable enough, then, because you’re no good at bellowing commands.”

“You’ll do it?” It sounded too good to be true! Hopefully he wasn’t plotting a way to avoid it without me finding out…

“...ugh. I’ll try, I guess. No promises, though.”

When we got close to the hive, Pharynx separated himself from the rest of us, changing course towards one of the training areas, and Blade followed after a moment. That left me alone with Feisty, and I decided this was as good a time as any to talk to her, maybe even better because I’d allowed the matter to go ignored for way too long and didn’t need to drag it out even further.

“You heard the conversation between Pharynx and me, didn’t you?” I asked.

“Yes. So what Rainbow Dash said is true, then? He really tried to kill Shining Armor?”

“I’m afraid so… And I don’t care how justified he thinks it was; I can’t have him killing people on a whim! Yes, okay, he said he’d try to control himself from now on, but he said it a couple of times before already, so I’m not inclined to believe him right away!”

“I’m guessing those earlier promises weren’t made after finding out someone had mistreated you into attempting to end your own life,” she said hesitantly.

“They weren’t,” I agreed. “I guess it’s easier to make that promise when you think you won’t be compelled to break it. I don’t think he’ll have such grievances with anyone else other than possibly Chrysalis, whom he’ll most likely have to fight either way if she tries to reclaim the throne, and I want to believe that he’ll take it more seriously this time, but he said ‘no promises’ and that’s worrying me.”

She nodded. “You mentioned anger management lessons to him. Shall I start out on that?”

“Do you have any experience?”

“Some, but I’m not exactly a professional. I could try…”

“Let’s keep it as a backup solution for now. I still want to give Pharynx a chance to get there on his own, and knowing him, I wouldn’t be surprised if he started sabotaging sessions out of spite, or pride, or whatever his reasons are. I’ll take a more active role in supervising and encouraging his progress, but if I don’t see any, I’m going to have to ask for help wherever I can find it. Can you do some research on the matter in the meantime? Either to prepare yourself for the task or to refer me to professionals if you don’t think you can handle it yourself, wherever in the world they may be?”

“Of course! How long will you give Pharynx?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t want to wait too long, but calling it a failure too quickly wouldn’t be a good thing, either. Would a week or two be too short an interval?”

“One week probably will, but you could gauge his progress after two weeks, I think. Depends on how motivated and determined he is. But keep in mind that he could feign progress to get you off his back. It’s been known to happen, and he is trained in deception. It might not even show in his aura that he’s lying to you.”

“I’ll try anyway. Thanks!”

The next day, I unexpectedly found Pharynx in the arts-and-crafts section, hunched over a piece of paper and levitating a pencil.

“Who are you and what have you done to Pharynx?” I said jokingly.

“Very funny,” he retorted in a way that would have dispelled all doubts about his true identity, had I seriously had any.

“What are you drawing?”

“Nothing. Go away.”

“Can’t I ask what my brother is up to?” I leaned in closer to the drawing but he threw his hooves over it and hissed in my face.

The rest of the arts-and-crafts group dropped what they were doing to glare at us.

Turning serious, I asked, “Didn’t you agree to work on that attitude?”

“...ugh, fine.” He rolled his eyes and uncovered the drawing.

“It’s a… schematic? You’re going to build something?”

“You know that dartboard you gave me?”

“Yes, what about it?”

“You said you made it with the intention of helping me redirect my anger. Well, it’s not enough. Not always, anyway. Last evening, I improvised a drawing of Shining Armor’s face and put it up for darting and the entire paper was obliterated within a couple of minutes, so now I’m working on designing a punching bag or training dummy or something sturdy enough not to fall apart so easily.”

“Don’t you already have a punching bag and training dummies?”

“What do you think happened to them this morning?”

I could only imagine… “But Pharynx, you’re supposed to be curbing your anger, not redirecting it-”

“I’m not an idealistic fool, Thorax. Unlike you, I realize there’s enough anger in me that it can’t just go away no matter how hard I try to quench it. Barring a miracle, the best I’ll ever be able to do is suppress it temporarily, but I will have to expel it sooner or later. I wouldn’t necessarily even need a dummy if you hadn’t forbidden me from throwing rocks and ripping up the plants, but now there’s enough drones scattered around planting those plants that I can’t throw rocks around without risking to squash someling. Punishing a dummy is safer for your subjects than letting me go berserk.”

“Well, if you think it’ll help you hold back from going berserk against anyone not posing an immediate threat to someone’s life…” The anger management exercises wouldn’t hurt, either; I’d have to ask Feisty if she’d made any progress yet. As much as Pharynx hated the idea and despite my doubts that they’d be anywhere near as effective on him as on an average pony or drone, it couldn’t hurt to try anyway, right?

“I know myself. That ought to do it if anything will.”

“If you say so… but do you think that eventually there may be a chance, however small, that you might get enough of a grip on your anger to no longer need to redirect it onto dummies?”

“Doubt it. Or if telling you what you want to hear to get you to go away and let me work on this, then yes, definitely, it’ll happen by tomorrow, why are you even asking?”

“You know me better than that!”

“Okay, I do, now will you get lost already and go do some royal duties or fawn over a butterfly or something? I’m trying to work here!”

A few days passed. I checked on Pharynx regularly; he was keeping himself under control for the time being, though it could simply be that he had nothing to challenge that control, and was still working on his rage-relief dummies. So far, he’d carved one out of a hunk of stone he’d dragged in from the wasteland, even if it was only of a rough equine shape when he declared it finished. Upon being questioned about the lack of finer details or even rough details, he insisted they didn’t matter, as they would get obliterated within the first couple of times he’d use the dummy for its intended purpose.

He was probably right.

He had, however, asked if I knew of any indestructible materials that the infiltrators of the old era had failed to learn of, or any indestructibility spells, or at least something expected to be more durable than the stone-turned-dummy he was just finishing. Was he concerned this too would be too weak to survive his onslaught? It sounded absurd, but if he really thought it necessary… I’d promised I’d write to the ponies and ask.

I was just about to do that when Psycho brought a pony to the throne room.

“Greetings, Your Highness,” the visitor said, bowing gracefully. “I have been sent from Canterlot to deliver a message.”

He opened his saddlebag and took out a scroll that bore the seal of Princess Celestia. Curious… Had something happened? Was this about Pharynx? Were we in trouble? They’d said it would be alright… but what if Shining had changed his mind? No, the correspondence about that would come from the Crystal Empire, I told myself. But would it? Maybe Canterlot was in charge of this kind of thing no matter where the mess-up had happened!

With knots in my stomach, I unwrapped the scroll.

Office of Princess Celestia, HRH/Office of Princess Luna, HRH
Castle of the Sun and the Moon
1200 Harmony Avenue, Canterlot, Equestria
To: King Thorax, HRH, of the Changelings
Re: Invitation

Hear ye, hear ye!

Her Royal Highness, Princess Celestia of Equestria, and Her Royal Highness, Princess Luna of Equestria, are pleased to announce the Grand Galloping Gala to be held in the magnificent city of Canterlot, on the 21st day of August, on the grounds of the Royal Palace and Gardens, beginning after sunset. You are cordially invited to honor this high-society formal celebration by your presence as the first-ever representative of the Changeling Kingdom. Included in the invitation are tickets for King Thorax plus one guest.

Princess Celestia

Princess Luna

P.S. We have no objection to Pharynx being your Gala companion, should you wish to bring him.

Sure enough, two golden tickets were attached to the scroll: one with my name, and one with a blank line, presumably to be filled in with the name of my companion.

“Whoa… this Gala sounds really big and important...” I mused.

“It’s the biggest high-society event in Equestria,” the courier said. “Being invited to it is considered a great honor.”

“In that case, I guess it would be rude to refuse, huh? Even though I’m not sure how to behave at high-society events… or whom to bring… Pharynx wouldn’t be very thrilled, and who knows if he’ll get his behavior under control by then…”

“I’m sure you can handle it, Your Highness,” the courier interjected. “In case you find yourself overwhelmed, Princess Celestia said to tell you your friends will be there.”

“Really?! All of them?”

“I know the Royal Family of the Crystal Empire is invited, and so are the Element Bearers and Spike. They get invited every year! I also heard rumors about Sunburst, Starlight Glimmer, and Trixie Lulamoon making their debut, and about Discord getting invited again despite having caused some mischief before. They are your friends, correct?”

“Yes.” So there was little point asking any of them to be my plus-one if they had their own tickets. Maybe one of my subjects would be interested, or maybe somepony from the Crystal Empire? I would prefer Pharynx, but whether or not that would be a good idea… “Um, do I have to decide who I’m bringing right now?”

“Most recurring guests already know who they’re going to bring by the time the invitations are sent, but not everypony, and it’s not a requirement. It’s enough to write their name on the ticket when you arrive so I’ll know whom to announce.”

“...announce?”

“Yes. I’ll be tasked with announcing the name of every guest as they enter the ballroom. It’s standard practice at formal events. Didn’t you know?”

“No, I’m new to this kind of stuff. No such occasions happened in the Crystal Empire while I lived there, I wasn’t an infiltrator that would be required to know such things, and Chrysalis certainly didn’t organize any formal balls!”

“Understandable. Shall I tell the Princesses to expect you, then?”

“Yes, I suppose. Though I’m not sure if I’ll even have a plus-one…”

“I’m sure you’ll find someone.” He bowed again and trotted off.

I went to find Pharynx. Sure enough, he was still in the arts-and-crafts area, only now, he was stitching something.

“Is that… a maulwurf hide?” I exclaimed.

“What do you think?”

“Where did you get it?”

He just glared at me.

“You… didn’t go kill a maulwurf for this… did you?”

“You’re feeling sorry for maulwurfs now? Don’t answer. I don’t wanna know. No, this isn’t a recent kill. I dug it up from the storage area. It belonged to the maulwurf that killed Succubus. I skinned him and kept the hide as a trophy, then forgot about it until now. I figured it should be sturdy enough for one of the rage-relief dummies.”

Oooookay… “Anyway, that’s not what I’m here about. Have you heard of the Grand Galloping Gala?”

“That posh thing in Canterlot? Yeah, what about it?”

“I just got invited to the upcoming one-”

“Have fun.”

“-and there was an extra ticket for me bring someone along.”

“So?”

“I was hoping you’d be interested…”

“Me?! Are you crazy? Especially after what happened in the Crystal Empire?”

“I’m sure you’ll manage to rein in your anger by then!” Definitely asking Feisty to help him get there...

“Even if I do, what makes you think Celestia won’t kick both of us off the cliff at the first sight of me? Not to mention that I’d rather get eaten by a pack of maulwurfs than go there?”

“She explicitly said it’s okay to bring you.” I showed him the scroll.

“Can’t you bring someling else?”

“I might find someone, but I was really hoping you’d want to come…”

He huffed and muttered something incoherent.

“Pleeease?”

A moment passed in which his annoyed glare countered my hopeful one, then he groaned and buried his face in the maulwurf hide. “Why is the universe punishing me at every step?”

Missing in Action

Dear Thorax,

Sorry for making you wait for my letter for this long! Things have been pretty hectic over here and I just couldn’t catch a free moment to write to you. It all started with Sunburst’s visit to an antique shop where he bought a bunch of random stuff among which turned out to be the journal of Starswirl the Bearded! You’ve heard of him, right? The most famous wizard who ever lived? Anyway, Twilight has always been obsessed with Starswirl, and Sunburst isn’t far behind, so you can probably imagine their reaction to finding out what they’ve got. Like, I’ve never seen Twi so maniacally inseparable from a piece of paper with words on it, and that’s saying something! They even roped the rest of us into researching it, and not only did they (we?) find out that Starswirl and five other ‘pillars of old Equestria’ planted the seed that grew into the Tree of Harmony and the Elements of Harmony, but they also figured out how to bring them back from limbo where they ended up while fighting the Pony of Shadows! Things went south almost immediately because the Pony of Shadows returned with them (surprise, surprise - I mean, why would these things ever go without complications?) and we had to defeat him… actually, reform him, as it turned out the guy used to be their assistant before embracing darkness due to the Pillars slighting him. Normally, that would be the end of it, but Twilight then decided to organize a Friendship Festival. It’s something she’d been considering on and off for a couple of years, but this thing with Stygian (aka Pony of Shadows) threw her into a fit of panic because who knows how many more ponies could be in a similar situation and on the verge of embracing darkness unless shown how many friends they have and how much those friends care about them, yadda yadda yadda (I’ll spare you the details of her overthinking spree or this letter will be longer than Encyclopaedia Canterlotica), so she put us to work, and now we have a Friendship Festival due to happen in Canterlot on 28th June, if you’re interested to have some fun. All creatures are welcome! Hey, maybe it’ll help Pharynx unwind, too? Don’t worry about him coming in contact with Shining. His legs haven’t healed yet so he politely excused himself.

Whew. I think that’s everything, at least the gist of it. I can go into more detail at the Festival if you’re interested. Anything new in the hive?

Uh-oh, Twi needs my help with something… again… I dunno when I’ll catch a break again so I’ll wrap this up for now. See you at the Festival?

Your friend,

Spike

P.S. Almost forgot. The hardest materials in existence are diamonds and dragon teeth, though I’m not sure if that’s of any help to Pharynx. Something that comes pretty close to those is the metal the changeling helmets are made of (at least, the helmets found on killed changelings after the Canterlot invasion). Starlight couldn’t think of any indestructibility spells but she said to tell you she’ll pass them on if she remembers any.

“Why is it that when something interesting happens, it’s always them who end up dealing with it?” Pharynx grumbled as he read Spike’s letter over my shoulder.

I chuckled. “Are you jealous?”

“That’s not the point. The point is, how come do the same half-dozen individuals end up being the heroes over and over again? I get it that the assaulting entities would want to wipe out the strongest opponents first, but these six weren’t always the strongest, and they even went looking for trouble this time! And no one called them out on recklessness?!”

“I’m sure they prepared for every outcome they could think of,” I shrugged. “Something must have surprised them.”

“Still reckless. They should have given it more thought.”

“You mean, like you and Chrysalis should have given more thought to the Canterlot invasion?”

“That was different! How were we supposed to know Sparkle was going to get suspicious?”

“Isn’t that the same as ‘something surprised them’? Or you in this case?”

“And she went poking at what she should have left alone!”

“Would her leaving things alone have prevented the invasion?”

“...we would have won if she hadn’t interfered.”

“But she did interfere, and the world is a better place now!”

He stared into the distance. “Hm. Maybe you’re right. But it would be nice to get some action every once in a while. We went from being a force to be reckoned with to sitting on the sidelines and watching life pass by and put everyone else in the spotlight.”

“You feel left out.”

“Is that what you want to call it?”

“Maybe we can attend this Friendship Festival they’re organizing. I know partying isn’t your thing, but it’ll do you good to get a change of scenery-”

“Have you forgotten that the yak delegation is scheduled to show up on that same day?”

“Oh. Right.” How could I have forgotten? Their letter had arrived less than a week ago! “Um, we can probably do both, we’ll just have to reschedule the yaks-”

Pharynx facehoofed. “No. You don’t reschedule yaks, ever, under any condition! Just because I may be bored with nothing to do doesn’t mean we have to provoke a war with them!”

“I don’t get it. Why would rescheduling be a problem?”

“Because yaks are notoriously stubborn and easy to offend, and if you want a chance of peaceful relations with them, you’d better hope they never find out you wanted to dismiss them so you could go partying of all things.”

“Okay then… Do you think Spike will be offended if we don’t show up?”

“You’re the one he’s really inviting. I’m just baggage.”

“What?! I’m sure he wants to give you a chance!”

“After Crystal Empire?”

“Yes!”

“Whatever.”

“So, do you think he’ll be offended much?”

“He can grin and bear it. You’ve got royal duties, you can’t go off frolicking whenever you feel like it!”

So that was probably a yes, but Pharynx didn’t care to invest any more time and energy into the matter. I had to agree with him, though; I couldn’t abandon my duties in favor of something that sounded like leisure time! Spike would understand, right? So I wrote an apology letter to him, explaining the situation, and his reply a few days later stated it was alright, and that they’d reschedule the festival if they could so I’d manage to show up.

That didn’t make me feel much better. It was like the Crystal Faire all over again! Would we ever come to the point when one of us could invite the other for any random thing without worrying about complications?

“They’re coming!” Tarantula announced on the day in question, overlooking the wasteland from the edge of the throne room.

“Is Savage with them?”

“Yes, he seems unharmed for now.”

“Good,” Pharynx and I said in unison.

“Are you sure the food will be alright?” Psycho asked her. “The last thing we need is a fiasco like the one the ponies had with them a while ago!”

“Relax, they never complained while I cooked for them over there!”

“Just asking…”

“Would they really go to war over an imperfect breakfast?”

Pharynx rolled his eyes. “You asked that a hundred times already! Yes they would!”

Wonderful… How was I supposed to pull this off without infuriating them? They sounded worse than Pharynx, and that was an achievement in itself! Would he be able to handle them if the peaceful approach failed?

“Relax, Thorax,” Tarantula interjected. “They’re not that easily triggered! There’d have to be more than just breakfast, like disrespecting their mannerisms and customs-”

“-which we can’t guarantee won’t happen anyway no matter how much we’ve coached Thorax on the matter! No need to test those limits!”

“They’ve had their share of contact with other lands since opening their borders,” Tarantula insisted. I’m sure they’ve figured out how to behave!”

“Yeah, now that you mention it, Princess Cadance did mention at some point that yak delegates are usually reasonable enough…”

“To ponies, maybe,” Pharynx retorted. “They have no reason to be considerate to us after we spied on them! Why do you think they closed their borders in the first place?”

“You know we weren’t the only reason!” Psycho protested.

“Maybe not, but we made enough of a contribution. I don’t know why they decided to bother to talk to us instead of just plain attacking.”

“Must you always be so pessimistic?”

“The word is ‘cautious’, Psycho!”

“Um… shouldn’t we go down there and meet them?”

They both glared at me.

“I mean,” I continued, shuffling awkwardly, “as far as I know, it’s usually seen as a gesture of hospitality… Unless yaks see it differently and you guys forgot to mention?”

“No, they’re okay with it.”

“Okay, then…” I took in a breath and let it out slowly in a vain attempt to steady my nerves. “Let’s do this…”

Pharynx approached me as we flew down to the hive’s base. “You sure you can handle this?”

“Um… I think so…” That was a lie and we both knew it.

“I’ve got disguised soldiers posted everywhere. Do what you think will work, but if they start yelling ‘Yak smash!’, run away as fast as you can and let us deal with it.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat. “You really think that’ll happen?”

“Beats me. Our history doesn’t bode well, but then again, maybe Tarantula is right and the yaks have mellowed from exposure to ponies.”

We were at ground level by then and the yak delegation was only a couple of dozen steps away. It was an impressive sight; though Pharynx had briefly turned into one while helping me get ready for the meeting, I’d never before seen a real yak in person, let alone a herd of them! Every single one of them was a bit taller than me and much bulkier and with bigger horns… Yep, not intimidating at all…

Hadn’t Pharynx’s disguise been smaller than a real yak? Or was I imagining it?

Okay, relax, Thorax, it’ll be fine… they probably won’t stomp you to death for the slightest excuse-

“Changelings!” the biggest and most decorated of them exclaimed. That would be Prince Rutherford, right? The letter had said he was coming… “Yak want to speak to King Thorax!”

“Um. I am King Thorax.” I stepped forward, feeling self-conscious about using that title. “Welcome to the Changeling Kingdom!”

“Yak confused. Changelings not evil anymore? Changelings always evil!”

“Please accept my apologies in the name of all the changelings that wronged your kind! We are reformed now!”

“How yak know changeling not become evil again?”

“Um… I guess you’ll have to trust us… I can’t show you what goes on in every changeling’s head, but everyling has shared love and, in doing so, abandoned their hostile ways.” Mostly true, anyway… I hoped I could count on Pharynx not to undermine what I’d just said! “Refusing to share love is what made changelings evil, and blind loyalty to our former queen is what kept us from realizing it. We understand now.”

“And how changeling decide to share love?”

Did he mean me personally or all of us? “Um, I showed the rest of them how. I’ve always been pacifistic, but it took being deployed to invade Canterlot to make me realize there was a world in which I could thrive as I was, assuming I could get the ponies to accept me, which I later did. I lived in the Crystal Empire for a few months until Chrysalis abducted the pony princesses and Element Bearers, and coming to their rescue put me in the position to teach my kind the benefits of sharing love. Okay, I didn’t have much of a choice by then, as I was captured and about to be executed and it looked like the last opportunity I was ever going to get to help undo the damage my kind has caused-”

Turning his back on me, Prince Rutherford joined his entourage for a hushed debate. I just stood there, shifting nervously on my hooves, unsure how to proceed.

“Kjetil and Hallbjorg say pony princess and pink pony say same thing,” Rutherford finally announced. “Yak give chance to changelings now to show they good.”

“Thank you! May I introduce my brother Pharynx, also the head of security, my aide Psycho - don’t let the name deceive you, he’s quite normal - and my subjects Savage and Tarantula, who helped prepare the hive for your visit!”

“This Kjetil, Horwitz, Yakmina, Hallbjorg, Yngve, Asbjorn, and Jorunn.”

“It’s an honor to know you all! Would you like to see the hive, or would you rather eat first? Tarantula cooked some traditional yak dishes!”

“Changeling know cooking? Yak thought changeling not cook! Pony cook, and pony cook yak dishes bad!”

“Uh…”

“It’s okay, Thorax,” Tarantula interjected. “We agreed they have the right to know. Prince Rutherford, I know you won’t like to hear this, but please don’t hold it against Thorax! He has nothing to do with it! You see, I used to be an infiltrator deployed to Yakyakistan.”

“Why changeling not say?!” Rutherford lashed out at me. “Yak not want changeling spy!”

In the corner of my eye, I saw Pharynx tense up in anticipation of a fight. “She isn’t there anymore! I pulled every infiltrator back to the hive as soon as I took command!”

Rutherford glared at us for a moment, then turned to her. “What your yak name?”

“Britta.” She put on a disguise I assumed she’d used during deployment.

“Yak think changeling speak truth,” Asbjorn said. “Britta disappear one day, never found. Yak remember hear rumor Chrysalis defeated next day.”

Rutherford nodded. “Yak apologize. Yaks hungry, food sound good.”

We led them to a table full of peculiar meals that had been set up at the hive’s ground level. Rutherford took a bite of… something… and munched at it for a moment.

“This good,” he said eventually. “Not perfect, but good for changeling cooking. Yaks eat!”

The rest of them swarmed the table with more enthusiasm than a starved changeling hunting a pony in the old days, and all the plates were cleared within seconds!

“Are you sure you cooked enough of that?” I whispered to Tarantula.

“I thought I did, but now I’m starting to wonder,” she whispered back, watching wide-eyed as her hard work got rapidly chomped out of existence. “I’ve never seen them so hungry!”

Having let out a loud belch, Rutherford then announced he was ready for the tour. I led the whole herd around, much like I’d done with the buffalo, while Pharynx and the other drones kept close but not so close that they’d interfere. This went smoothly, except for the yaks stopping in their tracks upon stumbling into a hallway that echoed with the choir rehearsal, and swinging in silence to the music for a full hour until the rehearsal was done. The drones hadn’t even sung anything yak-related! Savage had mentioned that yaks were very serious about music, but I hadn’t realized how far it could go!

Eventually, we ended up in the throne room.

“Throne room not have roof,” Rutherford mused. “Weird.”

“It used to have one, but it collapsed during my… uh, showdown with Chrysalis.”

“Changeling that powerful?!”

“Not really… there were many of us there, and the force of everyling’s love energy combined did it. Not on purpose, though… I don’t think any of us realized it would happen!”

“Yaks strong,” he chuckled, “but changelings stronger.”

“I’m not sure that’s entirely true,” I said, partly to him, and partly to Pharynx, hoping to get him to suppress that triumphant grin that really had no place here!

“Not muscle strong, yak mean. Changeling strength turn evil to good! Yak see now! Yak want announce truce, if changeling agree.”

Changeling agreed, wholeheartedly, upon which Yngve and Jorunn pulled out their yovidaphones and started blasting away, and less than a minute later, a swarm of drones including some of Pharynx’s now-undisguised soldiers rushed to the throne room to see what all the stomping was about!

“Do you think we can still make it to Canterlot for that festival?” I asked Pharynx several hours later, after the yaks had left and he’d dismissed the soldiers and sent Savage and Tarantula to clean up.

“No,” he retorted. “Unless you want to help them sweep the streets and put away the decorations.”

“Aww…”

“Hey, you told them you weren’t coming. Why would they prolong the thing to wait for someone who has no intention of showing up?”

Dear Thorax,

You will not believe what happened. Unless you read it in a newspaper? (Do you even get newspapers in the hive?) Okay, given our track record, it’s not really a surprise in and of itself, as we’ve gotten used to villains messing with us by now, maybe even to the point that Twi would panic if another doesn’t pop out of somewhere for long enough because she’d be stuck between ‘is something wrong with us, things aren’t normally this peaceful’ and ‘things are too quiet, am I missing a disaster going on somewhere’ as soon as she comes to the realization or someone makes the mistake of mentioning in front of her that ‘it’s nice to have some peace and quiet after all this time’ and she’d go crazy trying to figure out where the catch is…

Where was I? Oh, right, the festival! It looked like everything was going fine - the decorations were set up, the food was there, the musicians just arrived, the ponies were starting to mingle - and then a bunch of these huge airships surrounded Canterlot and the whole city was attacked and this unicorn in charge of them said she was preparing the grounds for the Storm King and Celestia and Luna refused to surrender so she petrified them and Cadance, and almost Twilight too but we managed to escape! This unicorn - Tempest - chased us to the other end of the world! We managed to lose her in some dump named Klugetown and moved on to Mount Aris and accidentally ended up in Seaquestria, and the seaponies refused to help at first but we almost convinced them, except that Twi blew it and we got kicked out, and the other girls were angry at her so they argued and Twi left on her own and Tempest captured her, and we went after them, and by then the seaponies changed their minds and decided to help too so they turned back into hippogriffs, which they originally were before the Storm King invaded Mount Aris and they had to flee, so now we fought the Storm King and his armies together, and he got petrified and shattered in the end and his army scattered and Tempest changed her mind and decided to help the ponies after all! Did I mention she was with him only because he promised to restore her broken horn?

Whew. Some day, huh? The festival was still held, only three days after the intended date, and it was pretty good even though we had no time to fix the decorations and bake more cookies. No, not even Pinkie, even though she did her best! Anyway, I’m beat. Going to bed now. Just wanted to let you know I’m fine. I’ll tell you all about it in detail later.

How did the meeting with the yaks go? Hope they didn’t smash your throne!

Spike

“We could have still made it to Canterlot, Pharynx!” I exclaimed, showing him the letter. “We could have helped them!”

“What…” He took the letter and read it; his aura was insanely red-hot by the time he shoved it back to me. “Argh… I vowed to Storm King I’d defeat him the next time we battled, whether or not I had the advantage of Chrysalis’ magic-suppressing throne, and now these ponies went ahead and killed him! I was supposed to do that, darn it!”

“Hold on… you know him?”

“Knew him, Thorax. He’s dead, if this dragon of yours is telling the truth. He attacked the hive years ago, or tried to, anyway. Chrysalis’ throne messed up his airships’ engines and they crash-landed. It wasn’t hard to chase him and his goons off, especially since they’d just finished pillaging the abandoned Mount Aris and looking for the missing hippogriffs. I learned that part later from the infiltrators deployed there at the time. The squad spent over a week sweeping the island and Storm King didn’t even let them sleep during the ordeal! Maybe that exhaustion was part of the reason why they failed to steer the airships out of the suppression field and restart the engines, too… Nevermind. The point is, they were easy pickings, but we basically let most of them go because their weak love wasn’t worth straining the slime glands to cocoon them. The few we did catch was just to prove a point. We basically showed them mercy and the Storm King was livid, as if fighting on unsuppressed turf would have made much of a difference! So I vowed that, if we ever crossed paths again, I’d teach him a lesson I was too lazy to teach him right away.” He sighed. “Didn’t expect to be missing in action when lecture time came…”

“I… don’t exactly condone killing but… you couldn’t have known he was there…”

“I might have! Your pals got all the way from Canterlot to Klugetown! They had to have passed near the hive! Why didn’t we see them, and why didn’t they ask us for help instead of venturing twice as far?”

“Maybe they thought we were still entertaining the yaks and didn’t want to intrude…”

“...maybe. Sounds like them.” He was silent for a moment. “You think we failed to notice them because we were entertaining the yaks?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible, especially since the yaks were here for a while, but… maybe they got lost and didn’t actually go near enough to the hive? Or maybe they teleported and simply skipped over us?”

“Again, we were closer and they’re already friends with you, and there hasn’t been much contact between ponies and hippogriffs for a while before Storm King, or our infiltrators would have reported it. Why go to complete strangers?”

“Maybe they didn’t realize you had experience with Storm King and somehow know the hippogriffs did?”

“Eh, it’s possible. We didn’t exactly share our military history with them.”

“Then maybe it’s time to change that, at least to cover the basics if you’re not okay with revealing everything. They’re our allies and deserve to know what kind of threats we can help with. Not so you can kill them to prove a point, though.”

He huffed. “I’ll think about it.”

“Thanks.” I started to leave.

“Hey, Thorax?”

“Yes?”

“If these ponies have such a knack for attracting trouble… maybe I should tag along every time you visit them.”

An Intriguing Offer

“Are you sure you need this many scrolls?”

“It doesn’t hurt to be prepared, Pharynx! The last time I was here, I ended up digging through shelves upon shelves of military reports!”

“I know how many there are,” he retorted. “I was in charge of them, in case you forgot. Even the ones that were centuries old, as you never knew which strategy Chrysalis wanted us to emulate or what little detail she wanted payback for from a great-grandson of the guy responsible for that detail, or whatever else was on her mind at any given moment.”

“Then this should be easy if you remember stuff from-”

“I don’t remember most of it, Thorax. A selection of the more notable, interesting, or recent stuff, yes, but the rest was a challenge to sift through, and I relegated the sifting to Urtica half the time because I had other things to handle. Like you said, there’s an insane amount of it, and Urtica said you’d barely scratched the surface by the time she found you.”

“Okay, then we need this many scrolls, so why are you acting like we don’t?”

“Because I have no intention on volunteering our entire classified history to someone who was our enemy until a few months ago and I don’t care if they’re our allies now! They’ll get a heavily redacted version and I’ll be damned if it turns out any more detailed than a list of creatures we’ve dealt with!”

“You do realize that probably lists every creature in existence, don’t you?” I said dryly.

“I’m pretty sure we never fought windigos,” he shrugged. “Or Grogar. The guy was defeated before our time if what I’ve been told is true.”

“Still, that doesn’t narrow the list down by much, don’t you think?”

“So what would you do? Dump the entire archive on them and let them have a field day with it?”

“Not necessarily. I was thinking more along the lines of chronology, you know, which war happened when, how long it lasted, who won, what strategies worked best, that kind of stuff, and probably something similar for the wild beasts. That should be basic enough… Of course, if you’re willing to share anything more than that, that’s fine…”

“I’m not giving away tactical information like free candy!”

“Fine, then, if the ponies get threatened by something we’ve dealt with, they can come to us and ask about the strategies-”

“Don’t push it!”

“They’re our allies! We can’t deny them this kind of information if they’re under attack!”

“If they’re under attack, then they don’t have time to stroll all the way over here for a tactical discussion over tea-”

“They could teleport! It only takes a few seconds! And there doesn’t have to be any tea involved!”

“Sure it doesn’t. I bet you already have an assortment of flavors stashed somewhere-”

We turned around a corner and almost tripped over someling lounging on the archive floor.

“-great, now we’re letting nymphs into restricted military sections…” he groaned.

“It’s not restricted anymore!” I reminded him. “Ocellus, what are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause trouble-”

“You’re not causing trouble! We just weren’t expecting to find you here!”

“Oh.” She calmed down somewhat, though her eyes were darting to Pharynx every couple of seconds. “It’s just… I like to read and… mom has been getting me books from Equestria… I think she has a friend there who sends them… but mail has been slow lately and I’ve already read everything I got and… and there’s not much else to read here so I thought… I’m sorry…”

“Can’t you re-read the books you got?” Pharynx asked.

“They’re from a library… we sent them back…”

“I see,” I mused. “But this is the military conquest section. Isn’t it a little too… depressing to read?”

“Um, yes, but I only just got here… I don’t know where anything is so I picked a shelf at random… okay, not really random, I was looking for a section that looked like I wouldn’t be disturbed there…”

“How did you get past Urtica?” Pharynx interjected.

She turned into a mouse.

“...of course.”

“But why not ask Urtica if she had something suitable for you to read?”

“I… I didn’t want to disturb her…”

“Pharynx, do we know of any light reading here for Ocellus?”

His flat stare said it all.

“...riiight… hm… I only have a few Daring Do books… Have you read those?”

“I have, they’re great!”

“Good enough for a re-read, maybe?”

Her wings fluttered. “Good enough for ten re-reads!”

“Then go ahead and grab one. They’re in my bedchamber, shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

“Really?! Oh, thank you thank you thank you thank you- Um, you really wouldn’t mind that I-”

“Not at all, help yourself!”

“Ok… okay…” She galloped off.

“So you’re letting any random nymph into your bedchamber now,” Pharynx stated. “I hope they know not to mess with mine in the process. Or with anything in yours that isn’t what they came for.”

“You worry too much, Pharynx. I’m sure Ocellus will be fine!”

“She probably will, but that won’t last if word gets out that she was allowed inside and other nymphs decide to see it as an invitation to follow suit. Or adults, eventually. There are still a few drones who disapprove of you and I’ll bet they’re steering clear of it because it was off-limits in Chrysalis’ time and it hasn’t occurred to them that might not be the case anymore. Don’t be surprised if things start getting suddenly broken or misplaced and the nights stop being quiet.”

“And I’m sure you already have a plan or five on how to deal with it in case it does happen. Now, shall we get started?”

“Last time I checked, they were in chronological order.” He approached a shelf and pulled out a stack of scrolls. “Let’s see… Winsonic Falls… Unicornia… Caracows… Saddle Horn Peaks… Griffith Isles… Arimaspi… Temple of Tehuti… eh, more or less chronological. Do you want everything or just stuff that isn’t ponies?”

“...I didn’t think of that,” I admitted. “Including everything would be more thorough, but the ponies probably have their own records of battles with us, and the point isn’t to teach them how to defend themselves from ponies, so maybe skipping those would be quicker?”

“That’ll still leave us with a lot of work. Most of our open combat with ponies took place in the early days of Equestria. The battles have been sporadic for centuries as we switched to infiltration and covert prey hunting in their lands, but the wars continued elsewhere and there probably isn’t a land we haven’t touched. Wild beasts are a whole other section.”

“That would probably be more useful to them, now that I think about it. They’ve already got a lot of allies, so how many hostile lands can there be?”

“You’d be surprised. Klugetown alone would make their skin crawl, and that’s just one dot on the map.”

“Yeah, what is it with Klugetown? Whenever it gets mentioned, it’s in an unfavorable context…”

“It’s a dump filled with crooks and smugglers from all over the world, and therefore the go-to place if you have some shady business to take care of. We actually used to get supplies from there, in disguise of course because half our sources either didn’t like changelings or they preferred to pretend they didn’t know where their merchandise was going. You’re better off not going there, which shouldn’t be too hard as I doubt they’ll ever be interested in establishing diplomatic relations. As for ponies…” He whistled. “We could spend a full week listing all the known schemes and tricks of those people for them and there’d still be a good amount that we’d miss. Maybe it is a good thing you brought all those scrolls!”

“So you’re thinking we should start with Klugetown?”

“Let’s follow the chronology of these scrolls now that you dragged me here. I don’t need the archive to- What do you want, Ocellus?”

I turned around to see her cowering behind a row of shelves.

“Sorry, I um…” she squeaked. “I don’t mean to disturb…”

“Then leave! We don’t have all day!”

She retreated even further.

“Don’t mind him,” I said gently, approaching her. “Are you having trouble finding the books?”

“No, I um, didn’t get there. I, uh… Princess Twilight is here and I ran into her and she asked where to find you and I ran off like a complete idiot and-”

“Whoa, slow down! Princess Twilight, here?”

“What’s so important all of a sudden that she couldn’t send a letter?” Pharynx interjected.

“Does it have to be important? Maybe she’s here casually!”

“Casual a few days after a siege of her country’s capital city? Seriously, Thorax?!”

I shrugged. “You said it yourself that saving the world is like a weekend hobby for them. Couldn’t they have gotten used to it to the point where it’s no longer stressful?”

“I meant fixing the damage! Though, that could have easily been relegated to the common folk, even the supervision duty.” He smirked. “Wouldn’t it take the prize if they just had another villain attack and she’s been forced to swallow her heroic pride and come begging us for assistance?”

I gasped. “Oh no… Ocellus, did you get the impression that something urgent was going on?”

“No, she seemed… happy? She was really nice but I didn’t expect to find her here and freaked out-”

I put a reassuring hoof on her shoulder. “It’s alright, you’ve never been around royalty and-”

“A-hem!” Pharynx scowled in my direction.

“...you’ve never been around foreign royalty and it’s normal to feel starstruck. You’ll grow out of it! Now, can you tell me where to find Twilight?”

“I think she was heading for the throne room. Before I ran off, that is.”

“Alright then, I’d better go talk to her. Pharynx, would you like Ocellus to assist-”

He grunted and waved us away.

“...oookay… Be back soon!”

Ocellus trotted off ahead of me, looking back gingerly every so often, and was soon out of sight. I continued to the throne room.

I found Twilight pacing lazily around the plateau and Spike sitting on one of the rocks, reading a comic book. Why hadn’t Ocellus mentioned him?! Had she been so taken aback by the arrival of an alicorn princess that she’d failed to notice anyone else?

“Ah, you’re here!” Twilight said right away, trotting over; Spike abandoned his comic book and ran up to join us. “Sorry for showing up unannounced. I hope you’re not busy?”

“No, things are pretty slow over here. Unlike in Equestria, by the sound of it. Did you really face two villains in the span of less than a month?”

“We… did… Wow, Spike, it’s really been less than a month! I never realized!”

“Of course you didn’t. You were so focused on setting up the Festival it’s a wonder you remembered to eat!”

“I wasn’t that bad!”

He fixed a glare at her.

“...okay, maybe a little,” she relented. “But it was meant to be big and important, and there was so much to take care of and coordinate, I couldn’t risk- Fine, that’s not why we’re here…”

“I don’t mind hearing about it!”

“Really, don’t go there,” Spike warned. “You get her going and we’ll be here forever! ...not that I mind getting to see you but I’d rather we do something interesting…”

“The Festival wasn’t interesting?”

“It was, in the end, but the preparations for it… a nightmare! Just running around to get the permits and other paperwork took forever, and we’d probably still be at it if the fact that a princess needed it hadn’t sped things up! You’d think somepony would have simplified bureaucracy at some point...”

“This is the simplified version! Didn’t you read File Folder’s Official Compendium of Official Office Practices?”

“That ginormous three-hundred-years old monstrosity of a book?” He gagged. “No thanks! I’m trying to maintain some level of sanity here!”

“I don’t know if I should be curious or afraid to ask…” I muttered.

“If you’d bothered,” Twilight continued, “you’d know perfectly well that- oh, okay, that’s not what we came here for, heh… Sorry, Thorax, I tend to get carried away sometimes when somepony disrespects a book in my presence…”

“In that case, I solemnly swear not to disrespect any books while you’re around!”

“And when she’s not around?” Spike quipped.

“Um… of course not! Why do you think I’d-”

“Relax, I’m just teasing!”

Twilight chuckled. “I know you wouldn’t, Thorax, which is part of the reason why I think you’d be interested to hear what I have in mind.”

“I’m listening!”

“You know about the Friendship Map in my castle, right? It shows the entire Equestria plus parts of surrounding lands such as Griffonstone and the Crystal Empire, or at least it used to. But a few days ago, after my friends and I returned to Ponyville after the Friendship Festival, we saw the map had in the meantime grown and now shows the entire Equus! So it occurred to me, if the whole world is in the reach of magic of friendship as seems to be the case, we’ll now have the duty and opportunity to spread that magic far and wide, wider than ever before, and I don’t want to wait for problems to arise for us to tackle them, and what promise do I have that the whole world won’t be too much to handle? I want to be proactive, do everything I can to keep friendship problems from even arising, and so I decided to open a School of Friendship!”

“Really?! That’s a wonderful idea! I already know it’s gonna be a success! If only something like that had existed earlier, maybe… Ahem, is there anything I can do to help?”

“Actually, there might be! I’ve gotten some advice from Celestia and the EEA’s provisional approval, my friends have agreed to be the teachers, and construction work on the school building and dormitories have already begun, so the only thing left are the students. The school may physically be in Equestria, but my vision is to make it open for all creatures, no matter which species they are or where they’re coming from.”

“Because all creatures need and deserve friendship, and what better way to bring it to them than through their own people brought together?”

“Exactly!”

“Ooh, it sounds beautiful… Can I attend?”

She chuckled again. “I think you already know enough about friendship to not need to attend. In fact, I’d offer you a teaching position if you weren’t already busy enough leading a country. I might still invite you as a guest teacher in some of the classes and maybe even ask you to be a substitute teacher if we need one and your duties permit, but what I really wanted right now is to ask you if any nymphs would be interested in enrolling.”

“Of course, I’m sure there’ll be plenty! You can have as many as you want!”

“Yeah, that’s kind of a problem,” Spike said.

“...how so? Didn’t you guys just say you wanted to spread friendship to as many creatures as possible?”

“We did!” Twilight said hurriedly. “Normally I’d never turn down a student, but since there are so many countries potentially involved, it’s… gotten complicated. You’re not the first leader I’m coming to with the idea. I hope you won’t mind that I left you for last; I only did it because I was sure you’d be reasonable and wanted to tackle the difficult ones first, and was met with a mixed response. The yaks were alright with it, and Queen Novo showed some interest in enrolling a few hippogriffs despite still not trusting me after the mess I made in Seaquestria, which I totally understand, and she’s on good terms with Celestia so that might have gone in my favor, but Ember only managed to find one dragon who didn’t threaten to burn Ponyville to the ground as revenge for getting roped into it, though she did promise to keep working on it, and Griffonstone doesn’t even have an official leader and the closest thing to a figure of authority they have picked the first young griffon that walked by and told me to get lost.”

“Ouch…”

“That in itself isn’t a problem. Okay, yes, it kind of is in the long run if I consistently fail to find students from certain parts of the world, but I can work on the strategy to deal with it as I go. The problem I’m concerned about actually came up while I was trying to convince Grandpa Gruff to enroll more than one griffon. He wasn’t the first one I asked, and I told him the leaders I’d visited before had offered more students and that I was sure at least some of the remaining lands would do the same, and somehow the conversation spun into him accusing me of playing favorites or something like that.”

“Of sucking up to people and meddling with things that don’t concern you and-” Spike added.

“Yes, Spike, and a bunch of other things that I wanted to ignore because Rainbow and Pinkie said he was like that when they met him during a friendship mission a while ago, but it cracked my confidence, which I hadn’t realized until the Abyssinians too accused me of favoritism at the mention of students being primarily from Equestria and the possibility of the number of students from other lands being higher than their one potential candidate, whom they withdrew by the end of my audience with them.”

“I don’t see how it’s favoritism if you accept every student who wants to learn,” I remarked.

“Me neither,” Spike agreed.

“I know, and it makes no sense to me either, but I guess it could be part of their culture to see it that way, and I may not have done a good enough job preparing to meet them if I didn’t know to anticipate it-”

“C’mon Twi, you’ve read every book in existence! You came as prepared as you could for someone who didn’t spend their life over there!”

“Spike is probably right,” I said. “Changelings know it best. One of the first things they taught us in basic infiltration is that no matter how well prepared you arrive at your assignment, there’s always something you won’t know, even after years in position, and that a good infiltrator knows how to work around those limitations. I’m pretty sure a version of that statement applies to your situation as well! You didn’t fail, you just came across a bump in the road and you’ll figure out how to get past it!”

“Yes, I’ve thought about it, and I’d consider accepting an equal number of students from each land if that would avoid favoritism accusations, but if I’m to set the limit by the count of students from the least-represented land, that doesn’t leave me with a lot of students since there’s just one student from Griffonstone, probably one student from Dragon Lands, and maybe one student from Abyssinia if I can convince them to change their minds.”

“Telling them to prove favoritism accusations right or wrong themselves by enrolling more students didn’t work, I take it?”

She shook her head. “That’s the first thing I tried.”

I pondered this. Could I find anyling who used to be deployed to Griffonstone or Abyssinia for an extended period and ask them for ideas on how to handle the situation?

“From what I know about griffons, they might agree if you paid them-”

“I suggested that and got turned down immediately,” Spike said. “It’s considered bribing, which in itself is illegal, plus Twi says it would go against everything the school is supposed to stand for.”

“Friendship should be its own reward, and expecting money or similar forms of compensation for being friends with someone only breeds fake friendships,” she added.

“Would it be that bad to ignore favoritism accusations and just accept whoever wants to attend?” I asked. “I mean, you’ll never please everyone anyway, and I really don’t see the logic behind the accusation! And who’s to say this will be a problem every year? For all you know, that one griffon could succeed where you haven’t and convince many other griffons to enroll the next year if he or she grows to like the school!”

“He could, yes,” Twilight mused. “But will he like the school enough to bother to try?”

“Good point,” Spike agreed. “I want to say that he will because you and the girls would be great teachers, but there’s more to school than attending classes. He could feel lonely if he turns out to be the only sole representative of a species, and depending on what he’s like, that could make all the difference!”

“But if he sees a lone changeling, a lone dragon, a lone yak, and so on, he might not feel as left out, and other creatures being the only ones of their kind there could make it easier for him to approach those creatures, and the same could go for any of those creatures! And since they’re in a pony city, they’ll expect to be surrounded by ponies and it shouldn’t be much of a problem!”

“Maybe that’s what they meant by ‘favoritism’...” Twilight mused. “It’s unrealistic to demand that all denizens of a city be kicked out of their homes or to order them to steer clear of the school for the sake of a few students, and about as unrealistic to build a school in the middle of nowhere, but if we put all the non-pony students in the same situation, at least during the first year… Thorax, would you be okay with me requesting that you only send one student this year? I won’t set limitations next year if this works!”

“Sure! I actually have someling in mind who I think would be a perfect fit for your school!”

“You do?” Twilight and Spike said in unison.

“Yes! She’s a bit shy and would have to overcome that, which I’m sure she will under your guidance, and she’s nice and well-mannered and loves books! Speaking of which, I don’t suppose you’ve brought along any books you won’t need right away? She finished reading everything her mom borrowed from the ponies and the next batch hasn’t arrived yet.”

Twilight gasped. “You don’t have books in the hive?!”

“Well, I have a few Daring Do ones I brought from the Crystal Empire, and I’m not saying that none of my subjects have obtained any since I took command and allowed them to pursue their interests, but we somehow haven’t yet established a library or anything of the sort-”

“Spike, add helping Thorax set up a library in the hive to the checklist!”

He did. “Do you have newspaper stands, comic book stands, that kind of stuff?”

“...no, but I guess we should…”

“Adding that too!” Scribble scribble. “Though, at this distance, I can’t promise the Equestrian newspapers to arrive on time…”

“That’s alright. A day or two shouldn’t make much of a difference! Except in emergencies, in which case I’m guessing you’ll contact us via communicators or teleport here?”

“Of course.”

“Speaking of emergencies, Pharynx and I have started listing enemies and wild beasts the changelings have fought over the centuries - the ones that could pose a threat to ponies, at least - and our tactics against them, if you ever need help defeating them. The Storm King business gave us the idea. Turns out Pharynx has had dealings with him some years ago, just after the hippogriffs went into hiding, and he was livid that you didn’t invite him to finish the job now! Not necessarily to have Pharynx kill him, just to incapacitate him until he’s no longer a threat…”

“We didn’t know,” Twilight said.

“I told you to stop by at the hive!”

“I know, Spike, but Thorax had a yak delegation to entertain! We couldn’t just barge in demanding his attention!”

“For the future, I can arrange that someling will always be available to see you if I can’t for any reason. I’m sure someling would have done it this time too, but I get it that you didn’t want to intrude. Will that be alright?”

“Of course! Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to revisit the other leaders to bring them up to speed on the school matters. We’ll come back one of these days about the library and the newspaper stand!”

“Uh-huh! See you then!”

They teleported away and I went looking for a certain nymph. I found her in one of the outer-wall gardens, engrossed in my book. Wait, she was already at chapter six?

“Hi, Ocellus,” I said, startling her a little, but she composed herself quickly. “I have two pieces of news for you. Actually, one piece of news and one offer. Would you like to hear them?”

“Uh… yes?”

“Twilight is going to help us set up a library right here in the hive. You’ll have more books to read any day now!”

“Really?” she squealed. “Ooh, thank you! I can’t wait! ...and the offer?”

“Twilight is opening a School of Friendship in Ponyville and asked if I knew of any changelings who would want to enroll, and you’re the first one I thought of. So, what do you say?”

The surge in her aura could have powered the Crystal Heart for a full century! “YES!”

New Ambitions

Over the following couple of days, Pharynx and I completed the list we’d started making. It had taken less effort than I’d expected; after all, there were only so many countries in the world, even if we’d been at war with all of them, and the strategies against each had remained more or less unchanged over the centuries. How wouldn’t they? Not much new had been invented in terms of warfare magic and technology, and deception often even when the other side expected it, so the soldiers only had to wait long enough for a particular strategy to be forgotten about by the intended targets before reusing it! Pharynx scoffed at the foreign troops’ naivety and the failure to learn from their predecessors’ mistakes. Annoyed by that, I’d asked him once or twice why the changeling armies hadn’t succeeded in conquering the world long ago if they were so superior, not that I complained that they hadn’t, of course. Starvation, he’d said. If you were inclined to keep the wars going, Thorax, we’d be unstoppable now! Heck, you could have become the Emperor of Equus months ago if you’d just tried!

Yeah, no. I would have to keep disappointing him in that regard.

The wild beasts hadn’t been much harder; again, there were only so many species, and a lot of them had a weakness of sorts that could be exploited. The trick was to get them into a situation that allowed for exploitation of that weakness… and for those that didn’t have any obvious weaknesses that we’d managed to learn of, the trick was to gather up enough brute force to stand a fighting chance. One unfortunate side-effect of the brute-force approach was that some of that force sometimes had to be sacrificed for the sake of victory… Pharynx took it for granted, but I hoped ponies would be able to find a way around it. Maybe they already did have a way for at least some of the beasts and could tell us about it?

So with that finished, I moved on to arranging the library.

Psycho and Proboscis helped me narrow down the selection of suitable chambers; I inspected all of them and, satisfied with its size and position, opted for the former Prey Storage 27, located roughly halfway up the hive from the lowermost underground level to the plateau on top, and large enough to house the quantity of books I expected Twilight might obtain for us and maybe even with some room to spare for the books that would continue piling up in the upcoming years. Proboscis’ workers and some of Pharynx’s mildly disobedient soldiers swarmed the place to clear out the clutter that had piled up and a few arts-and-crafts enthusiasts dropped by to measure the space for the bookshelves they intended to make.

The bookshelves were finished within a week. They were somewhat crude in design compared to the ones in the Crystal Empire’s library and in Twilight’s castle, but it didn’t matter; they were sturdy enough to hold the books and that was all that mattered! The drones had made more shelves than I imagined was necessary right now, but they would be filled up eventually, so it wasn’t a big deal. The newspaper stand they’d made to fit in one of the library’s alcoves was pretty neat, too, though I wasn’t sure if it had to be quite so big.

Then came the books.

I was alerted about it in the morning after the bookshelves and the newspaper stand had been fully set up. Sleuth and Retina galloped into the throne room out of the blue, telling me to come quick, and disturbed by the jumbled auras and the lack of explanation on what I needed to come quick for, I followed them to the source of the commotion. There, in the hallway in front of the library entrance, was a crowd of drones gathered around a literal pile of books that kept growing taller and wider as more and more books teleported in.

“What’s going on here?” I asked, staring dumbfounded at the endless stream of books materializing out of thin air.

“We don’t know!” Carapace said. “They just started coming, no warning or anything!”

“Do you think Starlight might have something to do with it?” Hornet asked.

“Starlight?”

“Yeah, I saw her around here earlier this morning. She asked if this is where we’re planning to set up the library, I said yes, and she just teleported away.”

I grabbed a few books from the pile. Astronomical Almanac of All Things Astronomy… Supernaturals… Seapony Etiquette… Starswirl: A Stellar Biography of a Stellar Sorcerer Star… Daring Do and the Quest of the Sapphire Stone…

“Okay, mystery solved,” I said, laughing in spite of myself and the soon-to-be-obliterated hallway. “These are the books Twilight promised us, apparently!”

“...I thought she’d have somepony bring them in boxes and carriages,” Hornet muttered.

“Me too,” I admitted. “But hey, this was probably easier for them? It sure would have taken a lot of carriages…”

“Yeah, no kidding!” Carapace interjected.

“Do we even have enough shelves for all this?” Sleuth asked.

“I… think so… but that might not be true if they keep coming for much longer…” They were still teleporting in. “Is the entrance to the library still accessible?”

“Hold on.” Retina turned into a sparrow and flew through what little space remained between the books and the ceiling, careful to dodge the incoming stream and the books it dislodged on its way in. She was back a couple of minutes later. “Eh, marginally, depending on how small you’re willing to get, and I’m not sure for how much longer if this keeps up.”

“Do we have any other entrances?”

“A couple,” Sleuth said, “but as far as I noticed, they’re all blocked off by the bookshelves. Maybe we-”

The influx of books suddenly stopped and Starlight popped into existence next to us.

“Hi Thorax! Just dropping by to see if the books made it here…” She trailed off as her gaze fell on the pile she’d sent us. “Huh… I thought the library entrance was around here… guess my destination targeting is a little off at this distance…”

“Oh, the entrance is around here alright!” Hornet spat. “You just clogged the entire hallway leading to it!”

“I… did?”

“Well, yeah, kind of,” I said, looking disapprovingly at Hornet. Couldn’t have been a little less rude? It wasn’t like anyling had gotten hurt in the process! “But that’s okay, we can always move them-”

She popped the two of us out of there and into the library.

“-aside until… Are you sure we can fit all of that in here?”

“...you know, I’m not sure,” she said, looking around herself. “Twilight and I must have spent so much time surrounded with books that we lost all sense of proportion!”

“Let’s try anyway.”

“How do you want them arranged?”

“Doesn’t matter right now. Let’s just grab some and shove them wherever until there’s enough space to walk through that corridor!”

“Heh, sure! Sorry about that…”

We both started levitating books and moving them onto the shelves. She was better at it; I tried to copy the neat stream of books she’d lined up in her magic, but kept losing focus and dropping half the books in my grasp and colliding half the others with the shelves and the already-shelved books, which only resulted in a big mess, so I gave up and went back to the easier method of taking individual stacks of books one at a time. Slower, yes, but at least I had better control of what I was doing.

“So where did you get all this?” I asked eventually.

“All of them are Twilight’s. I know a duplication spell so we went through her library and made copies of pretty much everything. It seemed faster and easier than looking for them in bookstores, plus some of them are discontinued editions and there’s no promise we would have managed to track them down even in second-hoof bookstores.”

“You copied the whole library?! No wonder the hallway is clogged up…”

She winced. “Actually, that’s barely half. Twi wanted to continue but Spike insisted that you’d be too overwhelmed if we sent everything at once… and my horn was starting to hurt and fume… so we agreed to call it a night and deliver this lot to you in the morning… and I’m starting to be glad I got to see just how much space this is taking up!”

“Yeah, no kidding… we’re gonna need a whole new library if Twilight intends to send the rest…”

“I can tell her not to! Or check what you’ve got and return what you don’t need and select what you want us to duplicate from the rest of the library... but it’s not a problem for us! If you’ve got the space to expand the library, I’m sure all the books will find their readers, and you never know when something might be useful!”

“Expanding might work if the other available chambers are still available, and I don’t like to throw away your hard work and possibly insult Twilight by refusing books… Are you sure you’d be up for continuing all this?”

“Did you forget you’re talking to one of the most stubborn mares in Equestria who can’t even trot down a street without resorting to magic? Of course I’ll do it! And Twilight will have a nervous breakdown if she only shares half of the library!”

I sighed. “Something tells me I’ve gotten myself in way over my head… but okay. At least we’ve got a nymph who’s bent on reading every book in existence, by the looks of it. She’ll probably die of happiness when she sees this!”

“Is that the same nymph you mentioned to Twilight as a possible candidate for the school?”

“I think we’re way past ‘possible’ now unless the school gets obliterated or something. You should have seen her when I asked if she was interested! That surge of joy could have easily catapulted you right back to Ponyville!”

“Sounds like we shouldn’t expect to have any problems with her, then! Not that I thought there’d be any, of course…”

“Of course. So, you’re teaching, too?”

“No, I’ll be the guidance counselor. Twilight and the other five are teaching the Elements of Harmony, each of them her own Element, plus Twilight is the headmare and Spike is her assistant as usual.”

“And the students?”

“We got a couple of hundred applications from all over Equestria and half a dozen from the Crystal Empire, so we’ll have our hooves full. As for the foreign ones, the Abyssinians definitely backed out of it at least for this year, but we’re still getting a griffon, a dragon, a yak, and a hippogriff, unless Grandpa Gruff changes his mind about enrolling Gallus.”

“Is that likely?”

“I haven’t met the guy, but I heard he only has two settings: ‘angry’ and ‘cranky’, or three if you count ‘stuck halfway between both’ as a separate one. So yeah… it wouldn’t come as a surprise to see him throw a fit because the wind blew in the wrong direction and bail out.”

“Would it help if I can track down anyling who used to be an infiltrator in Griffonstone and could share any tips on how to calm him down if that happens?”

“Spinning Chrysalis’ tactics to do good?” she smirked. “I like it! But I won’t impose. You probably have other things on your mind, and if my luck is contagious, doing it even with the best intentions is sure to backfire spectacularly!”

“But I want to help! Isn’t that what allies are for?”

“You’re right. Okay, I won’t mind if you can tell us something useful, but don’t feel obliged to do so. After all, it’s not like we’ll be seeing Gruff on a daily basis, and he doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who’d travel a thousand miles to screech out his frustrations on somepony if there are suitable enough victims closer by.”

“Maybe because traveling costs money,” Carapace quipped, trotting in with a stack of books on his back. A stream of drones followed with more books.

“Maybe- Hey, we made a passage through the books!”

“Already?” Starlight glared. “Alright, heh… guess we lost track of time while talking…”

“Where do you want us to put this?” Sleuth asked.

“Just put them wherever there’s space and we’ll sort them out later. How cleared is the hallway?”

“Single-file passage, but anyling going in the opposite direction would have to walk on the ceiling or turn into something with a small enough wingspan to fly over without hitting obstacles.”

“Then let’s widen it!”

We all worked until every last shelf was filled to the brim with books, most of them double-row except when the books were simply too large. Now that there were a lot of us, things were going considerably faster, but it still took a while due to the sheer amount of books that had arrived. In the end, there was still a pile of unshelved books in the hallway, but small enough to be moved aside where it wouldn’t obstruct traffic by much.

“I should have known to take it more gradually,” Starlight mused, looking at the residual pile.

“It’s alright,” I told her. “We’ve already established that we’ll need more libraries here!”

“How many more books are there?” Psycho asked.

“This wasn’t even half.”

“Hmmmm. We could repurpose Weapons Factory Three, in theory. That’s about twice as big as this cavern. The only problem is that Pharynx threatened to rip my throat out if I touch it because, ‘The first time a war breaks out, you’ll be sorry you ever messed with it!’ As if Factories One and Two aren’t plenty enough already, and if I can admit it, so can he!”

“So it’s not in use?”

“We’d have to clear out the smithing tools, but no, it sits empty, waiting for some hypothetical war that’ll probably never happen. It would have actually been the first place I’d have recommended for the library if it weren’t for Pharynx.”

“I’ll deal with Pharynx if he keeps complaining. Is there a place we can move the smithing tools to in case we end up needing them anyway?”

“I can distribute some to the other two factories and stash the rest in Proboscis’ warehouses or one of the decommissioned armories that are still unused.”

“Good. Starlight, would you like to stick around for a bit?”

“I would, but I’m afraid I can’t. Rarity has me scheduled for a fitting for my Gala outfit, and you know what she’s like with clothes…”

Memories of my own fittings for the coronation outfit flooded my mind and I winced. “Uh, yeah, sure, you’d better go, then… And thanks for the books!”

Pharynx didn’t take lightly to losing one of the weapons factories, no matter how unused it sat and no matter how unlikely it was that that would change in the predictable future. It didn’t help much that even the other two factories were barely producing anything these days; with all the wars ended and the abundance of weapons already in existence, there was simply no need for more, and even the training drills weren’t damaging the weapons and equipment quickly enough to require another spree of mass production; unless a war did somehow break out against all expectations, the current reserves could easily last a decade! He didn’t even have the use for the factories beyond production of training dummies and weapons repair for the time being anyway! So, with both of us agreeing not to produce weapons for sale to other countries - me out of pacifism, and him because he didn’t want to make our military technology widely accessible and put us in the situation where we might one day be attacked with our own weapons - he was left out of arguments for keeping Factory Three under his command awaiting to be restored to its purpose, and upon being promised that all equipment and machinery would be stored somewhere on the off-chance it would become needed again, had begrudgingly surrendered the factory to its brighter future.

I caught a glimpse of him darting my picture later that day, but when I tried to talk to him, he kicked me out of the room.

The drones were already clearing the place out by then and moving the stuff to Factories One and Two and a storage area that Proboscis had provided. The cavern was empty by the next afternoon and measured up for the bookcases by evening, and building the shelves started first thing in the morning. I helped too whenever I had a free moment, and surprisingly, so did Pharynx when the time came to hammer things down.

Okay, judging by the fervor with which he was slamming down the nails and the noise he was making in the process, maybe it wasn’t so surprising after all…

In the meantime, another group of drones had taken it upon themselves to bring some level of order into the books that had been haphazardly shoved into the shelves of the other library earlier. I dropped by over there a few times too, but Urtica and Ocellus seemed to have everything under control, and I was mostly just standing in the way and blocking traffic as a dozen drones milled about moving books from one shelf to another, so I tried to minimize my interference.

After about a week, the books in the first library were organized to perfection and the new one was fully furnished, and the only thing missing were the remaining books.

They arrived the next day, only this time, Twilight and Starlight were teleporting them in much more slowly and in pre-organized bundles, having learned their lesson the first time, so shelving went much more smoothly and no hallways ended up cluttered. The process may have taken the whole day as a result, but at least it went painlessly, and I even got to hang out with Spike during lunch break!

“Okay, that’s that,” Starlight said as she levitated the last book onto a shelf. “Whew! I never thought just Twilight’s books would fill two whole libraries to the brim! Really puts things into perspective, eh, Twi?”

Twilight grinned sheepishly.

“It might have been one library if we had buildings like ponies do,” I said, “but building one here would probably have taken a while, and if everything else is in the hive itself-”

“I don’t see a problem,” Spike said. “Except maybe if you’ll need to find two librarians! I’m guessing it’ll be a pain in the flank for any drone who gets tasked with managing both libraries… I mean, having to constantly run from one to the other and back… They’re not even close by!”

Indeed, they weren’t: Library One was just about in the center of the hive, and Library Two was in the western spire.

“That’s okay,” I told him. “Carapace and Shadow already volunteered to each take one. Thunder said he’d be interested too, but both positions were already taken by then so I offered him to act as a backup in case one of the main librarians can’t make it sometime.”

“Or you could offer him to sell newspapers?” Twilight suggested. “Oh, almost forgot! I enchanted a pair of trays: one for the hive and one for the news stand in Ponyville. Whatever gets places on one tray will automatically teleport to the other, within the weight limit of a few pounds, about as heavy as a standard stack of newspapers. We’ll use them to send the newspapers and magazines to you so the hive can always have the latest editions at the same time as Equestria! Ponyville will send some of their fresh stuff to you every morning or whenever things get published - some magazines come out weekly and some do monthly - and you, or your drone in charge of selling them, place the money and any unsold newspapers on your tray in the evening to send it to us. Since this is new, don’t worry about the cost or any other issues for now; I’ll cover the expenses of the unsold papers until we figure out how much of a demand there is and adjust the shipments accordingly. Also, if you need more of anything, just teleport a note to the Ponyville news stand within working hours and they’ll accommodate if they can!”

“Okay!”

“And if it proves to work properly,” Spike added, “we could eventually use something similar to transfer urgent mail or such things! Maybe even ponies who can’t teleport on their own!”

“That’s a little ambitious; I’d have to recalibrate the spell to support heavier payloads and adapt it to support multiple destinations or even unspecified ones! I’m not saying it can’t work, but it’ll take years to figure it out!”

“And knowing you, it’ll be done in a month if you get obsessed enough with the idea!”

“You’re just trying to figure out a way for Thorax to drop by more often, aren’t you?”

“Maybe I can learn how to teleport,” I mused. “Assuming it’s possible for changelings, that is…”

Starlight trotted over to a shelf and pulled out a book: Archanology: Intermediate Level Made Easy for Semi-regular Magic Practitioners. “Start with this. Teleportation is around page two-hundred, I think. If you have any questions, I’ll be glad to answer. Oh, and when you’re ready to test the spell, try to have no distractions the first few times or you might end up singed or taken to a completely random destination.”

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind!”

So they left for home and I took the book with me to study in my free time. Hopefully it would work!

The teleportation tray proved functional the very next morning. Our news stand was already filled with various newspapers and magazines when I came to check up on it, and the line of drones waiting for their copy stretched through five hallways at least! If I’d known the drones were that interested in reading the newspapers, I’d have tried to set something like this up ages ago! Even Pharynx bought a couple of things! I decided against buying anything for myself, lest I make any of my subjects wait in line for nothing.

Later in the afternoon, I found him reading Canterlot Times in his bedchamber.

“Anything interesting happening in the world?” I asked.

“Other than some overly optimistic king who decided to convert a military compound into a book dump? No, can’t really think of anything.”

“You’re still mad about that?”

“I’m not mad. I still think you made a mistake, but I can recognize an impending defeat when I see it, so I just cut my losses.”

“If that’s the way you see it-”

“But you know what? We have a glorious army even if you made it potentially short on logistics!”

“I’m sure you’ve trained them well-”

“And if you bring us any kind of enemy, we’ll prove it to you!”

“Uh…”

“Those ponies or griffons or whatever will never know what hit them!”

“...I feel like you’re trying to tell me something that isn’t part of your usual grumbling repertoire. Are you trying to tell me something?”

He shoved the newspaper in my face. An article spanned an entire page, and it was titled, Cities Across Equestria Prepare for Equestria Games Host Selection; Who Will It Be? I got to reading. It basically said that the next Equestria Games were to be held two years from now, and it was time to select the city that would host them. All interested cities were expected to submit an application within the next month, and an Equestria Games representative would visit each candidate city to inspect it for suitability before making the decision.

“You want us to host the Equestria Games?”

“It’s probably the closest we’ll get to actual combat in the foreseeable future. Why not?”

“Well… I’m not objecting, it would be a nice opportunity to show the world that we’ve become civil and to forge some friendships, but… what if we don’t get chosen to host the Games? I doubt we’ll be the only ones to apply, and we’re not even in Equestria-”

“So what? Crystal Empire isn’t in Equestria, either, and they hosted the last Games just fine! And it doesn’t matter if we don’t host; applications for hosting automatically count as applications for participation! Didn’t you read the article?”

I skimmed through the text. Sure enough, it said so, and it said that there’d be a separate application process for the cities that had no ambition for hosting the Games but still wanted to send their athletes.

“So, worst case scenario,” Pharynx continued, “all we have to do is pass the qualification rounds for at least something and we’re in, even if some other place turns out to be the host. But it would be great if we could beat the ponies to it, right? Right? Why would only they ever get to do the good stuff?”

“Well, they started the tradition, but it can’t hurt to try, I guess…”

High Society

“Are you done already?” Pharynx asked, poking his head into my bedchamber. “The Gala starts in two hours and we’re still in the hive!”

“Just a moment, Pharynx! I’m still not sure what to wear!”

“Thorax, you have twenty tuxedos. One of them should be good enough!”

“They are, and that’s the problem! I want to look presentable but I’m not sure which one would best fit the occasion! If only Rarity hadn’t made so many… Why did she have to get a surge of creativity for my coronation? Now I have enough clothes for three lifetimes!”

He groaned. “You’re probably immortal now, you’ll use them up eventually.”

“That’s not helping. Okay, the one I actually wore at the coronation is probably a bit too elaborate, and this one may not be formal enough, and this one seems a bit too heavy for summer… oh, and this one is from before I ascended… but that still leaves too many to choose from! If only she’d made just one or two-” I randomly took my eyes off the wardrobe and glanced in Pharynx’s direction. “I thought you were going too?”

“I am.”

“Then why are you dressed in full battle armor?”

“It’s ceremonial armor, not battle armor, and it’s hardly full if I had to shift the helmet onto myself thanks to these stupid antlers that won’t let me put on a real one.”

I facehoofed. “You’re not going to the Gala dressed like that, are you?”

“Why not? I’m a soldier, the ceremonial armor is appropriate-”

“Except we’re not headed for a military ceremony! The Gala is a civilian event - a high-society one but civilian nevertheless - and in Canterlot of all places! Do you have any idea how offensive and prone to misinterpretation that would be even though we’re allies?”

“...ugh, fine.” He marched off into his bedchamber; I heard clanking of armor plates and a buzz of transformation magic, and he reappeared with a bow tie so tightly-fitting around his neck that it could only be part of him.

“What?” he retorted to my snickering. “You’re not expecting me to show up in a frilly gown, are you?”

“Well, unless you really want to…”

He rolled his eyes.

“And you put on a disguise just for the bow tie?”

“It was quicker and easier than trying to tie one. Now will you finally get ready? I got ready twice waiting for you!”

“...I’m still not sure which tuxedo would be best…”

“...ugh, just grab one at random and let’s get going!”

I stopped rummaging through my wardrobe momentarily to glare at him. “Since when are you so eager to go?”

“Only because I don’t want to listen to you whine about showing up late for the next two months! And it’ll give me time to scout the area for threats.”

“I’m sure the Royal Guards would have done that already-”

“Didn’t they fail to notice the entire swarm around that city-wide shield bubble until it collapsed and everyling was right in their faces?”

“...they probably learned their lesson?” I smiled sheepishly.

“Doubt it.” He grabbed one of the tuxedos and flung it at me. “Now get dressed, and I hope you’ve learned a lesson to plan your outfits ahead next time!”

The one he’d chosen was very similar to the first one Rarity had made for me, while I’d still lived in the Crystal Empire, only bigger to fit my new size and with elytra sleeves in addition to the wing holes, and with a clip-on bow tie since I couldn’t figure out how to properly tie one from scratch even with illustrated instructions, and when I saw myself in the mirror, I was pretty satisfied with Pharynx’s choice. Maybe he had a knack for fashion that none of us knew about! Then again, these were all Rarity’s designs, so it was highly unlikely that he could go wrong.

I grabbed the tickets and pocketed them. “Ready?”

“Are you sure you’ve got this teleportation thing figured out?”

“I think so, why?”

“There’s still time to send a note to Starlight to fetch us if you’re having doubts.”

“Are you afraid I’ll mess it up?”

“I’m cautious. This is the most complex spell you’ve ever tried and you’ve only been practicing for a couple of days. I’d rather arrive at our destination in one piece.”

“We will! Just don’t startle me while I focus, okay?”

“Well that sounds encouraging,” he groaned. “Fine, go ahead.”

I focused and cast the spell on the two of us.

“What is this?!” he spat as we popped back into existence.

“Um… the spell worked?”

“Then why are we in the jungle?!”

“Because my range is limited! Starlight may be able to teleport directly from Ponyville to the hive, but she’s one of the most powerful magic wielders in the world and has been using that spell for years! Maybe I’ll get there eventually but I didn’t expect to land us in Canterlot in a single jump today!”

“You couldn’t have said that before?”

“I thought you knew… or at least guessed…”

He rubbed his forehead. “...right… should have guessed… Just don’t mess up the next steps, okay?”

“That’s the plan!”

ZAP!

“...on the path of our ancestors- What is the meaning of this?!”

“Oh, sorry, Chief Thunderhooves, we’re just passing through! Carry on!”

ZAP!

ROAR!

“Uh-oh…”

“Thorax, hide! I’ll-”

ZAP!

“-deal with… uh…”

“Sorry!”

“What the heck, Thorax?! Why’d you take us straight to a timberwolves’ den?!”

“I didn’t know it was there! I was just going for the maximum distance in the intended direction!”

“We need to plan this out better next time… Where are we, anyway?”

“This looks like one of the hallways in Twilight’s castle…”

“Ponyville? Nevermind, let’s just fly the rest of the way. We’re close enough and it’s probably safer.”

“Sorry…”

We found the exit and took to the air towards the mountainside city in the distance. Pharynx didn’t say a single word throughout the flight and I dared not probe him. His aura wasn’t particularly red-hot, but it was strung up, and I was probably to blame. Could his sour mood have been avoided if we’d opted to fly the whole way, even if it would have taken much longer? But I’d been so sure I could handle teleportation! I had handled it pretty well when we’d needed it most - I’d aimed for a safe location when zapping away from the timberwolves, and Twilight’s castle had to qualify - but what could I have done to not end up in that den at all? What promise did I have that covering shorter distances in a single jump would have kept us away from wild beasts? For all I knew, that would have only exhausted me faster and left us stranded in a place we couldn’t teleport away from!

Was Pharynx’s magic strong enough to teleport things? He hadn’t tried as far as I knew, but it would be a useful spell for him to add to his repertoire… Maybe I could convince him to learn it so we wouldn’t have to depend on my magic alone!

“Okay, we’re close,” he said as we flew over the Canterlot buildings and gardens and steered toward the castle. “Hmmm… quite a crowd down there…”

“Looks like we’re not late after all! Are all these ponies waiting in line for the Gala?”

“Probably; they don’t look like commoners. Let’s get in line.”

The wait was shorter than I’d anticipated, given the size of the crowd. Some of the ponies formed small groups and conversed while waiting for their turn to enter, and others stood by themselves. Pharynx and I ended up among the latter, as nopony in sight was familiar to us and nopony cared to approach, even as more guests arrived.

Eventually it was our turn and I presented the tickets to the pony at the entrance.

“King Thorax of the Changelings and First Commander Pharynx of the Changeling Defense Forces,” he announced as stated on our tickets, and we entered.

“Couldn’t you have shortened that a little?” I asked Pharynx as we trod down the staircase. “It was quite a mouthful…”

“It’s what I am and I prefer that over Prince Pharynx or whatever other hoity-toity title you had in mind,” he retorted.

It was a moot point; the ponies already in the ballroom only paid us a cursory glance before going back to whatever they’d been doing, be it conversing, sipping a drink, or admiring sculptures. I imagined some might be offended by failing to become the instant center of attention, but I was glad; it meant the ponies had grown past their fears enough to not even complain about us being invited! And to think they’d rioted against my visit to the city not that long ago!

One pony did notice us, however, and beckoned to approach her.

“Thorax, Pharynx, welcome!” she said. “So glad you could make it!”

“We’re honored, Princess!” I said, bowing a little. “I still can’t believe we got invited!”

“You are the one who brought peace to our kinds; it is only fitting that we maintain that peace.”

I gave a nudge to Pharynx, whose aura and facial expression were beginning to sour again.

“What?” he snapped. “If you want to suck up to Celestia, fine, but leave me out of it!”

I cringed. “Sorry, Princess…”

“That’s quite alright, Thorax,” she chuckled. “I appreciate individuals who speak their minds. It’s a refreshing change from, er, sucking up to me, as Pharynx called it, and often allows easier and honest conversations.”

“Maybe so, but there’s speaking one’s mind and then there’s just plain being rude!”

“I’m outta here,” Pharynx snorted, trotting off somewhere.

Uh-oh… “Do you mind if I…?”

“Not at all, go right ahead. And Thorax? Do allow yourself to stop worrying for one night!”

“...I’ll try.” Somehow, I wasn’t convinced the attempt would succeed.

I trotted down the hallway I’d seen Pharynx enter and caught up with him in another ballroom, where he stood awkwardly between groups of ponies who paid little attention to him.

“What was that about?” I asked him.

“C’mon, Thorax, you know better than to expect me to act like an over-enthusiastic fanfilly unless an infiltration assignment demands it!”

“Would it kill you to pretend to be an at least mildly-enthusiastic fancolt for five minutes? It’s called ‘manners’ and it’s really not that hard!”

“We both know they’d never fall for me actually meaning it!”

“But they’d feel better around you! On the other hoof, if all you do is grumble, they won’t like being around you and will stop inviting you to things and-”

“You know what? That sounds like a good idea; let’s try that for a change!”

I facehoofed. “And you’ll miss out on all that delicious love…”

“Whatever. You’ve got enough to sustain me, and if that stops, I can always steal some.”

Several nearby ponies stopped their conversations and turned around to stare at him, some wide-eyed, some frowning. I groaned to myself.

“Uh, he doesn’t mean it, guys,” I said quickly. “It was, uh, an attempt at humor? Heh… Carry on…”

They did so hesitantly, and I shot Pharynx a look. “Quit alarming people,” I hissed. “Are you trying to start a mass panic?”

He rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to retort, only for his eyes to fix on something behind me and sprout a scowl accompanied with an ice-hotness of his aura that could have easily been palpable even to non-changelings and the growling that not only stopped all nearby conversations but also sent the ponies making them into a retreating frenzy.

“Now what?” I moaned, turning to see what had caused the sudden outburst. I noticed it right away: in the doorway, uncomfortable by the sudden change in collective emotional state or maybe by the sight of one particular guest, stood Cadance and Shining Armor. “Pharynx, please behave yourself…”

He stopped growling but did absolutely nothing to soften his battle-ready stance or dissolve the severity of his aura. Mercifully, he didn’t pounce the newcomers or blast them with torture spells, either. Well, it was better than the last time, but not by much… At least for now! Think, Thorax, think! You have to do something to ease the tension!

I teleported to them, careful to position myself to block Pharynx from their line of sight as much as possible, and spread my wings for the same purpose even though, translucent as they were, they could do little to contribute to my intentions.

“Hi!” I said with a smile that couldn’t have been more over-exaggerated if my life depended on it. “I didn’t see you in the waiting line in front of the castle! When did you arrive? Were you here before us- I mean, before me? Heheh… having a great time, are we? I was just-”

Pharynx shoved me aside and pushed my wing out of his way. “Cut the nonsense, you’re not fooling anypony that I’m not here!”

“I, uh… sorry…” I squeaked; my eyes darted wildly from Pharynx to the Royal couple and back. “I just don’t want you to hurt them-”

“-so you’d rather make a fool of yourself with that pathetic attempt at distraction? At least try to make an effort next time; you’re making it way too obvious that I failed to teach you the important stuff! I have a reputation to maintain, if you haven’t noticed!”

“I know… but there are other ways to maintain that reputation… you don’t have to beat up an allied prince in public for it…”

“Who says I’m gonna beat him up?”

“...you’re not?”

“Contrary to popular belief, Thorax, I can control my impulses. Those anger management lessons you had me endure weren’t necessary; I had a grip on myself even before, and I would have beaten up Shining Armor with or without them. He deserved it and I’m not sorry.”

“Can’t you at least pretend?”

“I could but I won’t. It would imply that he deserves better than what he got, when he actually deserves worse.”

“You broke his legs!”

“Well he’s clearly walking, so I didn’t break them thoroughly enough!”

“You did,” Shining interjected. “I am walking, but only just. I’m held together with spells and bandages to allow me to last the evening, but even with that, I can only limp. Dancing with Cady is unfortunately off the menu this time.”

“It’s alright, dear,” she said. “I’m perfectly content to just sit at a table with you!”

“What a tragedy,” Pharynx retorted. “My brother could have been dead if you’d had your way!”

“Pharynx, cut it out! You’ve made your point plenty enough times already!”

“Or what? You’ll relegate me to flower-planting duty for punishment?”

“I thought this kind of behavior was inappropriate for this kind of event?” said a voice behind us.

“Ember? What are you doing here?”

“I was invited, obviously!”

“Why can she wear armor?!” Pharynx protested.

“Because dragons weren’t at war with ponies-”

“Yes they were! The last of their wars began in 714 CE and lasted three years! The changelings were starving so much during that time due to how much misery there was in Equestria that Chrysalis thought we’d become extinct! And that’s just wars; I’m not even counting the many sporadic dragon attacks on ponies that have been happening all the way up to the end of Torch’s reign!”

“Why do you know my species’ history better than me?”

“I was the First Commander to Chrysalis; I was supposed to know that stuff. But that doesn’t matter right now. Thorax, if I get roped into going to the Gala with you again next year, I’m wearing the armor and nothing you say will stop me!”

“Don’t you think you’re scaring everypony away a little too much even without armor?”

“Pfft. Cowards.”

“Please calm down…”

“Oh, I am calm! Did you forget what it looks like when I go on a rampage?”

“You don’t look calm,” Ember interjected. “Not even by dragon definition. Did something happen?”

“You bet something happened,” he snorted. “The prissy pony prince tried to kill my brother, is what happened!”

A collective gasp echoed through the ballroom, accompanied by an abrupt chilling of everypony’s auras. I cringed and facehoofed.

“That was over a year ago,” I moaned. “I’d only just started living in the Crystal Empire and hadn’t had enough time to prove my good intentions!”

“You did,” Shining interjected. “I just didn’t want to see it!”

“See?” Pharynx pointed at the stallion. “He refused to see it and refused to hold back! Thorax could have been dead now, you ponies wouldn’t have gotten your precious peace, and it would have been his fault!”

“He apologized and served his punishment!” I insisted. “And I forgave him! Quit attacking him already!”

“You may have forgiven him, but I can’t, ever! He deserves the worst!”

“Don’t…”

“I won’t,” he growled. “I punished him already and I won’t do it again no matter how hard I’m itching to skin him alive and hang him by his own intestines. I made a conscious decision not to touch him again because I want to prove I’m better than him. What does it feel like, Shining Armor? What’s it like to be spared by the most infamous savage in the room?”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna work,” Ember said to me. “That hatred and pent-up rage is so thick that even I’m suffocating, and rage is a dragon’s default setting!”

“I know,” I said back, “but what should I do? I’m out of ideas!”

“How about letting the grumblebug let off some steam?” Discord said, sliding in between Ember and me and wrapping his paw and claw around our necks.

I barely flinched at his sudden arrival, but Ember shoved herself away with a roar and a breath of flames that Discord caught and rolled up and knit into a sweater.

“Wha-a-a-at?” she gasped.

“What’s your ugly mutt doing here?” Pharynx demanded.

“I was invited, of course! Whatever made you think otherwise?”

“Maybe I should clear out before something else shows up claiming to have been invited…” he muttered through gritted teeth.

“Fine, pah, it’s not like we need you anyway,” Discord snorted.

The reply came in the form of a scowl so pronounced that Pharynx must have set his new personal record, and that was a feat in itself!

“Ooh, did I touch a nerve?” Discord continued in his characteristic jovial fashion that I knew would only win him a higher rank on my brother’s hate list, which could easily have been the draconequus’ intention. “I’m so sorry! It must be hard to always live in someone’s shadow!”

“What do you want?”

“Like I said, I only wanted to help, First Commander Prince, Sir.” A bunch of puppy-sized Discords sprouted from the ground and started running around Pharynx, saluting as they went, but he swatted them away. “You do seem to be under a lot of pressure lately, and I came to see if I can do something about it!”

“You? What?”

“Why, help you let off some steam, of course!” He reached out and twisted Pharynx’s ears as if they were valves, and actual steam started to blow out of them, doubling in intensity when he realized what was happening.

“What did you do?” Pharynx growled. “Cut it out or else!”

“Such ungratefulness! But pray tell, what does a puny mortal such as yourself expect to do to an omnipotent being thinking it would work as a threat?”

That earned him an epic hiss, and the steam jets from Pharynx’s ears intensified even more, up to the point of seriously reducing visibility in the room.

I’d had enough. “Shall we ask Fluttershy how she feels about this?”

“Eh, she doesn’t like steam anyway,” Discord shrugged, snapping his claw; Pharynx’s ears returned to normal and the steam cleared. “Says it ruins her manestyle. I don’t see what the big deal is if you ask me…”

“Did you seriously think that would help?” Ember interjected. “If anything, it ticked him off even more…”

“That’s where you come in, my dear!”

“Me?!”

“You think I didn’t notice that you’re pretty ticked off as well? All these high-society manners are no more your cup of tea than they are soldier-boy’s here, only you hide it better for the sake of maintaining friendly relations, but you’re as itching for a good fight as he is!”

“So you thought, what, exactly? That he and I fight right here, right now?”

“Well, you don’t have to if you don’t want to… Just say you’re not interested and I’ll let you go right back to chewing on that gem sculpture!”

“What gem sculpture?” Cadance asked, then facehoofed. “Not the Citizen of Equestria Statue…”

“Is that what it’s called?” Discord gasped. “Oh my… that does sound important… What will those who built it say?”

“Hey, if you’re trying to make a point, do it already!” Pharynx demanded. “We don’t have all night!”

“Oh? I thought you wanted to get out of this, what did you call it, namby-pamby freakshow? Are you starting to enjoy it, maybe?” Suddenly dressed in a fancy coat similar to the ones I’d seen waiters wear, Discord offered him a platter of some bite-sized food - what were they called, again? - and a glass of bubbly liquid.

Pharynx, unsurprisingly, swatted the tray away. “Enough! What’s your agenda?”

“Uh, Pharynx…”

“What?!”

“You might want to apologize to the sandwich thingies…”

He glared at me as if I was crazy, and in reply, I pointed to the scattered sandwiches that had rapidly come to life and sprouted fangs and claws and were beginning to hiss and screech and reposition themselves as if aiming to surround him. Some even fashioned spears out of the toothpicks that had held them together!

Ember didn’t waste a moment, and neither did Shining; they blasted the tiny food monsters with their respective spells and firebreath, but to little avail, as each sandwich monster would only turn into a grilled sandwich monster and resume its attack after a moment of disorientation. Pharynx joining the team effort to blast and stomp the living food helped, and after the other two adapted their tactics, the ballroom was soon filled with moaning and groaning food all over the floor, and the temporarily-ignored glass of drink decided to pile them onto their original tray and drag them out of sight.

“Congratulations!” Discord exclaimed, spraying confetti out of his paw and claw onto Ember and Pharynx in such a way that the confetti clouds condensed around the two to create matching frilly, pink dresses.

“What is this?!” Ember barked.

“That does it!” Pharynx growled. “I won’t be made fun of!”

They tore up their dresses and went at Discord with all the force and bloodthirstiness of experienced warriors. They punched and kicked, and unleashed spells and breathed fire, and even matched their tactics on the fly to gain some advantage; I had no doubt they would have succeeded against any other opponent, but nothing they did was enough to counter the endless stream of chaos coming from this trickster who only laughed louder with every new idea that defied reality. A downpour of rubber ducks? Of course! An exploding pineapple? Coming right up! Voices replaced with random sounds? Why didn’t you say so, it seemed to say!

“Is there any way to stop this?” I asked Cadance as an area of randomized gravity spun Pharynx into losing his battle disguise and flung Ember into setting an ice sculpture on fire, which then galloped away screaming.

“I don’t think so,” she said, “but as nasty as it may look, I don’t think he means harm. Either he’s bored, or he genuinely thinks he’s helping them with their grievances.”

“Or maybe this is just his normal way of interacting with people,” Shining added. “Whichever it is, it’s no use trying to get him to stop until-”

“Discord!” a warning reverberated through the room with all the intensity of a curse, and everything stopped.

“...then again, it helps to be Fluttershy,” Shining concluded.

“What do you think you’re doing, mister?” the timid pony continued roasting her friend. “I thought we discussed this at home! You promised you’d leave the other guests alone this time, didn’t you?”

All the color from Discord oozed onto the floor and he shrunk to the size of a pencil. “I, uh, er…”

“I know you like to have fun, but you’ve got your entire domain and my cottage for that! These ponies just want to have a nice, quiet, relaxing time with their friends and acquaintances! Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time? I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Princess Celestia stopped inviting you after harassing her guests over and over again! Is that what you want?”

“I, um… no, of course not… um…”

“Then what do you have to say for yourself?”

“...can’t I have just a little chaos for myself here?” he pleaded.

Her glare was all the answer he needed.

“Oh, fine, I guess I went just a little bit overboard this time-”

“Just a little?!” one of the noblemares still in the room protested. “This is a warzone!”

Discord opened his mouth to say something, reconsidered, and took a moment to really look around.

“Huh…” he mused, staring at the overturned tables and the singed-and-seething ice sculpture and the rubber ducks milling around eating the exploded food, and at Ember straightening out the dents in her armor and Pharynx standing there calm and aloof… wait, what?! Pharynx, calm? Now I truly had seen the impossible…

Was Discord pulling some twisted mind-control trick on my brother?

“...fine, I get it,” Discord finally said; a snap of his claw returned the room to its pristine state. “I’m, uh, sorry.”

With that, he walked away. Fluttershy followed, but not before casting a once-again shy, nervous glance at everypony. Cadance and Shining breathed a sigh of relief before finding a table to sit at and Ember shrugged and went back to devouring decorations.

“Thank goodness Celestia didn’t find out what-” I muttered to myself, only to be interrupted by a chuckle. I turned around to find the alicorn herself standing at one of the entrances, stifling a laugh and dancing at the brink of failing miserably.

“Princess?”

“Oh, don’t mind me, Thorax! I was just enjoying myself!”

“But they ruined the Gala! Aren’t you upset?” She wasn’t if her aura was anything to go by, but how?

“When you’ve seen as many high-society gatherings as I have,” she explained, “they all tend to blend together into an endless stream of displays of good manners for the sake of displaying good manners. Mind you, I am not against manners, but I find that they overstay their welcome when they become their own purpose. The nobility lives for these kinds of events so I couldn’t put an end to them without an uproar and a very good reason, however, but it’s always refreshing to receive guests who have it in themselves to add a touch of uniqueness and excitement into the mix.”

“...I see…”

“I know this is new to you, but whatever expectations you have of the Gala, try not to hold onto them too tightly. You might find the experience much more enjoyable if you allow yourself to relax and embrace any unexpected turn of events to unfold before you.”

A wink of her eye, and she was on her way, presumably to make an appearance in the other sections of the castle designated for the Gala. In the meantime, Pharynx had gotten himself involved in a conversation with a Royal Guard and a Wonderbolt, and seemed to be genuinely invested in the matter at hoof, whatever it was. I watched him from the other end of the room for a while, not wanting to break the spell by barging into the conversation, and savoring the sight of the rare brightness of his aura surfacing above the usual red-hot bitterness and the relentless discipline.

Then I noticed Spike had wandered into the room and went to join him.

“Had a good time, Pharynx?” I asked him as we were leaving the castle after the Gala was over.

“Mmmmh.” His aura, though less bright that just after the ordeal with Discord, was still unusually tranquil.

“Looking forward to next year’s invitation?” I nudged him.

“Eh, whatever.”

“Let’s hope we won’t run into any problems, then…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Shining Armor. You promised to hate him forever, and although you claim to have it under control, you lost it after enough prodding from Discord. Shining is pretty much guaranteed to be invited next year again, so if you’re coming too, how do I know you’ll refrain from attacking him?”

He was silent for a while, but unexpectedly, lost in thought rather than pouting.

“Pharynx?”

“I don’t think I hate him as much as I did,” he mused. “I mean, I still do, but it kind of… dulled down after that showdown with Discord. I can’t explain it. If that was his intention all along…” He shook his head. “Maybe he really was trying to help in that annoying, sideways way he’s so infamous for? It was… well, Chrysalis had us ready to expect anything from him if we ever had to fight him, but I never realized to what extent that ‘anything’ went… He had me questioning every sliver of the fabric of reality and second-guessing my decisions and thought process the entire time… it’s hard to describe to someone who’s never experienced it before… At one point during the ordeal, my eyes met Shining’s for a split second and I just… understood, for the lack of a better word. You know, like what I was going through with Discord somehow paralleled what he was going through with you? The uncertainty, the doubts, the need to sort it out somehow even at the risk of doing the wrong thing…”

“So that’s why you were so unlike yourself immediately afterwards!”

“I guess. I’m not entirely over it, just to be clear. I still hate him for wanting to risk doing the wrong thing, but I think I’m beginning to realize how hard it was for him to figure out what the right thing was.”

“Enough to leave him alone?”

“Yeah, I guess. Enough to leave him alone.”

I nodded as an intense wave of relief washed over me. If he really meant it…

“But right now,” he continued, “I’m drained and just wanna sleep.”

I lit up my horn with the budding spark of a teleportation spell. “Me too. Let’s go home!”

One Year of Friendship

“Congratulations!” I said to Pharynx after the award ceremony.

“Eh, whatever. Now teleport me to that cave.”

“Sure! Where is it?”

“North-east from the city, in the snowy outskirts-”

My eyes widened and I gasped. It couldn’t be…

“This one?” I asked as we materialized in one of the very familiar caverns.

“Yeah, why?”

“I didn’t realize you knew about it…”

“The scouts for the mission of replacing the royals used it as their base camp. Why? What’s so special about some hole in the ground?”

“...this is where I hid while they were looking for me…”

Pharynx said nothing, but the look in his eyes told me I had his full attention.

“I discovered it shortly after coming here, which was just after Flurry was born and the city’s aura went so bright that I sensed it all the way from Vanhoover. I needed shelter, and… well, I started needing shelter even more a couple of days later when it turned out I’d been noticed, so I blocked off all the entrances to keep the Royal Guards out, and spent probably weeks inside until Spike fell through a snow-covered opening I’d neglected, and you know the rest.”

“At least you had plenty to eat.”

“I didn’t. Well, okay, I did, but I never touched it because it would have been stealing as much as if I’d drawn it from a pony I attacked…”

He facehoofed. “Only you, Thorax. Only you would starve yourself next to an endless supply of food!”

“But because I did it, we now have just as endless supply of food at the hive!”

“Ugh, I guess. So where are the entrances?”

“Other than the one Spike fell through, this cavern only has one, behind that pile of glowing crystals. Beyond that are more caverns with their own exits. This one was the easiest to block off.”

“You couldn’t have piled all that onto the exit yourself!”

“I did. Not at first, I admit, but the more unbearable my hunger got, the more desperate I became to keep myself from rushing out and attacking ponies.”

“I better not ask anything else,” he muttered.

“It wasn’t easy, but I pulled through, and it was still easier to bear than Chrysalis’ torture sessions or surrendering myself into becoming like everyling else was back then, and yes, it was worth it, and I’d do it again a million times if need be for the same reasons.”

“I don’t doubt it. Will you let me sleep now?”

“Uh, right, sure. Shall I come fetch you when it’s time to leave?”

“Only if that love explosion thing doesn’t wake me up first, which I can’t imagine won’t happen.”

“Alright then, good night!”

He was already curled up on a rock and barely waved a dismissing hoof.

I left him there and flew to the city, stopping by to say hello to my flower for a minute. It was flourishing spectacularly and spreading further down the slopes of its hill than ever before! I’d known to expect to see it grow, but to see it happen this quickly… it was more than I could have asked for, and my heart swelled in pride!

If only I could show it to Pharynx… but he was asleep, and he wouldn’t have cared, anyway. Oh well, maybe in a few years, or decades, he would learn enough patience to at least feign interest… Until then, I was willing to wait.

The Faire was still going as usual when I finally returned, and the ponies didn’t seem to have noticed my absence. They must have just assumed I was entertaining someone else, though, and I got back to mingling as if nothing had happened. Unlike Spike, I still wasn’t getting overwhelmed by the crowds, so I even managed to hang out with Sunburst and my Ponyville friends a few minutes at a time, even with Rainbow, who had in the meantime calmed down enough to be somewhat rational about her defeat, but not so much that she’d give up wanting a rematch.

At some point halfway into the afternoon, I sensed waves of love erupt from somewhere just off-north of the castle. It puzzled me at first, and so did the other changelings in sight, and though it wasn’t enough to overload the Crystal Heart into a premature climax of the day’s event, it nevertheless began spinning a little more vividly. It must have been Paladin and his wife, I realized, welcoming their foal into the world.

Not long afterwards, I came across Pharynx as he walked around with a confused look in his eyes.

“Awake already?” I asked.

“I thought the ponies are supposed to turn translucent when the Crystal Heart explodes,” he said.

“They do!”

“They don’t look translucent.”

“That’s because the Crystal Heart hasn’t ‘exploded’ yet, as you put it.”

“What woke me up, then?”

“Huh? Oh, you mean that surge of love! I don’t know for sure what it was, but I was told earlier today that a friend’s wife went into labor this morning, and the surge came from where the hospital is, so I’m guessing the foal was born.”

“Figures.”

“Hey, if you’re still tired, you can use my room in the castle-”

“No thank you, Thorax, I’m not lying down into one of those cutesy-soft pony beds! Having to do it on the mission was more than enough!”

“But there’s still a good hour or so before we share love with the Heart…”

“I’ll find something to do.”

The ‘something’, as far as I could tell, turned out to be the continuation of his aimless wandering while avoiding interaction with everypony. Was he pretending to patrol? Was he suspecting threats and actually patrolling? Was he just trying to keep himself from falling asleep? I did my best to ignore him while mingling with more ponies, but every now and then, he would surface from the crowd and disappear again.

Oh well, maybe he was just bored out of his mind, now that the jousting was over.

I’d just bought a plush bunny from Whirligig’s toy stand and given it to Shining Armor with a short congratulatory note to pass to Paladin and his foal when the time came for the climax of the Faire, and as if on cue, Pharynx happened to be nearby again.

“Hey, they’re gonna begin the speech now!” I called to him.

“Oh joy,” he retorted. “So can we go now?”

“And miss the main part? C’mon, don’t be such a grump for once!”

He rolled his eyes and positioned himself next to me to listen to Cadance and Shining’s speech, or at least to pretend to.

Like last year, the speech began with nods of gratitude to everyone present and a few historical notes, which they wove into a tale of reflections of that history in the world of today, with a great focus on unity and the forging of friendship even with former enemies, ending with a message that no feat was impossible as long as one dared to hope.

The aura around me grew steadily throughout the speech until it reached a climax with the conclusion of Cadance’s words. Everypony bowed gracefully and poured their love into the crystally roads beneath their hooves, and I joined wholeheartedly; the other changelings mostly seemed confused at first, having never partaken in the ritual before, but quickly realized what was happening and followed suit, love seeping out visibly from their hearts. Even Pharynx had decided to abandon his grumpy stance and allowed himself to not exactly fall, but at least stumble under the spell of Cadance and Shining’s heartwarming speech, and was now ready to contribute to the renewal of the Crystal Heart’s magic.

I sensed a sharp tinge of apprehension coming from my drones as the Heart’s magic began to spread out and engulf the city in its blinding light before blossoming into soothing ripples in the sky, but I wasn’t afraid; this time, I knew what was coming.

Sort of.

The explosion of light left the ponies translucent in their intricately-decorated crystal forms, and I knew something similar was to happen to us, but the sight of our crystallized selves took my breath away: in addition to becoming translucent, we were now adorned with ribbons, an occasional bay wreath, and swirly and floral patterns over our hooves and elytra, and our wings doubled in size and detail! Pharynx sported a necklace that he didn’t seem to be too thrilled about despite his medal being embedded in it, and upon closer inspection in the mirror-like surface of a nearby wall, I found myself wearing a similar necklace and a tiara of sorts.

“Great,” Pharynx groaned. “Just when I was beginning to think we couldn’t get any more glittery…”

The journey back was a pleasant one. We’d spent some time with our friends until the train’s departure, and the first hour or so of the ride had been dedicated to sharing impressions with one another. Grim had had the time of her life with the foals, Antenna had sold all the flowers, Mystique and Elytra had not only sold all their arts and crafts but also received commissions for more, Whisper was still humming to herself, and Carapace had lost his voice from telling so many stories to his eager audience. The rest were impressed by everything they’d seen and experienced, and only slightly less impressed by the weight of the bags of earnings that they’d helped carry. Bandit was going to have his hooves full by the looks of it!

Pharynx was still feigning indifference to the playful taunting about his faux-battle victory but putting very little effort into concealing the brightness of his aura. The effort would have been wasted; the piece of pony metal on a string, as he’d called it, still hung proudly around his neck as we flew over the southernmost trees of the jungle and the hive came into view.

It was Wednesday evening by then, as Chief Thundehooves had met us in Appleloosa to invite us to partake in the traditional all-day stampeding and I’d had no heart to refuse the drones’ pleading looks, and afterwards, during the flight over the jungle, everyling was begging for frequent rests due to the weight of their cargo. It seemed odd, knowing they’d transported the merchandise much more easily on the way to the Faire, but Pharynx wasn’t complaining about the danger of resting in unfamiliar areas for once, and our communicator scarabs weren’t glowing with Psycho’s pleas for help with any emergencies, so I allowed it. Maybe the stampeding had worn them out more than they cared to admit, after all! As a result, our return to the hive came after midnight, and though I still wasn’t quite as exhausted as I might have been without the frequent resting, Pharynx practically commanded us into bed right away as we all had duties awaiting us in the morning.

I must have been wrong about not being especially tired, as I ended up oversleeping my usual wake-up time by over an hour, only opening my eyes to the sound of many galloping hooves and unbridled laughter. Were these the same drones I’d taken to the Crystal Empire or some others? And how were they awake already?

Maybe I needed to get myself an alarm clock. A new one, that is; the one I’d had in the Crystal Empire was way too loud even for a building with doors that closed. It wouldn’t do to give half the hive a heart attack whenever I needed to be up early! I didn’t want to take my chances with Pharynx, either; knowing him, he’d either annihilate the clock on its first wake-up duty or insist on implementing the early hour as the new norm for when the daily duties were supposed to begin in an attempt to encourage discipline or something. I didn’t know which was worse.

All of this could wait until another time, though. My duties must have accumulated over the past several days and I had to tackle those first.

I stepped into the throne room and-

“SURPRISE!”

“Gah! What the-” I stammered through the blizzard of confetti. “Huh?!”

The throne room was fuller than it had ever been since my coronation. Most of the drones I’d taken to the Crystal Empire were there, and some I hadn’t, but they weren’t the only ones; mixed in with them were my friends from Ponyville and the Crystal Empire, the Equestrian Princesses, Ember, some yaks and buffalo, and several ponies with cameras, one or two of whom were already snapping photos. In addition, a large table with cakes and drinks was set up in the middle of the plateau, and a dozen of smaller tables with sandwiches and fruits were along the edges, as well as extra flowerpots, and there were chairs and cushions to sit on pretty much everywhere… and where had all these flagpoles and their respective flags come from?

“It’s a party, silly,” Pinkie said. “Do you like it?”

“...we’re celebrating something?”

Her gasp drowned out everyone else’s murmurs momentarily.

Pharynx facehoofed. “How did you of all people forget?”

“Uh…”

“You overthrew Chrysalis a year ago! Today is the one-year anniversary of your reign!”

“Oh… that… heh… I guess it did slip my mind…” I shuffled awkwardly. “Didn’t expect a celebration, either…”

“Everyling’s been asking,” Psycho said, “and you never said anything so I wasn’t sure what to tell them, but the feelings forum that you missed for the Grand Galloping Gala concluded with overwhelming majority that they wanted to make the date a national holiday and celebrate. We called it Freedom Day, by the way, though if you want a different name, that’s alright.”

“We figured you’d be on board with it,” Feisty continued, “but we weren’t sure at first whether it would be better to involve you in the preparations or to surprise you, so in the end, Psycho offered to keep it a surprise unless you brought up the matter yourself.”

“I’m kind of glad I did because you might have gotten so involved in it that you’d miss the Crystal Faire. As it is, the drones had a fun time and managed to stall your return enough to let us work without having to dodge you or risk spoiling the surprise.”

“So that’s why they found the money bags so heavy all of a sudden!”

“But not so heavy that you’d end up missing the whole thing,” Pharynx shrugged.

“Wow, even you were in on it?! But how come we didn't see the ponies and others overtake us?”

“We teleported,” Cadance said. “Though, we rode a train to Equestria proper first to avoid getting thrown off course by a thaumic vortex despite there not being any major ones.”

“Of course. Pinkie baked these cakes, I take it?”

“Yep! And Berry made the drinks and sandwiches!”

The crystal mare smiled sheepishly.

“Well, right, this is a surprise, but a pleasant one! I appreciate that you wanted a holiday celebrating the deposal of Chrysalis, but it’s not a holiday for just me; it’s for all of us! I could never have done it without you, and we all reap the benefits today, not just me! Freedom Day? Yeah, I like the sound of it. Uh, happy Freedom Day, everyling and everypony!”

They all stomped their hooves and cheered. As I watched them, my gaze fell on something I hadn’t noticed before.

“Oh, and you decorated my throne?” I flew closer to take a look at the flowers adorning the branches of the tree incorporated into the throne. “No, wait, it’s blooming?! Did I miss the buds a few days ago?”

“That’s weird,” Antenna mused. “It shouldn’t bloom for another few years! When did it happen?”

“On the evening of the Crystal Faire, after the tendrils of the Crystal Heart’s magic showed up in the sky,” Psycho explained. “At least that’s what Blade says they are. I think the tree responded to them.”

“What does usually happen when the Crystal Heart’s magic reaches the hive?”

“It hasn’t reached this far since the Empire’s return until now and there’s no record in the archive that it used to prior to the Empire’s disappearance,” Pharynx stated. “They weren’t even visible on the horizon beyond the jungle, or someling on patrol would have noticed and reported it.”

“Oh? Could Chrysalis’ throne have been repelling them more strongly than other magic?”

“The tendrils have always only reached roughly to the southern border of Equestria, or more accurately, in all directions in a circle of that radius,” Celestia said. “It varied a little depending on how many ponies there were to charge it on a particular yearly festival.”

“Then it must have been Thorax and the changelings,” Sunburst mused. “We’ve already seen their love is strong enough to collapse a building made of solid rock, so it stands to reason it could have doubled if not tripled the Crystal Heart’s output. And if the tree in your throne is at all receptive to your magical or aural signature, which has occasionally been documented as a phenomenon, then it could have responded to the love you fed to the Crystal Heart and triggered the blooming… I think you’re the one who decorated your throne, Thorax!”

I smiled sheepishly. “Well, at least I did something for the celebration, even if it’s the most insignificant part… But seriously, you were all in on it? Guess I shouldn’t anger you or you’ll gang up and overthrow me, huh?” An awkward silence followed and I rubbed the back of my head. “I mean, as much as I enjoy the surprise, I kinda would have liked to take part in the preparations… but no harm done, right? I can do that next year… Anyway, I haven’t prepared any speeches in case you’ve been waiting for one, so let’s just get on to celebrating, shall we?”

They needed no prodding. As soon as the words left my mouth, a DJ booth sprang to life and the throne plateau turned into a dance floor, attracting drones from the lower levels to fill the remaining space and, when that became too tight a few minutes later, to swarm the sky around the hive’s top. The cake table was just as much of a hit with the ponies and other guests, though they had to work to get to it, even if some had the advantage of wings or levitation or just raw size. What I admired most was the surreal light, born brom the morning sun and the Crystal Heart’s magic still rippling through the sky and tempered by the multitude of air-dancing changelings’ wings, that created a vivid kaleidoscope of dancing rainbow over the plateau and everyone’s faces; truly a unique sight!

I couldn’t have been the only one who’d noticed; the flashes of reporters’ cameras pierced that perfection until their owners caught on and disabled them. One of them was standing close enough that I heard her mutter a satisfied remark at a glance of the polaroid photo taken under pure ambient light.

Then she realized who was standing near her and a sparkle ignited in her eyes.

“King Thorax?” she said. “I’m Quillstroke of Crystal Empire Times. May I ask you a few questions?”

“Sure- hey, aren’t you Paladin’s wife?”

“Yes! I’m flattered that you recognize me! Has he told you I’ve been fascinated by you ever since you turned up in the Crystal Empire?”

“He has! But didn’t you just have a foal the other day, and you’re working already?”

“I’m actually on maternity leave, but we were coming over anyway, so I figured I might as well take the opportunity to write an article. My boss agreed, and since the whole family is here, the plan is for all of us to take turns watching Aurora and Love Ablaze.”

“You have twins?! Wow, congratulations! Can I see them?”

“I think they’re still sleeping, unless this music woke them up. I took Gossamer’s suggestion to leave them in the hive nursery, and Rock Solid asked to stay with them.”

I assumed that was her son, who had come up in a conversation with Paladin once or twice but without mention of his name.

“Anyway…” She levitated a pencil and notebook from her saddlebag. “It’s been a year since you defeated Queen Chrysalis and took the throne. How would you summarize that year?”

“It’s been… hectic, for me at least, especially in the first days when I didn’t know the first thing about ruling a kingdom. I’ve adjusted to my role by now but there are still challenges to overcome every so often, but then again, there probably always will be, but I can rely on my brother and subjects to help me get through them. They needed some time to adjust too after my predecessor’s tyranny, and their lives are much more fulfilled today than ever before. I can’t claim the full credit for it; other lands are beginning to realize we’ve abandoned our old ways and a lot of drones have friends outside of the hive as a result.”

“But they wouldn’t if you hadn’t broken the ice!”

“Maybe, but some of those friends are people the drones were in regular contact with during infiltration assignments and who have since forgiven being lied to. I like to think that, if it weren’t for me, some of those infiltrators would have learned to share love and become genuine friends with their, um… targets, for the lack of a better word, and decided to share that knowledge with other drones.”

“Would Chrysalis have allowed it?”

“No, and they’d have had to take it gradually and be careful not to tell anyling who’d snitch on them, but if they’d succeeded, they could eventually have built up a large enough group to at least stand a chance if they had to fight back when she decided to execute them. Whether or not their efforts would have gotten as far as triggering a metamorphosis… in the best case scenario, it would have been inevitable eventually, though the question remains how long they’d have to wait to get there.”

“What about Freedom Day?”

“It’s a new holiday, obviously, and my subjects came up with it. I wasn’t consulted but I’d have approved wholeheartedly. It warms my heart to know that they’ve grown past their old instincts and indoctrination to want to celebrate what they’ve become!”

“So this will be a recurring holiday every year, I take it?”

“Absolutely! I’m already excited about actively taking part in the preparations next year!”

“It was mentioned that your subjects managed to keep the holiday as a surprise from you until the very last moment so you probably haven’t had the time to give it much thought, but from what you’ve seen of it, is there a message the other lands can draw from the holiday?”

“Only that good changelings are here to stay, which is an important message for anyone out there who still has doubts about us.”

“Holidays aside, what are your plans for the future?”

“To keep spreading friendship! There can never be too much of it!”

“Thank you! That would be all for now… I’ll let you enjoy the party!”

“Thanks! You too have fun!”

Enjoying the party had to wait a little longer, as other reporters had caught wind that I was answering questions and rushed to bombard me with some of their own. Much of it was similar to what Quillstroke had asked, though, so my answers were ready. Pharynx dropped by about halfway through the ordeal and stood aside watching, and for a moment, I worried he was going to shoo them away, but he didn’t as long as they were busy with me. That changed as soon as one of them attempted to direct a question at him, which resulted in the entire group taking their abrupt leave in a better-safe-than-sorry fashion, though I later caught a glimpse of some of them maintaining a very low profile among the other ponies.

All of my friends were busy either eating or dancing, so I decided to sneak out to the nursery for a few minutes. There, among many larvae and nymphs, slept two newborn fillies, being fawned over by Grim and Gossamer, and the sight of them awakened the irresistible urge in me to amply contribute.

“Aww, they’re so cute!” I cooed over the little bundles of joy. “I wanna hug them so much!”

“I know, right?” Grim said. “They’re so adorable… Can we keep them?”

“You’re putting me in a very difficult position now,” I teased. “And today of all days at that! We don’t ‘keep’ ponies anymore, but when something so precious drops by, I almost wish we could keep them just for a little while, just for hugging at least…”

“Watch it, Thorax, you’re getting evil around the edges,” Gossamer chuckled.

“What?! I don’t- why do you- I just-”

“Hey, breathe! I’m just messing with you! I don’t think there’s a force in the entire universe that could turn you evil!”

“Yeah,” Grim snickered, “or it would have happened a long time ago!”

“Hey look, they’re waking up!”

“Quillstroke said they’ll be hungry,” Gossamer said. She was probably right; one’s face was scrunched and the other was crying. “Wanna feed one? She left milk bottles for them.”

“Do I!” I picked up the blue filly, who had woken up first, and left the white one to Grim, who passed me a bottle that the filly then eagerly accepted. “Here you go, breakfast right on time! Aww, how cute… What’s your name?”

“That’s Love Ablaze,” Grim said. “This one is Aurora.”

“Pleased to meet you, Love and Aurora! I’m Thorax. I’m friends with your daddy, and I guess with your mommy too as of today, heh…” They were paying all the attention to their bottles and none to my attempt at introduction. “You’re right, food is more important. There’ll be plenty of time for us to get to know each other!”

I watched them gulp down the milk and started to cuddle Love when she was done, only to have my attention demanded by another filly.

“Oh, hi, Flurry!” I exclaimed softly, careful not to wake up Love, who had already fallen asleep again. “It’s always a pleasure to see you!”

“Bad Tora!” she pouted. “Pwomise pway an then go! Why no wanna pway wi me?”

Uh-oh… I’d promised to play with her at the Faire! Why hadn’t I looked for her?

“Oh, I’m sorry… I must have gotten distracted… I did want to play with you! Say, how about we play now?”

“Yea! Tora pway!”

“Watch out, I’m gonna chase you!” I taunted, having passed Love to Gossamer. “You can’t run from me!”

She blew a raspberry and dashed away to prove me wrong. She didn’t even have to put in much effort; though not entirely out of shape due to chasing nymphs on a regular basis, I was still untrained enough to barely keep up with her boundless energy. The challenge of catching the young princess grew as nymphs and a few fillies and colts took notice of us and eagerly joined, forcing me to keep track of multiple targets without disappointing any, and soon the cavern echoed with laughter and excited squealing.

After what seemed like hours to me and probably a pitiable few seconds to them, just as I thought I was finally about to catch one, the others executed a team effort to disorient me by whizzing past in quick succession, causing me to bank hard to avoid collision probably a dozen times in only a couple of seconds, and as a result, I was left tumbling through the air with a choice only between entangling myself in hanging vines or crashing onto the ground.

I chose the latter. Ouch… Where had the nymphs learned to be so sneaky?

A possible explanation came in the form of hooves stepping right in front of my face.

“Pharynx?” I said, looking up at his smirk. “Have you been looking for me? How did you know I was here?”

“Your guests are starting to wonder where you’ve disappeared to. As for how I found you… well, there’s only one reason why the nymphs are ever as loud as this, and even without that, you’re painfully predictable. I didn’t even have to track your aura this time.”

I got up. “This time? That sounds like I’m not as predictable as you’re making me sound!”

“Dream on, Thorax. I only track your aura when you freak out so I can get to any threats faster and deal with them before they can do anything. Not that there’s a lot of actual threats these days…”

“For the record, I don’t freak out nearly as often as I used to!”

“Your life used to be one giant freakout. I’d be seriously concerned about my senses playing tricks on me if they started telling me you’ve managed to top that.”

“Fine,” I groaned. “Now that you’re here, would you like to play chase with us?”

“What I’d like is for you to get back to your duties. That crowd came to see Thorax, the king of the mighty changelings, not me or any other drone, and you’re going to entertain them.”

“Aww, but we just started!” Nettle protested.

“Tough break. Thorax is the king, and as such, he has duties that come first. If he wants to play with you, he can when he’s finished with the more important stuff.”

Now all the nymphs moaned dejectedly.

“C’mon Pharynx, look what you’ve done!”

“Being realistic is what I’ve done. Your duty is to your subjects; playing can wait!”

“But the nymphs are my subjects too!”

“I know that. But are they defending the land, or crafting products for usage within the hive or sale to other lands, or healing the sick, or contributing to society in any way?”

“They will when they grow up! Being too young to do any of that is no reason to slight them!”

“And until they grow up and start contributing, they’d better learn that the world doesn’t revolve around them.”

“The world doesn’t revolve around anyone, Pharynx, not even me, no matter how much you like to pretend that it does. Not that I’m ungrateful that you care so much; it just comes out as a bit hypocritical, don’t you think?”

He let out a noncommittal grunt and walked away.

“Sorry about that,” I said to the nymphs and foals. “He has a weird way of caring, but he does care… I’m sure he just wanted to toughen you up a little… Anyway, what do you say to joining me and the others at the festival?”

Naysayer

The big day had arrived. Ocellus trotted into the throne room with a bursting aura and a matching grin, and her parents and siblings followed shortly. Spiracle carried a saddlebag.

“Ah, there you are!” I exclaimed. “Good morning! I see you’re all ready and excited!”

“‘Excited’ is an understatement,” Banshee replied, stroking the oldest nymph’s head. “Ocellus hasn’t stopped talking about the school all day yesterday! I don’t think she even got any sleep tonight!”

Ocellus smiled sheepishly.

“Well, it’s time to get going or we’ll miss the meet-and-greet! Are all of you coming?”

“We were hoping to, yes,” Spiracle said. “Unless it would be too demanding on your magic…”

“I think I’ll manage, though I might not be able to cover as much distance in a single jump as I would alone. Pharynx, are you coming?”

“You don’t need me there and I’ve got drills to oversee.”

“Then I can leave you in charge today? Don’t worry, you don’t have to deal with routine stuff. Just sort out any emergencies and I’ll handle the rest when I get back.”

“Figured as much. That ought to leave me plenty of time to introduce the nymphs into the military.”

“Pharynx!”

He smirked. “Relax, I don’t think they’d be interested anyway. Most of them, at least. They enjoy playing with you too much to suddenly obey orders.”

“Very funny. Alright then, see you later today! I think…”

I let my magic reach out to the family of drones and carry the six of us across the world. As I’d expected, it took two more jumps to get to Ponyville than a few weeks ago when it had been just Pharynx and me, but fortunately, without stopping by the immediate vicinity of any wild beasts. Less than a minute after leaving the hive, we were at Twilight’s castle.

“Whoa… Is that the school?” Banshee pointed to a large building at the base of a hill near the castle, across a pond.

“It must be,” I mused. “I haven’t seen it before, and Twilight did mention construction works… though I’m not sure how I failed to see it when Pharynx and I were- Nevermind. But there’s too many ponies standing in front of it to make it random.”

Ocellus withdrew into herself. “Are they all students?”

“Some of them look to old to be students, therefore they’re probably the parents, plus I can see Rutherford and Ember and an avian creature taller than the ponies. Maybe that’s a hippogriff? Why do you ask, Ocellus? Is something wrong?”

“She’s just shy,” Spiracle explained, giving her a hug, which seemed to help a little. “Don’t worry, Celly, you’ll be fine. They’re here to learn friendship just like you are, and if anything happens, you can trust your teachers to help you!”

“And you have that newspaper delivery thingy if you need us,” Banshee reminded her. “I’m sure the newspony will be happy to teleport your letter to the hive if you ask nicely!”

“He will,” I said. “Twilight told me so. She talked to him and he said no problem.”

“Oh look, the doors are opening! I think we’re supposed to come in! Go on, Ocellus, you’re the student!”

She did, albeit hesitantly, and turned into a filly when nopony was looking. Her siblings didn’t seem to have any qualms about showing themselves, as they took the moving crowd as their cue to flutter above in a game of chase, catching the interest of some of the students, who then joined in playful pursuit. Ocellus watched them for a while, then cast a nervous look at her parents.

“Don’t worry, you can show your true form,” Spiracle encouraged her, but to little avail. Even her aura seemed to be trying to shrink into itself to avoid getting noticed!

“Whoa, you guys are cool!” a pegasus colt said to the two younger nymphs when their game slowed down a little. “Are you our classmates? I heard rumors there’d be only one changeling in the school!”

“You heard right,” Cicada said, buzzing down near the still-disguised Ocellus and giving her a tap on the head along the way, which caused the older nymph to recoil slightly. “And it’s our sister! C’mon Celly, don’t be such a drama queen! They’re not gonna eat you!”

Some more encouraging nods on our part finally convinced her to show herself.

“What is that?!” another presumed student, a hippogriff if my guess about her species was correct, stopped in her tracks and leaped over before Ocellus’ magic had fully dissipated. “I’ve never seen a- er, excuse me, what are you?”

“A changeling,” I said as Ocellus was attempting to hide behind my leg following the energetic interruption.

“Ponies can turn into changelings?!”

“No,” Banshee said, “but changelings can turn into pretty much anything, ponies included.”

“Wow! I can only turn into a seapony - that’s what I used to be, by the way; long story - and it’s so fun to be something new for a change! And this place has so much more than we had underwater, I can’t wait to see it all! But you probably- hey, is that a dragon?!”

...aaand she was off as fast as she’d arrived, on her way to hunt down Ember and the young dragon she’d brought along, who looked about as thrilled to be here as Pharynx would be in a flower garden.

“Please excuse her manners, King Thorax,” the adult hippogriff said, approaching us. “There wasn’t much to do underwater and our young are still… overwhelmed with the abundance of everything the world suddenly has to offer now that the Storm King is no more.”

“I understand; some of the drones were like that too for a while after Chrysalis got overthrown!”

“Still, it’s no excuse for a queen’s niece,” he insisted. “Though there’s nothing I can do about it, as I’m not a family member.”

“Oh… Sorry, I kind of assumed you were her father…”

“He happens to be sick with the feather flu, otherwise he’d have been the one to accompany Silverstream, or her mother would if she hadn’t opted to care for him until he recovers. I’m his friend from the navy. Admiral Sea Spray.”

“Pleased to meet you, Admiral!”

“Forgive my bluntness,” he said, “but I must ask. There have been rumors, so… is it true that you killed the former queen yourself?”

“What?!” I gasped. “No! I’d never do that, no matter how badly she treated us!”

“Ah, I see. One of your subjects, then?”

“Not as far as- wait, are you telling me she’s dead?”

“It must be a misunderstanding, then. We heard she was overthrown and must have assumed that meant dead. But if she were dead in that way, surely you would have known about it. Our long separation from the rest of the world and the aftermath of Storm King’s threat to our safety must have warped our perception of reality. This isn’t the first time my kind has reached that conclusion upon returning to the aboveworld.”

“Maybe… Anyway, she fled immediately after our mass-metamorphosis and we don’t know where she is and what she’s doing. We tried to find her shortly afterwards but gave up eventually, as she could have been anywhere in the world by then. For all we know, she could be dead, though I doubt it; she’s too cunning to get killed… except that she is alone now, so… nevermind.”

“And if you do find her? Alive, I mean.”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve been hoping to somehow get her to see reason and accept our new ways, though I doubt there’s much to hope for. Everything I know about her says she’ll turn out to be irredeemable, so I should have some idea of what to do with her, but I don’t. I’m guessing Tartarus might be an option, assuming she doesn’t escape on the way there, that is.”

“Or from it. It’s rare but not unheard of.”

“Yeah… that too…”

At that moment, a bell sounded, and Twilight appeared at a podium set up on the far end of the main lobby.

“May I have your attention, please?” she addressed the crowd.

“Thank you for clearing that up, Your Highness,” Sea Spray said to me as we moved closer to the podium with everyone else. “Queen Novo will be interested to hear it.”

I nodded. “Please, just Thorax is fine!”

“Good morning, everyone, students, parents, and guardians alike,” Twilight began, “and welcome to the School of Friendship! I’m Twilight Sparkle, the school’s founder and headmare, and these are my friends and co-founders: Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity. Together, we will teach our classes and shape young minds to understand the importance and magic of friendship and its many applications in the world we live in. Friendship is indeed an all-encompassing and powerful force, and sadly often underappreciated in the past, so much so that we’ve only recently begun to discover its full potential. It warms my heart to see so many of you thirsting to uncover its secrets! But more on that during the school year, heh… I’ll have to stop now or we’ll be here forever!”

A chuckle spread through the audience. Something told me that last part was Spike’s doing…

“Anyway,” she continued, “please follow Guidance Counselor Starlight Glimmer to get your class assignments. While you’re at it, the six of us will take groups of students on tour around the school to help familiarize you with the building and the school rules, lest we overwhelm the counselor all at once. Parents and guardians are welcome to join us for the tour! If you have any questions, feel free to ask at any time! Finally, when all the tours and signing-in is done, we’ll serve refreshments in the mess hall and here in the main lobby. There’s plenty for everyone, and we’ve made sure to include options for non-ponies among you as well!”

We waited for Ocellus to sign in and she asked us to tag along for her tour of the school, which turned out to be bigger than I’d initially estimated and just as impressive as Twilight’s castle! How had they built it so quickly? If I hadn’t known it was brand new, I’d have thought construction had to have taken years! But for all its size and magnificence, nothing was overdone or out of place… How had they done it?

Our guide, Fluttershy, seemed just as overwhelmed at first, though I suspected the audience she’d been given was more to blame than the building itself. Not that there was anything wrong with the audience, though, except maybe for two young nymphs running around beneath everypony’s hooves ignorant of their mother’s attempts at scolding. They were, however, powerless against Fluttershy’s adoring coos and nuzzles once she’d caught them, and quickly surrendered to their fate of riding the rest of the tour on the pegasus’ back, only occasionally chirping and chittering in the interludes between playing with her mane and feathers. This seemed to have a calming effect on Fluttershy, as her aura unstrung itself and she continued the tour with a radiant smile and a clear voice. The only downside was that some of the students - and parents, too - became somewhat distracted by this display of affection to the little cuties, a sight so adorable that even Banshee was reluctant to reclaim her young upon the ending of the tour!

She did reclaim them eventually, when the time came to join the other groups in the mess hall. The nymphs didn’t even need convincing this time; they recognized an impending feast and went right back to their parents, who they knew would provide all the snuggling and delicious love a changeling could ask for. Ocellus hung around for a while too, until her attention switched to the lively hippogriff we’d met earlier and a blue griffon and joined them instead. They had to have become friends in the meantime, as she didn’t even resort to a disguise before trotting off with them! She only rejoined us much later, after the lunch was over, and though Banshee and Spiracle admitted to already miss her, we left for the hive with warmth in our hearts knowing our little Ocellus was going to be alright in her new school.

“I can’t believe it’s been a month already!” I said as Ocellus’ parents and siblings joined me in the throne room.

“And we can’t believe it’s been only a month!” Banshee countered. “We miss her so much!”

“She’s been writing letters to us regularly,” Spiracle added, “but this is the longest she’s been away from us! Uh, the longest since you took over the hive and we got reunited, I mean. The point is, we can’t wait to see her again!”

“Well, we’ll be there shortly.” The friends-and-family gathering was scheduled for about half an hour from now, and though I too was itching to see Ocellus and ask her how she liked the school, she was probably in class at the moment and couldn’t see us just yet. “How has she been doing, by the way?”

“She’s been… pretty stressed lately, according to her letters,” Spiracle said hesitantly. “She said things were fine during the first couple of days until Twilight started dropping by in classes and noticing the teaching style of the other professors wasn’t meeting her expectations and, apparently, the demands of some rulebook. Ocellus didn’t see the problem about following the rulebook at first, but then the professors’ enthusiasm plummeted, classes got dull, and Ocellus is beginning to question the usefulness of the things she’s being taught.”

“We want to think it’s just a phase that everyone goes through at some point,” Banshee continued. “Maybe she needs more time to get used to pony schools - after all, their style of teaching has to be different from the basic training she received under Chrysalis’ reign - or maybe the pieces will fall in place after she’s learned a little more… or maybe she’s just too homesick to focus on school properly…”

“...but what if this isn’t something she can handle?” Spiracle interjected. “She wanted this, and we thought we were doing the right thing by sending her to school, but what if we’ve made a mistake?”

“I can’t imagine why friendship would be a problem for her,” I mused. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly understandable explanation… talking to her might help us figure out what went wrong… and if nothing else works, I’m sure Twilight will hear you out and try to help…”

“Can you ask her?”

“Sure! But if this started happening after only a few days, why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

“We… thought she just needed more time to adjust… and we didn’t want to bother you and the Princess…”

“That’s not ‘bothering me’! If there’s a problem, I want to know about it, guys!”

“Okay,” Banshee said sheepishly. “I guess we still haven’t entirely unlearned the living-under-tyranny mindset…”

I nodded, understanding; I too still caught myself fretting about consequences of the old regime at times.

“Let’s get there,” I said. “Even if Ocellus is busy at the moment, maybe we can figure out something from others.”

They stepped closer, and I commenced a sequence of teleports that would take us to Ponyville.

Many of the students’ family members were already there by the time we popped onto the meadow just outside the school grounds, including the non-ponies. We barely had time to say hello to them when a colossal bumblebee buzzed into view from somewhere behind the school building, carrying a group of creatures, a couple of which I remembered from the opening event.

“The school is under attack!” somepony shouted, and a reddish-orange ray of magic shot towards the bumblebee.

The insect swerved to dodge the blast and crashed into one of the school towers, dropping the other creatures in the process and bursting into a flame that revealed our own nymph. Banshee gasped and took to the air, but Ocellus had by then recovered enough to buzz her wings and slow down her fall, landing next to the creatures she’d carried, who seemed to be fine, even if two of them didn’t have wings. The others must have caught them!

“What is going on here?!” Twilight demanded.

“Sorry, Professor Twilight…” Silverstream said, grinning sheepishly. “We got a bit carried away…”

“Those are students?!” an important-looking stallion exclaimed, stepping into view; I recognized him as the owner of the voice that had accused the disguised Ocellus of attacking the school. “I thought this school was supposed to teach ponies how to defend themselves from dangerous creatures!”

“Did that guy miss a memo?” Spiracle muttered at my side. “All but one of them are Equestria’s allies!”

“First of all, Chancellor Neighsay,” Twilight countered, “these creatures aren’t dangerous. Second, this isn’t a military school; we teach friendship, and friendship isn’t only meant for ponies!”

“It should be!” he growled.

I gasped as everything I’d been through to prove myself worthy of friendship and teach my kind to abandon their hostile ways flashed in my mind. I couldn’t speak for the other creatures, but how much more did he need to realize the changelings had turned themselves around and neither were nor wanted to be vicious beasts anymore? I fought the urge to walk up to him and demand an explanation, it must have been obvious, as Banshee, Spiracle, both of their younger nymphs, and a few of the nearby ponies put reassuring hooves on me, their auras bursting with concern.

Prince Rutherford didn’t have such qualms. “Unicorn think yaks no want friendship? Maybe yaks no want pony school if this how ponies treat yaks!”

“Feel free to return to your kind, then,” Neighsay retorted.

“‘Your kind’?” Ember snarled. “Smolder, let’s go!”

“This school was stupid anyway,” an elderly griffon spat, dragging Gallus away by the tail.

“Queen Novo will hear of this!” Admiral Sea Spray threatened.

Rutherford simply marched away with a sulking young yak in tow. Most of the ponies were still around, watching in bitter silence as the non-pony students followed their leaders to their respective homes. My drones and I just stood there. Were we supposed to pull Ocellus from the school too? I hated to do this to her after she’d been so thrilled to enroll, but if that was the proper way of dealing with this kind of situation… But I still didn’t want to do it! It wasn’t her fault, or Twilight’s for that matter, that this guy didn’t see reason!

In the end, the decision was made for us.

“Princess Twilight,” Neighsay said, “knowing your background, I didn’t expect you to fail to meet the EEA’s standards. But this… irresponsible teachers, students destroying school property and likely skipping class, and nonexistent standards for who gets admitted… Your school is a recipe for disaster and we can all thank Celestia nopony got hurt!”

“Nopony was going to get hurt! This school-”

“-is being shut down by the order of the EEA!” He touched his medallion, and chains sprouted over the school’s main gate. “One day you’ll thank me, Princess.”

With that, he teleported away, leaving Twilight in stunned tears while the crowd dispersed. I walked up to her.

“I… I can’t believe he…” Her friends had arrived in the meantime and were hugging her.

“I know,” I said gently, giving her a hug myself while watching Ocellus sob on her mother’s shoulder, barely keeping myself together. “I’m sorry…”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at that pony school thing?” Pharynx asked upon running into me shortly after I’d returned to the hive and parted with Ocellus and her family.

I sighed. “It ended abruptly, and not in a good way.”

“Explain!”

So I did. It took a while, especially after getting to the part about Neighsay, as the story had to be put on hold every couple of sentences to wait out his strings of increasingly creative expletives and to tone down his seething, red-hot aura. By the end, the floor was shaking under his hooves, and I was sure everyling within ten levels above and below us had suffered rage poisoning.

Pharynx wasn’t done, however, and I stopped paying attention to the particulars of his torture plan for Neighsay while trying to rein him in lest he start a war with our allies.

“Will you shut it with the ranting already?!” I spat eventually, fed up with failing to get a word in sideways.

“Will you stop defending him already?!” he spat back.

“I’m not defending him! I just don’t want you to do something we’ll soon regret!”

“People have gone to war over less, Thorax! Tortured and executed for less, too, in case you forgot!”

“Maybe under Chrysalis, but there has to be a better way!”

“Well I’m all ears,” he growled.

“I haven’t thought of one-”

“So we’re supposed to let ourselves be doormats in the meantime?”

“I didn’t say that. But things will be a lot harder to sort out in any favorable way if we deliberately turn things ugly-”

“He started it!”

“Pharynx, what happened to your anger management?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Not that long ago, you decided not to hurt Shining Armor again because you wanted to demonstrate you’re better than him, even though you still hated him. Why can’t you do the same with Neighsay?”

“The key word is ‘again’, Thorax. Shining Armor needed punishment and I delivered it, so delivering it twice wasn’t mandatory. Plus, I later realized that his perspective was unclear, which still doesn’t excuse him but it’s enough for me to consider his punishment adequate enough. Neighsay, on the other hoof, had every proof available to him that none of the creatures there were hostile, including the knowledge that most were in fact allies of his people if he’s at all in touch with reality, and he still chose to ignore it, and I doubt he’d have suffered any consequences for it by now, if he’s going to at all. Regardless of what pony princesses might tell you, those pompous high-ranking types can sometimes get away with things.”

“Okay, I get your reasoning, but I’m still not okay with you acting on it.”

“Whatever.” He started to walk away, and the hardening of his aura alarmed me more than all his unbridled rampaging.

“Pharynx?”

“What?”

“I want to think I’ve been talking to a sensible guy who will see the benefits of considering a less volatile strategy, but in case I wasn’t…” I sighed heavily. “I hate that it might be necessary to say this, but I command you to forgo any hostile actions towards Neighsay or any other pony, soldier. Am I understood?”

After a tense moment, he snapped to attention. “Yes, Sir.”

“Good,” I whispered upon continuing on my way. “I hope you mean it…”

I returned to the throne room to continue my duties, still mulling over everything that had happened. It was hard to believe that the friendliest country in the world could harbor somepony so cold-hearted! Maybe doing something else would get my mind off him just for a bit and help me calm down and clear my head… but after several hours of attempting to tackle routine stuff and repeatedly zoning out and succumbing to the bitterness of the unicorn’s disdain that still lingered in my head, I finally gave up. Someling was probably having it worse, though, and I decided to check on her.

The crushing darkness of her aura that hit me on the way there and accompanied me to her family’s burrow killed every hope that she might have found comfort in something in the meantime.

Banshee didn’t even have to say anything when she saw me at the burrow’s entrance.

“She’s in there,” she said, pointing to one of the side-chambers. “Spiracle just went to the library, to see if he can find some way to… She didn’t even care to follow him…”

I nodded grimly. If Ocellus couldn’t even find comfort in her books… What was I going to do?

Determined to try anyway, I followed the sobbing, trodding gingerly lest I startle her, and put a gentle hoof on her carapace.

“Ocellus…” I whispered.

Her swollen, bloodshot eyes turned up to me, and I pulled her closer, off the ground she’d sprawled on and into my embrace.

“T-thorax…” she stammered through the tears. “Why did he… What did I do wrong? I was so happy, and he… he just… I’m sorry, I-”

“Sssshhh… it’s not your fault… we’ll figure something out…”

“...b-but… h-he closed the school…”

“Ocellus, I promise you, if there’s anything to be done to resolve the situation, I’ll figure it out and do it! I’m sure Twilight is already working on it; I’ll write to her and see what she needs help with. Meanwhile, is there anything that you think might help you feel better?”

“I don’t know…”

“Maybe write to your friends, then? I’m sure they aren’t too happy about this, either, but there’s no rule that says you guys have to break up just because your school closed! After all, friendship is what the school was about, right? Even if nothing else works, you’ve found a few friends along the way; but I’m sure you’ll share a classroom again, so why not keep the friendship warm in the meantime?”

The tempest of tears on my shoulder calmed down. “Yes, I… I think I’ll do that,” she said.

Lost Student

Several days passed. I’d written to Twilight immediately after calming Ocellus down a little, and as Carapace had closed the news stand by then until Monday, I added the letter to the pile of regular mail due to be taken away first thing in the morning. Letters to a Yona from Yakyakistan and a Smolder from the Dragon Lands were at the top of the pile before mine joined them, and though I hadn’t meant to snoop, I assumed that meant Ocellus had already finished the letters to her friends. She would have had time to; I’d taken my time to formulate a coherent letter that would be taken seriously and discarded several drafts until satisfied with how it had turned out. I’d since strolled by her burrow a couple of times, wondering if there was something more to be done, but though an aura emanating from the inside had still been tainted with the darkness of mourning, that darkness had been silenced from a scream to low but persistent rumble. I’d caught a glimpse of her reading a piece of paper during one of those strolls a couple of days later; it must have been a reply from one of her friends, as flickers of warmth pierced the darkness of her aura.

She was going to be fine, I figured, and decided not to disturb her.

Now I just had to receive a reply to my own letter to Twilight. Surely she had a plan of action or at least knew how to begin! Except several days had passed, and she hadn’t written back.

At first I thought she needed more time. After all; I hadn’t teleported the letter; it was possible that she hadn’t received it or that her reply was still on the way. But then, the mailmare from Ponyville arrived for the second time since my letter had been posted, and Twilight’s letter was still to be accounted for. Was she ignoring me? No, it didn’t seem like her to ignore letters. What, then? Was she too busy trying to save the school to pay attention to mail? Had I offended her somehow? Did she think I was just trying to be polite or to cheer her up without a real intention to do the work? Had the letter gotten lost somewhere on its way to her?

Would going or teleporting to Ponyville help resolve my dilemma?

I guessed it might, but then again, there was still a chance for a logical explanation, and I didn’t want to put additional pressure on her. Giving her a little more time wasn’t going to hurt, I decided.

But after her reply was missing from the incoming mail batch for the third time, just as I was contemplating a quick teleport to Ponyville, I sensed two frantic auras rapidly approaching the throne room, and a moment later, Banshee and Spiracle galloped in.

“Thorax, you wouldn’t have made any plans for Ocellus to go anywhere?” Banshee panted.

“And you wouldn’t have forgotten to tell us, by any chance?” Spiracle added.

“Well, I have been trying to see if we can get Ocellus back to school, but-”

“So is she there?”

“I’m still waiting for a reply from Twilight- hold on, are you telling me Ocellus went somewhere?”

“We don’t know! Her bed was empty this morning, and we can’t find her anywhere! She said nothing about leaving, didn’t even leave a message! We asked everyling we ran into and everyling she’s been around to since returning, and none of them knew anything, either!”

This was bad… Where could she have gone? And why? I had to find Pharynx; he’d know what to do!

“What are you freaking out about this time?” he barked, flying onto the plateau as if summoned. “And how did you get half the hive to follow suit?”

“What…?” He was right; though Banshee and Spiracle’s auras had masked it initially, upon paying closer attention, I realized there were similarly-flavored auras scattered throughout the hive! It had to be the drones they’d already alerted, and that had to be what had alerted Pharynx, except he must have assumed for some reason that I was the cause! “Right… but it’s not me, Pharynx; Ocellus is missing!”

“What?! Why am I only finding out about it now?”

“Because we didn't know until maybe ten minutes ago!” Banshee rushed to explain. “We thought maybe she had some plans with Thorax and somehow forgot to tell us, or didn’t think it mattered if she was to stay in the hive-”

“-but noling knows anything about it!” Spiracle interjected. “She hasn’t even told Cicada and Nettle anything!”

“Have you searched her belongings?”

“No, not yet…”

“Do it. There might be some clues, and you two know her better than anyling else; you’re more likely to dig up something useful than any of my soldiers. Thorax, I take it you have nothing useful to share?”

“No, I don’t think so…”

“Nevermind. You’re with me.” He glanced at Banshee and Spiracle. “What are you still waiting for? Get going and tell any soldiers you come across to join the search! Any non-soldiers, too, unless they’re incapacitated or busy with something that can’t wait!”

They didn’t need to be told again. Pharynx took to the air and steered towards the training grounds; I followed.

“Thorax, how are your aura-tracking skills these days?” he asked.

“Average, I think. Maybe. Maybe just passable. Why?”

He groaned to himself. “I knew I should have worked harder to get you to learn the stuff that was important in the old days… Now it’s coming back to bite us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Forget it. I’ll rely on the soldiers.”

We were just about arriving at the training grounds, anyway; I knew it’d be pointless to try to get an explanation out of him until he’d dealt with the soldiers, so I kept aside awkwardly. If he intended to send them to search for Ocellus, he’d have to tell them something, and maybe it’d answer some of my questions, too.

“Attention!” he barked, and everyling present dropped everything to assemble up and listen. “As of this morning, we have a missing nymph: Ocellus, female, pre-adolescent; her base form is light blue with red wings and elytra and a head fin. Some of you may know of her. Last seen by her parents last evening, no obvious clues on possible whereabouts or reasons for going AWOL for the time being. Search of the hive’s interior is already underway. You have one hour to search the outskirts and report any unusual findings, during which time I’ll oversee your progress and devise a strategy for extending the search beyond the Changeling Kingdom’s borders if she isn’t found! This is primarily a search assignment, but be prepared for any complications including combat! Any questions?”

Silence and headshakes suggested there weren’t.

“Then what are you still standing around for? Move it!”

They dispersed, and Pharynx took to the air again. Unsure of what else to do, I went after him.

“Uh, Pharynx? You don’t really think they’ll have to fight Ocellus, do you?”

“Not her, you idiot. I’m hoping she just went off frolicking somewhere without thinking, but until we find her alive and in one piece, I can’t rule out the possibility that she’s bait. Remember there’s still one unreformed changeling unaccounted for and she would stop at nothing to settle the grudge she has on you.”

“You think Chrysalis is attacking?!” I gasped.

“I don’t know. We haven’t seen a hint of her ever since she got ousted, and not for the lack of effort. She’s cunning enough to trick us all, not to mention that the hive isn’t so different from its former state that she couldn’t find her way around it. The only reason why I think this might not be her is that if she’d reached Ocellus, she could have just as easily gotten to you, and killing you would make more sense for her ultimate goal than messing with a random nymph. Unless she’s toying with us, or unless Ocellus knows something without realizing its importance, which could be relevant if Chrysalis isn’t yet ready to make her move- What’s that?”

“What did you see?”

“Something moved in those bushes.” He pointed to a grove of shrubs a little ahead. “Stay quiet.”

He adjusted his flight path to a low glide, steady and quiet, almost touching the ground, only to suddenly accelerate within reach of the suspicious bushes, tackling the creature inside and shoving it into the open.

They ended up concealed from me by the bushes, but I heard a disturbingly familiar yelp, and divebombed to them before Pharynx could do any more damage.

“Fluttershy, are you alright? What are you doing here?”

“I, um, uh…”

“Step aside, Thorax!” Pharynx commanded, then scowled at my friend. “How do we know you’re the real pony?”

She whimpered, curled up on the floor tighter, and hid behind her wing.

“Leave her alone, Pharynx! Can’t you see she’s scared out of her wits?”

“Hm. Fair enough.” To Fluttershy, “State your business!”

“Um… I… hope I’m not intruding…”

“You’re not,” I said hurriedly, before Pharynx could yell at her again. “I mean, we do have a bit of a situation right now, but you’re always welcome! How can we help you?”

“I… um…thanks.” She slowly got up. “I just came to tell you… that is, Twilight asked me to come tell you-”

“Hurry up, we don’t have all day,” Pharynx grumbled.

“Don’t pay attention to him; he’s… stressed.” I gave him a look that I hoped would convey a behave-yourself-in-front-of-guests warning and got an eye roll in reply. “You were saying?”

“Yes. Um. Twilight was devastated by the closing of the school, but she and Starlight talked it over, and she came up with a plan to get the school reopened. I think the other princesses are involved to an extent, too, in case Chancellor Neighsay will need more… encouragement… Anyway, she’s rounding up the students. I know Neighsay wasn’t very nice and you might still be upset, but Twilight is really very sorry for the way he treated you all, and we’re wondering if you’d be so kind as to consider re-enrolling Ocellus? It would mean very much for us to have her back and-”

“Neighsay is the one who caused an international incident and Sparkle is the one who’s sorry?” Pharynx quipped. “And if she wants Ocellus back so badly, why didn’t she come here herself?”

“Sh-she’s reaching out to the p-p-pony students… she sent u-u-us t-to f-foreign k-k-kingdoms… quicker that way…”

Pharynx and I exchanged glances. “How soon is she expecting Ocellus back?” I asked before he could continue pressing her.

“Well, as soon as you’re willing to… it doesn’t have to be right away if it’s inconvenient for you, but it would mean a lot to Twilight and the rest of us if you could at least say when she might be coming…”

I sighed. “I wish I could, Fluttershy, and I’m sure she’d want to go right now, but… she went missing.”

“Oh no! What happened?”

“We don’t know yet. Her bed was empty this morning and noling has seen her or knows where she might have gone. We were just beginning a search when you arrived.”

“Oh dear… We have to tell Twilight! She might be able to help! Um, I think… I hope she will… um…”

“I can come to Ponyville,” I said. “I was trying to find out why she wasn’t answering my letter, anyway. I mean, it kind of got answered by what you came to tell me, but Ocellus’ disappearance complicates matters enough to get more involved regardless.”

“She didn’t mention any letters… maybe she forgot or hasn’t gotten around to reading them yet?”

“Or maybe it got intercepted,” Pharynx mused. “If Chrysalis is behind this, she could have learned about Ocellus’ importance through your letter, Thorax. Did the mail carriers report anything unusual?”

“You think Chrysalis took her?!” Fluttershy gasped.

“It’s one of Pharynx’s theories, and I wish I could reject it as impossible,” I said. “If it really is her, then we have to warn Twilight that something’s brewing! Pharynx, can you handle things here while I go to Ponyville?”

“Are you doubting me? Go!”

Considering how potentially urgent the situation was, I didn’t want to waste time flying all the way there. Fluttershy would have to put up with getting teleported alongside me, whether she liked it or not.

As it turned out, we weren’t the only ones with a problem. Most of the other leaders were already in front of Twilight’s castle, seething red-hot, and I could just about make out a flying dragon in the distance, probably Ember, carrying something. Twilight’s friends sat around awkwardly, souring up the aura.

“What’s going on here?” I asked nopony in particular.

“They lost them students,” Applejack said. “Ah ran into Seaspray in the Horseshoe Bay port before Ah could even get started sailin’ to their land, an’ he insisted on seein’ Twi. Pinkie an’ Rainbow got to Yakyakistan an’ Griffonstone before findin’ out an’ brought them leaders ‘ere. Ah reckon Rarity’s ‘bout to come back pretty soon too-”

“Ow!” Rarity moaned as Ember dropped her onto the ground. “I appreciate the favor, Ember dear, but do get a clawicure sometime, will you? My coat is all scratched up and messy!”

“I don’t have the nerve for that,” Ember retorted, then stomped towards the castle. “Hey, Princess! Or headmare or whatever! You have some explaining to do!”

The other leaders took it as their cue to storm the entrance, and I joined hesitantly, wondering if we’d get anywhere unless they calmed down. There was no way they’d be reasonable in this state! Maybe Ember would, since this wasn’t too far from her usual mood, but the others? Rutherford especially looked ready to level the city!

Too bad changelings couldn’t safely eat negative emotions. Gobbling up their rage could have made the situation more civil, but it would do Ocellus no good if I poisoned myself in the process.

The door opened and Twilight stepped out, followed by Spike. “Good morning, every- Is something wrong?”

“Where Yona?!” Rutherford roared. “If this pony’s fault…”

“I should have known not to get roped into this!” a griffon, probably Grandpa Gruff, yelled. “Ponies always have to complicate everything and I bet you won’t even pay for making me waste my time!”

“Queen Novo is very disappointed in you, Princess,” Seaspray stated. “Just what did you teach your students to allow this to happen?”

“I don’t follow,” she said. “Can you start from the beginning?”

“Silverstream was gone last morning,” Seaspray continued. “She left a note saying that she and her friends miss each other now that the school is closed, and that she was leaving so they could stay together.”

That explained why he’d already been on the way here when Applejack ran into him on her way to Mount Aris, and if the others had disappeared for the same reason, then Ocellus was likely alright and Pharynx had no upcoming invasions to repel, at least not in the immediate future, unless Chrysalis had been lurking close enough to notice something was up and decided to seize the opportunity while we were distracted. I didn’t think that was the case, though, and even if it was, she wouldn’t find many loyal servants anymore, and I was sure Pharynx’s troops would keep the hive safe from her.

“I can’t believe it!” Twilight exclaimed. “They did learn friendship!”

The others glared at her, and I couldn’t promise that I hadn’t reacted in the same way. The students were missing, and Twilight’s first response was to praise the friendship they’d forged, or maybe the lesson they’d mastered? Not unlike her to focus on such things, admittedly, but we had bigger concerns at the moment! And I could understand the young ones’ desire to stay together, but this wasn’t the way to do it! Ocellus at least had a family who missed her and was looking for her so frantically and imagining all kinds of horrible fates that may have befallen her, and her friends had to have someone in the same situation as well! At the very least, if Silverstream had had the presence of mind to leave a note, why couldn’t have Ocellus?

Twilight must have realized her blunder, as she immediately continued, “Sorry. Do any of you know where they might have gone?”

“You think we’d be here if we knew, missy?” Gruff screeched. “In fact, I think I can guess! This is the only place they have in common, so where better to go? I bet somepony helped them, too!”

“If you’re accusing Twilight of conspiring to hide students…” Rainbow threatened, flying over and getting in his face.

“I’m not conspiring, and I’m not hiding anyone!” Twilight stated.

“So you’re saying it’s one of us, huh?” Ember growled. “Cause I’m with… bird on this one-”

“It’s Gruff, you overgrown lizard!”

“You wanna get roasted, pigeon? Agreeing with one thing you said won’t stop me! And how are we supposed to know you’re not the one hiding them?”

“Whaaaaat?”

“You guys are so greedy you’d sell your own mothers for a big enough bag of coins! How much are dragon scales on the Klugetown black market?”

“Enough to be tempting,” Seaspray said.

“How bird pony know prices if not buying or selling? Yak think bird ponies sell Yona!”

“I know it because the black market borders our territory and we catch smugglers all the time! That doesn’t make us kidnappers!”

“Guys, we’re not getting anywhere like this!” I interjected. “Can we focus on finding the students and then decide if arguing and casting blame is necessary?”

“What are you up to, grub?” Gruff spat. “Been a long time since deception and trickery so you decided to pull one for old times’ sake?”

“No, I-”

“Or were you planning this all along? Lull us into a false sense of security, then grab some gullible youngsters and continue playing the victim while you secretly do who-knows-what with them?”

“What?” I gasped. “We’ve changed! You’ve- uh, most of you have seen the hive!”

“If I find out you’re lying,” Ember growled, poking a claw at me, “I swear I’ll break our alliance and burn the hive to a crisp and feast on the changelings’ corpses!”

“And if dragon lying, yaks fight dragons to death!”

“Your deaths, you flammable furballs!”

“Both of you can go extinct for all the griffons care!”

“Everycreature, stop!” Twilight bellowed, separating us all with force fields. When she spoke, the hoarseness of her voice and its exasperated tone mirrored her aura, which was a peculiar mixture of red-hot and a drained flavor of grey. “I understand you’re upset. I understand none of you wanted this. I understand you were caught off guard and don’t know where to begin. But succumbing to rage and throwing blind accusations at whoever happens to be nearest isn’t going to solve anything! I’m going to start looking for them, and you’re welcome to join me, but I won’t tolerate you being at each others’ throats and interfering with my progress. If you think you won’t be able to control yourselves, I would advise you to conduct your own search independently of others or to find something else to do until the students are found. I’m sorry if this doesn’t sound very friendly, but even if the students are safe at the moment, every minute we spend arguing is a minute in which something could happen to threaten their safety. Do you really want to be the ones to blame for delaying the moment they’re found?”

Ember, Rutherford, and Gruff each let out an annoyed huff before dispersing in all directions, and I could only assume they intended to search for their own students like Twilight had suggested, as neither of them picked the approximate direction of their homeland. Admiral Seaspray stated he would do so before departing as well, and soon I was left alone with the ponies.

“It’s alright, Thorax,” Twilight said despondently. “You can leave if you want. I won’t take offense.”

“But I want to help! Didn’t you get my letter a few days ago?”

“...what letter?”

“He wrote to offer help in reopening the school if you still wanted to,” Spike said, “but you were unreachable in that pillow-fort self-pitying spree, and I was going to write back myself, but then Starlight snapped you out of it, and the letter kind of slipped from my mind between everything you had me do for the school.”

She grinned sheepishly. “Oops… Sorry, Thorax…”

“It’s alright. The offer still stands, if you want it, and it looks like it includes finding the students now.”

“You know, I might as well,” she shrugged. “Why don’t we sit down and talk it over?”

“Ooh! I know!” Pinkie piped up. “Let’s go to Sugarcube Corner! My Pinkie Sense says there’s a lot of fresh cupcakes!”

“...Pinkie Sense?” I asked.

“It’s Pinkie, don’t question it,” Spike said.

“Eh, whatever, the sugar might get our brains running a little better,” Twilight agreed. “Celestia knows I could use it!”

The walk there was uneventful until, upon rounding enough corners, our destination came into view. A colt was just loading some trays of cookies into a cart.

“He seems familiar,” I mused. “Have I seen him before?”

“That’s Sandbar, darling,” Rarity explained. “He’s one of the students in our school! …was our student… but I’m sure he’ll come back as soon as we reopen the school! No worries!”

Glancing casually around while buckling the cart onto himself, he noticed us and did his best to pretend he hadn’t while starting to trot just a little too fast for a casual stroll he was trying to imitate, and I might have ignored it if not for the surge of unmistakable murky chill in his already-tense aura. What was he afraid of? It seemed completely out of proportion with just seeing his teachers trot down a street, even with seeing a foreign leader sort-of up close!

I pointed this out to the others.

“You think he might have stolen those cookies?” Rainbow asked, preparing to dash away after him, only to be caught in Twilight’s magic.

Meanwhile, Pinkie gasped loud enough to defy gravity, and a pink blur rushed to the pastry shop, screaming something about a cookie thief and a poor Mrs Cake. The others paid her hardly any attention. Must be another of Pinkie’s quirks, I assumed, remembering her seemingly break the laws of reality in a similar way shortly upon meeting me for the first time.

“Rainbow!” Twilight scolded, continuing the conversation. “You can’t accuse ponies of stealing without evidence!”

“Hello? Didn’t you hear what Thorax said? Why would he freak out like that if he’s not guilty?”

“There could be a number of reasons! For all we know, he could have seen something else, or he could have suddenly remembered something completely unrelated to anything he saw!”

“Could he have freaked out by seeing me?” I asked. “He might have had bad experiences with changelings in our old days. Maybe he still hasn’t gotten over it?”

“He didn’t seem to be afraid of Ocellus,” Fluttershy mused. “He was actually really nice to her during classes…”

“Come to think of it,” Applejack said, “he’s been thick as thieves with them five non-ponies, e’en more than with any ponies! Y’all ever seen ‘im sittin’ an’ studying’ with anypony else?”

The others exchanged glances and shrugged.

“No-siree!” Pinkie exclaimed, returning to us with a grin. “He always studies with Gallus, and Yona, and Silverstream, and Smolder, and Ocellus! And he paid for the cookies!”

“Pinkie,” Twilight said after a moment, “you know everypony in town and probably half the rest of Equestria. Does Sandbar have anypony in his family or circle of friends who might be celebrating something, such as a birthday or a cute-cenaera or something else that would explain his purchase?”

“Nope! Unless he met Coco Pommel since I last checked, but he’d have no reason to host her birthday parties, unless he’s working for somepony, and why would they order food from Ponyville when it could spoil before it gets to Manehattan-”

Rainbow shoved a hoof in Pinkie’s mouth, but she continued mumbling over it. “Pinkie, we don’t have time for this! Get to the point!”

“Y’all thinkin’ Sandbar knows where the rest of them students are hidin’? An’ bringin’ ‘em food?”

“That’s awfully likely, darling… But wherever would they go?”

“We could still follow him,” I offered. “I can still sense his aura, at least its rough direction. If we follow that-”

“-he could lead us to the missing students!” Twilight exclaimed. “Thorax, you’re a genius!”

I grinned sheepishly.

“But what if he calms down and you lose track of him?” Fluttershy asked.

“He’s still worked up enough that I don’t think he will. Even if he does, I think I can manage.”

“And if you do lose him,” Spike said, “we might by then be able to figure out where he’s going. I say we give it a try, huh? Nopony’s offered anything else and it doesn’t sound like we’ll lose too much time if this turns out to be a false lead!”

The ponies agreed, and I led them after Sandbar’s aura into the southern part of the city… and then further south.

“The Everfree Forest?!” Fluttershy gasped as we passed the last houses and the trees came into view.

“Now I know something’s up!” Rainbow exclaimed. “Let’s go!”

“That’s what we’ve been doing all along,” Rarity stated, “but not everypony is as fast as you!”

“Aw yeah, I’m awesome!”

Applejack facehoofed. “Aw, in the name of zap apples… this ain’t about y’all! Cantcha tone it down fer one stinkin’ minute ‘til we find them students?”

“Well it’s taking much longer than one minute!”

“An’ it’ll be even longer if ya keep complainin’!”

“Guys, the fear aura just spiked again!”

That killed all the arguing. “Well what are we waiting for?” Rainbow urged.

She had a point, and I rushed after the aura to its source, with the ponies and Spike right behind me. Before long, I wound up at the ruins of what could have been a fort or a castle.

“What is this place?” I muttered to myself.

“The Castle of the Two Sisters,” Twilight said. “It’s where Celestia and Luna used to live a thousand years ago, until Luna turned on Celestia and got banished to the moon. The castle was heavily damaged in their battle, and living in it after the fact was too painful for Celestia, so she gave up trying to rebuild it and moved to Canterlot instead. The castle’s been pretty much forgotten ever since, until Nightmare Moon returned and we followed her and found the Elements of Harmony. Why?”

“I think I spent a night here once, while fleeing the hive. It was dark when I got there so I’m not sure, and I left in the morning without paying much attention to details. The ruins puzzled me a little but I never thought-”

“There they are!”

We were by then in one of the castle’s hallways, and the ground ahead of us was a mess, wrought by age and decay and made worse by half-torn-up cushions and crumbled cookies strewn everywhere, and pierced with countless thorns. On the far end of the hallway, where Twilight’s hoof was pointing, lay an overturned cart, its sides riddled with more thorns, and our missing students were attempting to squeeze behind it. Some of them, at least; I couldn’t see Ocellus and Sandbar, but the cart was big enough to conceal them, especially if Ocellus had resorted to a downsized disguise for an easier fit behind cover. The cover was important, as dozens of thorny creatures were surrounding the cart, growling and propelling more thorns from their backs at the cornered group.

Before we could decide on a strategy, I heard a whiz behind me, and turned around to see a rainbow blur trailing through a hole in the ceiling, and heard many yelps from close to where the students were hiding. In the span of time it had taken Twilight to raise a shield bubble around the students, Rainbow had found a way to close in on the creatures and tackle them all away!

The relief was short-lived, as more of their peers popped up from everywhere.

“Fluttershy, darling, do something!” Rarity moaned as we became an additional target.

“I can’t! Puckwudgies are stubborn! If they decide they don’t like you, that’s it!”

“Then we’ll have to distract them!” Twilight said, swatting puckwudgies away from herself. “Thorax, can you get the students out?”

“I can try…”

“Go! We’ll cover you!”

All the obvious alternate routes were blocked with the annoyed creatures, and the short trek through the castle’s hallways hadn’t been enough to familiarize me with the layout enough to trust myself not to get lost attempting Rainbow’s approach, so after a moment to brace myself, I galloped through the hallway while doing my best to dodge the incoming thorns, but still ended up catching a few in my flank. Turning into a puckwudgie before making the run probably wouldn’t have helped me much, even if I’d had an opportunity to disguise myself out of the real ones’ sight; it may or may not have fooled them, but I couldn’t be sure one of my friends wouldn’t hit me by mistake. They were outdoing themselves, each in their own way and with varying success: aside from Twilight and Spike blasting them with magic and dragon fire, and Rainbow conjuring up a tornado to suck in the little beasts, Rarity was tangling them up in lace, Applejack combined lasso skills and the brute force of her hooves, Pinkie had pulled her party cannon from somewhere, and Fluttershy was attempting a peaceful approach despite just having claimed it pointless and somehow marginally succeeding. Their efforts were admirable, but the battle was nowhere near finished, and Twilight’s shield had already collapsed by the time I managed to get to the students.

One good thing about them being packed so close together was that it simplified engulfing them all in the spell I was about to cast. Now if only I could keep my focus in this madness around me…

With a pop, I materialized just outside Twilight’s castle, a bit dizzy but no worse for wear, and relief washed over me when I saw all six students there as well.

“Are you alright?” I asked, getting confused but soon enthusiastic nods and murmurs in reply.

“What happened?” a voice called from a little away.

“Starlight? I was- wait, what are all these ponies doing here?”

Before she could answer, another pop brought my friends after me.

“What going on?” Rutherford pushed through the crowd, followed by the other foreign leaders and representatives. “If changeling hold Yona prisoner-”

“Yona not prisoner!” the yak in question countered. “Big changeling save Yona and friends from puckwudgies!”

“So this Seasplash guy-” Ember said.

“Seaspray,” he corrected her.

“Whatever. What he said about you guys running off on your own, that was true?”

“What did you think?” Smolder piped up. “That we’d allow ourselves to be taken by force and dragged away? You know I’d burn whoever tried that to a crisp!”

“It would appear our warmongering has been premature,” Seaspray mused. “In the name of the hippogriffs and seaponies, I would like to apologize to you all for jumping to conclusions.”

“Wait, war?!” Sandbar gasped.

“Sounds like we all need to bring each other up to speed,” Starlight said.

That we did. It took a while to get all the stories straight, especially with all the interjections and requests for clarification of one thing after another, but we got there eventually. The only big thing I’d personally had yet to find out was that Starlight had been tasked with rounding up the pony students to return to the school, which explained her absence up until now and the crowd she’d brought, but the others had bigger holes to fill in the whole story.

Once everything had been said, Twilight suggested it was about time she reopened the school, and the entire crowd of students and companions agreed, except for one grumpy griffon, who reluctantly gave in after some persuading.

The chains across the school’s main entrance had barely crumbled under her magic when Neighsay teleported onto the scene.

“Who dares remove the EEA seal?” he demanded.

“I do!” Twilight stated. “Now if you’ll kindly step aside; the classes have been delayed long enough as it is!”

“The classes have been cancelled altogether! Nopony can be allowed to run a school this disorganized and hazardous, let alone allow dangerous creatures into the students’ vicinity!”

“I’ll show you dangerous,” Ember growled, cracking her knuckles.

“First of all,” Twilight continued, “what gave you the impression if disorganization and hazard was an isolated incident similar to those that happen on a daily basis even in pony-exclusive EEA-accredited schools, including, for example, Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, which I know first-hoof since I was a student there! How many schools did the EEA close down because of a spell gone awry or a flight course collision, for example?”

“That’s beside the point-”

“I’ll tell you: zero over the course of the last thirty years! I know; I checked! Second, your claim that non-pony students from Equestria’s allied countries are a threat to pony students is nothing but blatant racism and is as such in violation of Equestrian Constitution, section one, subsection four, the EEA Statute, section three, subsection seven, and all the core values that the Equestrian tradition is based on! If the EEA cannot see fit to uphold these rules and values and is set to deny accreditation to any school that aims to support them, then this school will be better off unaccredited.”

“The rules are there for a reason, Princess; you can’t just disregard them when they don’t suit you!”

“I’m not the one disregarding the rules here.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine, proposing to change the rules just so this one school can benefit; whichever phrasing suits you better.”

“No rule is set in stone, Chancellor, and they’re meant to be changed when they no longer serve their purpose. Need I remind you that the unification of Equestria centuries ago led to many alterations of rules and laws, including an education reform so all three pony tribes could study together in shared schools? The last time I checked, which was only a few days ago, that history lesson was still part of the curriculum of EEA-accredited schools as well as the EEA officials’ training program. I’m sure some individuals of that era found the idea to be as controversial as you’re finding mixed-species education to be, but since that has worked out fine over the centuries, I see no reason why this wouldn’t, and I see no reason why schools like this one couldn’t one day exist in every corner of Equestria and beyond.”

A round of cheers broke through the crowd, and Neighsay just stood there gritting his teeth.

“So I say again, Chancellor: kindly step aside so the students can resume their classes!”

“This isn’t over yet,” he grumbled before teleporting away.

“What a grump,” Pinkie muttered.

“I’m sorry that you had to be inconvenienced by him, everypony, everycreature,” Twilight now said to us, “and I’m sorry that I failed to address the issue right away. But I promise you, I will not let this happen again! Friendship isn’t just for ponies, but for all creatures, and these doors will always be open to anyone who seeks it, no matter who they are or where they come from! Now, students, I believe your classrooms and dormitories are waiting for you. The teachers certainly are, and now that we’re no longer bound by the EEA rules that were a condition of being accredited, the curriculum will be tailored to our own standards and much more enjoyable than the stressful ordeal that none of us was comfortable with!”

As the stream of ponies headed inside, I sought one other, and found her standing awkwardly among the non-pony students saying goodbye to their leaders, or in the griffon’s case, still pleading to be allowed to stay.

“Ocellus,” I spoke to her.

“I’m sorry, Thorax! I just wanted to see my friends again! I thought if I could… maybe…”

“The whole hive has been worried about you, your parents especially! I’ve been worried!”

“I, uh… I figured they might… eventually… but it was too late to turn back…”

“It’s never too late, Ocellus.”

“I… I get it… I’m sorry… I disappointed you, didn’t I? You put your trust in me and I disappointed you! And I couldn’t face you because of it!”

“Is that why you’ve been hiding behind Yona this whole time now?”

She mumbled something, bit her lip, and looked away.

I lifted her chin. “Ocellus, I… I can’t say I’m not disappointed, but it’s by how you handled the situation, not by what you wanted. All you had to do was ask to invite your friends over and we would have welcomed them with open hooves for as long as they wanted to stay, or if you wanted to visit them, all you had to do was tell someling and we would have made the arrangements.”

She sniffed. “Okay…”

“Can you remember to do that next time?”

She nodded.

“Alright then, I believe your friends are waiting for you, and the school library isn’t going to read itself!”

“Really?! I can stay?!”

“Of course you can stay! We never wanted to pull you out of the school in the first place, and now that we know where you are, your parents can stop worrying and Pharynx can call off the search parties.”

She winced. “Oops… I really messed up, didn’t I?”

“I’m not going to lecture you. Something tells me Pharynx will do it for both of us, but you don’t even need lectures to know what you did.”

“Yeah, um…” She glanced at the school entrance, where her friends were waiting. “I can’t believe this is happening! Thank you so much, Thorax! I’ll make you proud!”

I gave her a quick hug. “I know you will. Now go on and have fun!”

She pranced away to join her friends, and I spread my wings and took to the sky. The other leaders had left already, and the pony students were probably settling in by now, so I was alone. I would soon teleport back to the hive and bring Pharynx and Ocellus’ parents up to speed, but before I did that, I wanted to bask in the warm, bright aura coming from the school a moment longer. After what had happened today, I needed it to calm down and restore my faith that everything was going to be alright.

Bug in Shining Armor

“Hey, Thorax!”

I raised my head from the bunch of scrolls I’d been studying and found Banshee standing before the throne.

“Oh, good morning! How can I help you?”

“I’m not here to ask for help this time,” she said. “I came to tell you about Ocellus’ letter that just arrived.”

“How is she doing?”

“Much better, now that she’s back in school! She says parting with the EEA did wonders: classes are actually enjoyable now and they make much more sense, she got involved in some interesting after-class projects, and there’s much more time to actually spend with friends! She didn’t say anything outright, but I get the impression her self-confidence is growing, too. Anyway, she asked me to tell you she’s happier than she’s ever been and to thank you for giving her such a wonderful opportunity!”

Beaming, I hopped off my throne and hugged her. “Aww, that’s great news! You have no idea how much it means to me to see everyling happy!”

“I think I might have an idea,” she chuckled.

“You still can’t resist hugging every living thing you come across?”

I released Banshee and looked to one of the throne room entrances, where Pharynx stood frowning as usual.

“Uh, hi, Pharynx… Banshee was just telling me how happy Ocellus is to be back in school and how much she enjoys it-”

“I heard. Are you done?”

“Gee, can’t I be glad about something every once in a while?”

“It’s alright, Thorax,” Banshee said. “I just came to tell you that; I don’t really need anything else, so… guess I’ll be going now…”

She trotted off.

“Pharynx, why is it that whenever someling drops by to share something wonderful with me, you turn up and chase them away?”

“You’re acting like you didn’t expect that bookbug to excel in school.”

“I knew she’d do great, but that doesn’t make her success any less meaningful!”

“Just to remind you, she already has parents.”

“So I’m supposed to not care just because she isn’t my daughter? Pharynx!”

“Whatever.” He nodded at the pile of scrolls. “You doing anything that can’t wait?”

“I’m studying infiltrators’ reports to find out what Equestrian cities did to convince the Equestria Games inspector they were the most suitable host. It’s not exactly urgent in the strictest sense, but there’s an awful lot of it, so…” I shrugged.

“It can wait that long. Come.”

“Where are we going?”

He didn’t reply; instead, he just trotted down the hallway and I hurried to catch up. Following him took a while, and though I tried a few times along the way, I couldn’t coax out one single word from him in regard to anything. What was he up to?

Eventually we passed through the weapons factory and made a turn into an annex. His personal workshop, I presumed. A couple of shelves and a curtain positioned almost at the entrance hid the chamber from view- no, hid the wall from view… What?

Ignoring my confusion, Pharynx lit up his horn and undid a section of the wall.

“When did you learn that spell?” I asked.

“A while ago. It was in Chrysalis’ scrolls, remember? Then that unicorn friend of yours gave us the version that doesn’t rely on dark magic, so I would have gotten my hooves on it regardless of the first one. It’s useful; beats having a guard at the entrance at all times, not that it’d stop anyone determined to get in, but they’d have to know there’s something here worth tearing walls down.”

“Fair enough. But why are we here?”

“If you’d stop standing in the doorway and actually go in already, you’d figure it out.”

I did, and I saw it.

The chamber itself had a workbench and some shelves filled with various weapons and shields, in addition to tools, an anvil, a box of raw metal, and a furnace, and some scrolls that I took to be blueprints or spells; that much I’d expected to find. A couple of training dummies stuffed into a corner weren’t a surprise, either. What was a surprise stood in the very center of the room: a crudely-made lifesize wooden model of me, but the thing that Pharynx must have wanted to show me wasn’t the model itself but the assembly of metal plates it supported.

“You made me a full battle armor,” I said, staring at it dumbfounded.

“A prototype, yes.”

“Why?”

“Why…” He facehoofed. “Because you might need it!”

“For what? We don’t wage wars anymore, and not only are we allies with the strongest two of our former enemies, I expect we’ll gain more over time, especially now that Ocellus is making friends with them and excelling at her first steps in diplomacy! You heard Banshee! Ocellus could grow up to become one of the best ambassadors the world has seen!”

“You’re so in love with pacifism that you keep forgetting the diplomatic approach doesn’t work on everyone, Thorax. And you seem to have forgotten that there’s someone out there who wants your severed head on a plate!”

“I haven’t forgotten… but it’s been a while now; maybe she’s cooled down a bit?” I offered, not really believing my own words. Pharynx’s hard stare screamed that never in his wildest fantasies would he even think to consider such a possibility. “Okay, not likely, but if she does show up, I’m sure you and your troops will overwhelm her in no time!”

“Except we may not get to her in time,” he insisted. “Why do you think she’s as good as vanished off the face of Equus for so long? If I know her at all, she’s lying low until she devises a plan to annihilate you without risking getting caught before she’s done!”

I sighed in frustration. “Pharynx, if you expect me to wear that thing all the time on the off-chance that Chrysalis ambushes me…”

“That would be a good idea, yes.”

“I’m not doing it! The very idea makes my carapace crawl, and what will everyone think?!”

“Fine, don’t wear it! I didn’t think you’d agree, anyway!”

“Isn’t that a bit contradictory? You’re not expecting me to wear it, but even I know armor does nothing unless it’s worn…”

“You could put it on when you notice something isn’t right and start feeling in danger.”

“Won’t that take longer than finding you and asking for help?”

“Then teleport it onto yourself! How hard can it be?!”

I stared at the armor again. Could I do it? And speaking of teleportation, wouldn’t it make more sense to teleport myself out of danger?

“Look, fleeing won’t always be an option,” he said as if reading my mind. “You could be protecting someone who can’t come with you, or something you can’t take with you, or simply trying to secure an escape route. If she comes back, you’ll have to stay because the second you’re out of here, she’ll seize the throne and it’ll take a bloodshed to get her out of it. But she isn’t even the only thing I’m concerned about. Remember that last maulwurf? There are those, and the timberwolves, and a million other beasts; and as promising a diplomat as Ocellus may be, there’s no promise her efforts and connections will always be successful. We could still find ourselves in a war no matter how hard you’re trying to avoid it.”

“You really think the day will come when I’ll need it?”

“For your sake, I hope it doesn’t. But better to have it and never need it than to need it just once and not have it when you do.”

I sighed. “Fine, I’ll keep the armor in mind if I ever need it…”

“Good. Now try it on.”

That caught me off-guard. “W-what?”

“If you’re going to use it, it needs to fit you and be comfortable enough for extended wear.”

“Can’t someling else do that?”

“I had Grim take your shape for measurements and basic fitting, but now I need to get your input and possibly fine-tune it if necessary.”

“But I don’t even know where to begin! There’s got to be a few hundred pieces!”

“It looks more complicated than it is. I assumed you wouldn’t want your range of movement to be too limited so I built as many sections as possible from articulated segments.” He took the neckpiece and twisted it a few times to demonstrate, then opened it so I could see the joints. “There has to be some overlap of segments or they won’t provide enough protection, but they still don’t allow as much maneuverability as you normally have. There’s only so much that any armor ever built has been able to do in that regard while still retaining its primary purpose of shielding the user, and it takes some getting used to. Chainmail wouldn’t be as restricting but its effectiveness in warding off spells is very limited, and knowing who we’re potentially up against, I found it senseless to even consider it.”

“I see,” I mused, eyeing the armor more closely. Like he’d said, the articulated segments looked like they’d allow me to move more or less normally, which seemed important because the armor was designed to cover my whole body, not just the head and barrel like the ones Equestrian Royal Guards wore. “I’m going to need some help with it…”

“I figured as much.”

With his help and an unusual level of patience, I managed to get the gist of it. First came the barrel section, complete with an articulated underside and semi-articulated back cover, to which attached a separate plate for each elytron; then he showed me how to attach the leg pieces, then the neckpiece, and finally, the helmet. He’d solved the problem of fitting it over my antlers by making the faceplate completely detachable from the rest of it. I wasn’t especially thrilled about the curved blades that ran along the front of my horn and the outer edge of each antler, but he insisted they could prove useful in a fight unless they turned out to interfere with my magic. Lastly, he introduced the optional muzzle and the switch on the helmet that equipped and retracted eye covers. The latter were see-through, but I opted against them for the time being.

“That’s it,” he said in the end. “It still has a few weaknesses, namely that your wings will be unprotected when open because I haven’t yet succeeded in finding a material that would be sturdy enough to shield them and at the same time light enough to allow you to fly, and your tail is uncovered. I can make an extra plate to cover it, but it’ll be cumbersome and an enemy could grab you by it. Alternatively, you could tuck the tail under the barrel section, if you think that’s comfortable enough.”

“I think either of that would work,” I said after a moment of consideration. “Can I take it off now?”

“We’re only just getting started. How does it feel?”

“Heavy and… cumbersome…”

“Every armor is like that,” he retorted. “What I mean is, does the size fit?”

“I think so…”

“Nothing too loose or too tight on you?”

“No…”

“Nothing pinching?”

“No.”

“Good so far. Now let’s see if it stays like that when you move around. Come.”

I followed him out of the factory and into the public hallways. The armor plates clanked a little as I trotted forward and weren’t getting any lighter, but that was something I had come to terms with and could probably learn to ignore if I ended up needing the armor more often than I liked or would have been willing to put up with. Right now, my problem consisted of the fact that we were in public and drones could see me like this, and in fact did see me like this, and were stopping in their tracks and dropping everything they were doing in favor of glaring at me, some incredulously, some confused, some worried, and most of them afraid.

“What are you all standing around for?” Pharynx hissed and growled at each group. “Never seen a changeling in armor before? Get lost! Don’t you have duties to fulfill?”

Well, at least he was trying… though his efforts seemed to be doing more harm than good.

“It’s alright,” I tried to reassure everyling, with questionable success. “I’m not turning evil or anything, and we’re not going to war; Pharynx just needed my help with something…”

Yeah, I wouldn’t be convinced, either.

Eventually we found an exit to the outside and took to the air.

“Pharynx?” I said after a minute or two.

“Yeah?”

“This armor is awfully heavy to fly in… I don’t think I’ll be able to fly very fast or very far in it…”

“It’s metal; what did you expect? You’ll have to exercise your flight muscles a little more, and by that I mean actual exercise, not chasing nymphs around. Are you gonna make it to ground level or should I be ready to catch you?”

“I think I’ll manage. Where are we going?”

“Training grounds. Don’t give me that look! I won’t put you through combat drills! I already did impact testing with Grim! I just need to see how well you can move in that and whether or not the helmet interferes with your magic!”

“You know I don’t like obstacle courses, Pharynx…”

“I told you, no disciplinary actions this time around, and I’ll let you do it at your own pace.” When I sighed in defeat, he added, “I won’t even yell. Really, Thorax, I have enough grunts to unleash my sadistic tendencies on that I can hold back this time. I’m putting you through it because I need you to be as safe from harm as it’s possible to get.”

I managed a smile. “I know, Pharynx. You always have! Thank you.”

But the obstacle course still wasn’t a bit less unattractive than all those years ago in basic training, and no easier to go through; if anything, the armor and my size made it even harder, and Pharynx acting like a drill instructor wasn’t helping any. At least I managed to shut him up by reminding him of his promise from a minute ago! He really couldn’t help himself, could he? Things got a little easier from that point on, or at least less stressful, even if I did get stuck in a few obstacles to the point where Pharynx had to dismantle stuff to get me out. At least he admitted the armor was to blame this time, not my incompetence.

Then came the target range.

The first surge of magic I directed at a target in accordance with Pharynx’s instructions hit me right back in the head and I stumbled and fell.

“Ow! What…?”

“The spell rebound off the antler blades,” he said, taking my helmet off to bend the said blades to sit a little further away from my antlers, then gave it back. “Try now, but don’t put so much juice into it unless you’re sure you won’t knock yourself out if it happens again.”

“I’m kind of dizzy… Can I take a break?”

“From everything or just from blasting?” Was there a hint of impatience in his voice?

“Well… I’m not exactly thrilled about any of this, but if you insist I continue…”

“I just want to be sure your armor works if you ever need it, Thorax. I guess we can continue tomorrow if you’ve hit yourself that hard, but I’d rather have this done today, now that I’ve cleared the training area so you wouldn’t embarrass yourself in front of the soldiers.”

“Oh… I didn’t realize you halted their training for me. I guess I can manage today, then. What’s next?”

He took out a crossbow from a nearby chest.

I winced. “Uh, you know how I feel about weapons, Pharynx…”

“Yes, but if it comes to needing armor, it’s possible you’ll have to resort to using a weapon to defend yourself or someling else, so get over it. Ever been taught how to use this?”

“No.”

“Might have known… Alright, listen. The quarrel goes here on the stock. This piece of metal in the middle of the bowstring is the locking mechanism. Draw the bowstring by pushing it back with the quarrel’s nock until the locking mechanism clicks and the quarrel sits in its slot. This here is the trigger, and keep your hoof off it until you’ve aimed at the thing you want to shoot, or you’ll risk accidental discharge. Did you get all that?”

“I think so…”

He gave me the crossbow and a full quiver, and I spent a few minutes reluctantly trying it out. My quarrels went everywhere, only one managed to hit the edge of a target, and Pharynx only needed a second or two to realize he was better off standing behind me.

“You’re hopeless,” he groaned after I’d emptied the quiver. “Think you’ll do better with a spear or a dagger?”

“Uh…”

“On second thought, let’s skip it before you gouge your own eye out,” he said hurriedly.

“That’s probably the best decision you’ve made today,” I muttered.

He rolled his eyes and asked, “Are you still dizzy or can we resume the blast-testing?”

“How much longer is it going to take?”

“As long as I need to make sure the helmet isn’t interfering with your spellcasting anymore. Why? Got an appointment?”

“No, I just want to be done with it.”

“Thought as much. Gimme that crossbow before you somehow manage to shoot yourself without a quarrel, and start blasting the targets. Like I said, take it easy at first and go gradually harder.”

I did so, and though the spell hit the target this time, I started to feel funny again.

“What’s wrong now?” he asked.

“I’m not sure… my ears are ringing as if someone stuffed me in a tin can and started banging on it…”

“More interference? Fine, I’ll readjust the antler blades again.”

“Can’t you just take them off entirely?”

“You do realize it’ll be harder to chop the enemy’s head open by headbutting them if I do that, right?”

I recoiled. “Why would I want to do that?!”

“Well I dunno, to save yourself? …ugh, fine, might have known you’d want to get rid of them.” I passed him the helmet and he burned them away with a powerful ray from his horn. “I’ll smooth it out later. Now put it on and keep blasting.”

This time it was much easier, almost as if I wasn’t wearing a helmet at all; I figured the blade in front of my horn was still creating a bit of interference, though not nearly as much as the antler blades, but Pharynx flat out refused to remove it and I only just barely managed to convince him to shorten it a little, which he said he’d do in due course, but first he wanted to see the strongest blast I could muster.

Believing we were almost at the end of the ordeal, I put my everything into it, and though I gave myself an ugly headache in the process, the target was obliterated with a long trail of smoldering ashes extending into the distance from where it had stood.

“Impressive,” Pharynx said, smirking at the display. “Hit Chrysalis unaware like that and you might actually stand a chance against her!”

“I’d rather not have to deal with her at all…”

“I too would rather that you don’t, but we may not have a say in the matter.”

“So, are you satisfied now?”

“Yeah. I’d rather that you didn’t get stuck in those obstacles, but I know it was probably inevitable given your size, and you weren’t as clumsy in the rest of it as I expected you’d be. Except the crossbow. Your aim is downright hopeless even for someone wielding it for the first time, and I sincerely hope it was only a consequence of hitting yourself with the rebound spell, because if it isn’t, I hope you’ll never have to use it or you’re bound to hit everything except the enemy, and that’s not the armor’s fault. I can let you try again sometime when you recover just to make sure, not that I expect you’ll jump at the chance. All things considered, I’ll give the armor a passing grade and use it as a template for the soldiers’ armor.”

“Oh, good,” I sighed in relief and proceeded to take it off.

“What are you doing?” Pharynx suddenly asked.

“You said we were done and I can’t wait to get out of this thing-”

“We’re done with the battlefield testing, you idiot! But you most likely won’t be personally involved in combat unless things turn catastrophic! You’ll mostly be in the background, issuing orders to the troops, planning strategies, or negotiating assistance with other lands, thus only wearing the armor as an additional safety measure! We’re not done until you spend the whole day in it to see if there are any issues with prolonged usage!”

“...you’ve got to be kidding me,” I groaned.

“I’m not. Go back to the throne room or wherever you need to be and continue with whatever you need to do, but don’t take the armor off yet. There’s no point in having one if you won’t be able to resist taking it off after five hours of sitting in a command tent because you didn’t realize until then how uncomfortable it is.”

“But I have to be at the feelings forum this afternoon! What will everyling say?”

“That’s their problem, not yours. Though if you really have to justify your every move in front of them, tell them it was my idea. That ought to shut them up.”

I wanted to argue the matter but knew it was pointless; his mind was made up, and the best I could do under the circumstances was to postpone the rest of the ‘testing’ for a different day, but he’d still make me go through with it and probably wouldn’t leave me alone until I stopped postponing it indefinitely regardless of what other duties it might interfere with. At least nothing out of the ordinary was happening today and I expected no visitors… Better to just grit my teeth and get it out of the way, then.

Word must have spread about what we were doing, as half the drones I came across on my way back to the throne room showed no reaction whatsoever to the unusual sight. It felt awkward to sit on the throne and read scrolls like this, and after a couple of hours, I could only conclude that there was nothing physically wrong with the armor, and the most uncomfortable thing about it was the fact that I’d been made to wear one in the first place, regardless of the plateau being mercifully empty of the other changelings. It just didn’t feel right, no matter how good Pharynx’s intentions had been, or how justified his reasoning was! I hoped I’d never have to use it for real!

The feelings forum passed better than expected, too. The armor didn’t cause a panic or an onslaught of questions, and noling mocked me about it; in fact, only one or two drones present didn’t seem to have heard about it and asked what was happening, and though I tried to keep the explanation short and simple, the rest of the group caught on to my misgivings about the whole thing, which then derailed whatever plans anyling had had in favor of a consoling-and-reassurance session, complete with what might be called hug-resistance testing in Pharynx’s jargon.

Conclusion: the armor was completely powerless in stopping the onslaught of hugs. Whether this feature was intended or an oversight, I welcomed it wholeheartedly!

There was still some of the day left after the feelings forum and I decided to finish the scroll I’d started, and even managed to drop by at the arts-and-crafts session to draw a few sketches before the group wrapped up for today. No playing with nymphs, unfortunately; there was no way I could keep up with them all armored up like this! The day had been challenging enough already and they were going to have to put up with my absence again! Besides, it was almost their bedtime.

Come to think of it, I was ready to turn in early, even though it was just past sunset. I went to my bedchamber and only managed to take off my helmet, glad and relieved the day was finally over, when Pharynx showed up out of nowhere.

“I thought we’d agreed you’d keep the armor on for the full day,” he said.

“I did! I’m going to bed now!”

“I can see that!”

“So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is if you take the armor off, we won’t know if you’ll be able to sleep in it well enough to function normally the next day.”

I stared at him, trying to think of what to say and failing miserably. He couldn’t be serious!

“What?” he retorted. “If there’s trouble bad enough that you need armor, there’s no promise it’ll be resolved by bedtime, and you could easily end up having to sleep armored up in order to increase your chances of staying alive if whatever’s threatening us gets to you in your sleep.”

“You’re making this up just to mess with me, aren’t you?”

“Don’t you remember the three months when I slept like that- oh, right, you were in a healing cocoon then. Look, that’s really done, and anyling with advanced combat training will tell you that it included sleeping in armor at some point. Just because everyling wasn’t doing it routinely doesn’t mean it wasn’t ever done, and yes I realize you’re not a soldier, but if a war breaks out, as the king, you won’t just be a target for enemy troops; you’ll technically be the highest-ranking military official of the Changeling Kingdom. Not me; you. Therefore, you’ll need to be able to do this!”

“So you expect me to armor up for bed for the next three months?”

“Ideally, yes, but I know you’ll never agree to it, so just do it for one night, just to see what it’s like so you’ll know what to expect if you ever need to do it for real. One night; that’s all I’m asking.”

I groaned. “Okay, fine. One night. But I’m taking the armor off in the morning and putting it in storage until I actually need it, and I don’t care what you say!”

Needless to say, it was a long and restless night, full of tossing and turning and failing to drift off into dreamland, and I was so exhausted the next day that I passed out for half an afternoon, nearly sending the hive into mass panic. Never again, Pharynx!

Nightmare Night

It felt good to be out of the hive for a change. I hadn’t even had to go far nor invent elaborate new activities to entertain myself; I’d found what I needed right here in the meadow that had once been a wasteland, under the warm afternoon sun, surrounded by clusters of flowers and shrubs and the occasional tree, listening to the soothing ripples of the freshly-completed stream meandering through the verdant scenery. The green was a welcome reprieve from the endless engrossment into scroll upon scroll of dull reports and observations, but no matter how necessary the mind-numbing task was and how soon it needed to be completed, I was grateful to Antenna for requesting my help with an entirely different matter. Though I could have relegated the weeding and replanting of her gardens to any random drone who happened to be nearby, I opted to do it myself, admittedly just because it hadn’t crossed my mind that there were other options, and what a difference it made!

I finished planting the tulip bulbs and went to find Antenna, to see if there was something else she needed my help with. I found her trimming an oleander bush.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“A little slower than I’d like, but nothing to really complain about. Are you finished already?”

“It wasn’t that hard!”

“I suppose it isn’t when you have magic…”

“I only used it to levitate the spade! Okay, and the bulbs too… but nothing more elaborate than that!”

“Sure you didn’t,” she chuckled. “Your hooves aren’t muddy at all!”

A quick glance confirmed it; until the flowers began sprouting, I had nothing to show for my efforts save for the slightly disturbed ground if one knew where to look. Okay, feeling alive again after a full week of uninterrupted scroll-studying following Pharynx’s armor ordeal had to count for something, but if one looked at me now, they’d have nothing to clue them in on what I’d been doing for the past three hours, which couldn’t be said for Antenna, whose legs were splattered with brown all the way to her barrel.

“Hey, I’m not complaining,” she added hurriedly. “I don’t care how people do things as long as they don’t mess anything up!”

“Thanks,” I said. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to impose, but you wouldn’t mind planting some strawberries, would you? They’re in the trolley. I’ve reserved a spot for them near the edge of the fruit garden.”

“Sure!” I found the seedlings and their designated patch of land easily and got to work.

Eventually I was done with that too, and stretching myself back upright to release some of the tension left from the hunched-down stance, I turned my face to the sky, expecting to soak up some of the sun’s warmth, but was met instead with the gloom of dense clouds stifling the sky as far as the eye could see. How long had I been working? There hadn’t been the slightest puff of cloud up there while I talked to Antenna! Where was she, anyway? I couldn’t see her anywhere even after taking to the air! The trolley was gone, too!

No, wait, the trolley was just inside one of the ground-level entrances to the hive, where she normally stashed it when she wasn’t working. She’d probably been attentive enough to notice the clouds roll in and decided to finish up and get inside before-

A drop of rain fell on my head as if to accentuate the point I was debating with myself, and then another, and another, and before I knew it, I was galloping to the hive, soaking wet from the sudden downpour.

It took a moment of catching my breath before I realized I was still holding a spade in my magical grip. I chuckled awkwardly at myself, shoved it into the trolley with the other gardening tools, shook some of the rainwater off myself, and proceeded deeper into the hive.

I’d barely turned around the first corner when a black face of an unreformed changeling popped up from behind a stalagmite and hissed at me.

“Aah! What… Pharynx, is that you? What are you doing? And why do you look like that?!”

It took him a moment to stop laughing.

“Seriously, Pharynx! You almost gave me a heart attack! What’s gotten into you?” He was still laughing. “What’s going on?”

“What’s going on, Thorax, is that you’re too easy to startle! That was better than I expected!”

“Are you so bored with your life now that you have to start inventing trouble for me to worry about?”

“It wasn’t him,” said another black changeling, coming down a hallway; many others poked out of hiding and gathered around us. “It was us.”

“I don’t understand… Isn’t everyling supposed to be reformed by now?”

“We are reformed,” said another, whom I recognized as Carapace by his voice. “I saw in today’s Ponyville Times that ponies celebrate Nightmare Night tonight. I wasn’t entirely sure what that is so I asked Menace, and he said it’s a festival based on Princess Luna’s corrupt alter ego. Something about wanting to please her so she wouldn’t eat little ponies?” He shrugged. “Anyway, ponies like to dress up in disguises and play spooky games, and we started wondering what it would be like it we did something similar, and we were overheard and a lot of droned joined the discussion, and in the end it was decided that we could just look like our old selves tonight and scare and prank one another, though we’re not opposed to including elements of normal partying into the mix for those who prefer it.”

“And Pharynx was okay with that? Aren’t there… security risks or something… involved?”

“I’m the one who suggested it,” he quipped. “Yes, there are security issues, but it was worth it to see your flabbergasted face!” He snickered again.

“It’s not funny! What if I’d mistaken you for Chrysalis in disguise and blasted you?”

“I know you well enough. Besides, I bet Chrysalis would be confused if she tried to show up tonight!”

“Sorry if this wasn’t fun to you, Thorax,” another drone said. “We can stop if you don’t like the idea…”

“Except it’ll take a while to tell everyling,” another interjected.

“The whole hive is in on it?”

“Yes, and participating, although some took a bit of convincing. I believe you’re the only colorful changeling in the hive right now, Thorax!”

“Oh. Well, if the others are enjoying it, I guess it’s alright…” I turned into my old self. “We wouldn’t want to spoil the fun, right?”

“Actually…” the first drone spoke again, fidgeting her hoof nervously.

“Yes?”

“We were kinda hoping… if it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you… well, if you don’t mind, at least… maybe you could pretend to be Chrysalis instead of yourself?”

That caught me off-guard. “Why?”

“Because you’re the king… but you weren’t when we looked like this, and she was the queen, so you’ll still get to be at the throne… and because you ran away at some point so you weren’t even here all the time and it wasn’t for a mission… I mean, you didn’t really want to be here…”

“...so the hive won’t miss me if there isn’t a Thorax in this version?”

She went silent for a moment, then started avoiding eye contact. “That sounded better in my head,” she admitted. “I mean, it’s not to say that we don’t like you! We do! It’s just… we were thinking more along the lines of, what should I call it, historical accuracy?”

I cast a glance at Pharynx.

“I had my misgivings,” he said, “but if you’re accompanied by at least one or two drones at all times for the entire duration of your disguise as her, that should avoid any identity concerns. I’ll still lather you in whatever’s left of that changeling revealer ointment after the fact to make sure you’re still you if the others insist.”

I was silent for a little while. The dislike in my relationship with Chrysalis was mutual, and I wasn’t a bit more thrilled by the offer to take her shape than I’d be by the prospect of being in the same room with her. Were they expecting me to mimic her behavior too? I hoped not! It felt wrong on so many levels even if everyling would know I didn’t actually mean to yell and throw insults, and I wasn’t even sure if I could pull it off! In fact, I was convinced that even as little as looking like her would make me feel dirty! Why had they asked this of me?

“You want me to be Chrysalis that much?” I asked in the end, hoping they’d say no.

“Well, it would be interesting…” a drone that hadn’t spoken before replied.

“...fine, I sighed and heeded their request. “Now what?”

“Come along! There’s a party waiting in the throne room- uh, actually, I don’t know where they are now that the storm is raging…”

“They must have moved it to one of the larger inner chambers. Maybe the feelings forum or the weapons factory?”

“The weapons factory is working on weapons,” Pharynx growled. “Anyling who decided to start a party in there will be licking the gutters clean for the next year!”

One of the drones standing behind Pharynx snuck away from him and silently galloped down the hallway. The others pretended to not notice.

“Maybe they spread it across several chambers,” Carapace suggested. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find several parties set up independently from one another scattered throughout the hive, either. We’re bound to find one of them eventually!”

Sure enough, we found one in the arts-and-crafts area, and almost everyling froze in place the second I entered.

“Uh…” I muttered. “Guys, are you sure you discussed the whole thing with others?”

“We did, yeah,” Carapace said. “At ease, everyling! It’s just Thorax in disguise! Carry on!”

That did the trick, but only to an extent, and the party continued in a more subdued manner. Even though it’d been over a year, Chrysalis’ absence still hadn’t dulled the drones’ obedience response she’d instilled in them by the looks of it, and they seemed to dread her more than I remembered. I couldn’t blame them; she was horrible and most of them hadn’t realized the full extent of it until she’d left, and after my much more relaxed rule, the prospect of going back or even being in close proximity to her was terrifying! Was it really a good idea to be disguised as her?

But they got over it gradually, apparently having realized no harm was coming from the one who bore her face, and a few even started asking why I wasn’t acting like her.

“You want that?” I asked back.

“It would fit the disguise,” one of them said. “And we know you won’t really mean it, let alone harm us, so…”

I groaned inwardly. “Alright, let me try… How dare you address your queen like that? Off to the dungeons with you… um, are we supposed to have a dungeon?”

Pharynx happened to be close enough at that moment to overhear and facehoof. “Brilliant,” he groaned. “You couldn’t play her to save your life! Why are you even trying?”

“Because we asked him to,” the drone answered in my stead. “Okay, yes, that was lukewarm, but I know you can do better, Tho- I mean Chrysalis… heheh…”

“Isn’t it enough that he agreed to look like her in the first place?” Grim joined in.

“A disguise is worthless if behavior can’t match!” Rampage interjected. “Not that I’m surprised a fighter doesn’t know infiltration tricks!”

“My last mission was infiltrative!”

“You lasted less than a week! I spent years on mine!”

“It doesn’t matter!” Hornet outyelled them. “We all know ‘Chrysalis’ here is actually Thorax, so who cares if the impersonation is lacking?”

“I do! How does a king end up with such a lousy representation of one of our core traits?”

“It’s one of the old system’s traits! We don’t need it anymore!”

“Wasn’t this supposed to be the night of remembrance of the old system?”

“So Thorax shouldn’t be allowed in it because he failed to improvise a perfect impersonation of his polar opposite? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying he should have tried harder! And why couldn’t he practice in advance?”

“Can we please stop arguing?” I asked. Everyling shut up, only to start shouting over themselves a mere moment after. “Guys!”

“Don’t listen to them, Thorax,” Grim said. “The disguise is good enough-”

“Not without the right behavior it isn’t!” Rampage insisted.

“Stop!” I exclaimed. “Just… just stop! I would have gone as my old self if some of you hadn’t asked that I play Chrysalis instead, I’m not comfortable with even looking like her, and it’s gonna take a miracle to get me to bring myself to copy a fraction of her viciousness! I don’t even know why I agreed to do this!”

Dropping my disguise, I stormed off before any of them could say another word.

I trotted aimlessly through the hallways, and though it wasn’t my intention, furiously enough that everyling got out of my way, and the few who looked like they wanted to speak up as I passed them changed their minds abruptly. Were they afraid of me? I was too distraught to pay attention to their auras, but how ironic it would be if I was more intimidating now, as myself, when I least wanted it, than while looking like the one whose whole existence revolved around instilling fear!

I had no destination in mind but somehow ended up in my bedchamber, and as soon as I caught my breath and realized where I’d set hoof into, all the fury within me that I hadn’t even been aware of on a conscious level quickly died away, and I slumped onto the floor, worn out and hollow. Why had they asked me to impersonate Chrysalis? Did they really miss her so much in spite of my best efforts to give them a better life? Did I mean nothing to them after everything I’d done?

I wanted to be proven wrong but the love aura coming from the rest of the hive was lukewarm. I wanted to be comforted but no one was there to hug me. I listened for hoofsteps, but the only sounds were those of the rainstorm echoing through the hallways. This wasn’t the hive I wanted, and if I didn’t know better, I’d have thought I was in the nightmare of the old one!

Resigned to despair, I surrendered to the onslaught of tears.

I didn’t know how long it had been, but eventually, a prodding hoof pulled me out of my self-pitying trance.

“Are you crying again?” a voice chided. “Why am I not surprised?”

I forced my head to raise a little. “Pharynx?”

“Are you done? Because if you are, I’d like to dismiss the guards.”

“...what guards?”

“The ones patrolling the perimeter on lookout for intruders,” another voice spoke from behind me. I turned around to see Hornet, Grim, Banshee, and a few others, all their colorful selves again. So was Pharynx; why hadn’t I taken notice? “Or one intruder, actually. The arrangement is that a group of volunteers and some of the… less deserving… soldiers keep watch until the rest of us are done partying, however long that turns out.”

“Oh… well, if the party's over, I guess they can go to bed now…”

“That’s the thing,” Banshee said. “We were hoping the party wouldn’t be over! You’ve barely had any fun, and it’s our fault!”

“Oh, brother…” Pharynx groaned.

“We heard Luna had some initial mixed feelings about Nightmare Night, and that she managed to resolve them by realizing ponies had fun being scared by her villainous alter ego as long as they knew she wasn’t actually evil,” Grim said, “and we thought we could get the same with you. We didn’t realize you wouldn’t enjoy being mean or scary to us even for pretense, and it never occurred to us that you’d think we didn’t want you around just because we asked if you’d be interested in pretending to be someone else for a few hours! And it should have been obvious to anyone who knows you at all! We’re sorry we hurt you!”

“Aww, guys…”

“So what should we tell the others?” Hornet asked. “I mean, we can wrap up the night right now if you want, or you can just stay here by yourself if that’s what you prefer, no pressure. But we were kind of hoping you’d consider giving it another chance. You’d never guess, but it turns out we’re missing a Thorax!”

I wiped my tears. “You… want me back?”

“Of course we want you back! We never meant to chase you away in the first place!”

“Except before he became king,” Pharynx interjected, getting awkward shuffles in reply and a shush from Grim.

What could I say to that? Of course I was going to rejoin them! I turned back into my small, black self. “Lead the way!”

The party cheered up instantly upon my return, and save for a few drones who wanted to apologize and one or two needing Pharynx’s encouragement to do the same, soon there was nothing left to suggest a drama might have occurred a little earlier.

The dancing and harmless teasing continued well into the night, and when Psycho came to inform us that the storm had passed and that the guards had unsealed the exits to the throne room, we joined the party that had already returned there, adding their pranks and water balloon fights to our repertoire. I hadn’t expected to have that much fun! Despite a couple of hiccups, I had to consider the night a success.

But the fun had to come to an end, marked by the first rays of sunlight on the horizon, and I thanked everyling for the wonderful time and bid them to rest a little before taking on today’s duties.

“Can’t we celebrate just a little bit longer?” Retina pleaded.

“I’m sorry, we celebrated throughout the night,” I said. “If we let it last any longer, we won’t have the time to get the hive ready for the Equestria Games inspector!”

Crunch Time

After a short nap, I rounded up some of the drones in the throne room.

“Okay, here’s how it is,” I said. “The Equestria Games Inspector has announced her visit exactly a week from now. Every report I’ve read describes her as strict, grumpy, and extremely easy to offend and disappoint, which I guess comes with her job so we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves if we fail to impress her-”

“That’s sure to boost everyling’s confidence, Thorax. Great job,” Pharynx interjected.

“What can I say? There’s dozens of other candidates, and we’re the only one outside of Equestria and the only one who used to be their enemy! How do we know that won’t be reason enough for Ms Harshwhinny to disqualify us from hosting?”

“Because she’s supposed to be unbiased,” he insisted. “That too is supposed to come with her job. And if that isn’t enough, I’ll have a little chat with her.”

“You can’t hurt her!”

“When did I mention hurting her? Believe it or not, I am capable of maintaining a verbal-only encounter when I have to.”

“...riiiiiight… Anyway, we’ve got a week to get everything ready. I know a week doesn’t sound like a lot of time, but if we work together, we can do it! Now, you’ve all volunteered to oversee an aspect of the preparations. First of all, do you have a large enough workforce to complete your assignments in time? Noling is understaffed?”

I got murmurs and headshakes in reply, but noling claimed a shortage of workers on their team.

“Good. Now the details! Urtica, does the archive contain any blueprints of stadiums suitable for Equestria Games? Or schematics, or specifications, or whatever they’re called?”

“I do! Blade sent a copy of the blueprints for the Crystal Empire’s stadium at some point during its construction a few years back,” she said. “He had to sketch them in a hurry to avoid getting caught so they’re pretty crude, which was enough at the time because Chrysalis didn’t expect to need to rely on that piece of intel anytime soon… but you can still tell what’s what on that sketch if I remember correctly! I’ll just have to check the standard dimensions of the arena, though I’m not sure if that would be anywhere in the archive… Maybe the library? Do we even have sport-related books?”

“Try Encyclopaedia Equestrica,” I offered. “That one sounds like it has pretty much everything about everything, and there are enough volumes that it probably does!”

“Can I draw a neater blueprint based on Blade’s sketch?” Mystique asked. “I’ll include the measurements, too, if it helps!”

“Of course you can! But won’t it interfere with your decor-arranging?”

“Nah, it’ll only take a day or two, and I can always get more drones to help me, or just turn into a giant three-headed octopus if it turns out they’re all already involved elsewhere.”

“Okay then… What about accommodations for the guests and athletes if we’re chosen?”

“We can probably squeeze them into the hive,” Grim said, “but not everyone will be comfortable with such an arrangement, not to mention that a lot of outsiders would get lost in all the hallways and passages sooner or later. I’d suggest building a structure with a predictable layout separate from the hive if you’ll have time to do it.”

“I hope I will… What about food? We could get thousands of visitors!”

“Why do you think I’ve been planting an orchard?” Antenna said. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to rely on it entirely - plants can sometimes fail to take root, I mean, or we could get some kind of disaster that’ll destroy the plants or leave little to harvest - but if all goes as planned, it should cover a good portion of the guests’ needs, plus we could export the produce later on!”

“Good! What about decorative plants?”

“...I’m sure the inspector will take into consideration the fact that this was a wasteland until not that long ago… Not that there’s anything wrong with the plants we do have! It’s just that someone used to topiaries and immaculate lawns might find our vegetation a bit unkempt - not that there’s no charm in that, in fact, some groom their gardens to appear unkempt, and anyway, you have to let plants grow strong before trying for elaborate appearances - and the wasteland is big enough that I simply haven’t gotten around to covering it in vegetation entirely…”

“It’s fine, she’ll probably understand! Besides, flowers aren’t exactly crucial for the athletic aspect, so they shouldn’t play a major role in decision-making no matter how beautiful they look-”

“Didn’t Detrot strike out one year because she didn’t like its parks?”

“Where’d you get that from, Pharynx?!”

“I have my sources.”

I waited for him to elaborate, but to no avail. “Oookay… what else do we have? Psycho, can you propose a tour of the hive and its surroundings based on what the inspector would most likely be interested in?”

“I’ll have to check her record in the archive for the stuff not strictly related to the Games, but yeah, no problem.”

“The banquet?”

“I’ll find the recipe for her favorite food!”

“Cleaning crew?”

“Proboscis is already passing out the brooms and mops,” Grim said. “I ran into her on my way here. She sends her apologies for not being here, by the way.”

I nodded. “Security, if we’re picked?”

“Will be taken care of.”

“Do we have any bedchambers ready in case she decides to stay overnight?”

“I don’t think she’s done that anywhere,” Urtica mused.

“Maybe not, but we are pretty far from Equestria, and as far as I’ve managed to find, she’s never had to travel such a long distance. She could decide that a two-day trip makes more sense, plus it would give her an opportunity to evaluate any guest facilities we have. Apparently she likes to catch candidates off-guard, and this could give her an opportunity to do so.”

“But we don’t have any guest facilities,” Grim said. “I don’t think we’ve needed them before!”

“Well, we’re going to need them now. Even if we don’t get to host the Games, chances are we’ll start getting regular visitors eventually! They’ll need someplace to stay!”

“You’re not wrong, but can you build a stadium and a hotel within a week?”

“The spell isn’t that hard; in fact, I’m guessing the bigger issue will be to ensure the measurements are correct. Besides, Pharynx has already agreed to help! Speaking of which, Pharynx, the hotel is going to take up additional space that I haven’t anticipated, and it makes little sense to put it way out there in the wasteland. Do you think you could perhaps sacrifice a portion of your training grounds or move them elsewhere?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“Where am I supposed to train the troops, then?”

“You’ve got a whole unused wasteland to choose from and arrange to your liking!”

“So do you for the stadium and the hotel!”

“That could be a little too far out there… the ponies may not be comfortable so far away from familiar grounds…”

“And the hive is the epitome of friendly familiarity, especially to those who were captured and held there as food. That’s some brilliant deduction you’ve got there!”

“We’ve changed! And the hive looks nothing like it used to!”

He just glared at me.

“...okay, it’s far from unrecognizable, but there’s enough difference to make it obvious that the hive isn’t what it used to be!”

“Can you promise me with one-hundred-percent certainty that nopony is going to get flashbacks or a panic attack at the sight of what’s still similar or go on a rampaging spree in an attempt at revenge?”

“No, but don’t you think those afraid to come back would just steer clear?”

“They could get coerced into coming if a friend or a relative is competing, or they may not even realize they’re going to flip out until they get here.”

“Speaking of which, maybe it would be a good idea to have someling or somepony ready to provide emotional support for such situations?”

“I’ll ask Feisty,” Psycho said.

“Thanks. So, Pharynx? Would you at least consider it?”

“How much of the training grounds are we talking about? Hypothetically.”

“I’m not sure before I see any blueprints, but probably not more than half-”

“Are you crazy? I’m not giving up that much!”

“Like I said, you could set it up elsewhere!”

“That takes time and effort, and I’m not going to have any of either if you want the whole hive to get ready for the inspector within a week! You should have thought about it sooner! Why doesn’t Antenna give up some of her gardens or whatever you call them? That would create plenty enough space!”

“I did give it up! Why do you think that patch of land southwest from the hive is emptier than it used to be?”

“And that’s still not enough for you, Thorax?”

“It may have been enough until the need for a hotel was brought up. It may still be if we cram everything together and extend further into the wasteland with whatever can’t fit, but it’s possible that we’ll get more guests than we’re anticipating, and I’d like some wiggle room if we have to add more visitor seats in the stadium last-minute.”

“You don’t even know if we’ll host the Games yet, and you’re already thinking of enlarging the facilities!”

“Aren’t you always the one who insists on planning for worst-case scenarios? Not that this would be a worst-case scenario, I mean…”

He facehoofed. “I also always insist on having realistic expectations, and right now, I don’t see why I should give up something crucial to the hive’s existence in favor of something that may or may not even happen.”

“But-”

“If the need arises, I’m willing to reconsider. Until then-”

“How do you expect the inspector to take us seriously if we don’t have the basic requirements for hosting the Games?”

“That’s up to you to convince her, Thorax. Until you do, the training grounds are staying as they are and that’s final!”

A smartly-dressed pony appeared out of nowhere as I was frantically helping set up decorations for the Equestria Games inspection mere minutes before it was due to begin, wondering how I’d allowed the preparations to drag out like this and scolding myself for misjudging the amount of time needed for everything I’d invented or overestimating my ability to handle such an enormous feat. I almost ignored her in my rush to achieve some semblance of readiness despite having doubts it would fool anyone, but the sour tightness of her jaw muscles and a matching aura made me set down the garland held in my magic and cautiously approach the newcomer.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“I am Ms Harshwhinny, the Equestria Games Inspector,” she spat. “You were supposed to expect me an hour ago!”

An hour?! Goodness, where had the time gone?

“I’m so sorry to keep you waiting, Inspector-”

“Did you or did you not receive my letter? I clearly stated my exact time of arrival and the requirements I expect you to meet! Why wasn’t this heeded?”

“A letter…” What was she talking about? I didn’t remember any letters except the one from the Equestria Games Committee, and that one only stated the date of the inspection! Had it been lost in the mail? Had someling hidden it? But who’d mess with- wait, didn’t the infiltrators’ reports say she liked catching people off-guard? Maybe this was one such instance?

“I’m afraid I haven’t seen the letter; it might have gotten lost in the mail. I can check if you still deem it necessary. Meanwhile, since you’ve managed to find us anyway, would you like to see the hive? We’ve worked very hard to ensure you’ll feel welcome! I apologize if we missed something that you requested in the letter…”

“Hm. I’ll consider overlooking the letter fiasco if it turns out the post office really lost it, but from this point onward, you’d better prove yourselves less incompetent than what I’ve seen so far if you want to still have a chance of hosting the Games.”

“I understand. This way, please!”

I led her into the next hallway, wanting to reach one of the larger corridors and reorient myself on where we were exactly, as this particular hallway was unfamiliar to me and too nondescript to make reasonable guesses about its location, and noling was around to ask even if doing so wouldn’t immediately look bad for us. The hallway we ended up in next was marginally less decorated than the first one, and I chalked it up to sloppy preparations and hoped she wouldn’t notice, but the further we went, the hallways were decorated less and less, until eventually they were not only undecorated but filthy and downright dilapidated, maybe even in worse condition than any I’d seen under Chrysalis’ rule! How were things still so bad and why hadn’t anyling bothered to do something about it at least for the Equestria Games Inspector’s liking? Had they assumed she’d stick to the big things, so to speak, and not care to venture into some small, insignificant hallway in some random corner of the maze of tunnels that made up the hive? Come to think of it, why were we decorating a random set of minor hallways she probably wouldn’t care for? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to put our efforts into sprucing up the public areas? Was this where we were planning to have her stay if she requested accommodations for the night? But if that was the case, why had we assigned her to some burrow so deep in the labyrinth of hallways that she’d get lost without the help of someling who lived in one of those very hallways and knew the way out? I needed help finding the way out by now! I was ready to swallow my pride and ask for directions no matter how bad it would make us look in Ms Harshwhinny’s eyes, but whom to ask? There was noling here! Come to think of it, we hadn’t encountered a single drone in all this time we’d spent stumbling around! Where was everyling?

And how had Ms Harshwhinny known where to look for me in the first place?

“Mister Thorax,” she barked before I could ponder the matter further, “is there anything worth seeing around here?”

“Um… honestly, I don’t think so…”

“Where are we, anyway?”

“Uh…” How was I supposed to tell her I had no idea?

“Nevermind,” she huffed. “Let’s just skip the rest of the tour and go straight to the stadium.”

“Actually…”

“What is it now?”

“...we… don’t have a stadium yet… But we are going to build it! We’ve just had a bit of a disagreement on where exactly it should be…”

“Let me get this straight, Mister Thorax,” she spat, rubbing her temple. “You applied for the ambitious task of hosting the Equestria Games, which, being an athletic event, by definition requires a stadium, yet not only do you not have one, you’ve also failed to provide a suitable location for one?”

“I know it sounds bad, but-”

“Do you have any idea how long it would take to build a stadium worthy of such a high-profile event? Especially in the back of beyond like this?”

“Actually, there’s a spell-”

“Furthermore, your hive is in disarray, its layout is confusing and impractical for visitors, and your organization skills are downright nonexistent.”

“We can work on that-”

“Frankly, in all my years as the Equestria Games Inspector, I have never seen a candidate so blatantly incompetent for hosting the Games and so deluded into thinking they’d stand any chance against the competition, and I’m not even talking about the athletes!”

“I’m sorry… if you can just-”

“I’ve seen candidates that were a waste of my time, but you’ve gone above and beyond that. You are an insult to the Equestria Games as an institution!”

“Please-”

“You don’t even deserve to show your faces at the Games, ever!”

“...what are you saying?”

“I’m saying, not only will you not host the next Equestria Games, you will not even see it. Based on your disastrous performance at the Equestria Games inspection, your athletes are now disqualified from competing in the Equestria Games, and your citizens are banned from spectating! And don’t try to pull stunts with disguises, because I’ll make sure the security forces can recognize and deal with you!”

She stormed off and left me stuck in indecision on whether to run after her and beg for another chance or to crumble down and cry. In the end, the latter prevailed.

Soon, a gentle hoof touched my shoulder. I recoiled slightly in surprise and turned to its owner.

“Princess Luna?” I gasped. “What are y- wait, I had a nightmare again, didn’t I?”

“Indeed you did, even if not as violent as the ones tormenting your slumbers in the past, thus I did not recognize it for what it was until it was too late. Alas, I have only just arrived; forgive me for being so late!”

“It’s alright, Princess. Just seeing that you still care to watch over me means more than you can imagine!”

“It is my duty as your friend and ally! But it has been a long while since your slumbers were troubled, and I had truly believed it would not happen again. Pray tell, has there been unrest in your kingdom?”

“On the contrary; we’re looking forward to taking part in the next Equestria Games! It’s just that we applied as a potential host, and…” I sighed. “...and I guess what I learned about Ms Harshwhinny has left me feeling like we’ll make colossal fools of ourselves, especially now that we’ve run into some disagreements about the preparations and there’s only so much time left to resolve it… Maybe we really did bite off more than we can chew…”

“Is there a specific point in your conundrum?”

“Yes, the main thing is that we have a stadium and a hotel to build, which we can do in the remaining time by utilizing one of the spells I found in Chrysalis’ secret chamber soon after ascending, but Pharynx and I can’t agree on the location. I don’t want to put either too far away from the hive and he doesn’t want to rearrange the training grounds to make space for it closer.”

“Can you not arrange the visitors’ quarters to make the distance less noticeable?”

“...I’m not sure what you mean,” I admitted.

“The stadium must be built in accordance with specifications in order to qualify, but no such specifications exist for the hotel. Nowhere in the rulebook does it even say a hotel must be one single building, or a compact one, and nowhere in the rulebook is its required proximity to the stadium stated. All that is required is that it fulfills the needs of those staying in it, which I believe you are capable of ensuring. I have seen the extent of your creativity; can it not come up with more than a basic design?”

I considered her words and an image began stirring in the back of my mind; vague though it might have been, I was sure I could give it shape! “I think I can,” I said to her.

“Very well,” she said with a smile. “Once again, I look forward to seeing what you have built!”

By the time I opened my eyes, the seed of an idea that Luna had planted into my mind had grown and blossomed into a much clearer shape. Could I pull it off in the given time? I leapt off my bed and rushed to the arts-and-crafts section, where I’d spent the entire afternoon yesterday working on the stadium’s blueprints with Mystique and Urtica. Good thing it was too early for anyling to be up yet, otherwise I would have surely left a trail of injured drones I’d bumped into galloping like this! Was the sun even up yet?

I found the blueprints right where we’d left them, and checked and re-checked each dimension and proposed design. Could it work? Good thing Mystique had sketched a map of the hive’s surroundings on one of the blackboards, and good thing she’d had the presence of mind to do it roughly in scale! I used it now to check if my idea would hold water and how well it would fit in with the surroundings, adapting and altering the details as required, and in the end, just as the morning sun’s rays crept through a window and caressed my work, I finished up and took a step back to observe the final design, knowing it was going to be perfect.

Just about then, Pharynx and Mystique trotted into the room.

“Morning,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about that thing all night and I still don’t see how we could- Have you been up all night?”

“No, just for the past hour or two. I think I have it figured out, actually!”

They both studied the blackboard. “You know, I think you have,” she mused. “This could actually work! I like it! What about you, Pharynx?”

“Hmm. This part here is a bit too close to the archery range. Other than it being a safety hazard, I don’t want nosy foreign tourists snooping around on a military compound.”

“Oh. We can plant some trees, and maybe add a wall or a fence or something-”

“That works, but I had something else in mind.” He wiped the archery range off the blackboard and redrew it further south-east, beyond the rest of the training grounds. “This spot looks like it could use a pond or a flower garden or something, and flying to the archery range would be a good exercise for the soldiers’ stamina.”

“You really mean it?!” I hugged him. “Oh, Pharynx, thank you so much!”

“Yeah, alright, fine,” he grumbled, pushing me away. “Are you done already? We’ve got some building to do!”

Good Impressions

“Well, is she here already?”

“Calm down, Pharynx. It’s a long way from Equestria and she isn’t known for being late; I’m sure she’ll show up any moment now!”

“She’d better. I have more important stuff to do than sucking up to pony officials.”

“Didn’t this whole thing start out as your idea?”

“So?”

“So one might expect a degree of patience in regard to the procedure that could turn that idea into reality, don’t you think?”

“Bah. That’s your job!”

“Mine?”

“Yes, Thorax, you’re the sickly-sweet one with an insatiable desire to befriend and please everyone. Me? Something doesn’t go the way I think it should, I punch first and ask questions later, which isn’t the kind of approach that would work here. We need someling who thrives on chatting and sweet-talking, and we just happen to have one standing right here.”

“Hey, I’m just being polite! That doesn’t mean I enjoy conversations with every living creature! Some are boring and some are terrifying! But I show some manners even when I don’t like my collocutor and entertaining them is the mother of all chores, and frankly, Pharynx, I think you should make an effort this time, too.”

He grit his teeth and said nothing more as we stared at the edge of the wasteland.

“Where have you been, anyway?” I asked.

“Setting up the security teams. Just in case.”

“Are we expecting trouble?”

“Hopefully not, but you never know.”

“Well, at least you seem to have thought to keep Ms Harshwhinny safe from harm-”

“I’m not trying to keep her safe from anything. I’m trying to keep you and the drones safe from her!”

I facehoofed. “Pharynx, I know she has a reputation, but you can’t seriously expect her to attack us if we fail to meet her expectations!”

“It’s not about the inspection! Yes, she stated that as a reason for showing up, but how do we know she won’t see it as an opportunity to get some retribution for our actions under Chrysalis? I agree, it’s a stretch; she was never captured and neither were any of her family members or associates, save for one coworker she’d barely interacted with during the couple of weeks they’d known each other before we took him, and we’re unaware of her having any ‘friends’ that fit your definition of the word, but she could still hate us on a principle and decide to act on it at the slightest of provocations, even if she has decided to try to be objective.”

“Well… okay, I understand your caution, but I really don’t think she’d do that…”

“Alternatively, she could have been replaced by Chrysalis. What we’re doing isn’t exactly a secret.”

I gasped. “You think this is how she’ll attack?”

“It would make some sense. As a good host, you plan to show Harshwhinny around, answer her questions, cater to her wishes, and so on and so forth, and Chrysalis would expect that. She could easily take advantage of the situation, if not to outright attack, but at least to scout the changes from the old days while hiding in plain sight and use that information to plan her approach at a different time.”

“Will you be able to recognize her if that’s the case?”

“The idea is to attempt that, or if we fail, to shadow her after she leaves until we’ve established who she really is. But leave that part to me. You just be a good host and pretend we’re not suspecting anything. Can you do that?”

“I think so…”

“Good.”

We stared into the distance some more. Eventually, a speck appeared above the treeline, getting gradually bigger until I could discern two pegasi pulling a carriage. They landed on a clearing in front of the hive, where Pharynx and I had been waiting, and a mare in a business suit stepped out. Her facial muscles were tensed up and her glare sharp, which wasn’t a surprise given the infiltrators’ descriptions of her, but so far, there was nothing in her posture or aura to suggest she wasn’t who she appeared to be. Just in case, I glanced at Pharynx, who gave a barely-perceptible, noncommittal shrug.

I approached the visitor. “Ms Harshwhinny, I presume? We’ve been looking forward to your visit! I am King Thorax, and this is my brother Pharynx, the head of hive’s defense forces and my second-in-command. We wish you a warm welcome in the name of all changelings! I hope your journey went well?”

“My journey was pleasant enough,” she said with a hint of impatience in her voice, “but I can’t imagine everypony competing or spectating will be able to do the same, assuming you’re selected to host the Games. There aren’t enough air taxis in Equestria to cater to all of them, and some may not even be able to afford it. How are you planning for everypony to get here? Are they supposed to trudge through that jungle?”

“No, actually, a railway is under construction, extending south from Appleloosa. It’s a little to the east from where you flew in so I’m not surprised that you didn’t notice the break in the foliage. The costruction crew estimates it’ll be complete in a couple of months, well in time for the Games! The inspection just happens to be a bit too early for you to make use of the train, I’m afraid, but it will be done, so feel free to visit us again when it is!”

“I’m too busy to travel around on a whim like that, Your Highness, and the selection of suitable hosts can’t wait for your railway to be completed. My evaluation of you will have to rely on trust in your workers in that regard. Not the ideal situation, so the rest of what you have to offer better be satisfactory if you don’t want to be eliminated from consideration.”

“Of course.”

“Which leads me to another important point. Equestria Games, as is obvious from their name, originated in Equestria and have always been held in Equestria. In addition, there are plenty of cities in Equestria that are still waiting for their turn to host the Games. Why should the kingdom that used to be an enemy of Equestria take priority over Equestrian cities?”

“Funny how you’re forgetting the Crystal Empire,” Pharynx muttered, loud enough to be heard.

“I beg your pardon?!”

Uh-oh… Pharynx, please don’t mess it up…

“The Crystal Empire isn’t part of Equestria, strictly speaking, even if they are closely allied through family relationships and, prior to that, through political relations dating back over a millennium. The changelings have been around long enough to have records of that era, and as much as I’ve begun to dislike Chrysalis following my brother’s ascension, I still trust her to have kept those records accurate and as safe from harm as possible. She had every reason to, or infiltrations would have failed as soon as an agent’s cover integrity was to depend on that knowledge.”

“Pharynx-”

“I’m not done, Thorax. Those records state that even in its earliest days, the Crystal Empire has never been part of Equestria proper, not even after its return when an alicorn princess took the throne. Even Shining Armor relinquished his Equestrian citizenship in order to claim the throne alongside his wife. Therefore, your claim that Equestria Games have never been held outside of Equestria is either a gross omission, which I doubt considering your reputation as a strict perfectionist, or a blatant lie-”

“Please excuse Pharynx, Ms Harshwhinny,” I interjected, stepping in front of my brother with a quick control-yourself glare and hoping he’d get the message. “This attitude has always served him well in his role as a military commander, especially in the old days, but now he’s struggling with diplomacy as a result… he has good intentions and just doesn’t know how to show them…”

“I meant what I said,” he insisted, pushing past me to face Harshwhinny directly. “So, Madame Inspector, is this a test of how we’ll handle a tricky situation or are you trying to disqualify us based on racial favoritism?”

What?! “Pharynx, that’s enough! Ms Harshwhinny doesn’t answer to you and she hasn’t done anything to deserve this kind of treatment! Now, will you please start behaving yourself?”

“Whatever.”

“Ms Harshwhinny, please forgive us for this… incident… I should have talked to him before this-”

She held a hoof up. “While I don’t normally encounter such bluntness during my inspections of Equestria Games candidates, I… appreciate your honesty, Mr Pharynx, though I’ll reserve the right to not explain my reasoning for asking that question. Shall we continue, Your Highness?”

“Uh… yes, of course! Um, this way, please?”

She followed me into the hive, and Pharynx shadowed us from a distance, though still close enough to be noticeable and somewhat awkward, almost as if he wanted Ms Harshwhinny to feel under suspicion. Unless this was an attempt at keeping a respectful distance after treading too close to enraging the Inspector and possibly ending her visit before it had even begun?

“You asked why we should take priority over Equestrian cities in hosting the Games,” I said as we navigated the corridors. “I must admit that it never occurred to us that us hosting the Games could be seen as robbing Equestria as something that’s rightfully theirs, and if that’s the case, I apologize and am willing to withdraw our application to host. But from what I’ve learned about the Equestria Games, it’s meant to promote unity and friendship and was founded on the belief that anyone can shine if given the opportunity. The changelings are friendly now and we’ve been looking for every opportunity to let the world know it, and though we’ve come a long way, there’s still much that can be done in that regard, and one of the most direct ways to get there is to show everyone how much we’ve changed. Equestria Games will make it easier to forge friendships because there’s always so many athletes and spectators, and participation alone would do that to an extent, but we feel that hosting would allow more people to see us in a new light and realize what we’ve become in the past year or so, not to mention an opportunity to compensate for some of the cruelty we spread in the old days. In other words, this would be an opportunity for us to really shine and show the world they have no reason to fear us anymore.”

“And what makes you think there are still people who hate you?”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard of the recent incident with Chancellor Neighsay closing down Princess Twilight’s school because a few students weren’t ponies?”

“I’ve heard of it. Wasn’t there only one changeling student?”

“Yes, and one griffon, one hippogriff, one dragon, and one yak. But the chancellor put us all into the same ‘dangerous’ pile even though none of those species is an enemy of Equestria and some have even spent their whole lives as its citizens, and I have a hard time believing he’s the only one who might still have a problem with us. Even if he is, some of my subjects have been reluctant to reach out to other lands out of fear they’d be met with the same hatred as in the old days. This would help bring friendly ponies to them, and the friendships they forge would build their courage to face the world and ensure they have more places to go if they run into difficulties.”

“Assuming that’s correct, what makes you so sure everyone who comes here will be friendly?”

“I’m assuming there will be enough friendly people to make it worthwhile. There could also be people still afraid of us, but we’re hoping to help them see their fears are unjustified now. As for troublemakers, we may not be able to prevent their arrival, but Pharynx swears he can deal with them easily. I’m sure he’ll be willing to discuss the details with you if you’re interested!”

We glanced at Pharynx, who looked all but interested in discussing anything with anyone.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Ms Harshwhinny said.

I led her through every public area in the hive Psycho and I’d agreed she may be interested in on the grounds of said areas being potentially appealing or useful to the athletes, spectators, or both, such as the library, the arts-and-crafts area, the feelings forum, a few infirmaries, and the nursery. Drones everywhere were the epitome of politeness and warm friendliness, sometimes up to the point where I almost thought them too friendly to appear genuine to a pony unable to sense their auras, but they were mostly met with curt replies to their greetings and offers to be of assistance and an ice-cold aura of indifferent professionalism. Wasn’t something like this stated in one of the scrolls I’d read in preparation for her visit? That she was annoyed by politeness? Oh, right; Blade had reported a rumor that the main reason why the Crystal Empire had been chosen for the last Games was how fed up with impeccable politeness she’d been and that was the only place she’d gotten to see the genuine spirit of the city due to some freak incident? It sounded ridiculous, but why hadn’t I bothered to verify that claim just to be sure? I was friends with the ponies who had made it happen, after all! But even if I had asked, would it have made a difference? I couldn’t exactly welcome her with chaos and insults just to avoid the ‘not the same old’ super-politeness! Maybe she really had preferred Pharynx’s bluntness earlier, no matter how grumpy… But would it be enough to win her over?

Eventually we arrived at the throne room, and recognizing its purpose, she abandoned the practice of waiting to hear what I had to say about the location I was showing her.

“Your Highness, why are we here? Your throne is adequate, but if you mean to suggest it’s something the athletes or their spectators could utilize-”

“It isn’t, and I won’t. I brought you here for the view.” As I led her to the southern edge of the plateau, I continued, “Down there are the facilities we built for the Games. The hive as you saw it upon arrival used to look the same from all directions. We started growing plants over it and the surrounding wasteland after I took the throne, but if you had shown up at any point more than a week ago, you couldn’t know which side of the hive you were looking at without being intimately familiar with the fine details or using the sun or the jungle on the northern horizon to orient yourself. It’s different now that we’ve added… this.”

Below us, beyond the edge of the plateau, a brand-new structure meandered through the scenery: a hotel stemming from the southern wall of the hive, with irregular, winding contours that mimicked the ones of the hive and followed the shapes of the rooms inside it and formed cascades with recesses that held the soil into which Antenna had planted sprouts of the same flowers and vines that adorned the hive itself. In several places along the length of the hotel were grapelike clusters of additional rooms shaped to match the style of the hotel’s main body and surrounded by shrubs and tree saplings; in the curve between the middle part of the hotel and Pharynx’s training grounds, now partly hidden by a rock garden, was a cozy little park with a pond and foals’ playground nearby, and far into the distance, at the tip of the hotel where it tapered into a ground-level-only lobby, was the stadium, connected to the hotel only by a wide walkway that circumnavigated the otherwise detached structure built in the same style as the hive and hotel. The stadium, too, was surrounded by vegetation, although like that planted over the hotel, it still had some growing to do before it could captivate the world with its full beauty.

Even unfinished as it was, the sight left an impression on Harshwhinny: her eyes widened, her aura peaked into elated brightness, and she let out an audible gasp.

“You built all this in a week?! I don’t believe it…”

“There’s a spell that modifies the hive’s structure in accordance with the caster’s wishes. It’s an easy one, but I’ve only managed to make it work on the stone the hive is made of and nothing else, which is why the hive, the hotel, and the stadium are all interconnected. It would have been possible to just extend a narrow streak of hivestone to wherever I wanted to build something and then hide the connecting line underground or turn it into a road, but we ended up liking this design more. It’s not entirely finished, though; we’re still placing the doors, lights, plumbing, furniture, and so on, but some of the rooms are fully equipped for you to see how every room is going to look like in the end. It should all be done well before the Equestria Games according to the supervisors.”

“Seeing it up close is why I came here,” she stated. “Are we supposed to take the same route down or is there a shortcut?”

“There are many routes through the hive, some of which could be considered shortcuts, but they’re all similar to what you’ve already seen on the way up. I can cut it short by teleporting us to the hotel, or if you prefer to see where you’re going, I can levitate you along while flying to ground level or turn into a dragon and fly you down on my back.”

“...I had my share of various assumptions on what to expect of this visit, but riding a dragon wasn’t one of them,” she admitted. “Wouldn’t it undermine your reputation in the eyes of your subjects?”

“Yes,” Pharynx interjected.

“No,” I said simultaneously. “As one of the lowliest drones of Chrysalis’ time, if not the lowliest, everyling must have already seen me perform what was then considered the most demeaning tasks at some point or another, and they all know that I don’t believe any honest task to be demeaning and that no task that needs doing is below me. Besides, carrying ponies on my back would not be demeaning in any way! Unusual at most, but otherwise perfectly normal!”

A sour streak flickered in her aura for a moment. Had I offended her? Couldn’t I have phrased myself a bit better?

“Very well,” she said in the end. “I’m not a fan of teleporting, and I trust you that there aren’t many things left to be seen inside the hive, so I’ll let you fly me down to ground level.”

As I transformed and waited for her to climb on my back, I caught a glimpse of Pharynx frowning at her. Was he simply disapproving of this particular method of transportation, or was he suspecting her motives? I didn’t sense anything malicious in her, but maybe she knew how to hide it well… Unfortunately, this wasn’t a good opportunity to ask him about it, and I couldn’t see any coming anytime soon… I was just going to have to continue being a good host like he’d told me to and trust him to not make a mistake!

We landed in the small park, and upon reverting to my usual form, I led the Inspector through the nearest of the ground-level entrances.

“This will be the main entrance to the hotel,” I explained. “There are several others opening into every recess of the hotel’s ground plan and one at the stadium end, not counting the gateways connecting the hotel to the hive. The reception desk will be in this alcove, and there’ll be a sitting area between it and the main entrance. Also, smaller sitting areas at the side-entrances. The ground level is reserved for a restaurant and various communal areas that we haven’t fully settled on yet, but it’ll probably include a dancing area, a spa, and some areas for various games including one or two designated for foals. The guest rooms are upstairs; five levels in total at the tallest part, but the design of the hotel should allow adding additional levels or side-clusters if the need arises.”

“It’s a lot of work. Are you sure you’ll be able to finish it in time for the Games?”

“I believe so! The drones working on it are former infiltrators whose cover identities included being skilled in the kind of work we need here, such as plumbing and carpentry-”

Just then, a group of drones trotted by, carrying tools and wooden planks.

“Are they the workers you’re referring to?”

“They must be. I’m not personally familiar with anyling from that group, though.”

“I want to see where they’re going and what they’re going to do there.”

“Of course! They must be building the doors for every guest room. The hive itself doesn’t have any doors that close, as you’ve seen, and I have to admit I initially forgot about them until someling mentioned the guests wouldn’t appreciate not having a clear barrier between their rooms and public areas.”

“You’d better thank that someling, because such a blatant oversight would have disqualified you on the spot if the hotel didn’t have room doors in its finished state. What do changelings have against doors, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Your Highness. You said it yourself a minute ago the hive doesn’t have any doors, yet your kind used to have infiltrators all over Equestria and you yourself lived in the Crystal Empire briefly, therefore doors can’t be an unfamiliar concept.”

“Oh! That’s probably because the hive’s architecture shifted and changed autonomously all the time until shortly after I took charge. The spell that did it must have worn off… Anyway, gateways between hallways and chambers were constantly forming and disappearing at random, and so were the walls themselves occasionally, so having doors wouldn’t have made much sense because they probably either wouldn’t survive very long or wouldn’t remain attached very long. There actually were doors of sorts at the entrances to Chrysalis’ castle, which wasn’t prone to shifting like the rest of the hive, but we got rid of them along with security clearances. There was just no need to keep them.”

“And how do your subjects feel about the fact that anyone can barge into their personal areas and do whatever?”

“I haven’t gotten any complaints about it. We’re used to it, really, and it’s possible that living under a dictatorship and having clearances for every smallest thing taught us to respect boundaries. Probably the only good thing it ever did…”

“That and not being helpless against threats,” Pharynx quipped from behind us.

“What was that?”

“Oh, nothing, Pharynx just takes his role as head of defense very seriously. Oh, the drones are apparently working in this section today! You wanted to check on them?”

She nodded and entered one of the rooms, where a worker dropped his current task to give her an enthusiastic overview of what they were doing at the moment, how they were doing it, and what remained to be done. I used this opportunity to catch up with Pharynx.

“What do you think so far?” I asked.

“Blunt, no-nonsense, and perfectionist to a fault,” he said, “just like our intel pegs her. Keeps her emotions to herself but I’m not sensing any malice. Either she’s who she claims to be, or Chrysalis got a better grip of her aura while in disguise since we last saw her and I lost my touch around all of you.”

“You could actually tell her apart by her aura?”

“Sometimes, yes, if she was furious enough and her aura wasn’t getting drowned out by other auras, but it wasn’t foolproof. Don’t forget that she had centuries to perfect the skill.”

“So, you think we’re safe?”

“I think there’s a good chance we are, but I’m not letting my guard down just yet. There’s still plenty of chances for surprises.”

The drone who had taken over showing Ms Harshwhinny around for the moment led her towards one of the adjacent hallways, where I knew the work had been completed, in order to give her a preview of what the rest of the hotel would eventually look like. We followed, giving them enough space to look at everything without being obtrusive.

“Will you be able to handle her if… you know…”

“Who do you take me for, Thorax?”

“Fair enough. What about the inspection? Do you think it’s going well so far?”

“What I think doesn’t matter here. Though, she hasn’t stormed away yet and isn’t raising her voice as much as her file makes it seem to be her habit, so unless she’s completely disoriented by the hive’s layout and concerned that we might decide to suck the love out of her at the slightest of provocations, it could be worse.”

“That’s not very reassuring…”

“Take that to the feelings forum. I’m not here to be sappy.”

“I know; you’re too practical for that. But do you at least have any suggestions on how to improve the experience for her, now that you’ve seen what she’s like first-hoof?”

“No. You’re the one with the talent of indulging people, why do you need my help?”

“But she kind of reminds me of you! Can’t you at least-”

The worker had finished showing Ms Harshwhinny everything there was to be shown and gone to return to his duty, and she rejoined us.

“How did you like the hotel, Inspector?” I asked.

“It’s adequate, assuming your workers can finish everything before the deadline.”

“I have every confidence that they will!”

“We’ll see. But while important to the Games, these are all secondary issues. Are you going to show me the one thing the Games cannot take place without?”

“The stadium? Yes, that’s the next step on our tour! Follow me!”

I caught a muffled ‘finally’ as I trotted downstairs, but a few minutes later, after we passed through the southernmost exit into the area surrounding the stadium, the inspector’s strung-up flavor of aura evaporated completely as she laid her eyes on the most important point of her visit. The stadium matched the style of the hive and hotel from the outside, being somewhat hivelike itself except much shorter, and with wide entrance halls spanning the entire circumference of the ground level and just-above-ground-flight-entrance level, giving a sort of spider web feel mellowed by the abundance of moss, vines, and flowers planted in the connecting beams and all over the stadium’s outer surface. Walking inside, she was met first with spacious hallways and then with the arena carefully measured and arranged in accordance with the rules and instructions we’d found in one of the books in the library, completed with changeling-style decor in the spectator area and at the competitors’ entrances.

Pharynx and I waited for her to take it all in, upon which she cast us a suspicious glance and pulled out a large roll of measuring tape from one of her jacket pockets and proceeded to measure the arena. I looked at Pharynx as a wave of panic washed over me. Was this normal or had she found some irregularity visible to the naked eye that we’d failed to notice because we’d only been in a stadium a couple of times before? Had we made a measurement error? Were we about to get disqualified? Pharynx frowned at me to calm down, but that became impossible after she pulled some kind of an instrument from another of her jacket pockets and started to wave it around. What even was that thing?

Eventually she put the tape and the device away and rejoined us.

“The arena size and proportions are in accordance with specifications and the thaumometer only shows background noise,” she stated. Catching my blank stare, she added, “That means you’re not using magic to cheat.”

“Oh, good,” I breathed. “I mean, I knew that!”

I wanted to kick myself as soon as the words left my mouth. Wonderful job, Thorax! Now you’ll only look more suspicious! Did you just send your brain on a vacation? Luckily, an opportunity for distraction presented itself in the form of Ms Harshwhinny’s growling stomach.

“Gosh, I’m so sorry!” I gasped. “We didn’t even offer you anything to eat and the dining room was right there half an hour ago! A couple of drones have volunteered to prepare a meal for you; it should be ready by now… Do you like falafel?”

She nodded curtly but her aura screamed yes!, and we returned to the hotel, where a table in the restaurant had already been set. One plate, one glass, and one set of silverware, complemented by a vase of flowers, and that was enough, as Pharynx and I weren’t going to eat the food cooked for her.

Just as we sat down, a drone approached with a steaming soup tureen.

“Welcome to our humble restaurant!” she chirped. “It’s a pleasure to meet you! My name is Ecdysis and I’ll be your server today. Shall we start with some asparagus soup?”

“You seem to have brought it already, so obviously we shall.”

“Wonderful!” She filled Ms Harshwhinny’s plate. “Would you like a drink? We have orange juice, strawberry juice, apple juice, an assortment of teas, and water.”

“No coffee?”

Ecdysis cast a panicked glance at me. Had we really forgotten that?

“Nevermind,” Ms Harshwhinny said. “I’ll take dog-rose tea, if you have it.”

“We do! Coming right up!” She dashed away, leaving the tureen behind.

The soup smelled wonderful and I had no doubt the taste wouldn’t disappoint, but Ms Harshwhinny gave it a suspicious sniff regardless. Apparently satisfied, she grabbed the spoon, only to put it back sown with a scrunched face.

“What is this?” she muttered. “Ecdysis!”

The eager drone flew back. “The water for your tea is still boiling, ma’am-”

“Why is this spoon dirty?”

“...it is?”

“There’s some greenish grime on the handle!” True enough, some of it had remained on her hoof. “Don’t you know how to wash utensils?”

“So sorry! I’ll bring another right away! Um, here’s a cloth if you want to clean yourself up…”

While the Inspector scrubbed her hoof clean and Ecdysis was fetching another spoon, I caught Pharynx hiding a smirk. What was he- oooh… Wow, you never leave things to chance, huh, Pharynx?

The new spoon was satisfactory, and apparently so was the soup, as our guest didn’t pause even once to say anything. Unless she was just that hungry?

The tea arrived just as she was finishing up the plate.

“Your tea, ma’am,” Ecdysis stated, setting the tray onto the table. “Would you like more soup?”

“No, I’ve had enough.”

“I’ll bring the main course, then-”

“But I am wondering who cooked it.”

“Coxa and I cooked the whole lunch. Is something wrong?”

“No. On the contrary, it’s surprisingly good, considering it was made by someone who probably never tasted it and wouldn’t have had the need to cook.”

“Actually, we both have experience in preparing pony food from our infiltrator days. I was a chef in a restaurant in Baltimare, and Coxa was deployed into service in a noblemare’s mansion in Trottingham but got found out early on. We both tasted pony food occasionally, too, as it was part of our cover.”

“Aren’t you breaking some kind of rule for telling me that?”

“I would be in Chrysalis’ time, but Thorax put an end to our exploitation of others, and that includes no longer lying about our past as there’s no need to keep secrets anymore and people deserve to know.”

I nodded. “Noling is required to spill the beans on what they did in the old days, though. How much they reveal is entirely up to them.”

“And how do ponies react to being told they were taken advantage of?”

“It depends on the pony, but overall they aren’t as furious as they used to be. Some even put two and two together after we disappeared when Thorax recalled us to the hive and had a whole speech ready when we came back to explain ourselves or wrote us letters when they heard mail delivery to the hive was a thing now!”

“Interesting. You may go.”

She obeyed and returned immediately with a tray of food. “Just your main dish now, ma’am: falafel with a side of potatoes and eggplant. Bon appetit!”

This time, Ms Harshwhinny took a moment to examine the fork before digging in. “Hmmm… nice to see at least some utensils are washed properly…”

“That was deliberate,” Pharynx stated as she took the first bite.

“I beg your pardon?!”

“The ‘grime’, as you called it, was actually an ointment that we came across on a mission a few months prior to Chrysalis’ defeat and took a sample for study when it turned out capable of collapsing a changeling’s disguise. We wanted to find a way to negate that effect but to no avail. The concerns about it being potentially used against us are no longer an issue now that my brother reformed us and is forging alliances like crazy, but one concern still remains.”

“What concern?”

“Chrysalis is still at large, and since the two of us have never met you before and therefore couldn’t recognize you by personality and shared experiences, I ordered Ecdysis to plant some changeling revealer ointment onto the spoon because it was something you were likely to touch.”

“In case it wasn’t clear,” I added, “you’ve passed the test.”

“I see,” she mused. “But Chrysalis was overthrown, what, a year and a half ago? How do you know she wouldn’t have found a way to work around it by now?”

“We don’t, but we paid close attention to your behavior and aura throughout the day and haven’t found anything to doubt your identity and motives. The spoon trick was arranged prior to your arrival, by the way, and I decided to go through with it regardless of our impressions of you for an extra layer of security.”

“I hope you’re not upset with us,” I said.

She considered this over a mouthful or two of her lunch. “I’m not. Normally I would be, but you have a potentially serious issue and you handled it adequately. Do you intend to subject the athletes and spectators to the same test during the Games?”

Pharynx and I exchanged glances. I knew what he’d want, but although I didn’t disagree, this was a matter worth discussing.

“We haven’t decided,” I told her. “There are advantages, but if Chrysalis is determined enough, she could sneak in and replace someone at any point during the course of the Games, so everyone would have to be tested repeatedly, and some might not like it even if they have nothing to hide. It could blow up in our faces despite the best intentions. We may get away with demanding it only from athletes or troublemakers, and the rest we’ll have to simply trust to be who they say they are. Another option would be to watch out for any aberrant auras and behaviors, which Pharynx’s security teams would probably do either way. All this is assuming she isn’t tracked down and captured before the Games, of course. What do you think?”

“I think each approach has merits and drawbacks, but the Games aren’t happening tomorrow. We have plenty of time to discuss the strategy and to rethink our approach if something changes in the meantime. But regardless of what we decide, you’ll have to ensure your security team is trained and up to date with all the protocols.”

“They will be,” Pharynx stated.

“Wait,” I interjected. “Are we talking hypothetically, or…?”

“No, Your Highness,” Ms Harshwhinny said. “I had my doubts prior to the inspection based on the changelings’ old reputation and have been preparing to announce Vanhoover as the next host, but not only have you swept away those doubts, you’ve actually impressed me by how much you’ve accomplished in such a short timespan! You’ve proved yourselves to be more than capable of hosting the next Equestria Games, and I have every confidence you will live up to the challenge!”

Under the Sea

“Hi, Thorax…”

“Ocellus? Goodness, it’s great to see you! Come here, my little bookbug!”

“I’m sorry I missed Hearth’s Warming…”

“It’s alright; your parents told me what happened at the school. We still missed you, but knowing you were staying behind for a friend who doesn’t have a family to spend holidays with made it a little easier to bear. We’re so proud of you, you know that?”

She blushed. “Heh, thanks…”

“But Hearth’s Warming was only a few days ago. I thought you were staying in school for almost the entire break?”

“That was the original plan, yes, but then we came up with the idea of visiting everycreature’s homes for a few days until the next semester starts so the school staff can take a break too, and Headmare Twilight liked the friendship-building potential of the idea… so… this is our first stop.”

The other five students came out from hiding in a hallway.

“I hope we’re not intruding, Your Highness?” Sandbar asked. “We can send a letter to Counselor Starlight to teleport us back or send us further ahead if you don’t want us around-”

“Why wouldn’t we want you around? You’re Ocellus’ friends! Though I’m not sure we have enough solid food stocked up…”

“Food no problem,” Yona said. “Headmare sent cart with food when we say hive first stop! Yak left cart in meadow outside!”

“Oh, so that’s settled!” I made a mental note to thank Twilight and Starlight in my next letter to Ponyville. “Now, let’s find some chambers for you. Will you be alright in the hotel? You’ll have the honor of being its first guests! Some of the rooms are finished, but most are still being worked on, so I’m going to have to ask you to stick to the finished areas in order to avoid getting lost and to allow the drones to work. I’ll make sure someling is always available to you in case you need something, and of course, you’re free to drop in at the hive whenever you want. Ocellus, would you rather stay with your friends or with your parents?”

“Well, I do miss my family… Guys, do you mind if I stay with them and come hang out with you when I can?”

The matter was quickly settled with her friends’ reassuring words.

“But I still want to see the hotel! I still can’t believe we’ll be hosting the next Equestria Games! We heard our professors almost blew it when helping Princess Cadance impress the Inspector the last time! And you landed it despite our old reputation! How did you do it?”

I chuckled. “All in due time, Ocellus. Now, how about a tour?”

A few days later, Silverstream flew up to the throne room with a piece of paper in her claw.

“King Thorax? Am I interrupting?”

“No, not at all! How can I help you?”

“I just received a letter from mom! I’ve been telling her and dad and my brother and all of my cousins about how wonderful a time we’re having here, and I guess they told aunt Novo about it, and since we’re due to move on to Mount Aris tomorrow, mom said to tell you that aunt - that’s Queen Novo, I forgot to mention - invited you and whoever else you want to bring to travel with us and spend a few days in our kingdom! Isn’t this exciting? We haven’t had foreign dignitaries since, like, forever! Not counting that time when Headmare Twilight popped up unannounced, I mean! Does that even count if she spent a few hours there?”

I chuckled at her outburst of energy. “It counts if you want it to count, I guess. But are you sure we’re actually invited? She didn’t just say it to be polite?”

“Nope! See for yourself!”

She passed me the letter and pointed at a paragraph. It read:

Word of your and your friends’ exploits in the Changeling Kingdom even reached your aunt Novo! Skystar must have rambled about it all day because Novo dropped by and vented about it for a full hour yesterday! In the end, she admitted after some nice, relaxing kelp that in spite of wishing her daughter would calm down and act serious every once in a while, hearing so much about changelings in such a short amount of time piqued her interest and she’d like to meet them. Would their king be interested in visiting? We can make arrangements for him and any other changelings he chooses to bring as his entourage and your group’s chaperones. Can you find out if he’s available and willing, or should we plan for a different time?

The letter went on about matters that were none of my concern so I returned it to Silverstream. “I think we can work something out. You wouldn’t happen to know where Pharynx is?”

“Right here.” He flew up over the edge of the plateau. “Saw this one flying around with an aura of a maniac and came to see what’s up with her.”

“Ooh, I’m a maniac? Cool! I’ve never been a maniac before! Is it fun?”

I shrugged at Pharynx’s confused expression. “How do you feel about a trip to the hippogriff lands tomorrow?

“Banshee and Spiracle already agreed to chaperone the students.”

“I know, but Silverstream just came to tell me I’ve been invited to meet their queen and can bring whoever I want.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Well, yes… unless it’s a problem…”

“Ugh, fine. I’ll tell Grim to cover for me at the training grounds tomorrow.”

As per Pharynx’s advice, we were ready to head out by dawn, which I quickly became grateful for as the night chill made way for unexpectedly warm morning sun and then the scorching heat as the day progressed, even as we flew high up above the sand of the southern badlands. I believed I could still handle it, if only thanks to the slight breeze provided by the fluttering of my wings, and Smolder seemed to be enjoying herself - unsurprising, really, as she could walk through fire and swim in lava - but poor Yona was sweating profusely on the back of Banshee-turned-ladybug despite the buzzing of the monster-sized wings and the shade provided by Ocellus and Spiracle. The other students were faring only marginally better, just enough to put up brave faces that their auras didn’t match.

I moved closer to Pharynx. “I’m starting to think we should have headed out a little earlier…”

“Well I wanted to, but some creatures kept whining about it being too early!”

“Did you tell them it was going to be this hot out here?”

“I did. The dragon didn’t care and the others must have thought I was exaggerating for the sake of exaggerating.”

“Well, at least we got part of the way under better conditions… though maybe we should have packed more water…”

“Quit whining. We’re only about two hours away.”

Two hours?! “Wha- but-”

“That’s to Mount Aris,” he added. “We reach the ocean in an hour or so, and the heat should be less intense above the water.”

“Oh, good… though I still don’t get it why you refused to let me teleport everyone at least to the coast-”

“Because chances are you’d only end up in Klugetown.”

“C’mon, how bad can that place be?”

“Lemme think. A peace-loving king whose reforms cost those crooks a whole lot of customers, and a half-dozen naive, just as peace-loving kids. No, I really don’t see how anything could go wrong there…”

I groaned to myself and kept flying.

Eventually the horizon changed from the dull monotony of sand to clusters of derelict buildings, only marginally less beige and brown than the sand itself, some clusters spanning taller than they were wide, and upon closer inspection, bustling with activity, though we were still too far away to make out much detail. One thing that was noticeable from a distance, however, were patches of intense blue beyond the buildings.

“That’s Klugetown,” Pharynx announced to anyone who still hadn’t figured it out. “One thing you need to know about that place is that if something exists, it’ll be on sale there. That potentially includes students of friendship, preferably but not necessarily alive, so be wary if you ever end up there by yourselves. We won’t be landing for any lunch breaks. Luckily for you, most of these crooks can’t fly, and I’ll handle those that can if you catch their interest.”

“I’m not afraid of them!” Smolder and Gallus quipped simultaneously.

“I know, guys,” I said, “but let’s not test that assumption, okay? Just stick together.”

“Maybe we can befriend them!” Silverstream chirped. “Wouldn’t our professors be impressed!”

“Please don’t,” I squirmed. “At least not until you’re older. I don’t want anything to happen to you! If Pharynx says these guys are dangerous-”

“They are dangerous!” he interjected.

“-exactly. The head of a country’s defense forces would know, especially when that country used to wage wars with the rest of the world. I understand your wish, Silverstream, I really do, but… not today, please. It’s not safe.”

“Last I heard,” Smolder said, “you weren’t concerned about safety when confronting Chrysalis; what makes you think this is any different?”

“It is different! My friends were taken prisoner, I went to save them, and yes, I was aware of the danger every single moment and I was afraid!”

“And for a good reason,” Spiracle interjected. “Thorax almost died in that throne room. I was there, I saw it. Long story short, if he hadn’t blasted her with love, she would have either forced Pharynx to slice him open with her sword, or she would have done it herself.”

“...oh.” An awkward silence fell onto the group, until Sandbar asked, “How did you know blasting her with love would defeat her and reform everyling?”

“I didn’t. It just… happened. I actually wanted to show everyling how much love they could gain by sharing, and everything else was an unexpected side-effect. It could have easily failed, and who knows what the world would have turned into.”

He nodded, and as nocreature was in the mood for conversations anymore, we continued our flight in silence. We were all but past Klugetown by now, and the ocean waves brought a welcome freshness that dispelled the exhaustion brought upon us by the desert heat. We just had to pass the final cluster of structures that made up the harbor and the airship port, and then the ocean spread wide before us, broken up only by a few islands on the horizon. One of those islands was much taller than all the others combined, centered in a small archipelago, and unusually symmetrical.

“Is that Mount Aris?” Ocellus asked, pointing at the tall island, to which Silverstream nodded enthusiastically. “Whoa… I can’t wait to see it up close!”

It was a sentiment I shared, and as we were approaching, the details of the majestic island became clearer, fueling the anticipation. There was a beach at the bottom, and a serpentine pathway leading uphill from it through a forest, ending at a glorious gateway discernible from afar, beyond which sprawled a vast, dreamlike settlement of treehouses, each shaped like the loveliest lily of the valley, and the paths between bustled with activity; further uphill from the village was a verdant plateau charming in its own way even from afar, and on the smaller islands surrounding the tallest one, more structures could be seen, similar to the ones in the main village. One island prided itself with a port, too, and a few held bridges and what might have been the foundations of a future railway.

“Hm. They’ve been busy,” Pharynx mused. “The last team sent here reported this was a ghost town. Then again, that was in the old days, and it makes sense the hippogriffs would return and restore the place to its old glory now that the Storm King is dead.”

“You never said anything about us having invaders in Seaquestria,” I said. “Neither did Psycho or Urtica, now that I think about it…”

“That’s because we didn’t have any. The last ones returned to the hive when the hippogriffs decided to hide underwater. It was deemed the safer option for us, and the seaponies weren’t going anywhere.”

“What was that team doing here, then?”

“Looking for you.”

“Hey,” Silverstream interjected, “can we land on the top of Mount Aris?”

“Not in the village?”

“It’ll be worth it, I promise!”

She was proven correct even before we touched down. The calming scenery of the plateau would have been a rewarding end to our journey all on its own, but I wouldn’t have expected it to sound so captivating! What was this music that complemented the visuals of our surroundings so perfectly?

“Welcome to Harmonizing Heights!” Silverstream sang. “Isn’t it great?”

Not even Pharynx thought to disagree, despite lacking the enthusiasm to agree like the rest of us.

“Fascinating,” Spiracle said. “Are the melodies caused by the resonance of the winds and the air currents on the shape of the plateau, by any chance?”

“I have no idea! Are they? Maybe aunt Novo would know? I always thought it was because of the legend of-”

“Silverstream! Oh, and King Thorax?” a hippogriff addressed us as a group of them flocked to us from downhill. “Our apologies, Your Highness; we were expecting you in the village! Though, it makes sense my daughter would bring you here first… much easier to wow people here than down there… Ahem. I’m Sky Beak, Silverstream’s father as I’ve said already, and honored to meet you. All of you! Silverstream has told us so much about you in her letters! If you’d care to come with us, we’ve prepared a festival in the honor of your arrival down there in the village.”

“We are honored, Mr Sky Beak, but you didn’t have to go through all the trouble of preparing the whole festival…”

“Nonsense! It isn’t every day we get a visit from foreign royalty and a group of creatures from all over the world all at once!”

“They also hold festivals, like, every weekend, so it’s not that big a deal,” Silverstream chuckled.

“Well, that too,” Sky Beak admitted. “Which isn’t to say that celebrating your arrival means any less to us! Now come along!”

A younger hippogriff poked Sky Beak. “Won’t aunt Novo be annoyed if she has to wait until after the festival?”

“Hmm, you’re right. Your Highness, would you mind terribly accompanying my son to Novo’s castle? She prefers to stay underwater but is just as excited to see you as the rest of us!”

“Yeah!” Silverstream agreed. “Maybe we can drag her ashore and get her to join the festival this time!”

“I suppose we could go to her first,” I said, turning to the students and Ocellus’ parents. “Will you guys be alright without us?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll keep an eye on them,” Banshee assured me, and the group headed for the gates leading to the village.

Meanwhile, the young hippogriff approached Pharynx and me. “It’s an honor to meet you, Your Highnesses. I’m Terramar, Silverstream’s brother.”

“Pleased to meet you, Terramar! And just ‘Thorax’ is fine! I’ve never been a fan of high titles.” I hoped Pharynx would get the hint and introduce himself, but he didn’t. Hadn’t I told him to make an effort prior to leaving? Then again, maybe his idea of ‘effort’ was to restrain himself from ripping apart anyone who dared approach me… “And this is my brother Pharynx, also the leader of the hive’s defenses. He’s… not very social, so please excuse him…”

“It’s alright. Contrary to what you’ve just witnessed, there are hippogriffs and seaponies who aren’t especially social too, so I understand. Now, may I take you underwater?”

We took to the air and flew all the way down to the beach, only catching a glimpse of the village and the festival along the way. It looked to be interesting and I looked forward to coming back later, but royal duties had to come first.

Terramar stepped into the water, then halted and turned to us. “Uh, this is awkward, but I don’t know if the pearl of transformation works on changelings… Can you breathe underwater?”

“We can store around one hour’s worth of air,” Pharynx said.

“Okay, that should be enough to at least get through the introduction…” He touched his necklace and was engulfed in a flurry of swirling lights, from which he emerged with fins and fishtail in place of claws and hooves, and disappeared under the surface. Pharynx and I matched his form and followed as he led us into the ocean’s depths.

The enveloping blue got gradually darker, and just as I was starting to worry we’d get lost in the pitch black at the bottom, a slight glow broke through from below us, growing lighter and larger as we approached, until the underwater city became clear in all its glory.

“Whoa…” I whispered wide-eyed. The seaponies hadn’t sat idly in exile! They’d made the most of it to turn their refuge into a home!

“I know, right?” Terramar said. “We took to decorating the place as a distraction from worrying what the Storm King could be doing to our homes on Mount Aris and whether or not he’d figure out where we’d gone and how to get to us. It didn’t help much, but no one wanted to tear anything down, and now that we’re free, those who grew to like the underwater life were so happy to finally have a choice that we kept decorating some more!”

“How does it work?” Pharynx asked. “Did you separate yourselves by where you wanted to live or do you go back and forth as needed?”

“I go back and forth because I couldn’t decide. Everyone else did decide, so it felt awkward for me until mom and dad reassured me I didn’t have to choose between them - mom’s a seapony, by the way - and everyone else mostly sticks to what they opted for.”

“Is it hard for you that your parents are separated?”

“Not really. They’re on good terms and we meet up on the beach every so often, and most families have members on both ends, so I’m not the exception in that regard. We’ve learned how to make it work. Oh, we’re at the castle already! I think aunt Novo will understand if you want to spend a little more time touring Seaquestria-”

“We’re burning air here and I don’t want to waste time surfacing for breath more times than I have to,” Pharynx spat.

“...right. Of course. Sorry.” Deflated, Terramar led us below the dome of the castle, to where the entrance was apparently located. “Aunt Novo is waiting.”

“If we have time later, a tour would be nice,” I said to Terramar just before he left us alone to meet the queen, and though he nodded politely, it had done little to brighten up his aura. I decided to catch him later and see what could be done about it; also, another lesson on tact with Pharynx was in order.

The castle, or the throne room at least, was simple in layout, and all we had to do was swim up to the large shell that turned out to be the throne. A purple fin hung lazily from the edge, only to move abruptly when we were about halfway to reaching it.

“Are you the changelings?” a deep, monotonous voice mumbled. Had she been asleep or was she simply bored out of her mind? “I didn’t expect you so soon.”

“Yes, um, I’m Thorax and this is my brother Pharynx. Pleased to meet you, Your Highness!”

“Indeed.” She eyes us for a moment. “Are you always this colorful or did the pearl of transformation have an unusual effect on you?”

“We’re always like this,” I said. “Also, we transformed through our own magic, so-”

“Queen Novo,” Pharynx interjected, “you have twenty minutes to say what you want before our air supply runs out and we have to surface. You would have had longer if that guy didn’t waste time on rambling and-”

“Pharynx,” I growled, and he took the hint. For now, at least; I’d have a word with him later. “Please excuse him, Your Highness; we’ve had a long journey and he’s had to ensure the students’ safety…”

“I’m not a nymph anymore, Thorax,” he grumbled.

“I see your brother’s attitude hasn’t strayed very far from that of the changelings we used to know,” Novo stated.

“Someling has to keep a level head while my brother holds hive-wide hugging sessions,” he quipped, and Queen Novo burst into laughter.

“Oh, you’re a delight, General,” she said, composing herself.

“First Commander.”

“Oh?”

“Chrysalis had her own military hierarchy and I saw no reason to reinvent it now that Thorax is in charge.”

“Well, First Commander, like I said, you’re a delight. A refreshing mix of the familiar old and the intriguing new… I have to admit, you’ve jostled my expectations.”

“Which were…?”

“No matter. A queen needs not reveal everything, hm?” She chuckled to herself. “What I can reveal is that I have a proposition for you.” This time, she was looking intently at me.

“Yes?” I said.

She reached into her throne and presented a scroll; I recognized it as one of the copies of the declarations of peace I’d sent out a while back. “This says you wanted to forge an alliance even though I doubt you could have known much about us, though I may be wrong on that account since your courier knew where to look for us. Am I right in assuming you sent these everywhere and hoped someone would take you seriously?”

“Well… yes, kind of… but we were still enemies with the whole world back then and I couldn’t really afford to be picky about where potential friends were coming from regardless of what they were like… For what it’s worth, I’ve since learned more about the hippogriffs and would be interested in an alliance even if I hadn’t already offered it…”

“Good save,” she said with a smirk. “After Storm King, I’m cautious about who we choose to ally with, lest we get betrayed. I’m sure you understand that, despite your change for the better, your past doesn’t bode well for you.”

I hung my head. Was this why she’d requested us here? “Of course,” I said.

“However, because of your change for the better, as witnessed by my niece during her time around your Ocellus and in your hive, I’m becoming confident that an alliance with the Changeling Kingdom is worth considering, especially now that I’ve met you in person. Not right away, I mean, but I think establishing diplomatic relations would be a good first step.”

“Oh, right! Yes, of course! Where do you suggest we begin?”

“By arranging a communication line between our lands. Does the hive have any form of postal service or do you send couriers as and when needed?”

“Kind of both, actually. We only need them for communication with other lands, and so far, Equestria and the Crystal Empire are the only ones we get regular mail from on an everyday basis. Their mailponies have been bringing the mail most of the time and I imagine things will be easier once the railroad between them and us is finished.”

“Ah, yes, Silverstream mentioned this railroad. Is the construction coming along well?”

“Yes, there haven’t been any delays! We expect it to be finished about a month from now.”

“We’ve been rebuilding our own railways that were destroyed in the early battles against the Storm King. We meant for them to reconnect Mount Aris with our historic territories on the mainland and to rebuild those communities over time, but now that my people are renewing their ties to Equestria, a railway going all the way there would be useful.”

“And the Changeling Kingdom is right in the middle… We could connect the railways across the badlands! I’m sure the ponies will agree to modify the construction plans! I can probably find changelings with a relevant skill set to join in the effort!”

“What’s next?” Pharynx muttered. “You’re gonna decide to build a port on our eastern coast and a branch of the railway leading to it?”

Novo and I looked at him, then at each other.

“...did Pharynx just give us an idea?” I asked.

“Like I said, he is a delight, isn’t he?”

The delight groaned and facefinned.

“The railroad and the port will make it easier for our peoples to forge and maintain friendships,” I mused.

“In the meantime,” she agreed, “we can send couriers back and forth to exchange letters.”

“And the hive will welcome the hippogriffs whenever they decide to visit! Seaponies too, though I’m afraid we only have one river and a couple of small lakes.”

She waved me off. “They can be hippogriffs temporarily. The pearl of transformation has no limit on how many times it can be used.”

“In any case, we’ll be honored to have them over!”

“The changelings are welcome here too, as long as they don’t revert to their old habits.”

“They won’t-”

“Thorax, we need to surface,” Pharynx interjected.

“Why?”

“Our air supply will run out while we’re still underwater if we stay here much longer.”

“I don’t think we’ve been down here that long-”

“Do you want to drown?”

“...fine,” I relented. “Queen Novo, would you mind excusing us for about half an hour? We’ll try to be back sooner than that-”

“Actually, it won’t hurt to go up there myself,” she said. “It’s been a while since I last participated in a hippogriff festival, anyway. Would you care to join me?”

Mourning

A couple of weeks after the completion and opening ceremony of the Equestria-Changeling Kingdom railway, a letter arrived for me on the train. Nothing special about it at first glance, as it was neither the first letter the hive had received in this fashion nor the only one in its batch. The fact that it had come from the princesses was no big deal, either, except that it bore the seals and signatures of all the princesses and Shining Armor.

“What do you make of this?” I asked Pharynx after mulling over its contents for most of the day.

He paid it a cursory glance from three steps away and shrugged. “Are you being invited to another party?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know.”

“Have you forgotten how to read?”

“Of course not,” I snorted. “I’ve read it several times during the course of the day but I can’t figure out what they want. They’re usually more direct and… less ambiguous…”

“Let me see.” He grabbed the letter from my hooves. “‘Dear Thorax, a matter we believe likely to be of some relevance to the hive and possibly to the diplomatic relations between our nations has been brought to our attention. There is no urgency in the sense of people’s safety being jeopardized by the situation, but we nevertheless wish to discuss the issue sooner rather than later. Please visit us in Canterlot at your convenience, and please bring Pharynx with you.’ What’s that all about?”

“See why I’m puzzled? They normally say why they want me there, and this is the first time they asked for you specifically!”

“You should verify it’s really them who sent this.”

“Who else would have sent it?”

“I dunno, perhaps a certain disgruntled former queen bent on revenge, trying to get us out of the way so she can seize back the throne?”

“Or maybe the ponies caught her!”

“Don’t you think they would have said so?”

“...right, probably. So what shall we do?”

“We’re sitting right here in the hive until you hail them via those communicators we gave them and verify that they really sent it. Then we’ll decide the next step.”

“You think they’ll tell me what it’s about when they didn’t want to in the letter?”

“They don’t need to tell you about that at this point. All they have to do is convince you that whoever’s on the other end of that communicator is who she says she is, and that she did send you a cryptic letter. There has to be some question you can ask whoever of them answers that only she would know the answer to. Can you do that?”

“I think so…”

“Good. You know where the communicators are.”

“King Thorax and First Commander Pharynx wish to see you, Princesses.”

Celestia and Luna rose up from their thrones as the guard ushered us into the room without needing a single word of explanation from us.

“Thank you for showing up so quickly,” Celestia said. “I hope we haven’t disrupted your schedule too much?”

“You didn’t, we hardly had anything going on. Are we disrupting anything by barging in unannounced like this?”

“There’s nothing upcoming that can’t wait, and it’s hardly unannounced if we summoned you.”

“Fair enough. What’s it about?”

“We have agreed it would be best to show you. Come with us,” Luna said. As we were leaving the throne room, she told one of the guards, “Please inform Shining Armor to meet us in the northern basement.”

“Restricted area?” Pharynx inquired.

“You are well informed,” Luna said. “The thoroughness of your former infiltrators at work, I presume?”

He nodded but offered no elaboration.

“What’s in the restricted area?” I whispered to him after a short while.

“No idea. The entrance was changeling-proofed and well guarded. Our agents never got in. Had they guarded the rest of Canterlot half as fiercely as that basement, Chrysalis would never have dared attempt the invasion.”

Shining Armor and his sister were already waiting for us at the bottom of a stairwell, next to a door that looked too imposing to open with a full-mana blast from an alicorn’s horn.

“These two are actually here in Canterlot?” Pharynx quipped. “Are you ponies sure you’re not the ones with spies all over the world?”

“We came after your brother hailed Twilight about that letter. Cadance would have come too but she’s expecting Neighponese delegates and it couldn’t be postponed on a hunch that you were about to get here.”

Pharynx glared at him for a few more seconds before mumbling something that sounded like ‘I don’t know why I believe you’.

Celestia interrupted the uncomfortable silence that had followed by casting a spell on the doors, which pulled open. “This way,” she said.

A little down a hallway was a room full of something that looked like weird storage cabinets. Once we were all inside, Celestia gave Shining a nod, and he pulled open one of the drawers, revealing the body of an unreformed changeling.

“I’m sorry for the secrecy,” he said, “but we didn’t want to discuss this in the unrestricted sections of the castle before consulting with you. Somepony could have overheard.”

I nodded, then gestured at the drawers. “Is this…?”

“Yes. Every one of these drawers contains a dead changeling, mostly the ones killed in the invasion of Canterlot, though some were found elsewhere at random times. In a way, this room is my fault. The invasion left me convinced that I’d failed as the Captain of the Royal Guard, and the public demanding retribution didn’t help any, so since I couldn’t change the past, I decided to make sure nothing like that would ever happen. That meant finding out everything about the enemy, and since you guys didn’t bring much in terms of unknown weapons and the prisoners were notoriously uncooperative, I was left with only one thing we could get anywhere with. As you can probably guess, there’s only so much that can be learned from corpses, so the investigation pretty much hit a dead end eventually, and everypony authorized to know about it simply put it out of their minds soon after being reassigned to other stuff.” He hung his head. “Actually, that’s not quite true. I didn’t put it out of my mind. Even after Cadance and I moved to the Crystal Empire, I kept hoping for some breakthrough that would get the investigation going again and produce some actual results. I thought I got that breakthrough when you showed up and was too stubborn to give up that hope to realize you were genuinely a good guy and how unfair it would be to turn you into a… uh…”

“A test subject?” I offered.

“...yeah… and I got dangerously close to that… and when I finally got over myself, I knew I should tell you about this room, but you weren’t authorized to know about it, and I kept telling myself that’s the reason why I didn’t tell you even after you overthrew Chrysalis, but eventually I had to admit to myself that it was only an excuse to conceal how ashamed I am of the whole thing. So I discussed it with Twi and Cady, neither of whom had known about it, and…” He shrugged. “... well, here we are. I’m sorry I never told you, Thorax.”

I wasn’t sure how to feel about what he’d just told me. On one hoof, I could understand his reasoning for why he’d brought this room into existence; we’d done horrible things and it was only normal for him to want it to never happen again, and it wasn’t like he could expect many of us to help him get there. On the other hoof, was this really the best way? Couldn’t he have come up with something less intrusive, even though we hadn’t given him a reason to think we could change for the better one day? And what about Celestia and Luna? One or both of them had to have authorized it; had they too been blinded by the stubbornness of our old ways and the hunger for retribution to the point where they didn’t bother considering the alternatives? Had they actually tried to consider alternatives only to fail to come up with any?

“I, uh, can’t say it’s alright,” I said eventually, “but I understand why you thought you had to do this. Just tell me one thing, and be honest: were any of these drones alive during the… experimenting?”

“No. A few were alive and locked up in prisons when the research started, but they died in their cells and were brought here afterwards. I was so worked up that I wouldn’t have held back from bringing the living ones from prisons if that meant getting results, but Princess Celestia outright forbade it. She and Princess Luna tried to talk some sense into me and didn’t get very far, but I still respected their decision even though I came this close to ignoring it every so often. That limit they set was pretty much the only thing that held me back and now I’m glad for it.”

“That makes no sense strategically,” Pharynx interjected. “You could only gain by trying to force useful information out of prisoners. Not that I’m complaining that you didn’t, but why didn’t you?”

“We had the opportunity to eradicate the changelings several times throughout history, even before my sister’s banishment to the moon,” Celestia said. “But it never felt right. I think I might have known on some level that you could turn good if given a chance.”

“Looks more like a thousand chances.”

“Indeed,” Luna said. “In the end, it was worth it to not give up on you.”

“Was it? What about all those subjects of yours that we captured and killed over the centuries?”

“We mourn their loss, and in the meantime, our defenses did their best to keep you away from as many ponies as possible.”

“I don’t think I would have condoned that approach if I were you.”

“Would you rather that we brought the changeling kind to extinction?”

He clenched his jaw but said nothing. Was he too proud to admit he was glad to be alive thanks to a ‘strategic mistake’?

The silence turned awkward and I attempted to break it. “I appreciate that you told us about this, even if it took a while. Are you still using the bodies for something?”

“We’re not,” Celestia said. “Even if the scientists hadn’t gotten everything they could out of them, the reason to keep them has long expired. We can release them to you whenever you wish to arrange the funerals.”

“Changelings don’t do funerals,” Pharynx remarked.

“We didn’t in the old days,” I corrected him. “Chrysalis probably thought it would waste training time or diminish our loyalty to her or whatever. There’s no reason why we can’t start, and judging by how many drones swarmed the archive a while back looking for relatives only to learn many were dead, I bet at least some of them would appreciate a chance to see them even if it’s just to say goodbye.”

“You do realize doing it once only means you’ll have to keep doing it whenever someling dies, right?”

I shrugged. “That’s the whole point of funerals, isn’t it?”

“Don’t you have enough going on already? And where are we even supposed to hold the funerals?”

“Why is it such a problem to you that a lot is going on in the hive? Noling ever said we all have to do the same thing! Okay, Chrysalis probably did, but she’s not around anymore, so… And the badlands are big enough that allocating part of it for a graveyard shouldn’t be a problem!”

“Except that all the corpses in the ground will attract the maulwurfs!”

“How did we handle that before?”

“We burned the corpses and dumped the ashes wherever.”

“Then we can keep burning them - it’s called cremation, right? - but instead of dumping the ashes wherever, we can do something respectful, say, plant a tree in them. That wouldn’t attract maulwurfs, would it?”

“...no.”

“Figured as much. Princesses, would the bodies fit in a train?”

“We can arrange as many cars as necessary and the ponies to carry them to the train station. The anti-decomposition spells seem to be holding. When would you like it done?”

“Whenever it suits you.”

“Then we’ll get right on it. Shining Armor?”

“I’ll issue a public statement.”

“There’s one more thing,” Twilight interjected. “When Shining told me about this, I remembered something you told me and went to check, and… well, there’s no easy way to say it, and you may have figured it out by now anyway, so… Thorax, Pharynx, your mother is in this room.”

“Don’t you think you’re overdoing it?”

After a couple days’ preparations, the procession of Royal Guards pulling the caskets had made its way through the streets of Canterlot to the train station as the crowd had stood by in revered silence, respectful enough to leave me not hanging too much onto the occasional mixed feelings in the spectators’ auras, unavoidable given the reminder of the horrors unleashed upon the city. Shining’s speech must have calmed the waters to an extent. The hive had already been informed and several propositions for the funeral arrangement had been waiting for us upon return; I’d added my own ideas, and after a long discussion of every detail from respectfulness and symbolism to feasibility and safety, we’d reached something that pretty much everyling agreed on. Putting it to practice had required another week or so of preparations, during which the drones had been saying goodbye to their tragically departed relatives.

Now that the preparations were ready and the funeral day had arrived, Pharynx still had his grievances.

“I’ve told you a million times,” I said to him, “I’m not overdoing it. The whole hive agrees nothing is overdone. Where do you see a problem?”

“It’s insane to see so many adults wail over an unavoidable fact of life.”

“Pharynx, they lost their parents and siblings, some even their children! Of course they’re sad! Wouldn’t you be if I were in one of those caskets?”

“I wouldn’t be making a show of it!”

“But you would be sad, right?”

“So?”

“So they are too, and sharing their pain will help them deal with their loss. Even if it doesn’t work for everyling, there’s no shame in mourning the death of a loved one. After all, we’re changelings; we can tell when someone’s hurting, therefore there’s little sense in trying to hide it.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine, let’s get it over with.”

We flew south, past the stadium and the freshly-planted gardens, further into the badlands, where rocks had been cleared to make space for what was due to become a graveyard and eventually a memorial forest.

The ground had been empty a couple of days ago; yesterday, a grid of firewood beds had been laid out, far enough apart not to pose a threat of merging into one enormous bonfire. Now, the place was brimming with drones gathered around each casket placed on its respective mound of firewood; in place of their usual colors, the sea of chitin had temporarily turned greyscale as an expression of grief for the ones they’d lost. The only spots of color belonged to the four alicorn princesses, Shining Armor, Spike, Starlight, and other foreign dignitaries, that is, the parts of them that weren’t clad in black, and to the lit torches in the guards’ hooves.

Pharynx and I, greyscale ourselves since before leaving our bedchambers, landed onto the podium set up for us in front of the crowd.

When the last stragglers joined us and the crowd settled, I began my speech, still unsure it would do the occasion justice even after days of preparation.

“My dear changelings and friends from afar, thank you for coming together today in such great numbers. I wish it were for a happy occasion. I wish we could welcome our brethren back home, witness their transformation, and celebrate the beginning of their new lives. Alas, it was not meant to be. The circumstances that lasted for centuries unquestioned and unchallenged had sealed their fate and led to their tragic and untimely demise. Those same circumstances denied us the chance to know our parents and children, some of which we are bidding a final farewell to on this day. But I do not wish to cast blame; I fear it would only deepen the wounds and provide no relief from the pain of loss and the endless what-might-have-beens. I wish we could reflect on the time spent with the ones we lost, but except for those who lost a sibling and the rare few whom life brought into the company of their now-lost parent or child unaware of the bond you shared, we’ve been deprived of the chance to make the memories, and there’s nothing to reflect on. Some of you, I believe, already sought those who might remember your lost relatives - their teammates, for example - and those who haven’t thought of it yet, feel free to do so; I’m sure they wouldn’t mind sharing some stories through which you might get a glimpse of your loved ones. Some of you are still looking; whether your relatives’ remains are forever lost, yet to be found, or somewhere in the nameless caskets, please know that we grieve for your loss just the same as if you had a casket to present. We share this pain, and though we cannot undo the past, I implore you, let this be a warning, both to us and to our allies and former enemies: may we never allow ourselves to return to the hatred that claimed our brethren’s lives; may the future generations not repeat our mistakes.”

As the choir began to hum a mournful melody, Pharynx unraveled a scroll and read out the names and final assignments of each departed drone, waiting between names for the guards to light up the respectful pyre and for Antenna to pass a seed to the drones’ families, until he ended with a familiar name and, after Antenna gave me her seed, called for respect for the unidentified and unidentifiable remains for which he took the last seed.

The fires burned for a long time and the choir hummed their melody until the last embers died down. Then, the team of pegasi on standby in the clouds above us started a drizzle intended to cool the ashes and provide the water for the seeds.

One by one, the families dropped their seeds into the ashes and waited for Proboscis’ workers to cover the mounds with a layer of soil before placing the nameplate markers and silently withdrawing back towards the hive.

When my turn came near the end of the ceremony, I glanced at the acorn in my hoof before planting it into the ashes, wondering how many years I’d have to wait before I could finally sit in the shade of its future tree. Would it grow at all? Antenna had assured me she’d soaked all the seeds in a fertilizer potion, but what if it didn’t work? Would we have to replant the seeds that fail to grow? And how would the families feel about it? Would it be seen as their relative being undeserving of being remembered or leaving a legacy? And would enough of the ashes still be there for the seeds to grant the dead drones their final transformation?

Maybe, maybe not. But even if the ashes merged with the soil and the two became indistinguishable, the matter that formed the ashes would still be there, right? The matter, and the sorrow over the memories we’d never forged.

I let the acorn slip out of my hoof.

Goodbye, mother…

A little away, Pharynx stuck an olive seed into the unidentified drones’ ashes.

Later in the evening, after the foreign guests had left and the hour approached bedtime, I realized I couldn’t find him.

He wasn’t on the military training grounds, not that there’d been any training today for him to check up on, as everyling had been required either at the funeral or for guarding the hive from any intruders that might have attempted to use this opportunity to sneak in.

He wasn’t in the weapons factory, or in his workshop, or in any of the remaining armories.

He wasn’t discussing things with Psycho, Proboscis, or any of his drill instructors. He wasn’t in the throne room. He wasn’t at the train station. He wasn’t air-patrolling the hive’s perimeter. He hadn’t been seen or heard grilling any unsatisfactory or insubordinate soldiers. He hadn’t caught any intruders to imprison or interrogate.

He hadn’t come anywhere near his bedchamber as far as anyling could tell.

I was on the verge of waking Psycho in a fit of panic and asking him to organize a search when a random drone mentioned an unexplained bat flying south earlier in the evening.

There were hardly any bats around here! Maybe…?

Unsure of where I might end up, I decided to check.

I found him in the badlands, in the part that wasn’t yet the memorial grove, standing motionless, staring at one particular nameplate.

“Can’t you ever leave me alone?” he grumbled, never taking his eyes off the ground.

It looks like you need to not be left alone, I almost said, but knowing he’d only shut himself off under the first hint of an onslaught of comments and questions, I simply stood next to him, only paying him a glance as I mirrored his posture, hoping he’d fill the silence but knowing that no force in the world could make share his thoughts and feelings, no matter how stiflingly dark his aura became under their mercy.

He needed an outlet, I knew. With an aura as tempestuously dark as I’d ever seen it, he needed one desperately, but there was no promise it would come in my presence.

“I should have sent someling else,” he said after an eon of silence. “I could have done it. I could have invented a reason why she couldn’t or shouldn’t go, why someling else would be a better choice, or why she’d be more useful guarding the hive while the rest of you rampaged over there… but I wanted to be an exemplary commander. I knew Chrysalis knew I could see the blood bond listed in her record, and I knew I was supposed to ignore it… I knew she’d know why I’d done it had I changed her assignment and I’d probably have gotten punished… Maybe it was deliberate and she was just testing me, I don’t know. I thought it wouldn’t matter. I thought I was doing the right thing, and I thought Canterlot would fall, I never even considered the possibility of our defeat… and now it’s too late.” He turned to face me, and for the first time in our lives, moonlight reflected in the tears that welled up in his eyes and streamed down his face. “I made a mistake, Thorax. I made a mistake and now she’s dead… now you’ll never know your mother and she’ll never know you… she’ll never know one of her eggs hatched into a king… she never got the chance to witness everything you did and be proud of how much you mean to the hive… and it’s all my fault…”

He had by now collapsed into my hooves and I held him as he sobbed his heart out. “It’s alright, Pharynx… you couldn’t have known… and if it hadn’t been her, it would have been someling else…”

“You don’t know that… maybe the ‘someling else’ would have done something differently and stayed alive…”

“Or maybe they would have killed somepony, which is no better than what happened.”

“That’s not helping.”

“But let’s assume you had reassigned mom to hive duty and deployed someling else to Canterlot, and that her replacement died. After everything that happened, could you look that soldier’s family in the eye and tell them you’re the reason their father or whoever is dead and why?”

He pulled out of the hug only enough to glare at me.

“It wasn’t your fault, Pharynx; you were following orders. Yes, I’m sad that I’ll never know her, but I’m just as sad for every drone we cremated today. I didn’t want to taint that speech at the ceremony, but their blood lies on someling else’s hooves, not yours. You know who ordered that invasion and every other, you know who designed the system to be the way it was, and you know who would have punished you for disobeying that system.”

“Are you… holding a grudge?”

“I try not to, and part of me is still hoping she’ll come around, but there’s no denying of what she did. That’s, in a way, why we need all this.” I gestured at the graves around us. “A reminder of the past, lest we repeat it.”

He smiled bitterly. “That crown seems to be growing on you, you know that?”

I smiled back. “Come on. Let’s go back to the hive.”

Resurrected Harmony

The mournful spirit lingered on in the days following the funeral. Drones often spent time in the graveyard, some smoothing out the soil that covered their relatives’ ashes, some sitting at the grave markers in deep thought, some talking with other visitors to the graveyard, presumably sharing stories about the deceased drones or discussing what else could be done to honor their memory. Decorating the graves seemed to be popular; I’d seen several drones crafting more elaborate nameplates than the ones placed initially, Antenna was busy with unusually high amounts of flowers even considering the increased demand for decorating the hotel and its surroundings, and I’d received several inquiries about my willingness to produce some buttercup cuttings for planting on the grave sites.

I’d granted all the requests, thankful that my buttercup had grown enough to give so many cuttings at once without it even being noticeable that something had been taken. The tree seeds planted into the ashes had all sprouted, too, and were growing impressively fast, some already being as tall as myself if not taller. Where in the name of eggshells had Antenna found that fertilizer potion? Either way, even if the graveyard was already becoming the memorial grove and looking way nicer than the dull, empty badlands, I wasn’t complaining about getting it to look even nicer than what the trees alone could accomplish; I believed our ancestors would have liked it, had they lived to see our new era. In that regard, a buttercup sprout was intended for my mother’s grave, and another for the grave of the unknown soldiers.

The drones were still visiting the memorial grove regularly, but as the days went on and most of the planting and decorating was finished, they weren’t spending as much time there anymore, and life in the hive gradually returned to its routine pace.

On one especially uneventful day, I grew bored of sitting in the throne room in wait of something to happen or someling to require my advice, and the nymphs just happened to be in the middle of an afternoon nap, so I took an easel and painting supplies from the arts-and-crafts section and flew out into the not-so-bad-anymore badlands. Betterlands?

A spot at a riverbend caught my eye. A tree and some shrubs had grown on one bank, cattails stretched further upstream, and vibrant flowers blanketed the surrounding land. Even a couple of frogs were resting on a rock! I didn’t need to look further to find the scene of my next landscape!

I hadn’t realized how much I missed painting until my brush made its first stroke across the canvas. Royal duties had left me little time for creative pursuits and I’d sacrificed following one personal desire to follow the desire to serve my subjects, but today, the universe had decided my subjects could wait. Inspiration beckoned, and this time, I heeded its call.

My brush danced across the canvas with a rainbow of colors shimmering under the bright summer sun; was it the skill of my magic wielding it or the warmth of the aura coming from my heart? How sweet was the passion that commanded every stroke, how dreamlike the trance that bound me to the canvas, how powerful the bliss that wove life into the shapes and colors!

The bliss and trance were so intense, apparently, that the rest of the world had ceased to exist to me until the painting was almost complete, and I almost ruined it when I noticed a newcomer and recoiled in surprise. He was an elderly unicorn sitting still in the meadow watching me patiently, and though I’d never met him before, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was familiar somehow.

“Please, carry on,” he said. “You don’t have to stop painting on my behalf.”

“Right… uh…” I fumbled frantically with my watercolors and brushes, only to spill the glass of water. “Oops…”

The unicorn levitated everything, spilled water included, back into position. “I apologize for startling you. Perhaps I should have announced my presence?”

“Um… I think I should have noticed you either way,” I admitted. “How long have you been here?”

“I arrived when you were coloring the water.”

“That must have been an hour ago at least! You could have- Um. Were you looking for me? How can I help you?”

He smirked at that. “I wasn’t looking for you specifically, though I won’t complain that I’ve met you. I assumed you would be too busy with royal duties to entertain guests and expected a conversation with some of your subjects unless they had more pressing matters. You are King Thorax of the changelings, I presume?”

“Yes, that’s me,” I said, smiling sheepishly. “I happened to have a moment for myself this afternoon, otherwise I would have been in the throne room most likely-”

“You do not have to justify yourself to me, Your Highness,” he said. “I understand leaders and heroes need to relax from time to time just like everypony else.”

“Thanks… oh, and just call me Thorax, please. I still don’t like all those high titles. Probably never will, heh…”

“Very well, Thorax.”

“Now, how can I help you, sir?”

“If we’re abandoning titles, it’s only fair that it goes both ways. Just call me Starswirl.”

Of course! Starswirl the Bearded! Twilight had mentioned his return from limbo and placed busts of him and the other Pillars in her school’s main lobby! How could I have forgotten?

But what was he doing here?

I must have looked either too starstruck to speak or utterly confused, if not both, as he chuckled to himself and said, “I see my reputation precedes me even if my face was unfamiliar to you after a millennium of absence.”

“Have I offended you? I’m sorry-”

“Not in the slightest. I would have taken offense in the past, but I’ve since come to realize that when one becomes merely a legend, he should expect the public not to know him in the flesh.”

So I, and probably a number of others, had still offended him to some degree, but he was trying not to take it personally. Fair enough… “Still, Twilight told me about your return and I saw your bust in her school. That doesn’t really excuse me.”

“I like to think I’m not quite as stiff as that bust is portraying me. At least, I hope to appear more approachable than a block of stone.”

“You saw the bust?”

“Princess Twilight was kind enough to invite me to her school not long ago and to show me everything. I must say, I’m impressed by what she’s accomplished.”

“Yeah, that’s Twilight… there’s no task, challenge, or obstacle she couldn’t handle…”

He nodded. “Courtesy of the magic of friendship, I’m told. I regret to say I never cared much for friendship back in my time… who knows what the world would have become had I understood friendship better… Then again, we are fortunate that someone else understood when it mattered.”

“Like I said, Twilight can-”

“Not only Twilight,” he interrupted me. “I understand you were a disciple of friendship long before there was a school; a disciple that taught a nation and has since passed the torch for one of his subjects to follow in his hoofsteps.”

I rubbed the back of my head awkwardly. “Aw, you’re making it sound more impressive than it was…”

“Your Ocellus would argue I’m not making it sound nearly as impressive as it actually was.”

“You’ve met Ocellus?!” I facehoofed to myself. “Of course you have. Why would Twilight neglect to introduce one of her most hardworking students?”

“The most hardworking, I dare say after what little time I had to make that judgment. It is curious you are not her father; she has your humility. Are you perhaps more distantly related?”

“If I am, either the records that trace our lineage to a common ancestor have been lost, or noling has cared to look. But one doesn’t need a blood bond to share a common trait, nor is it a promise of likeness. For example, my own brother couldn’t be more different from me than he is, and if you’ve met Ocellus, you had to have noticed her obsession with books rivals that of Twilight’s, and the two of them can’t be related at all since they’re not even the same species!”

“Then it must be an acquired trait nurtured by the people she looks up to.” He stroked his beard. “That would explain why she was so starstruck after Twilight introduced us compared to how I saw her in passing shortly before, while she was unaware of my presence… and why she spoke so highly about you when I asked about her home.”

How much had she said?! Not that I necessarily minded, but if somepony as used to praise and adoration as Starswirl must have been was impressed… “Aw, I don’t think I’m that praiseworthy… maybe that adoration is making her see me as better than I really am…”

“Even if we take that into consideration, the fact remains that it took her almost a full hour to wind down-”

“An hour?!”

“-and it didn’t sound forced at all. In fact, it’s what inspired me to visit the changeling land and see that wonder of hers with my own eyes, conditions permitting. I would have gotten around to it eventually anyway unless my age caught up with me first, but she made me curious to do it sooner rather than later.”

“I’m sure you would have gotten to visit us either way, not that I’m not honored to meet you now!”

“I’m older than I look, Thorax, and so much has changed in a thousand years that, even now that I’ve devoted myself to traveling the world in order to catch up with the changes and documenting them in my memoirs, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I can’t rely much on others to help; my fellow Pillars have returned to their homes and started over, and I myself have no descendants to turn to, having dedicated my life to serving Equestria in its early days. Longevity spells help, but even they can only do so much to a mortal, even one wielding a powerful magic.”

“I hope I’m not being rude, but how old exactly are you?”

“Centuries. I was there long before the births of Celestia and Luna, before the founding of Equestria, even before the changelings came into existence. I believe I may actually be responsible for the creation of your kind, or at the very least, for unleashing the first changelings into the world.”

“I’m not sure I understand… Are we a result of some kind of magical experiment gone wrong?”

“Not an experiment as such, but a chain of spontaneous events. You see, way back before the founding of Equestria, the pony tribes were divided and lived separately in hatred of one another, hatred so deeply ingrained that it stuck within the ponies’ bones after they died, permeating the graveyards. Such a concentrated well of emotions leaves a mark on the land. Add to that the magic of the unicorns who were buried alive because the doctors of that era didn’t know better, and a dark magic was born and infested the ground, and later when one such graveyard flooded, the resulting lake became cursed as well. It grew a carnivorous tree that consumed the unicorns’ bones, preyed on a nearby colony of insects, and drank the underlying dark hatred.”

“I think I see where this is going… but where do you come in?”

“I happened to travel past that lake in my youth. I observed what I just described to you as it was happening, made notes of it in my journal for future reference, and before I left, I nailed a warning sign into the carnivorous tree. I heard a loud crack as if a tree had fallen shortly afterwards but thought nothing of it, as this was in a forest, but when I returned to study the lake years later, I found the cursed tree had been split open for a while. It was another few years before the changeling swarms first openly attacked a pony settlement, but sporadic reports of previously-unknown insectoid monsters were already popping up; I traced the first one to barely a week after I first visited that lake.”

“The changelings must have grown in that tree, and the nail you drove into it must have provided them a way out,” I mused.

“That’s what I surmised too. And since only so many changelings could fit in that tree, those years of their sporadic sightings before their first open assault must be when they gathered their strength and grew in numbers.”

“And since we were forged in hatred, it makes sense that we’d have an insatiable hunger for love. The one thing missing from us, destined to remain missing until we learned to create it ourselves… just like our unicorn ancestors failed to do.”

“A likely theory,” Starswirl agreed. “It can be expanded on: your new colors are probably either an outward manifestation of that love, or a legacy of the unicorns’ colors once the darkness of the hatred was purged from you.”

I pondered everything he’d told me. “This is a lot, but I still don’t get one thing: why is Chrysalis different? I mean, why has her base form always been different from that of every other changeling? And why was I born different?”

“I don’t know for sure. She may have come from a very powerful unicorn, an especially evil one, one that was still alive when the tree consumed them, which would be possible if they arrived later than the others and were to drown in the lake or the tree snatched them as they were passing by, or maybe there was an unaccounted-for alicorn in one of the graves. She could also have come from a different insect than the rest of you, or there could have been magical forces at work inside the tree itself that decided to create one changeling different from the rest for some reason. Maybe she was supposed to become a biological queen, but that probably didn’t work, given that changelings mate in pairs. We might never know. As for you, maybe you had a spontaneous mutation that affected your perception of love, or whatever good was left in your species after all this time beat the odds against the overwhelming darkness in the process of creating you.”

“Do you still know where that tree was? I’m wondering if we can do something about the dark aura.”

“The tree remains as far as I know, unless it rotted away since I last saw it. The area was cleansed of dark magic, the lake was drained, the remaining skeletons relocated, and a network of caves was discovered underneath in the process. Given the area’s past, it was eventually decided to put the caves to use as what is now known as Tartarus.”

“...oh.” That was about as much as I could say, given the amount of new information to process and their implications.

“It seemed apt at the time,” he said. “If I’d known changelings would be good one day…”

“It’s alright,” I interjected, more for his benefit that I really believed my own words. “I understand. Still, it’s a lot to take in, and I’m not sure how the others would feel about it.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about it! “They deserve to know, but let’s not rush into making it public, okay?”

“I will not speak of it until you do.”

“Thank you. Now, you’ve seen our origin and our history; may I show you the particulars of how we turned out?”

Sister-in-law

The nursery echoed with excited squeals as water balloons flew through the air in all directions, occasionally resulting in a yelp or a shout of protest upon contact with an unsuspecting nymph or one too slow to dodge or redirect an incoming projectile. None were deterred by this temporary setback; if anything, it only fueled their determination to return the favor tenfold, regardless of whether or not they’d picked their target correctly, not that it mattered, as everyling had already scored countless hits at everyling else and missed enough that the nursery might as well have been converted into a swimming pool given how many water balloons had burst open on impact with the walls.

Due to my size, I wasn’t faring any better, much to the delight of some of the nymphs. I didn’t mind, having joined the game willingly, but after a while the number of them seemed to be growing, and soon enough, I couldn’t keep up with them anymore. I collapsed onto the floor, soaking wet and laughing myself out of breath.

“Alright, that’s enough for today,” Gossamer said, approaching from the adjacent chamber.

“Aww, but it’s just getting interesting!” Cicada protested.

“It’ll be just as interesting tomorrow. Now, it’s almost bedtime, and your parents are here for you. Everyling’s parents, I mean.”

The protests were half-hearted; they knew there was little point in trying to convince Gossamer and their parents to stay a little longer, and they were going to be back in the morning anyway. Whether or not I would have enough free time to drop by again remained to be seen, but I had no doubt they could think of fun activities regardless of my presence.

When all had left, I found a cloth to dry myself with, then helped Gossamer clean up the puddles and the other mess left in the wake of the balloon war.

“One of these days,” Gossamer muttered, “I’m gonna start asking the nymphs to start doing this.”

“Aren’t they a little too young for that?”

“Some are. I meant the older ones. Of course, I wouldn’t mind if the younger ones just cleaned up their own messes. I don’t expect them to scrub the entire room clean, but they’ll have to have a few responsibilities eventually.”

“Well, as long as ‘responsibilities’ don’t take up the entire day and rob them of their nymphhood…”

“I didn’t mean it like that, of course. Just a bit of tidying up at the end of the day, like what we’re doing right now, as long as they don’t make an even bigger mess while pretending to clean. Wouldn’t you like to be done with it sooner so you can go do other stuff?”

“I’m used to cleaning, and it’s not like I have anything urgent waiting for me right now-”

“Maybe you do,” she said, pointing at the exit and my brother standing in the doorway.

“...now what?” I groaned. Pharynx avoided the nursery like the plague, so if he was here looking for me, it had to mean trouble!

Except he wasn’t alone like I’d expected.

“See?” Grim said. “Told you he’d be here!”

“Whatever,” he grumbled.

“What are you guys doing here?” I asked. “Did something happen?”

“That depends,” Pharynx grumbled again.

“...I don’t follow.”

“We meant to ask, since it’s never happened before and you never stated your opinion on the matter as far as we know, would two changelings be allowed to officially get married if they wanted to?”

“Of course they w- hold on, ‘we’?!”

Grim nodded enthusiastically.

“As in, specifically the two of you?!”

Her nodding intensified and sprouted a matching wide grin. Pharynx just rolled his eyes but failed to conceal a smirk of his own.”

If either of them had intended to dodge a group hug coming from my direction, they hadn’t been fast enough.

“Aww, that’s wonderful!” I squealed. “Congratulations! I’m so so so happy for both of you!”

“Really, Thorax,” Pharynx protested, trying to push himself out of my grip and failing miserably. “We’re not married yet!”

Grim chuckled.

I needed a few more seconds to come to my senses and realize holding them in a choke-hug for much longer probably wasn’t going to accomplish anything useful, and when I released them, Pharynx backed off a couple of steps.

“But I don’t understand. How long have you been together? How did you get Pharynx on a setting that’s neither ‘grumpy’ nor ‘murderous’? Why didn’t either of you say anything?!”

“I thought we just did,” Pharynx remarked.

“We wanted it to be a surprise, sort of,” Grim explained. “Also, we weren’t sure at first where we stood with each other and where we wanted to take it. Didn’t want to make any rash decisions either… but I guess when you spend a long enough time around someone and work together through good times, trouble, and everything in between, you’re bound to develop trust and a deep understanding of each other.”

“Of course! It’s just… y’know… you really caught me by surprise…”

“That’s what you get by not paying attention,” Pharynx interjected. “Given how much I’ve relied on Grim ever since you took the throne, it should have been easy for someling with your capacity for love to figure out what’s going on!”

“I thought you were just friends! How was I supposed to know there’s romance involved?”

“...at this rate I’m gonna start thinking your aural senses are nonexistent,” he groaned. “You can’t be that clueless!”

“Maybe you’re just hiding your aural flavors better than you think,” Grim said to him. “Bet I would have been easier to read, except I’m not around Thorax nearly as often as you are, and he knows I’ve been looking for a mate so a romance-flavored aura wouldn’t be a surprise from me.”

“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“That’s what you like about me,” she winked. “Thorax, do you have a vision of what changeling weddings should look like, or do we get to plan what we want in the ceremony?”

“Honestly, I have no idea,” I admitted. “I’ve never even been to a wedding unless you count being in an invading army during one, and even that one got botched. I have a vague idea of what pony weddings usually look like thanks to Sunburst’s lessons, but that doesn’t mean we have to follow the same recipe. Did you have anything specific in mind?”

“Yes,” Pharynx said. “Something that won’t escalate into a week-long hive-wide festival. We can just go to the archive and sign a scroll for all I care.”

“Come on, we discussed it,” Grim protested. “A celebration would be nice! I agree that it doesn’t have to be over-the-top, but I don’t want us to act like we’re ashamed of getting married, either!”

“...fine,” he relented. “As long as it’s within reason.”

“Great! It’s getting late now, so why don’t you two meet me in the throne room in the morning and we’ll discuss it in greater detail?”

“Works for me,” Grim chirped.

“I’ll tell Psycho to fill in for me on the training grounds,” Pharynx said.

“Sure! See you tomorrow, then!”

“One more thing, Thorax,” he said. “Keep your mouth shut about this. I don’t want the whole Equus to know about it before we even get the chance to announce it ourselves!”

I wasn’t sure about the rest of Equus, but the whole hive knew by morning.

The first sign of Pharynx not getting his wish for discretion tackled me as soon as I left my bedchamber in the form of several drones passing by only to stop abruptly and drown me with questions.

“Are you excited, Thorax? I’m so excited I could scream!”

“How did Pharynx of all people fall in love?”

“Can I be a bridesmaid?”

“Is the party gonna be huge or what?”

“Why didn’t you say we could get married? I would have done it ages ago!”

“Are we supposed to bring them gifts? What do you think they’ll like?”

“Has Grim decided who’s making her gown? I know a great seamstress if she hasn’t!”

“Girls, girls! Please!” Thankfully, they calmed down. “I don’t know the answer to almost any of that; frankly, I only just found out myself that they want to get married, we haven’t gotten around to discussing the details in regard to the wedding yet, and they asked me not to spread the news for now.”

“Oops…” one of them muttered. “Is it okay if we promise not to tell anyling?”

“As long as you keep that promise… How did you find out, anyway?” But they were already gone.

I’d barely made it into the throne room when Antenna caught up with me.

“Hey Thorax, I know it’s early and you’re probably busy, but I was wondering if maybe I can get some extra money from the treasury?”

“What for?”

“The gardens,” she said with a shrug.

“The gardens look fine. Is there a problem I’m unaware of?”

“No, no problem! It’s just that the wedding party is going to need a lot of flowers and I’ll need more fertilizer potion if I want to have any hope of growing enough!”

“You too know about the wedding?!”

“...am I not supposed to?”

“Eventually, yes, but Pharynx and Grim didn’t want to go public with it until we’ve arranged the details, including how big the celebration is going to be, which I guess will affect the demand for flowers.”

“Oh. So, I should hold off on obtaining the potion?”

“For now, yes. I’m sure they’ll come to you in due time!”

“Alright, then. Guess I’ll just… go do my stuff… See ya!”

I waved her goodbye and noticed a few drones standing at the mouth of a hallway, looking unsure of whether or not to proceed further.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“Um, we’re from the choir. We wanted to know about the wedding arrangement, but I guess it’s a little early for that, heh…”

“It is. Like I told Antenna, I’m sure you’ll get your answer in due time.”

“Figured as much. Well, thanks anyway!”

That seemed to be the end of it. I breathed a sigh of questionable relief and went to sit on the throne, and as soon as I did, Pharynx stormed into the throne room, aura exploding red-hot, with Grim trailing not far behind.

“Thorax, what did I ask for last evening?” he growled.

“Um, discretion?”

“So why in the name of rotten eggshells can’t I walk two steps without getting congratulated and pestered with questions?!”

“Uh-”

“You just had to blab, didn’t you?!”

“No, I-”

“I asked for one thing, Thorax! One thing! Was it that hard to-”

“Pharynx, please!” Grim interjected. “He didn’t have to ‘blab’, as you so eloquently put it! We were in a public hallway; anyling could have overheard! Can’t you give Thorax the benefit of the doubt?”

He glared at her for a moment, then at me. “I don’t know. Thorax, can I give you the benefit of the doubt?”

“I went straight to bed after talking with you last night,” I told him. “I didn’t see anyling along the way, and even if I had, I know better than to spoil your big news like that! I don’t know who spread the news, but everyling already knew by the time I woke up, so unless you’re going to suggest that I talked in my sleep-”

“And how do you know that everyling knew?” he persisted.

“Because they swarmed me with questions. They must have figured the groom’s brother would be as good a source of information as the bride and groom themselves when they ran into me first.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Only that nothing has been discussed yet and to give you two a chance to announce it on your own terms.”

“Hmph. Fine.”

“Right… I’m sorry your wedding announcement didn’t go as you wanted, but everything else is still under control, so let’s make the most of it, shall we? Do you have anything specific in mind that you’d want to include?”

“Only that I don’t want it turning into a circus,” Pharynx muttered.

“Well… I don’t have anything specific, but I like the overall way ponies do weddings, so maybe we can do something along those lines? I mean, we probably won’t need the cake and the banquet unless we decide to invite non-changelings, but the rest of it seems alright…”

“Grim, if we’re doing it pony style, that means the whole hive will want in, and didn’t I just say I don’t want it turning into a circus?”

“What makes you think we have to invite the whole hive? …no, wait, you’re the king’s brother and second-in-command and this is the first wedding in history between two changeling drones; of course they’ll want to celebrate even if they don’t get actually invited!”

“Well finally you see what I mean!”

“But Pharynx, would it really be that bad to treat it like a minor holiday? The wedding itself can still be a small affair only for those we invite, and the rest won’t feel disappointed for being left out if we state we’re alright with them celebrating in their own ways.”

“You do realize it could turn into a security nightmare if everyling takes it as an excuse to let their guard down, right?”

“Oh, shush; I know you already have a roster of security teams planned out with enough efficiency to cover the hive three times over!”

“...I still don’t want to overblow it,” he muttered.

“Pharynx,” I interjected, “Grim has a point. Making a small holiday out of it might not be a bad idea, and the inner circle, so to speak, of who gets invited can be as large or as small as you wish. It is usually reserved for the people close to the couple getting married, and no one in their right mind would complain about being left out just because they happen to know you. That’s how Cadance and Shining’s wedding went - the real one, after we got purged out, I mean - and as far as I’m told, everypony in Canterlot had a great time whether or not they were actually invited to the wedding! You probably won’t even be aware of anything happening outside your own celebration!”

“On the other hoof,” Grim added, “if we forbid the general populace of the hive from celebration at all, they’ll probably be disappointed, and I’d rather not have our wedding ruined by a sour aura seeping in from around whichever part of the hive we reserve for the wedding.”

“Can’t Thorax invent some kind of aural force field to block that?”

“That’s not how it works,” I said dryly. Maybe there was a way, but even if I could figure out how to achieve it, it didn’t feel right.

“...fine,” he groaned. “Under one condition: noling without an invitation can get in, not even in disguise. If I see the slightest anomaly such as one single unexplained butterfly, I’m kicking everyling out and arranging a private wedding with just the two of us and Thorax or whoever else is supposed to officiate.”

“I can live with that,” Grim said. “Thorax, do you think that’s feasible?”

“It should be,” I mused. “It would be easier to implement in an indoor area, though I was considering setting up the ceremony somewhere outdoors because there are some really pretty spots. But, your wedding, your choice, huh?”

“An outdoor area would be really nice! Pharynx, can’t you arrange the guards to adequately keep watch?”

“For the entire duration of the party? Someling’s attention will slip sooner or later.”

“Then let’s hold the ceremony outdoors and then move indoors to party!”

“That could work as long as we can keep track of the guests,” he said after a moment. “What else is needed?”

“Well, I guess I’ll be the officiator,” I said, “and there’s usually music, bridesmaids, groomsponies, or groomslings in this case, the ring bearer… Am I forgetting something?”

“Other than the staff preparing everything and cleaning up afterwards, I think that’s it. Oh, a photographer!”

“Mystique can take pictures and I think I saw a few choir members leave the throne room just before we got here, so that should cover it. Proboscis can handle the cleaning crew. That leaves the ring bearer, bridesmaids, and…ugh, groomslings… Do we really need those?”

“I guess it’s up to you, but if Grim wants bridesmaids, then having a few groomslings would be a nice balance. I’m sure you can find at least a few you’re on good enough terms with who’d be interested! Now, if that’s everything, think it over, decide whom you’re inviting, and then we’ll see how soon we can set the date, okay?”

Thanks to Grim and Pharynx thinking it over surprisingly quickly given the differences in how they envisioned a perfect wedding and settling on a small ceremony that required little preparation, the big day arrived just over a week following the first announcement of their engagement. I couldn’t sleep the entire night prior; I must have been more excited than the both of them! Actually, was Pharynx even excited, or was this merely an annoyance to get over with in order to get to where he wanted to be? It still felt a bit weird that he would fall in love, but maybe he was starting to consider the hive safe enough to finally allow himself to relax and explore what else life had to offer besides war and enemies!

There would be nothing of that today, I vowed as I dug through my wardrobe in the morning, looking for an appropriate outfit. He may have dedicated his life to being our protector, and Grim may have worked hard to live up to his standards as his subordinate, but their military skills would not be needed today; this was a day of love and happiness, not of fear and misery, and I would do everything in my power to make everyling forget the iron discipline and simply rejoice!

It had taken me forever to rid my speech drafts of everything gloomy and I was fairly satisfied with how it had turned out, and Urtica had assured me with every new version that it was suitable for a wedding, and it probably was… so why was I suddenly having doubts about it? And where in the name of eggshells was that tuxedo?

…ah, there it was. After Rarity’s latest spurt of creativity, maybe it was time to find a bigger space to store all these clothes.

I got dressed and went to review the speech again. It looked alright: bright, uplifting, hopeful… but was that the problem? Was the speech just too optimistic for Pharynx?

He was going to hate it, wasn’t he?

“Hey, are you done?”

“Huh- oh, hi Pharynx! Ready for the big day?”

“I’d be readier if someling hadn’t been tossing and turning all night in the chamber next to mine.”

“Sorry… wait, why are you wearing full battle armor?”

“For the purposes of today, Thorax, it’s called a ceremonial armor, and I’m getting married in it.”

“...but why?”

“Members of the Equestria’s Royal Guard and soldiers of some other lands often wear ceremonial armor to their wedding, and since we’re borrowing foreign customs, I’ve decided to borrow one that suits me.”

I glanced at my speech draft. Yeah, definitely gonna hate it, I sighed to myself. Oh well, too late to change it now!

“So, you done or what?”

“Huh? Oh, right… yeah, I’m done… Are we starting already?”

“The flight there takes around ten minutes, and Grim says we’re not supposed to keep the guests waiting, which I agree on from the security standpoint, so unless you want to be late…” He shrugged.

“I don’t! Why would you even suggest such a thing?”

“Then what are we still standing around for?”

I couldn’t argue with that. We got underway.

“Ooh, I can’t believe this is finally happening!” I squealed as we found an exit and took to the air. “My big brother, starting a family of his own!”

He scoffed but did a poor job of hiding a smirk.

“You know, I’m still surprised at how you and Grim made a consensus on everything so quickly in the end! The way the whole thing started, I thought we’d be stuck debating every aspect for months! Not that I mind having been wrong this time…”

He rolled his eyes. “That’s probably because I figured we’d never reach a consensus, having so diametrically opposite ideas on what our wedding should look like, so I told Grim she can organize the wedding any way she wants as long as I get to organize the security around it any way I want.”

“Aww, that’s so nice of you!”

“And as long as I can veto Shining Armor from the guest list.”

“You didn’t!”

“Thorax, get real. Why would I invite the guy who wanted to torture and kill my brother, even if we’ve settled on a truce in the meantime?”

“So that’s why he isn’t coming…” I mused. “Not a friend’s bachelor party after all…”

“He might have gone to one for all I know. I didn’t bother checking up on people’s excuses.”

Fair enough, and even if Shining was busy elsewhere this weekend, I hoped he wouldn’t take too much offense for being told to keep out of here today. Hopefully the invitation for Cadance had at least been polite about it…

Soon the wedding area came into view. Grim had picked a perfect spot: a lovely recess in the shade of a birch tree and a couple of Neighponese blossoms flanked by lilac bushes and some ferns and bleeding hearts. With Antenna and Mystique’s help, she’d set up a low podium and blended it into the scenery with bouquets and floral garlands, and arranged cushions in the guests’ seating area, interspersed with more flowers. I’d offered to help, but they’d promised me they had everything under control, much to my disappointment for being essentially getting kicked out until it turned out I’d needed that time to prepare-

“The speech!” I gasped.

“What?”

“I left the speech in my bedchamber! I have to go back for it!”

I spun around and buzzed my wings harder, but he grabbed my tail, holding me in place. “No you don’t! We’re gonna be late!”

“But-”

“Seriously, Thorax, given how many times you’ve rehearsed it, one would think you’d have memorized it halfway through! Do you really need that scroll?”

I didn’t want to mess up his wedding by missing a line or two… or ten… of what I’d prepared, but he did have a point. The speech wasn’t that long, and even if I did forget something, I could probably improvise my way out of it!

“Fine,” I relented. “Let’s get into position.”

The guests were all here, observing us as we landed onto the podium. Most were changelings, but a few had come from afar: Cadance sat between Twilight and her friends on one side and Celestia and Luna on the other, an arrangement that helped her not look out of place without her husband; a few of Grim’s pony friends were scattered randomly between changelings, and Ember looked uncomfortable sitting awkwardly in what probably counted as a back corner. The bridesmaids and groomslings were in position, too: Gossamer, Coxa, and Banshee on one side of the podium, and Psycho, Spiracle, and Apex on the other. When Pharynx and I touched down, Ocellus trotted forward to take position next to me, then transferred the ring cushion from her back to her hooves.

Everything was ready and perfect. The only thing still missing was the bride.

A moment later, she emerged from behind nearby oleanders, striding reverently to the rhythm of the choir’s chant as the warm breeze ruffled her veil and the folds of her gown. As he gazed upon her, Pharynx’s aura erupted into what had to be one of the brightest states it had ever achieved in his entire life.

He really does love her, I realized. No pretending for the sake of some ulterior motive!

Grim ascended the podium, the choir finished their chant, and before moving onto the speech, I allowed myself a moment of silence so this wonderful occasion would really sink in.

“Dearly beloved, fellow changelings and friends from afar,” I began, “we are gathered here today in celebration of love between two individuals, sweet and glorious on its own, yet groundbreaking, as never before in the known history have two changelings been united in marriage. They are the first, but hopefully not the last; may their example lead us into a new era, one where every changeling celebrates the love they have for another and builds our future on the foundation of that love, like Pharynx and Grim are doing today! It warms my heart that the one pioneering this road is none other than the changeling who resisted it most!” Some of the guests tried to stifle a snicker, to which Pharynx gave a slight roll of his eyes. “Pharynx and Grim faced a lot of challenges and hardships together, and all it did was make their bond stronger! Whatever life brings them, be it good or bad, I know they will face it together and come out on top, and may they have the best of what the future has to offer!”

Well, not exactly as I’d written it, but apparently good enough, judging by the guests’ cheering.

“Now, Grim, do you take Pharynx to be your lawfully wedded husband, to love and support him through good times and bad?”

“I do,” she said, taking one ring from Ocellus and placing it on Pharynx’s horn.

“And do you, Pharynx, take Grim to be your lawfully wedded wife, to love and support her through good times and bad?”

“Yessir!” he said, grinning as he levitated the other ring onto Grim’s horn.

“Then it is my great pleasure to pronounce you husband and wife! You may kiss-”

Before I could finish the sentence, Grim embraced her husband and kissed him firmly, startling him for a moment, but he pulled himself together and returned the embrace.

Congratulations, brother, congratulations, Grim, I bid them as happy tears blurred my vision and the overspill of love aura shone from their hearts. May you share a long and blissful life together!

Loose End

An unexpected letter arrived the next day.

Dear King Thorax,

How have you been lately? I trust the hive is still prospering under your care? It’s been a while, and I didn’t want to take up too much of your time when you probably had more important things to do, but I still think about you occasionally (how couldn’t I?) and hoping to see you again at some point in the future.

I’m afraid this isn’t a social call, however. I visited a friend in Detrot the other day, and while our time together was pleasant, there was one peculiar thing she shared with me. She works in railway maintenance, and one evening while returning home from a late shift on the city outskirts, she was enjoying the night sky and saw something fly above the treeline of the nearby forest. She says it was too dark to see what exactly it was and she didn’t think much of it, except she saw it again the next night. This time it flew directly above her, and she swears the thing had holes in its legs! I questioned her at length if she’s sure they were legs rather than some object the thing was carrying, and apparently she is sure! I debated with myself and my sister whether or not I should bother you with this, and although she thinks there might be a rational explanation and has been reluctant to have us cause a ruckus, neither of us can sleep peacefully anymore, so I decided to write to you anyway, thinking you’d know what’s going on if anyone does. So, are any unreformed changelings still unaccounted for, or is this something else? (Please say it’s something else…)

Oh, almost forgot. In case it matters, Bogie Wagon isn’t sure when exactly this happened, but she thinks about a month ago.

Sorry if I’m freaking out over nothing, and thanks in advance.

Soothing Dusk

As if on cue, Pharynx dragged himself into the throne room just as I was finishing reading the letter. He looked as if something had chewed him up and spat him out, and he was yawning and rubbing his eyes.

“What happened to you?” I gasped.

“First wedding night,” he mumbled; it sounded like an attempted retort with all the energy and brazenness sapped out. “I’m beginning to realize why ponies go on a honeymoon instead of right back to work…”

“...you didn’t hold drills this morning, did you?”

“Psycho took over after two hours. Not even sure why I came here of all places…”

“Maybe you wanted to say hi to your little brother?” I grinned awkwardly. He’d probably aimed for his bedchamber and ended up here by mistake, though…

“What for? I see you all the time!” He became aware of the letter in my hooves. “What’s that?”

I glanced at the letter; I had meant to discuss it with him, but he was in no condition for it at the moment! “Uh… nothing…”

“Doesn’t sound like nothing.”

“No, really, it can wait! Why don’t you take a nap now?”

“So it is something,” he half-smirked. “Lemme see.”

“C’mon Pharynx, you’re too tired! We can discuss it later!”

“I said give!” He ripped it out of my grasp and started reading.

He looked bored with it at first, as if reading only to spite me, but about halfway through, he snapped out of the exhausted gutter and into his usual, focused, attentive, super-disciplined self as if a switch had been flipped; he glanced at me briefly but kept reading. Then, having finished, he glared at me again and shoved the paper into my chest.

“Explain to me one thing, Thorax,” he grumbled. “You’ve obviously read this, otherwise you would have said you haven’t. This something-what’s-her-name Wagon pony saw Chrysalis on the outskirts of Detrot on two separate occasions, and you claim it can wait?! Are you out of your mind?!”

“Um… we don’t know for sure it’s Chrysalis…”

“No, it was a Chrysalis-shaped balloon for little fillies,” he retorted with an eye roll. “Of course it was her! Who else would it be?”

“I don’t know, maybe some other unreformed changeling…”

“What other unreformed changeling?! She’s the last one!”

“The last one that we know of-”

“There aren’t any others! I checked the service records ages ago! Everyling is accounted for; the hivebound drones, the infiltrators, the released prisoners-”

“What about the drones presumed dead? You know some bodies haven’t been recovered; there’s a chance some of them are still alive!”

“Doubtful. They would have found a way to contact the hive and explain themselves - they would have had enough time for it even before you took command - or they would have gotten captured. I know who the unaccounted-for ones were; they were genuinely loyal enough to Chrysalis that I find it unlikely they would have abandoned the hive and their assignments to live on their own, and even if some of them were feigning loyalty in order to avoid punishment for disloyalty, treason, or however you want to call it, why not return to the hive now that the new leader is such a goodie-goodie? Face it, Thorax, they’re dead.”

“I know… it’s just, there’s always that tiny little possibility…”

“Whatever. Random drone or Chrysalis, our approach is the same.”

“Which is…?”

“We go to Detrot, find this pony, and question her. Then we commence a search.”

“Okay…”

“Well, what are we waiting for?”

“Now?”

“Chrysalis is a threat to both the hive and Equestria. This takes priority; everything else can wait until we find her or at least figure out what happened!”

The train was full of changelings.

Pharynx had originally intended to have me teleport us - meaning the two of us plus half the army - directly to Detrot, only to be left grumbling in frustration upon being told I could neither teleport everyling at once nor do it in a single jump and would probably exhaust my mana reserves about halfway through, so he’d reluctantly packed us all onto the train and very begrudgingly settled for a long ride. Despite my occasional efforts at a conversation, he hadn’t said a word since.

Now that we were almost at our destination, I tried again.

“Do you really think we’ll find her?”

“I will personally fry any soldier who fails!”

“But it’s been a month! She could be anywhere by now, maybe not even in Equestria!”

“Then we’ll find traces of her having been here.”

“Like you found traces of me after I ran from the hive?”

“You’re forgetting I didn’t want a trace of you to be found! Also we did find the biggest trace of you imaginable and you’d be long dead now if I hadn’t sabotaged the process of beating that trace to a pulp, in case you forgot.”

I hadn’t. “And in case you forgot, every hunter except you did want me found. Don’t you think they made an effort?”

“I don’t know what they did then, but now I’m going to make them succeed if it’s the last thing I do!”

A few drones shifted nervously.

“Pharynx, you of all people know how hard it is to find a changeling that doesn’t want to be found! And Chrysalis has had centuries to hone the hiding skills and is probably more cunning than all of us put together!”

“She’s also alone. Not just against us but against the whole world. She literally has no one to rely on for any kind of assistance or support, unlike for most of her life when she had the entire swarm to command into dying for her if necessary, and we can take advantage of that.”

“...but what if it’s not enough?”

“I won’t allow it to not be enough. Your life and the future of the hive depend on it, and we cannot fail!”

The train came to a halt. Our disembarking drew stares from nearby ponies, and though some of them had a hint of nervousness or concern in their auras, no panic ensued.

A group of Royal Guards approached us.

“Good afternoon, Your Highness, and welcome to Equestria,” one of them said. “I’m Lieutenant Halberd, head of the Detrot Royal Guard outpost, and these are sergeants Firm Hoof, Bravado, and Thunderstorm. Princess Celestia informed us about the situation and we’re here to offer assistance.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant-”

“You involved Celestia in this?” Pharynx interjected, frowning. “Don’t you think we can handle this ourselves?”

“If Chrysalis really is lurking somewhere in Equestria, then she’s the ponies’ problem too, not just ours, and they deserve to know what’s going on,” I told him. “Besides, it’s part of our alliance with Equestria to cooperate against threats, and didn’t you complain a while ago about not seeing how they would contribute?”

“Contribute?” he snorted. “In hunting down a changeling? They were clueless about the infiltrators right under their snouts, and you said it yourself how tricky this is going to be!”

“Pharynx,” I groaned, rubbing my forehead, “this is a matter of international security, and as you yourself said, the hive’s future. Don’t you think that’s reason enough for setting your stubborn pride aside temporarily and at least allowing the ponies a chance to help?”

“Hm.” He eyed Halberd with a scowl and gritted teeth for a moment. “If you want to help, you can start by tracking down the pony who reported the suspected sighting.”

“Bogie Wagon? She lives a few blocks from here. Shall I take you to her?”

Pharynx glanced at me. “Did you tell them her name?”

“I may have mentioned it to Celestia-”

“May have?”

“Okay, I did. She asked!”

“Remind me to never let you get tortured for information… Alright, fine. Let’s go there while our troops get in position.”

He transformed into a nondescript pegasus before heading out, and the soldiers followed suit with various disguises of their own.

“Why do we need disguises?” I asked. “The ponies aren’t afraid of us!”

“Maybe not, but do you want her to recognize us if she’s here?” he retorted. “We should have stopped looking like ourselves while still on the train!”

“...fine.” I didn’t think it would matter much now that I’d been going around in my own form for a while, especially since I had backup this time, but then again, knowing how unscrupulous Chrysalis was and what she was capable of, Pharynx’s strategy might not have been entirely senseless; even if she refrained from openly attacking us on the spot in the middle of the city, she could still cause trouble if seeing me here led her to the conclusion that the throne back home was empty and potentially reclaimable, not that I doubted Psycho’s willingness and ability to defend it, but there was no need to push our luck and get soldiers injured or killed trying to keep her away from it… so I followed Pharynx’s example and made myself a disguise.

While the three sergeants accompanied our disguised troops into the outskirts of the city where they would commence the search around the railroad, Halberd led Pharynx and me through the streets in the opposite direction until we arrived at a medium-sized building that had seen better days but was still in a somewhat alright condition. Upon checking the row of mailboxes to verify we were at the right address, he led us to the third floor, where one of the doors was marked with an image of a train car. The owner’s cutie mark, I presumed.

Pharynx looked around the hallway, and apparently satisfied with the situation, said, “Should be safe to drop the disguises.”

We did, and Halberd knocked on the door, which opened a crack after a short wait.

“Yes?” the mare on the other side asked.

“Ms Bogie Wagon?” Halberd asked, getting a nod in return. “I’m Lieutenant Halberd of the Royal Guard, accompanying King Thorax and Commander Pharynx of the Changeling Kingdom. May we come in?”

Another nod, and a moment until she undid the chain keeping the door from opening further, and we were inside; I had to keep my head low to avoid scraping my antlers across the ceiling, but downsizing myself would probably have freaked Bogie out. Thankfully, we were offered seats pretty soon.

“Can I help you?” she asked eventually.

“You’re friends with Soothing Dusk from Whinnyapolis, correct?” I began.

“Oh,” she said. “She told you about the thing I saw. I… honestly, I didn’t think anything would come of it even though she’s your acquaintance. I certainly didn’t expect you to come running this soon after I told Soothing about it!”

“Can you tell us exactly what you saw?”

“Well, it was just a shadow over the treeline the first night. It was too dark to catch much detail and I only caught it for a second or two anyway, and I wasn’t even sure I hadn’t imagined it. I probably would have left it at that and forgotten about it if something hadn’t flown right above me the next evening. This time it was a little closer and I took it for a pegasus until it flew in front of the moon and the moonlight shone through the holes in its legs.”

“Through the legs?” Pharynx inquired. “It couldn’t have been a reflection or something?”

“No, there aren’t any lights there that could reflect off something on the thing’s legs like that, and I can’t imagine what else it could be.”

“Probably a changeling, then. Did you catch any other details?”

“What do you mean? It was dark!”

“But the changeling flew in front of the moon the second night. Did you catch any particulars of the silhouette other than the leg holes? Or an estimate of body size?”

“I’m not sure…” She closed her eyes. “It just looked equine… maybe a little larger than an average pony, though it could just be my impression, what with it being dark and all, and anyway I didn’t think much of it…”

“Horn shape? Tail length? Did it have a neck fin or a mane?”

“Uh…” She opened her eyes.

“It’s important,” I encouraged her, catching on to what Pharynx was aiming at. “Anything you can tell us will help, even if you’re not sure.”

She closed her eyes again. “...it… passed in front of the moon… I would have taken it for a pegasus if not for the leg holes… but what did… hmmm. Now that I think about it, the mane and tail were pretty long-”

“You’re sure it was a mane? Not a neck fin or some kind of scarf or cloak or whatever these things are called?”

“Well, I suppose I can’t rule out a weird headdress… but I’m pretty sure it was attached to the head rather than the neck or the barrel, so probably not a scarf, and it would have been pretty tattered for a piece of cloth…”

“Did you get a side view of the silhouette or the underside view?”

“...the underside.”

“Then you wouldn’t have caught a neck fin, and maybe not the horn, either,” Pharynx mused. “Did you ever knowingly see a changeling prior to today?”

“Only in newspaper articles after the Canterlot invasion and on a couple of occasions after your queen was overthrown.”

“Was Chrysalis in any of the pictures?”

“Not that I know. All the changelings looked the same, except for King Thorax after the reformation, I mean. Why?”

Pharynx took the shape of Chrysalis. Bogie yelped.

“That could be the thing I saw! Is that her?”

“That’s what she looked like the last time we saw her,” I said as Pharynx reverted to his own form. “We assumed it was her, but some drones are unaccounted for after various assignments and presumed dead, and we had to make sure what you saw isn’t one of them so we could plan our approach better.”

“I thought Chrysalis was dead! She isn’t?!”

“No, she ran off following my ascension and hasn’t been seen since.”

“Oh my Celestia… and you’re saying she flew right over me?! How am I still alive?!”

“She may not have noticed you, or she may have been trying to keep a low profile because unexplained disappearances of ponies would have gotten noticed now that we’ve stopped hunting for prey. Another possibility is that she may have been scouting for prey that wouldn’t be missed. You didn’t see her a third time?”

“No, but repairs to that section of the railroad were completed just before the second time I saw her and I got sent elsewhere afterwards, so I wouldn’t know if she appeared again. Not there, anyway.”

“Which section are we talking about?”

“The repairs were being done between the second and third milestone south of the station, and I sighted her… I dunno, halfway home? I’m not even sure if it was roughly the same spot both times.”

“Within two miles south of the station, then. Not that she would have had a reason to limit herself to that particular area, but it’s a start.”

“If you say so… gee, I can’t believe I might have narrowly dodged a cocoon…”

“I can assign a few Royal Guards to protect you until this is resolved,” Halberd offered.

“You think I’m still in danger?”

“We can’t rule it out at this point. Have you noticed any unexplained ponies lately, or had anything weird happen?”

“...no, I don’t think so.”

“Anypony you know mention something of the kind?”

“No…”

“Lieutenant,” I interjected, “has anypony gone missing around here lately?”

“None that I can remember personally, but I’ve got people searching our records ever since we got word of what was happening. We’ll know soon.”

“It might not be enough,” Pharynx stated. “She’s smart enough to target ponies who wouldn’t be missed, so it’s not unlikely that ponies are missing but nopony reported it.”

“Can you search for them too, if it’s not too much to ask?” Halberd asked us.

“Looking for captured prey is part of our standard search protocol for missing changelings.”

“Good! Thanks.”

“Ms Wagon, I know all this wasn’t easy to hear,” I said. “Do you have anyone who can stay with you?”

“My husband is at work at the moment but should be home soon, and I’m sure Soothing would come running at the first sign of something not being right. Heck, I barely managed to convince her to go home after she found out I’d seen a changeling! I thought it was a random leftover unreformed drone… never thought the queen might be lurking…” She shuddered.

“We’ll sort it out,” I told her. “I promise.”

“I know… Soothing said so much good about you… I think I can trust you.”

There wasn’t much more to be found out so we said our goodbyes just as Bogie’s husband came home. Halberd made a detour to the Royal Guard outpost to organize protection for Bogie and check on progress of the missing ponies reports, and Pharynx and I flew to reunite with the soldiers, who had in the meantime set up a command center in an abandoned shack on the north-eastern outskirts of the city, one that had previously been used as the base camp for one of the teams sent after me a couple of years ago. A tactical panel had already been arranged on one of the walls, complete with a detailed map of the area and a roster of teams assigned to each sector, and several drones were guarding the perimeter.

“Report,” Pharynx demanded of the one guarding the shack entrance.

“No movement in sight, Sir,” she said. “The teams deployed for a preliminary sweep ten minutes ago, so it’s too early to know anything. Is the presumed target correct?”

“Yes. Come here, Thorax.”

I followed him inside, and he opened a crate that sat in a corner and passed me the pieces of my armor.

I flinched. “Why do I need that?!”

“Because I’m not just gonna sit on my rump waiting for someling to get lucky when we know where the sighting took place, and I have no intention of letting you out of my sight either with her on the prowl, which means you’re coming with me, and since you’re no good at fighting, you’ll need at least some level of protection that doesn’t entirely depend on me or any soldiers who may be in the same area as us.”

“Can’t I just sit here with the guards?”

“Thorax, you’re my brother and the king of the hive. I’m not leaving you and worrying what became of you while I was away, and I don’t care how skilled these guards are! Now put that thing on already!”

I did, reluctantly and with a good amount of help on his part. At least he didn’t insist on giving me any weapons… then again, he must have assumed I’d sooner injure myself with one than use it on an enemy with any level of success, and he was probably right.

Days passed with no luck finding Chrysalis, her lair, or any trace of her presence in Detrot and its surroundings, no matter how hard our teams looked, even after Pharynx had reorganized the team rosters to have both day and night covered. He even pulled more teams from hivebound security to expand the search into Foal Mountain and Everfree Forest; he would have done the same for the areas north and west of Detrot, but the smaller army compared to the one of our old era meant that would have left the hive almost defenseless, so in spite of his misgivings, he relented into leaving that area to the Royal Guards upon giving Halberd, Firm Hoof, Bravado, and Thunderstorm a crash course on what to look for. My attempts to remind him it was for the good of the hive were consistently failing to make him less grumpy about it, but at least he never tried to dispute me. He probably knew all that himself, but it went against everything that used to be vital in the old days, and old habits were notorious for dying hard.

At least Bogie was safe and recovering from the shock of finding out who she’d seen, and Halberd had only found two reports of missing ponies since Chrysalis’ deposal, both of whom had been found alive and well within hours of going missing, and both instances had been the case of innocently wandering off. He’d even used some of our changeling revealer ointment to verify that the two ponies hadn’t been replaced, with favorable results.

Either way, in spite of both our and the Royal Guards’ best efforts, the searches were coming up empty everywhere. We were considering giving up and returning home when Pharynx and I stumbled upon a clearing in the forest northeast of Detrot, just outside of the territory we’d had searched thoroughly multiple times. It was a peculiar area: absolutely no vegetation anywhere save for one dead tree with its trunk split open, hints of a rotten aura everywhere, and massive doors embedded into a stone cliff on one end.

“What is this place?” I whispered.

“Must be Tartarus,” Pharynx mused. “Chrysalis never sent changelings here because there was no point. No prey to hunt, no information to steal… Wait a minute.”

Something in his tone made me shudder. “What’s wrong?”

“That tale Starswirl told you… he said changelings came from a cursed tree in a cursed swamp that used to be a cursed graveyard, right?”

“Yes, and the swamp was later drained and the skeletons removed- Oh my goodness… He said the nearby caves were turned into Tartarus… I think we found our place of origin, Pharynx…”

“Quiet,” he hissed. After a few moments of intense listening to the silence in which nothing jumped us, he continued in a hushed voice, “Chrysalis was alive back then; she’s one of the changelings who emerged from that tree. Has to be. I doubt it was an ancestor; she never mentioned having one and no records or legends, either our own or of ponies, say otherwise. If she has some kind of homing instinct unlike the rest of us, it could have reawakened when she went into hiding and led her here. Even if she doesn’t have a homing instinct, she could have remembered this place and decided to come here knowing ponies hardly ever drop by, and the lingering rotten aura of the cursed graveyard would help mask her own aura from any changelings trying to hunt her down. I should have thought of it and sent the army here sooner, darn it!”

“So what should we do?”

“We call for reinforcements. There’s a set of communicators embedded into your chestplate.”

“Huh…” They were in a hidden compartment that I hadn’t noticed before, but at least it explained why the chestplate seemed bulkier than the first time I’d tried it on. Pharynx must have added it in the meantime and forgotten to tell me!

Pharynx contacted our command center and ordered all teams to converge on our location without delay, and I decided to inform Celestia about our suspicions. This was one of the highest-security areas in her country, after all, and if it was compromised…

I expected at least a few hours’ wait, but Celestia and Luna teleported over within seconds. They needed little explanation; instead, they both got right on to searching the area with us, and when the changeling teams started arriving, the two princesses unsealed the gates of Tartarus and went inside on the off-chance that the runaway queen had found a way to crawl inside to hide. Several squads of Royal Guards joined them later, and our own teams swarmed the clearing and the forest all around it, but even our best efforts produced nothing suspicious.

Nothing until one of the changeling teams uncovered a burrow under the dead tree that had given birth to our species.

It had a narrow entrance, almost like a mouse hole, which it may have been at some point, and a root concealed it from view except from one specific angle. The soldiers reported the tunnel leading some distance almost straight down and opening into a cavern that Pharynx, the princesses, and I then teleported into. The cavern was about twice the size of my bedchamber, or about the size Chrysalis’ bedchamber had been before I’d built a wall through the middle, and empty save for runes carved into each wall.

“Looks like dark magic,” Celestia mused, looking them over, “though my knowledge of runes is rusty. Can you make more sense of it, Luna?”

“Nay, sister. Perhaps it would be wise to employ Starswirl’s assistance?”

“I was thinking the same thing. Thorax, what do you plan with this room?”

“We’ll leave a squad of changelings to maintain surveillance of the area,” Pharynx answered in my stead. “There’s nowhere to hide in here and nothing to disguise as without causing suspicion, so they’ll have to remain topside. Your wizard won’t be disturbed while he works unless Chrysalis comes back and our soldiers fail to stop her.”

“It should be of no consequence,” Luna said. “The great Starswirl can undoubtedly hold his own against the villainess.”

“As long as he survives to tell us what’s written on the walls and what to do about it, I’m fine with that,” Pharynx agreed.

“Can’t you send at least some of the soldiers inside after her?” I asked.

“After they inform the hive of her return, yes, but one or two should stay outside to follow her if she kills everyone in the pit and gets out. We need to be able to track her movement if we want to capture her.”

“Do you want Royal Guard assistance?” Celestia asked.

“Not here; they can’t disguise themselves and will only make it obvious that the area is being watched. I won’t complain if they nab her someplace where no changelings are deployed, though. Just try to keep her alive to face punishment if possible.”

“Or until we convince her to reform,” I added.

“You can’t seriously think that’ll work, Thorax!”

“We can at least give her a chance!”

“She’s had plenty of chances! She could have come back begging for mercy or forgiveness or whatever any day since you ascended if she wanted to!”

“...one last chance, then? I don’t think I can bring myself to just punish her without trying…”

He rolled his eyes and snorted. “One chance, since you insist so much. But keep in mind that the chance expires after twenty-four hours without a sign of her attitude improving or the second she tries to kill you, whichever happens first.”

“I’ll have our wizards recommence their research on how to neutralize changeling magic,” Celestia said. “I’ll also inform you on Starswirl’s findings as soon as he has them. If you need anything else, you know where to find us.”

With that, we said our goodbyes and teleported out, and Pharynx issued orders to the drones who would be staying behind while the rest of us prepared to return to the hive.

First Duty

It felt strange to be here.

It shouldn’t have, really; this was where my life had begun, where I’d spent most of my days, been taught about the world as my kind had seen it. This was where, by all accounts and expectations, I should have learned to hate and despise, to attack and conquer, to instill fear, to enslave other races and rob them of what made them so jarringly, unmistakably unlike us and use it to perpetuate the vicious circle of hating and conquering and enslaving. Such had been the ways of my kind ever since we came into existence, so why expect anything else from any of us?

Alas, it had to have happened sooner or later, and I was the one who had ended up with the uneasy honor of being the exact opposite of my kind. Whether by a whim of nature or by surfacing of the long-dormant trait in our core, I’d come into this world yearning to harness love in a way that the rest of my kind had seen as nothing short of sacrilegious, and as long as I’d insisted on adhering to my aberrant way, they’d made sure I paid dearly for disrupting the tried-and-true warrior ways and for daring to delude myself that there might be a choice! My days had been a long string of tears and pain, but for some inexplicable reason, my hope for better days, for being finally heard and given a chance to show the benefits of my way, had survived against all odds… until, at last, that too had been quenched.

So I’d left.

I’d be lying if I said my path henceforth hadn’t been just as trying; it had pushed me to the limit, brought me against both my kind and their enemies, and had been on the brink of claiming my life and the last remnants of my sanity more than once, but I’d succeeded. I’d made an ally in the most unlikely of places, gone through a terrible ordeal to earn an opportunity to have myself heard and be given a chance in the land of my kind’s enemies, and somehow or other, I’d earned their trust against all odds. It had taken another couple of months to completely overcome the residual friction and distrust, but I’d gotten there in the end. The wounds of the past had healed by then too, and I’d grown accustomed to my new home and expected to peacefully live out the rest of my days there.

Except that fate had had other plans: a group of drones had infiltrated my new home and abducted my benefactors, and I’d been left with no choice but to flee for help, assemble a few allies, and head back here to rescue the captives so they could return to their rightful places and banish the foes. We’d faced one obstacle after another, been outnumbered and eventually subdued, and just before meeting my end, an act of desperation on my part had unexpectedly turned everything in our favor. I’d unleashed all the love I had in me and it had made all the difference! That act had done everything I’d meant it to do and so much more that I wouldn’t have expected in my most daring fantasies: it had inspired the changeling swarm to finally embrace my way, it had destroyed the dreaded throne and thus allowed the non-changeling magic to come to life here again after what must have been an eternity, and it had united ponies and changelings for the first time in history!

The swarm may have accepted the new ways, but its leader hadn’t; though hardly surprising to see her livid after so many of her loyal subjects had abandoned her to side with an outcast - an outcome strange enough in itself - I hadn’t expected her to relinquish her reign and her home and everything she’d worked for all her life so readily, not even against such overwhelming opposition! But relinquish it she had, and had disappeared into the unknown before any of us could stop her or at least follow. Though I knew her heart to be filled with putrid, malignant, impenetrable darkness, it saddened me to think that she would give up her life’s work sooner than allow for a chance that she might have been wrong and let some light and warmth into her heart. Though I had no reason to after how much pain she’d caused me, part of me still hoped that she’d simply acted in shocked spite and that she would one day return seeking guidance and reconciliation, even if every sensible ounce of me dismissed such an outcome as utterly impossible.

Either way, whether or not she’d intended to, she’d essentially given up her crown. And whether or not I liked it, everyone else present for the occasion had agreed that I was the one to claim that crown.

In a way, I could see the logic behind it. I’d been the one to perform the act which had ultimately resulted in her retreat; essentially, I’d overthrown her, though doing so had been the last thing on my mind, even as a theoretical possibility! Even more, the act of unleashing love had changed us physically, transformed us into colorful beings and relieved us of every trait that appeared menacing to other creatures. There was now a variety in appearance between drones bigger than ever before, and my own appearance was the most strikingly different from all the others, and in a way made me stand out from the rest of them and paralleled how alicorns stood out from earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi. In essence, it seemed like Harmony itself had assigned me the very role that the ponies and changelings alike had decided I should accept!

It felt strange to be here in the hive again after everything that had happened. It felt strange to be here and expect to live to see not just another day but plenty of days to come. It felt strange to be here and not expect pain and unavoidable lose-lose situations. But all of it paled in comparison to how strange, how surreal it was to consider myself in charge!

King Thorax. How weird, how unlikely it sounded! Had it all really happened? Wasn’t I about to wake up in my bed in the Crystal Empire, ashamed of how ridiculously grandiose my ideas had gotten? Had Princess Luna seen any of it? Was she going to reprimand me for stepping out of line? The ponies had helped my self-confidence grow, but surely there had to be a limit beyond which it would do no good to allow oneself to go! Would my friends think any less of me if I’d crossed that threshold? I hoped it wasn’t too late to go back!

But this wasn’t a dream; the impossible had really happened, the ponies had recovered from their cocoon-induced coma and left for their homes, and I’d taken the first steps toward undoing the centuries of damage that the changelings had caused to the world. I’d barely scratched the surface for now, admittedly: I’d ordered the release of all captured creatures from their cocoons and the recalling of our forces from the other lands; these were all small steps, and I knew there was so much more that I’d have to do, but I’d at least made a start! I’d taken those first steps right after the collective transformation, carried by the thrill of the moment and by the exaltation of my lifelong wish of bringing friendship to my kind finally having come to pass, and I knew and felt in my heart that those had been the right steps to take and that I’d never regret doing them or wish I’d done them differently; but a few hours had passed since and the initial hype had died down, and I was left with a failing self-confidence and unsure of what to do next. I hadn’t planned for this! I hadn’t seen it coming, I hadn’t expected I’d ever be trusted with this level of responsibility, and I certainly hadn’t expected it to happen so abruptly! If only the princesses hadn’t been in such a hurry to get back to Equestria and the Crystal Empire to undo any damage their impostors might have caused in their absence; any advice on how to rule a kingdom would have been invaluable! If only they could have spared a moment to share a few tips on how to get started! What if I failed at this? What if I did something wrong? What if the changelings decided they’d gotten ahead of themselves and that acceptance of peaceful ways and love-sharing had been a mistake? What if they reverted to the old ways and decided to follow Chrysalis again? What if I did something to make them revert to the old ways and decide to follow Chrysalis again? What if-

Deep breaths, Thorax. Calm down! That kind of mindset won’t do you any good! Nature and Harmony decided you were capable of this, and so did the alicorn princesses! Are you going to question their judgment? They trusted you, therefore you can do this! Now snap out of it, calm down, and start thinking rationally!

Scolding myself had only helped marginally, but at least I was no longer on the verge of hyperventilating and screaming and transforming into a mouse and scurrying to hide under the nearest rock. That wouldn’t be befitting of a king! How in the world had I ever ended up in this situation?! Surely there had to be someone more capable-

Alright, stop it! You’ll never get anywhere like this!

Realizing I was stuck in a loop of self-depreciation and panicked helplessness, I decided to get up and take a short walk in an attempt to clear my head. I hadn’t left the Throne Room ever since it exploded, and the events that had transpired were probably getting to me more than I cared to realize! The mess hadn’t yet been cleared; a few drones had merely collected the fragments of my predecessor’s throne and piled them up in a heap, and I’d been sitting next to that heap ever since. This wasn’t my first time near the throne; several instances of my punishment for one thing or another over the years had happened here, and though I had no reason to think I’d ever be subjected to unimaginable pain in this room again - on this plateau, to be more accurate, as the walls and ceiling were gone now following the explosion of love - but I wouldn’t be surprised if the memories of my previous experiences of this place were part of the reason why I was finding it so difficult to relax. Or was it some lingering spell that Chrysalis might have cast on the Throne Room, something to torment any usurpers of her throne with should she ever be deposed? It had seemed impossible to me and to everyone I’d ever known that her reign could ever come to an end, but I wouldn’t put it past her to have come up with such a thing regardless.

I’d started walking, but didn’t get far. As soon as I approached the edge of the plateau, a multitude of colors around the base of the hive assaulted my eyes: drones standing about in place as if gathered for a purpose, a few ponies trotting between them away from the hive, presumably on their way home, and a considerable number of drones hovering in place, almost as if overseeing the ones below or waiting for something…

They were waiting for something, I realized. I’d mentioned to Psycho that I’d hold a speech to inform everyling about what had happened and what I expected of the future! He must have gathered them there to wait for me! But why so soon? I hadn’t told him to do it now! I wasn’t ready to hold a speech yet! I was barely holding myself together; how was I supposed to figure out what to tell them so quickly, let alone leave them in awe and inspire confidence and trust? If I made a public statement now, it would turn out to be a disaster for sure!

But I couldn’t leave them hanging, either; Psycho had already said they’d gotten restless and begun to request instructions for how to handle this new situation! This was as much of an uncharted territory to them as it was to me! Sure, I would have preferred to have had some time to decide what to tell them and rehearse a speech, but under the circumstances, would an improvised one really be that bad? They’d understand my predicament and forgive any imperfections as long as I helped them figure out what to do with themselves, wouldn’t they?

I wasn’t so sure. My past with them screamed otherwise; why would they suddenly trust a traitor and sympathize with someone they’d mocked and beaten up on a daily basis? It took some doing to convince myself that choosing me over Chrysalis earlier today had to be a good sign, but how long would it last? What if the mass transformation hadn’t been their decision to follow me but rather to just hear me out and then decide whether or not what I had to offer was good enough to warrant the abandonment of everything they’d ever known? We’d all assumed that I’d won them over, but had I really?

I was about to start hyperventilating again when Psycho and one other drone flew up to me.

“I’ve gathered up the drones, Your Highness,” he said. “You may address them whenever you want.”

His words hadn’t ended my rising panic, but they had kind of shifted me into focus. Kind of.

“I would have appreciated being asked if I was ready, Psycho. Or at least being given a heads-up that you were about to do it.”

“My apologies, Your Highness!”

“And stop calling me ‘Your Highness’! I told you I’m not comfortable with it! Please?”

“Of course.” He gestured to the other drone. “This is Urtica. She’s the hive archivist and has expressed a desire to document your speech. Will you permit it?”

“My King, I’d be honored to serve you if you will allow me to retain my duties,” she said, bowing gracefully.

Wonderful! How many times did they have to be told to loosen up around me? This was only making me even more nervous! Then again, this was my first encounter with Urtica, so she probably didn’t know all this and was acting the way Chrysalis would have expected her to.

“Uh, I guess so if you want,” I said, “but I have to warn you that I haven’t prepared a speech and it’d be nothing short of a miracle if it didn’t fail your expectations. And while we’re at it, may I point out that I’m not Chrysalis? I get it that she demanded a display of obedience, but I’d much prefer that you all act naturally around me!”

Still bowed, she snuck a glance at me and then at Psycho as if wondering if this was some kind of a test.

“Relax, Urtica,” he told her. “I’ve known him for years and he means it. I get it, I still revert to old habits too, but let’s try to adjust, shall we?”

“Okay,” she said and rose to a normal stance. “Shall we get started, Your Hi- uh, I mean Thorax?”

“I suppose… I just hope I won’t mess it up… I’ve never held a speech before…”

“Then keep it simple,” Psycho said. “They won’t expect a pep rally anyway. Just tell them what you want them to do without much fuss. There’ll be plenty of opportunities to wow them later when we’ve all gotten used to this new situation.”

“I guess that could work, but… isn’t that a little too… uh… militaristic, for the lack of a better word? I don’t want to make it look like I’m the next Chrysalis even if I tell them to go paint flowers…”

“You want to sound friendly?” Urtica chimed in. “Less like a commander and more like a guiding hoof?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“Then you might want to begin with setting such a tone. For example, infiltrators’ reports from Princess Twilight’s coronation stated that she thanked her associates - um, friends, sorry - and the other ponies present there for the roles they played in her path to becoming royalty, and Dragon Lord Ember allegedly made an attempt at humor when addressing her subjects for the first time. I’m not saying that you have to do either of those things, but if it helps you decide on your approach…”

“Thank you, it does help!” Maybe the ordeal wouldn’t be so bad after all…

I started for the edge of the plateau again. Seeing the crowd below again made my heart leap into my throat regardless of the advice I’d just been given. Hadn’t the crowd been smaller a minute ago? Were they still gathering up? How many of them were there supposed to be, anyway? And would they care to listen? I was sure Chrysalis wouldn’t have had to worry about that as few drones would be so foolish to risk punishment if caught inattentive, but how soon until they caught on that no such punishment would be coming from me, and how would it affect their behavior? I hoped they’d at least make an effort to appear polite and maybe even get the gist of the message in the process if I was lucky, but what if they decided not to bother and simply left the premises? Or what if they started a discussion on the matter? I wanted to believe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing so long as they kept it civil, but would they keep it civil? My first speech ending in carnage was the last thing I wanted!

Okay Thorax, that’s not helping, and you can’t stay here frozen in indecision forever! Just fly down there and address your subjects already!

My subjects. Oh, how weird it felt to refer to them in that way! Would I ever get used to it?

I swallowed a lump in my throat and buzzed my wings; Psycho and Urtica followed me to the base of the hive, to what looked like a podium set up for me - unless it was simply a boulder or a throne room fragment of a convenient size? - and positioned themselves close to me but in such a way that they wouldn’t be drawing attention to themselves. The crowd, murmuring among themselves until that point, went silent, and all eyes gave me their full attention. I looked them over. Most of the faces were the colorful ones of the reformed drones, but they were interspersed here and there with a menacing-looking black face of the old days. There were more than I’d expected to see, and I realized I was hoping none of the colorful faces were disguises erected to throw me off guard. There couldn’t have been too many of them or their collective love aura wouldn’t have been so thick, but it was impossible to be sure that none of them had decided to show up with a face that wasn’t their own.

It didn’t matter, I reminded myself. They were my subjects - goodness, it felt weird on so many levels to call them that - and I was their king - that still felt world-shatteringly strange and I had no idea how I’d ever get used to it! What they’d done to me in the past didn’t - shouldn’t - matter anymore; whatever I’d felt about them before was now irrelevant. Whether or not they’d come to accept my principles, they were my people, and their well-being was my responsibility; no matter how they felt about me and how I felt about them and about the rest of the world in relation to us, my first duty was to them, and nothing in the world would change that for as long as I lived!

Well, I assumed so, at any rate. But what to tell them, and how to begin? Memories of a previous life overwhelmed me momentarily; the last time so many drones had gathered up for me, they’d done it to watch me scream in pain… What had that episode of punishment been for? I couldn’t remember even though it hadn’t been that long ago, but with so many of them, they’d all blended together and I’d sometimes found it hard to tell where one ended and another began-

Okay, enough! That’s over and done with! Just do the speech already! Everything will be fine!

Thankfully, the drones hadn’t seemed to notice me panic a moment ago, or maybe they had but decided against reacting to it. It could have been the discipline from the old days when anything that could be interpreted as disrespect to the Queen would have been grounds for punishment, but I hoped that, this time, they would have held back their reaction out of at least partially-genuine respect.

I took a deep breath and stepped forward.

“My dear fellow changelings,” I began, “much has happened today and I believe you already know the gist of it, so I won’t bore you with the details right now. Let me begin by saying how deeply grateful I am to every one of you who had the courage to set aside everything you’ve ever been taught and lived by and to give me a chance to show you the benefits of sharing love! Judging by your new colors and the strength of your love auras, there’s more of you already than I ever dared to hope, and it means to me more than you realize! But as happy as this day was, it brought a tremendous change and it’ll take a while for all of us to adjust. I expect you’ll have a lot of questions, and though I can’t promise to know the answers as all this is just as new and unexpected to me as it is to you, I’ll do my best to help you. Don’t be afraid to ask! I’ll probably be somewhere around the, uh, former Throne Room most of the time, but if I’m needed elsewhere, feel free to wait, or come looking for me if the matter is urgent.

“Now, I’ve been told a lot of you don’t know what to do with yourselves now that I’ve cancelled all missions you were sent on or preparing for. We’ll be a peaceful nation from now on, therefore I don’t see the need to maintain an army anymore, and the same goes for prey-hunting as we can create love for one another now and won’t have to resort to stealing it. But there is so much more that we can do with our lives! We used to be bound by hunger and blind obedience, but now that we’ve overcome those limitations, I don’t think there’s anything we couldn’t do if we put our hearts and minds to it! I’d like to start an arts-and-crafts group to allow you to express yourselves in new ways and a feelings forum in which you could get to know and understand one another and help your peers with any problem they might have. Those are my own ideas for what we could do, but I don’t want to limit you to just that, and I especially don’t want to dictate your every move! If there’s something that interests you, feel free to suggest it, and you may find that you’re not the only one with such an idea! Draw your inspiration from anything, be it a role you had on an infiltration mission, something you were taught in training, a suppressed desire that you never dared to show in the old days, or whatever else you think the hive will benefit from. As long as it isn’t violent or harmful in any way, I’ll be glad to help you achieve it! The same goes for any suggestions on how to improve the hive and our lives in other ways, as I still haven’t had the time to take a closer look at Chrysalis’ rules, which I’m sure are in need of thorough revision now, and I’d like your input. Think it over and come to me to discuss it. And the most important thing of all: do make friends! You’ll be surprised to see how much love it’ll give you!”

The drones began murmuring among themselves, only a few at first, but more joined in gradually. I took it as a sign that they’d taken my advice to discuss possible activities; at least some of them would! At the very least, they were talking about something, and if that helped them get to know friendship, I’d be satisfied!

I didn’t know what more to say to them at the moment. If need arose, I could always ask Psycho to gather them up again for another speech, hopefully one I’d have prepared for a little better. Besides, I had a lot of catching up to do, and I still didn’t know whether or not Pharynx had gotten the message to return to the hive! I missed him so much; whatever happened next, I had a feeling everything would be easier with him by my side! I wondered how he’d react to the big news…

Darkness of Old

My expectations had proven correct. I spent the night tossing and turning, trying to find a comfortable and soothing way to position myself on the bed in order to fall asleep and failing miserably, wondering how to get off the bed without alerting Pharynx and whether or not I’d have better luck falling asleep on the floor… I did manage to doze off a few times, but never for longer than a couple of minutes at a time, and I knew this simply by how shallow these intervals of sleep had been, if they could be called sleep at all. I couldn’t even blame it on the bed’s creepy aura anymore; though still present, the aura was now barely noticeable! Either it had faded somehow, or I’d overstated it greatly! Unless I’d gotten used to it and managed to tune it out? Whatever the case was, I still had something keeping me awake! But what? I doubted it was the sudden change in my life; that would have been a problem on the first night too! It couldn’t be the hive itself for the same reason! Worry over the decisions I’d made? Yeah, that could explain it; the hive matters I could probably handle, but the declaration of peace and the other lands’ reactions to it…

...and Pharynx. Yeah, that would definitely do it.

It must have been around dawn when I finally realized any further attempts at falling asleep were pointless and gave it up. I remained sprawled on the bed a little longer, lost in thought. The text of the declaration had seemed okay enough from my inexperienced point of view, but would its recipients see it that way? Should I have asked the ponies for advice before sending anything? Princess Cadance would have surely helped me! Were she not so far away, I’d have probably gone to her instead of Urtica, but I’d wanted to announce the changelings’ peaceful ways as soon as possible! Would the other leaders see my intentions and honor them regardless of any imperfections in the text of the declaration? And what about the bits and gems I’d sent? Psycho’s suggestion had seemed more sensible than Bandit’s, but how could I be sure that I hadn’t made a mistake in that regard in my hurry to dispatch everything? Would anyling else have offered a better option if I’d thought to ask?

And what about Pharynx? He was the most ambiguous of all! There were moments when I got a feeling he was trying to cooperate and moments when I could swear he wanted to rip my throat out, even moments when those two states existed in him simultaneously! Granted, that was an improvement since the old days when the urge to rip my throat out had been much more obvious in him than anything that might be considered a desire to cooperate, even when defending me from other drones, but it still wasn’t making it any easier for me to figure him out. Maybe I would figure him out if I could just talk to him, but the way he was holding himself, a meaningful conversation would be nothing short of a miracle!

Oh well, nothing I could do about it now. He was still asleep, like probably the rest of the hive, which meant that any other order of business would have to wait too. In the meantime, this was as good a time as any to familiarize myself with my new bedchamber better than the last evening’s cursory glance had done.

I got up and made a round of it. I didn’t know what it had looked like before and what, if any, objects other than the bed it had contained, except that the walls were indented with unusually many niches and alcoves, and there weren’t any holes in them save for the entrance. There were no lamps, either; the animal-powered-cocoon ones had by now been released throughout the hive including here, and though wood-and-fire torches were placed elsewhere in their stead, none were present here, and the only illumination came from the bed cocoon itself, but I couldn’t figure out how since no creature was trapped inside. Maybe Pharynx would know?

All in all, the room wasn’t that bad, if a little too big for my needs, and I could probably make it feel like home with a little time and effort. Maybe to get rid of the current bed and find another, and a desk and a cupboard would be nice, too; they didn’t even need to be anything fancy… and the walls could really use some paintings, even if hanging them on such uneven surfaces would be tricky…

As I surveyed the room more closely, I noticed one of the alcoves in the far end was unusually deep, and aligned in such a way that it wasn’t obvious from the entrance and even from most of the room itself. It seemed almost strategically placed! Knowing the room’s previous owner, that would hardly be a surprise, but what could she have been hiding in there?

Intrigued and uneasy, I went into the alcove. What I’d seen before was simply an atrium of sorts, narrowing a little on the far end into what might be described as a small hallway, then making a sharp turn and opening into another chamber.

Inside, a table stood next to a wall, a quill and some scrolls laid onto it, and more scrolls on a shelf indented into the wall. Beneath the table was a nondescript chest, and a cockatrice lamp hung from the ceiling, probably unnoticed by whoever had cleared the other lamps in the area. My first instinct was to open the lamp and let the cockatrice out, and it would have probably been safe as I doubted it was strong enough to turn anyling into stone given the amount of light it was providing, but something drew me to the table first.

I was just about to unroll one of the scrolls when I heard hoofsteps.

“You’re up early for a change,” Pharynx said.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I told him. “Did you know about this place?”

“No, I’ve never been in her bedchamber until tonight, and she’s never exactly been keen on sharing information randomly.”

“Not even to her First Commander?”

“About what her bedchamber looked like? Why would she? I wasn’t her consort! I might have gone in if I had to wake her up for an emergency, but that never happened!”

We stood there in silence for a moment.

“So what do you make of this?” I asked eventually.

He shrugged noncommittally. “What’s in the chest?”

“I don’t know.” I pulled it towards us, opened the lid, and recoiled, wishing I hadn’t touched it and letting the lid fall back down. Pharynx gave me a look and proceeded to open the chest himself and rummage through its contents.

“Okay, so another torture kit,” he stated.

“‘Another’? How many did she have?”

“One in each armory and a few more stashed around. Think she ever used this one on you?”

“How should I know? I wasn’t keeping track!”

“Eh, probably not,” he said, eyeing a few… items… more closely. “No blood on any of this. Which isn’t to say that she never cleaned the stuff or had someling else clean it, or that this wasn’t a spare set.”

“Are you done with that?” I asked feebly.

“Why, you want some?” He tossed me a cat-o’-nine-tails.

I cringed and levitated the whip back to him. “I was hoping to throw it out…”

We just stood there, looking at each other.

“Now?” he asked.

“Yeah… Would you be so kind?”

“You sure you won’t need any of it?”

“Are you crazy?! Do you have any idea how much those things hurt?”

“I know how loudly you scream on the receiving end.”

“Then you know why I don’t want them!”

“What I know is that you could use a tougher attitude and a higher tolerance for pain!”

“Pharynx…”

“What? A good soldier shouldn’t succumb to getting hit a few times!”

“But we’re not soldiers anymore, and that stuff can’t be compared to a few hits!”

“You’re still insisting on that, are you?”

“It’s a done deed, Pharynx. I’m not having us become savages again and the sooner you-”

“And I’m not going to sit idly by and watch the hive crumble under the onslaught of invading armies!”

“What invading armies?!”

“Just you wait, Thorax! They may not be here yet, but they will be, and I can promise you that!”

“You’re starting to sound like Shining Armor when he first met me…”

“That only means the guys’s sensible.”

“More like paranoid!”

“Are you sure? The invasion was already being prepared!”

“But I wasn’t its scout!”

“No, you were a bait! Did you really have to parade around looking like yourself? What if the infiltrators had been ordered to grab you while I wasn’t there?”

“I’m sure my friends would have tried to help-”

“‘Tried’ is right! They’d have been captured themselves! Actually, they were captured!”

“Not all of them were!”

“And sure, a few random untrained crystal ponies would have definitely succeeded where five alicorns, a military commander, five vigilantes, and a fire-breathing dragon had failed! Gimme a break! Even that wizard turned out to be helpless despite knowing we were there!”

I had no answer to that.

“So…” I said after a moment, “can you throw this out? Please?”

“Ugh, fine.”

He stuffed everything back in the chest, closed it, and dragged the thing away. I expected he wouldn’t be back so soon, if he returned at all, so I moved on to examining the scrolls.

The first few I grabbed were completely illegible, but not due to messy hornwriting; the script was perfectly clear but written in an alphabet unknown to me. There were a few sketches and diagrams too, but none of them made it even remotely clear what the text was about. I had a vaguely bad feeling about the scrolls and that was the full extent of what I could get from them at the moment. Dark magic, maybe? If that was the case, I absolutely didn’t want anything to do with them! I decided to ask Sunburst for an opinion when a chance presented itself, or maybe Twilight or Starlight if I ended up seeing them first, and set the scrolls aside for now.

The next scroll was legible and described a spell that looked easy enough at a glance, and didn’t seem to have anything sinister about it. Pharynx returned when I was about halfway through reading the scroll.

“What’s it say?” he asked.

“It’s a spell of some kind,” I said. “It’s supposed to do something to the hive but I’m not sure what exactly.”

“Have you tried casting it?”

“No… you think I should? What if something goes wrong?”

“With you, it’d hardly be a surprise.”

“Do you wanna try?”

“Me?! I’m not a magician! I can levitate stuff and fire combat blasts, but that’s about the extent of it!”

“And I’ve always been useless in even that…”

“Didn’t you say your magic feels stronger now? You can levitate things just fine and you broke Chrysalis’ sword easily!”

“Yeah, well, maybe, but that doesn’t mean I can do other things!”

“It doesn’t mean you can’t, either!”

I stared at the scroll.

“Look, whatever that thing does, I doubt it’ll make the whole hive collapse or anything, and it could be useful.”

“So you think I should try it?”

“Chrysalis had a reason for keeping this here. Dunno about you, but I’d like to know what that reason is, and aside from asking her directly, I don’t see how we can get at that reason unless we try the spell.”

I pondered this. Despite what Pharynx had said, I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, but if he thought it was a good idea…

“Okay… okay… just, stand back a little, would you? I don’t know what’ll happen…”

He did, and I called up my magic, focusing on wielding it the way the scroll said to, and fired a burst of it into the floor, and a wall sprouted rapidly from the spot, extending upward and to either side to merge with the preexisting walls and the ceiling, separating me from Pharynx and almost trapping me inside the secret room!

“Mother of all trouble…” Pharynx shouted from the other side. “You okay, Thorax? What did you do?”

“I don’t know! You think this is supposed to happen?”

“How should I know? You’re the one who read the scroll!”

“Well, it could be that the spell was meant as a construction tool… but I didn’t read the whole thing…”

“Can you undo it?”

“I’m not sure…”

“Well, what does the rest of the scroll say?”

“I don’t know. The lamp remained on your side and it’s too dark in here.”

“Have you tried using magic as a light source?”

I hadn’t, but I was pretty sure I knew what he meant. I tried to create an orb of light in the tip of my horn like I’d seen some unicorns do.

“Oh hey, it worked!” I read on. “No, it only describes how to use the spell with a bit more finesse. It does seem to be a construction spell, and what I started with must be a version for when you need to build a wall quickly, probably in emergencies.”

“Can you do the finesse version?”

“I think so… the way it’s described, I’m supposed to something like levitate the wall to where I want it while making sure it stays in place… sounds convoluted but I think I get what it means…”

I did as instructed; the newly-formed wall yielded to my magic and, little by little, shrank back in on itself until it was almost gone. I didn’t bother smoothing out the edges; all that mattered was that I’d figured it out! I could come back to it later!

“Nice to see those antlers are useful for something, by the way,” Pharynx said, smirking.

“What do you mean?”

“They lit up together with your horn when you were casting spells.”

“Really? Huh… You think that’s why my magic is stronger now?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. What about those other scrolls? More magic?”

“Well, I found a couple I couldn’t read… maybe you can?” I gave him one.

“Nah, never seen such a script, but I sense something severe stirring in it… Dark magic? You’d better be careful with that, Thorax.”

“I know, I sensed the same thing. I’ll ask the ponies if they can figure it out.”

“Yeah, they’d probably know more about it than any of us,” he said reluctantly. “And the others?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t gotten that far.”

“You gonna check them now?”

Wow, he almost sounded like… like he genuinely wanted to know what was on the scrolls - no, like he wanted us to find out together!

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

“You sounded like you were making an effort to spend time with me and be friendly and I can’t believe it!”

He gagged. “Thorax, you’re new to magic and you’re messing with spells you’ve never seen before. I’m trying to keep you from hurting yourself. Or to put you in a healing cocoon if you do hurt yourself.”

“Aww, that’s really sweet of you!” I reached out to hug him, but he pushed me away.

“Sweet?! I’ve gotta do something with myself! I mean, it’s not like I have any troops to command or any duties to take care of!”

“You’re still mad about that?”

He huffed. An awkward silence followed, and having drawn a blank as to how to dissolve it, I invested my attention into the scrolls again.

The first few I grabbed off the shelves were unreadable. After that, I came across one that looked like a blueprint of something, and Pharynx thought it looked like some kind of weapon Chrysalis may have been developing but couldn’t say anything more without taking a closer look, so we set it aside. Not that I wanted that weapon, but he insisted that Chrysalis could still build it from memory and wanted to know what he’d be up against. Then there were more unreadable scrolls, after which we found one that appeared to both of us like designs for a torture device. Pharynx set that aside, too, though without elaborating what he intended to do with it. The rest of the shelved scrolls were, unsurprisingly, unreadable.

I thought for a moment that we were done, but then I remembered I hadn’t finished looking at the scrolls on the table; I’d started with them and gotten distracted by Pharynx’s return from disposing of the torture kit! He had disposed of it, hadn’t he? I decided to trust him on that and grabbed the remaining scrolls.

Again, one was unreadable. The next one was a long list of names. I unrolled it completely; it was really long! Most of the names were crossed out; in fact, only a few remained uncrossed: Celestia and Luna near the beginning, and then nothing for a long while until Discord, Cadance, and Shining Armor, the three of which had actually been crossed out and written again, and a little further down, it listed Princess Twilight and her friends, Spike, Flurry Heart, and at the very end, my own name and Pharynx’s, both written in capital letters.

I showed it to Pharynx.

“Is this what I think it is?” I asked, fearing he’d say yes.

“That depends on what you think it is,” he retorted, skimming through the names. “Some of the crossed-out names are unfamiliar to me, most of the others are the enemies she defeated or was told they’d died of other causes, and I think you know who the uncrossed ones are. Yep, definitely a hit list.”

“Why did she keep it? I mean, I don’t think she’d have forgotten who her enemies are.”

“Okay, a list of mementoes and a to-do list in one. Happy now?”

“No! That’s an awful lot of names!”

“Have you met her?”

“Okay, point taken.”

“Next!”

There was one scroll remaining. It was written in normal script, but I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“Well?” Pharynx asked.

“I’m not sure… It looks like a collection of spells, but it doesn’t say what any of them do… and they’re awfully alike, almost like variations of the same spell…”

“Can’t you guess what they do?”

I shook my head, still looking at the scroll.

“Think you could try them?”

“Maybe…”

I picked one at random and cast it on the wall. Nothing happened. I tried aiming it at the table, with the same result. I shrugged at Pharynx.

“You sure you’re doing it right?”

“I think so…”

“Is it supposed to be cast on inanimate objects?”

“It doesn’t say. What else would it be cast on?”

“Many things. Weather, living creatures, the caster himself…” Then, after a moment, he added, “Try it on me.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? I don’t want to hurt you or anything…”

“Just do it.”

“Without knowing what it does?”

“Thorax…”

I knew that tone; he used it as a last warning whenever I didn’t realize discussion was over and any further attempts would be futile in a way that would only result in cuts and bruises if I kept pressing the matter. Reluctantly, I fired off the same spell as before, and he stumbled and collapsed onto the ground, curling up into a defensive position and gasping for breath.

“OW! What did you do, Thorax? Ugh!”

“Oh no… are you okay? I’m so sorry!”

“What did you do?!”

“I… I don’t know… I thought I got the spell right but-”

“Think again! That felt like you threw me in a pool of superheated lava!”

I froze. That description was unnervingly familiar! I looked at the scroll again and felt knots forming in my stomach as I took a closer look at the words written tiny in brackets at the end of each spell.

Crucio seca… Crucio caeda… Crucio coqua… Crucio algea… Crucio misera… Crucio frema… Crucio calca… Crucio lapida… Crucio morsa… Crucio flarga… Crucio acori… Crucio franga… Crucio trunca… Crucio apida… Crucio rumpa… Crucio scabi… Crucio icta… Crucio igna… Crucio ultima…

I didn’t know all the words, but I still managed to recognize some I’d seen in Sunburst’s books. If I remembered their meaning correctly, and I couldn’t be sure as I hadn’t been especially interested in the ancient language in question, that would mean these were-

“Torture spells.” Pharynx had by now recovered enough to join me in reading the scroll, and hadn’t needed long to reach the same conclusion as me. “Might have known.”

“Oh, Pharynx… I’m so, so, so, so sorry! I never meant to hurt you! I should have known...I should have recognized what this was! Please forgive me!”

He said nothing. I looked at the scroll again, feeling a storm rising up inside me. This thing should never have existed! How long ago had she devised it? How many drones had it brought the worst day of their lives to? How many times? How many of them had thought they’d deserved it? How many could say that one of these abominations was the last thing they’d ever felt? My eyes filled with tears as I tried in vain to convince myself that these spells had been created for me and me alone, that no other being, changeling or otherwise, had ever wronged her so deeply to make her resort to such horrors, that she hadn’t been aware of just how indescribably painful her spells were… but deep inside, I knew better. She’d known exactly what the spells did and how horribly they did it, and she hadn’t held back! Hornet had said so!

But I was in a position to do something about it, no matter how insignificant. I couldn’t make Chrysalis forget any of these spells and I couldn’t keep her from using them on anyone unless I tracked her down and devised a good enough supervision system if reforming her turned out to not be an option, and I couldn’t turn back time to prevent the spells from being invented, but I could make sure no one else got their hooves on the scroll! I prepared to unleash a burst of magic that would incinerate the parchment, but then Pharynx snatched the scroll out of my magical grip and stormed away with it.

“Hey! I shouted after him. “Where are you taking that? Come back!”

When he didn’t reply, I went after him, but he was already gone.

Now what? Knowing him, he’d put it somewhere I wouldn’t think to look for it, and he’d refuse to tell me where it was or what he intended to do with it no matter how hard I tried to get him to tell me! What did he want with it, anyway? To destroy it, not having realized I’d been about to? I sure hoped so! That thing was dangerous beyond words!

Well, at least I hadn’t blasted him in the face again.

There was nothing more of interest here. The illegible scrolls were pretty much piled up together, and Pharynx had forgotten to grab the ones he’d set aside for further review, and whatever was on any of it, I didn’t want anyone messing with them until I had them looked at and declared safe.

I detached the lamp and placed it on my back, built a wall to block off the chamber, and on an impulse, built another wall in front of that one, and then one more. I was under no illusion that it’d stop anyone determined to get in or that the other walls wouldn’t yield sooner assuming any of them were of the same thickness and quality as the ones I’d just erected, but at least it felt better than leaving the room open for anyone to stumble into or putting up just one wall. Barring any unforeseen developments, I intended to keep the room closed off until a chance presented itself to take the scrolls to Sunburst, Twilight, or Starlight.

I left my bedchamber and ran into Psycho.

“Oh, hi,” I said. “Have you seen Pharynx anywhere?”

“No, why?”

“Nevermind. I’ll find him sooner or later… I think… In the meantime,” I passed him the lamp, “I found this. Can you or someling else release it and nurse it back to health?”

“I thought we got rid of them all… okay, I’ll find someone. Anyway, the courier from Klugetown just came back.”

“How did it go?”

“He tried to give the declaration to the local crime boss - there isn’t any kind of normal hierarchy there and the crime boss is the closest thing they have to an official leader, in case you didn’t know - but he didn’t get there. Says a landshark tried to grab him and he got chased and had to toss some of those gems around as a diversion. In the end he just stuck the declaration to a wall somewhere in town and scrammed while he could.”

“At least he made it back!”

“Yes, but we still don’t know how much we lost. Bandit is counting the remaining gems.”

“Nevermind the gems! Is the courier injured?”

“A couple of scratches, but otherwise fine.”

“Thank goodness! Any more of them back yet?”

“No, Klugetown is the closest. I don’t expect anyling else back before tomorrow, and that’s assuming they don’t run into any complications.”

“Okay. Has anything happened in the hive that I should know about?”

“The arts-and-crafts group and the feelings forum are due to start today, and I’ve assigned them to former Drill Chamber B-5 and Armory H-17, respectively. The choir is still looking for members and Antenna is still collecting the seeds and saplings. If you meant if there was trouble, no, none that I know of.”

“Thanks. I’ll be in the throne room, I guess.”

He nodded and trotted off with my lamp in tow, and I went to tackle today’s duties.

Heart to Heart

The three of us went on a mad rush through the hive’s corridors, looking everywhere we could think of and intercepting every drone we came across to inquire about my brother’s whereabouts. None of them knew, and most didn’t seem to care, regardless of whether they were reformed or not. Some even went as far as openly admitting relief he was unaccounted for under an assumption he’d either gotten eaten or left on his own like I had a year ago! I didn’t like it that they’d written him off so readily, but admittedly, it was hardly surprising, at least where the reformed drones were concerned, given how much he’d been terrorizing them as of late. Why the renegades welcomed his disappearance was somewhat less obvious at first glance, but I may have been right about him not really being a renegade, at least not quite in the same sense as the other renegades.

It was beginning to dawn on me that Pharynx leaving might make some sense after all: he obviously wasn’t reformed and the actually-reformed drones mostly hated him or at least disapproved of his antics, but up until now, I must have taken it for granted that, since he wasn’t reformed, the renegades would see him as one of their own even if he wouldn’t be their choice for a ringleader due to his connection with me… but if the renegades had shunned him too, then he really was on his own! He’d lost his rank way before the disbanding of the changeling army, and arguably some of the respect would have been lost along with it, and the rest of that respect would have gone with the revelation that he’d turned traitor to protect me from Chrysalis, and he hadn’t yet had a chance to reclaim any of that respect… Maybe the reformed drones would forgive him for protecting their new leader in his time of need, but the renegades probably still held a grudge against him for it! And not only had I done nothing to help him, I hadn’t even bothered to hear him out! No wonder he’d have lost his patience and packed up and left!

But why now? Despite everything, I believed he still loved the hive, so why would he turn his back on it in the face of a proven threat? Had my friends insulted him? I replayed their conversation in my head and found nothing he couldn’t handle. Had they - we - simply tipped the scale for him, pushed him to the limit at which he no longer cared what happened to us because we’d hurt him so much? Try as I might, I couldn’t convince myself that that was the case. It could have been without a maulwurf in the picture, but Pharynx wouldn’t have just left us like this! He’d never been one to give up easily, no matter how daunting the goal and how challenging the path to getting there!

That left one logical option, one I stubbornly and desperately refused to believe even as our search kept producing no results.

Please, Pharynx, I begged with every hallway and chamber that failed to show a trace of his presence. Show yourself… I can’t lose you… I don’t want to lose you… Please, don’t leave me…

“Should we split up?” Starlight eventually asked. “We’d cover more ground that way!”

Sunburst grimaced. “I don’t know… I think I’d get lost in here…”

“You probably would, both of you,” I said. “Not to mention that with all that thumping, the maulwurf could breach the hive any second if it hasn’t already, or there could be a cave-in, or something else! I can’t lose you too!”

Starlight went to take a look through a nearby opening. “Well, the maulwurf’s still out, at least,” she said. “Maybe if-” She stopped mid-sentence and craned her neck out. Her aura, already murky ever since hearing about the maulwurf and Pharynx, went worryingly chilly. “Uh, Thorax?”

Please don’t tell me what I think you’re gonna tell me! I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Yes?”

“How many maulwurfs did you say you were dealing with?”

...what? “One, why?”

“There’s another approaching from over there-”

“What?!” Could Psycho and Hornet deal with both of them with the few helpers they’d managed to find?

“-and it’s swatting at some kind of an oversized flying spider-”

I pushed her out of the way and flew out. “Pharynx!” I cried, only to be knocked onto ground level by an immensely powerful blow that could have easily killed me.

I turned around and saw the first maulwurf looming over me, raising a claw. A flash of light in the corner of my eye caught my attention and I turned to see Starlight, who lit up her horn as the maulwurf’s claw crashing down at me, then her horn turned a different shade of thaumic glow and I was whisked away in her teleportation spell and materialized in one of the outermost hallways of the hive just in time to witness the claw make contact with the ground and leave a considerable crater where I’d been a mere moment earlier.

“Thanks,” I breathed.

“Don’t mention it. What were you thinking?”

“That spider you mentioned? That’s Pharynx’s preferred battle disguise!”

I’d barely said that when the spider crashed right next to the gate through which we were staring and dissolved in green flames. Starlight scooped up the resulting drone in her magic and levitated him inside.

“Let me go!” he roared, kicking at the air. “Let go, you idiot! Let go!”

“Only if you’ll-”

He blasted at her horn and she yelped and dropped him, and he wasted no time in turning back at the direction of the gate, except I was standing close enough to block the way out. He nearly collided with me, then attempted to shove me aside, but I held my ground.

“Thorax, you have half a second to move or I’ll stop restraining myself!” he spat.

“I just want to talk to you!”

“No time! Don’t you see what’s out there?”

“I do, and that’s exactly why I-”

“Stop wasting my time with your useless pacifist delusions!”

“They’re not delusions, and that’s not-”

“Time’s up!” He pushed past me but I grabbed him by the tail and dragged him back in a split second before a maulwurf would have splattered him all over the hive’s outer wall. Starlight quickly put up a shield at the gate, but I wasn’t sure how long it’d hold.

“Pharynx, please!”

“Are you gonna run your mouth till these things level the hive?!”

Sure enough, the maulwurfs were getting extra cranky on the other side of the wall; the ground shook hard enough that Pharynx’s expression could become true!

“Why don’t we stop arguing, then, and-”

“We’ll stop arguing alright when I defeat those things! Then I’ll leave and you’ll never have to put up with me again!”

Had I heard him right? “What?!” I gasped, even though I’d just considered that possibility a few minutes ago. I just hadn’t thought it would actually happen!

“You heard me! Now do you want to keep the hive standing or not?”

“Yes, but you can’t leave-”

“Yes I can! I don’t know why I waited this long!”

“Can’t we talk about it-”

“No! For the last time, Thorax-”

“Pharynx! Will you please, just once, listen to me?!”

He stared at me for a second, then recovered his red-hot attitude. “Why should I? You never bother to listen to me!”

“I will this time!”

“And then do things your way regardless? Thanks a lot, but I’ll spare myself the effort!”

He pushed past me again and headed for the next exit. I rushed after him.

“Don’t want to talk? Fine, then listen.” He made a show of ignoring me but I wasn’t going to give up. “I was wrong. I thought I was doing the right thing by enforcing a peaceful approach on everything, and though I still believe that approach can do wonders and will never stop believing it, my friends helped me realize that non-violence isn’t always applicable no matter how much I may want it to be. Sometimes one has to resort to battle, and if the ponies can do it when all else fails, I think it’s time that I learn to put up with it too.”

He still marched onward with a clenched jaw and a venomous scowl, and though he never once even glanced at me, I was sure I had his full attention. Starlight followed at a respectful distance, and soon, the out-of-breath Sunburst came trotting out of a nearby hallway, accompanied by a few drones.

“They helped me realize something else, too,” I continued. “I thought helping you understand and accept my way of leadership would bring us closer, but it only drew us apart, and it’s because I didn’t listen to your advice… because I didn’t want to listen. I thought you were just being spiteful, but now I know you were just trying to help with your own point of view, to make me see the mistakes I was making and to suggest a better way of doing things, even if you weren’t necessarily right every time, but you never meant to undermine my leadership. I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner!”

“Sorry?” he spat, stopping abruptly in his tracks. “You think a ‘sorry’ will magically make things perfect instantly and without any effort? Do you have any idea how hard it was?! I sacrificed everything for you, Thorax: my rank, my reputation, my life, just to keep you alive for one more day at least, to buy you as much time as I could to have some semblance of a normal life before you got captured and executed, and I don’t care that it was for nothing since you finally learned to stand up for yourself, except you didn’t learn to stand up for yourself! You got saved through dumb luck and the ordeal didn’t teach you anything! You’re still the naive little idiot you’ve always been, except you’re now even more deluded than ever and can’t be talked any sense into so I have to fix your mistakes and keep our enemies at bay, except now I have to do it alone because you refuse to have a defense force and everyling else is either too invested in sucking up to you to listen to reason or still hold a grudge against both of us for losing Chrysalis! Do you have any idea how hard it is to know your leader’s stubbornness will doom the entire species sooner or later and having to fight against the current and keep trying to fix it all by yourself even though you know it’s near-impossible because no one will ever listen?!”

“Wow, talk about irony,” Starlight quipped.

Pharynx snarled at her.

“She has a point, Pharynx,” Sunburst stated. “A leader’s stubbornness dooming the entire species, and fighting against the current to do the near-impossible task of fixing it? Don’t you think Thorax fits that description just as well?”

“How? We were doing just fine until he escaped and ruined everything!”

“Pharynx,” I let out an exasperated sigh, “we were at war with everyone, enduring tyranny of a deranged sadist, and constantly starving. Under what definition does that constitute ‘doing fine’? We’re not starving anymore, we don’t have to be at war, and though I hope I am not and never will be a sadistic tyrant, I never claimed to be perfect, either. I know I’m not. I thought I was doing the right thing by having us rid ourselves of all forms of violence, but I guess even pacifism can go too far. Yes, you told me that countless times, and I’m sorry I didn’t listen. I guess you sometimes need a friend with a different perspective to finally understand.” I smiled briefly at the two unicorns. “I’ll listen from now on. We may not agree on things, Pharynx, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work together. Sometimes your way will be justified and sometimes mine will, and sometimes we’ll have to meet halfway. For starters, how about I reestablish our defense forces with you as their leader?” I offered a hoof. “Will you help me defend the hive?”

He stood there for a few moments in a silent, unreadable frown, long enough that I was starting to believe he’d slap my hoof away and storm off ranting insults. Instead, he bared his fangs in a mischievous smirk.

“Then let’s go kick some maulwurf rumps!” he said, then turned to the crowd of drones that had gathered around us in the meantime. Hadn’t I told them to seek safer areas? “I need volunteers!”

Apparently that was enough to get everyling to lose interest in our conversation in record time. The swarm stirred and murmured uneasily, the ones closest to us started looking around, and the ones further away backed away a little, some even disappearing into whatever corridor happened to be nearest. Even the renegades in sight weren’t showing much more enthusiasm!

My hopes sank at this display of mass reluctance. Pharynx had to have spent a while fighting that maulwurf with no success at driving it away; he had to have done everything in his power and still failed to stop the beast from reaching the hive, so how was he supposed to deal with two of them at once all by himself? I intended to help him to the best of my ability, but with my laughably pathetic combat skills, would I make any difference at all? I’d more likely just end up needing to get rescued instead of getting to contribute! And if Sunburst was right about maulwurfs being resistant to magic, then I couldn’t even count on him and Starlight to provide a solution! Maybe they could use their magic to distract one or both maulwurfs, or maybe they could trap one while the drones dealt with the other, but would that be enough?

And what about the volunteers that Psycho and Hornet had managed to gather? Would they still be interested in helping now that there wasn’t just one maulwurf on the agenda, or would they reconsider upon realizing Pharynx was the one in charge now? Where were they, anyway?

The ponies and I exchanged glances. They too looked like they hadn’t anticipated such a turn of events.

“Won’t any of you help Pharynx?” I asked the drones, hoping my explicit approval of the idea would snap at least a few reformed ones out of it.

My plea didn’t help, and an especially strong thud that came immediately afterwards only caused a few drones to yelp and dodge falling debris.

“Come on, we don’t have time for this!” Pharynx exclaimed. “Get your rumps moving already or you’ll all get killed!”

“Please guys, Pharynx and I can’t do it on our own!” I added as the next thud caused a cave-in in one of the tunnels in sight. Still, it was futile. “Is everyling okay there?”

Faint murmurs suggested they were alive at least, but the cave-in only made matters more urgent; more tunnels would crumble before long if we failed to stop the maulwurfs from hitting and clawing at the hive! It was a wonder it had lasted this long!

Pharynx got moving towards the nearest exit.

“Where are you going?” I protested, trying to stop him.

“Thorax, in case you haven’t noticed, there are two maulwurfs out there, trying to bring the hive down, and I don’t see anyling doing anything about it.”

“But you’ll get killed!”

“I will if I keep standing here like an idiot and waiting to be killed! Get out of the way!”

I refused to budge, but then a colossal claw tore through the wall and forced us all to retreat deeper into the hive, and I had to physically drag Pharynx away from the newly-formed hole as he sputtered threats and curses and struggled to get free. That had to be the first time in my life that I managed to overpower him! Was he simply restraining himself to avoid injuring me?

Seeing this, Starlight lost her patience and marched forward.

“What is your problem, people?” she said. “I can understand that not all of you like Thorax, Pharynx, or both of them - not even ponies like literally every other pony in existence - and I can understand that you may not have had combat trainings in a while and may be feeling unprepared as a result, but fighting used to be your whole life for much longer than it wasn’t anymore, and you wouldn’t have forgotten how to do it by now, and Thorax is your leader, so if he asked you to help out, why not do it? Especially because so many of you chose him over Chrysalis! He may not be demanding that you serve him the same way you served Chrysalis, but he gave you a lot of things she never did, one of which is the right to make your own choices! Don’t you think a great way to thank him for it would be to choose to help him and his brother save the hive from a threat? And as for the unreformed among you, I hear you’ve been starting a lot of fights recently. Why not fight now if you’re so starved of combat? Is it because Chrysalis isn’t the one issuing orders this time, or was it only fun while you were going at the ones you deemed weaker than yourselves?” She squinted at one of the clusters of renegades. “Are you… cowards?”

Gnat shot forward. “Who are you calling a coward?”

“Hey, if you can’t handle anything that fights back…”

“Try me, pony!”

“Okay, Gnat volunteered himself,” Pharynx interjected. “Who else?”

“I-” Gnat started, then clamped his mouth shut, probably having realized that any protesting would only prove Starlight’s point. Unfortunately, no drones actually volunteered.

“If I may,” Sunburst tried, “you should be aware that you’ll stand better chances if there’s more of you in the fighting team, regardless of whether or not any of you individually wants to-”

“I’ll go!” came a shout from one of the hallways. Soon enough, the slightly out-of-breath Grim buzzed in. “Sorry I’m late, been rounding up the nymphs. Cicada told me where to find you-”

“Is she alright?” Banshee asked.

“Yes, I left her and the others with Gossamer in the hatchery. Anyway, I want to help fight the maulwurf… Where do I sign up?”

“Right here-”

“Grim, are you crazy?” another drone shouted. “You’ll get yourself killed!”

“Thanks for the concern, Carapace, but I’m doing this!”

“Why? Haven’t you had enough excitement recently?”

“I have, and that’s exactly why I want to help. I’d never have a chance for the kind of life I want if it weren’t for Thorax, and if I can repay him in any way, I will! And Pharynx too, because Thorax wouldn’t be here now without a bit of brotherly help, no matter how the rest of us felt about that help at the time. And guess what? We all owe our lives to them, so let’s put that bloodlust Chrysalis instilled in us to good use for once and oust the maulwurfs so we can enjoy more of our newfound freedom! You don’t want to get eaten today, do you? Well the more of us join forces, the easier we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen!”

I saw a shimmer in Pharynx’s eyes as Grim held her short speech, and a poorly-concealed smirk as half a dozen drones flew over or squeezed through the crowd and lined up next to our little group, then a couple of dozen more, then probably twice as many. Before long, we had half the present swarm readying for battle! Even a few renegades decided to abandon their mischief and join the ranks!

“I’m proud of you, Grim,” I said tearfully. “Pharynx, will that do?”

“You bet,” he grinned. “Charge!”

So we did. The maulwurfs were momentarily taken aback by the sudden eruption of rainbow-colored chitin with occasional streaks of black, but they recovered quickly and started swatting at us. The swarm spontaneously split up into two, one half commanded by Pharynx and the other by Grim by unspoken agreement, both of them actively participating in the fight along with shouting orders. Every tactic must have been employed, both for fighting in our natural forms and in disguises, and though Sunburst, Starlight, and I were mostly clueless about what certain commands meant, having never served in Chrysalis’ army except for that one time in Canterlot when I’d actually gone out of my way to avoid partaking in combat, we did our best to compensate for that lack of understanding by mimicking whatever the others were doing whenever feasible and providing distractions. We weren’t successful the whole time; Pharynx shoved me out of the way of an incoming supersized claw more than once, and I caught a glimpse of Starlight looking around frantically while enclosed in a shield bubble and an apparently dizzy Sunburst being carried out of the battle zone.

Everything was going mostly fine until Grim got knocked unconscious and her predicament distracted my brother enough to unwillingly join her in dreamland.

“Pharynx!” I cried out, flying over to him and nearly getting splatted in the process myself. Luckily for me, Starlight had noticed what was going on and blasted at the maulwurf while clutching its claw in her magic.

“Get outta here!” she shouted.

“You too! It’s gonna-”

It did. Starlight’s magic, though powerful, was no match for the muscles of an enraged maulwurf, and the beast broke out of her grip and pounded the ground where my friend stood… where she had been until the very last moment. She couldn’t have cut it any closer teleporting away if that had been her intention! I couldn’t figure out why she’d chosen to teleport onto the maulwurf’s head of all places until she started blasting it again, then teleported onto its snout as it swatted at her, then onto its ear, then the other ear, and so on as the maulwurf kept hitting itself in a vain attempt to get rid of the annoyance.

“Hey, good thinking!” I said to her, whether or not she could spare a moment and some of her focus to register my words. “Why don’t we- uh…”

In this short time while Pharynx and Grim were out of commission and I was too distracted to notice much of what was going on around me, the battlefield had become dotted with drones lying around unconscious; less than half of our initial defensive team remained, and though most of them had switched to the other maulwurf now that Starlight had found a seemingly effective way to deal with hers, but the vigor in their auras had in the meantime given way to a murky chill, the telltale sign that losing their commanders, if only temporarily, had crushed their spirits and left them vulnerable to the point that we could easily be defeated even though Starlight’s maulwurf was showing every sign of having had enough of hitting itself and may have even considered leaving!

“Huh?” she said, having noticed that something was amiss, and missed her cue for teleporting away. A force field erected at almost the moment of impact with the claw must have saved her from getting knocked out too, but she probably hadn’t had enough time to put enough magic in it to make it stronger, as it shattered instantly and she was left dazed and unable to keep fighting.

Okay, Thorax, enough fooling around! I transformed into a manticore as big as the maulwurf and went at it furiously, counting on righteous anger to give me the edge I needed, but I lacked combat knowledge and experience and it showed; I’d barely struck a couple of blows when the maulwurf scored a hit that got me dizzy to the point of dropping my disguise and crashing to the ground.

The other drones noticed what had happened and, as far as I could tell, stopped fighting at once. I tried to tell them not to pay attention to me and to keep fighting, but it came out as incoherent muttering. Needless to say, it did nothing to snap them back into focus and give them a fighting chance again, and I’d barely started mentally apologizing to them for messing everything up and getting them all killed when a rainbow-colored cloud seeped from the hive’s entrances and continued where the first two teams had left off. I couldn’t believe my eyes! More drones had decided to help us? When had that happened? Okay, they weren’t quite as numerous as the ones Grim had motivated, but I was going to welcome any advantage I could get! Even better, their arrival restored some of the other drones’ lost spirits, and the joined teams were starting to make a difference at last! Starlight and some of the knocked-out drones were starting to recover, too, and soon they were back in business as if nothing had happened!

“About time they showed up,” a gruff voice behind me stated.

“Pharynx, you’re alright!” I exclaimed. Okay, to tell the truth, he didn’t exactly look his all-time best; his carapace was ripped up in a few spots and he seemed to be struggling to stand upright, but he was too stubborn to let that stop him, and he was awake at last, and the rest faded in comparison!

I started to hug him but he pushed me away. “Later! I’ve got a pest to get rid of!” he said as he took to the air and rejoined the battle.

“Be careful,” I said, but he was already too busy to notice.

Just about then, Grim woke up too and rejoined the fight, and so did the rest of the unconscious drones within the next few minutes. I was still making an effort to help the other fighters, but they could easily do without me by now: the arrival of reinforcements and the recovery of the temporarily-incapacitated drones had done wonders to restore everyling’s spirits, and the larger numbers made it harder for the maulwurfs to shake us all off despite their growing frustration. It took a while, but eventually they decided they’d had enough and ran off, chased by the swarm into the distant parts of the wasteland where they dug themselves into the ground in a last-ditch effort to shake us off.

“And stay there!” Pharynx shouted after them, and everyling else cheered.

Psycho and Hornet came up to me. “Sorry we’re late,” they said. “We didn’t know you’d started without us!”

“I found them in something called ‘feelings forum’,” Sunburst said, joining us. “They were getting their volunteers ready for when you give the signal and didn’t realize it had already happened. Maybe we should have sent someone to get them right away?”

“Oh… you’re right, we should have! At least we should have remembered to ask if they were there already! What about you, Sunburst? You okay?”

“Yes, it was only a minor hit as far as maulwurf hits go… not that I’ve had any first-hoof experience with them prior to today! But nevermind me, someone else wants your attention.”

I turned around to face Pharynx. He was grinning widely for the first time in years and there was a fire in his eyes that I’d never seen before!

“I take it you like how things turned out?” I asked him.

“Like it? Nothing like a good fight to get the old blood pumping!”

“Even if it didn’t go so well for a while? Speaking of that, are you alright?”

“What are you talking about? As if a soldier worth his fangs would be afraid of getting hit! I can’t remember the last time I was this pumped! And you know why?”

“Because you beat the maulwurf?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, you idiot, I’ve beaten maulwurfs before. I’m pumped because we beat them! Because you fought alongside me! I’d given up hope it would ever happen, but not only did my pathetic little brother go to battle, he did it willingly! And he won! Don’t you get it, Thorax? This is the best day of my life!”

“I don’t think I deserve that much credit-” I started, but stopped myself mid-sentence when I realized Pharynx was radiating visible tendrils of love energy. He noticed it too and opened his eyes wide in confusion as he looked at himself; his eyes only had enough time to dart back at me before his whole body wrapped itself in a magical cocoon of pure love, from which he soon emerged a new changeling, reformed like most of the rest of us, only taller but not quite as tall as me, but most strikingly, a pair of antlers maybe half the size of mine adorned his head.

I grinned as he looked himself over, still confused over the unexpected change. Eventually he got over the initial shock.

“Huh,” he muttered to himself. “You really do stop being hungry after this…”

I hugged him in response, and he pushed me away again, though not as violently as before.

“But that doesn’t mean I want to get all sappy like the rest of you,” he added.

I smiled sheepishly. What was I expecting from him? But for all his grumpy attitude that was downright infuriating at times, he was my brother, and I loved him to pieces and wouldn’t have him any other way!

“Come on, Pharynx,” I said. “Let’s go home!”

Something for Everyone

A pleasant surprise awaited me in the mail a few days later. Among the usual letters from Spike, Twilight and her friends, Starlight, Sunburst, and Ember, was an additional one bearing the royal seal of Princess Cadance. It wasn’t unlike her to send me letters, though she didn’t usually do it in an official capacity… What could be happening? I opened the letter and found it lacking the usual formal structure I’d learned to associate with insignia on an envelope. Had something been sent by mistake?

Dear Thorax,

Shining and I thought you might be interested to visit us for the Crystal Faire, since you enjoyed the last one save for the disappointment that Spike couldn’t be here. Consider yourself invited! This year, Auntie Celestia and I paid close attention to make sure the Faire doesn’t coincide with any major events in Canterlot, and the magical conference that messed with her and Spike’s plans last year is this time scheduled for the weekend before the Faire. Barring any unforeseen complications, all of your friends will be here to attend the Faire with us! Some of them have expressed interest in being given assignments, though, so I can’t vouch for all of them to be available for socializing. I expect you won’t want to run a booth this time, but in case you do, just tell us and we’ll have one set up and reserved for you. The same goes for any changelings you choose to bring, and I’m not saying this to be polite; Shining and I really do want to meet more of your subjects and see them mingle with the crystal ponies, and so do they! We’ve actually been halted in the streets a few times while taking Flurry for a walk and asked if we can get you to bring changelings to the Faire! We also don’t mind Pharynx being among them, though we understand if he doesn’t want to or you’re not comfortable with bringing him along.

I just realized I forgot to tell you the date of the Faire. It’s Saturday, September 4th. We hope to see you then!

Cadance
P.S. Flurry has a surprise for you!

Yes, Cadance, I certainly was interested in visiting for the Crystal Faire! The last one had been wonderful all on its own and made better by allowing me to contribute by selling my paintings and sketches, and if Spike and the others were coming this year, that was all I could ask for! And getting to bring changelings… was I dreaming? I knew the Crystal Empire’s royals were fond of changelings, so why hadn’t I expected an open invitation to such an important event?

I re-read the letter. It didn’t feel like a dream, but I still caught myself watching for Luna strolling by on the sidelines.

Satisfied eventually that I wasn’t going to see her in this context, I got up off my throne and went to talk to my subjects. We’d been invited, and it wouldn’t do to ignore this opportunity to strengthen the bond between our lands!

The train chugged on between the mountains and through snow-covered valleys of the far north. Though our destination was still too far to be observed, the calm weather promised no delays to our arrival. I wasn’t afraid; even with unexpected setbacks, we were close enough to fly there with only a slight delay, maybe even to teleport if we could trust the thaumic vortices that made such a method of transportation risky in this part of the world to have remained dormant with their snowstorm-inducing brethren.

Appeased by these thoughts, I shifted my attention to my fellow passengers. Though a few had rooted for teleportation all the way from the hive, the others had kept them grounded in reality, as they’d put it, claiming it would put too much strain on my magic, a stance that I couldn’t effectively counter, especially once it had found ample support in Pharynx. Thus, here we were, resting on the overnight train out of Appleloosa after having flown over the jungle. Some were still asleep under the morning sun caressing their carapaces through the train car’s windows; others had already opened their eyes to the incoming light.

“Are we there yet?” Antenna asked, yawning.

“Do you see any crystally buildings or spire-like castles?” Pharynx retorted.

“I thought the aura was a much better telltale sign than the architecture?” Grim joined in.

“Bleh. It’d be much easier to tell without all of you interfering. Just what in the world is making you broadcast that aura so intensely?”

“It’s in accordance with the Crystal Faire spirit-”

“You shut up, Thorax! You’re especially guilty! Another few minutes and I’ll be getting morbidly obese just by sitting next to you…”

“I’ll take that over being hungry any day,” Cornicle quipped.

“Just you wait, guys,” Feisty said. “I bet Pharynx will be the first in line for all the stalls and activities!”

“I’ll be the first in line for a nap,” he grumbled.

“Aww, but I brought you here to enjoy yourself!” I protested. “And didn’t you sleep just now?”

“Someling had to keep an eye on you lazy snugglebugs. And you know what I think about pony festivals and all the pathetic stuff they do there.” He turned to the window and made a show of ignoring us.

There was silence for a moment, then Elytra asked, “Think a crystal berry pie will change his mind?”

A round of chuckles followed.

“I heard somepony makes cute plushies there! Maybe that’ll do it!”

“Or the foals when they start playing with him!”

“I know! The crystal ewes are so fluffy and adorable, he won’t be able to resist!”

More giggling drowned out Pharynx’s annoyed groans, and the sour aura emanating from him was diluted by everyling else’s warmth; they pretended not to notice, but I was sure they did. Were they hoping their cheer would pass on to him if they tried hard enough? It hurt me to see him like that, but fortunately, I had an idea what to do about it.

“Sounds like all of you have plans already,” I said. “I’ll probably join you at some point, but personally, I’m just looking forward to seeing my friends again. I just hope the Royal Guard ones will be able to take a short break from patrolling or spare a moment during the jousting tournament to talk for a bit…”

Though he was still very deliberately staring through the window, Pharynx’s ears twitched at the mention of jousting, and I knew I’d caught his interest.

“Will you send anypony to buy our stuff?” Mystique asked, continuing the conversation, oblivious to my attempt to get Pharynx involved.

“Of course! That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? But I’m sure the ponies won’t need prompting to empty their money bags at your booths! They certainly did when I sold my stuff last year, and yours is way better than mine was!”

“Yeah, why aren’t you selling anything this year?”

“I didn’t make anything. Besides, Cadance asked if I’d care to be available for mingling with ponies and answering any questions they may have, which I think is more important for improving our reputation than selling a few doodles.”

“Hey, we’re almost there!”

Thunder was right; the crystal city was in full view by now, and we were approaching the station.

Almost everyling swarmed the window and uttered wow’s and whoa’s; the Empire had that effect on those seeing it for the first time. Feisty and I just grinned at each other, and Pharynx continued pouting.

Soon the train stopped, the doors opened, and a flash of golden magic popped in front of me before a ball of pink fluff attached itself to my chest.

“Tora here!” it babbled. “Ma, pa, Tora an chali here!”

“Yes, yes, Flurry, we’re here,” I chuckled, stroking her mane. “And you’ve learned to talk!”

“Yea! Follo me Tora!”

I followed her to the platform, where her parents were waiting with Spike and Twilight. We exchanged hugs right away.

“So, Thorax,” Shining said, “did you like Flurry’s surprise?”

“Absolutely! When did she learn to talk? Why didn’t you say anything?!”

“It was a surprise, silly,” Cadance chuckled.

“Of course,” I said. “Well, Flurry, now we can finally understand what you’re trying to tell us!” More or less… but it would get easier over time, so I wasn’t complaining.

“Yay! Tora come play wi me!”

“A little later, honey,” Cadance told her. “I’m sure he’ll drop by the foals’ playground at some point! You will, Thorax, right?”

“I will, and I brought Grim here to help your own foalsitters, as promised. Also, here are Mystique and Elytra with their arts-and-crafts projects, Antenna with flowers, Carapace with the storytelling, Whisper with the musical workshop… you’ve already met Pharynx and Feisty… and the rest just came to see the Empire and mingle with the citizens and tourists. I hope I haven’t brought too many?”

“It’s never too many,” Cadance reassured me. “If we’d wanted to limit your numbers, we would have said so!”

“That’s right, and we welcome you all to the Crystal Empire!” Shining added. “Though, we should get moving. The Faire starts in half an hour, you need to set up your booths, I have to check the roster and arena for the jousting tournament - there’s still a few open spots, by the way, so if any of you want to participate, come with me and I’ll sign you up - and we need to make sure there aren’t any last-minute complications before we open the festivities. Those of you without assignments will have to just be patient until everything is settled, I’m afraid.”

“Thorax said we’d be helping carry the stuff and set up the booths,” Cornicle said.

“I did, yes. Will that be a problem?”

“Not at all! That’ll make things easier as long as you don’t lose track of who’s helping whom and where you’re supposed to go!”

“We won’t!”

We loaded the stuff onto our backs and headed for the city. Everypony and everyling except Pharynx found a companion to chat with along the way, but though he was technically alone, my brother kept close to Shining Armor at all times. If I didn’t know better, I would have suspected him to be plotting all kinds of things… but then again, if he were plotting things, he would have made sure to be less obvious about it.

I ended up with Spike riding on my back between pots of flowers and bush sprouts I was carrying for Antenna.

“So we finally get to do this together, huh?” he said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it last year!”

“It’s alright, Spike. I know you were busy with other things, and I got to enjoy the Faire regardless, though I did miss you. I take it you don’t have any assignments?”

“Not officially, other than helping Twilight with the preparations, though knowing the crystal ponies, they’ll swarm me again and I’ll end up telling stories and giving out autographs.”

“Mind if I sit in the audience?”

“Doesn’t Cadance want you to mingle with the ponies and whoever else visits?”

“Okay, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take a break from it for a few minutes to enjoy what the Faire has to offer! Right?”

“I guess, if you have nopony to strike up a conversation with.”

We were at the Faire grounds by then, and Spike rejoined Twilight as she directed us to our booths; Cadance excused herself to take Flurry to the castle for a quick breakfast and Shining trotted off towards the stadium, presumably to see to the jousting tournament as he’d mentioned. Pharynx lingered a moment longer and disappeared as we were settling into the booths and helping arrange stuff.

Antenna’s booth ended up right between Rarity’s fashion corner and Crystal Berry’s cookie stand.

“Hey, darling,” Rarity said. “I take it the journey from the hive went well?”

“It did!” Antenna said. “We’re well rested and ready for whatever the day will bring!”

“Oh my, and you do have such stunning flowers! Simply marvelous!” She gasped. “Ideeeaaa! It may be near-autumn, but who says one can’t design a spring fashion line ahead of its peak season? Do you mind terribly if I use some of your adorable flowers as motifs to incorporate into the designs?”

“Why would I mind? Do you need actual flowers or will you craft them out of fabric?”

“I’ll craft them out of fabric, but now that you mention it, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to have a few actual ones for reference…” She reached for one of the bags of coins. “I’ll take these, these, and these… oh, and maybe those, too? Thank you, dear! How much are they?”

“Let’s see… I’ll give you a discount, so… seventy-four bits?”

“Hey!” Berry shouted from her stall. “You gals wanna grab a snack while you’re at it?”

“Why, thank you, your pastries do smell divine! What would you recommend?”

“The crystal berry caramel hearts are the freshest out of the oven, not to say that the others are bad, I mean.”

“I’ll take one! It says three bits, if I’m seeing it correctly?”

“Two bits, since we’re giving out discounts. What about you, Thorax and… uh, I didn’t catch the name?”

“Antenna. No, I’ll just bask in the love coming from them, if you don’t mind, and leave the actual cookies to the ponies. I can still pay if you want…”

“Nah, love is best served free… Right, Thorax? You taught me that, didn’t you?”

I rubbed the back of my head awkwardly. “Maybe…”

“Aw, modest as ever! Started eating pony food yet?”

“No, it still feels like I’m wasting resources others might need, even when there’s an obvious abundance of food.”

“This?” she snorted. “You should see Pinkie and Applejack! They run a pie booth together. I trotted past it half an hour ago and they already had enough to feed three death-starved Canterlots, and it smelled wonderful! Makes me worried I won’t sell anything…”

“I’m sure you will, darling,” Rarity reassured her, munching on the cookie she’d bought. “These treats speak for themselves!”

“I guess I can pitch in if you don’t sell much…” Antenna mused.

“Oh, pfsh! Of course she’ll sell everything, Antenna dear! They’re absolutely delightful!”

“You girls seem to have everything under control,” I said. “I’ll just go check on the others quickly before the Faire starts, if that’s alright with you? I’ll drop by later again if I can.”

“But of course, darling! Say, would it be too much trouble for you to take a few of Berry’s treats to Fluttershy? She’s in the petting zoo and I’m not sure if she’ll manage to catch a proper lunch break.”

“Of course! What about Rainbow and Starlight? Should I get something for them too?” I’d caught a glimpse of Starlight preparing a magical workshop while the other drones were settling into their booths, and I had no idea what Rainbow was doing.

“Rainbow rushed over to the jousting tournament, but I think she’ll get enough breaks between matches to grab a snack herself when she’s hungry.”

“And I left a couple of sandwiches and a slice of cake in the castle kitchen for Starlight. She said she intends to teleport them to herself as part of the workshop she’s running.”

“Okay, then, see you later!”

Fluttershy was very grateful for the cookies but had too many little ewes to keep an eye on to chat much, and I had just about enough time to check on the other drones’ booths before the Crystal Empire anthem marked the opening of the Faire. All four adult alicorn princesses and Shining Armor held a short speech and then disappeared into the crowd. I followed their example. It wasn’t long before crystal ponies, and occasionally non-crystal ones, started approaching me with questions about the new hive and how my subjects were adapting to their new lives; some who had known me before were interested to know how I was handling my new role in the changeling society, and there were even inquires about visiting the hive! I was kept busy, but not so busy that I’d miss noticing Spike get even more attention, just like we’d predicted.

A couple of hours later, after a conversation with a group of ponies from Fillydelphia, I ran into Rainbow strutting around furiously, muttering something to herself.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“That brother of yours… when I get my hooves on him…”

Oh no… “What’s he done now?”

“He beat me! I could have won! I should have won! I’m a Wonderbolt, darn it, not some newbie with four left hooves who can’t hold a lance!”

“So the jousting tournament is over already?”

“No.” She kicked at the ground. “Last I checked, they were getting ready for the quarterfinals.”

“Oh… I thought…”

“Yeah… I got my flank kicked in my third match… But don’t go blabbering about it or I’ll find you and make you sorry! I’ve got a reputation to maintain! And Pharynx owes me a rematch!”

Somehow, I doubted that would end up any differently, but Rainbow wasn’t in the mood to hear it. “Is Pharynx still in the game?”

“Yep.”

Of course he was. Stupid question. “...and when are they starting again?”

“Dunno. A couple of minutes? I’m not sticking around.” She marched off, grumbling to herself again.

I watched her go, debated cheering her up, and decided it was doomed to fail; nothing I said or did would make her stop pouting, and changing the past to make her the winner was even less likely. She probably just needed to get it out of her system… and it probably was hard for somepony not used to losing… but then again, nopony could win everything every time. And, realistically speaking, this wasn’t even her turf; though athletic and more versed in physical feats including combat than an average pony, she was first and foremost a flier, and jousting was a martial discipline, therefore the kind of thing Pharynx had spent his entire life training for.

And the tournament wasn’t over yet.

But I’d promised I’d be available to entertain the ponies…

“Don’t worry, Thorax,” Cadance said, approaching from behind me and gently touching my shoulder. “We’ve got you covered.”

How long had she been there… and how had she known?

In a daze, I nodded absent-mindedly and flew to the stadium.

The beginning of the quarterfinals were just being announced as I looked for an available seat. I found one next to an old friend.

“Aren’t you competing?” I asked him.

“I was,” he said. “Your brother defeated me in the first round. Part of me wants to be mad at him, but I think it’s just the universe’s way of ensuring some payback for the way I used to treat you.”

“What?! But we’re friends now, Trusty! I’ve forgiven you long ago!”

“But I still haven’t forgiven myself entirely, though getting to gradually discover your true self without much outside pressure helps me live with myself. Based on how much better I’ve fared compared to Captain Shining some months ago, I’m guessing Pharynx doesn’t know our history?”

“I haven’t told him, so if he has found out, he must have learned to control himself better.”

“Unless he just doesn’t want to get disqualified from further competing by breaking the rules and is plotting revenge for sometime out of ponies’ sight…”

“Don’t say that! I made him promise to behave himself!”

A round had just ended with a yak victorious over a bulky crystal pony I vaguely remembered seeing in a Royal Guard uniform once or twice while living here, and the next round was announced.

“Oh look, there he is!” I exclaimed as my brother marched into the arena. “Wait, where did he get that armor?”

“Beats me,” Trusty shrugged. “Didn’t he bring it along?”

“I don’t think we even have any armor that fits our new bodies. He certainly wasn’t carrying one on a train! He wasn’t even aware there was going to be a jousting tournament until we were almost here!”

“Oh well, a mystery for another time. Maybe the Captain assumed Pharynx would be interested and had an armor made for him during the preparations for the Faire.”

“Maybe. Who’s that other guy?”

“One of the Royal Guards; a transfer from Manehattan, I think. He came here only a couple of weeks ago and I still haven’t gotten around to spending much time around him outside of morning roll-call.”

“I was chased in Manehattan once, but I don’t remember any Royal Guards, only police officers and some brave civilians…”

“An outpost exists, but yeah, it’s a small one and they’re there pretty much just for appearances and ceremonial purposes, and watching over the city is mostly in the police’s hooves. Unless you’d been found right under their snouts or the chase lasted all day, I’m not surprised they didn’t have time to show up before you ran off.”

“Probably-” The round began, and Pharynx scored an epic hit. “Ouch… that must have hurt…”

“Who are you rooting for?”

“Hey, just because my brother is competing doesn’t mean I want the other guy dead! …he isn’t dead, is he?”

“Nah, just unconscious… I think…” The medics came and carried him away. “Yep, alive. They didn’t cover him and halt the tournament.”

“So… what now?”

“Pharynx wins this round and the tournament continues. This isn’t the first time in history that somepony got knocked out and it won’t be the last.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but at least they’d provided medical staff on standby and there seemed to be rules against excessive violence, so it probably wasn’t that bad… And if Sunburst had been right a while ago about ponies rarely sustaining injuries, then this incident couldn’t be a regular thing, right? I decided not to ask.

Like Trusty had said, the tournament continued. Sentinel battled a griffon and won, this time without medical interventions for either party, and after them came a red dragon and-

“Shining Armor is competing?!” I exclaimed. “I thought he was only going to oversee the tournament!”

“That was the idea, but Paladin’s wife went into labor so he dropped out of the roster five minutes after the tournament started, and Captain couldn’t find anypony to replace him.”

“Oh…wow… I didn’t know he was expecting a foal!”

“Yeah, he- What the?”

The dragon, obviously furious that his winning streak that had brought him to the quarterfinals was about to end, blew a fireball at Shining, who was, thankfully, skilled enough in defensive magic to conjure up a shield.

“Stop!” an overseer shouted. “Garble, you’re disqualified!”

“We’ll see about that, you pathetic pony!”

“Keen Watch is right,” Shining declared. “You made an illegal move.”

“And your magic tricks aren’t illegal, now?”

“No.” Keen Watch reached into his saddlebag, took out a book, and leafed through the pages until he found what he was looking for, then showed it to Garble. “See here? ‘Rule 51: An illegal move shall be permitted if used in defense from an opponent’s illegal move in the event that attempting defense by a legal move would not be expected to prevent the defending competitor from sustaining a major injury or death.’”

“Pathetic rules for pathetic ponies!”

“Call it as you will, but you could have killed your opponent, so be glad you’re just disqualified and not arrested!”

“Pfft! Illegal this, disquali- quali- whatever! I should have known wimps like you would hide behind stupid rules so it’d be less obvious how pathetic you are! At least it’ll be fun to watch you try to stop me while I eat all your precious gems!”

“Garble!” a roar echoed from the opposite side of the stadium. Ember flew into the arena and pointed her scepter at the exit. “Out. Now!”

“B-b-but Dragon Lord-”

“I. Said. Out!” To the ponies, “Sorry about that. I should have known he was gonna cause trouble and forbidden him from competing, or better yet, not brought him along in the first place. I’d better escort him to the Dragon Lands before he starts another international incident.”

“Can’t she send another dragon to escort him?” I asked Trusty.

“Nope. The only other dragon here is Spike, and that would have gone spectacularly.”

“Yeah… I can imagine…”

Despite this second incident in a short time, the semifinals started without much fuss. Pharynx defeated the yak with only a little more effort than he’d needed against the Royal Guard, and Shining triumphed over Sentinel, who amply redeemed herself in the battle for third place against the yak three times her size.

“And now, the grand finale,” Trusty said as the remaining competitors strode to their positions. “I must say, Thorax, this has been one of the more interesting tournaments I’ve seen, and this final round is going to be especially interesting!”

“I know… that’s what I’m worried about!”

“So, knight Shining Armor, we meet again,” Pharynx taunted from his end of the arena. “I challenge you to a battle in the honor of my King!”

I hid under my hooves and let out a moan. Trusty patted me on the back.

“Let’s begin, knight Pharynx,” Shining taunted back.

Keen Watch signalled the start, and the Captain and the First Commander launched into a full gallop with lances held tightly at the ready. I winced as Pharynx scored a hit, but Shining didn’t allow himself to be knocked down. The two charged at each other again a few times and both managed to dodge a blow, until Shining’s lance connected with Pharynx’s armor, and I winced again; though stumbling a little more than Shining had earlier, he steadied himself quickly and I allowed myself to breathe again.

As they prepared to charge again, I sensed a red-hot surge in my brother’s aura.

“Don’t kill him, Pharynx, please,” I whispered.

Shining knocked Pharynx down and I bit into my hoof, but Pharynx wasn’t giving up just yet; he flipped himself back onto his hooves and resumed his charge in one fluid motion, returning the favor before his opponent realized what had happened.

The entire stadium broke out in gasps and Trusty joined me in hoof-biting.

Shining tried to get back onto his hooves but was lanced down again. He made one more attempt, but Pharynx hadn’t even stopped pressing him down. He strode closer, pressing the lance down harder until he was standing over him and Shining struggled to breathe.

Then, stomping onto his chest, he lifted the lance and stabbed it into the ground just next to Shining’s head with so much force that the wood broke in half.

The stadium went silent as Pharynx, now calm as a mountain lake, walked away from the arena and left Shining Armor lying on the ground wide-eyed, gasping for breath.

“Excuse me,” I muttered after a few stunned seconds, having recovered from what I’d seen, and flew to intercept Pharynx on his way out.

I caught up to him in the stadium’s entrance lobby.

“Are you satisfied now?” he asked. “I left him alive.”

“I… yes, you seem to control yourself a little better now.”

“And for the record, I didn’t orchestrate this so I’d end up fighting him.”

“I know. You couldn’t have… you probably didn’t even realize this was part of the Faire until I mentioned it on the train…”

“I didn’t, no. I almost missed it in favor of a nap…”

“Instead, you won,” I smiled.

“Heh. Yeah. Ponies are still pathetic enough that I managed to kick their flanks even after a sleepless night. Which reminds me… there’s a nice, quiet cave on the outskirts and I’d better get going if I want to be awake again in time to catch a train home.”

“But you’ll miss the award ceremony…”

“You can pick it up.”

“But I’m not you!”

“But you can look like me. We’re changelings, remember?”

“I don’t know… it still doesn’t feel right…”

“Whatever.” He engulfed himself in blue flames and emerged from them unarmored, then started to walk away. “It’s not like I care any for a piece of pony metal on a string, anyway.”

“If I promise to teleport you to that cave afterwards, will you stay and accept the medal yourself?”

He paused, then rolled his eyes and turned back, attempting to hide a smirk. “Eh, fine.”

I started to follow him back towards the arena when a realization hit me. “Wait, did you go through the entire tournament without armor?!”