Chapter 1: Fluttery WingsView OnlineSong of the DeepChapter 1: Fluttery Wings“The hippogriffs?” The young colt nodded at his daycare teacher, A light yellow unicorn in her early 30’s with curly blue and yellow hair like cotton candy, along with big round glasses with a pink frame. “Well let me tell you all a story…”,she said mysteriously, intending to intrigue the young foals sitting around her. She took out some little figures and a colorful map of equestria to catch the kids' eye. “Does everypony see that strange small mountain in the sea?” Some of the foals nodded, just excited to get to the good part. “That’s mount Aris! That is where the hippogriffs lived after the war that was fought against the Storm king, an evil creature who even betrayed his own loyalists!” The teacher cleared her throat. “What do they look like Ms. Rosa?” said the same colt that had originally asked about the hippogriffs. “Well,” she stuttered a bit embarrassed by the fact she hadn’t made it clear earlier, “they are like griffins but with horse parts instead of lion parts.” The daycare teacher shows a small stone figure decorated by shiny shell shards. “This is a small statue I have of a hippogriff, this was made by real hippogriffs you know!” Rosa exclaims proudly as if it were an ancient treasure that she had found in a temple instead of in a cheap artifact market. By that point the fillies and colts had lost interest and carried on with their own things, playing with each other's manes or the loose strings on the carpet. The teacher packed up the map and the figures and sighed, adjusting her glasses with one hoof. “Alright time for recess everypony.” The foals jumped up excitedly and trotted happily to the city park in a messy line controlled as best as possible by Ms. Rosa. They laughed and yelled and kicked up the dirt playfully to make dusty clouds before they arrived at the park. The public park was used as a recess ground due to the lack of room for any more school property. The park lie in the middle of a dense trading city named the Farlens. It was a lush patch of land with big green flowering trees, bushes, and grass, very much contradicting the city around it which was dusty, dirty and buzzing with merchants and traders along with the general public, sometimes including over enthusiastic tourists from canterlot. Ms. Rosa sat down on a dry patch of grass to take a rest, already exhausted from herding the foals around at the difficulty level of herding cats. She unwrapped her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The sandwich was rather dry and the peanut butter sticky, but it was eaten regardless, because complaining wasn’t an option with such little money. She stood back up after finishing her lunch and directed her students back towards the school gates. The foals sat back down expressing obvious disappointment using body language due to the end of their recess. “Story time everypony! Gather on the reading carpet and we will choose a story to read!” A filly raised her hand frantically and called out before Ms. Rosa had allowed her to speak. “Ms. Rosa, where is Sugar Pine?” The teacher’s eyes widened. She quickly went to the jacket rack and snatched her oversized beaver brown coat. Right after that she quickly scribbled a note and handed it to a colt. “Alright class, please go to the art room and give Ms. Grape Vine this note, I have to go for today. Make sure to listen to her and have fun!” She stuttered nervously. As the rest of her students exited the classroom she quickly opened the door and bolted out, barely remembering to lock it. Ms. Rosa walked out onto the streets and called the filly’s name repetitively. “Sugar Pine! Sugar Pineee!” In return to her calls she got nothing but the clinking of coins and the trotting of hooves in the voluminous marketplace. She ghosted around the city more nervously, asking random ponies walking by if they had seen a light green filly with a yellowish brown mane. “She can’t have gone that far!” Ms. Rosa gasped as she slowed down to catch her breath. The fluttering of little wings at once caught her eye in the big crowd a few meters away, the flutters looked desperate, like a bee that had fallen into water, trying to get out so it wouldn't drown. Ms. Rosa Pushed through the crowd, apologizing for each pony she’d run into or pushed to the side while trying her hardest to get to the fluttery wings. As she got close she saw some young stallions teasing the foal she had been looking for, Sugar Pine, stepping on her tail and laughing as they kicked dust on her with their hooves. “Let me go you big meanies!” she yelled at the young stallion stepping on her tail. One of the stallions held the pink bag she’d always carry around, waving it just out of her reach with his magic, teasing her. It had blue and yellow flowers depicted on the sides and one broken handle ripped by constant use. Ms. Rosa hesitated, scared herself that they could hurt her if she stepped in. “Guard! Guard!” Ms. Rosa yelled. The stallions noticed her and soon saw a guard wiggling through the crowd with a long metal bat. “Return this young lady’s bag immediately or suffer the consequences of the law!” The earth pony guard said in a raised voice. The guard lifted his bat ready to strike the stallion with the bag that still remained in the grip of his magic. Ms. Rosa quickly held Sugar Pine back and pushed the young filly behind her protectively. The young dusty stallions ran away, except for the one with the bag, letting the others escape due to there being only one guard available for the time being. The Stallion looked strangely calm. He held the bag in front of himself to protect himself from the possible hit. The Strongly built earth pony positioned himself to hit knowing that a bag wouldn’t protect the stallion from a painful bone breaking blow. Suddenly the bag moved. A tiny hoof poked out and went back in and there was a small whimpery squeak. The guard immediately stopped and lowered his bat, finally understanding the meaning behind the Stallion’s confidence. “If you hit me I will get hurt but you can’t harm me without hitting the small one first, most likely shattering her spine and killing her.” Ms. Rosa Froze imagining the whole situation. “Either that or you let me off the hook, eh?” The stallion said with a smirk. Ms. Rosa sat there in shock sitting on Sugar Pine’s tail so she wouldn’t run off or try anything dangerous. Ms. Rosa kept her eyes sharp on the two, the guard staring daggers at the young Stallion. Sugar pine came to see that Ms. Rosa’s attention towards her was in fact obscured by the conflict, so she looked at her tail and started gnawing on it, cutting a few patches of hair off at a time half way down her tail. She eventually managed to gnaw her tail in half separating her from the part of her tail Ms. Rosa sat on. Sugar pine scraped the remains of the hair in her mouth off with her hoof and wiped her hoof on Ms. Rosa, which was met with a disgusted reaction by her teacher, distracting her from the fact that Sugar Pine had already escaped. Sugar pine flew up angrily, her small wings fluttering like those of a beetle. She flew towards the stallion and attacked the stallion’s face like an angry Magpie. No damage was caused by her hooves but the stallion got annoyed enough to drop the bag and attempt to catch the filly out of anger. “Come here you little rat!” he yelled after her as he started following her recklessly through the crowd, knocking down many of the ponies in his way. “Sugar Pine NO!” Ms. Rosa yelled knowing subconsciously that Sugar Pine wouldn’t listen. Ms. Rosa Quickly picked up the bag with her magic and ran after the guard who ran after the stallion, who ran after Sugar Pine. Sugar Pine took a hard right into an alleyway, a dead end. The stallion ran into it as well, only realizing that it was a dead end when his face came a meter in front of the wall. Sugar Pine sat on the top of the wall looking down at him, smiling like he had smiled at her before, which made the stallion angry. Realizing that the filly had trapped him he quickly jerked his head around to run off, and instead was met by the guard's bat hitting the joints of his front legs backwards.
Chapter 2: A Strange FillyView OnlineSong of the DeepChapter 2: A Strange FillyMs. Rosa yanked on Sugar Pine’s ear. “For Celestia’s sake! How did you get that foal!? It’s parents must be worried sick, and you could have gotten seriously hurt as well!” Sugar Pine looked away from Ms. Rosa heavily implying that she didn’t care that Ms. Rosa scolded her. She was proud and stubborn as ever. The Guard station they waited in was cold and relatively empty, they sat on the hardwood slabs in the waiting area, which were cold and just waiting to give any unsuspecting pony a splinter. Ms. Rosa sighs. “Sugar Pine, sweetie, why did you run away in the first place?” asked Ms. Rosa with a more passive approach. Sugar Pine sat there silent, acting as if she didn’t hear her teacher out of protest. The head guard walked into the waiting room, the clickety clacking of his hooves being the only thing to disturb the silence. He held the small foal rather roughly like a tax paper and asked in a stern voice, “How did you get this little one? Did you kidnap her?! Do you know how badly you could get punished for a crime like that?!”. “Sir,” said Ms. Rosa, “I don’t know! Sugar Pine already had the foal when i found her in the middle of the city!” The head guard took a moment to think. “Mam, may I ask in addition what this kid was doing outside of school, and why they were unsupervised?” Ms. Rosa sat there silently looking down at her hoofs ashamed. “I-It’s not her fault Mr. Officer…” Sugar Pine mumbles to the head guard. “I snuck away during recess.”. Sugar Pine spoke up, “I was hoping to get some grilled crickets.” Ms. Rosa slightly scrunched her nose in disgust, by the mention of grilled bugs. “I-I snuck away because I know that Ms. Rosa wouldn’t ever let me..”. The head guard sighed and patted Sugar Pine’s head. “Alright little filly, I will believe you but I will only let you get away with this once, Your parents will be notified and given 1 warning no charge included.”. She nodded. The head guard cleared his throat. “You aren’t free to go yet though… We still have a missing child to deal with.”. He plopped the little filly in front of the two, it was tangled comfortably in a blanket that hid most of its body. It pushed it’s face out from under the blanket, stretched and yawned in the form of a small squeak. The two ponies’ eyes widened and Ms. Rosa covered her mouth with one hoof, while the head guard nodded. There, in front of them was a cute, fat, fluffy, squirmy, sleepy baby hippogriff. Her coat was fluffy and thick, it had a pinkish gray tone with other sections beholding a seemingly perfect pearl white, her front feet were small and fluffy, so fluffy in fact that one could barely see the sharp little talons under all of the fluff. One thing was off about her though, she had no wings but instead had a tiny, stubby, velvety, grayish pink horn tipped with the pearl white that also found itself on her legs, the under part of her face and her belly. “Sugar Pine!” Ms. Rosa exclaimed “What the hay?! How in the world did you get this little griff??” “That’s the question we are trying to answer right now,'' said the head guard. “Please explain Sugar Pine, this is serious!” mumbled Ms. Rosa to the stubborn filly. The Stallion nudged the filly and asked, “Where did you steal h-”. “I didn’t STEAL her!” Sugar Pine interrupts, “If anything I SAVED her!” The guard looked surprised and shut his mouth, waiting for her to continue. “I went into the tavern to see if there were any grilled crickets available today-”. Ms. Rosa scrunched her nose again to be soon met by a judging stare from pine. “Anyways, I decided I wanted to explore a bit after I snuck inside maybe well- steal some crickets-” “Sugar Pine!” exclaimed Ms. Rosa. “Stop interrupting my story Ms. Rosa!” Sugar Pine snapped back. “So after I got a cricket or two I gained interest in the V.I.P section of the tavern, I’ve -never- been there!” she continues. “It was sooooooooooooo fancy! There were pretty shiny rocks and gold and colorful lights everywhere, along with very very comfy chairs- everypony was dressed quite formally actually-” “Sugar Pine, get to the point- the little one, how did you get her?” the guard said impatiently. Sugar pine glared at the guard and stopped talking, staring at him with an annoyed expression. “My apologies young lady, continue.” “I hid under one of the chairs and the lights went out. They slowly faded back on after a minute and directed themselves to face a small stage in the room. A pretty Mare stepped out on the stage holding a box covered by a red velvet cloth. An older pony went up as well, he had on a nice tuxedo and a funny red bow tie.”. Sugar Pine pulled on each end of her imaginary bow tie, gesturing what the old stallion did on the stage. “After a while of greeting the audience the mare pulled the velvet red cloth off and it was a filly sized cage, containing the little one. The cage was quite dainty and decorative, it had thin wires. The old Stallion yelled “This is what you have all been waiting for!” maryly, and proudly presented her in the cage as if she were an expensive ornament, rather than a filly. They put her backstage again and began asking around how much the guests would pay to “buy her”. I- didn’t pay attention to the rest- I just crawled backstage and played with her through the cage. She had a strange mouth thingy on and didn’t seem to enjoy it, so I chewed through the wires and I slipped the mouth thingy-”, “Muzzle.” The head guard interrupted. Sugar Pine paused and gave the guard a disapproving stare, but eventually continued. I wiggled it off of her, but as soon as it was off, an annoying alarm went off so I stuffed her in my bag before squeezing through a tight hole under some crates with her. I ran away from the tavern as quickly as possible and didn’t look back. Then of course…. I was unlucky and bumped into that gang of young stallions.”. Ms. Rosa and the guard sat there speechless.
Chapter 3: Storage ChamberView OnlineSong of the DeepChapter 3: Storage Chamber"What nonsense!" the angry changeling threw his young son's clay sculpture to the ground and smashed it to bits. "I said you may only BOTHER me when you have something IMPORTANT to say or something VALUABLE to give.", the King thundered, towering over the little half changeling colt that shook with tears in his eyes as his father cast a menacing shadow over him. "B-but papa....." the scared little son stuttered, "M-mama said that it w-was valuable, papa..". "She said I d-did a good job... I made it for you.. p-papa" "You are not my only child Enoch! I don't have time for this, I have so many colts and fillies that I don't know more than 10 of their names out of the THOUSANDS! Just because you are my second born son doesn't mean you are entitled to waste my time! Only your older brother Vasumori gets my respect because he's the next heir! You, you filthy little rat are just like all my other thousands of spawns, all you are to me is a soldier and a servant! Now get out of my sight!" The king kicked his son to the side roughly, royal guards pointing their silver spears at him to lead him out of the king's room as he cried. "Papa please," he yelled at the door as it closed, "I worked so hard!". Enoch's cries were met by silence, neither of the guards even flinched. He fell silent knowing it was no use, hung his head low and waked to his mother's room on the other side of the Mansion. The small colt busted into his mother's room with tears in his eyes. A pregnant Pegasus mare lay there on the bed, her hair cherry pink and her coat tree trunk brown, along with her messy bun and big heavy golden hoop earrings. She sat up immediately. "Oh no baby! what's wrong?!" The gentile pregnant Pegasus exclaimed in a quiet tone. The changeling colt jumped onto the bed and immediately buried his face in his mother's chest as she hugged him in an unusual position so her pregnant belly wouldn't get in the way. "You're a liar mama! Papa hated it and I worked so hard!" The mare lifted his chin up to look at her. "Hey... It's okay... papa is probably just stressed..." she sighed. "H-he said I don't matter to him!" "Oh nonsense Enoch, you must be overreacting." "No! Mama I swear! He said that he only wants my older brother!" Enoch whimpered. His mother's chains rattled and clinked together as she went to sit in another position. "Enoch..... this is the first time you told me this... where is this whole 'older brother' nonsense coming from?! You are the oldest child he has, with me." the mare sighed. Enoch exclaimed in disbelief, "Mama no! I-I told you many times before and even showed him to you! Don't you remember?!" "No no no, go to the nurse baby, you are talking nonsense, did you perhaps hit your head on the way here?" He sat there and stared at her. "The bad doctor came again didn't he?..." The confusion on his mother's face was visible. Enoch expressed his annoyance while walking out of her room and closing her door in a rather harsh manner. "Eno-!" As Enoch trotted along he kicked the carpet frustrated. Half way down the hall the doctor passed him. He opened his mouth but nothing came out except the sound of a small inhale. He knew where the strange doctor was headed and shivered at the thought of it. he felt along the carpet, and felt a rather symmetrical bump. His hoof creeped under the carpet and lifted it to reveal a basic non decorative metal handle that had already tarnished. The handle was attached to a dry wooden floor hatch that had already started to crumble when touched or manipulated. The hatch opened half way as Enoch lifted the handle. He sighed at the increasingly decomposing hatch door and wiggled into the gap before it closed behind him again. "Ngh!" The changeling fell into the tunnel from above rather ungracefully. He stood up to find that the side that has touched the ground of the tunnel was covered in the light brown powdery dirt. Soon he shook it off with a little wiggle and a buzz of his wings. The tunnel leaded into a vast network of caves with big crystals, small tide pools and massive stalactites and stalagmites that ever so slowly built upon each other as centuries passed. All that was audible though the silent cave was the water drops which hit the ground similar to the sound of slowly blowing wind chimes. He covered the tunnel with rocks and set off. His iridescent wings shone it the low light of the crystals like they were made of delicate glass. He walked along rather slowly enjoying the serenity of the cave's calm beauty. After a while of admiring the crystals his hooves stopped right at the edge of a glistening crystal lit cave lake. His wings started to flutter in an irritating manner as he touched the water. The bottom on the lake was not to be seen. With a quick jump that looked more like a trip, he was surrounded by water and looked around himself hesitantly. He started paddling down, still holding his breath with an irritated expression. The deeper he went, the darker and cloudier the water got, receiving less and less of the light that was given off by the crystals on the surface of the water in the cave. Quickly, Enoch shut his eyes tightly and swam full power towards the deep. The water got thicker and thicker as he swam though it, and finally became the same density of molasses. He struggled only a bit before he broke though the dense substance. As it broke he fell into a voluminous cavern the size of Canterlot, filled with air, in fact an underground city of changelings. Water spilled out from the roof where he had riggled in and slowly closed back up like it was a living, self repairing organism. There was a constant sound of the buzzing of wings that echoed far. It was filled with living spaces, which in other words, were the holes in the walls of the cave and in the pillars, elevated above the ground. The ground consisted of slimy changeling eggs and fat changeling larva, still trying to navigate the world they had just come into. The mucus around the eggs and larva glowed overwhelmingly and disappeared into darkness as Enoch at last, had reached his hole of residence, cuddled up with some of his half brothers and sisters and fell asleep.
