The Blueblood Papers: Bound By Blood

Chapters

Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 1
Chapter 8
Chapter 16

Chapter 2

If there was any single pony who could claim to be suffering the greatest in the unbearably hot and humid climate of the Badlands, it was Captain Frostbite. As his name and his cutie mark, a single stylised snowflake with jagged edges so as to resemble a ninja’s shuriken more than a delicate and fragile crystal of ice, suggested, his special talent was in cold weather survival, which made him uniquely unqualified to fight a campaign out here in the blistering heat of the desert. Every time I saw him he looked thoroughly miserable in this heat, sweating so much that one could mark his passage around the camp by following the trail of puddles he left in his wake, before they dried up, that is.

“We don’t have the luxury of going where our cutie mark leads anymore,” he said, when I asked him why he wasn’t up near the Yakyakistani border where he might be more comfortable instead. “I doubt the Yaks are going to try anything about now, eh?”

The peculiar pronunciation of ‘about’ as ‘a boot’ and the superfluous ‘eh?’ at the end of the sentence identified him as a native of the Vanhoover March, as did the overly dense coat on him, which had defeated all attempts at thinning by clippers and scissors, which made him look rather broader than he really was. He was young, of course, which only made the comparison to the stallion whose position he now filled all the more poignant. Unlike when I had first met Red Coat, however, I gathered that he was already an experienced officer, albeit as a lieutenant stationed on one of the many forts along the northern wastelands shared with our large and belligerent neighbours, and despite suffering in the heat he still attempted to present a thoroughly professional front.

Why him, an outsider, and not a junior officer from the Night Guards who could perhaps more easily step into the vacated position, was something of a mystery to me. Perhaps there truly was no suitable candidate amongst them to take Red Coat’s place, or their own sense of honour forbade them from accepting the dead stallion’s stars, or, as was most likely, this questionable decision was merely the result of an uncaring military bureaucracy that treated ponies merely as numbers on parchment. Nevertheless, he was here, and he would have to get over his extreme aversion to heat if he was going to be of any use to anypony.

“They’re our allies now,” I said, remembering that Pinkie Pie’s unexpected skill with negotiating with a nation of mad, drunken, illiterate, ineloquent savages (though now that I think about it, perhaps it was not so unexpected that she’d get on so famously with the brutes) had somehow broken their self-enforced isolation and opened up the reclusive Yaks to the wider world. “I’ve heard from Princess Celestia that Prince Rutherford wants to send an expeditionary force to the Badlands to ‘stomp bugs’.”

“Smash bugs,” said Frostbite, and I fought off the instinct to strike him for correcting me. “Yaks smash, not stomp, but it looks about the same.”

“Still, if you’re struggling this much now, imagine how Yaks would feel over here.”

We laughed, as imagining a Yak warband making its way here, through the length of Equestria, merely to suffocate in their own dense fur in a climate of precisely the opposite extreme to their native one still precluded the idea that they could be organised enough to scrape together a real expeditionary force. They could hardly spell the word ‘expeditionary’ in the first place. I would eat those words, of course, much later when the impossible happened and the Y.E.F. not only mustered and equipped enough Yaks to form a near-enough full division, but also organised themselves accordingly and managed to make it to the frontline without much trouble, and then proceeded to acquit themselves surprisingly well in battle.

[The Yakyakistani Expeditionary Force was formed by Prince Rutherford, who had expressed concern that the Yaks were missing out on ‘good smashing’ in the Badlands. The Y.E.F. would take part in the final offensives of the war, and in particular as heavy shock troops in the breaching of the Chrysalis Line, the last set of fortifications before the Queen’s Hive.]

Besides that, Captain Frostbite was of average height, good-looking in a sort of rustic manner, and had a rather stocky build even without his thick fur, with a small, decidedly non-regulation beard that he insisted he shaved off every morning but it always re-appeared on his face within three hours. His fur, matted with so much sweat, might have been a rather attractive shade of ice-blue if it wasn’t for the ever-present pale grey and yellow dust that clung to just about everything, and all the more so if something happened to be damp and sticky. I thought that I ought to go and meet him if, as his Company Sergeant Major had said, I was to tag along with him to whatever next battle we were about to be thrust into.

There was something of an ulterior motive to that too; Square Basher was more astute than her clumsy, meal-headed appearance had otherwise implied, and had suggested that this initial meeting should take place in full view before the soldiers of the company. The idea, as I had worked it out, was that the common soldiery would see me, an officer whom they apparently respected and trusted for whatever reasons peculiar to them, getting along with their shiny new officer and consequently think that if I liked him then clearly he must be a stand-up fellow worthy of following into certain death. Personally, I had my doubts that such a thing would work, believing that even the proletarian masses who made up the bulk of the Equestrian Army would see right through such a ploy, but it appeared that they were so enamoured with the myth of the great Lord Commissar Prince Blueblood, Hero of Equestria and all that rot, that they seemed to fall for it. I suppose I ought to give Square Basher some credit where it is due; one does not spend an entire adult life in the military without picking up a few things about how a soldier’s mind works, when it’s not distracted by drink, whores, and trying to stay alive, that is.

It was in the mid-afternoon when we had our staged meeting; Market Garden had called a halt and so we hadn’t advanced from our camp all day, though I’d heard that the PGL had been dispatched on a few scouting missions to our south. This left everypony else feeling rather anxious, and as I had done my rounds earlier I’d picked up more than a few rumours that we would be facing a battle very soon, perhaps even tomorrow. Such talk and the lack of any concrete information had only served to aggravate my anxiety about it all, and so I took extra care to make sure that I remembered to wear that star spider silk undershirt I had commissioned from Rarity’s boutique. As I stood there, sweating in the sun (albeit not nearly as much as Frostbite here), the awful thought that its unique resilience would be compromised by being drowned in sweat intruded into my mind and simply would not leave.

Out of an apparent lack for anything else to do, Frostbite’s company was mustered for an impromptu inspection. At least I managed to convince a few bored pegasi to bring some clouds over for shade, not that the sparse amount they could muster out here offered much in the way of relief from the hot sun. The ponies of the company, the ones who weren’t otherwise occupied with some sort of duty, were arrayed out in a small square in the camp cleared for just this purpose, with the Royal Colours hanging limply from the flagpole overhead. They were all well below parade-ground standard, being on campaign and far from any reliable source of high-shine polish for armour, but despite this they presented themselves quite well despite their difficulties. Besides, neither Captain Frostbite nor Yours Truly could be considered anything approaching ‘presentable’ either after nearly a full day of marching yesterday, our uniforms stained with dust and enough sweat to drown a colony of breezies, so it was not as though we two filthy, stinking officers were in much of a position to criticise the appearance of the common soldiery.

Nevertheless, Company Sergeant Major Square Basher was deeply sorry about the state of her troops as we marched down each row of still, statue-like ponies at attention. “Standards have slipped somewhat, sir,” she said, rather meekly. “I do apologise.”

“As long as they’re ready to fight,” I remarked.

Stopping at one soldier at random, whose name and face has long since faded into the void just like all of the countless others I have met over the course of my career, to cast a critical eye over the state of his uniform and equipment, I saw that although his dark steel armour was covered in dust and the sweat gave his coat a grimy, almost oily sheen, that his equipment was immaculately clean. His musket was presented upright, with its butt resting on the ground and held straight up with his right foreleg; I had very little understanding of how these things worked, and I still don’t as these ugly things exist merely for the benefit of earth ponies and pegasi to make up for the lack of a horn in combat, but I could see that the dark metal bits that actually operated the mechanism were as devoid of dust as one could possibly imagine. At the very tip, pointing defiantly at the sky, the bayonet was plugged into the gun’s barrel, where it positively scintillated even in the slightly-dimmed light of the cloud-covered sun.

“They’re ready to fight, sir,” said Square Basher. She strode towards the soldier before me, who, despite being at attention, could not override the instinct to flinch from the tall mare bearing down on him like a dragon on a helpless sheep. “Aren’t you, colt?”

The stallion hesitated briefly, eyes flitting from Square Basher, to me, to Frostbite, then back to Square Basher. He opened his mouth to speak, but it wasn’t fast enough for the Sergeant Major, who pushed her face uncomfortably close to his and shouted at an unnecessarily high volume, “I asked you if you’re ready to fight, colt!”

“I’m ready to fight, sir!” he shouted back, voice cracking a little. I realised that he must have been barely out of puberty, but I would never have worked it out from his appearance alone, being strapped up in armour and equipment and the characteristic teenaged facial blemishes concealed with a foundation of dust.

“Louder for the Captain and the Commissar!” bellowed Square Basher, her grey face turning crimson. She leaned in even closer until their helmets struck with a loud ‘clang’. “I want Chrysalis to hear it in whatever disgusting hole in the ground she’s hiding in, colt. I want her to piss herself in terror because she knows the Night Guards are coming for her, and you are going to pull her wings off one by one and ram them up the one place where Princess Celestia’s sun doesn’t dare to shine!”

I watched Captain Frostbite flush crimson with embarrassment. “I don’t think that kind of language is necessary,” he said quietly, though Square Basher appeared not to hear it.

“I’m ready to fight, sir!” the soldier roared back, though the sharp, squeaky twinge to his voice undermined the effect somewhat.

“Good lad.” Square Basher wiped the teenage spittle from her face, but she seemed satisfied with this display, and demonstrated it by playfully slapping her dinner plate-sized hoof against the stallion’s pauldron. He was nearly knocked over onto his side. With her delightful mental image now seared into my mind like a brand, we moved on, and another ghost of the rank and file faded into obscurity.

Civilians who are reading this, whether they be ordinary commoners or of the armchair general variety, might have seen the Royal Guard around and about in Canterlot, standing to attention in the various royal properties around our great capital city and being subjected to obnoxious tourists who seem to have forgotten that spears are in fact sharp. Those ponies might also have seen paintings produced by war artists, in particular those employed by the Ministry of Information for the purposes of pure propaganda, of gallant ponies charging triumphantly into battle at Black Venom Pass or Virion Hive and so on, with their armour glistening in the sun and unsullied by the dust kicked up by their hooves. If they could go back in time and see for themselves how those same Equestrian soldiers, especially those of the much-vaunted Guards regiments, really looked, then they simply would not have been able to recognise them. The ponies standing before me were filthy, though they made do with what little time and resources they had, and they stank too; the aroma of body odour, gunpowder, and the latrines permeated everywhere where these soldiers made their camp, in places stronger or weaker depending on the concentration of ponies and the direction of the wind, and perhaps it is this ever-present miasma that lingers foremost in my memory of those unhappy times.

Even the most fastidious of Sergeant Majors, like Square Basher, were forced to accept that the omnipresent dust simply could not be kept off armour, and that cosmetic dents and scratches would simply have to be tolerated where replacements took up valuable space on supply trains needed for food, water, and ammunition. Basic sanitation and grooming had to be kept to a basic minimum standard, and with water being so heavily rationed due to our precarious supply situation, the prohibition on beards (moustaches were allowed, even encouraged, for whatever reason) was quietly ignored. The once-sleek armour became festooned with pouches containing musket cartridges, ration bars, and as many canteens of stale, sterilised water as each pony could carry and still be expected to move. It was a far cry from the sight of rows of highly-polished armour that I had seen in the first months of the war, and, perhaps, the clearest indication of the transformation of the Royal Guard into the Equestrian Army; the superfluous pomp and ceremony had gone, to be replaced by this machine of war. In truth, I felt rather sad at this realisation, and I looked forward to a time, hopefully soon, where the only soldiers I would meet were the ones standing to attention next to Princess Celestia, with spears instead of muskets and armour so shiny I could check my handsome face in the reflection.

There was, however, only one thing that could overpower the lingering background stench of the camp, and the sudden wave of concentrated unwashed socks alerted me to the arrival of my aide, Cannon Fodder, a good few seconds before I heard him approach.

“General Market Garden wishes to see you, sir,” he said, holding out a small note scribbled on a scrap of paper torn off from an envelope. The unidentifiable organic grime from his hoof stained it into illegibility.

“Thank you,” I said, suppressing the minor flitter of anxiety in my stomach. It meant one of two things -- either Market Garden wanted to show off the new pocket watch that she’d bought for the new offensive, or she was planning something painful in my immediate future. I hoped for the former, and from what I’d heard from Major-General Garnet it was rather a nice pocket watch, but as a gambling pony, which ranks somewhere in the middle in a list of my various sins in order of severity, I would have placed all of my money and the shirt off my back on the latter.

“I thought Field Marshal Hardscrabble was in charge, sir.” Cannon Fodder’s words interrupted my train of thought before it careered right off the tracks and over a cliff.

“He is,” I said. “But he’s in overall command of the theatre, and he’s tasked Market Garden to lead the 1st Army into the Changeling Heartlands.” Presumably to mollify her after she threw a small fit over not getting the field marshal’s job herself, thought I.

“As the Princesses will, sir.”

As a result of all of the mess that I had endured over the past few months, my actual job (and you, dear reader, cannot begin to grasp how insulted I continued to feel, that I, a prince, had a job now with a salary, like a common pony) had been in something of a confusing pickle. In addition to my role as an independent commissar attached to the Two Sisters Brigade headquarters, who was also apparently free to run off with a battalion when the mood took me, I was still a ‘lord’ commissar also attached to Market Garden’s personal staff, with the aim to smooth out the rather jagged parts of her personality that did not lend well to maintaining the sorts of professional relationships between general officers of different ranks. In reality, that did not mean much, aside from sitting in on meetings and reassuring slighted ponies that her bluntness was not to be taken personally, so there remained a glimmer of hope, shining like gold at the bottom of a refuse pile, that this was merely another dull meeting about logistics that required my presence to add a sense of gravity to the proceedings.

I made my apologies to Captain Frostbite, who was probably grateful for the opportunity to go and lie down in the shade somewhere until night came when the temperature would drop to a level he was more comfortable with, and I followed my aide and his odour over to Market Garden’s command marquee. As expected, she had positioned her headquarters prominently in the centre of the camp, from which she could keep an intrusive eye on everything that took place here and make sure that everypony knew that she was really in charge. A large, sprawling gazebo-like structure that consisted of a cover of stained, dusty cloth, which also served as some form of aerial camouflage as if the thousands of ponies around it were somehow missed by the Changeling scouts, stretched over a series of tall tent poles, it was, as ever, a hive of activity. However, I noted that, as with Hardscrabble’s office back in Virion Hive, most of the furniture and files, except for the map table, were still packed away in various boxes and crates ready for the expected advance.

The map table was in the centre of the tent, and, I noted as I followed Cannon Fodder into the shade granted by the marquee, was bigger than Field Marshal Hardscrabble’s one back in Virion Hive. It looked newer too, having only a lighter patina of dust than everything else in the camp, and seemed to be of a collapsable sort that could be easily folded down and transported. Market Garden herself was perched over it like a gargoyle, peering down at the maps arrayed out before her in that all-too familiar pose. Her generals of corps, division, and brigade, plus a few staff officers and the odd commissar, were gathered around the map table with the air of a group of morticians around a hideously-mangled corpse they were expected to make appropriate for an open casket funeral. As I approached a free space at the map table, I felt as though the next funeral I would be attending would not be of some elderly aunt I had never met or a cousin who drank himself to death, but my own; the scene before me only confirmed my suspicions about imminent violence in my future.

The meeting was already underway when I arrived. A commissar, with considerably more gold lace on his uniform than mine, was in the middle of speaking: “...operating in this area, and they may be of some assistance here.”

Market Garden shook her head emphatically. “Princess Luna’s partisans are unreliable - an ill-disciplined, un-trained, and under-equipped gang of thugs and brigands - at best they would only be a mild distraction to the enemy. We cannot depend on them in this battle.”

The commissar looked as though he was about to argue further, but clearly thought better than to try and batter down the General’s stubbornness and gave up with an awkward shrug. It was then that Market Garden noticed that I had turned up, at unreasonably short notice I might add, and she hopped off the table.

“Ah, Blueblood,” she greeted. “Good of you to finally arrive.”

“Prince Blueblood,” I sneered, as I took off my cap and tossed it, top down, onto the table in front of me.

Market Garden grinned, apparently still taking my annoyance at her refusal to use my proper title as some sort of shared little joke. The damned thing was that there was nothing I could do about it; she didn’t care enough about other ponies to stop if I asked her politely, and firing a general who, in spite of her personality, had become quite popular at home thanks to ‘her’ victory at Virion Hive, hardly reflected well on me. I would have to simply put up with it, and hope that other ponies did not take it as an invitation to follow her rude example.

While I was quietly simmering away in futile irritation, she picked up her swagger stick in her mouth and tapped the end on a point on a map just close to her. “Natalensis Hive,” she said, getting straight to the point as ever. [Presumably after taking the stick out of her mouth.] “That’s our target. It’s a vital source of love and slave labour for the Changelings, and that’s why it must be taken.”

“Forgive me, ma’am,” said Major-General Garnet with barely-concealed contempt dripping off each word. “Another siege?”

The Field Marshal pulled another one of her smug little smiles. “No, Natalensis Hive is not fortified and not garrisoned,” she said. “It has no walls, no towers, no trenches -- completely open, and there’s nothing to stop us from simply walking in, except for the Changeling war-swarm perched on the high ground to the north-east of the city. I have selected I Corps to drive the enemy from the hills.”

“Horsefeathers, not us again,” I heard Lieutenant General King Fisher, the elderly pegasus stallion with a fishing rod cutie mark standing to my right, whisper to me under his breath. I hadn’t seen much of him, it just occurred to me, as given Market Garden’s tendency towards micromanaging the various units of ponies under her 1st Army, most of the generals gathered around the table probably felt somewhat redundant there.

“What was that?” asked Market Garden, quite pointedly.

“I’m honoured, ma’am,” said King Fisher. “Truly honoured.”

Even one as socially inept as General Market Garden could see through that, and she gave King Fisher a positively withering glare before moving on. “The Changelings have just announced that Queen Chrysalis has appointed Hive Marshal Chela to command the war-swarms on this front.”

There was an audible, collective gasp in the assembled generals, and a few whispered to one another in hushed, shocked tones. The name did not mean much to me at the time, not having been terribly interested in whatever was going on with the other fronts, being sideshows to the main event here, but the reactions of everypony else present told me everything that I needed to know -- that this Chela, whoever they were, had a reputation, and Changelings only gained such reputations with Equestrian officers for being brutal, ruthless, and skilled. A pattern emerged, in which whatever we had done to make our fighting forces more effective, the enemy invariably followed suit; we brought in Field Marshal Hardscrabble, and now they brought in this Hive Marshal Chela fellow.

As the growing anxiety spread throughout the ponies in the meeting, and despite knowing very little as ever I was starting to catch it too, Market Garden merely smiled. “Finally,” she said, after having allowed her officers sufficient time to build themselves into a state of mild agitation. “A worthy opponent.”

[Chela needs little introduction, but to provide some much-needed context for Blueblood’s narrative, the ‘Desert Buzz’ had previously commanded the Changeling forces in the Eastern Theatre of the war, where she had directed the only reversal of the Equestrian advance into the Badlands and had pushed the 2nd Army back to the border. She was rewarded with a promotion to Hive Marshal and sent to replace the captured Odonata as the commander of the main Changeling swarms defending the Heartlands.]

Her display of her usual pig-headed confidence seemed to calm the generals, and the talk devolved into the usual tedium of these meetings -- troop movements, supplies, logistics, projected casualties, water, hay, ammunition, and so on -- and I stopped paying attention to it, both utterly bored and horrified by what I was hearing. I rarely had anything of worth to say in these meetings anyway, beyond the usual platitudes about our duty to the Princesses and to Equestria and all of that other vacuous nonsense that they nevertheless ate up. However, in spite of my lack of interest in the dreary conversation I found my attention drawn to the assortment of maps and aerial reconnaissance photographs scattered all over the table, while Market Garden bloviated about finally getting the sort of set-piece battle she had fantasised about.

I’m rather fond of maps, even military ones; there’s something quite enticing about the promise of exotic foreign lands and ponies in the lines and barely-pronounceable names there on parchment that excites the imagination, and sets one’s hopes up high only to be disappointed by the real thing. I found a topographical map of the city and its environs, which somepony had disfigured with some scrawls indicating the positions of the Equestrian and Changeling armies. The city itself was a large sprawling blob at the centre, looking like the cartographer had spilt some soup on the parchment and then drawn its outline in ink, and even I could see that it would be a damned tricky place to defend even with the high ground around the city. A cunning general might hide her forces inside the city itself, blunting our superiority in magic and firepower by dragging us into the quagmire of street-to-street fighting, especially with civilians in the way to complicate matters. So, when I saw that the enemy had done the ‘conventional’ thing and placed her forces atop that high ground outside the city, marked out by a series of little green boxes with crosses and circles within, that immediately set off an alarm bell the size of the one in the Cathedral of the Sol Invictus in my head.

“It’s a little bit too convenient,” I blurted out, interrupting Market Garden mid-speech.

“Pardon?” She glared at me from across the sea of maps and stationery.

I held up the map in my magic for all to see. “Just a thought, General,” I said, and as everypony, generals and commissars alike, turned to watch me, I felt an inkling that I might be making a fool of myself by telling these much more experienced military ponies how to do their jobs. It was too late now, so I thought I might as well commit fully: “The enemy has placed her forces in a very prominent position on these hills, directly in front of our own positions, almost daring you to attack them directly.”

Market Garden didn’t quite roll her eyes, but the slight nod of her head at least hinted at that gesture. “That’s entirely the point, Blueblood,” she sneered. “We finally have the enemy where we want her -- no more manoeuvre or Changeling trickery this time. Tomorrow, there will be a battle.”

That hardly abated the somewhat tense atmosphere that had descended under the marquee, and it was Major-General Garnet, ever the self-important voice of reason, who spoke up on its behalf: “Ma’am, I think we ought to at least consider the possibility that this is a trap. Chela pulled something like this in the Battle of the Gazelle Village, where she made a decoy attack to the north and-”

“Enough,” snapped Market Garden, cutting off another one of Garnet’s lectures (though in this case, I thought it was actually pertinent to the discussion at hoof for once, and I certainly wouldn’t have minded letting him ramble on). “I was afraid of this; you’re so scared of what Chela might do that you’re paralysed by indecision. That’s why the Eastern Theatre was in retreat. We have total superiority in firepower here, so any trap that she might spring on us will only be a temporary setback for us. Look to your own commands and prepare to fight a battle, that is all that is required of each of you.”

Market Garden’s confidence was infectious, but unfortunately I was naturally immune to such things by now. Nevertheless, the generals around me seemed to draw some degree of comfort from her bull-headed insistence that she was going to win the war for Equestria, and, I suppose I have to grant her credit here, kept them all focused on the task at hoof instead of fretting about what the supposedly unbeatable Chela was going to do to us. What other option did we have? Besides running home away from this whole war business, of course, but few ponies present would be amenable to that suggestion.

That did not stop me from fretting, however, and I paid little attention to the remainder of the meeting as my mind became focused on how in blazes I would go about weaselling my way out of this mess. My aristocratic sense of honour and noblesse oblige had brought me into it, and the ancient tenet of Dictum Meum Pactum [My word is my bond] forbade me from turning around and saying ‘On reflection, I think I’d much rather not go into battle against the most feared general in Chrysalis’ vast swarms, thank you very much’. I could only console myself with the fact that I was dealing with a neophyte officer, who, although experienced enough to be promoted to Captain in a new Army that now forbade ponies from purchasing their ranks, had never seen a battle in this theatre, and therefore I could rely upon Square Basher’s NCO-instincts prompting her to protect him, and by extension me as long as I remained close by his side at all times. It was quite a risky strategy, but short of destroying the reputation that had shielded me from the more mundane, bureaucratic terrors, it was all I had.

However, once the meeting had finally wrapped up and everypony but Yours Truly was buoyed with a newfound confidence for tomorrow’s fight, I had made a last ditch attempt to find something, anything, at Brigade HQ that could keep me from having to follow through with my hasty promise. Unfortunately for me, the only cards left on the table were more assignments with the other units of the brigade, as standing back at a safe distance with the Brigadier was apparently snapped up by a more enterprising commissar than I, so I was rather stuck with Square Basher and Frostbite.

As ever, I did not sleep a wink that night, but as I struggled with sleep for most nights the effect it had on me the next morning compared to others was negligible at best; a cup of that strong Trottingham tea seemed to perk me up a little, but did nothing to assuage my mood. I spent much of the early morning, as the army martialled itself out of the camp and organised its various units and detachments, fretting anxiously while everypony else got to work. How my aide Cannon Fodder took my nervous pacing around between the tents and my quiet mutterings that it was all hopeless I’ll never know, for it was almost impossible to guess what thoughts rattled around inside his skull, but that he continued to stick by my side throughout this entire mess seemed to imply that he thought that it all served some higher purpose.

The well-drilled machine that was the Equestrian Army had mustered itself just as the sun was raised over the hilly horizon. The entirety of I Corps was arrayed out in a column and advanced, in true steamroller fashion, across the vast wastes of the Badlands towards that high ground Market Garden had pointed out on the map. Generals seem to find the high ground very reassuring, and I pondered this as I trudged on in this great column weaving through the wastes, for in the absence of any clearer directives from above they would always default to taking the biggest hill they could find. This obsession seemed a little redundant when both armies have soldiers gifted with flight, but my wandering mind considered that the fact that our erstwhile General is an earth pony might have something to do with it.

The air was filled with the noise of an army on the march; with the rhythmic thunderous beat of thousands of sets of hooves striking the earth, of clattering armour and equipment, of myriad snorts and whinnies, and of NCOs barking at their sections and platoons to keep their lines dressed and to watch their spacing. Choking dust, kicked up by the marching horde, was like a dense mist that obscured almost everything beyond a dozen paces that I could see. Not that I could see much in the first place; I was further back in the formation, so my vision was limited to the ranks of ponies immediately before me anyway, the sight of the regimental colours of the Night Guards fluttering defiantly in the warm morning breeze, and of the hills rising over this dust cloud before us.

A sense of deja vu struck me as I gazed up at those hills, which had emerged into view after about an hour of marching. These formed a ragged, broken line across the horizon, and looked perilous to climb with their pits and gullies. I could make out the formations of the Changeling swarm there, as dark long rectangles atop the peaks of those hills, almost daring us to charge up there and attack them in a head-on assault. Indeed, as I saw them there, placed like a damned obvious target that the likes of which Market Garden and Hardscrabble couldn’t possibly ignore, the words that I had said in that meeting in the day before echoed through my mind like a violent sneeze in a quiet art gallery: It’s a little bit too convenient.

Nevertheless, here we were. There was nothing I could have done to dissuade a pony like Market Garden, more bull-headed than a minotaur, from an idea once it becomes cemented in her head and especially if she thinks she came up with it, and all that I could do was trust in her apparent belief that overwhelming firepower always trumps alleged tactical genius. I wasn’t so sure; not being a general, I had very little idea of the supreme art of strategy beyond the bits and pieces that I had unwillingly picked up, but I had fought the Changelings for long enough to have learnt the painful lesson that they are always, seemingly without fail, up to something. It was like a pony believing that poker is really a game of random chance playing against a veteran gambler with half a dozen aces slipped up his neatly-pressed double cuffs.

The army came to a halt. At once, the constant cacophony ceased with a final, almighty clatter of that one last hoofstomp. My ears, at last, could have a temporary respite from that appalling racket, at least until the battle began, as it always does, with an artillery barrage. I heard a few mutterings elsewhere and the distant shouts of corporals and sergeants keeping order in the ranks, along with a few muted coughs and whinnies drifting on the stale breeze. Again, my view of the proceedings was quite limited on the ground; all that I could see were the ponies immediately around me and the hill ahead, of course, though when I thought to look up I saw that our pegasi had taken flight and remained hovering in set, straight formations above us. I smelt the all-too-familiar stink of sweat and fear, and I would wager that a not-inconsiderable amount of it came from me.

Frostbite, who had been marching beside me, was quietly shivering in his sabatons as he stared up with wide eyes at the vast array of Changelings perched upon the hills. The poor chap; this was probably the very first time he had laid eyes on a war-swarm, and even with my benefit of distance and experience it was not a pretty sight. The dark mass, though neatly arranged with a precision that would make Square Basher envious, looked like a stain upon the landscape -- a malignant growth, despoiling all that it touched, and spreading its tendrils north into our beloved realm.

“Scared, Captain?” I asked.

He tore his eyes from the ghastly sight ahead of us and looked at me. “N-no, sir,” he stammered out.

“I’m glad one of us isn’t,” I said, pulling a faithless grin. “I’m terrified.”

That bit of rare emotional honesty, wrapped up as the sort of cocky assurance that ponies expected of me, seemed to settle his nerves a little. Mine, however, were frayed to the point of near-collapse, but I was merely better at hiding it; unlike most common ponies, I had to learn to hide my true emotions from a young age lest I receive another beating from my father. That, at least, paid off now in presenting a facade of stoic implacability.

Now that the incessant noise of the army on the march had ceased with its halt, I could hear the blood thumping in my ears like the synchronised hoofsteps before. I felt sick, as I always do before a fight, as though my insides were writhing about under my skin and trying to escape from me. Yet I somehow managed to stand still and straight, shoulders level and head held high as a soldier apparently should, despite every conscious and subconscious urge pulling on my limbs to make me turn and run like the coward I truly am. I fought to keep my breathing level, which was no easy thing given the amount of dust that thousands of ponies’ hooves had kicked up, but focusing on each breath -- in and out -- helped relax me somewhat. It was madness, truly, to hurl bodies at a Changeling swarm perched atop a hill for reasons that I barely understood; Market Garden had decided that it was of vital importance to the war and we had to do it, and ponies would have to die for it.

Our artillery finally opened fire. A series of almighty crashes, like close thunder, split the relative silence, and Frostbite nearly jumped out of his boots. A pony somewhere made a quip about one of their comrades passing wind, but the laughter and the redressing from the sergeant was drowned out utterly by the second volley. I couldn’t see the cannons from where I stood, surrounded by ponies, but I could work out that they were somewhere in front of the formation. It made sense, I supposed, as even the old guard of officers would not have been daft enough to risk firing on their own ponies, at least on purpose.

All that I could see was the distant effect that Market Garden’s ‘total superiority in firepower’ had on the swarm above us. White and grey streaks arced gracefully through the sky, and then plunged into the dark mass of the Changeling formation. Much of the roundshot fell short, kicking up small plumes of dust as they skipped across the sun-baked ground, as the artillery ponies were getting their range in. A few, likely from Bramley Apple’s battery, struck true and tore out great gouges in the formation that were quickly sealed with more drones.

“They’re running away!” exclaimed Frostbite, and the relief was evident in his voice. Indeed, the Changelings were on the move, and the swarm inched its way backwards over the crest of the hill.

I exchanged a few glances with Square Basher and Cannon Fodder, as the three of us tried to mentally sort out which of us would be the one to tell him. Fortunately for me, it was my aide who punctured his balloon: “They’re moving to the reverse slope, sir, where our artillery can’t hit them.”

“Oh.”

Our cannons continued firing on the retreating Changelings, becoming more accurate, and therefore more deadly, with each shot. The bombardment grew in intensity, no longer single, regular volleys, but accelerated into a rapid crescendo as each gun, and there must have been many of them, was fired at the peak ability of its crew. Further conversation had become impossible. The noise was a constant, rolling drumbeat, with each gun barking with its own unique tone and timbre to become an orchestra of devastation. Yet for all its loud bluster, the bombardment seemed to have little overall effect from what I could see; it must have been horrifying for the poor drones there, expected to retreat in good order with the threat of randomised death from afar hanging over their chitin, and having been on the receiving end of artillery before I could sympathise, but they had somehow managed it, no doubt in part due to that insane fanaticism that Odonata had spoken of before.

The last slivers of the black horde slipped over the crest of the ridge and the Changelings were out of sight. The cannonade ceased, save for a few desultory shots at the peaks of the hill out of spite, which did little more than knock off a few inches off the maximum height of these interesting geological features. The smell of burnt powder drifted along the breeze, mingling with the general scents of sweat and fear. Relative silence descended once more, though it was interrupted by the occasional distant, distorted ‘thud’ of a mortar or a howitzer being fired in the hopes that the shell, fired at an oblique angle, would land somewhere where the enemy was hiding behind that hill. At least when the cannons were going off it was impossible to even think with all of the noise, as the thoughts of what was to follow were utterly drowned out. Now, however, came the imaginings of the horror to come, and with them the sharp, acid sensations of anticipation -- the fluttering of the heart, drying of the mouth, and the damned restlessness.

Somewhere, a bugle called out a lively tune, followed by another, and another in answer, until it rivalled in volume the artillery bombardment we had just witnessed. The drummers rapped out a tattoo in imitation of the cannon-based score that preceded them. I could make out the Prism Guards, far off to our right, call out their famous chant in time with the drums: “Vive Celestia! Vive Celestia! Vive Celestia!”

“Bloody Prenchies,” I heard Square Basher mutter under her breath. “I thought I smelt garlic.”

It was madness. Pure, utter madness; we were marching straight into a trap, my instincts told me that much, but looking back I don’t think I could have articulated it in any way that would have convinced Market Garden from deliberately springing it. In her mind, her faith in sheer, bloody brute force would overcome any trickery the enemy could muster. There was no way out for me now -- I touched my chest, feeling the sturdy fabric of the star spider silk undershirt that I had bought at great personal expense underneath my dusty wool coat, and prayed that it would be enough to carry me through the rest of the day. That’s what I told myself then and there, that I would only need to worry about surviving to the end of the day and it would be over until the next one, which I would be better prepared to escape from.

“Shall I give your order to advance, sir?” asked Square Basher.

Captain Frostbite tore his eyes from the sight of the hills we would be fighting and dying over, and looked up at his Sergeant Major. “Sorry,” he said, blushing fiercely under his helmet. “Give the order, Square Basher.”

The big mare nodded, sucked in a deep breath, and bellowed at a volume that could have been mistaken for the Royal Canterlot Voice: “You heard the Captain! Company, Forward march!”

The Guards Division had taken the bait, and we advanced on Hill 70.

Chapter 3

It occurred to me, as I trudged up yet another Faust-damned hill, that battles seem to involve far too much walking, and more often than not it was mainly uphill. Of course, fighting was generally involved in battle, but first one must get there and for most of us that was via our own four hooves. Our going was quite slow, and I tripped more than a few times over rocks and pits along the way, but the risk of a twisted ankle paled in comparison to the volley of fire I was certain that we were about to be subjected to. Now, I’m certain most ponies reading this know exactly what happened, as what Hive Marshal Chela pulled next is precisely the thing that makes armchair generals randier than Yours Truly in a Prench bordello, but to add some perspective from the point of view of just one unhappy individual caught up in all of this, and for the benefit of those whose interests are rather more benign than the subject of ponies and Changelings killing each other, I’ll simply explain what I saw.

For the most part, I merely saw the armoured flanks of the mare in front of me and the hill rising above. My terror was such that I could not enjoy the callipgean display before me (having had the great fortune to be situated behind a mare who filled out her crupper [the part of a suit of armour that covers the flanks] quite nicely), as my eyes were fixed upon the summit of the hill. I fully expected to see the vast, dark mass of the Changeling horde slither over the ridge once more and force us back down the hill with the crushing weight of sheer numbers. Yet they did not, and that only worsened my anxiety about this whole mad venture.

“The bugs will be just behind the ridge, sir,” said Square Basher to Frostbite over the noise of the entire battalion advancing. “They’ll be waiting for us, so they’ll likely get the first volley off. We’ll take casualties, but our ponies will stand -- by Luna, I’ll make sure they’ll stand, sir. They might have artillery, but our pegasi will rush in and take out their crews, so don’t worry. Then we’ll fire by platoons, the entire division, sir. We can reliably out-pace their rate of fire, so as long as we can keep it up we’ll kill more of them than they will of us. When it looks like they’re about to break, we’ll charge down the slope and finish them off with bayonets and swords. Job done. It’s that simple, sir.”

If only it really was that simple, thought I, as I heard the Sergeant Major’s little lecture on the delicate art of military tactics. To me, however, it merely highlighted the madness of what we were about to do; of course, I had endured it before, most notably in the bloody assault on Virion Hive where the army charged head-first into heavily defended breaches, but for me at least, experience could never take away the sting and shock of it all.

The sound of bugles and drums urged us forwards, merging with the general noise of the marching hoofsteps of thousands of ponies and the clatter of armour and equipment. Above us, the pegasi flew close by in a tight formation, such that I could probably greatly annoy one by throwing a stone up in the air if the mood took me. From what I gathered, the light companies had been sent forwards to scout ahead, but had encountered some heavy resistance from the enemy, who didn’t much appreciate having their dastardly plans spied upon, and had beaten them back. In hindsight, that should have been a warning of what was to come.

I had caught glimpses of the aerial battle ahead, watching the tiny dark specks and glints of silver and gold against the clear blue sky dance and weave in a sort of dark imitation of Wonderbolt airshows. A few of these dots would clash in mid-air, tussle this way and that in what I knew to be a desperate fight to the death but from down here appeared terribly abstract and inconsequential. It went on as we continued marching, until the squadrons drifted back in dribs and drabs to the relative safety that the bulk of the division had offered, but as my thoughts were straying to more immediate, personal problems, I simply didn’t consider how we would be going over that ridge without much of a clear idea of what lay behind it. It was safe to assume, however, that there would be a lot of Changelings.

“The heavy pegasi companies will cover our backs, sir,” said Square Basher, as Frostbite watched the battered light companies limp back over our heads. “And failing that, we always have the square. I’ve drilled our ponies enough times so they’ll do it perfectly in their sleep, so don’t you worry, sir. No flying enemy will dive on a tightly-packed square unless they want a bayonet in their necks.”

Captain Frostbite nodded but remained silent for a good, long moment, and then said, “How many battles have you seen?”

“I’ve been with the Night Guards since the beginning: Black Venom Pass, Fort Nowhere, and Virion Hive. So has the Commissar, sir, and we’d have lost those battles without him.”

“You give me too much credit,” I said, wanting to put an end to that nonsense before it started giving Frostbite here too high expectations of what I could do in this fight. “If I brought victory, it was only by helping other ponies to become heroes.”

I was reminded of how Auntie ‘Tia had long given up on insisting on her lack of divinity as zealots only took her modesty as further proof of their theory. Perhaps it was best to let these things slide, I considered, but then ponies would come to their own conclusions anyway, and I’d still rather try and steer the narrative in whatever way that I could.

The conversation mercifully fizzled out, and a terrible tension settled in the air again, thickening it like flour in soup until I felt as though I was wading through chest-deep slime. My limbs burned with the exertion of walking uphill, especially after a full morning’s march without much of a break. Yet I could not tear my eyes off the top of those damned hills, waiting for the hail of Changeling artillery and musket fire to repulse our advance, until my vision began to swim with vertigo and I had to force myself to stare instead at the ground just in front of my forehooves. That helped to settle my nerves a little, by focusing on the mechanical process of placing one hoof in front of the other, and avoiding falling into pits along the way.

It worked so well that I barely noticed when the halt order was given. We had finally reached the summit, sergeants barked out the orders for earth ponies to load muskets and unicorns to charge horns, and then… nothing. Hush descended, save for quiet murmurings and the snorts and stamps of impatient ponies, and the rattle and jostle of weapons and equipment being adjusted. My hooves itched; the Changelings should have fired their muskets already, bought illicitly on some sort of black market from Faust-knows what arms dealers to the south, at the first sight of our lines crawling over the ridge, and I had braced myself to hear the sharp, firecracker noise of distant fire and the screams and cries of the wounded and dying. Yet there was only the quiet, confused murmurings all along the lines, followed by the sharp barks of sergeants and corporals telling them to be quiet.

“What’s going on?” asked Frostbite. He didn’t wait for a reply, and slipped forwards between the ranks of ponies to the front. Square Basher immediately went after him, forcing her larger frame through the tight formation, and I reluctantly followed in her wake as genuine curiosity had briefly overridden my sense of self-preservation.

We emerged out at the very front of the line, and I instantly felt very exposed without a veritable wall of armoured ponies in the way. The other side of the hill sloped away before us, which led to a series of further gullies, valleys, and hills in an undulating, broken landscape that swept away into bland, dull flatlands further along. I could make out Natalensis Hive roughly where these flatlands began, and as General Market Garden had said, it was not a fortified walled city like Virion Hive, but a vast, sprawling urban mess that looked rather like a stain of grease on cloth from where we stood. Still, it looked like it could one day be a rather nice place to visit in happier times, and I could make out a few interesting buildings that could become tourist attractions.

Standing at its summit, even I could see why Market Garden coveted this high ground so greatly; from here, one had a commanding and uninterrupted view of the city and the lands surrounding it for miles all around. Natalensis Hive might have been ‘undefendable’ according to the esteemed General, but from up here it was impossible for any army to advance on the city from the south without being spotted and, I assumed, subjected to murderous artillery fire. I had the misfortune to be situated on the tallest of the hills, the one numbered ‘70’ on the maps, which the two players situated across the metaphorical chessboard had decided was the key to winning this battle.

What I could not see from this lofty vantage point, however, were the Changelings. The entire reverse slope and fields beyond were empty, save for withered old shrubs, desiccated cacti, and a vast assortment of rocks of varying sizes and shapes. I looked up, wondering if the enemy had discovered that even higher ground than our meagre little hill called the sky, but the only formations that I could make out were our own directly overhead and what, from my perspective on the ground, looked like a swarm of midges out in the distance. It was impossible to judge distance and numbers, but our pegasi scouts had apparently been chased out of the skies by an overwhelming force, from what I could gather, and trying to assemble the picture of what had happened in my head I would assume that the enemy then retreated to safer distance as the division arrived in force atop the hill.

“The Changelings have all gone, sir,” said Cannon Fodder, quite unhelpfully.

“Where in Equestria did they all go?” asked Frostbite. He pointed at the Changelings buzzing around in the distance. “That can’t be all of them.”

I looked up and down our line, and saw the other frontline earth pony and unicorn companies in a similar state of confusion. Above, our heavy pegasi formed into standard V-formations and circled over our heads, while the light companies surged onwards on trails of white vapour. I could only wonder what the generals further back were discussing when the reports came filtering back that the Changelings had simply disappeared.

“They must be here somewhere,” answered Cannon Fodder with a vague shrug.

The itching in the frogs of my forehooves that had always alerted me to something awry refused to abate, despite the clear absence of any obvious threat; it made absolutely no sense for them to abandon this strategically vital land without a fight, unless it was a trap. My gaze drifted back to the slope descending away before us, positively littered with rocks. When it finally came to me, I was more perplexed that seemingly nopony else had figured it out, or perhaps they had and had decided, likely due to the rigid discipline and chain of command of the Equestrian Army, to keep it to themselves.

“The rocks,” I said, hushed just in case they might overhear me. Frostbite and Square Basher stared at me with blank, gormless expressions, as did Cannon Fodder, but that was usual for him. “They’ve changed into the rocks. I’ve known them to disguise themselves as books before.”

The shock of the realisation of something both horrible and obvious swept over Captain Frostbite’s face as though a veil had been draped over it. He almost seemed to recoil from it, as though the thought itself was a sharp spear thrust in his direction. “What do we do?” he blurted out, though he kept enough of his self-control to keep his voice relatively quiet despite the obvious fear in it.

“Pass the word along-” I stopped; it would take too long, and that meant more opportunity for somepony else to do something stupid. Where this inkling came from I’m still not sure, most likely the same instincts that allowed me to win games of cards rather than anything honed by two years at the front, but I would wager the larger of my summer houses that Chela expected Market Garden to march us over what she would assume is open land and take Natalensis Hive seemingly undefended, only for the swarm of Changelings to reveal themselves and rip us all to pieces.

[General Market Garden’s post-war memoirs state that she had detected that this was a trap and thus ignored the advice of her generals to march on to the city, which in her book she describes merely as a secondary objective to taking the hills and destroying Chela’s war-swarm. However, as with most officially published memoirs of generals, it is wise to take this with some scepticism.]

“Open fire on the rocks,” I said, and I even felt a little embarrassed saying that out loud. However, if I was right we might yet live, and if I was wrong I’d simply look a little foolish.

Both Captain Frostbite and Company Sergeant Major Square Basher looked at me as though they were wondering if I’d poured brandy on my cereal instead of milk that morning, but they apparently decided to humour me. We pulled back behind the line, out of the way of our own muskets, and I watched the proceedings with my heart hammering away in my chest.

“Company!” Square Basher’s voice called out sharply, though as with all NCOs her pronunciation sounded a little slurred. “Make ready!”

The soldiers were a little slow in following through with the order, for there was nothing obvious to shoot at, but their instinct to obey orders prompted them to follow through. A hundred or so muskets were cocked and readied.

“Present!” roared Square Basher, and those hundred muskets were levelled at nothing in particular.

“Sir!” A pimple-faced unicorn in the uniform of an ensign weaved his way between the troops at a brisk jog, and almost collided with me when he tried to stop and salute at the same time but got his hooves mixed up. He gasped for breath, apparently having galloped much of the way, but still managed to spit out part of his message at least. “Colonel Sunshine Smiles sends his regards and wishes to know what Captain Frostbite’s intentions are with-”

“Fire!”

There was an almighty crackling roar as the company’s muskets fired. I watched, straining my eyes to see through the resulting cloud of filthy white smoke that obscured the front rank of the company and everything beyond. The queer stillness returned, and I held my breath as the smoke that stung my eyes and nostrils began to clear with an agonising slowness on the languid breeze, hoping to see merely an empty field of rocks marked with wasted musket balls.

Though my view was obscured by the smoke, the entirety of the field sloping away from us flashed green momentarily, and then faded. I heard them before I saw them fully. The air was filled suddenly with an immense droning sound that I was all too familiar with, high-pitched and warbling with myriad tones and intensities, and which seized my heart with an icy claw and squeezed for all that it was worth. Of all the times to be right, for once, it had to be this. Before the smoke could clear completely, the sky above became black with the vastness of the Changeling swarm leaping into the air on buzzing wings as one, inspiring raw terror to grip me. Below them, perhaps a score lay on the ground, dead or dying from the volley of musket fire.

A second volley crashed out, once more obscuring my view with smoke. The enemy’s formation was so vast and yet so densely-packed that it was impossible for anypony to miss even with these infamously inaccurate weapons. Shouts of alarm rippled through the entire Equestrian line, followed by yet more cracks of disciplined musket fire and magic. I saw through the clearing smoke that a few drones were struck, and thus fell from the skies into a ruined heap.

I expected the swarm to immediately charge us, and overwhelm our thin line of grey and gold to force us back down that hill we’d just spent all morning marching up. In spite of the initial shock, the famed discipline of the Equestrian soldier suppressed all such feelings of surprise and fear; with their unique combination of honest encouragement and dire threats, the NCOs maintained order and the murderous, laborious work of loading and firing proceeded. Yet the swarm continued to surge up on buzzing wings, and as I stood there and followed their path heavenwards, I realised that their true target was not us poor ground-bound ponies, but the squadrons of pegasi above.

We could only watch in helpless futility as the entire swarm, in defiance of all previous behaviour we had come to expect from them, charged straight, en masse, into the isolated and separated squadrons of pegasi and griffons above. This supposed military genius, Hive Marshal Chela, and her apparent skill in improvisation was revealed in all of its hideous glory, and the mystery of how she had beaten back our eastward advance was no longer a point of speculation for me. Now, in an one-on-one fight, your average pegasus soldier will usually out-fight an average Changeling drone, for as far as I could understand it the wings of the latter were not suited for the sort of prolonged physical activity associated with an aerial brawl. The problem now, however, was that war is never only a matter of equitable fights between lone individuals; this vast swarm, looking now like a dark mass of nightmare-stuff swirling like a tempest, devoured our smaller formations one by one.

[It is generally accepted by historians that Hive Marshal Chela had expected the Equestrians to march directly down the slope and over the disguised drones for an ambush, and that her decision to place her entire force in the skies to quickly achieve aerial dominance was an improvisation on her part after Blueblood spoiled her trap.]

It was horrible to watch, and there was nothing anypony on the ground could do to stop it lest we accidentally hit our own ponies. The light companies were mauled, and though the heavy pegasi and griffons did their best to fend off the swarm, the sheer numbers of the Changelings were winning out. In the vast skybound brawl I could make out individual fighters frantically tearing through the skies, alone or in formation, then clash with another in a mad flurry of wingblades, bayonets, fangs, and beaks, until they pulled apart to repeat the process or one dropped like a stone.

The order came for us to form squares, to guard against the enemy’s now-obvious mastery of the skies. Frostbite’s company executed the drill with parade ground perfection, despite the rocky terrain, and what was a long, shallow line a few ponies deep folded inwards at three points, as though on hinges, to form as close to a geometrically perfect square as equinely possible. As ever, I found myself simply standing and watching as all of this happened around me; I stood in the centre of this small, tight island of armour tipped with bayonets and muskets with Frostbite and Square Basher, as the aerial battle continued to rage overhead.

The tide in the air had clearly turned against us, and so our pegasi, in accordance with the drill manuals, landed and took shelter in the hollow centres of each of these squares. The battered and bloodied ponies, with scratched and dented armour and their bodies marred with cuts and bruises, descended into the relative safety offered by the ground infantry with a haste that could have been mistaken for falling. Indeed, one of the grislier sights of this battle, often overlooked, is how the dead and severely wounded fell from the skies like a morbid hail, and often directly on top of their comrades. I became nauseated at the sight of an earth pony crawling out from under the broken remains of a pegasus, whose body was ruined beyond recognition by the impact.

The hollow inside our square rapidly filled with these wounded, desperate pegasi. I will never forget the haunted, vacant expressions on their faces for as long as I’ll live; with pale skin often streaked with blood, mouths gaping open as they gasped for breath, and eyes wide and staring but focused on nothing in particular. Few were in any sort of formation, and our little square had collected a variety of light and heavy pegasi from various companies and even regiments -- Night Guards, Solar Guards, Prism Guards, Crystal Guards, and even the odd griffon from the PGL -- all huddled alike behind the earth ponies brandishing muskets and bayonets skywards.

“Night Guards!” bellowed Square Basher. Our entire square braced at the sound of her voice. “Here you will stand! By Luna, you misbegotten ingrates are going to earn your pay today! Prepare to defend against airborne attacks!”

It was hard to move in the centre of the square, so filled with pegasi it was that I had to squeeze and push my way around the densely-packed ponies. I tripped over a few of the wounded and dying on the ground, where they had been left, crying out in pain or shivering in a world that was slowly growing dark for them, to either slowly expire or somehow, against the odds, make it through.

Captain Frostbite was somewhere in the centre of this, and I found him staring in dumbfounded horror at what was going on around him. The other ponies, mainly those pegasi who had made it into the safety of the square, seemed to be ignoring him as he stood there like a statue. He didn’t notice me approaching, and all but jumped out of his hide when I tapped him on the shoulder.

“S-sorry, sir,” he stammered out. “What am I supposed to do?”

I arched an eyebrow; how in blazes was I to know either? “First, never say that out loud,” I said, improvising a military pep-talk. “You’re an officer, and these ponies depend on you knowing exactly what to do. If you don’t know then at least pretend that you do, and your Sergeant Major will help you along the way. Second, we’re in a bit of a jam at the moment, so in the absence of any orders and with no avenue of retreat we must stand here and fight.”

Far be it from me not to immediately leap to ‘run away’ from an obvious threat, but those same gambler’s instincts told me that doing so when the enemy had full control of the skies was tantamount to suicide. Our best bet, as it had been since the very first time a clan of earth ponies met a clan of pegasi and had a disagreement over who owned a scrap of land, was to band together in this tight square and fend them off with sharp, pointy sticks.

Frostbite nodded his head, but was apparently incapable of saying anything else. I would wager that he had never seen anything like this before on the northern frontier.

“Do you know how to use that?” I asked, pointing towards the flintlock pistol still safely held in its holster on Frostbite’s belt.

“Yes, I think so.”

I hadn’t a clue, of course, despite having inherited a few duelling pistols from my late father, which served merely as interesting conversation starters in the drawing room. “The soldiers will appreciate it if it looks like you’re taking part in all of this.”

And likewise Yours Truly, I thought to myself as I left him to fiddle about with his silly contraption. By now our pegasi had surrendered the skies, as far as I could tell, and were huddling with the rest of us in the squares. In ours, at least, I saw that those who were still capable of fighting brandished their short carbines and pistols and joined in with the earth ponies. Four bristling walls of muskets and bayonets would make our formation a difficult nut for the enemy to crack, or so the theory went; theories were all well and good in the debate halls of the Academy, but being tested out here was another matter entirely.

With our surviving pegasi safely in the squares, a small break in the fighting emerged. What was happening beyond our own square I had no way of knowing at the time, but I imagined that the rest of the division was in much the same sorry state as we were. The air tasted of blood and burnt powder, and was filled with the sonorous droning of thousands of Changeling wings. I couldn’t bear to look up, but nevertheless I forced myself to and withered at the sight of the entire swarm hovering directly above us and just out of effective musket range. The sky was full of drones, more spread out this time so as to minimise the effect of musket fire and magic, but nevertheless the sight was a daunting one. I dared to rear up to peer over the huddled masses of ponies around us, and saw other formations of Night Guards likewise perched precariously atop the summit of this ridge, bunched up into the familiar squares as we were.

Despite seeing our comrades merely a short gallop away, it was hard not to feel terribly isolated and exposed out here. Not having a clear idea of what was going on elsewhere certainly did not help, and my nerves were most terribly frayed as a result. It looked as though everything that I had feared had come to pass, and all we could do was stand there and wait for the inevitable. Of course, as history records, it was about to get much worse for me.

“Here they come,” said Cannon Fodder with the same resigned air as an irate passenger watching his train pull into the station ten minutes late.

I looked up again, following his blank and unimpressed stare, and immediately wished that I hadn’t. The Changelings, who had thus far been content to keep their activities to the skies above, gathered into large, tightly packed groups that were spread out amidst the vast expanse of pale blue, like spots on a dalmatian, and then plunged down upon our tiny, isolated square in a series of waves.

Captain Frostbite was still fumbling with his pistol, and when he too directed his attention back to the battle developing around him he almost dropped the thing as he was messing around with the ramrod. His ears and tail dropped, as did his jaw, and he even took an involuntary step back right into a pegasus clutching a broken wing who hissed and swore at him. It was to no avail though; our new officer had become transfixed at his first sight of a war-swarm heading straight for him, and, if I must be honest, I almost envied him for his commoner status allowing him the luxury of expressing the fear he felt.

Still, it would not do, so I laid a friendly hoof on his shoulder. “Say something to your ponies,” I said. “It doesn’t have to be grand, but just something to encourage them and let them know you’re still in charge.”

He hesitated, then nodded his head dumbly. “Night Guards!” he shouted, though his voice cracked. The soldiers stiffened their backs and pricked their ears, and I heard the sound of hooves tightening around muskets. “Everypony is counting on us holding the Changelings here! There can be no retreat!”

As far as inspirational speeches in battle go, it was hardly Princess Celestia’s address to the loyalists before the final siege of Canterlot at the end of the Nightmare Heresy, but it was quick and snappy and therefore did the job admirably. In the heat of battle, there was hardly any time for the sort of flowery speeches ponies like to imagine take place, for the enemy are not exactly about to stand back and let that sort of thing happen regardless of dramatic effect. Indeed, at that moment, they were still tearing down on us at a terrifying speed, insectoid wings buzzing with a dolorous, heavy droning noise that still haunts my nightmares.

“Wait for my order,” said Frostbite. Apparently taking some measure of confidence from his own little speech, he now seemed more assured of himself and his ponies.

I, however, had decided to huddle up to the densest clump of earth ponies that I could find, which happened to be on one of the corners of the square. There, I could only gape uselessly at the fragment of the black swarm peeling away from the main horde to dive at our own tiny, isolated island. The infantry square was supposed to be impenetrable to aerial attack, but that was before some damned bastard invented the musket; they had only to open up a gap in this densely-packed formation bristling with steel and it would be swept away into bloody ruin by fang and bayonet. This was the end, I thought, and not for the first time in my life, but there was little else I could do except stand there trembling and wait for the finish.

There was a crackle of distant musket fire, muffled by the wind. I could not help but shudder when I heard it, expecting to feel that same fiery pain again or the nothingness of oblivion. Instead I heard a few cries, and saw a number fall near our square, either dead or wounded from the fusilade, but it was not enough.

“Present!” shouted Frostbite above the drone of wings. He pushed his way through the packed mob of pegasi in the centre to the point where it looked like the Changelings were aiming towards; some sort of transformation seemed to be taking place within him, and whatever it was that the ponies who selected him for leading the company saw had finally come out to the fore.

Yet courage could only do so much. The enemy were closer now, the droning of their wings ever louder. They burst through the musket smoke -- the swarm coalescing into the point of a great spear that would puncture our wall of steel, and near enough that I could see glistening fangs and frantically buzzing wings.

“Fire!” screamed Frostbite. The volley crashed out like a single, ragged bark of thunder, and the resulting smoke blew back in my face to sting my eyes and nostrils. Blinking away the tears, I saw through the white smoke the foremost drones, the tip of this spear, simply drop from the sky like stones. A split-second of momentary confusion, for in the densely-packed swarm those drones who escaped our volley collided in mid-air with the dead and the wounded, and the swarm itself seemed to flinch and recoil like a beast that had been pricked.

“Bayonets!”

In a series of fluid, mechanical motions, bayonets were rammed into the still-smoking muzzles of the muskets and thrust skywards. And not a moment too soon either, as the diving swarm recovered from the shock and collided with our square with a heavy crash. I could make out flailing hooves and glints of steel and chitin in the ensuing mess. Stinking ichor sprayed as drones were impaled upon this bristling wall of hideously sharp bayonets. Chilling shrieks of agony filled the air. To follow my own advice and give the impression that I was actually participating, I fired a couple of shots over the ponies’ heads into this oncoming horde, and while I have no idea if I actually hit any of them, there were so many so packed together it was practically impossible for me to miss.

The corner of the square that had borne the brunt of the assault bowed inwards slightly under the weight of bodies smashing into it, but the earth ponies, standing shoulder-to-shoulder like the phalanxes of old, still held. The swarm then surged over and around our packed formation, like a running stream over a rock. I ducked under them, hoping to use the armoured bodies all around me as cover, as they swept on overhead. Those drones who lingered too close were slashed and skewered with bayonets, showering us with their green blood and pelting us with their twitching, writhing bodies. One fell directly in front of me, neck opened with a precise slice to the jugular that still pumped ichor, and landed on a pegasus frantically trying to reload his short carbine, pinning him to the ground and spilling his powder. I seized the horrid, still-squirming thing in my magic and tossed it out beyond our formation.

“Stand, damn you!” Square Basher’s powerful voice cut through the awful din of battle.

The incessant, indescribably mad noise of clashing steel, musket fire, buzzing wings, and screams was too much for me to bear. The sight of so much blood and bodies, all packed into space no larger than a tennis court, limbs twisted into unnatural angles and so much flesh violated by the cold, mechanical means of modern war, had transfixed me with its horror. There was nowhere I could look without observing a scene of appalling and senseless suffering.

I stood there in something of a daze, being jostled and shoved as ponies moved within this formation to meet the next wave. Newspapers would later report on my stoic, implacable demeanour in the face of overwhelming odds and how the common soldiery around me drew great strength and courage from my example, but really I was simply so overwhelmed by everything that I had fallen into some sort of dull stupor, apparently incapable of speech or doing much else besides standing around and gawking dumbly at the carnage unfolding all around.

The Changelings rushed past us. They swirled once more into a swarm, looking like a vast flock of starlings as they did so. A great, triumphant yell rose up from the Night Guards, along with jeers and heathenish insults about the lineage of the enemy. Bayonets and hooves were thrust and shaken in the direction of the re-organising swarm. I knew what was coming next, for the enemy would not be deterred even by whatever horrendous losses they had suffered by battering against the solid brick wall that was an earth pony square. The moment of respite, however, allowed my head to clear somewhat and for me to take stock of the situation, such as it was. Our square had held firm, mercifully, and judging by what appeared to be an embankment of Changeling corpses piled up all around the outer perimeter, it would appear that the enemy had suffered the worst of it for now.

Not that this would dissuade them. I lost how count of how many times they hurled themselves against our tiny equine fortress on that bloody first day, but if asked I usually say five or six times (if I bother to answer at all, that is; many younger aristocrats these days seem to think that such things are appropriate conversation starters at parties). The outcome, however, was the same each time, and that bank of dead and dying drones piled up around our square grew higher and higher as the day wore on, until we probably could have used them for cover if the Changelings decided to use artillery.

It was around the third or fourth time this happened that Captain Frostbite, clearly terribly distressed by the abject slaughter he was witnessing, screamed, “Why won’t they just stop!”

I wished that I had an answer for him, but it would appear, at least from what I could infer during the long, tense moments between each assault where I could do nothing except ponder my fate, that Hive Marshal Chela really, really wanted to push us from this hill right now and was getting rather impatient with our dogged refusal not to. So impatient, in fact, that they apparently didn’t think to bring up some artillery or grenadiers.

[The Changelings, lacking the sort of heavy industrial base as Equestrian cities such as Manehattan and Trottingham, could not afford to replace lost materiel and so tended to use what little artillery they could manufacture or buy sparingly. Furthermore, some Purestrains considered artillery to be at odds with the traditional Changeling doctrines of deception and mass swarm tactics, being difficult to conceal and useless when the swarm closed into close range.]

The day wore on, the enemy dead continued to pile up around the square, and our wounded continued to suffer or expire, until the evening began to descend and the Changelings, likely as exhausted as we were, gave up on their futile attempts to crush our square. We watched, bloodied but unbroken, as the enemy settled down for the night in a series of makeshift encampments all around our tiny formation.

It was then as the fighting finally stopped that we received the orders to dig in. A unicorn who looked almost dead on his hooves, likely about to suffer a bout of magical exhaustion very soon, had teleported just outside of our formation, hurled a rock with a note tied to it over the heads of the bewildered earth ponies, and then vanished out of existence with another flash of magic. The note, which had bounced off of a pegasus’ helmet, was as succinct as it was bland and unhelpful:

“Entrench and hold position for forty-eight hours. Do not retreat.”

The most obvious and direct way back down the hill was flanked on both sides by large mobs of Changelings and guarded from above by hovering drones, almost daring us to run through the gauntlet. Likewise, we were prevented from regrouping with the rest of the battalion by another horde of drones camped in the way. After a full day of fighting, our ponies were utterly drained, both physically and emotionally, by the ordeal we had gone through. For our gallant efforts, all that we had to look forward to now was an awful night, exposed up on the hill, and pray that we would make it through to the morning.

What followed, however, was one of the more unusual events of the war that I had witnessed. The sun was setting below the horizon, casting all with an orange-red tone and giving the entire morbid scene a more ethereal, otherworldly feeling that I found profoundly unsettling, as though everything was tinted with blood. We had moved the wounded together and laid them out, while piling up the dead, both ours and the Changelings’, as far away as we dared to. I was with Captain Frostbite and Sergeant Major Square Basher as they were going through the arrangements for the night. Here, our tight square had loosened its formation somewhat, and the platoons of earth ponies, joined by those pegasi who could still fight, had adopted a rough hexagonal shape that could, in theory, snap back together the instant a Changeling so much sneezed in our direction. A small work detail was organised to start digging trenches, but few ponies were in a fit state for heavy manual labour.

Cannon Fodder had been gracious enough to somehow find both the time and the means to brew tea and had passed it around the assembled officers in the centre. It had been a bloody awful day, all told, and the night was only going to be worse, so I was immensely grateful for this one simple luxury.

“We’ll all have to huddle together for the night,” said Frostbite. “It’s going to get real cold in a minute. We had to do this out on patrol up in the northern frontier, so all of you need to get over any prudishness you have about getting close to one another. We’ll also need eyes on the bugs at all times, so I’ll leave it up to the platoon commanders to organise watches in their sectors. Just keep them spread out so nopony gets too tired-”

“Sir!” A young Ensign came galloping over, panting with excitement. “Changelings, sir, with a white flag.”

“It’s a bit premature for them to start asking for surrender now,” I said, partly to myself, but it slipped out. Nevertheless, it provoked a few polite chuckles. “Very well, let’s see what they want.”

We followed the Ensign and squeezed our way around the soldiers to the very front of the formation. The enemy were quite a distance away, far enough that it was impossible to make out individual drones among the masses, but standing about a dozen yards away from us in No Mare’s Land were five of them. One stood at the front, apparently an officer or whatever equivalent they used, with a bodyguard of four, one of whom carried a long stick with a stained white rag tied to the end. The bodies of their fellows littering the ground around them, the results of their futile attempts to break our squares, can’t have escaped their notice, but the officer drone seemed to be deliberately ignoring them.

“Hello, Tin Cans!” he shouted across the gulf between us, cheerily enough. ['Tin Cans’ or ‘Cans’ were the most common nicknames Changeling drones had for Equestrian soldiers, in reference to the heavy plate armour commonly worn. Bayonets, swords, spears, and so on were sometimes referred to as ‘can-openers’.] “Hive Marshal Chela has a proposal for you! You have many wounded-” He stopped, and though it was difficult to follow eye movements with those damned compound eyes of theirs, I got the worrying impression that he was staring directly at me. “By the Hives, it’s the Black Prince!”

Perfect, thought I, that’s all I needed right then and there; now the Changelings knew exactly where I was, and as they were under the peculiar misapprehension that I was somehow integral to the Equestrian war effort far in advance of my celebrity and status as a prince of the realm, I, and by extension the poor ponies saddled with me, would be singled out for special attention. I said nothing, but felt terribly aware of being stared at.

The Changeling officer gave a curt bow, and I wondered if I was being mocked. “As I was saying, Hive Marshal Chela is willing to offer a temporary truce to allow you to evacuate your wounded back to your camp below the hill.”

It was another trap, that much seemed all too obvious. Yet it was most unusual for the enemy to even attempt negotiating with us, and I struggled to think of what they might possibly gain from all of this. When I realised nopony else was speaking because they expected me to take the lead, yet again, I shouted back, “What’s the catch?”

“No catch!” The Changeling officer took a cautious step forward, and I could see that he wore some sort of new armour that I hadn’t seen before, which consisted of a dark blue-purple breastplate and helm with a glossy sheen and texture that seemed organic, looking much like an extension of his natural chitin. The helmet swept back to cover much of the neck, and the cheek guards extended down past his jaw to end in a series of sharp spikes so as to resemble the mandibles of a large beetle. His breastplate in fact consisted of four overlapping plates, and as I could not see the same sort of straps and buckles that one would expect to see securing armour to one’s person, I had to conclude that it was somehow affixed directly to the Changeling’s already-tough chitin. I could make out what I took to be some sort of rank insignia -- the stylised green flame on the left side of his chest above a series of three pips, and on the right side of his helmet was a grey triangle that was much taller than its base was wide, symbolising the Hive itself. “Shall we come closer so we don’t have to shout? I’d prefer it if we conversed like civilised creatures!”

I looked at Captain Frostbite, who then slowly nodded his head. “But if he tries anything we’ll put enough holes in him that we can use his chitin as a colander.”

Taking that as an affirmation, I waved the curious Changeling officer and his entourage over. They seemed almost relieved as they crossed the distance, though I heard the sound of muskets and bayonets being readied just behind me. Square Basher growled like a timberwolf, and tightened her hoof around the shaft of her sergeants’ halberd. I made a mental note to dive to the ground should those Changelings do anything untowards, as it simply would not do to have survived this long only to be felled by a musket ball forged in Manehattan.

It was unusual and disquieting to be this close to a Changeling without them trying to kill me, even after Odonata’s capture and those lengthy conversations with her. These drones seemed to be quite ordinary as far as their lot go, and aside from the new armour on the officer, there was very little to differentiate them from any one of the hundreds of other such drones that have tried to kill me in my long and unfortunate career. Still, the officer approached with an easy-going confidence reflected in a deceptively-warm smile and a relaxed gait, though his bodyguard seemed as wary of us as we were of them. He stopped at a respectable distance, but the others hung back a little and looked ready to bolt. It was then that I noticed that they were all unarmed, though that term rarely applied to creatures with sharp fangs and who could transform parts of themselves into sharp and pointy objects at will.

“I am Captain Lacewing,” said the officer, holding out his hoof for me to shake. Despite everything, automatic decorum overrode good sense and I accepted it; the hoof felt uncomfortably cold to the touch. “I offer myself as a hostage for the duration, while you evacuate your wounded. It wouldn’t be too much to ask to allow us to do the same, either, I shouldn’t think.”

“Thank you,” I said, subconsciously wiping my hoof on the ground. The strange drone didn’t seem to notice the rude gesture, or pretended not to. “But why?”

Lacewing made a knowing smirk and nodded his head. “Ah, yes, you must be used to the other sorts of Purestrains after all these years,” he explained.

I looked him up and down, taking in that fearsome, intimidating armour with its peculiar, arcane symbolism, and realised that he was more-or-less about as tall as I was. “You’re a little small to be a Purestrain,” I said.

“We Changelings are nothing if not adaptable; we change, after all. We are not all the same in shape and size or power, but we are all devoted to serving Queen and Hive. Anyway, Hive Marshal Chela wants a clean war, with none of this ugliness that has ruined it before.”

I looked past him to see the bodies filling the fields and wondered if the Changelings had a peculiar definition of ‘clean’ compared to standard Ponish; there was nothing clean about the lifeless, mutilated corpses that surrounded us, nor in the flies that swarmed around their bodies, nor in the ultimate tragedy of lives cut short for the hubris of officers and generals, supposedly in service to a higher cause that somehow made it all worthwhile. However, it was somewhat refreshing to see that Equestria did not hold a monopoly on officers whose grasp on reality was limper than a wet sock. Unless, however, it was another ploy.

“I’m sure you having the opportunity to take a good look at our forces and disposition has nothing to do with it,” I said.

Captain Lacewing chuckled, and it was a good-natured sort as though I had told a mildly-amusing anecdote. “Looks like I owe my sergeant five horns. Was it that transparent?”

[Horns were the Changeling currency at the time. Being based on the love standard, the exchange rate to Equestrian bits varied considerably according to the amount of love held within Queen Chrysalis’ vault. It is believed by some historians and economists that having currency tied to a food source contributed to a kleptocratic system, which necessitated continual expansion and conquest of pony tribes that inevitably prompted the Changelings to attack Equestria.]

“Like Canterlot spring water.”

“I hope to visit Canterlot very soon,” he said, wistfully looking in a direction that approximated north. “I have a cousin there who says it’s lovely this time of year.”

The implications of that little statement took a little while to sink in, but when it did I dismissed it as a further attempt to disarm me. His apparent friendliness, seeming much like the ideal of a charming, pleasant officer and gentlecolt that all ponies who hold a Princesses’ commission aspire to, seemed almost genuine, but one could never let one’s guard down around their sort. Not that I let my guard down around any creature, changeling or pony. Yet more than that, it simply seemed so thoroughly alien coming from a race that I associated with bestial cunning, total conformity, and callous morals that it was more thoroughly disturbing than if he simply stuck to that familiar old stereotype. That would have made it a lot easier to tell him where he could stick that dubious offer.

“You’re being very trusting of us,” I said, at length. “Who’s to say we’ll let you go?”

“Oh, you most certainly will.” There was a sly glint in Lacewing’s compound eyes. “You’re the Black Prince! You’d never stoop so low as to harm a willing hostage.”

Not in front of other ponies, that is, but he had me there. However, he seemed to pick up from whatever subtle social cues I was subconsciously displaying that I was seriously considering it, and he quickly added, “That would be dishonourable of you.” He rolled the word ‘dishonourable’ around his forked tongue as though luxuriating on a particularly fine vintage of love, or however their kind enjoyed that emotion, drawing special attention to it.

I hated making important decisions, or rather the prospect of being held accountable for them, so I found it best to try and spread the responsibility around as much as possible; if things went well I could still claim credit, and if they went poorly there was always a convenient scapegoat ready and waiting. Fortunately, I had Captain Frostbite and Square Basher with me, and so I asked them for their thoughts on the matter.

“I don’t like it, sir,” said Square Basher, as Frostbite was still apparently too stunned to respond. “Can’t trust a bug as far as I can throw ‘em, but some of our colts and fillies won’t survive the night without proper medical treatment. Just what I think, sir.”

That prompted Frostbite into finally forming an opinion. “Fine, but you’ll run him through the moment the bugs try anything, eh?”

“Hives, we wouldn’t dream of it!” proclaimed Captain Lacewing, as though he had been gravely insulted.

Nevertheless, that was that settled. We took our hostages, one willing and the others looking about as nervous as the slathering beasts possibly could, as far away from our formation as we dared to without leaving ourselves too exposed. As this was apparently my responsibility, I accompanied them and the guard of five rather confused earth ponies to a spot a dozen yards by our furthest picquet line, while Frostbite went about organising the evacuation of our wounded, mostly pegasi, back down to the main camp at the base of the hill. We watched them depart together, those who were still capable flew and the rest were carried on stretchers on hoof, in this thoroughly surreal moment of calm, sense, and order in a world where all of that felt less and less relevant as this damned war dragged on. This grim, morbid procession of ponies whose lives would be changed forever by today marched on by, past the formations of Changelings that flanked our line of retreat. I waited for the inevitable betrayal, but to my continued surprise the enemy simply let them be, and the column of wounded and their carers slipped through this corridor usncathed.

Perhaps, I thought, there was some tiny glimmer of honour left, and inexplicably it was found in the Changelings. Of course it makes sense now, with the benefit of hindsight and the knowledge of what would come later, but it is impossible for me to overstate just how utterly shocking it was that an enemy we had known to be so thoroughly void of scruples and morals to behave in such a manner approaching chivalry, even if it gave them the dubious advantage of allowing a few select individuals to view our meagre defences.

I belatedly realised that I could have earned a spot amongst those lucky ponies, but it was too late for that now.

Nevertheless, the Changelings had unexpectedly kept up their side of the bargain, so therefore it was our turn. Captain Lacewing, who had hitherto remained in silent contemplation with his drones despite his earlier talkative behaviour, seemed to pick on the cognitive dissonance tugging at my brain, and flashed one of his odd grins. “Don’t worry,” he said, “we’ll go back to killing each other tomorrow morning.”

He bade us a good night, and I reciprocated out of mere politeness. With a tug on the brim of his helmet and another smile that, despite the presence of fangs, was warm, he turned on his hooves and led his grateful bodyguards away and back across the gulf to his own lines, where no doubt they had been just as anxious about his return as we were about the fate of our own wounded. I returned to that meeting with a relieved Captain Frostbite, the centre of our formation now cleared of our troublesome wounded ponies, with a peculiarly bittersweet sensation in my breast.

Decades later, I still wonder what happened to Captain Lacewing.

Chapter 4

I will not provide a day-by-day account of what happened on that hill; largely because it all tends to blur together in my memory and I struggle to recall what exactly happened on each particular day. All that I can recall in any real detail, aside from various bits and pieces that I will do my best to recount, is how I felt throughout the whole ordeal -- alone, depressed, and utterly exhausted. Not that I could ever show any of it in front of the soldiers, of course, as propriety demanded that I maintain an air of aloof, aristocratic self-assuredness and a damned pig-headed optimism even as we starved together atop a stupid hill whose tactical and strategic importance I had long since ceased to care about.

From what I could work out, in spite of their unusual chivalry earlier the Changelings were rather miffed that we hadn’t done the expected thing and ran away back down the hill with our tails between our hindlegs. I suppose I ought to give General Market Garden some credit, for her stubborn insistence that we hold these bloody hills appeared to have stumped the enemy somewhat; with their total mastery of the air, any retreat would have been mercilessly exploited and turned into a chaotic rout, but now that we were resolutely not doing that, Chela had no choice but to grind her forces down into nothing by hurling them against our entrenched positions. This post hoc justification might seem all well and good with the benefit of distance and hindsight, but at the time I was pretty damned unhappy about the prospect of my mortal body being used as a mere roadblock. After all, it wasn’t the generals trapped on the hill, sweating during the day and shivering through the night, starving, dehydrated, sick, and being shot at, bitten, and stabbed by Changelings. Still, forty-eight hours didn’t seem so bad, thought I, considering that I had been through such horrifying events like the gas attack on Virion Hive and a school camping trip.

We managed six days.

Six days I spent living in a filthy hole in the ground with Cannon Fodder, Frostbite, Square Basher, and four other ponies whose names and faces have been lost to the mists of a failing memory, ducking under deadly hails of cannon balls, musket fire, and shrapnel, and venturing out only to answer the call of nature or help our dwindling number of ponies fend off wave after wave of Changelings hurling themselves at our entrenched positions through land and sky. Long, tedious hours passed where I huddled in the base of it, with nothing to do except try to catch up on lost sleep, which were interrupted by those short, sharp bursts of violence seemingly at random.

Each attack was always preceded with artillery and dive-bombing by Changeling grenadiers. Fortunately for us, that unicorn ensign who just so happened to be unlucky enough to be selected to relay Colonel Sunshine Smiles’ message earlier also turned out to be something of a prodigy when it came to shield magic, and was able to keep us all mostly safe during the more intense moments. As the only other unicorn present, I was often called upon to lend him what meagre strength I could muster, as being rather young and untrained he had yet to build up the sort of stamina required for sustained use of magic. [Blueblood is often dismissive of his own magical aptitude, having graded poorly in school. While his own ability with spells is lacking, more out of a refusal to practice than anything else, he could still draw on large reserves of raw power, perhaps in part due to his distant alicorn lineage.] We would huddle at the base of our pitiful little foxhole, the ensign straining with the energy and concentration required to project the shield over us, which flared and flashed bright white and angry reds as each cannonball and shell smashed into it, while I held his small, shivering body with my horn touched to his, funnelling my own power into the shield. Later, when it was briefly over, Square Basher would always make sure that he received extra rations.

Then, with a sort of grim inevitability, the drones would come in a vast wave as they had always done, like the stormy sea to crash upon the rocks and cliffs that were our trenches. As skilled as our ensign was with shields, they could not last forever, especially against the tidal wave that was a massed swarm assault. The shield inevitably failed, and the enemy descended over ground and from the air. The resulting effect was the same as always: they would charge on, we would hold our fire until the last possible moment for maximum effect and to conserve powder, but no matter how many were felled they kept on coming, and it all descended into the madness of hoof-to-hoof fighting as it always did. We brawled over holes in the ground, losing a few, only to retake them with a renewed counter-assault. And such it was, over and over, day in and day out -- slaughter over holes in the ground.

The battle beyond raged incessantly around us, and our little trapped company was only one small part of it. Yet the abject hopelessness of our situation seems to have made it all the more memorable in the collective memory of the general public, compared to the other tales of heroism and glory, and pain and suffering, that took place throughout that awful week. What was going on elsewhere atop these hills I had no idea at the time, though when I dared to peek my un-helmeted head out of the hole I called home I could sometimes make out glimpses of further violence and senseless carnage taking place elsewhere, beyond the confines of this damned hill and the Changelings that surrounded us. More than that, however, I could hear the distant rumble of artillery and the muffled crackle of far-off musket fire, and as I could only see those remote glimpses of pegasi and Changelings clashing in the skies above and the white-grey plumes of smoke blossoming amidst specks on faraway hills, I had only my imagination to rely upon for any clue as to what was going on elsewhere. Not that it truly mattered to me, of course, having rather more immediate problems to deal with in the shape of hundreds of drones surrounding our tiny island in the midst of the raging sea, but throughout this thoroughly miserable week I still held out for the vague hope that somepony out there was thinking of poor old me enough to mount a rescue.

That was not to be, of course, for the enemy, apparently under the delusion that I was somehow crucial to the entire Equestrian war effort and that everypony would pack up and go home were I to be killed or captured, had elected to devote a considerable amount of effort in eradicating our little pocket of resistance that might have been better spent elsewhere. Nevertheless, as I’ve said, officers and generals are just as ruled by their emotions as much as anypony else, and the same invariably applies to the Changelings; whoever was in charge over there, beyond the gulf of the No Mare’s Land that separated us, probably wanted to be the one to drag me, Princess Celestia’s nephew, in chains before Queen Chrysalis and thus secure a promotion, knighthood, a medal, or whatever it was that their misbegotten kind received to celebrate a job well done. Extra rations, probably, now that I think about it.

The first forty-eight hours passed with some measure of optimism amongst the ponies of Frostbite’s company. Though cut-off and surrounded, we had already given the enemy a bloody nose and there yet remained hope that we would be rescued, so while my own natural pessimism precluded me from joining in with their shared delusion, I could at least understand where it came from. However, as the sun set on the second day and we were still stuck on the summit of that damned hill, it became readily apparent that General Market Garden’s estimate of two days for a rescue was, at best, optimistic, and, at worse, a lie, and that optimism slowly faded into a sort of grim, fatalistic determination.

“They won’t just leave us here,” said Captain Frostbite, as he stared out down at the Equestrian side of the slope, where our most direct way back home was blocked off by an encampment of Changelings. He then looked at me with a pleading expression on his face, and added, “Will they?”

“Equestria expects every pony to do their duty,” I said flatly. What else could I say in that situation? Nevertheless, as with jazz what was not said was just as important, if not more so, and in that shared look we conveyed to one another without words an agreement on our feelings of helplessness and betrayal. And speaking of jazz, the sort that sounds like the entire band playing all of the notes they can as quickly as possible with seemingly no concept of melody would be a fair description of my mental state at the time.

The nights offered no respite. Under the cover of darkness, the enemy would try to sneak small teams in close, usually disguising themselves as small animals or rocks to get past the sentries. More often than not, they succeeded in slipping through our increasingly strained ponies on watch, whose attention and alertness had been withered by the constant stress of hunger, thirst, lack of sleep, and the threat of a violent end in the dark. Usually, we would only be alerted to their presence by sudden cries in the night as somepony somewhere was set upon by these nocturnal assassins. The fighting that would then break out in each foxhole and trench was typically short, confused, and vicious. It was these little events, sometimes up to four times a night, that chipped away at the strength of our company the most, both materially in terms of ponies left alive and emotionally. Sleep became almost impossible, as nodding off meant the increased likelihood of a knife between one’s ribs.

At each dusk an undeclared truce was observed, where there would be a break in the seemingly endless artillery bombardment and the waves of Changeling attacks, and we were granted an all-too-brief moment to emerge out of foxholes and entrenchments to take stock of our worsening situation. The two days’ worth of oat rations that each soldier carried in their knapsacks stretched out for four days with careful rationing and looting of our dead, and while there was little in the way of grass suitable for grazing up here, the dry, tasteless, nutrition-deficient substitutes that clung to life here at least suppressed the feelings of hunger for a short time. Ammunition, too, was running low, but as Square Basher had helpfully pointed out, bayonets and hooves require nothing but what Faust had already granted us.

More importantly, perhaps, it allowed Captain Frostbite to speak directly with his ponies. In these holes on top of the hill, the barriers between officers and enlisted rapidly broke down with our shared hardships, despite my best efforts. I suppose after one night huddling together for warmth it was impossible to maintain such an elevated position. Nevertheless, they all seemed to appreciate his efforts in keeping our beleaguered little band together.

“Everypony’s counting on us,” he’d tell them every single night, and they would all nod and agree and say how they’re all with him to the end.

[Blueblood glosses over his own contribution to maintaining the morale and fighting spirit of the company during its time on the hill. Interviews with other survivors of the company not only praise Captain Frostbite’s leadership, but also Prince Blueblood’s example in equal measure; the value of a prince of the realm and a recognised war hero sharing in their misfortune without complaint should not be overlooked.]

As for water, our situation was much more precarious; what each pony carried in canteens had to be eked out as much as possible, leading to dehydration amongst the ranks that was only worsened by the intense heat of the day and the frantic bursts of demanding physical activity caused by each assault on our desperately-held position. By the third day, headaches, lethargy, and a sensation of having one’s thoughts seemingly muffled by cotton wool were simply things I had to get used to. The already lax standards of personal hygiene had to be abandoned completely in order to make our dwindling supply last -- the stench was unimaginable, and only grew more ripe as that week from hell wore on, but by that point anypony left alive up here with me had ceased to care. The experience, so glorified in the annals of war and that vampiric beast called popular media, had reduced us all to the state of untamed, wild animals, living in our own filth and with no thoughts beyond mere survival to the next day.

On the end of the fourth day, a pegasus squadron had broken through the Changelings’ aerial screen and dropped off a bundle of supplies for us -- food in the form of those hardtack biscuits that seemingly last forever, ammunition and replacement weapons, and, most importantly, many full canteens of water, which we used, perhaps thoughtlessly and wastefully, for brewing tea in the hopes that we would finally be rescued before it would run out again. The pegasi, apparently shocked at the dishevelled state we were in, with Yours Truly almost unrecognisable with the beginnings of a beard and a uniform that was almost in dusty shreds, nevertheless passed on a message from General Market Garden that our valorous stand on Hill 70 was an inspiration to the entire Equestrian Army to carry on fighting.

We were being sacrificed; that was how it came across to me as I nursed my chipped enamel mug of hot tea and listened to the pegasi explain what they knew about the battle that continued to drag on beyond our tiny position on the hill. Hive Marshal Chela’s attempt at a knockout punch right from the out had failed, and now the two sides were like boxers in the ring trading blows, each refusing to back down, until one must inevitably keel over from sheer exhaustion. Our struggle was merely one part of a greater whole, but apparently a rather crucial one as far as the pegasi were concerned as it tied up a disproportionately large section of the Changeling swarm away from the ‘cauldron’, I think they euphemistically called it, where our main effort to grind down the enemy was being exerted.

None of this, however, did much to assuage the feelings of abandonment and betrayal that writhed around within my soul. Of course, it was the cold mathematics of modern war that meant that our valiant sacrifice here provided an excellent diversion for Market Garden to exploit, but all the justification in the world could not stop me from feeling hungry, exhausted, desperately thirsty, and just downright awful, and nor, as I had seen it, vindicate the deaths of those ponies who defended that damned hill. Ponies will often speak of the war and make grand speeches about the need for sacrifice in the name of Harmony, as long as it’s somepony else making that sacrifice on their behalf.

The pegasi left us, taking hastily-written letters to loved ones back with them, and the sun set on another day here. Their visit and the news and supplies they brought buoyed the flagging morale amongst our meagre band, who now numbered perhaps two thirds of the original company, and had now been reassured that they had not been forgotten by their leaders.

That optimism lasted until the next morning, when the Changelings, apparently frustrated by our continued refusal to give up, resorted to poison gas to smoke us out. I recall vividly the frantic cries of ‘gas!’ repeated over and over across our hill, as the shells, trailing putrescent grey-green smoke, descended down upon our already-perilous position. As my foxhole filled with this choking miasma, I fumbled with the newfangled type of gas mask that we had all recently been issued with. The chemical-soaked bag worn over the head had been replaced with a shaped canvas mask with length of rubber tubing connecting the mouthpiece to a filter canister held in a box worn on one’s back, which gave one the impression of a sort of brain-damaged elephant. The straps that secured it around one’s head might have given a better seal against the poisoned air, but as the deadly fog swirled around us, already bringing stinging tears to my eyes and burning my nose and throat, such was my growing panic as it continued to seep through the gaps around my cheeks and jaw that my magic seemed incapable of manipulating the buckles to tighten it correctly.

It was Cannon Fodder who saved me, yet again. Having secured his own mask somehow with only his hooves, he silently adjusted the straps on mine until the appropriately tight and protective seal could be formed. I gave him my thanks, though my voice was heavily muffled by the mask and the filter. The others in the foxhole had managed to put theirs on just fine, and I felt rather embarrassed that I had needed help.

[Though the use of poison gas was quite rare during the Changeling War, especially during the more mobile Heartlands Campaign, both sides would employ this controversial weapon against entrenched positions, such as Virion Hive as before and in this one instance in the Battle of Natalensis Hive. The Equestrian Army, however, in preparation for the new campaign had feared mass deployment of chrysaline gas by the enemy and had issued troops with the new model of gas mask modelled on captured Changeling designs, which was a stark improvement on the older models. Soldiers were drilled to put on their gas masks in seconds, though it appeared that Blueblood had neglected to practice.]

The gas sank and settled at the bottom of our foxhole, swirling around our legs as we waited for the inevitable. It was damned hard work to breathe in this thing, having to suck air through a mouthpiece that rapidly filled with saliva and had that odd, metallic taste imparted by the purifying crystals packed into the filter box. In this heat, wearing a canvas mask over one’s head in addition to a peaked wool cap, or a helmet if one was lucky, also caused the damned thing to fill with sweat too. The goggles rapidly misted over despite the supposed benefits of the anti-fog paste, so that I could scarcely see, either. Huddled against the earthen wall of our hole as though that might somehow protect me, I could only think that this would finally be the end of it all, and after the past few days of living in this damned hole, venturing out and braving sharpshooters just for the privilege of answering the call of nature in the communal latrines, I might have welcomed it.

The enemy came as they always did, in mass waves to overwhelm our fragile position. Swarms of them, with their faces too covered by protective respirators to make them seem even more in-equine, were hurled against our position, the fighting devolved into an all-out brawl, and they were thrown back again, as they had always been since the start of this horror. Except this time our ensign didn’t make it; this young chap, whose name goes unremembered but whose efforts, more than anypony else’s, allowed us to endure in this hell for so long, hadn’t secured his new gas mask correctly and had thus died asphyxiating on his own melting lungs, entirely unnoticed in the chaos. We found him while we counted our dead, far too many this time, curled up in a ball at the bottom of our foxhole, his still body stiff, and when we pulled off his mask the congealed blood and slime that had collected inside splashed out on my hooves.

On the dawn of the sixth day, a lone Changeling drone with a white flag was spotted advancing on our position. Captain Frostbite, looking like a bedraggled, hollowed-out shadow of his former self (and I would wager that I looked no better), peered out over the lip of our little foxhole and watched him.

“Maybe they’re giving up, eh?” said Frostbite, still somehow clinging to the last shreds of optimism despite everything we had endured thus far.

“Not bloody likely,” I said, taking a rather more realistic approach to things. It was about damned time, too, thought I. After six days of this I’d entirely had enough and was more than willing to take Changeling captivity over yet another awful night here; at least they’d have to feed me if they wanted me alive enough to be harvested for love, and whatever it was they fed their slaves had to be a damned sight more palatable than hardtack biscuits.

The drone carried on, waving his little white flag in the air from time to time as though to make sure that we saw it. He walked at what seemed like an agonisingly slow pace, as, just like pulling off a plaster, I just wanted the embarrassment of our surrender over and done with as quickly as possible.

“That’s close enough!” called out Frostbite. His voice cracked under the strain of the past week’s exertions.

The drone obliged and stopped about twenty paces from our foxhole, still waving his flag. Looking around, I saw that in the surrounding entrenchments other ponies likewise peered out over the gulf of No Mare’s Land to observe.

“Well?” Frostbite shouted. “What is it?”

The Changeling cleared his throat, and then spoke in a clear voice that projected surprisingly well across the gulf between us: “Brave Equestrians, you have done all that the honour of war requires and more! But there is no point in continuing this fighting; you are outnumbered, outgunned, and completely surrounded. You have been abandoned! Your generals have left you all here to die, but Hive Marshal Chela offers you the chance to save your lives in an honourable and dignified surrender. You will be treated well and looked after as prisoners of war. If you refuse our generous offer, we will attack with overwhelming firepower and numbers.”

Well, that was jolly nice of them, I thought, and I looked to Frostbite in the expectation that he’d do the sensible thing and agree to their generous terms. He, however, remained silent as he slipped back down under the lip of the foxhole, his face blank and unreadable.

“Bloody liars,” said Square Basher, snarling like the beast she increasingly resembled, before quickly adding a quiet ‘sir’. “Nopony gets left behind, that’s the ‘Guards way, sir. They wouldn’t just leave us here.”

And that blind optimism is what got just about everypony else killed. Still, there was something comforting about that way of thinking, that if we just held out a little bit longer then our comrades would come valiantly to our rescue. I could picture it vividly: the ponies in gleaming gold and silver armour crashing into the vast horde that surrounded us, putting the wretched enemy to flight, followed by a nice warm bath and a mug of hot cocoa, medals all ‘round, and a well-deserved trip to the nearest house of ill-repute to celebrate with a mare or two. It was so tantalising, that in my desperate state even I bought into the delusion; besides, it was not as though anything I could say would dissuade Captain Frostbite, on whose shoulders the responsibility ultimately rested, from the course of action he was already set upon. Nevertheless, it was worth a try.

“Captain Frostbite, I think we should at least consider the option of surrender,” I said. “The soldiers have already given all that they can.”

“They’ll give more, sir,” snapped Square Basher. “We just need to hold out a little longer. The enemy is breaking, I can feel it. They’re bluffing; they’re getting desperate.”

Captain Frostbite stared vacantly into space as we argued, and it was the sort of look that I had seen all too often in my career of a pony who had come to the realisation that everything was completely and utterly ruined and that all hope had gone. “Prince Blueblood?” he said quietly. “Tell him to fuck off.”

I was sorely tempted to tell him to take that idea to Tartarus too, and then waltz out of the foxhole into the welcoming hooves of our new Changeling captors, but that’s not something Commissar-Prince Blueblood was supposed to have done. Perhaps some ponies would still be alive now if I’d taken that choice, perhaps not, but as ever any choice I had in life was merely an illusory one. Few things would sink my reputation faster than admitting to a surrender, even if it was to ultimately save lives, especially my own. That little fantasy of our final heroic rescue and the delusion of hope it brought was what nudged me into going along with this madness, and to this day I regret that I was too deluded, too weak, to say those difficult words ‘we surrender’.

Besides, I couldn’t use Frostbite’s exact words, not even to the Changelings. I poked my head out of the foxhole again, and shouted back at the drone waiting patiently out there in No Mare’s Land, “I’d love to surrender, but as a prince of Equestria I can only give myself up to a royal of equivalent rank or higher!”

The Changeling drone blinked. The warm breeze made his white flag flutter anxiously from its pole. “What?” he finally blurted out.

“Please present a Changeling prince or a princess to accept my surrender; giving myself up to a common drone is entirely beneath my station. Even Queen Chrysalis would do.” An awkward silence descended, where the drone, apparently confounded by Yours Truly going off-script, stood there with his little bug-like face screwed up in confusion, so I added, “Is there anything else?”

He said nothing, but lowered his flag, turned around slowly, and skulked off back to his own lines with the white cloth trailing behind him. There was something quite sad about the way he walked, and in hindsight that was probably an indication of what was to come. With that done and our fate sealed, I dipped back to the relative safety of the foxhole.

It was shortly after that when the Changelings brought what looked like every artillery piece they owned and pointed it directly at our position, and it was at that moment that I considered perhaps I had made a terrible mistake. There appeared to be thousands of them, arranged in a semi-circle down the slope at much closer range than before. Maybe it wasn’t too late to change my mind, I hoped, before they would unleash a hail of shot and steel to rip us all into shreds with. Yours Truly surrendering after that little stunt was hardly a good look, but that was before I was staring down the barrels of dozens of heavy guns; it was the sort of sight that truly made one reconsider one’s priorities in life, and mine had just been nudged even further into the realm of selfish self-preservation. I watched the crews unlimber the guns, unpack barrels of gunpowder and bags of roundshot and canister, and plot out firing trajectories by doing sums in the dusty ground. They were not far, and certainly at that range they could not fail to miss, and even if our little holes in the ground would protect us from the worst of the direct fire, they had only to fly overhead and drop grenades directly on top of us.

I was struck by a startling moment of clarity. It was stupid; I had been monumentally stupid, moreso than usual, and all for blind optimism and a witty quip that now gets recited to me ad nauseum by ponies who think they are being clever by repeating something I said decades ago. Well, I had changed my mind, and at that moment I ceased to care what Frostbite, Cannon Fodder, Square Basher, or any other pony on Faust’s green Equus would think of me. If they all wanted to lose their lives in a ludicrous Colts’ Own adventure then that was their choice, so be it, but at least I would be alive to worry about my sunken reputation later. Gripped by a manic sort of fear, I reared up on my hindlegs, planted my forelegs over the edge of the foxhole, and hoisted myself up in a most undignified manner that had me kicking my rear hooves uselessly as I climbed over the lip. I rolled out into No Mare’s Land with rather less dignity than my more usual escapes out of bedroom windows, saw the drones gaping in surprise at me, and I then picked myself up and trotted off merrily in their direction.

Any positive feeling at having finally escaped this nightmare was then utterly crushed when I heard a great cry rise up from behind me -- voices ragged by dehydration, hunger, and raw desperation, but still with enough life in them to strike fear into my heart, bellowed out in a single, wordless scream of rage. I dared to look over my shoulder to see what remained of our company, perhaps three dozen ponies, likewise struggling out of their trenches and foxholes. They each brandished muskets, bayonets, and even mess tins.

“Follow the Commissar!” roared Captain Frostbite, rearing up on his hindlegs and pointing in the general direction of the enemy. “Follow Prince Blueblood to death or glory!”

This was the precise opposite of what I had intended, and I wasn’t all that keen on death or glory either. I’ll never know why ponies seem to think those are the only two options in life. Our ragged little band of starved, crazed ponies in bedraggled uniform and matted fur galloped past me in a full charge, though others, driven mad by the ordeal, limped along behind. Cannon Fodder, whose standard of cleanliness and hygiene inexplicably remained unchanged throughout our messy ordeal, appeared by my side and took it upon himself to urge me forwards to keep up with the assault I had started entirely by accident.

“Your sword, sir!” he shouted.

I should have left the damned thing behind, thought I, but now that this final moment of insanity had started I might as well be seen to take part in it. Reluctantly, I drew my sabre with a steely rasp that briefly drowned out the maddened, hoarse cries of my comrades, and quickened my pace, though making sure that I would still linger at the back of the formation.

The Changelings seemed to be too shocked to do anything; not one cannon fired, even though a well-placed blast of canister shot would have ripped what little remained of our exposed company into bloody shreds. Instead, apparently terrified by the bizarre sight, the crews simply turned and fled, abandoning their guns -- it was not as though any ponies were in a particularly fit state to use them. A triumphant cry rose up from the disorganised mob that our once-disciplined ranks had become, though that was invariably short-lived when the enemy’s infantry, having swiftly recovered from the shock of watching us doing something that defied all logic, military or otherwise, turned back to finish us off.

The mad brawl that ensued resembled more of a brutal pub fight than a battle, and I dare say that our showing was pretty dire. The drones closed in around our lacklustre charge just as its energy petered out, and with hooves and fangs took it upon themselves to dismantle what was left of our formation. Yet though our ponies fought with the bestial fury of those who have already thought themselves doomed and dead, it was not enough against the ruthless fanaticism of the enemy. I watched the comrades I had shared that hill with stomped, stabbed, gutted, and slaughtered, and though they continued to give a good account of themselves in taking as many drones with them as they could with bayonet and sword, it became readily apparent that this madness had to end.

I threw my sword down, unbloodied in this last charge, at the hooves of the drones advancing upon me. “That’s enough!” I cried out desperately. “We give up! Please, we give up!”

The slaughter ceased, and there were perhaps fifteen of the original one hundred ponies left standing, who, having spent the last of their energy and finally seeing sense, followed my example and laid down their weapons on the dusty ground and stepped back with both relief and grief etched upon their faces. Of course, there was no guarantee that the Changelings would respect the so-called rules of war, especially after we had been a damned thorn in their side for nearly an entire week, but I reasoned that they had nothing to gain from abusing or murdering us when it had become abundently clear that they had at long last won. I imagine that it must have been quite the novel experience for them.

For a while it seemed that the drones had no idea of what to do with us, and stood back at a respectable distance brandishing bayonets and their own hooves transformed into blades, glowering and hissing. Then one drone, perhaps an NCO or whatever version they have, stepped forwards to pick up my sword off the ground.

“It’s him,” said one of their number, his thin, reedy voice quivering with awe. “It’s the Black Prince!”

“We got him!” cried another. “They’ll have to give us rations tonight!”

“I want his hat!” One, apparently bolder than the rest, darted forwards and snatched the offending article off the top of my head. As far as I was concerned he was welcome to the hateful thing, and he wore it a damned sight better than I did.

That, unfortunately, only encouraged the others, and soon I was mobbed by drones who all wanted a souvenir from Yours Truly: the medals pinned to my chest, the brass buttons on my coat, and even going through my pockets to take my wallet and my new hipflask, which was sadly empty. Their cold, clammy hooves grabbed the desired items and tore them free, leaving holes in my uniform where the tarnished buttons and medals used to be and ripping the stitching on my pockets. They were none too gentle about it either, and I was being pushed, shoved, and jostled about as the drones each demanded a piece of the Black Prince to take home with them. Cannon Fodder shouted his protest and tried to push them away from me, but my valiant aide was soon overwhelmed. I was powerless to do anything about it, except throw up my forehooves and try to ward off the more aggressive of the trophy-hunters. One of them found Slab, and apparently disappointed at receiving a small sheet of slate where his fellows had taken something shiny and valuable, dropped him carelessly on the ground and tried again in another pocket. Arguments soon broke out over the more prized items, like the Order of the Crescent Moon and the Flash Magnus Star that had adorned my breast, and what should have been a dignified surrender was rapidly turning into a ridiculous, foalish squabble. Another drone, however, found the small Amythest Star medal, adorned with my cousin Cadance’s profile, and when I saw her kind, friendly expression rendered in crystal gripped in the filthy hooves of a Changeling that snapped me out of my dumb stupor.

“You give that back!” I shouted suddenly, and grabbed the frame with my magic.

The drone snarled and hissed, showing her sharp fangs and forked tongue, and pulled harder at the little medal that suddenly meant so much to me. However, I was not about to let it go without a fight, and especially when I had an unspecified length of time in Changeling captivity to look forward to, that portrait miniature of one of the few ponies who would be genuinely upset at my capture might become my only source of comfort. Elsewhere, too, I became aware of some other altercation between the victorious drones and the defeated ponies involving personal belongings being absconded with, but I was much too tired, drained, and fixated on my own silly thing that I paid little attention to it. Really, in hindsight we should not have expected their sort to abide by our rules about looting even after Captain Lacewing’s unexpected display of chivalrous behaviour.

Just as it looked as though it might lead to further violence, the squabble halted. This drone raised her hoof as if to strike me so she could take the medal for herself, but as I began to recoil from the blow that was sure to come, she looked away, lowered her appendage, let go of my treasured item, and stepped back. A sudden change came over the Changelings that was as unsettling as it was abrupt. They became quite subdued and restrained in their manner now; the little fights over meagre possessions now ceased, and they all retreated a few steps to give us some space. I thought that perhaps there was something to the old hive mind theory of how Purestrains exerted control over their hordes, but when I saw said figure slip through the parting mob of drones and observed the peculiar look of reverence and devotion in the ugly, bug-like faces of the enemy I realised the truth of what Odonata had said about their blind, fanatical loyalty to their leaders.

“My soldiers, I am disappointed in you,” said the Purestrain as she emerged into my view. She was tall, as most of their lot were, towering over her smaller, likely malnourished subordinates, with a slim frame. Oddly for a Changeling she wore a uniform and it seemed to be modelled on that of an Equestrian field marshal - it consisted of a dark grey wool coat with a high collar and green piping, buttoned up with brass buttons, and with an assortment of peculiar medals on the right side of her chest. This uniform was rather lived-in, though clean and obviously well cared-for by a devoted valet.

“You are supposed to be professionals,” she continued, and her drones had the good sense to look suitably admonished. “I trained you as such, to be worthy of the noble cause of defending our hives from the invaders. These ponies have done nothing but fight with the dedication and honour that I expect from each of you; they are to be treated with the respect that they are due as gallant opponents on the field of war. Return their belongings.”

I was quite surprised to have my things returned to me in full, with the exception of my sword, and I very quickly stuffed them all back where they belonged in my torn pockets. Except for Slab, however, who remained on the ground where he had been tossed and forgotten about, so he had to be retrieved. The buttons and medals I had to hold onto, as affixing them back on my ruined uniform was impractical.

Having finished the sort of patronising lecture that would not have gone amiss from an older Royal Guard officer admonishing recruits in basic training, she turned to me and smiled with a stiff, polite bow. “Prince Blueblood, I am pleased to meet you. I am sorry that we cannot bring our Queen here at such short notice, but I hope that a Hive Marshal is of sufficient rank to accept your surrender. I am Chela.”

So this was the infamous Hive Marshal Chela, allegedly the bestest general of the entire conflict according to some (while I’m in not much of a position to comment, they still ultimately lost the war, so she couldn’t have been that brilliant). The overall impression, however, was not quite as fearsome as her reputation otherwise implied; if anything, the uniformed Purestrain standing before me seemed disarmingly ‘normal’, as far as their kind went, if a little too affected in the sort of polite, ladylike persona she was trying to present. What was lacking was the slavering fanaticism that bordered on mental illness that most of their kind I had met possessed, or Odonata’s cold, calculating, and domineering streak. I suppose if I had to be locked in a room and forced to make small talk with a Changeling, I would not have been as upset if said bug happened to be Chela.

I wasn’t much in the mood for conversation at the time, however, and speaking hurt my parched throat. All that I could do for the foreseeable was stand there mutely and stare.

“Where is the officer in command?” asked Chela, looking around. “I wish to congratulate him for his spirited and tenacious defence.”

“Dead.” Sergeant Major Square Basher pushed her way through the disorganised mob of surviving ponies, carrying what looked to me like a heap of armour on her broad back, but when she emerged out into the open I saw that it was indeed Captain Frostbite. I had lost sight of him when the charge devolved into a brawl; he was right behind me, I was certain, but what happened to him exactly when the enemy closed in around us I hadn’t a clue. The look on her face said it all, however, as guilt was etched upon every weary line that creased it -- she was supposed to have looked after the young officer, as she had said in my tent in what felt like half an eternity ago, but had failed for the second time.

“Ah.” Chela bowed her head and shook it sadly. “A noble sacrifice for his country. We shall bury him with all due military honours.”

It was quite the shock, I’ll tell you that much, and I was quite surprised at how much it affected me. I had barely had the time to know the stallion, and now I never will. Though he had been rather flakey at the start, he was shaping up to be a solid and dependable officer; I doubt few others would have motivated their ponies to hold on in these appalling conditions for as long as we had. Once again, I had survived where perhaps a more deserving pony had not, but should have. There was nothing that I could say or do, except try to keep the raging emotions within me contained beneath a veneer of aristocratic implacability -- anger, hate, self-loathing, despair, trepidation, and relief all fought with one another in a no-holds-barred hoof-fight in my mind for dominance, and it was all that I could do to keep myself from breaking down and sobbing. At least, for now, it was over, and an uncertain future lay before me like the vast desert of the Badlands stretching into infinity.

“You’ll all be well taken care of,” said Hive Marshal Chela, and though I suspected the usual sort of ulterior motive behind that I could detect nothing but sincerity in her voice. “And Prince Blueblood, you must join me for dinner tonight. I’ll have my adjutant provide you with the necessary…”

“Chela!” a loud, gruff voice called out from behind her.

Her expression, which had been quite pleasant considering the circumstances, screwed up into a distinct scowl more befitting a Purestrain as another Changeling emerged from the horde surrounding us. This specimen of their peculiar race was closer to what I had come to expect from Purestrains, in that he, for I assumed the creature to be one, appeared to be barely capable of sapient thought. He wore no uniform, though his rank was made perfectly clear by his imposing size, towering over Yours Truly by at least a head, and his brutish appearance and manners. Curiously, I could make out what appeared to be some sort of brand applied to the chitin on his upper left chest, which crudely resembled the green flame symbol I had seen elsewhere in their iconography, topped with a three-pronged crown. There was a profoundly irritated look on his malformed face, but it could just as easily have been his usual expression at rest. In spite of myself, I took an involuntary step backwards closer to Square Basher and Cannon Fodder.

“Scarabaeus,” said Chela, addressing the newcomer. Then, apparently having already tired of conversing with the thuggish Purestrain, turned her attention back to me, “Prince Blueblood, this is Scarabaeus, the Queen’s Attendant assigned to watch over me. I suppose they’re similar to your commissars, only-”

This ‘Queen’s Attendant’, as Chela described him, hissed at her in a disgusting, bestial fashion, rudely interrupting the Hive Marshal, who sniffed haughtily but otherwise kept quiet. He jabbed an enormous, ungainly lump of a forehoof directly at me, as though I had been directly responsible for whatever grief he had been put through, and snarled, “Is this what held up your war-swarm for a week?”

Although I felt dead on my hooves, I could not help but quip, “Not bad; we were only ordered to do it for two days.”

***

[As Prince Blueblood’s very personal account leaves a great deal of other detail lacking, it is necessary to return to Paperweight’s ‘A Concise History of the Changeling Wars’ to place his testimony in proper context. At the time he would not have had a clear understanding of how the battle was progressing, and, as ever, is content to describe things from his own narrow perspective. The context around the decisions made by Market Garden and Hardscrabble is sorely missed in this manuscript, but I believe it is necessary for understanding the events that led to his last stand on Hill 70.]

The opening stages of the Battle of Natalensis Hive appeared to have gone badly for the Equestrians. Having taken the bait, I Corps advanced on the high ground to the north east of the city, whereupon Equestrian airborne troops were driven from the skies by Hive Marshal Chela’s innovative swarm tactics. The 3rd, 7th, and 12th Divisions of I Corps had been badly mauled by Chela’s war-swarm and retreated in disorder through a Changeling gauntlet. The Guards Division withstood the assault but had become almost completely surrounded by the swarm. The narrow route of escape back down the slope must have looked tempting to the beleaguered officers on the hills, however, it was then that Market Garden had made the controversial decision to forbid Major-General Garnet from withdrawing his division from the exposed high ground.

A famous anecdote best illustrates Market Garden’s methodical and unflinching approach to encountering setbacks in battle. Field Marshal Hardscrabble was observing from General Market Garden’s headquarters as this took place, where he remarked, “Well, it would appear that a general retreat might be in order now.” Market Garden was seen to stare up at the Guards Division on the hill for a few moments, surrounded on three sides and in the air by the swarm, and replied, “Retreat, sir? But Chela has just blundered! I have her right where I want her!” Hardscrabble was seen to smile and nod, and the two went into the tent to plan the counter-attack.

Hive Marshal Chela had clearly planned for another lightning assault that would sweep away the Equestrian forces, as she had done many times on the Eastern Theatre of the war. Market Garden’s decision, however, had turned what might have been a swift victory for the Changelings into a gruelling battle of attrition that the latter could not sustain. The Guards Division had secured a defensible high ground, albeit at the cost of aerial superiority, and the remainder of I Corps had regrouped for a counter-attack. Chela had to choose between yielding the high ground overlooking Natalensis Hive to Market Garden, or trying to push the Equestrians back by engaging in the sort of pitched battle that the Changelings had tried to avoid for the entire war. In the end the choice was made for Chela, when Chrysalis forbade her from retreating. The two armies were now fully committed to a brutal, week-long, back-and-forth slog over the high ground.

Casualties were high on both sides. In what was referred to by Chela as ‘the Wasps’ Nest’, the Guards Division had been split into a series of pockets atop the high ground, where they dug in and repulsed seemingly endless attacks by the Changelings. Attempts to reduce these pockets were stymied by repeated counter-attacks by the rest of I Corps, which allowed most of the isolated units to break out and regroup into a more cohesive defensive line on the hills.

The 3rd Company of the Night Guards on Hill 70 could not, as the Changelings devoted a disproportionate amount of forces to trying to eliminate that pocket. The one hundred ponies occupied a key position that would have allowed the enemy to outflank the bulk of the Guards Division, and would subject them to withering fire. Furthermore, as the tide turned against the Changelings, the capture of Commissar Prince Blueblood seemed a promising consolation prize. The company held out for six days against overwhelming odds, before the remainder finally surrendered.

On the seventh day, Hive Marshal Chela ordered a withdrawal, despite demands from Queen Chrysalis that Natalensis Hive must be held at all costs. Her tactical brilliance in the opening of the battle had failed against Market Garden’s stubborn determination, and rumours circulated that the invincible Hive Marshal had lost her touch. Even though she had captured the vital position of Hill 70, the strength of her war-swarms were all but spent in the meal-grinder and retreat was the only option. General Market Garden had won another costly victory, which allowed her to secure Natalensis Hive in the following days with fresh troops from VII Corps.

However, the immediate public reaction to the battle was overwhelmingly negative, due to the high casualties and the capture of Prince Blueblood. Equestrian newspapers vilified both Market Garden and Hardscrabble for their performances in the battle. A false story, likely planted by Changeling infiltrators, circulated that Hardscrabble was drunk throughout. Market Garden was criticised for a lack of imagination and for failing to identify an obvious trap, and later for her failure to pursue Chela’s retreat south to defensible positions. In retrospect, it is clear that she had anticipated one of Chela’s tactical sleights of hoof and had planned accordingly. Instead of panicking and ordering a retreat as the enemy had expected, she turned their supposed advantage against them. Ordering the Guards Division to stand and fight despite being almost surrounded seems counter-intuitive, but her resolute will forced Chela to submit to a set piece battle and ultimately brought victory.

The Battle of Natalensis Hive marks another moment of escalation, and represents the start of a war of attrition that the Changelings could not possibly win in conventional terms. Field Marshal Hardscrabble would continue to push the Changeling war-swarms, in spite of losses, having correctly predicted that Equestria’s increasing superiority in ponypower and firepower, combined with a newfound willingness to use those advantages effectively, would overwhelm the Hives to the point of collapse and bring the swiftest possible conclusion to the war. With each hive city taken or cut off, the Changelings’ ability to sustain both their population and their war effort would diminish to the point where they would have to sue for peace. Queen Chrysalis’ refusal to allow her swarms to even consider strategic withdrawals only served to accelerate the deterioration of the entire Changeling war effort by bleeding drones and equipment at an unsustainable rate, while Equestria was better able to sustain and replace those losses materially, if not politically.

Queen Chrysalis must have been aware of the worsening situation, made all the more treacherous for her when Princess Celestia, in her capacity as Warmistress of Equestria, made it publicly known that she would only accept peace with the Changelings if Chrysalis was deposed. As a conventional victory over the Equestrians seemed less and less likely, she would turn to increasingly desperate plans to end the war in her favour, starting immediately with Operation: Sunburn.

Chapter 5

‘Queen Chrysalis wants him alive.’ That’s what Hive Marshal Chela had told Scarabaeus to stop him from cracking open my skull with his bare hooves and turning my jellied brains into a modern art painting; like most other ideological thugs, my fellow commissars amongst them, he was thoroughly and dangerously deficient in the humour department and tended to react to innocent little quips with threats of violence.

Nevertheless, I hoped that my safety would be guaranteed right up until the point where I would have to meet Queen Chrysalis for the third time. I could only imagine the sorts of horrific torture she would put me through for her own sadistic amusement. Still, that was in the future, and they would have to keep me alive and well until then. If I could stay on Chela’s good side by behaving like a trophy for her to trot out to impress her guests at dinner parties, or whatever it was that Changeling Purestrains got up to for fun, then with a bit of luck I could go the rest of the war without having to meet the dreaded Queen of the Changelings at all.

If her promise that I would be treated well was genuine, though I had no reason to trust their kind, then perhaps this was finally the break I had been looking for ever since Princess Luna had forced me into this now-ruined uniform -- to wait out the end of the war in the relative safety and comfort of a Changeling prisoner-of-war camp, having more than done my part for Princesses and Country, to be gratefully released by the victorious Equestrian Army just as this horrid conflict ends (and far too late to take part in any more fighting, to my insincere regret). The only potential hiccup would be having to maintain my reputation for derring-do with the occasional token escape attempt, but… well, I’ll get to that in the fullness.

For now, however, the remaining fifteen ponies left alive after that ordeal and I were escorted away. A few were incapable of walking and had to be carried by drones on stretchers, and as I never saw them again I have no way of knowing if they survived the Changelings’ version of battlefield medicine or not. Chela and Scarabaeus had gone off ahead, presumably to direct the rest of the battle now that they had finally taken Hill 70, and we were left in the care of an assortment of officers and drones who regarded us as though we were each liable to explode with the slightest provocation. They did not chain us up, as I had fully expected from their barbaric sort, though our weapons were collected and our pockets searched, rather more delicately this time, for what they considered to be ‘intelligence’. Well, there was precious little of that to be found both in our pockets and in our brains. Yours Truly, of course, being the only unicorn, had his horn fitted with an inhibitor ring, which was somewhat too small and itched abominably; such things seemed to only come in a single size, and their makers seemed unwilling to accommodate the well-endowed unicorn.

As for Captain Frostbite’s body, Square Basher looked reluctant to part with it, but offered no resistance as the drones lifted the still, lifeless corpse from her back and carried it away down the slope. Whether or not they would fulfil their promise of burying him with, as Chela had put it, ‘all due military honours’ or just what the Changelings’ definition of those words actually meant was entirely up in the air. I was struck, however, by the respect that the enemy we had learnt to hate and dismiss as mere savages afforded to the body of the officer commanding the unit that had been a nasty thorn in their side for nearly a week.

All that mattered to me now was that I was safe for the foreseeable future, and as soon as I had my fill of water and something more substantial to eat besides hardtack biscuits and weeds I could go about collecting the scattered remnants of my wits and formulating some sort of plan. We were herded down the slope towards the Changeling side of the lines, in the vague direction of Natalensis Hive, and were thus brought to one of their encampments about halfway down the slope.

There, I was surprised by how familiar the scene felt; it was a military camp very much like the others that I have seen and unfortunately lived in these past few years, with tents, stores, offices, bivouacs, canteens, and cooking fires, but that it was crawling with Changelings was somewhat unnerving. As we passed, they all immediately stopped whatever duties they were performing to watch us shamble on in, staring with those unnerving compound eyes of theirs, and I felt peculiarly self conscious about it. The camp even smelt similar, which, while not entirely identical to the combined body odour of hundreds of ponies sharing a cramped living space with minimal hygiene, was at least evocative enough of that all-too-familiar bouquet. In hindsight, I’m not sure what else I should have expected to have seen. After all, I hadn’t given it much thought at all, if any, about how their lot conducted themselves when they weren’t trying to turn my body into an equine pin-cushion, but I suppose looking back it should have been relatively obvious that they must invariably pass the time between battles and prepare for them in much the same way that we did. For example, the scene of a group of drones sitting around a campfire and playing some sort of strange game with peculiarly-shaped dice as a pot of something bubbled away over the campfire could have easily fitted into any encampment of ponies with only a change of species involved.

One other thing that struck me, as I watched this disturbingly familiar scene, was the number of wounded drones around. We passed what might have been some sort of medical tent, and outside we saw drones in varying states of consciousness, most listing in and out of it, arrayed out on the dusty ground around the tent. There must have been hundreds of them scattered about the place, and each bore some sort of injury, from cracked chitin that had been glued back together with some sort of organic paste, to missing limbs and eyes, while others were apparently beyond saving and were simply left to expire. I could see glimpses through the open tent flap and gaps between the cloth panels of figures moving back and forth, each wearing white smocks smothered in green ichor that was congealing into black slime, wielding what looked like implements belonging in a Griffons’ butcher shop. Throughout, I could hear the sound of cries of pain and bestial hissing emanating from this tent, and I imagined that their doctors either hadn’t heard of anaesthetic or simply didn’t bother. Outside one tent flap there was a small mound of severed hooves and legs, and every now and again one would be tossed through to join this slowly growing pile, which attracted all manner of flies and other vermin. If I had to say, all of this implied that, on the face of it, the Changelings were not doing terribly well in this battle.

As we were ushered past them, I overheard whispered snippets of conversations from the drones, both wounded and healthy. Most commented on ‘The Black Prince’, of course, in tones of quiet awe and a sort of grudging respect for a pony whom they believed to be a gallant if misguided hero. Other than that, I overheard a brief portion of a rather heated conversation between two drones on sentry duty outside an ammunition store.

“I heard we’re retreating tomorrow,” said one.

“That’s stupid,” said the other. “You’re stupid. We just took Hill 70 and we’ve captured the Black Prince!”

“But the Tin Cans aren’t running away like Chela said they would. We took Hill 70 but we lost three others yesterday. They’re just relentless, and-”

“Will you shut up before the Attendant hears and we both get in trouble?”

They left us in a large tent, which provided enough shade from the midday sun as to be almost comfortable. I assumed that they had erected it for the express purpose of holding prisoners, though judging by the wide open space and lack of other ponies within they appeared to have been terribly optimistic about how many they were going to capture. Two troughs were along one side of the interior, one filled with dry hay and the other with water, but other than that it was almost completely bare. There was also a large bucket filled with water with a few damp towels that were probably intended for the purposes of personal ablutions, which I gratefully took advantage of to wipe some of the week’s worth of muck, grime, dust, blood, and sweat that had accumulated on my face. The result meant that the towel, which was already little more than a rag, was rendered unusable without a thorough cleaning.

With little else to do, I threw myself on the ground and rested for what felt like the first time in an eternity. I could not completely relax, of course, as the quiet chatter of Changelings and Purestrains just outside the tent flap, just hushed enough for me to pick up some ominous-sounding terms like ‘processing’, ‘indoctrination’, and ‘work’, but little else, was more than sufficient material with which my overactive imagination could conjure up images of the sorts of appalling torture camps our propaganda had hinted at. However, though I still felt sick, tired, hungry, thirsty, and more than a little dizzy, I could at least take a great deal of comfort in the fact that, despite everything, I had survived yet again. Faust knows how I managed it this time, but I did, and as I felt the dusty, lumpy earth against my skin I could at least take some solace in that. The trick, however, was doing it again and again.

[At this point in his career, Blueblood’s knack for survival was already taking on mythical tones. I had even overheard my own staff whispering that he might have been an immortal alicorn who had lost his wings. Such rumours proved useful for the purposes of propaganda, and so were hardly discouraged, though he privately resented them.]

The other surviving ponies took my lead and likewise rested on the floor. Another, a little more able-bodied than the others, went about passing around the hay and water like the splendid little chap he was. Right then and there, after a week of oat rations and biscuits, I’d have said that this meagre little meal could have given the likes of Gustave le Grand a run for his money. However, Sergeant Major Square Basher would not, could not, perhaps, relax; she paced around the vicinity of the tent flap, forwards and backwards, pausing occasionally to peek through it and grumble something under her breath. I ignored her, but clearly her constant moving about, even after a week of privation and brutal fighting, began to irritate at least one of the troopers.

“For Luna’s sake, Sarge!” he snapped. Square Basher turned on him with a look that would have reduced Iron Will into quivering jelly, but this soldier, having survived Hill 70, clearly feared nothing. “Will you stand easy, sir?”

The two glowered at one another, almost daring the other to be the first to strike. I lifted my head, wondering if I had survived the battle only to be beaten to death in a stupid brawl between squabbling soldiers. However, Square Basher chose to ignore the impertinent soldier and continued to peer out through the gap in the tent flap.

“Two guards,” she said quietly, “armed with spears, and the camp is crawling with more bugs. But I reckon we can take these two out, grab their weapons, and then make a run for it into the desert.”

The silence that followed revealed everypony’s thoughts on that suicidal plan more than mere words could, but I had to nip this sort of talk in the bud early before ponies whose common sense had been beaten down by desperation started to be swayed by it. “Assuming,” I said, choosing to be diplomatic in my response given the circumstances, “that we eleven ponies prevail against an entire camp of Changelings and at least some of us make it out into the desert, like you said, then what? What are we to do next?”

Square Basher turned her death glare towards me, but if she thought she could intimidate an officer, a commissar, and a prince of the realm who had just survived Tartarus with the same parlour trick that terrified common soldiery into submission then she had another thing coming. “We make our way back to Equestrian lines.”

“Just like that,” I said flatly. “Just walk back, through the entire Changeling army, to our own lines, which we don’t even know are still there, seeing as we have no idea as to the course of the battle.”

“Then we join up with the partisans and continue the fight!” Square Basher was raising her voice now, and I could hear that the murmurs of small talk from the Changeling guards had ceased. “We have to do something! We can’t just give up!”

I had to put an end to this sort of talk, lest some of the other soldiers start getting swept up in this absurd fantasy, so I stood up and marched on over to her. Well, it was more of a stumble than a march, really, but what it lacked in gravitas I made up for in drama. I pulled her by the shoulder to the corner of the tent, and it was to my mild surprise that she actually allowed me to do that.

“You stand down,” I said, sotto voce, but only just loud enough for a few of the more attentive soldiers to overhear if they were so inclined. “These ponies have all done their duty and more; you should be proud of them, instead of demanding the impossible. It’s over.”

Square Basher snorted like a minotaur, and stared at me with a grim, haunted expression. There was a certain sense of despair in her dark, smouldering eyes, as one who has crossed past that threshold where life, either one’s own or anypony else’s, ceases to have meaning or worth, but only the last gasp of tenacious defiance in the face of the inevitable pushes one on. Well, it had to be crushed before it could ruin the peaceful, albeit unpleasant, remainder of a war in a prison camp that I was looking forward to.

“How can you say it’s over?” she said, with her voice no longer raised. “Blueblood, after everything we’ve been through!”

“Sir,” I insisted. “Address me correctly.”

She had the good sense to look suitably admonished and embarrassed, and bowed her head. “Sorry, sir.”

“That’s better.”

I swung my hoof in the direction of the surviving ponies, less than a dozen of them in the tent. Some looked back attentively, but others stared vacantly into space or had finally fallen asleep for what must have been the first time in days; each bore the scars of what they had been through, both physical and emotional, plainly on their bodies and in their haunted, gaunt expressions. One had been bandaged up in whatever rags we could find, after our scant medical supplies ran out after a few days, and her blood had dried and crusted over them. Others had half-healed wounds, which still occasionally wept blood and pus into their matted, sweat-soaked fur. Another gazed into the blank, off-white wall of the tent unblinkingly, gently rocking back and forth with his forelegs clasped around his hindlegs.

“Look at them,” I said softly, as though to a foal. “Are any of these ponies fit to carry on the fight now? They’ve done enough, let them rest.”

Square Basher followed the direction of my hoof and looked over at her soldiers, the ones she supposedly shepherded first for Captain Redcoat and then Captain Frostbite, both now dead. Her expression was tense, but still rather blank, then she breathed a heavy sigh. I knew her to be roughly of middle age, and for the first time she looked it. The rigid, military posture that she always held, which also accentuated her imposing stature and build, slackened into a defeated slouch that made her look like a mere shadow of the strong, imposing, disciplined mare that I had known. It was rather sad to see, as indeed was the sight of the ponies huddled in the tent in general, but I suppose it had to be done, just as much for her benefit as for my own.

“Very well, sir,” she said finally, and staggered away from the tent flap like a pony being led to the gallows. I could not see clearly if tears had formed in her eyes, but the way she snapped her head away from me as though to hide them certainly implied it. Finally, her military bluster and bravado had cracked and cold, hard reality set in.

Really, I just wanted her to stop speaking, but showing concern for the ponies ostensibly under my command, now that I was the most senior officer left alive and everypony and the Changelings seemed to naturally think I ought to be in charge for some reason, would at least put me in good stead not only with them, should they start getting ideas about daring escapes and dragging me along with them, but also Chela. The Hive Marshal seemed to be imitating the old Equestrian ideal of being both an officer and a lady, acting with great chivalry and courtesy even to the hated enemy, and Yours Truly maintaining the appropriate level of attentiveness to the well-being of one’s own cannon fodder, including the Cannon Fodder, who was busy attacking the hay provided with his usual disregard for manners and the appetites of his fellow diners, would only elevate her opinion of me. For the time being, until I was safely inside a prison camp, my best bet to ensure that said camp was at least survivable, if not comfortable, was to play into that odd perception of me.

Square Basher sulked in the corner; everypony else either paced about like, well, caged animals, or curled up on the ground; and I indulged in what was the first proper meal I had in nearly a week by continuing to gorge on hay. However, Chela had invited me for ‘dinner’ later, whatever that meant to a Changeling Purestrain, so perhaps I ought to have paced myself, but this stale, flavourless hay did begin to help in some way to ease the pain and emptiness in my stomach.

“What’s going to happen to us, sir?” asked one of the other soldiers, a chap with a foreleg in a sling but who had insisted on walking.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m a bit scared myself, but I’ll do my best to make sure you’re all looked after.”

Sometimes, a little emotional honesty from an officer goes a long way to helping the common soldiery; as much as they need to believe that we are infallible so that they trust us to bring them out of this alive and well, it pays to remind them that, in spite of all outward appearances, we are still the same species. Not too much, of course, as that risks utterly destroying one’s credibility in their eyes. None of them needed to know that this stiff-upper-lip facade was all that was stopping me from simply going to pieces. Was I to rot away in the sort of appalling prison camp as I had heard from other ponies? Perhaps I was to be paraded around like a trophy, or, as was most likely, dragged to the hooves of Queen Chrysalis for a prolonged torture and execution. It didn’t bear thinking about, and getting worked up about it wasn’t going to change things anyway. So, as I had done for the past two years of war, it was merely a matter of getting through one day at a time, over and over, until it was finished.

“That Chela said she’s having you for dinner, sir,” said another.

“Invited me for dinner,” I said, though the thought that I might just be drained dry of love continued to unsettle me.

After some length of time, I don’t know how long, as my watch had stopped days ago and I never bothered to wind it again, a drone came to fetch me. He escorted me out of the tent, and I made a quiet farewell to my fellow survivors as though some terrible fate awaited me beyond. Back outside, I could see that Celestia’s sun was very much in a different position from when we had been discarded in the tent, almost approaching the horizon. It certainly had not felt as though I had been in there all day, but after that week on the hill perhaps my perception of the linear passage of time had been all bent out of shape somewhat.

I was led to another, smaller tent and was informed by the Changeling waiting there that I was to ‘get dressed for dinner’. That was rather confusing at first, but it became readily apparent when I was brought inside and saw the double-breasted ivory-coloured dinner jacket with a shawl lapel, a white linen pocket square, soft marcella front evening shirt with gold and mother-of-pearl studs, and a blue velvet bow tie hanging up on hangers from a clothing rack. Quite where they got these exquisite clothes from and just why the enemy had brought them to an active warzone ostensibly just for me to wear had eluded me, but as I’d been living in the same filthy, sweat-soaked uniform for a week without changing, I was quite ready to dismiss any questions and misapprehension for this rare opportunity to return to a more civilised life. If only for a short while, at least, as I feared that once I’d left the company of the Hive Marshal, assuming I survived that encounter, my immediate future would hold little opportunity for dressing for dinner.

There was also a full-length mirror standing next to the clothes rack, and I was shocked at the sight of the pony staring back at me. Over the course of the past week I hadn’t had the chance to see my own reflection, and though I knew that my physical state had deteriorated somewhat, I could not have anticipated that it would have declined so far. My fur had become stained, patchy, and dull; my frame had lost some of the softness that came with a lifetime of indulgence and not enough exercise; my mane was a greasy, slimy mess; my face became afflicted with a patchy, week-old beard; and my eyes stared back from sunken, dark hollow sockets. In short, I looked just about as bad as I felt.

Mercifully, there was a large metal tub filled with steaming hot water, practically overflowing with soap suds that filled the room with the sweet, heady scent of soap. I eagerly removed my hat and unpeeled myself from my coat, tossed them carelessly on the ground, and slipped into the hot bath with all the grace of a drunk elephant jumping into a pond. Much of the water spilled out over the sides of the crude tub, and it wasn’t terribly comfortable to lie in and relax as its sides were unfortunately straight and perpendicular, but it was a bath, and the first I’d had since my disastrous stint as the military governor of Virion Hive at that. The warmth of the water and the scent of the soap had an almost intoxicating effect, akin to a glass or two of invigorating champagne; I could feel it metaphorically cleanse my spirit of the stains of war and its accompanying misery as readily as it washed my coat of muck and grime.

When I reluctantly climbed out of the bath after a good, long soak, as the temperature of the water had dropped from just pleasantly hot to uncomfortably lukewarm, I’d left behind enough dust, muck, and Faust knows what else accumulated grime to turn the water a sort of murky dark brown colour. I towelled myself off and looked around for some shaving implements to rid myself of this itchy, patchy beard. Some ponies simply don’t have faces for facial hair, and numerous adolescent attempts to follow the trends for moustaches, side burns, muttonchops, and so on that come about in Canterlot every few months proved that I was much better off clean-shaven. However, for reasons that should have been very obvious, the Changelings did not see fit to provide me with a sharp razor and I was not about to trust a drone anywhere near my face with one, so I would have to put up with what looked like small, localised outbreaks of yellow mould over my lower face.

Now that I was about as clean as I was ever going to get with what the Changelings had provided me with, I towelled myself dry and set about getting dressed, and I found that putting on shirt studs and tying a bow tie was extremely difficult with only one’s own hooves to do it. Quite how common earth ponies and pegasi managed to dress themselves without the aid of servants was beyond me, but after a great deal of trial and error I managed to make myself look at least presentable, if not dapper. I suppose using my hooves instead of magic added a certain sense of sprezzatura in the imperfect, lopsided bow tie knot that suited me quite well.

I still looked dreadful; like a homeless pony who had been put through a very rudimentary grooming regimen and then forced into a tuxedo for the amusement of bored, young aristocrats, and after the week on the hill that comparison felt particularly apt. Nevertheless, my valet, Drape Cut, had told me that the assumption of semi-formal evening dress has a particularly stimulating effect on one’s own morale, and the sight of myself, only moderately cleaner than before and still sporting that damned patchy beard, dressed as though I was about to attend the Canterlot Garden Party did at least help lift my flagging spirits by just enough to make the prospect of a ‘dinner’ with a Changeling Purestrain seem survivable. I was rather struck by how well the dinner jacket fitted me, and wondered perhaps if one of the many tailors on Saddle Row I had commissioned over the years had been infiltrated by Changelings. That, I thought, would also explain why some of them had become quite stingy with prices recently. Nevertheless, for the first time that week I felt like myself again, or as close to my old self as I possibly could.

Having completed my toilet in the tent [He means this in the archaic sense of washing and grooming himself, or I certainly hope that he does], I slipped out through the flap to find an escort of two Changelings, both of whom looking like they’d much rather be doing anything else besides looking after me, waiting with impatience. I don’t know how long I had taken to get dressed in the tent, but I probably spent a little longer than strictly necessary trying to perfect the fold on my pocket square so that it looked as though I had simply stuffed it in my breast pocket. Certainly, the look of ponies bored and annoyed but doing their very best to hide it was one that I had seen often from hoof-servants, carriage drivers, and relatives just as I emerged from my wardrobe was plain on these two.

They led me away, past throngs of curious Changelings gawking at me, and towards a great tent. Along the way, I found a rather pretty little flower blooming amidst the detritus of the camp. It was small and with white petals, so I plucked it with great difficulty using my hooves and slipped it into the lapel buttonhole for a boutonniere, much to the continued irritation of my escorts. The camp itself, as I got to see more of it, still seemed disturbingly similar to any Equestrian equivalent, which made the differences seem all the stranger. There were a few domed structures made out of chrysalite, which glistened with an unsettlingly organic sheen in the afternoon sun, whose purposes I could only guess at. I caught glimpses of drones entering into them via holes that opened up in the sides and then closed behind them with no apparent indication that there might be a door there, and what went on within I could only guess at.

As we approached the tent I started to hear classical music played on a scratchy old gramophone; one of Beethoofen’s melodramatic symphonies, if I was not mistaken. I still had no idea what to expect from this encounter, so the presence of Horsetrian classical music was terribly perplexing, though in hindsight not surprising. My guards lifted the tent flap and beckoned me in with a series of jabbing hoof gestures and hissing, and inside I could see Hive Marshal Chela seated at a large dining table that had been set out for two diners. Elsewhere in the tent I could see that some small effort had been made by the ‘hosts’ to make it look welcoming, with the decrepit gramophone spinning away in the corner and an assortment of desert flowering plants, most of them already close to death, placed on the centre of the table. Somehow, rather like those creepy porcelain dolls that certain elderly relatives of mine liked to collect, the attempt at creating a welcoming scene that just missed its mark only made it more unsettling, as though it would all explode into bloody violence without warning.

“Prince Blueblood!” Chela rose from her seat, as manners dictated. I saw that her uniform was immaculate, with the grey-green cloth freshly pressed and the brass buttons and medals shined and polished to within an inch of their short lives. “Come in! Please, take a seat.”

I muttered my quiet, awkward thanks, being more than a little confused by the display, and stumbled inside and took my seat on the opposite end of the table. There was a space for a plate, framed by a stained old set of knives, forks, and spoons arranged in what I might call an unconventional setting. I still did not quite understand the purpose of this, but if I had to guess then I assumed that Chela, for whatever reason, was trying to impress me.

“I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this,” Chela said as she re-took her seat. I felt safer with the heavy wooden table separating us, but only marginally so; for all of her pretensions at being civilised and Equestrian, she was still a Purestrain and therefore, in my experience, very capable of acts of great cruelty and violence at the drop of a peaked cap. She waved her hoof from the table with its modest setting to the gramophone warbling away in the corner, and smiled with fangs showing. “You see, Prince Blueblood, we are not all monsters.”

That remained to be seen, thought I, but I kept that to myself, for it took a damned sight more than a dining table and recorded chamber music to count as civilised. Not kidnapping ponies to harvest them for love would have been a good place to start, perhaps. I was not much in the mood for conversation, and despite her attempts, Chela was not exactly a sparkling conversationalist; there was a certain forced quality to her whole manner, but I can’t entirely discount the thought that it might actually be genuine and had more to do with my perception of her as, well, a ‘monster’, as she had put it. Nevertheless, I could only respond with a polite smile and a nod.

With a clop of her hooves on the table, Chela summoned Changeling wait staff from beyond the tent flap. When I say ‘wait staff’, I mean two drones clad in clumsy approximations of formal evening dress and each bearing a dish. One had a dull emerald-green crystal that was roughly the size of my hoof, which was placed before the Hive Marshal, while the other, piled high with what looked like grass clippings, was apparently mine. When it was positioned before me, I saw that it was indeed grass clippings, likely ‘harvested’ from the patch of dried-up weeds just outside the tent. There was no wine served, I noted with some disappointment, but on reflection I think now that it might have been a mercy, as I shudder to think of what passes for wine in the Hives.

“We must do this properly next time,” said Chela, apparently noticing the expression I’d pulled when I was presented with grass clippings for dinner. “When this war is over, of course, we can dine in Canterlot.”

“I’m not sure any of my clubs would allow Changelings inside,” I said glibly; some of the more traditionally-minded ones had only recently allowed earth ponies to join after endless complaints, and I dreaded to imagine Chela or indeed any other Purestrain seated in the prestigious Imperial Club’s dining room.

“Unless they do not know that I am a Changeling.” Chela grinned, and picked up the crystal from her plate. I was quite curious as to what she was going to do with it, as I doubted their kind consumed gems in the same manner as dragons. “I can be whomever I wish. And besides, once we win this war and the green flame flag flies from Canterlot Castle, things may change there.”

“Quite,” I said, nudging the pile of grass clippings around with the fork. The thought of my beloved city under the oppressive hooves of Queen Chrysalis didn’t bear thinking about; there was little room in her new order for the refined frivolities provided by prestigious clubs. “Do you really think you’ll win?”

Chela laughed, and it was a sharp, refined sort of titter that just had to be affected. “What an odd thing for one soldier to ask another,” she said. “Of course we will win! But I dare say that if I asked you that same question you would respond in exactly the same manner. No soldier goes to war anticipating that they will lose.”

In response, I could only mumble some sort of agreement, before nibbling on a few strands of the grass clippings. They were dry and tasteless, but still an improvement on the hardtack biscuits.

“I spent many happy years in Canterlot before the war,” she continued, as she fiddled around with the peculiar crystal in her magic aura. “Would you believe that I used to be a farrier there? My shop was close to the Royal Academy, next to that statue of the Iron Duke of Trottingham gazing sternly in the direction of Griffonstone, so I served many old Royal Guard officers. I don’t believe that I ever shod your hooves, sir. Not that you or anypony else would recognise me now, of course. I picked up quite a lot from listening to those old officers talking; they tell their farriers things they would never tell their wives, or mistresses for that matter.”

“Yes, I remember seeing your shop now,” I said, lying as I’d never paid the little shops around that damned statue much attention, but it made Chela smile and I thought that keeping her happy by playing the role of the attentive and appreciative guest would only increase my chances of preferential treatment. “I shall be more careful with what I say around farriers in future.”

“I was only interested in listening to military matters,” said Chela. I watched her tap on the crystal with her hoof a few times, each with a sharp, chiming sound like a tuning fork being struck with a hammer, until it cracked. A pale green miasma, one that reminded me of that abominable poison gas they used, wafted out of the cracks like vapour. She opened her maw, revealing rows of sharp fangs and a slithering forked tongue, reminding me that behind her attempts at appearing civilised she remained the enemy, and sucked in this vapour as though inhaling smoke from a hookah.

“Crystalised love,” she explained, apparently seeing my quizzical expression at what passed for table manners amongst their kind. “In the past, our war-swarms would bring ponies with them to feed on while out on campaign, but as the scale of our conquests over the Badlands pony tribes grew, bringing hundreds of livestock with us and guarding them simply became impractical. Queen Chrysalis invented a way to harvest love and transform it into easily-transportable crystals. Though on the Eastern Front I took enough ponies prisoner that feeding the war-swarm as it advanced was no longer an issue. The taste, however, leaves much to be desired.”

[The story of Queen Chrysalis personally inventing crystalised love is pure propaganda. The origins of the practice have been lost, likely purged from archives, but it is generally believed that Changelings based this on ancient experiments performed by the mages of the Old Crystal Empire.]

“And is that what I am to you?” I asked pointedly, and poked at the plate of grass clippings before me to emphasise my next point. “I’m to be livestock?”

“Hives, no!” Chela sounded almost offended at that. “You are a prince and I will make sure that you continue to be treated as one.” She placed the crystal, which had lost some of its brilliant green lustre, down on the plate and leaned over the table, resting her large hooves on it. “I have a colleague, Dorylus, who has some new and very interesting ideas about how we look after the ponies in our care. He will see to it that you and your ponies are treated well. In time, you’ll learn to willingly donate your love.”

What the Changelings considered to be ‘treated well’ remained to be seen, and from what I had witnessed of the poor, unfortunate wretches who had suffered under their rule in Virion Hive and how Odonata insisted that the slaves were looked after, my fears were not totally eased. At least, however, they would keep me alive until this blasted war ended, and I was quite willing to endure whatever hardship they could throw at me so long as I came out in one piece -- even the worst ideas my imagination could conjure of a prison camp seemed like a holiday compared to the week spent on Hill 70.

In truth, as this peculiar evening wore on, the subtle sense of unease, divorced from my more obvious anxieties about the uncertain future that lay before me, began to weigh more heavily upon me. This veneer of civilised behaviour, crudely painted over and already peeling away, could not even begin to mask the brutality of the regime that I would be entrusting with my immediate well-being, given what I had already seen of it. Despite my misgivings about the conduct of this conflict from our side, the too recent memory of those haunted, barely-equine creatures who had suffered under Changeling rule left no doubt in my mind that our cause was the just one.

As for Chela herself, much has already been written of her alleged ‘chivalry’, both from fellow ponies who had developed a peculiar sort of respect for her and from more modern Changelings who are still rather embarrassed about their dark past and cling to anything that might suggest that they weren’t all bad. All that I can say is that while her affable nature seemed to be genuine, and she at least appeared to be concerned for my continued safety, she still embraced a cause that called for the subjugation and enslavement of ponies.

“Don’t you think it’s unfair,” she said, when a lull in the stilted conversation had descended and she seemed to think it needed filling, “that Equestria has so much love, the very thing our kind needs for sustenance, and you hoard it all to yourselves?”

“It is unfair,” I said, pretending to concede out of politeness and concern for my own skin. I cared little that the average drone was desperate for food, for as far as I was concerned it was a crisis of their own making.

Chela smiled. “I knew you’d be reasonable. The Hives are starving, and now Equestria launches a war of aggression against us. Do we not have the right to defend our lands from invasion?”

I failed to hide my smirk; this was far too easy, I thought. “Tell me,” I said, apparently regaining some of my bravado with this filling, if tasteless and nutritionally deficient, meal, “if our invasion of the Changeling Hives is a ‘war of aggression’, as you put it, then what does that make Queen Chrysalis’ foalnapping and impersonation of a Princess of Equestria and the cowardly surprise attack on Canterlot?”

“Necessary,” said Chela, and a little too quickly for my liking. “I know what that traitor Odonata has said, that we could have asked for Equestrian assistance with our food problem. Equestria would have the Changelings become vassals, slaves dependent on your goodwill and benevolence. Dependence breeds servitude, which begets weakness and decadence, as your ponies have become under the rule of a Princess who has coddled you with a thousand years of peace and safety. I’m sure you understand, Prince; I’ve taken a great deal of interest in your family’s history, and in it I see the remnants of the old ponykind that conquered Equestria, crushed the Griffons, and purged out the rot of the Nightmare Heresy from itself, before your kind wasted its strength on friendship.”

[Chela is referring to Odonata’s public statement calling upon the Changelings to rise up and overthrow Queen Chrysalis, whom she blamed for the war for being too prideful to ask for Equestrian assistance. This had very little effect in the Hives, as most drones were not in a position to read it. Chela’s speech appears to be a summarised response produced by the Hive of Propaganda and shared among the Purestrains, who were believed to be the intended target.]

There it was, the ugliness that lay beneath that neatly-pressed uniform, shiny medals, and warm smile. Dress up the open sewer in the refined trappings of high civilisation by placing an attractive cover over it however one pleases, but once the lid is lifted it still becomes thoroughly clear that it is all full of effluence.

“Except you failed at Canterlot,” I said. I don’t know if it was the grief that I had just been forced to endure, still raw with Captain Frostbite’s death, but somehow I felt that I just had to say it. While we sat and ate and conversed, the war still raged on, and here I was being made to pretend in order to satisfy the ego of an upstart enemy general. “And because you persist in underestimating ponies, you will continue to fail. What you consider our weakness is in fact our greatest strength.”

Chela hesitated; her face was expressionless, but it was damned clear that she hadn’t expected me to answer back. I imagined that my capture was quite the propaganda coup for the enemy, and no doubt they wished to turn me as we had done with Odonata; the difference is that Odonata already held doubts about the direction her nation was taking, whereas with me, although I disagreed with a great many things involving the ending of aristocratic power in Equestria, I knew wholeheartedly that our cause was the just one. Well, I thought as I continued to shovel grass clippings into my mouth, they had another thing coming.

“Queen Chrysalis will guide us through this war,” she said at length. “And we shall emerge stronger for it, for the Queen is the Hive.”

“And the Hive is the Queen!” chanted the other drones in the tent simultaneously. I nearly jumped out of my hide when they did that.

There was little arguing with fanatics, but I almost gave it my best shot before abruptly coming to my senses. “Your Queen is nothing more than a bloody…” Jumped-up, arrogant, crude, brutish, tyrannical, cruel, ignorant, and utterly joyless parvenu, possessed of a foalish obsession with violence and domination at the expense of the well-being of her own subjects, to whom she promises no golden future to strive for, but merely short lives of struggle and hardship.

Of course, I did not say any of those things out loud, no matter how much I wanted to; the balance of power in my interactions with Odonata had been completely reversed, and as I sat there listening to the drivel spewing forth from Chela, I felt a sharp reminder of just how precarious my position was barging into my brain and loudly shouting down the urge to put Chela straight. My bow tie suddenly felt rather tight around my neck. I eyed the other drones in the tent warily, those dressed up as waiters to continue with this absurd play-acting of a formal meal, and had no doubt that they were thoroughly perplexed and embarrassed by this ordeal and were looking for any excuse to put an end to this ridiculous affair by beating me with musket butts. As for Chela herself, while I knew that she was genuine in her reassurance that I would be perfectly safe, for a given definition of ‘safe’, it was still dependent upon her goodwill.

“The grass is delicious,” I said, violently steering the course of the conversation back away from the icebergs of politics.

“No, it isn’t,” said Chela, smiling politely. “But thank you. Dorylus will provide you with meals more befitting a prince, so don’t you worry. And I’m not offended; we’ll bring you around to our way of thinking soon enough, and the Queen’s new order will need ponies like you to keep the masses in line.”

That remained to be seen, thought I. I stuck to more benign, banal, but ultimately harmless subjects like family history, places to see in Canterlot, and, something that I’d picked up through my long association with those ponies from a certain rainy isle, the weather. It all seemed to entertain Chela, at least, this pantomime of polite civility, and I could even begin to relax ever so slightly. Oh, I still felt like I was coiled up tight like a spring, but at least a little bit of the tension had been eased somewhat.

The afternoon proceeded; I continued to nibble away at the grass, while Chela continued inhaling the fumes from her cracked crystal through her mouth. Despite the Changelings undergoing some sort of food crisis, she and the other Purestrains still seemed to be doing rather well out of it, and the hungry stares of the other drones fixed upon what must have been a tantalising source of sustenance for them was not lost on me. Chela seemed quite comfortable ignoring them.

After a while of this, I’m not sure precisely how long, I heard the tent flap swish open and the hoofsteps of some large and heavy creature stomping on inside. I looked over to see that dumb brute Scarabeus barging his way in.

“Chela, there you are, I’ve…” His words trailed off, and his eyes almost bugged out of his malformed skull as he saw the admittedly absurd sight of a Prince of Equestria dining with a Changeling Hive Marshal. “Chela, what in the Hives are you doing now?”

“I’m hosting,” said Chela, very matter-of-factly.

Scarabeus frowned. I didn’t think that the chitinous plates on a Changeling’s brow would allow for such a distinctive expression, but such was the intensity of his confusion that he somehow managed it. His mouth, too, hung open, as though his brain had to divert attention normally spent on keeping it closed to grasp this rather simple concept. His head even tilted to one side, like a particularly ugly puppy. “Why?” he asked finally.

“To help make our guest here feel more comfortable,” answered Chela.

“Prisoners aren’t supposed to be comfortable!” Clearly, he was still struggling to understand what was going on, but in all fairness, I continued to have some difficulty too. He fixed his little, pig-like eyes on me momentarily and sneered, and I bristled under that hateful glare, before he collected himself and turned his attention back on the Hive Marshal. “You should be directing the battle.”

“I have given my general orders for the evening, and I trust my officers to execute them well,” said Chela. “The battle is lost anyway. All that is left to do is prepare a rearguard as we retreat.”

[Hive Marshal Chela’s doctrines prized the individual autonomy of junior officers to interpret orders and react fluidly to changing circumstances on the battlefield, in contrast to Market Garden’s preference for detailed planning and her top-down leadership style. It was not unknown for Chela to refrain from issuing orders at all until ‘the opportunity for decisive action presents itself’.]

“Lost?” Scarabeus looked thoroughly aghast, as though Chela had sprung up from her seat and slapped him hard across the cheek. “The battle is not lost! The Queen commands that every inch of our territory must be defended to the last Changeling!”

Chela placed her crystal, now devoid of its lustre and looking more like a dull stone, on the plate before her and peered over at her Attendant from across the tent. “At the rate the Equestrians are tearing through our ranks, the last Changelings left alive will be the two of us. We’ll fall back and prepare for a counter-offensive.”

Then, apparently getting bored of explaining this to Scarabeus, she turned her attention back to me. “Forgive me for talking shop, but your Market Garden is the most stubborn general I’ve ever fought against; unimaginative and predictable, perhaps, but when she sets her mind on a goal she’ll never let it go. If she wants Natalensis Hive so badly, then she’ll take it.”

“I don’t believe this!” exclaimed Scarabeus. “The Queen ordered that Natalensis Hive must be held at all costs.”

Chela breathed a deep, frustrated sigh, as a parent who tires of explaining things to an aggressively curious but rather stupid child would. “My dear Scarabeus, your devotion to our Queen is second to none, but in your years watching over me you still fail to grasp the basics of military tactics. Land that has been lost to the enemy can be regained, cities can be retaken, but experienced drones are not so easily replaced. Our casualties are unsustainable -- we must withdraw if this war-swarm is to survive as a fighting force. Then, when Market Garden has over-extended herself, we strike back!” She punctuated her point with a dramatic sweep of her hoof over the table that nearly brushed her plate off. “A backhoof strike!”

Except that Market Garden didn’t do that; Chela had yet to pick up on our venerable general’s reluctance to advance with any particular urgency, which, while rather frustrating for everypony else, including Hardscrabble, eager to get this benighted war over and done with as quickly as possible as though it was some sort of race, was probably the best thing to do in my uneducated opinion. Still, at the time, as I sat there watching this peculiar argument with the same sort of awkwardness as any dinner guest has when their hosts start arguing with one another, it was rather worrying that the army could be marching straight into another trap. I thought about everypony else I had come to know in my time as commissar - Sunshine Smiles, Starlit Skies, Blitzkrieg, Bramley Apple, and even Fer-de-Lance, to name a few - and wondered if they too had made it through the battle unscathed. I hoped they had, but thinking about them suddenly made me feel sad for reasons that I could not adequately explain rationally, and it took whatever willpower I had left after all that I had endured to keep myself from burying my face in my hooves and start sobbing. That would have been rather embarrassing in front of the enemy.

Chela and Scarabeus glared at each other, while I continued to pretend to find the chipped plate in front of me very interesting. Then, after a while of listening to the scratchy gramophone music, Scarabeus approached Chela, and the other drones scurried out of his way. “I ought to report this un-Changeling behaviour,” he said quietly, and pointed directly at the table I sat at. “I can have you removed from command and you’ll waste away with that damned princeling there in a camp.”

Chela merely smiled, and I knew well that confident little smirk of somepony who knew that they were untouchable. “Do it, and then you can explain to the Queen why you fired her best general. She personally appointed me to command this front, no? I doubt that she would take kindly to you insinuating that she has made a mistake.”

Scarabeus, apparently having exhausted his wits, merely shot me what he had probably intended to be a death glare. However, having been subjected to such glares of far greater intensity from my dear Auntie Luna, his was merely a pale imitation and even in my current fragile emotional state it failed to have the intended effect. If anything, after his dressing-down from the Hive Marshal, it rather cheered me up. Seeing that he had talked himself into a corner, he simply hissed at me, turned on his hooves, and marched himself out through the tent flap, presumably to go and find a drone or two to abuse if I knew his bullying sort well.

“I do apologise for him,” said Chela. “He is committed to the old ways.”

“Not at all,” I said. “If anything, this has been quite reassuring.”

“Oh?” Chela arched an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Reassuring to see that your command structure appears to be as dysfunctional as ours.” I hastened to add: “We have since made improvements.”

“I’m sure,” she said with a cryptic smile. "You see? We're not so different after all."

"No, we are. It's just that we're so different, we go right around and meet up at the other end."

Her only response was an amused smirk. The rest of the meal, if it could even be called that, carried on in much the same awkward manner -- Chela would make a banal comment, I would reciprocate with another of similar tedious quality, and then a lull would ensue. This would be repeated a few times, until, merely out of politeness at this stage, I had finished the plate of grass clippings and pushed it away. Mercifully, as dinners with high ranking officers go, this one was relatively short, for the Changelings were not the sort to go for extravagant meals consisting of more than one course and I doubted that they would be passing the port around any time soon.

“Well, Prince Blueblood, it’s been delightful,” said Chela, likely lying through her fangs. “But I’m afraid Scarabeus is right on one account – I do have a battle to direct.”

“Yes, delightful,” I said, very definitely lying. “We must do this again when this war is over.”

“Quite.” She rose to her hooves and I followed suit. “I do hope you enjoy your stay with Dorylus. I know he’s looking forward to having you. He’s wanted a suitable pony to test out his theories on equine care for the longest time, and I think you’ll be just the right pony. Have a good evening, sir.”

With that, she left, and I was escorted back to that tent with the bath. Along the way, I struggled to process the peculiar scene that I had just witnessed; I could only conclude, after a few minutes of muddling through those thoughts, that Chela had some kind of strange, contradictory view of Equestria and ponies. She clearly admired our civilisation in an odd way, or at least parts of it, having seen fit to imitate the habits of our refined upper classes in rather shallow terms, but she continued to subscribe to what Odonata had referred to as the ‘truth’ behind this world, that we are weak and therefore must inevitably be conquered by a stronger race, according to their own warped definitions on what 'strength' means. Perhaps, if I was a more intelligent sort of pony, I could say that this pointed to some fundamental sense of inadequacy commonly felt amongst the Changeling high command, or indeed some sort of strange mental defence mechanism triggered by the fundamental disconnect of their propaganda not matching up with the reality of the situation - that a supposedly weak and decadent empire was beating seven shades out of the supposedly strong and virile Hives.

I’m not exactly what one would call a deep thinker, and as I was led back to the tent with the bath I came to no particularly insightful conclusions about this. Once there, the drones escorting me directed me inside, and again left me alone. The bath had been emptied, but the tub, still with a residue of water and suds at the bottom, remained. The mirror, reflecting back the image of the tired old prince in semi-formal evening wear, was likewise still there, as was the uniform I had been captured in, now hung up on the clothes rack. Upon inspection, I found that the ripped seams had been sewn shut, the holes darned, and the entire garment given a thorough brushing that removed most of the dust and some of the stains. The brass buttons and the medals, all accounted for, had been re-attached. I could only guess that when I was to be paraded around like a prize that they wanted me to look at least halfway presentable. A brief check confirmed that all of my belongings, including Slab, remained safely in the pockets.

I assumed that they expected me to disrobe and return the dinner jacket, and I was about to do just that when I felt it slither off my back entirely of its own accord. The garment fell behind me in a heap, and the tiny, nagging suspicion I had been harbouring ever since I had put it on was confirmed when the crumpled up jacket became engulfed in green flame and transformed back into a rather embarrassed-looking Changeling drone. Likewise, my bow tie and shirt quickly followed suit, untying and peeling off my body, and each returned into their original forms. The three drones looked at one another, chirruped oddly with a flutter of their insectoid wings, and then trotted out of the tent without saying a word.

I immediately poked my head out of the tent flap and demanded another bath -- this was going to be an even more unpleasant incarceration than I had first thought.

Author's Note

Published a little later than I'd have liked - been having to stay late at work, but hopefully it should ease up and I'll be back on my regular schedule.

Chapter 6

The soldiers were all full of questions when I returned from dinner with the Hive Marshal: ‘what is she like?’, ‘how do Changelings eat?’, ‘did they tell you what they’ll do with us?’, and ‘how do we know you’re the real Prince Blueblood?’. The opportunity for some rest and some real food, in comparison to the weeds and biscuits that made up most of our diet on Hill 70, during the intervening time between my departure and my return appeared to have buoyed their spirits somewhat, or at least made them more inquisitive. I was tired beyond all measure, but I did my best to answer their questions, and proved the latter by describing in considerable detail my preferred recipe for a dry martini, which I don’t think the common soldiers quite followed but it seemed to assuage their fears that I might have been replaced.

Square Basher, however, continued to sulk silently in the corner of the tent, and though I thought that I ought to check on her, I knew that the tough old battle-axe would be more insulted by the insinuation that she required the help of another pony, especially from an officer, and could generally be trusted to get over this damned funk on her own merits. As callous as it seems, and though I held an appropriate amount of respect for a mare who could likely crush my skull between her hooves like an apple if she so desired, she was welcome to throw her life away in a ridiculous and foalish show of defiance against an enemy that held us entirely at their mercy, just so long as I didn’t have to be involved in it beyond writing the obligatory letter of condolence to her next of kin. If she had any, that is, as I and most other stallions in the regiment had long suspected that she somehow materialised out of thin air one day as some sort of avatar of blind militarism. The problem, however, was the prospect of any escape attempt reflecting badly on the rest of us, and our hosts deciding that we were undeserving of preferential treatment and we were better off languishing in those horrid green capsules.

We were all kept there overnight, where I had the first night of mostly restful sleep since I was last in Canterlot. Primitive bedrolls and blankets were provided, but for all they were worth we might as well have been sleeping on the bare ground instead. The night was punctuated, however, by intermittent sounds of distant artillery fire, which served as a continual reminder that the war was never too far away. Other than that, and the faint sounds of other activity unseen beyond the tent, it felt unusually and unsettlingly quiet for the amount of Changelings I had seen outside. I recall lying awake between moments of sleep, and staring out at the dark, shadowy shapes in the tent and trying to count them to ensure that nopony had taken complete leave of their senses and decided that Square Basher’s mad schemes might be worth a try. It kept my mind off contemplating my fate, at least.

The next morning came, as it always did thanks to my dear old Aunt. No sooner had the sun peeked through the gaps in the tent cloth and the flap when a Changeling in some position of authority, their equivalent of an officer I’d imagine, blundered in with his two guards and nearly stepped on a sleeping pony. He announced, in a bored tone that implied that he had drawn the shortest straw, if their kind even had straws, and earned the unwanted duty of speaking to us, that we were to be evacuated immediately and taken ‘south’. All sundry questions from my fellow prisoners, each more than a little upset at having been woken up so early, were ignored as he then stormed out with such a speed that his guards struggled to keep up with him.

Following that odd display, we were given a quick breakfast of more hay, of such quantity that I was starting to get a little curious of where it was coming from and why a race that lives off love had quite so much. As I shovelled the hay into my mouth, using my hooves as I still lacked the use of my horn, I made a quick headcount of our small party of prisoners, and was relieved to find that nopony had escaped, successfully or otherwise, in the night. There was no tea to be had, despite the loud demands of the soldiers who, having survived Hill 70, appeared to have become emboldened to the point where they felt they could tease their heavily armed and armoured keepers like unruly schoolfoals with teachers. Without their customary tea, these ponies from Trottingham were bound to get even more bolshie. The water that was provided, however, was clear, cool, and refreshing, at least.

We were not given very long to enjoy our breakfast, as basic as it was, for the unhappy little officer and his two guards returned shortly and demanded in rather petulant terms that we leave and follow him immediately. I supposed that all of the manners in their kind had been unfairly concentrated in the form of Hive Marshal Chela, and it wasn’t much, as I stumbled out of the tent and into the early morning sun.

Now outside, I could see that the drones were hard at work dismantling the camp for transport, and true to their names they were rather industrious at it. I watched, while we were left to mill about aimlessly under the careful watch of our guards, as they worked with precise coordination to bring down the tents and pile up wagons with supplies and ammunition; it was enough to make one wonder if there was truly something to that old, long-discredited ‘hive mind’ theory that still occasionally resurfaces even to this day. The comparison to those sorts of social insects is intended as a compliment, and I’m certain that the average drone would have taken it as such.

“Prince Blueblood!” I heard Chela’s voice before I saw her. She emerged from the scurrying mass of working drones, effortlessly slipping past individuals darting this way and that to attend to whatever tasks were required of them. “I trust you slept well? Good. I’d have offered you and your ponies proper beds, but… well, there is still a war on. Come along, we need to be out of here before your Market Garden catches us!”

There was very little chance of that, given Market Garden’s previous reluctance to advance with any particular sense of urgency. I was ambivalent about that, as while there remained the possibility of a heroic rescue and hopefully another extended convalescence to deal with the physical and emotional trauma of capture, equally probable scenarios in which I’d be accidentally killed or if Chela decided that if she couldn’t have me then nopony else could still presented themselves. Besides, I had a tolerable holiday in the Changeling lands to look forward to, assuming that their word was to be trusted, that is.

Our guards directed us to follow. The sea of drones parted to allow Chela and her entourage, we prisoners included, easy passage. The Hive Marshal seemed to want me by her side for whatever reason, presumably to show off to the common soldiery that she had captured the infamous Black Prince, Equestrian hero and scourge of the Hives and what not. Cannon Fodder adopted his usual space just behind and to the side of my shoulder, and the drones gave him a suitably wide berth - I assumed that his aroma was just as offensive to the Changelings as it was to ponies.

As for my aide, he seemed rather more ‘clingy’ than usual; though he remained his typically phlegmatic self, taking the entire ordeal on Hill 70 and his capture with an enviable sense of sangfroid that would have astonished the Iron Duke, after my peculiar dinner with Hive Marshal Chela he seemed even more reluctant to leave my side. Though he didn’t say it, and indeed he said precious little even by his own standards, he seemed to be telling me in his own way that whatever happened I could still rely on him. It was a great comfort, for despite everything that was going on, the madness of the war and the uncertain future that lay before me, there was at least one singular constant that I could rely upon in this world in the form of a devoted, unflappable, smelly little unicorn whose horn didn’t work the way it should.

Square Basher, too, decided to stay close by my side, but seemingly out of a desire to keep an eye on me than to lend me any sort of physical or moral support. I would catch her staring at me when she thought that I wasn’t looking, and then instantly snap her head away when the itchy sensation of being watched proved too much for me and I had to glance in her direction. She kept her expression deliberately neutral, and her vocalisations seemed to consist mainly of approving or disapproving grunts, but I would imagine that she resented me for being quite so ready to give in and start chumming up with Chela.

Well, it was for her own good, and she would just have to get over it if she wanted to survive her time in Changeling captivity until the end of the war, which didn’t seem that far off now that we had a Field Marshal who might motivate Market Garden to hurry up. I certainly was not about to let her get in the way of at least a tolerable stay with this Dorylus fellow Chela had told me about, though I’d have to pay the appropriate amount of lip service to keep her from doing something stupid to spoil it for everypony.

We moved on through the camp with our escort, and passed by another field hospital. There, the wounded were arrayed outside the large tent in much the same manner as the other one we were dragged past the day before. Rows upon rows of them, lying on the ground and stacked together with little space between each of them. Some were bandaged with stained rags, while others had their grievous wounds still laid open and exposed to all manner of vermin to infest the ruined flesh. A few were still conscious, but only barely, rolling their heads limply from side to side or grasping their hooves up at nothing before them. These ones made odd little chirruping noises, like a cat at a bird it can’t reach, as we walked on past.

The sight was appalling enough already, even after the first time, but what made it more awful now was the presence of those drones wearing ichor-stained aprons. I had initially taken them to be doctors, medics, nurses, or some other equivalent medical-type professional whose remit lay firmly within saving lives. Yet, morbid curiosity, with its emphasis firmly on the ‘morbid’, directed me to observe the proceedings. These aproned drones moved in pairs, one carrying an array of fearsome-looking equipment in a threadbare canvas bag by his teeth, and this one followed the other up and down the lines. At each ‘patient’, they would stop, and the lead drone would cast his scrutinising compound eye over them. I am not sure why he bothered checking, as the result was always the same each time: the doctor would take what looked like a large hammer from the tool bag and use it to drive a spike directly through the patient’s chest with an appropriate splatter of ichor added to their aprons, then the poor thing let out a sharp, pained gasp and his body shuddered and fell limp. The doctor would then move onto the next wounded drone and repeat the process, over and over. Those who were still somehow conscious must have known what was coming, for I saw the fear evident even in their alien, compound eyes. Some tried to resist, but due to their injuries their weakly flailing hooves were easily subdued and they were thus dispatched like the rest.

I managed to keep my revulsion to myself, albeit barely, just to ease these next few uncomfortable moments, but my fellow prisoners were not so tactful. They exchanged shocked and horrified mutters with one another, and though the guards and Chela had managed to ignore the increasingly angry comments, there was finally one that they could not ignore.

“Monsters,” spat one of the soldiers, a young chap no older than seventeen years old. Chela shot him a look over her shoulder, but otherwise ignored him, until he spoke again: “You heard me, monster.”

Chela stopped in her tracks and then rounded on the young stallion. There was a bit of a commotion as our escorts weren’t expecting this and collided with one another. She glared at him, but there seemed to be little malice in her expression, only what looked like disappointment. To his credit, the spotty little stallion, barely taller than her breast, met the Purestrain’s stare with one of his own.

“You disagree with destroying drains on our society?” she asked, quite plainly.

“It’s wrong,” said the stallion, with the sort of smug flippancy that only a teenager could muster. He didn’t look at her, and it was a gesture not out of fear but of contempt.

“A crippled drone who cannot work or fight is a burden on the Hive, taking what is already scarce and giving nothing in return.”

The stallion shrugged, but otherwise said nothing. He looked away from Chela, apparently finding something else happening off in the far distance much more interesting. This was already feeling rather tense and awkward, and I saw our accompanying guards tightening their hooves around their bayonet-tipped muskets, so I decided to chime in with an equally flippant, “It’s still wrong.”

Chela aimed an arched eyebrow at me. “I’m surprised, sir. We are at war, and your side has devised increasingly deadly weapons and magic to do this to our loyal drones.” She pointed at the sea of dead and soon-to-be-dead drones; another one, gasping for air and babbling what sounded strangely like a prayer, let out a chilling death rattle and fell silent. “And you would show compassion to those same drones you have mutilated and maimed. I don’t understand it.”

“And that’s why you’ll lose,” I said. “Because you don’t understand what Equestria’s fighting for.”

To be fair, I struggled to understand this irrational feeling of compassion to these wretches myself at times, but Chela didn’t need to know that. As my fellow ponies voiced their approval with jeers at their bewildered Changeling captors, her gaze narrowed into a squint, then she shook her head and muttered something about how strange ponies are and carried on walking. A few menacing jabs in our direction with bayonet tips from our ever-watchful guards encouraged us to follow along, and so we did.

Much of the camp from this point on had already been cleared away by the industrious drones, though they left a great deal of detritus behind. The tents, stores, supplies, and so on had been packed up and loaded onto a series of crude wagons pulled by the larger and stronger-looking individuals, but anything that they did not deem essential, including their own wounded and cripplied drones, had to be discarded and disposed of. They had decided that the most effective way to dispose of such things, be they piles of rubbish or fresh corpses, was by burning them. We passed a series of large pits that had been hastily dug into the hard, dry earth, each filled to the rim with twisted, still-bleeding bodies of drones and all manner of assorted bits and pieces. These were then doused in oil and set alight. Hot white and yellow flames licked over the contorted bodies, and great plumes of roiling black smoke rose into the sky, no doubt visible to our forces atop the hills they had just spent the last week squabbling over. My skin smarted from the heat as we walked by.

The smell of burning flesh, regardless of the species, is not something easily forgotten; it is a distinct and striking stench that will linger within the back of one’s own mind, and will sit there until it is once again disturbed by even the slightest whiff of smoke and instantly evoke the memories associated with it. I’d more than had my fill by that point, and forced myself to look away. However, that could not stop the images of burning drones from flaring in my mind as we passed.

A few tents and stores still remained amidst the desolation, however, and I observed the drones busying themselves around them. One fiddled with a few boxes of grain, and I soon worked out that he was filling one box with gunpowder, while another drone set up a crude trip-wire around it. Traps, of course; it was just like their cowardly kind to resort to such measures when they’re losing.

Our procession carried on slowly downhill, away from the camp and on into Natalensis Hive. Chela was rather quiet after our brief conversation, except for issuing orders to the swarms of staff officers who each trotted up and demanded direction, and whom I identified by a series of strange markings branded onto their chest chitin. My fellow prisoners had become rather more subdued after what they had witnessed, compared with earlier this morning, and any conversation between them was quiet, blunt, and stilted. The fellow with the hoof in a sling struggled a little with the amount of walking that he was expected to do, but he soldiered on, limping along and doggedly insisting that he didn’t need the help offered by his friends.

As for Natalensis Hive, it resembled how I would imagine Virion Hive would look if the formidable city walls had been removed and the densely contained hovels within were allowed to spill out into the surrounding countryside. A great sprawling mass of these lop-sided homes made out of pale grey mud bricks, all arranged in a mad road system that I suspected was designed to thoroughly confuse any attacking army, but was really due to a lack of concern from their Changeling overlords for the niceties of proper city planning. The tallest structure was merely a few storeys high, and it looked as though actual care and attention went into its construction. It was a square, squat tower, though it could only be called such by comparing it to the meagre structures around it, and from a flagpole on its roof the black flag with the green flame fluttered in the early morning breeze.

There were native ponies lining the streets, watching us, and when we Equestrians passed them by they stared at us as though we were of an entirely different species. They were of much the same stock as those I had briefly ruled over in Virion Hive; having lived under the cruel hoof of Changeling oppression, reduced to the status of mere crops for their uncaring overlords, they were thin, emaciated little wretches, on average a hoof shorter than most of us. Their expressions were blank and hollow, as though they lacked the energy to convey emotion, if they still had any. And there were hundreds of them, filling the gaps between their filthy hovels.

As we neared the tower I began to hear Scarabeus’ voice amplified and made tinny by a loud hailer. The street, if the narrow gap between two lines of those crumbling little homes could be called that, opened up into a square which was sparsely filled with the native ponies. Their gaze was focused up at the roof of the tower, and following them I could see Scarabeus himself standing atop it and shouting through a hollow cone:

“...are not your friends! Do not believe their lies! The Equestrians bring nothing but chaos, violence, and terror! They will make you all into slaves for Celestia, that immortal monster in the form of a pony who grows even fatter on the plunder of this unjust war! But do not fear, my little ponies, for we, your guardians and protectors, will soon return! Resist the invaders! Offer them no aid, but defy them with all your might! Those of you who hold true to the Queen shall be generously rewarded, and traitors will be punished severely. For the Queen is the Hive and the Hive is the Queen, and she will lead us to final victory!”

The applause that followed was loud, and I could feel the earth tremble beneath my hooves, but truly it was half-hearted and forced. I can tell when such things are insincere; Faust knows I’ve had to develop that keen sense over the years with my disastrous early royal public appearances, and this was the most forced that I had ever seen. The armed Changeling drones interspersed within the small crowd of ponies, whom I noticed to be watching the ponies more than the speaker, likely had something to do with it. How many more were hidden in plain sight amongst them I had no way of knowing, though I wished for the use of my horn back so I might reveal them with one of the few spells I’ve truly mastered.

The comment about my dear old Auntie ‘Tia confused me slightly, but I’d spotted a faded propaganda poster pasted on the side of a crumbling mud brick wall. It portrayed a crude caricature of said alicorn, with her flanks drawn overly large to a grotesquely exaggerated degree, even by her own generous proportions, shovelling a mountain of cake into her mouth while starving foals, Changelings and ponies alike, looked on and wept. On the other side of the picture was Queen Chrysalis, made to look so kind and beneficent that I almost did not recognise her, offering to share her cake, while a very angry Princess Luna, clad in the same rainment as Nightmare Moon, emerged directly out of Celestia’s shadow to slap her cake out of her hooves. As propaganda went, it was not particularly subtle, but the amount of care and attention the ‘artist’, as if propaganda can ever be considered an artform, had put into drawing Princess Celestia’s oversized rear end made one consider if he was trying to express a desire that his society strongly disapproved of.

[That infamous poster is not the most flattering portrait of me, but neither is it the least.]

The applause went on for far longer than any natural and spontaneous outburst of praise ought to, and Scarabeus stood there at the top of the tower basking in what he must have thought was the genuine adoration of the crowd. He puffed his chest, tilted his head back far back, and thrust out his lower lip, nodding appreciatively with a smugness so intense it was a wonder his skull hadn’t cracked open trying to contain it. Then, however, he spotted me moving with our small group through the square, and pointed his ungainly slab of a hoof in my direction.

“Behold the Black Prince!” he continued, and all eyes turned to me. “Their so-called Prince of Blood, nephew to the hated tyrant Princess Celestia. See that he is merely a pony, as mortal as the rest of them! See that we have captured the butcher of Virion Hive, and will bring him in chains to our Queen to face true Changeling justice!”

The ponies didn’t react, besides looking around at each other and their Changeling handlers as though waiting for some sort of instruction of just what to do. The sight of hundreds of pairs of eyes, mostly sunken and hollow, devoid of life and vitality, was rather unsettling, so I merely slipped back on that old default standby that any royal pony relies upon in any awkward situation. I smiled politely, waved with a slow and slight motion of my hoof, and said cheerfully, “Hello.”

A visible ripple went through the crowd, like a stone dropped into a still lake. There was some quiet murmuring, though I couldn’t quite make it out given their debased language. I don’t know what kind of propaganda they had been force-fed about me, likely terribly unflattering but I’m certain that I’ve been called far worse by better creatures in my time, but I imagined that it bore about as much resemblance to reality as, well, the Equestrian propaganda about me. At least pretending to be a ‘normal’ pony, as far as one of my regal stature could possibly stoop to, might help to at least call into question whatever nefarious pictures they had painted.

I turned to the nearest native pony, an older mare who was probably a decade or two younger than her wizened, wrinkled, grey face would otherwise imply, and employed that classic cliche that served me so well through awkward and uncomfortable conversations with overawed common ponies: “And what do you do?”

I never found out, even if she could understand basic Ponish (which further begged the question of whether they could understand Scarabeus’ hateful screed in the first place), as the guards saw fit to spoil my moment by seizing me by my upper forelegs and dragging me away on my limp hindlegs. Upon reaching the end of the ‘street’, they decided that I could walk under my own power after all and unceremoniously dropped me back on all-fours. The rest of Scarabaeus' speech seemed a little more stilted after that, though I did not hear the end of it as we were all hurried along rather quickly behind Chela. Still, I had my harmless fun at their expense and I felt considerably happier as a result; the Changelings took themselves far too seriously, I thought, especially Purestrains like Scarabeus, which merely opened themselves up to even more ridicule.

We were ferried through more nameless streets, some so cramped that we could only slip through in single file while others so wide that we could have all walked side-by-side if the mood took us. I could smell burning in the air, but mercifully not that of flesh; another dark pillar of black smoke rose into the air somewhere in the distance, obscured by the buildings all around us.

“That would be the food stores,” said Chela, when I pointed out with some concern that part of the city was on fire. “Hay, grain, oats - everything needed to keep our ponies fed. We can’t let any of that fall into the hands of the enemy, can we?”

“What about the ponies still in the city?” I asked. “I’m surprised you’re just going to let us waltz in and liberate them.”

Chela smiled, and I didn’t much like that expression. “Equestria can feed them, then, if Market Garden can get here in time. Two-and-a-half thousand ponies live here, aside from the few we can afford to take with us, and I know that you’ll drop everything just to take care of them because you did precisely that at Virion Hive. Meanwhile, I’ll regroup for a counter-attack while your soldiers are too busy handing out candy bars to little foals instead of fighting a war.”

[The scorched earth policy instituted by Queen Chrysalis after the fall of Virion Hive was only partially followed by officers in the field during this point of the war, where it was commonly believed that decisive counter-attacks would quickly reclaim the land lost to the Equestrians and thus make the policy a waste. As the war worsened and more fanatical elements replaced more sensible officers, the policy was followed with increasing fervour. Parts of the Badlands are still uninhabitable by sapient creatures to this day as a result.]

“This is hardly selling me on the idea that your Queen has our best interests at heart,” I said, passing a small family huddled together in the misshapen doorway of their crumbling hovel. I stopped to look at them, and to peer past the bewildered, vacant faces to see their squalid living room. I couldn’t imagine ponies living under such conditions, even after having lived in a hole in the ground for a week.

“I can understand your trepidation,” said Chela, pausing in her stride to watch me in the manner of somepony waiting for their dog to stop sniffing around a lamppost, “but you have my word as an officer and a lady that you will be treated well, and your fellow soldiers too.”

An adage about ladies not needing to self-declare as such immediately sprang to my mind, but I managed to hold it back. “I mean the common ponies.”

“Your concern for them is touching, but prey animals are much better off under servitude. It is their natural place, after all.” There was a hint, and only a hint, of irritation in her refined voice; I was wasting time with these inane questions, which could have been better spent on military matters that were of far more vital importance. While I would be the first to correct other ponies who seem to imagine that the entire course of the war and indeed Equestrian history was down to my own actions and not those of the ponies I happened to be around, I do like to think that, in some small way, these delays that I was inflicting upon Chela’s tight schedule contributed to our final victory in this campaign. “Besides, they already serve your Princesses, but they will find greater meaning in serving us.”

“They don’t look happy,” noted Cannon Fodder, once more bludgeoning down pretentious nonsense with the hammer of his habitual bluntness.

“They’re just sad that we’re leaving,” snapped Chela. “We’ll be back soon. Now come along, we don’t want to keep Dorylus waiting.”

I had to wonder if Chela truly believed in the absurd things she said and if she had ever allowed herself to question those rigid doctrines, or indeed if any of the other Purestrains and ideologues of the Changeling Hives paid anything more than mere lip service to this sort of patently wrong idiocy. However, looking back with long decades to have considered this problem, and indeed the problems that arose following the end of that miserable conflict, it hardly mattered whether she or any other Changeling felt it in their heart-of-hearts. The overall effect in terms of the lives of the ponies and indeed the drones who suffered under this regime was very much the same either way, and the difference therefore purely of academic interest.

The sights had put something of a downer on the earlier upbeat mood of the morning, and we trudged on through the winding city streets and back out into the open plains of the northern Badlands. We were greeted by four wagons, merely large, covered boxes on wheels, pulled by four chained earth ponies each, all under the watch of Changeling guards, of course. There were more Changelings milling about the place, scattered across the plains in a sort of disorganised mob as they presumably carried out the age-old military practice of ‘hurry up and wait’. They still regarded us with some measure of curiosity, but it appeared that the novelty of having captured the fearsome Black Prince had either worn off rather too quickly for my liking or the sting of yet another ignominious retreat in the face of overwhelming Equestrian forces had rather dampened their spirits somewhat. Still, the sight of them sulking cheered up a few of my fellow prisoners, who made a variety of rude hoof gestures at the drones.

“I’m afraid this is where I must take my leave of you,” said Hive Marshal Chela. “It’s been an honour and a pleasure to have you as my guest, and I only hope that we’ll get a chance to converse properly once this war is won.”

“Yes, of course,” I said in the verbal equivalent of a shrug.

Chela bowed with a stiff lowering of her head, then turned back and trotted away with her staff officers behind her. Things didn’t quite pan out the way she planned, as history tells us, but that’s not important for me to discuss now. I was full of trepidation again as we were herded onto the wagons; I with Cannon Fodder, Square Basher, and one other plucky little stallion who looked as though he was perpetually on the verge of tears at all times. There we sat upon hard wooden benches that made one’s rear numb within moments, and the leashed earth ponies dragged us away into an uncertain future.

There’s not much to say about the journey to wherever we were supposed to spend the rest of the war; when one has seen one part of the Badlands, one has seen it all, at least before the fall of Queen Chrysalis that is. There were no windows, but I could peer through the gaps between the planks of wood clumsily nailed together and the back of the wagon was wide open for us to see what we had just travelled through. I caught Square Basher eyeing the wide open plains beyond, clearly considering simply leaping out and making a dash for freedom, but it had appeared that my words and the fact that our journey seemingly took us quite far from hospitable civilisation dissuaded her. And it was the very definition of bleak; vast plains, rocky hills, and valleys as far as the eye could see, and all lifeless except for clusters of cacti and hardy, un-nourishing grasses. There was nothing else to do except sleep, the course of conversation having run dry very quickly since our incarceration, or peer out and strain to see something, anything, out there that might provide even a moment of interest. Yet there was very little of that, and glimpses of isolated hamlets out in the distance only seemed to punctuate the desperate emptiness and loneliness of this place -- only sun-scorched earth, empty sky above, and a dim haze separating the two.

That’s not to say that our journey was entirely uneventful. Though our going was rather slow, with our earth pony pullers merely walking, even taskmasters as cruel and uncaring as the Changelings understood that ponypower is not unlimited, so we stopped off every few hours in a day to exchange earth ponies at tiny, miserable villages. Quite how these exhausted wretches were supposed to get home after being exchanged was never explained to me. At each of these stops we were allowed outside to stretch our stiff legs and try to get some feeling back into our backsides, albeit under continual supervision from the drones.

I observed with some curiosity how these drones treated the ponies, and I can categorically state that the term ‘poorly’ is simply not strong enough. At the first tiny hamlet, a drone was beating a unicorn almost twice his size with a stick, and said pony simply stood there and took it until the cane snapped in half. He then received a kick for his troubles and the drone stormed off to find somepony else to abuse. The others around him, who probably could have overpowered the drone quite easily, I thought, likewise merely watched the display with a certain sense of passive despair, as though this sort of thing was merely accepted and normal. One of our number had to be restrained from intervening, and only a reminder that there would be a reckoning once the banner bearing our Princesses flew from Chrysalis’ tower could stop him.

That drone was revealed to be what the Changelings called an ‘overseer’, which was some grade of civil servant or bureaucrat. The Changelings had an awful lot of ranks with a variety of different roles that alternated between the very precisely defined to the incredibly vague, and a lot of them overlapped. Along our journey we encountered overseers, proctors, attendants, registrars, secretaries, assistant secretaries, directors, sub-directors, and wardens, to name a few. Watching our escorts, who had hitherto avoided all but the most basic and necessary conversation with us, engage in bickering arguments with these low-level and petty functionaries of the apparatus of the Hives’ government demonstrated all that I really needed to know about them; sometimes lazy, sometimes ambitious, but always pompous and with a grotesquely inflated sense of their own self-worth. It did not matter that our drones were on direct orders from the Hive Marshal to escort a captured Prince of Equestria, our arrival on their little fiefdom constituted a challenge to what little authority they’d seized for themselves, or an imposition on their very busy schedule of lording over a broken and dispirited population of malnourished ponies. A little bribery eased our passage somewhat, but invariably our escorts were not quite willing to waste too much of whatever currency they were paid in just on our behalf. It seemed to me that our journey time could have been halved were it not for these obstructive apparatchiks, not that I was in any particular rush.

These breaks allowed me the rare opportunity to get to know the ponies I’d be sharing an extended incarceration with; we had been through Tartarus together on Hill 70, so while I’m sure ponies reading this will like to imagine that the experience had made us all blood brothers or some other such rot, the reality is that the conditions there were hardly conducive to small talk. There were fifteen survivors left, not counting the wounded who were taken away, and I thought it best to get them on my side. Whatever sort of prison camp we were about to be held in, I thought that we ought to present some sort of united front to our captors.

Most common ponies are rather guarded around their superiors, and it usually comes from one of two places -- they are either too intimidated to truly open up or they think I’m up to something sinister. However, quite often a few inoffensive questions about family, as all ponies invariably have them, and some encouraging comments are usually enough to get most ponies to open up, and though some take a little longer than others, they will usually succumb to peer pressure once they see everypony else joining in. A few joked that I must be a Changeling if I was asking so many personal questions, but nevertheless they eventually came around too, and the spot of dry gallows humour earned at least one or two welcome chuckles.

The stallion I shared a wagon with was named Light Roast, who had been a barista in civilian life. He and his brother volunteered for Twilight’s new model army, and though he’d ended up in the prestigious Night Guards and his brother in the 17th East Trottingham, he assured me that there was no sibling rivalry at all involved. The spotty teenager who had stood up to Hive Marshal Chela was Switch Blade, a juvenile delinquent from the slums of East Trottingham who’d upset the wrong gang by innocently selling salt on the wrong turf and joined up to escape having his kneecaps broken with sledgehammers, or so he told me. There were others, of course: Ploughshare, the farmer, who’d signed up after Changeling infiltrators had burned his fields; Golden Ticket, a chocolatier; Stitch In Time, a tailor; and more whose names and faces escape me for the moment.

We stayed one night in a decrepit hamlet. My fellow prisoners and I were confined to our wagons, again under a less-than-watchful guard, while the officer apparently in charge of our escort, who never said a word to us, was off spending time with the local administrator. Now, the interesting thing about ponies in positions of power over others, and I must admit that I am guilty of this too, is that they will often forget about the presence of those that are lesser than them. Many secrets have been revealed, reputations destroyed, and scandals broken when discussions between powerful ponies were overheard by a disregarded but public-spirited servant in the corner of the room, quietly dusting away at a shelf of antique porcelain cups. In my incarceration I discovered that this was just as true, if not more so, with the Changelings; they thought of us as ‘livestock’, things like inanimate furniture, and apparently incapable of listening and understanding. As I lay on my front on the filthy floor of the wagon, Cannon Fodder’s snoring sounding like an ursa major being slowly strangled, I could see and hear two guards conversing just outside.

“You lot just came from the front, right?” asked one. It was dark out, so I could only see the outlines of their heads silhouetted against the flickering light of a campfire just beyond.

“Yeah,” said the other.

“I heard we’re pulling back, but the Hive Marshal’s luring the Tin Cans into a trap.”

“Beats me. I only do what I’m told, like a good drone.” Her voice took a flippant, sarcastic tone that the other didn’t seem to pick up on. “Whatever it is, I might miss it if I’m escorting this lot to wherever.”

“I bet they’re full of love,” said the first. “Hives, I’m so hungry. There’s hardly any left for us from this lot once the tithe’s been collected from this stupid village.”

“We’re under orders not to touch them.” The silhouette shrugged. “The Hive Marshal said to take them someplace special.”

“Where’s that?”

“Dunno.” There was a short pause. “Doing as I’m told, again. All I know is the male unicorn in there is the Black Prince himself -- I always imagined him taller -- so we’re taking them to some fancy prison camp. They don’t tell us anything, remember? Anyway, we’ll get there tomorrow, then it’s back to the front for me again.”

“Rather you than me. The partisans are getting bolder out here, attacking wagons on the road from here to Opuntia. [A small town that served as a supply hub for Hive Marshal Chela’s war-swarms.] We lost three caravans in the last week, and we don’t have enough drones to patrol the entire road.”

“Why not?”

“No idea, only the Purestrains are allowed to think. There’s three of them, and they’re all pegasi from Equestria.”

“Only three? You’re struggling with only three pegasi?”

“They’re tough bastards, comrade -- elite, Equestrian special forces, not your usual band of escaped slaves. They lay ambushes on the road with explosives and lightning, then they kill any drone left standing, nick all the supplies, and disappear back into the hills before any of us can react. You never know if they’re hiding behind the nearest cloud. There were only three ponies to start with, except the livestock started getting riled up by Tin Can propaganda too, so now we’re stretched thin putting down more little uprisings all over the damned province. The ones that get away from us end up joining the partisans, and the Equestrians are helping train them. It seems like however many we recapture or kill, more and more of them end up escaping.”

A third voice, from a drone who had apparently just joined the conversation whom I could not see from where I lay in the wagon, chimed in. “That, maggots, sounds an awful lot like defeatist talk.”

“No, sir,” said the drone, this time with an undercurrent of fear in his voice. “Just giving my comrade here an accurate appraisal of the tactical situation in this province, sir.”

“I see, and when did the Queen finalise your promotion to Purestrain? I must have missed the ceremony, what with all the shit I have to deal with from you stupid lot on a daily basis.”

“Sir?”

“Idiot. You don’t serve the Queen by giving unsolicited, pony-shit ‘tactical advice’ to strangers, you serve her by shutting up and doing what you’re told. Stupid, damned maggots.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

Some things never change, I thought, as I watched the third silhouetted shape storm off into the darkness. Our two guards were much less talkative after that, and spent most of the rest of their shift in an almost contemplative silence. However, as I lay there, finding it rather difficult to get off while lying atop these hard wooden planks, I spotted Square Basher in the corner. She looked out of the wagon, her ears pricked forwards attentively and her dark eyes glinting in the dim light. The moon shone its cold, white glow through the open back of the wagon, and illuminated the uncharacteristic little smile that had formed on her face. I remembered that she’d mentioned the partisans before, and I couldn’t think of a worse turn of events for me than to be ‘rescued’ by a band of would-be freedom fighters and having to camp out in the hills and be hunted like a rabbit whose warren happens to be too close to Griffonstone. ‘Conventional’ warfare was bad enough already without adding the miseries of itinerant, outdoor lifestyle to it.

Still, it was another uneventful night devoid of valiant escape attempts, and everypony was present and accounted for in the following morning. We set off at first light, no doubt our escorts wishing to finally be rid of us. The remainder of the journey proceeded much in the same manner as the preceding day, with mercifully no daring raids by partisans to spoil the mood of dull tedium and utter boredom. We stopped encountering any more villages since, though we continued to stop to allow our earth ponies, still rather scrawny fellows by our standards but most likely the biggest and strongest that they could find amongst their subdued slave populations, to rest for a bit. After a while, I cannot possibly say how long with any real accuracy, the open plain through which we had been dragged through turned into a winding path carved into the side of a steep hill, which gave me hope that we were finally nearing our destination.

The road then levelled out, and soon the wagons stopped and we were herded out once again. I’d fully expected this merely to be another break to rest our pullers, but when I stumbled out and landed with a little less dignity than those foalhood lessons in decorum should have instilled in me, I was rather taken aback by what I saw. We appeared to have been dropped off at a quaint but rather large country manor house just outside Trottingham with double wings, a variety of sprawling outbuildings, a neatly tended lawn and garden, and a gravel driveway. The only thing that testified to its apparent primary use as a prisoner-of-war camp only became apparent to me when I looked behind me to see the tall wooden fence topped with knots of thorny vines that surrounded the entire grounds, and a heavy iron gate that was being slammed shut behind us. I could only spot a few Changelings around, and they all seemed to be idly milling about the place; they were all clad in some variety of formalwear, albeit with a few details off like black neckties worn with stiff standing collars and the wrong sort of tailcoat for this time of the day, which marked them as servants, but by the way they watched us I could tell that they were, in fact, guards. As is always the case with their sort, there are often more than one can directly see.

As the others disembarked behind me and the remaining three wagons were likewise emptied of ponies, who all stretched their aching legs and complained in no uncertain terms about the unpleasantness of the journey here, a tall, thin, sinewy Purestrain stepped out and approached. Rather peculiarly, he wore a smoking jacket tailored out of a lush burgundy velvet, topped off with a paisley cravat tied louchely around his swan-like neck. He smiled and bowed low and obsequiously.

“Prince Blueblood!” he exclaimed, full of giddy excitement. “Enchante! I am Commandant Dorylus. Allow me to welcome you to Camp Joy. For you, the war is over.”

Chapter 7

I don’t think anypony expected that. ‘Flabbergasted’ is probably the word that Square Basher might have used to describe my reaction, at least if she wasn’t too busy sulking like a teenager whose advances upon the opposite sex had just been very publically spurned. As a recreation of a country manor, ostensibly in the Trottingham style as for whatever reason that rainy little island was regarded as the benchmark for such things, the ‘camp’ seemed to be an acceptable imitation of one, if not totally accurate. I should know, as I have one such manor on the Griffish Isles and a few others dotted over Equestria in the same style, though really one never ‘owns’ such a property, one is merely a caretaker until it is time for the next generation to take charge of it.

Though their original purposes as the central hubs for vast rural communities ruled over by a feudal lord have diminished somewhat over the years, becoming merely ways for we disenfranchised nobles to make up for lost earnings by opening up our homes to the loathsome vampires known as tourists, they are still invariably surrounded by farms and quaint little villages whose ponies are usually employed by the master of the house. As such, they are designed to be large enough to house and entertain not only a gentlecolt and much of his family when he is not engaged in business in town, and a small army of staff who keep the place running, but also a variety of distant family, friends, and other guests and whatever staff they might bring with them. This imitation, while superficially accurate in terms of the early modern styling and classical touches, nevertheless felt wrong; a home that should have belonged on a certain grey, wind-swept island, surrounded by green fields, dense forests, and farms worked by productive earth ponies, was now perched atop a barren hill amidst a hot, dry, and inhospitable landscape inhabited by swarms of Changelings and the brutalised population of ponies they oppressed. It gave one a sense of architectural whiplash.

Still, despite the subtle sense of unease that all of this roused within me, I nevertheless found myself rather cheered by the sight. It might not have been exactly the same as what I was used to, but it still represented at least an attempt at carving out an oasis of civilisation amidst the barbarity of their kind. They had clearly made an effort, especially in the thoroughly unsuitable climate of the Badlands, and assuming that they had made the same effort not only in the interior but in the service provided, then perhaps the next few weeks, months, years or however long I was to stay would be rather enjoyable. Quite why they would go through all of this effort when our valiant forces were ever encroaching upon their Heartlands still puzzled me; the Changelings rarely did anything without some sort of sinister purpose behind it, and one would receive no prizes for assuming that they had something distinctly unpleasant in store for us all later.

Then there was Commandant Dorylus himself. I’d only heard his name mentioned a few times by Hive Marshal Chela, and I hadn’t thought to ask more questions about the chap I was about to entrust with my life and well-being. The long and boring journey had given me more than ample time to imagine the sort of creature who oversaw a prisoner-of-war camp for a government that regarded the Convocation of Creatures and its rules on war as merely polite suggestions. None of them were particularly encouraging, despite Chela’s repeated assurances that I would be treated well. As he stood there, smiling politely in his velvet smoking jacket and paisley cravat, it occured to me that he looked much like a poor pony’s caricature of what a rich pony looks like, albeit as a Changeling Purestrain. Though really, in order to truly sell the illusion he ought to have been swirling a glass of brandy, puffing away at a cigar, and beating a servant with an antique cane for failing to shine his horseshoes to an acceptably high standard. Distantly, I remembered that I owned a very similar smoking jacket at the time, and wondered if my staff had been compromised as well as my tailors.

“You must have had a long journey from the front,” said Dorylus, after a full minute of us staring in dumb, slack-jawed amazement at him and his ‘camp’. “Come, I’ll show you where you’ll be staying for the duration of this war. If I do my job correctly, I’m sure you won’t want to leave!”

With that, he turned on his hooves and trotted merrily up the gravel driveway to the front door of the manor. I was still trying to get over the shock, so I was rather slow in moving. The staff, or the prison camp guards I should say, moved to try and ‘politely’ encourage us to follow along. Still, my fellow prisoners appeared to be waiting for me to make the first move, as ever, and so despite the trepidation I was feeling of what might be beyond this quaintly hokey and somewhat pandering facade of civilised life and behaviour, I followed him.

The gravel crunched noisily under my hooves as I trudged up the driveway, and after a few moments of hesitation I heard that distinctive sound echoed behind me as my comrades eventually followed. My limbs were still quite numb after the long journey, so I stumbled awkwardly a few times and almost slipped on the looser collections of small stones. Ahead, Dorylus stood by the great wooden doors to the manor, and he smiled as though he was eager to show off something to us. As we approached, he applied his slim, slender hoof to the highly polished surface and pushed it open, and the distinct lack of an aged creaking noise felt like a worrying absence of something that should, by rights, be there.

We were led, or coerced, rather, into a hall. Again, the details were all present and correct, as far as I could see, from the highly-polished marble floor to the ornate rugs to the wood panelled walls and comfortable furnishings, but it simply felt far too new for my liking. It certainly impressed some of my fellow prisoners, and indeed Switch Blade commented on just how many bits it must have cost to build and furnish this place. However, the lack of centuries of wear and tear, with no scuff marks on the floor tiles or chips carved out of the wooden panels where centuries ago a distant ancestor drunkenly headbutted the walls, felt disconcerting to me. It is difficult to describe, perhaps, but it felt soulless, and much in the same manner as when the nouveau riche attempted to imitate the trappings of the old aristocratic power of Equestria, only more so. Nevertheless, I reminded myself that it could have been a damned sight worse, and at least I was not being held in chains in an awful, cramped barracks. Therefore, I made a facile comment about how nice it all looked, which earned a beaming smile from Dorylus.

There was a set of stairs leading up to a mezzanine between the ground floor and the first floor, and there about halfway down, was a small group of mares and stallions. Their beauty was striking, and so very unexpected that I must have stopped and boggled at the delightful collection of fillies like Rarity in the presence of Yours Truly at that ill-fated Grand Galloping Gala. However, they were much too perfect in appearance, in the same way that this manor house and its grounds were; young, narrow in the waist but generously apportioned in the flanks, and with slim, long, shapely limbs. Their faces seemed to be quite excessively made up too, with garishly red lips that seemed overly plump, long eyelashes, and smokey eye shadow. Their expressions were those dumb little smiles that mares pull when posing for the sorts of photographs that take up the bulk of specialist gentlecolts’ literature, except seemingly permanent on their faces.

As for the stallions, I am hardly the one to provide an expert appraisal of their attractiveness, but judging by the similar hungry looks on the mares in our merry band of prisoners, like pugs when they hear the click of a can opener, they certainly had the same effect on them as those pretty fillies up there did on me. Even the ever-frigid Company Sergeant Major Square Basher looked as though she was moments away from charging up the stairs, putting the two closest stallions into a headlock each, and dragging them both to the nearest bunk while warning the others not to wander too far. These stallions were each tall and well-muscled, albeit in that chiselled sense that is purely for show instead of a by-product of actual hard work, and their faces each bore a slightly frowny, disapproving pout that mares for some reason found attractive.

They were Changelings, of course, if whoever reads this had yet to work out the bleeding obvious by now. Only they, apparently still quite ignorant of the finer points of equine sexuality, would present such utterly flawless examples apparently lifted straight out of the pages of Playcolt magazine and the self-indulgent fantasies of whomever else they’ve captured. Faust knows I’ve had, perhaps still have even to this day in my old age, rather the deserved reputation for philandering, and I could well imagine that this Dorylus fellow had read my file, saw the near-success Odonata had with the oldest ploy in the book, and thought that where she had one wrong was being much too restrained in her disguise. To what end all of this served, however, I didn’t know, and though I had already seized and mounted each mare in turn in my mind’s eye already, it could only have been a trap of some sort. We fifteen ponies, myself very much included, were unfortunately falling for it, and who could blame us after what we had each been through? After a week on Hill 70, we all felt we deserved a little comfort in the hooves of another, even if they were ultimately Changelings.

Still, I felt I had to resist, if only out of spite for the enemy. Far be it for me to suddenly become an exemplar of temperance, mind you. My reputation for sleeping with any attractive mare capable of saying ‘yes’ of her own free will had to be put aside for that of the noble hero, who was supposed to be above such petty lusts.

“Commandant Dorylus,” I began.

“Please, just call me Dorylus,” he said, smiling politely. “We’re all friends here.”

I very much doubted that; friends don’t keep friends behind locked gates, after all. “Dorylus, then,” I continued. “What’s the game here? This isn’t prison camp-y at all.”

“Ah, you were expecting cages, iron bars, cold showers, chains, and back-breaking labour?” He chuckled, as if at some private joke. A brief wave of his hoof dismissed the pretty ‘ponies’ atop the staircase, much to the vocal disappointment of Switch Blade. “Come, let me show you to your rooms and I shall explain everything.”

We followed him up the staircase, which had a disconcerting lack of creeks beneath our hooves, past the mezzanine, and onto the first floor, where we were greeted with a long gallery which commanded spectacular views of the grounds and the paradoxically beautiful desolation of the Badlands on one side, and on the other were an array of doors which I presumed led to our rooms. Along the way, Dorylus delivered his explanation with the air of a creature who had spent a great deal of time thinking about this moment.

“It may be treasonous of me to admit it,” he began, and already it was a very promising start, “but we Changelings have encountered a problem. Our slaves keep trying to run away.”

“Gee, I wonder why,” said Golden Ticket, with his voice not so much dripping in sarcasm as drowning in a vat of the stuff.

“It is indeed a conundrum,” continued Dorylus, either purposefully ignoring or genuinely ignorant of the snide comment’s meaning. “We Changelings provide our livestock with food, shelter, water, and all of the other basic amenities of life in this barren and hostile land. We also provide them with a greater purpose in life, which is to work for the superior species and provide the love we need to survive. Yet, despite the kindness and generosity shown by our Queen, you all continue to resist the natural order of things. We traditionally suppress revolts with violence and terror, but it simply does not work anymore; an escaped slave killed in an escape attempt or in reprisals by the Blackhorns can be of no practical use to the Hives, and rather than instil fear, his martyrdom only serves to inflame more thoughts of rebellion in his fellows. It’s like a virus, spread by Equestrian propaganda.”

[The Blackhorns were a Changeling paramilitary organisation with wide and far-reaching powers across the Hives and occupied territories. Their principal concern was the detection and destruction of any threats to Queen Chrysalis, the neutralisation of any domestic opposition to her rule, the enforcement of drones’ ideological commitment to the Queen’s cause, the management of the system of correction camps, and the violent suppression of slave revolts.]

“It seems like the more you push ponies, the more we’ll push back,” I remarked. We passed by a framed portrait of an austere-looking mare in crimson military dress uniform, but on closer inspection of its surface I found no telltale evidence of brush marks, and deduced that it was merely a poster. “Hive Marshal Chela mentioned that you have some theories on- how did she put it? -‘equine care’ you’ve wanted to test.”

“And how is dear Chela?” asked Dorylus. “I haven’t seen her in a while, but it’s nice to know she thought of me by sending you.”

“The last I saw her, she was running away.” That comment brought a few enthusiastic cheers from my fellow prisoners and a pat on the back from Ploughshare that nearly knocked me over; showing a bare minimum of resistance through the occasional snide comment allowed me to prove my continued loyalty to the Twin Crowns of Equestria without actually having to put my own life in danger, though that still depended upon on how thin-skinned Dorylus and our caretakers were. If he knew anything about me, I imagine he expected it.

He simply smirked in response, but otherwise disregarded the comment. I expect that he didn’t feel the need to confront it, having me completely at his power.

“Once we conquer Equestria” -that comment brought a couple of jeers from the ponies that were still ignored- “the problem will be magnified a thousandfold; we will have millions of new livestock, yes, and finally enough love that no drone will ever go hungry again, but until the population of Equestria has been subdued so that it can be of productive use to the Hives, we will have slave uprisings the likes of which the Blackhorns have never seen before. It will be nothing more than a continuation of this war, potentially without end, and we may lose more than we stand to gain.”

It had occurred to me, during the rare periods where I have no choice but to stop and think about the increasingly absurd set of circumstances that led to this war, that the Changelings, or perhaps merely Queen Chrysalis herself, lacked the capacity to think and plan in the long term. Assuming, for instance, that her initial attack on Canterlot had succeeded, with two out of the then three Princesses out of action and our capital occupied, that still left not only a densely populated city to occupy, but also the rest of Equestria, including the major cities of Manehattan, Trottingham, and Los Alicornios, to name a few, left to conquer. They seemed to be under the foalish delusion that Princess Luna, for whom Equestria’s warlike past was a very recent memory, and would quietly submit the remainder of the realm to its new mistress. This fellow, at least, appeared to have identified that very obvious problem, that winning the war was one thing but winning the peace was quite another, but I’m not sure that his posited solution was particularly inspired either.

We’d reached the row of doors that presumably led to our rooms, and most of the ponies, myself included, were getting quite bored of this lengthy and tedious explanation, but I had a suspicion that refusing to listen was one luxury this 'idyllic' place did not afford. "I have a theory," he carried on. “If we treat our livestock well by giving them a quality of life far greater than what your Princesses already provide, then revolts will be a thing of the past! We can give you the life of comfort you clearly desire, and all that it’ll cost you is the love you hold in abundance.”

The awkward hush that descended after his little speech, combined with the furtive glances between each pony, probably told him all that he needed to know about what we all thought about his pet theory. Nevertheless, Square Basher, who had hitherto been sullen and quiet this entire time since her dressing down in that tent, decided to make everypony’s feelings on the matter quite plain and obvious:

“That sounds like bollocks, mate.” She shot me an apologetic look, and mumbled a quiet, “Sorry, sir.”

Dorylus chuckled, though it was a dry, emotionless kind of laughter. “I expected as much, mon amis, but all I ask is that you give me a fair chance. The alternative for you would be… well, having seen the ponies of Virion and Natalensis Hives I think you already know. For now, anything you desire can be yours if you merely ask my staff. They are ready and willing to provide you with any service you want.” Then, with a lascivious smile that made even my skin crawl, “And I do mean any.”

Light Roast, surprisingly, raised his right hoof in the air. “I’d like my freedom, please,” he said meekly.

“But you will have freedom,” answered Dorylus. “A different sort of freedom to what you’re used to. Freedom from want, freedom from boredom, freedom from work, and the freedom to pursue your own interests and hobbies without any of the pesky unpleasantness of your old lives to get in the way. You can all live as your Prince Blueblood does, in his palace with his servants who cater to his every whim.”

“The Commissar still serves,” said Cannon Fodder, and to my continued surprise his fellow soldiers proclaimed their agreement on the subject. “He might be a prince, but he’s still a soldier like the rest of us.”

“A royal title and its privileges comes with immense responsibility,” I said, lying through my damned teeth as usual; they were excuses to drink and indulge in carnal delights on the hard work of ordinary ponies, deserved only because certain distant ancestors of mine happened to perform favours, often unpleasant, for Princess Celestia. Still, I did my best to look as modest as possible with all of the attention now suddenly heaped upon me. “As Private Cannon Fodder said, despite my wealth, I remain first and foremost a servant of the Equestrian Herd. I’m afraid your little theory is doomed to fail, Dorylus; ponies won’t turn their flanks on the Princesses in exchange for the promise of some light pampering. Harmony, peace, and friendship are worth fighting for.”

But not necessarily dying for, I mentally added, unless it was somepony else doing that on my behest.

An amused smirk formed on Dorylus’ face. “I certainly don’t expect your enthusiasm right away, my little ponies, but I hope that you’ll give me a fair chance,” he said, as he began to circle around our small group back to the top of the stairs behind us. “This is a big change for you all, and livestock-”

“Stop bloody calling us that!” snapped Switch Blade with a petulant stomp of his hoof. The ‘servants’ revealed their true purposes as guards when they darted forwards with the sort of alacrity that only came with hours upon hours of relentless drilling, to form a protective, well-dressed phalanx between their master and the threat of a rather bolshie little teen thug. I quickly moved to Switch Blade’s side, held his shoulder gently but firmly, and silently shook my head.

“Apologies.” Dorylus nodded his head in an insincere bow, and with a wave of his hoof he silently dismissed his ‘staff’ back to their previous positions in the corridor. “Ponies, then, like all herd creatures, prefer the stability of routine and institutions. I would prefer it if we didn’t have to resort to sending you to a forced labour camp to work until your body breaks and you must spend the rest of your short life in a cocoon, but from this moment on that will depend entirely upon your behaviour and that of your ponies, Prince Blueblood.”

He looked at each of the captured Night Guards in turn, his mouth smiling but his eyes studying us carefully. Only Switch Blade and Square Basher seemed capable of meeting his gaze. “I trust that won’t be a problem, Prince?”

“No, of course not,” I said.

It certainly rankled for a pony of my esteemed regal stature to submit like that, but never let it be said that I am not willing to debase myself in order to save my worthless hide; if he asked me to kiss his hole-ridden hooves or else face the remainder of this war performing back-breaking manual labour as he had threatened, then I would have done so with only perhaps a minute or two of thinking very hard about it.

“Ah, tres bien!” he exclaimed. “These are your rooms, and I hope that they’re to your liking. I shall leave you all in the capable hooves of our head butler, Solenopsis; if there’s anything you would like, just ask him and he’ll do his best to get it for you. Au revoir!”

He bowed so low that I thought he might do us all a favour and smack his horn into the floor, thus knocking himself out. Nevertheless, with that absurd flourish, complete with an unnecessary obsequious scrape of his right rear hoof, he trotted merrily away down the stairs. A few drones followed him, but we were still left under the supervision of five others in servants’ attire and one who I’d deduced was the ‘butler’ by the false handlebar moustache affixed to his upper lip and his practised expression of subtle disdain. There were more of them hidden away, I was sure of it, perhaps disguised as the rather cheap-looking vase standing atop a small table or those potted plants in the corner of the long gallery. Aside from that we were left there, standing about aimlessly, and each quite overwhelmed and at a loss as to what we were supposed to do now.

“Finally,” I said with a grin, “I never thought he would shut up.”

That brought a few chuckles from the ponies, as a little joke to ease the growing tension in the room. Even one of the Changelings standing guard snickered to himself, though he was quickly silenced by a kick and a stern look from his closest colleague. I made a quick note to remember him, as he seemed as though he might be that rare sort of drone with an identifiable personality; chumming up with as many of my captors, in particular the much-abused common drones, would certainly help make my stay here a damned sight easier. However, most of their sort look terribly similar, and though they might say the exact same thing about we ponies, it was almost impossible to find distinguishing features between them, being of much the same shape and colouration as each other. He seemed a little smaller than the others, perhaps their equivalent of an adolescent, and I noticed a spot like a birthmark on the left side of his forehead roughly in the shape of a kidney bean.

“And that’s it then, sir?” said Square Basher. She managed to keep herself from sneering, but I could hear it in her voice. “It’s all over for us?”

“No, of course not,” I said, lying as ever. “As soldiers of Equestria, it’s our duty to escape from captivity, and I fully intend to.”

Were I wearing pants, they would have been ablaze by now, but without such an obvious indication of the web of falsehoods I was weaving before their eyes, the soldiers, and indeed the Changelings, seemed to buy it. Square Basher smiled to herself, as though a deeply-held belief had just been vindicated; Light Roast looked terrified; Switch Blade grinned to the drones staring agog at me and dragged his right forehoof in a horizontal line along his neck; and Cannon Fodder shrugged and stared vacantly into space.

“But,” I said quickly, to bring everypony back from their daring escape fantasies and firmly back into the realm of reality, “it is not our duty to throw away our lives wastefully. The Princesses still have need of good soldiers like us, and we’ll be of no use to them dead. Trust in our comrades still fighting, and we’ll be liberated and back on the field in no time.”

Hopefully, not too soon, I thought, but that little speech seemed to mollify them a little. The question, however, would be of how long I could possibly keep this going before the soldiers finally worked out that I never intended upon escaping at all. Nevertheless, I had bought myself a little time at least, and who knows, perhaps the inexorable ‘sledgehammer’ that was General Market Garden, as wielded by Field Marshal Hardscrabble, would come battering down the gates of this prison camp before that would become an issue. After Virion Hive and Hill 70, anything seemed possible.

For now, Solenopsis showed us to our chambers. I had been given the use of a ‘state room’, which disappointingly turned out to be a small, sparsely furnished bedroom consisting of little more than a double bed, a rug, a wardrobe, and a writing desk. It was about the same size as one of my wardrobes.

“It will do,” I said to him, and for those ponies reading this who might be of the common stock and therefore unaware of the peculiarities of upper class speech, when a prince says that something ‘will do’, it most certainly will not. The bed, when I tested it by throwing myself upon it, was a little too hard and rather lumpy, but it was a bed at least, and that really would do.

Well, Blue, thought I as I stretched out on the bed and looked up at the plaster ceiling, this was a fine state of affairs that I had gotten myself into, and once again it was my own damn fault for doing a favour for a, well, I hesitate to call Square Basher a friend, so the term ‘colleague’ would have to suffice. I was left alone, as far as I could tell, and that left me with little else to do but ruminate on the grim situation I found myself in. It was, however, as far from the worst possible outcome to being captured by the enemy as could be reasonably expected; in fact, I would go as far as saying that things had finally gone my way, for once. Certainly, I would still have to be very careful, but if I could walk that tightrope well enough then I could fully expect to sit out the rest of this awful war in relative comfort, however it might end.

I was still wearing my uniform, and though the Changelings had cleaned and repaired it for me, after two days on the road it was starting to get wrinkled and dusty again. Though I wanted to remove the damned thing and see if I can acquire a more suitable set of clothes for the climate, a collar and a bow tie perhaps, it still served as a symbol to my fellow prisoners, so I thought it best to leave it on. I unbuttoned the coat and reached under it, and was reassured to find that the star spider silk undershirt was still there and hadn’t mysteriously disappeared; retaining the uniform would at least cover this ace up my sleeve.

As for Commandant Dorylus, I have an instant dislike for any creature who sprinkles his conversation with gratuitous Prench, for it is the sign of the sort of grasping bourgeois parvenu who, insecure about his low birth, seeks to over-compensate by adopting the surface elements of aristocratic refinement. It is a peculiar little paradox that flummoxes some of the lower orders that we nobles, already secure in our power and privileges, will often be quite plain in our speaking. Everything about him, from his appearance to his manners and his speech, seemed to scream artifice, and that immediately set my paranoid instincts on edge. Then again, the Changelings in general are nothing if not consummate actors, imitators all and seemingly incapable of doing anything at all that a pony or even a griffon has not already done before, and often in a rather shallow way.

For now, I decided to test the boundaries a little by exploring as much of Camp Joy as I could without getting into trouble, and found that I was given a surprising degree of liberty to wander as I saw fit. My fellow prisoners had been allocated a room each on the first floor, all along the long gallery, and seemed to be mostly enjoying the novelty of a modest amount of privacy for the first time since they joined my Aunties’ service. Cannon Fodder had insisted on the room next to mine, which was quite reassuring, and as soon as he’d heard my door shut behind me as I left he sprang out into the corridor to follow me. Further along, I stumbled across a well-stocked library filled with paperback copies of popular novels, including most of the Daring Do books, and were seemingly all brand new. On the ground floor I found the entrance hall through which we had, well, entered, a drawing room, a parlour, and a dining room. There were also the servants’ halls and quarters, but I left those for my aide to explore on my behalf; I might be a prisoner and thus my social standing lowered somewhat, but I still daren’t venture into the sacred kingdom that is the servants’ rooms.

While Cannon Fodder investigated the staff, I decided to take in the grounds outside. Country manors typically presided over vast tracts of countryside, with carefully tended gardens and orchards where one can engage in the traditional unicorn gentlecolt’s pastimes of croquet and clay pigeon shooting, in addition to maintaining the rare portions of wildlands within Equestria for hiking, birdwatching, and fishing by invitation of the owner. That key part of the country manor style that our captors had been valiantly attempting to imitate was largely missing here, though they certainly gave it a solid go, at least. To start with, there was not enough space encased within the tall wooden fence that surrounded it; as I wandered around outside I found that our little camp was built atop a modest hill with a wide flat top, and one of many in a landscape that resembled a sheet of parchment that a Griffon had balled up and then attempted to smooth flat with his sharp claws. The greatest constraint, however, remained the distinct shortage of water characteristic of this part of the world with which to sustain neatly trimmed lawns and ornamental hedges, and so the Changelings had to resort to crude substitutes. The ‘grass’, I found when I dared to violate my old groundskeeper’s edicts by stepping on it, turned out merely to be the dusty ground painted green, which my hooves disturbed. The topiary in the shape of birds and dogs were statues carved out of a rather brittle sandstone and likewise painted green. Some of the flowers, however, were real, and were likely the sort of hardy and rare plants that somehow flourished in this harsh environment.

There were a few squat, square buildings dotted around the grounds. One appeared to be a barracks, judging by the short glimpse inside through the window of rows of bunks and Changelings snoozing on them, before I was politely urged away by a drone in a tailcoat. Others were used for storing a variety of peculiar games, presumably for the amusement of the ‘guests’, but the rest were merely empty and apparently only for show.

My brief exploration of the grounds told me much more than the enemy’s commitment to keeping up appearances, as while I pretended to be admiring the architecture and ‘horticulture’ of this place, I took in a quick summary of their outside security arrangements. While it seemed that we had more or less complete freedom of this place, the outer perimeter was more heavily guarded. Changelings armed with muskets patrolled the fence, and a small detachment of them stood guard over the only gate. Assuming that we managed to either overpower or slip past them undetected, that still left us out in the middle of a terribly hostile environment that seemed to resent pony habitation with a passion, with Faust-knows how many miles between us and the nearest pony settlement, likewise absolutely crawling with enemy patrols on the lookout for their very important prisoner. Escape, I decided then and there as I looked out at the desolate landscape beyond, was simply suicide; I already knew that, of course, but it was reassuring to have that confirmed beyond all reasonable doubt.

I noticed during my wanderings that not all of the ‘staff’ were Changelings. There were ponies serving as maids, quite attractive young mares and stallions of native stock, both in Prench maid outfits, who, while each rather pretty, did not resemble the unsettlingly perfect living dolls presented to us before. When I returned to the library, I found the rather saucy little thing dusting away at the bookshelves with a feather duster in the library to be all the more alluring for her imperfections when compared to those idealised caricatures of pure sexual fantasy come to life. They could well have been drones with a better sense of what real ponies look like, and without the use of my horn I had no way of knowing for certain, but her wide-eyed terror when I tried to strike up a halting conversation seemed genuine.

“They’re not allowed to speak with the guests,” said the drone watching over the library. “If they’re caught, they get punished.”

“That seems a little excessive,” I said, stepping away from the cowering mare. In truth, I felt rather sorry for her, no doubt sent here against her will like me. “I like to get on with my servants, back home.”

“It’s the rules, sir.”

“Very well.”

I left her to get on with her task then, meaninglessly dusting the bookshelves too new to have acquired a patina of dust in the first place, and grabbed a Daring Do book at random to while away the hours until dinner time. As I sat in the armchair close to the window for light, I noticed that the drone, who stood in the corner, hadn’t moved and was staring at me. It was getting quite distracting after a while of this. I was about to tell him to go away and leave me to my escapist adventure story, when I noticed the odd kidney bean-shaped mark over his left brow and recognised him as the snickering drone from before. Perhaps he had been following me.

“Do you read these books?” I asked, holding up the novel with its striking cover of our heroine swinging on a vine away from a hydra.

The drone pulled a queer look, and for a moment I wondered if they could actually read at all; I would not have put it past the likes of Chrysalis and her Purestrains to think that the act of reading could inspire dangerous thoughts of rebellion in the drones. “Those are for the guests,” he said.

“That’s not what I asked,” I said. “Can you read?”

“I can read,” he answered, nodding enthusiastically. “But those ones are for the guests.”

“Let me guess, it’s the ‘rules’?”

“Yes, sir.” He looked this way and that, and then, apparently happy that there were no other drones around, said with a hushed, conspiratorial voice, as though he was admitting to a great crime, “But I’ve read that one, and the others.”

Well, that was a start, thought I; it paid to get on well with the staff at any institution, especially if I was being held against my will, and no doubt once I’d ingratiate myself enough I could use that to gain a few favours. “Did you enjoy them?”

The drone looked around again. “They are examples of a weak and decadent society that drugs its subjects with foalish escapism,” he said, apparently reciting propaganda by rote. “Yes, I enjoyed them, sir.”

[There was an extensive black market in the Hives for Equestrian media, of which adventure stories and comic books were especially popular. The Ministry of Information and Princess Luna’s Ministry of Unladylike Warfare had tried to flood the market with overt Equestrian propaganda, but this proved to be ineffectual. More stories were then written to appeal directly to drones, to be as entertaining and with messages of rebellion against autocratic authority. Daring Do and the Slavers of the South was one such example, and proved to be extremely popular among the drones. Daring Do became a symbol of the small but determined drone resistance groups within the Hives.]

If somepony had told me two years prior that I would be discussing Daring Do stories with a Changeling drone, I’d have thought them insane for even suggesting that their sort were capable of reading and appreciating fine literature, but there we are. The young chap’s name was Musca, as he told me when I eventually asked, and he was merely an adolescent by their own terms. He’d joined the Chrysalis Scouts, which I gathered was a youth organisation rather like our own Scouts, except that the songs sung around the campfires were less about helping those in need and more about grinding them underhoof for the glory of the Hives.

“Have you met her?” he asked, after a while of idle conversation about the possible identity of a suspiciously familiar blue pegasus in the latest book.

“Sadly, no,” I said. “I’ve tried, but A. K. Yearling is reclusive even by the standards of reclusive authors; even my fan letters have gone unanswered.”

“I meant Daring Do, sir.”

I looked at him, wondering if I was being mocked, but though their expressions are quite alien with all that chitin and those strange compound eyes, he looked quite earnest.

“Daring Do isn’t… She’s a work of fic-” I gave up; I was not prepared that afternoon to try and explain the concept of fiction to a Changeling who had spent his entire life swallowing whatever propaganda the Hives shoved before his eyes. Besides, he looked so damned hopeful and innocent that even I felt bad about crushing the dreams of a drone. “Not yet. We’ve both been very busy.”

Nevertheless, we carried on quite amicably for a little while longer, discussing Daring Do and other such trite but entertaining adventure stories. Indeed, for a time I almost forgot that I was speaking with a Changeling drone, not much different in appearance from all of the others who have tried to kill me on the battlefield. Peculiarly, he seemed to lack that inherent awkwardness common ponies have when speaking with me, their social superior; Celestia, Cadance, Shining Armour, and Twilight Sparkle all had that knack of making commoners feel at ease with them to varying degrees of success, whereas I simply struggled with most whom I hadn’t known for any particular length of time. Musca, however, was quite perfectly comfortable chatting away, and were he a pony and were we back in Canterlot I might have been offended at this over-familiarity being shown. However, here, it served my purposes precisely well.

There was a peculiar sense of innocence about this particular Changeling, for he seemed to lack much of the sense of casual cruelty that was so prevalent in their society. Oh, there were a few glimpses of it, such as when he expressed surprise at a scene in Daring Do and the Eye of Argon where our titular heroine chose to spare a defeated and helpless Caballeron, instead of feeding him to a writhing colony of pukwudgies and ridding herself of her nemesis once and for all. I almost agreed with him there.

It was then, however, that Cannon Fodder, having completed his survey of the servants’ quarters as much as he could before being kicked out, blundered in. I made my excuses, left Musca alone in the library, and followed my aide outside into the corridor again. There, on our way back up to the bedrooms on the first floor, he explained what he found.

“Ponies, sir,” he said, confirming my suspicions. “Maids and cooks, sir.”

“I would suspect the Changelings are adverse to doing servants’ work themselves,” I said.

“Seems like it, sir.” He shrugged. “But there is one other thing.”

Cannon Fodder followed me into my room and shut the door behind him. He waited for a moment, listening at the door, until, apparently satisfied that nopony and no drones were lingering outside to hear us, trotted on over to the corner of the room opposite the door. I watched with some faint amusement as his hooves left grubby little prints on the rug as he crossed it. There, he looked over at what seemed like a blank wall, running his hooves over its surface until, and I’m not quite sure exactly how he found it, I heard the click of some sort of catch being activated, and a square portion of the wall was pushed inwards to reveal a narrow, cramped corridor in the walls.

“Well, now,” I remarked. “That’s very interesting.”

Chapter 9

“That can’t be sanitary,” I said, gazing into the modest hole dug through the latrine. At first it seemed barely wide enough to admit even a slender pegasus, but, as I examined it past the outer lip that had been covered by the lavatory unit itself, which I now saw had been deftly unscrewed from the floor, it seemed to be much wider past its relatively narrow entrance. It would have to be, thought I, if a mare as big as Square Basher had been digging it, or if she expected me to go crawling through this crude escape tunnel. “Has it been used recently?”

Square Basher’s cheeks flushed pink with uncharacteristic embarrassment. “Well, sir,” she said, screwing her face up. “It is a toilet, and there have been one or two little… accidents along the way, but everypony now knows not to use this one for its intended purpose.” Her hoof tapped the little cross crudely carved into the open wooden door.

“Just one little thing, Square Basher. You said ‘everypony’; who else is involved in this little scheme of yours?”

“Like I said, sir, everypony. The mares have been digging out the tunnel just a little bit at a time, when they pretend to use the facilities, and the stallions help us by disposing of the dirt outside with their gardening project.”

I had thought it was unusual that Switchblade had suddenly taken an interest in plants that didn’t have psychoactive effects on ponies. There was, however, one thing, and though she had said ‘everypony’ it still left one notable exception.

“Everypony except me,” I said, a little affronted at having been left out. Though, had I been aware earlier, I’d have made moves to put an end to this ridiculous plan before it could even get as far as unbolting the lavatory unit from the floor.

“Well, sir, about that.” Square Basher’s ears wilted as she spoke, and she seemed to find it harder than usual to look me in the eye. “Begging your pardon, sir, but I saw you getting friendly with the bugs and I wasn’t sure you could be trusted. I’m sorry, sir, I ought to have known that you were only doing that to keep the attention off the rest of us.”

“No harm done, I suppose,” I said, which was wrong; a lot of harm had been done, and now I had to frantically think of a way to put a stop to this silly thing without putting myself in danger. “What about Cannon Fodder?”

“No, sir.” She shook her head fiercely. “He would have told you.” There was at least one thing in this world gone mad that I could still rely on, then.

The news left me in a bit of a daze, where I was all but overwhelmed by the onslaught of thoughts of how to deal with this new development, which threatened to completely upend the relatively comfortable life I had managed to secure. Anger and betrayal were first and foremost the emotions I felt; after all, everything I had done thus far since I surrendered my sword was in her own best interest and those of the soldiers who still looked to her for leadership as much as my own sake, but if she saw those feelings through the cracks in my masque of princely detachment she must have taken them for me merely being upset at not being told of her brilliant plan in the first place.

I considered trying to deliberately collapse the tunnel later, somehow, but I would have to do that out of sight of Square Basher and anypony else; when she invited me to take a closer look, and I reluctantly put my head inside the gaping hole and held my breath from the lingering odour, I saw that the construction was of surprisingly high quality and arranging a cave-in would be trickier than I thought. Square Basher proudly told me about how they had stolen bits of wood by selectively dismantling items of furniture in their rooms to serve as buttresses. The hard and dry earth of this bleak and depressing part of the world, while it must have been extremely difficult to dig through using mere cutlery, at least seemed to make the prospect of a tunnel collapse unlikely in my thoroughly uneducated opinion. Besides, I thought, I’d rather not try to engineer a cave-in whilst inside the tunnel.

That left informing on her to Commandant Dorylus, or ‘grassing’ as that stallion of the street Switchblade had referred to that most unforgivable of sins, and that was still a terribly risky proposition. Although it would put a very rapid stop to this plan, and I could in theory do so anonymously if our Purestrain host was feeling particularly generous, the timing would leave Square Basher and her fellow conspirators very little doubt as to who had told on them. If my goal was to survive this benighted war, it would not do to have avoided the prospect of being hunted down by Blackhorn patrols out in the middle of bloody nowhere, only to have been stabbed in my sleep with a dirt-encrusted spoon by a vengeful Sergeant Major who had decided that my loyalty to my Aunts was severely lacking.

“How far does this go?” I asked, after removing my head from the smelly hole in the ground and taking a deep breath of slightly fresher air. Just once, I almost wished the poison gas of so long ago would have taken my nose along with my lungs.

“We’re about halfway there,” said Square Basher. She lifted the lid from the lavatory’s cistern and fished out a small water canteen. Pulling out the stopper, she produced a rolled-up napkin, upon which she, or perhaps somepony else, had sketched out a crude diagram of the tunnel with measurements. “We came up with the plans over our dinners in my room, sir, and everypony chipped in with ideas. Ploughshare did the measurements by walking up and down the lawn and counting his hoofsteps. We take it in turns to dig, just a little bit at a time, when the bugs think we’re in here doing our business.”

I looked out of the window, trying to follow the path on the map in my mind’s eye, and realised that it went the shortest possible distance to the opposite side of the fence surrounding the camp. Directly in the way of the path carved by this tunnel, however, was that small barracks building that I had found during my earlier wanderings. Based on my guesses, informed by my special talent putting the pieces and numbers together for me, once completed, this prospective tunnel would open up a few yards just beyond the wall, whereupon our gallant band would either be instantly spotted by the guards looking out from the upper windows of the mansion, or be hunted down and caught like rats by the patrols that would no doubt infest the countryside once Dorylus found that his camp had suddenly become depopulated. An alteration of the measurement of the length of the tunnel would have it terminate just within the outer perimeter of the camp, and if I was particularly precise with this it could even end directly inside the Changelings’ barracks.

One had to give Square Basher all due credit here; while she might be devoid of curiosity and imagination, both qualities deemed undesirable by the old Royal Guard and beaten out of her by a lifetime within it, and lacked the necessary foresight to understand that her plan was ill-advised and foolhardy in its most generous interpretation, but she was not only stubborn enough to see it through, she was also still very capable of executing her duties as an NCO and organising ponies to work effectively together towards a singular end. It made me feel at least a little bit guilty about what I was going to do.

“I say!” I said abruptly, snapping my head up to look out of the window. Beyond, ponies and drones milled about aimlessly in the grounds. “What’s Switchblade doing out there with that spade?”

I was almost embarrassed for Square Basher that my stupid little ploy actually worked, but as far as she was concerned, Lord Commissar Prince Blueblood, with whom she had suffered, fought, and bled with over the years, would have no possible reason to lie to her. She muttered an obscenity under her breath, then turned and galloped out of the loo, the door swinging shut behind her with a resonant and final thud. Now alone with the plans, I set about discreetly altering their measurements; Lady Luck provided one of her vanishingly rare boons when I found a pencil with a rubber on the end inside the canteen, for I only had a much-used fountain pen in my jacket pocket, which would have made it so incredibly obvious as to who had done it that I might as well have signed my name.

Writing with my mouth was something that I had always struggled with, having a horn and all the magic that came with it, but as Square Basher’s own mouthwriting, for I assumed it was hers, bordered on unintelligible, my inability to be neat with something I’d never bothered to practice was actually a bonus. However, even if I had made such a perfect facsimile, there was still no guarantee that it would be so readily accepted. Even then, the momentary confusion and arguments that would follow might at least waste enough time for them to allow me to come up with an alternative method of sabotage.

I erased the measurement, brushed the resulting detritus into the hole, scribbled in the new one, and dropped the pencil back in the canteen just in time for Square Basher’s return. She gave me a queer look as I stood there with the map, trying my best not to look guilty under her somewhat accusatory stare.

“I need to keep my eye on that one, sir,” she said as she marched on over to me, shaking her head. “He’s a good fighter, but he never knows when to stop. He needs some damned discipline in his life, and I’m going to make sure he gets it. All done with the map, sir?”

“Yes, thank you.” I returned it, and watched with bated breath as she briefly paused and frowned at my hasty ‘correction’, then, much to my relief, simply folded it up neatly and placed it back in the canteen in the cistern.

Progress on the tunnel proceeded as planned over the course of the next two weeks, thereabouts, and it was perhaps the most nerve-wracking period that I had endured for quite a while. Unlike, say, a battle or even the lead-up to one, this was not the sense of mounting dread that builds over the course of several hours and then released in a rapid burst of overwhelming mortal terror, but a constant low-level ‘buzz’, as it were, of underlying anxiety about whether or not I had done the right thing. By ‘right’, of course, I mean merely that which will ensure not only the survival of the mortal flesh I must inhabit, but also my social reputation that allows me to keep filling it full of fine wine and cheese. Nevertheless, the cards had been dealt, and all that was left for now was to make do with the hoof I had been given.

Dorylus seemed not to suspect a thing, and neither did his staff. If anything, he thought we were all being so very well-behaved and compliant, barring the odd infraction that I now had reasonable suspicion was merely intended to cover up the increasingly complex tasks required to keep the escape tunnel a secret. An argument over which variety of olives were best, green or black, helpfully distracted the guards from the bundle of ponies evacuating the ladies’ loo following a lengthy session of digging, for example. I, however, had the additional duty of making sure that he remained completely ignorant of our plans, at least until the moment of truth.

By way of segue, speaking of his ignorance, there was a lot he still failed to understand about ponies, and it would have been quite funny were he not placed in a position of power and authority over us. I recall one startling moment when he decided that he would host afternoon tea for us, in an apparent attempt to help the soldiers from Trottingham feel more at home. Never mind that all of them were of the lower social orders, and for them ‘tea’ meant stopping work for half an hour for a cup of hot, milky brown stuff and a hoof-full of biscuits, so the ones that deigned to present themselves for this event were rather perplexed when they were presented with a fine china tea set and a selection of cucumber sandwiches. As for me, I was rather a dab hoof at this sort of ridiculously overwrought ritual and so I guided them through the complex etiquette, though it still held nothing on the Neighponese tea ceremony, which held the prospect of familial disgrace if one spilled so much as a drop.

The whole thing was about as awkward as one might expect afternoon tea with a Changeling Purestrain might be, especially under the careful watch of the guards. As with his dinners, the number of guests besides myself could be counted with all four hooves, so all of us together in one corner of a room set out for a much larger party only exacerbated that feeling of intense social awkwardness. Once again, conversation, such as it was, was stilted, slow, and split by long and tedious silences that allowed one’s thoughts to drift into daydreams. Dorylus sat there at the head of this small, cloth-covered table, upon which the tea set and cucumber sandwiches with the crusts removed rested, and he and a thoroughly bemused-looking drone in a black lounge suit went through the practised motions of preparing the tea and pouring each guest’s cup for them.

I shan’t bore you with the rest of the details; you, dear reader, merely have to picture the six of us, plus the guards, sitting in silence and desperately trying but failing to make some sort of friendly conversation. It was what happened immediately after, as the other ponies wandered out muttering to one another about just how ‘weird’ that whole display was, that the truly interesting thing happened. I was just about to follow them, when I heard Dorylus breathe a frustrated, angry sigh; he had maintained his gracious host persona for so long, largely without fail, and this was the first crack that I had seen. Curiosity got the better of me, and I stopped and looked over my shoulder to see him slumped in his seat, staring at the half-eaten sandwiches.

Dorylus locked eyes with me, and there was a certain look there that I had only seen before on the battlefield when one of his fellow Purestrains was trying their damnedest to kill me, before it faded and his empty smile, devoid of anything approaching true happiness, returned to his face. “They don’t like me,” he said, sounding rather disappointed.

“It’s nothing personal, I assure you,” I said, turning to face him properly. “You’re just the sworn enemy that wants to destroy their country and enslave their friends and family. You’ve something of an uphill struggle to get them on your side, bordering on the perpendicular, I should say.”

“I don’t understand it.” There was a defeated tone in his voice, as one would when confronted with the realisation that perhaps everything that one had been working towards had been critically flawed right from the off. His head was bowed and his shoulders slumped. It was rather startling to see a Purestrain of all creatures looking and sounding quite so vulnerable, but from what little glimpses that I had seen of the world of Changeling politics, his career and indeed his life might very well be depending on the success of this little experiment here. The thought didn’t move me to much sympathy, however.

He carried on, though his staff shared uneasy glances with one another. “I’ve provided everything you ponies could need and want, I’ve even looked into this ‘friendship’ thing that your Princess Twilight Sparkle speaks of, and still you have all been uncooperative and ungrateful of my hospitality.”

An alarm bell ran noisily in my head; did he know about Square Basher’s tunnel and was he merely testing me? “We are not animals,” I said flatly. “Our loyalty to our Princesses and to our country can’t be bought with mere tea and sandwiches, Dorylus.”

“And what of you, sir?” He fixed me with a sharp, accusatory glare. “If your loyalty is so absolute, perhaps it would be better to place you and your ponies in a conventional prison camp and be done with this costly experiment.”

Then it struck me; though I was very much a prisoner here, it became readily apparent that, if my instincts were correct, he was as much held captive by the expectations that his Queen now placed on him as I was by the fence and guards. It was his use of the word ‘costly’ that prompted this revelation, and indeed as I looked around at the opulent surroundings and the absurd numbers of Changelings required to look after a mere dozen prisoners here, I realised that this experiment must have incurred a considerable expenditure for the Hives in terms of money, time, and effort, all of which could perhaps be better spent on waging this war in a more direct manner.

This realisation only strengthened my resolve in my plan; it was in Dorylus’ best interest that Square Basher’s escape attempt, that I had deftly sabotaged with the aim of getting caught, be quietly swept under the rug. The last thing that he probably wanted was for his model prison camp upon which Queen Chrysalis’ highly ambitious new order would be built, and likewise his future career within it, to have its entire philosophy disproven with a spectacular escape attempt. In this appalling calculation, the course I had set myself upon really seemed the least awful.

“My loyalty to my Princesses and my Aunts is unshakable,” I said, fibbing only a little, “but you have my cooperation only for the sake of my comrades. We may tolerate this better than whips, chains, and having our love forcibly sucked out of us, but I warned you that you should not expect us to abandon all that we ponies hold dear.”

Dorylus rose to his hooves. Some of his old demeanour returned; he was tall, towering, and, despite the practised, easy-going smile and the absurd smoking-jacket-and-cravat ensemble that he wore, there still lay an undercurrent of subtle menace beneath it all. He might not have been the sort of cruel, petty tyrant of most of his ilk by outward appearance and manner, but one did not ascend to the heights necessary to build this ridiculous Trottingham manor house in the middle of nowhere in a regime such as Queen Chrysalis’ without having one’s hooves sullied by blood and ichor. I saw some measure of that as he approached, and stood rather too close for my liking, forcing me to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact in the sort of cheap trick to intimidate smaller ponies that I often used.

“One day soon this war will end in our victory,” he said, with his voice pleasant enough, “and how the vanquished will be treated may very well depend on the success of my experiment here.”

“You’re awfully confident for the losing side,” I said with a casual shrug.

He smirked, and I felt the urge to wipe it from his face with my hoof. “Many a race has been lost when the leading drone believes that they have already won, only for the cunning second to make his move when the would-be victor has spent the last of his energy keeping ahead, and so it is with war. We Changelings have suffered defeat before; defeat after defeat after defeat, only to emerge victorious in the end. Just you wait, Your Highness. Under the guidance of our Queen, we will emerge triumphant in the end.”

“Why, which blushing bride-to-be is she impersonating this time?”

Dorylus’ smug grin only grew wider, and it made the fur on the back of my neck stand on end. He raised his hoof, and I noticed how the plush velvet fabric of his smoking jacket draped over the decaying holes in his long, spindly limbs, reached over, and patted me on the back in what he probably thought was a friendly manner. There was a surprising amount of strength there, despite his slim frame, and he nearly knocked me over. Even then, it took a considerable amount of willpower not to flinch from it, as though it was on fire.

“I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise for you,” he said, with a sly wink that only increased my urge to punch him square on the nose. Then, leaving me to mull over his cryptic words, he trotted away merrily to whatever it was he got up to when he wasn’t busy doting on us.

Quite what he did behind the closed doors of his study remained a mystery, and after that strange conversation I found myself feeling uncharacteristically curious about it. I had imagined that running this camp required his full attention, but he spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time completely out of sight and apparently working on something else. Without much in the way of practical knowledge about how the Hives were run, if there was any formal bureaucracy at all, I could only guess that he had other pet projects to work on. I recalled what Odonata had told me, of how Chrysalis herself encourages her underlings to undermine one another to keep them from uniting against her, so I had naturally assumed that he was plotting something to keep himself in her good books.

The only hints that he was working on something terribly important, or at least had the appearance of it, were the daily deliveries of papers and files by a Changeling drone whom I found to be rather less amenable to conversation than the other curiously friendly ones who watched over us. Each day, without fail, he would arrive at the front door carrying his bundle, sometimes containing only a few sheets of paper and other times so large and packed that he strained under its weight, and hand over the precious delivery to Dorylus personally, before trotting off without another word. I had asked the Commandant about them, but he merely smiled, shrugged, and assured me that it was merely boring paperwork. Were it not for that comment about the ‘surprise’, I might have believed him.

Yet there was another incongruous thing that, when I realised it, almost drove me to madness as much as the weight of the deception I had to maintain: not once since we had arrived here had we been harvested of love. I would have thought that a race that was apparently on the verge of starvation, five years from exhausting its own supply according to Odonata, would absolutely leap at the chance to drain us all dry. But they had not, and I could not understand why Dorylus had not subjected us to whatever ghastly and no doubt painful procedures their kind use to extract and store love. In the end, I could take it no longer and had to ask him.

“I want you to volunteer for it,” said Dorylus with the air of somepony explaining the bleeding obvious to an idiot. “That’s the entire point of this whole endeavour.” Then he stormed off to his office, presumably to sulk.

[The subject of the Changelings' restraint at Camp Joy became a hotly-debated topic among Equestrian propagandists and military leaders for years after the fact. The supremacist camp maintained that any idea that the enemy could restrain themselves from parasitising ponies for food for so long would be a scourge on morale, encouraging ponies to naively see them as victims, a narrative the Changelings constantly tried to push. I, and many war-weary ponies besides, saw it as an encouraging sign that some cooperative solution could yet be found.]

The days and weeks passed in much the same manner. I had considered fixing the ‘correction’ that I had made to Square Basher’s plans so that we might escape for real, if only to spite Dorylus, but I thought better of it. Spite might have been one of my more powerful drives, but self-preservation always ended up winning that mental debate overwhelmingly, and though I’d started to fear what he might do to me when this escape attempt was foiled, it must invariably pale to the hardship I would suffer should we actually pull it off. It was too late anyway, and the evening when Square Basher announced that the tunnel was complete had crept up much too quickly for my liking. Such is the way of these things; one imagines that something set to happen in the far-off future might never come to pass, right up until the moment it does and one is forced to deal with it.

It was an evening like any other in this ridiculous place. I had dined with Dorylus again, to give the illusion that nothing untoward was taking place, and it took all of my foalhood lessons in regal decorum not to allow the trepidation gnawing in my gut to show through the masque. Again, there was another peculiar balancing act involved, for I had to pretend to engage with his stilted conversation without the appearance of doing so to cover anything up, and while I think that he bought it completely, the thought that he somehow knew continued to take up an awful lot of space in the back of my mind. However, it was steadily becoming too much for me to bear, and so I retired early that night, citing the need to get a good night's rest in preparation for the tennis tournament our host had arranged for tomorrow.

I spent the next few hours before zero hour, so to speak, pacing about in my room, trying to work off the growing anxiety or distract myself by reading any one of the racy novels I had collected from the library and left on the bedside cabinet. Dear Faust, this was insanity -- pure, naked insanity. Any number of imagined outcomes flashed vividly in my mind, each with a worse end for me than the one before; being caught in the act was the entire point, but when I considered what must invariably come after, the niggling little thought that I had made a very grave misjudgement here refused to leave my mind. The possibility of talking Square Basher into postponing this escape attempt until ‘the right time’ had come to mind, but that would merely be a case of prolonging the inevitable, and perhaps it would be much better to simply get this unpleasantness over and done with now rather than later.

Finally it was time, and though the long hours had felt like an eternity as I endured each one after the other, when the appointed moment came it felt as though they had passed much too quickly. It was around midnight, and even Changelings had to sleep, so there was only a light guard presence around at this time. Cannon Fodder and I left our rooms and wandered downstairs, passed bored, tired guards who, apparently having been lulled into a false sense of security with our reasonably good behaviour, barely seemed to acknowledge us. There was no curfew here, so ponies going about on nocturnal perambulations was not an entirely suspicious occurrence for them. What would be considered unusual, however, was for all of us to have done so simultaneously, and so, in another surprising display of intelligence from the Company Sergeant Major, Square Basher decided that we would all mount our escape in waves, not only to avoid suspicion, but in the now-certain chance that our little prison break was to be discovered, only a few would be caught directly in the act.

We lingered together around the library until the corridor to the lavatories was unguarded, and then took our chance and darted into the ladies’ together. There, Square Basher, Switchblade, and two other ponies, both mares, were already waiting for us, each with their lithe, slim bodies covered in muck and dust from the digging. The door was open, the toilet unit placed to the side, and the tunnel open for all to see, and it seemed to recede into an oppressive blackness as though I might fall into it as a bottomless pit.

I felt as though I should say something profound, and after a brief second’s thought I gave up and trotted out a fatuous comment: “Well, everypony, I suppose this is it.”

“Indeed, sir.” Square Basher nodded gravely. “Just the last little bit left before we come out the other side.”

“Jolly good, then. Sterling work, all ‘round.” I looked past Square Basher’s head, through the window, to see the dark outline of the Changelings’ barracks building silhouetted against a starry night sky, and it occurred to me that, assuming my own estimates were correct, the occupants of that shabby little outbuilding would be rather shocked at the appearance of escaping prisoners bursting out of their floor. What I was counting on was a quick admittance of failure and an easy surrender, to ensure that the worst we would receive was a slap on the hooves and a stern talking-to, but given that the Sergeant Major was unlikely to react with that sort of sense and grace, it would unfortunately have to be me. “It’s probably best that I go first, just to make sure it’s all clear.”

Square Basher raised her eyebrows at me. “Are you sure, sir?”

“Well, you’ve all done the hard work so far and I feel a little left out,” I said, telling one almighty whopper of a lie there. “I’d like to do the last bit, if you don’t mind.”

“Very well, sir.” She gave me the look that non-commissioned officers and servants alike have when their officer and/or master has a strange idea, but they still have to go along with it regardless. With a ridiculous flourish, she presented the weathered, dusty, chipped stainless steel spoon to me as though it was an ancient relic from the times when the world was young and the Royal Pony Sisters were still eating mashed peas. I accepted it, and as I approached the hole in the ground it occurred to me that without my magic I had no idea how I was supposed to dig through that last bit of earth between me and alleged freedom.

“The ground is dry, and it comes out easily in clumps, sir,” said Square Basher, apparently sensing my ineptitude with this sort of thing. “You just need to stick it in your mouth and poke the dirt until it breaks up. Just remember to close your eyes.”

Again, that sounded less than sanitary, and I wondered if the lack of magic and the reliance on hooves and lips to hold things had anything to do with greater sickness rates for earth ponies and pegasi, but as I was about to go crawling through a tunnel dug through a latrine it seemed like a moot point. As undignified things go, this one ranked somewhere near the bottom, and I wondered perhaps if it was still too late to try and talk my way out of it. Well, I couldn’t speak clearly with my mouth full of stainless steel anyway.

“So much for a silver spoon in the mouth,” muttered Switchblade, apparently thinking that I couldn’t hear.

Getting through the hole proved a little tricky. My head went in fine, and my shoulders required a little bit of wriggling to slip through; quite how a mare as tall and broad with muscle as Square Basher got through remained a mystery to me. I then discovered that over-indulging on the readily-available food and neglecting my exercise had resulted in the expected effect, and my hips were stuck. However, a few forceful shoves from somepony, presumably Cannon Fodder, and I popped right through like a champagne cork.

I fell a few feet down a sharp slope, and managed to arrest my fall with my hooves just before I collided with the bottom. It was almost pitch black, save for the scant amount of light that streamed in from behind me. My eyes struggled to adjust, but I could feel with my forehooves that the tunnel continued to slope down a little more and then gradually level out. The walls were rough and pitted, which made sense as they had been dug out by a single astonishingly well-made spoon, and in parts were supported by planks of rough wood.

[According to Square Basher’s version of events, as recorded in a few interviews made after the war, the spoon was not the only tool used to dig this tunnel. A variety of whatever cutlery and small gardening implements they could steal from the Changelings was used, however, the ‘Spoon of Freedom’, as it came to be known, would endure as a symbol of the escape attempt. It’s unlikely that Blueblood would have had that detailed information, or cared to ask.]

Cannon Fodder followed me into the tunnel, and collided into my rear legs and flanks. I crawled forwards into the empty blackness to give him space, and the ground and the walls scraped awkwardly against my front and sides. There was the sound of a match being struck, and the space immediately in front of me flared into a dull orange glow, which gradually brightened as my aide lit a small candle. Well, that, at least, was some help, I thought.

I’d come this far now in this ridiculous scheme of mine, so I ought to see it through to the end whatever the outcome. Crawling on my belly like a snake, or like a worm, rather, I inched my way through the tunnel. It was desperately slow going, and every second that I spent down there, dragging my ungainly form forwards one hoof at a time, I felt the urge to leave grow stronger and stronger. I don’t usually get claustrophobic, having spent some of my youth exploring the ancient catacombs and crystal tunnels beneath my palace, but here the horrid thought of the great weight of earth above me burying me alive simply would not leave me. At least I could stand up in those aforementioned places, for here there were parts where the tunnel narrowed to such a degree that I needed my aide’s assistance pushing myself through it. In places the ceiling scraped against my back, still scarred as it was with the latticework of year-old flogging wounds, and the reminder of that awful moment did little to improve my bleak mood.

However, the fact that you are reading this now should indicate that no such eventuality occurred, and I made it safely to the other end of the tunnel. I felt such relief as I had rarely ever felt before when I sensed that the tunnel was sloping upwards, for it meant that the end was finally in sight. The gradient grew steeper with each drag forward, until it reached what I estimated to be a forty-five degree angle. The going was harder, having to work against the natural force of gravity that affects prince and commoner alike.

I became aware of the dead end when I jabbed my horn into it. By that time, I was already exhausted and more than a little on edge in this horribly cramped and dark space. Lying there on my belly, entombed under the earth like my ancestors in the family mausoleum, I traced over the surface with my hooves, and squinted to see the rock wall in the flickering light of the sputtering candle behind me. That there might not be much in the way of air down here had occurred to me, so I wasted little time. I wanted out, as fast as possible, and whatever it was that Commandant Dorylus might do to me, including packing me off to be Queen Chrysalis’ chew toy, seemed to me to be an improvement on my current predicament.

As digging implements go, the spoon seemed like the least ideal, but I was hardly the right sort of pony to make that sort of judgement. With the handle between my teeth, held steady with my lips, I did as Square Basher had advised and jabbed the business end into the earth above. It was hard and dry, but after a few strikes it came away in great clumps that landed directly on my face for the most part.

How long this took I hadn’t a clue; it could have been mere minutes or it could have taken hours, but it certainly felt like a damned sight longer than both. No wonder it had taken them this long to dig the tunnel, and here I was, probably holding up their precious tight schedule with my usual ineptitude. Well, I thought, the more things that could go wrong with this already ill-advised escape attempt, though surprisingly well-executed it was, the likelier that it would dissuade Square Basher and her loyal cadre from any further endeavours. I carried on chipping away at the wall, pausing to blink the muck out of my eyes and wipe my face when the sensation of dust tickling my fur became too aggravating. My limbs ached, my jaw had become numb, and my thoughts strayed and drifted to how if only I had stayed at home instead of attending Fancy Pants’ party those long years ago I could have been at home in bed with a mare, plumbing the depths of a much more welcoming hole instead.

Finally, the last few inches of the earth gave way; a hole, not much larger than my hoof, crumbled into clumps of dirt and dust over my face, and warm, dim candlelight streamed through it. I say ‘dim’, but after an interminable amount of time in that dark hole, the meagre flicker of a dozen candles might as well have been staring directly into Celestia’s sun. Blinking away the spots in my eyes, I widened the hole by shoving both hooves through it, and then used them to force my head and shoulders out.

The Changeling drone who must have been curiously observing the hole forming in the dirt floor of his barracks flinched back from me and chittered in alarm. Within seconds, a ring of bayonets circled around my head, which poked out of the hole, and the blades glinted in the faint orange light. The drones seemed more surprised and entertained than anything; I distinctly heard laughter in the background, as one told another to go and fetch the Commandant to deal with this, and though the drones had levelled about half a dozen sharp bayonets directly at my head, they each seemed unwilling to actually follow through with the threat.

I felt Cannon Fodder shoving at my rear hooves, and so I got him to stop by kicking back lightly. I imagined that quite a queue had formed behind me, and very shortly we’d all be forced out like water from a gardener’s hose.

“Oh dear,” I said, and the drones chittered again. “This doesn’t look like Canterlot.”

[We can assume he spat out the spoon before speaking.]

The drones grabbed my forelegs and pulled me out. I offered no resistance, since this was merely part of my plan; they weren’t too rough, either, and helped me up to my hooves once I was free of that blasted hole, where I could finally stretch my stiff, aching limbs. While a small argument broke out amongst them over who should go and investigate the hole, I took stock of the room I’d found myself in -- it turned out that my special talent was right on the money, for once, and I had emerged right in the centre of the barracks building, and it was astonishingly ‘normal’. I wasn’t sure what I expected, truly, but it might have involved cocoons, ominous green lighting, and that chrysalite gunk splattered everywhere. Instead, however, there were rows of bunks and lockers, and, as with Equestrian soldiers, each had tried to personalise theirs in some way with trinkets and even posters. One depicted a drone, presumably female judging by its rather attractive curves, presenting her flanks to the camera with a vivacious wink.

“Prince Blueblood, what are you doing here?” one of the drones asked, and in the dim light I didn’t recognise him as Musca until he stepped closer and I could see the distinctive mark on his face.

“Escaping, of course,” I said with an easy smile, despite the anxiety still knotting in my gut; I thought I might feel relief at having been caught, but I would still have to face the consequences and hope that Dorylus was in a forgiving mood. “Better luck next time, I suppose.”

By now, Cannon Fodder had emerged from the tunnel, and the drones menacing him with their bayonets gave him a suitably wide berth. He sat in the corner with his forehooves in the air in a gesture of surrender, and watched the proceedings with his typical lack of interest as, after much more cajoling from the others, one of the drones crawled into the hole to investigate.

“A shocking bit of bad luck, eh?” I said again, trying to keep the mood light, though, if I knew anything about the common soldiery, I imagined that the drones here were more upset at having their off-duty time interrupted by this ridiculous escape attempt than by the escape itself. “Right in the middle of the Changeling barracks. Who would have thought it?”

I realised I was overdoing it a little, so I decided to keep quiet until this was resolved. The drones directed me to sit in the corner of the barracks with Cannon Fodder, under the watchful eyes of two drones, while the others pottered about trying to work out what to do here. There was something strange about the way they behaved, and the reason for it would not become readily apparent for a while, though I would have plenty of time to ponder this conundrum; they did not operate with the sort of single-minded efficiency that had once led many of us to believe in that discredited hive mind theory, but more like a group of raw recruits trying to figure out a complex order before the drill sergeant forces them to do push-ups in the rain again. Perhaps, I thought, they were merely drones who had thought themselves lucky to have been selected for a simple and easy task, and thus having avoided the nightmare of frontline combat to instead foalsit a prince and his ungrateful ponies, they could afford to let standards of discipline slip somewhat.

Sounds of shouting, muffled by the earth, could be heard from the tunnel, and I thought for a moment that what I’d hoped would be a peaceful little capture would be ruined by a pony refusing to accept failure. However, the drone soon returned unharmed and Switchblade emerged behind him, swearing profusely the entire time. Apparently, the message that this plan had gone spectacularly wrong had travelled down the line, for no further ponies were dragged from the hole. Outside, I could hear some sort of commotion going on, but from where I sat I could only make out dark, drone-shaped shadows moving past the windows.

After a while of this, sitting there while the drones milled about and chatted uselessly, the door to the barracks swung open violently and slammed into the wall with a sharp, resonant ‘thud’. Commandant Dorylus strode into the room, and the inane chatter ceased immediately. He looked, for once, as a Purestrain probably ought to; he was out of his dressing gown and cravat, naked in his armoured chitinous hide, and stood there at the door with that all-too-familiar domineering sneer on his face. The drones scrambled with a hideous buzzing noise to their bunks and stood to attention in less than a second’s time, and as he passed them, down the aisle between the rows of bunks, to approach me, he made absolutely no indication that was even aware of their presence.

“Alright, you caught me fair and square,” I said as I rose clumsily to my hooves, hoping to cut off any potential thoughts of severe punishment.

Dorylus stopped, glared down at me with an expression that might have chilled the heart of any other pony who hadn’t been subjected to far worse from Princess Luna, who remains the unquestioned master of such things, then breathed a heavy sigh. Just like that, his masque returned, and he pulled what he thought must have been a sympathetic face, and shook his head softly.

“I’m not angry,” he said, though the tension that lay under his clipped voice told otherwise. “I’m merely disappointed in you.” Dorylus tapped his hoof on the ground, and two of the closest drones scrambled up to him. “Put Prince Blueblood in the Box for me, will you?”

The two drones looked almost apologetic as they seized me by my upper forelegs and dragged me away. I heard Cannon Fodder argue with Dorylus, just as I was removed backwards from the barracks, and the door slamming shut cut off the entire conversation. Whatever my aide was saying, and it was most unusual for him to say more than a single sentence at a time, was unlikely to sway the Commandant.

“Come along, I don’t think this is necessary,” I protested, pulling at my forelegs in a half-hearted way to try and free myself. “I can damn well walk.”

“Orders, sir,” the drone on my left muttered. “Sorry.”

I heard the creaking of a door open, and I rolled my head back to look ‘ahead’, as it were, and saw that a cellar door in the side of the manor, one that had appeared to be concealed in the brickwork just like the entrance to the secret passage we’d discovered, had been opened. Stairs receded into pitch black darkness, and I was dragged down there into a dank, slimy cellar with a low ceiling. There was no light, save for the pale white glow of the moon shining wanly through the open door, which illuminated only the steps down and a square of grey stone slick with dew. The drones released me in the middle of this room, which, as my eyes adjusted to the foreboding gloom, I saw was rather small, about the size of my Canterlot apartment’s lounge, utterly devoid of furniture save for a bucket in the corner whose purpose would become readily apparent soon, and even lacked a door or any other sign of egress save the steps leading up.

It was eminently obvious that I was to be left here as punishment, and inwardly I seethed at both Square Basher for creating the situation that resulted in this predicament and me for not taking more proactive steps in stopping it. Still, I thought, they wouldn’t keep me here for too long.

My guards left me, and Dorylus himself appeared at the cellar doors, peering down at me standing gormlessly around in the dark. Silence descended for a spell, until I could bear the tension no longer and said those immortal words: “I can explain.”

Chapter 10

“I don’t want to hear it,” said Dorylus. He sighed and shook his head in mock disappointment.

“No, really! I have a very good and very convincing explanation for all of this. You see-”

“Prince Blueblood,” he interrupted, holding up his hoof. “I thought we had a gentlecolts’ agreement; you cooperate with my experiment and I won’t have to resort to the more traditional methods of livestock control.”

“A gentlecolts’ agreement is made between two gentlecolts,” I said, with a defiant shrug; being interrupted like that certainly got my gander up. “As with ladies, no gentlecolt would ever describe himself as one, so I shall recuse myself here, but you certainly are no-”

“Shut. Up.”

His words, and the venom in which they were thoroughly drenched, silenced my babbling; one got the impression that he had wanted to say that to me for a desperately long time. In truth, I was positively shaking, though I hoped that if he saw me shivering in the darkness that he would put it down to the chill of the desert night than fear. I had some idea of what the Changelings did to ponies who disobeyed them, and indeed I had heard many grim and grisly stories of grotesque tortures of body, mind, and soul inflicted upon those rare ponies of Virion Hive who had dared to resist their enslavement. Still, save for the aforementioned metal bucket, I could find nothing in here that could foretell what sort of trials I was to be put through, but it was all staring me straight in the face, and it would be worse in a way that I couldn’t have imagined at the time.

“I take no pleasure in this,” he said, and I believed that; it was an admission of failure on his part, that his precious little camp and whatever ideology he was trying to promote amongst the Hives was not the magic panacea for the Changelings’ little food problem after all.

Dorylus lifted his hoof to signal to a drone, unseen by me, when he abruptly looked up and to the side as something else grabbed his attention. I then heard Square Basher’s voice, distant and muffled at first but growing louder by the second, faintly out of breath as though she had been running, imploring him in an increasingly frantic tone to stop. She then swept into view at the trapdoor above me, next to the Commandant.

“It ain’t fair, sir!” said Square Basher, and it was the first time that I’d heard her address Dorylus as ‘sir’, or even acknowledge him at all. “The escape tunnel was my idea, not the Commissar’s. I did all the digging, and he only did a little bit at the end. Get him out and put me in there!”

I was rather shocked, and I imagine Dorylus was too; it was daft beyond all measure, and I simply could not grasp why she, of all ponies, would do such a brave but incredibly stupid thing like admit it was her fault and offer herself up for punishment in my stead, but still, it was all very touching and I hoped the Commandant was in a reasonable mood. Alas, he was not. He merely regarded Square Basher, who was almost tall enough to look him in the eye without much straining, with a peculiar look of curiosity, which bordered on amusement, and then shook his head with a thin smile.

“He is the Commissar,” said Dorylus. “He is the pony in charge, and he should know better. An officer takes responsibility for the actions of the ponies under his command, especially when they operate without his orders, and as a result it is he who will be punished as severely as my experiment here will allow. If he was truly as innocent as you say then he would have put a stop to your escape attempt in the first place. Instead he not only allowed you to continue but actively took part in the attempt.”

“It still ain’t fair,” Square Basher repeated, apparently hoping that her typical bull-headedness, that had served so very well elsewhere with officers and enlisted ponies alike, would prevail here against what Dorylus thought passed for reason.

The Purestrain snorted and shook his head in unconcealed irritation. “Fine,” he hissed. “No ice cream for you and the other ponies for a week, if that will satisfy your desire to be punished, but as for Lord Commissar Prince Blueblood here, his rank and title warrants a more severe punishment.”

The way out of this predicament was right there, blaring angrily at me and demanding to be made heard, but so was Square Basher, and I couldn’t very well admit my deception with her within earshot. All that I had to tell him was that I knew about the planned escape tunnel and had discreetly sabotaged it to ensure our capture; damnation, I was actually helping him in his daft little experiment and thanks to the Company Sergeant Major valiantly protesting my ‘innocence’, I couldn’t bloody say it! I cursed her naive and backward beliefs on military honour, but all that I could do was stand there, despite the overwhelming urge to scream at Dorylus, and try to look all heroic and noble. One would have thought that he would have been able to work it out himself, that it was all terribly convenient for what appeared to be an earnest escape attempt to be foiled by a very simple measuring error, and one that resulted in the tunnel terminating in the barracks, no less, but I could only wonder that he was in fact looking forward to this.

“Go on, Square Basher,” he said, calm and implacable as ice spreading over glass. “Don't make this harder on your ponies t—”

"That's Sergeant Major Square Basher," I cut in, immediately earning a withering look from Dorylus as if someone had just spilled his wine right as he was about to sip. Even so, I managed to meet him without flinching, as my deeply indoctrinated adherence to decorum wasn't so easily shaken.

There was a sharp pause, broken by a sharper snort from Square Basher. I caught her eye then, and what I saw was that damned sense of gratitude, even awe, as if she'd distilled its essence from her whole troop just to be placed on my undeserving head. “I won’t forget this,” she said to Dorylus, though I couldn't help but feel it coming back to me. “The Commissar is one of us.”

She turned and walked away, disappearing from my view; a fat lot of good her solidarity was about to do me, thought I, as I stared up at a bemused Dorylus. Perhaps it would have been better to have taken my chances out in the wild with the Blackhorn patrols and the partisans, but if I hadn’t been trapped in this cell, then… well, I’ll get to that.

“Look, if you’ll just let me damn well explain,” I said, petulantly stomping a hoof like a foal.

Changelings don’t have eyebrows, but the brow ridge above Dorylus’ right eye formed an admirable approximation of that gesture. “Go on,” he said.

I could only pray that Square Basher was out of earshot, or that I could make her believe that I was lying to save my own skin. “I found out about the escape tunnel only when it was halfway through construction, but I couldn’t tell you because I would lose the trust of my soldiers. You must understand, as a fellow leader, how important it is to keep one’s ponies on side, so I changed the map so that we would get caught, and now we have! No harm done.”

“My expectations were higher, sir.” That last word was spat out as though it was rancid cheese. “Even if I believed that ridiculous story of yours, you must still be punished as an example to the others. We can’t have them threatening the success of Camp Joy with repeat escape attempts. I’m sure you must understand, as a fellow leader.”

Then, he looked to one of the drones standing around, who watched the proceedings with only a vague interest. “You,” he said, “take the Prince’s watch, then lock him in there. Hay and water rations only.”

The drone saluted Equestrian-style with his hoof against his forehead. [As opposed to the Changeling style of salute, which was a short, sharp buzzing of wings] He trotted down the steps, and I obligingly held out my left hoof with the small timepiece strapped around it. It was a rather attractive little thing that I’d bought for myself while on a thoroughly unexciting trip to Hayvetia and had somehow survived a week on Hill 70, so I made certain to instruct the drone that I wanted it back after this, whatever it was, was over and done with.

“How long is he to stay there, sir?” the drone asked as he relieved me of my watch. He trotted back up the steps, leaving me alone in the darkness, standing on the single square of pale moonlight on the floor.

“Oh.” Dorylus shrugged. “Until I think he’s learned his lesson.”

The door slammed shut with a sound that put me in mind of a heavy coffin lid being closed, and as the already scant amount of light was extinguished and I was plunged into a most opaque and impenetrable blackness the analogy felt all too apt. There was the mechanical sound of a large key turning a heavy lock. So, I reasoned, I was to be kept down here by way of punishment for my part in this escape attempt, and hopefully not for terribly long. Still, it could have gone a damned sight worse -- at least I wasn’t being flogged.

I sat on the floor, but presently the cold, hard stone made my flanks ache, so I resorted to standing. There were no chairs, and no bed either for that matter, so that at least implied to me that they did not expect me to sleep here, and therefore I would be out of here in no time, or so I thought. Still, I was already getting pretty bored, and it must have only been a few minutes by my guess, so I decided to pace around the room for a bit. My eyes had accustomed to the pitch blackness somewhat and there was nothing here, aside from the empty bucket, so there was little chance of me bumping into anything, and after a few paces in a clockwise circle around the perimeter, I found that it was about ten and a half paces long and five and a quarter paces wide, give or take a few depending on how long my strides were. Going in the opposite direction brought a brief moment of novelty and interest, but it had just as quickly faded when it brought the same conclusion as before.

After a vague amount of time had passed of this, I gave up and threw myself upon the hard, cold floor, where the sensation of pain provided at least a modest diversion from the boredom. Something jabbed into my ribs when I landed on my front, and I realised that Slab was still sitting happily in my jacket’s inner breast pocket. Hissing with pain and annoyance, I removed him from my pocket and propped him up against the wall.

“Well,” I said, “this is a fine state of affairs we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

Slab stared stonily back at me.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that; we’re both in this mess together.”

It might have been rather premature for me to start losing my mind and talk to inanimate blocks of stone, but one must remember that it was exceedingly rare for me to ever be truly alone; privacy and solitude were non-existent in the Royal Guard, even for officers, but even at home in Canterlot or whatever part of Equestria I happened to be staying in, I was always surrounded by servants who, even if I rarely acknowledged them unless I wanted something or they happened to be in my way during one of my blacker moods, were still a constant and reassuring presence that I now sorely missed. Even, however, if I was staying in my apartment in downtown Canterlot and Drape Cut had the evening off and was doing only Luna knows what, I could still nip out to a bar, club, brothel, or all three, as and when I pleased.

Now I was well and truly isolated from everypony, even though I knew that they were merely a single shut door away, and the thought spiralled, taking on other anxieties and neurotic thoughts that had previously set up shop in the darkest recesses of my own psyche. I got up, ascended the stairs with renewed energy, and tried the handle; it was locked, of course, so I threw my shoulder against it. The door remained firmly shut and I bounced off it, stumbling down a few steps. There was a dull, throbbing ache where I had collided with it.

“Oi, stop that!” I heard a voice call out from behind the door, presumably the bored sentry placed to watch over me. It was something to break up the empty tedium, so I tried again, feeling strangely exhilarated at causing some sort of reaction.

This time, the door opened, and I was relieved to see something beyond those four walls; it was still dark outside, though to me it looked as though the sky was just starting to lighten somewhat. The guard, another drone who looked much like any other with a sour expression on his face, pointed the butt of his musket square at my chest and gave me a forceful shove. I fell backwards, skidded down the short flight of steps, and fell in a heap on the floor at its base.

“Cut it out, or you’ll be in there for even longer,” he hissed, then slammed the door shut again, and I heard again the sound of the key grating in the heavy lock.

Well, so much for that. Though antagonising the guard was to be my only source of stimulation, it was hardly conducive to me getting out of here any time soon. There was nothing to do then, except lie down on the unforgiving stone floor, though it was cold and hard, and consider just how damned unfair this whole situation was. I had been hoisted by my own petard enough times for my behaviour in the past, the events of that Grand Galloping Gala with Rarity quite possibly the most public of them, though sleeping with Earthshaker’s ‘wife’ garnered the most severe punishment, but it seemed as though trying to do the right thing, as far as I could see it, had very much the same result, though this time my feelings of having been unjustly slighted were more than justified. Whatever I did would result in something horrible happening to me, and that counted for not doing anything at all, too. So, I concluded, as I laid there on the ground and counted the bricks in the opposite wall, I was simply fated by whatever divine or diabolical spirits that watched over the course of my life to have it completely screwed over at any given opportunity, and typically just when I think things are finally going my way.

Except, however, I wasn’t entirely alone here; I was trapped with myself, and that proved to be the worst possible pony with whom I could have been incarcerated, with the possible exception of Mr Stripes’ demented daughter, perhaps. With no other source of distraction, save for pacing around the room and counting my steps again, I could only lie there and listen to the little, nagging voice in my head that told me that, by all rights and if the universe truly had a sense of justice about it, I really ought to have been dead by now, run through by a Changeling bayonet on Hill 70, and Frostbite alive in my place, and Red Coat too, for that matter, and however many others more deserving of life I had seen fall in this horrendous conflict. The voice, my own, told me that I was a drunk, useless parasite, which, looking back on it now, was mostly echoing what those hack, populist tabloids wrote of me during those odd spells where there was nothing else more edifying to report on, but, as I was trapped in that dark cell, it sounded more honest coming from within my own head.

Time passed. I understood why they had taken my watch; the long wait might have been marginally more tolerable if I could measure how long it took, but now I had no way to measure the passage of time except to watch the light through the cracks in the door herald each day. About three times a day I was fed the promised diet of hay and water, which became something that I looked forward to immensely as the only source of stimulation I would receive. Yet it never felt like enough, both in terms of nourishment and in taste, but it was something to look forward to.

I must have slept in that time, for I had dreams; strange ones that I barely remember now, but always of blood and dust and beasts, but that my weakening grasp on sanity, already withered by years of war, could have formed these images while awake and lucid had occurred to me. So when light suddenly flooded into the room, blinding my eyes with its brilliance, from a rectangular hole that had formed in the wall opposite the door, I was all but certain that I was either dreaming or hallucinating.

A tall, broad figure was silhouetted in the square of light, and its long dark shadow was cast upon the cold floor. It stood there on the precipice, apparently looking around the room, before its gaze settled upon the pathetic form of Yours Truly, lying on his side against the opposite wall, next to the steps that led up to the door out. I lifted my head, squinting into the bright light until my eyes adjusted to its brilliance, and I saw that it was merely that of a candle that had been placed on the floor behind the figure.

“Sir?” whispered Square Basher, but after such a long period of silence, the voice of another pony other than my own or from within my own head was almost deafening. She walked into my cell with slow, cautious steps, as though entering the cage of a wild animal that might suddenly lash out and attack without warning.

“Square Basher?” I tried to stand up and maintain what little of my dignity I still had after an interminable amount of time in this cellar. “Are you real?”

She stopped abruptly, apparently taken aback by my question. “Yes, sir,” she said after some thought.

“Sorry, it’s been rather tricky working out what is and what isn’t real, down here.” In truth, I could have run up and hugged her, so desperate was I for equine contact, but even despite all that I had been through these past hours, days, or however long I had been here, that would have been unseemly. Instead, I merely stood there dumbly, most likely looking rather terrible. “What are you doing here? What if you get caught? It’s much too risky.”

My words seemed to have come out as a rapid babble, in contrast to the usual sort of practised, refined speech that many long hours of elocution lessons had forced upon me. My expressed concern, however, was not on her well-being, after all, it should have been her stuck in here and I’m certain she would have weathered the misery better than I anyway, but were she caught in here with me, that would likely spell even more pain for me too.

“Cannon Fodder showed me the secret passages,” she explained, “and he’s out there keeping an eye out for any guards. That bug with the Daring Do fetish bribed the other guards with some Power Ponies comics.”

“Can they be trusted?”

“Well, sir.” She sighed and shook her head. “You can never trust them, but there’s something… something funny about this lot that I just can’t put my hoof on, sir, not that it’s my place to say, of course, and well, frankly, I think it’s worth the risk.” An awkward smile formed on her lips. “If you don’t mind me saying, you look dreadful, sir.”

“I feel it too,” I said, which was probably the closest to emotional honesty anypony was ever going to get out of me. “How long have I been down here?”

“Two days, sir,” she said with a grave nod. “We told Dorylus we wanted you out, but he said no, so we took matters into our own hooves, sir.”

I could hardly believe it; only two days here and I already felt as though I was losing what little remained of my mind. “But you heard the Commandant; I’m the officer here, and the responsibility is mine. I don’t want you and the others risking themselves on my account.”

Square Basher moved closer, and I saw that she had a pair of loaded saddle bags strapped to her back. She sat down next to me, quite close, such that, if the mood took her, she might rest her head on my shoulder, and started unpacking the bags.

“I ain’t not never disobeyed an order from an officer, sir,” she said, as she produced books, scraps of paper, candles, matches, cakes, and, most oddly, a cricket ball from the saddle bags. All well and good, but the final item was what truly lifted my spirits: a bottle of brandy. “Not ever. But this time I have to break a twenty year streak. A good sergeant looks after her officer, and for now you’re my officer.”

So that explained it, thought I, as she continued to empty the goodies from her saddle bags; with Captains Red Coat and Frostbite both gone, I was to be her surrogate officer, and given her recent track record, that didn’t fill me with much hope. I suppose such thoughts were rather insensitive, looking back now, but at the time I was hardly in the right state of mind to feel fair about her predicament. Nevertheless, I knew that she had taken both Red Coat’s and Frostbite’s deaths rather hard, as a personal as well as professional failing on her part, and would then latch onto Yours Truly as a result of her apparent maternal need to look after young officers. She would have to have realised that this latest misery I was being put through was largely her fault, and that she was trying, in her own small way, to make up for it. As always, she would never say as much, but it was abundantly clear to me.

“I wanted to get you a few things,” she continued, arranging them out in front of me as though I was a foal and it was my birthday, “and the other ponies helped out, too.”

Most of it was stolen, of course, as she explained that Switchblade’s pre-war side-job in breaking-and-entering for the purposes of common burglary proved to be rather useful in procuring cakes from the kitchens and the books from the library, but it was the thought that counted. I was actually rather touched by this little gesture; it was quite inconceivable for me to consider that ponies might like me enough to get me gifts, or at least steal them, when I can usually afford to buy whatever I wanted (when not incarcerated, that is). Of course, it wasn’t the real me that they liked, but merely the idea of me that they had formed in their heads, and even then I could only imagine that Square Basher had done this to alleviate her sense of guilt.

Still, she stayed with me for a while, and we chatted aimlessly about nothing while taking alternate swigs from the rather agreeable bottle of brandy. “Switchblade lifted it from Dorylus’ own drinks cabinet,” she explained as she hoofed it back to me.

I took another sip, though after wiping the rim with my quite grubby sleeve. “Knowing that does make it taste rather better, don’t you think?”

Square Basher chuckled politely. We had lit a few of the candles, which mercifully provided some measure of dim light to see by, but hopefully not enough to alert the clearly inattentive and presumably deaf guard standing around outside.

A lull had formed in the conversation, so I fell back on that usual standby of small talk with the lower orders: “What will you do after the war?”

She looked at me as if I’d just asked her to present a dissertation on advanced magical theory. “After the war?” I nodded, and she shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. I haven’t thought about it much. I guess I’ll stay with the Army, when it turns back to the Royal Guard, and carry on as before.”

“Nopony waiting for you back home?” I asked, somewhat drunkenly. “No thought of life outside of the military?”

“The Royal Guard’s my husband,” she said, and then pointed to her cutie mark. With her flanks bare for perhaps the first time since I’d met her, I could see that her cutie mark was a single marching hoof clad in armour that was both functional and unadorned by decoration. “My special talent is keeping ponies in line, sir, so the Royal Guard’s an obvious choice; it doesn’t have much application outside of that, except maybe, I dunno, being a bouncer, but that doesn’t appeal to me. This job is what I’m best at; I’m good at it, and it’s good to me.”

I doubted that last bit very much, but I kept quiet on that account. It might have been the rather fragile state that I was in after two whole days stuck in this hateful little place, but I felt rather sorry for her; I suppose I needn’t have, though she might have had a life filled with rigid military structure, she seemed to have truly thrived in it. Perhaps it was more the case that I simply could not understand it, but there was little that I understood of the lower orders anyway, and vice versa. If pressed, I might say that she had found a level of order, familiarity, and control that I, with my very different upbringing, background, and social class, chafed under and resented to the core.

“What about you, sir?” she asked.

“Go back to being a prince and enjoy the peace and quiet,” I said, in another rare case of unfiltered honesty.

“Just like that, sir?” She let the question linger with its unspoken follow-up: even after something like Virion Hive?

“A prince doesn’t have much of a choice,” I answered flippantly. “Go home and try to carry on as though none of this ever happened.”

I was rather struck by how informal Square Basher was with me at that moment, but then again, given the circumstances, so was I; her innate awkwardness around her social betters still persisted somewhat, but she seemed to have relaxed a little around my presence. The flickering golden glow of the candles seemed to accentuate her strong, tall, and broad frame quite nicely, and there was certainly a strange appeal to her muscular, unrefined physique that I had not considered before, I thought.

Bear in mind that it had been quite a long time since I had last been with a mare, by my standards, and by ‘mare’ I mean a real one and not one of the Changelings in Dorylus’ perverse pleasure manor. Furthermore, with the two of us being rather tipsy and emotionally compromised, and, in spite of everything else, Yours Truly remaining Canterlot’s most eligible bachelor, what followed was inevitable. Though a mutual expression of spontaneous lust - one minute we were swigging from the bottle and the next we were clumsily going at it on the floor like inebriated rabbits - it remained an awkward albeit pleasurable affair; we were still, after all, in a small, hard, cold cell with an unpleasant odour and the threat of discovery over our heads, but I think that, if anything, added a frisson of danger and seediness that only served to contribute to the excitement, rather like stealing away with the host’s wife to the servants’ quarters at a society party. Square Basher proved to be an inexperienced but enthusiastic partner, and though she would neither confirm nor deny the accusation, I would have assumed based on her unexpectedly submissive performance, that this mare more than a decade my senior had never known the intimate touch of another before.

We carried on, with the two of us rutting away uninterrupted until we both lay in each other’s hooves gasping, exhausted, and sated, and it was a damned miracle that the drone standing guard behind the door didn’t pop his head in to find out what all the noise we were making was about. Perhaps he knew and didn’t care; I had a nascent and unproven theory that the drones’ opinions of Commandant Dorylus were about on par with ours. Then again, the average drone continued to possess some level of naivety about ponies that was almost endearing, and this one might have assumed that I was up to some bizarre solo equine activity that he didn’t deem worth interrupting.

Nevertheless, I felt content for perhaps the first time in a desperately long while, and not merely due to having my own carnal desires indulged. For a brief moment, as I held her body to mine, I could at least lose myself in the quaint fantasy of having a pony who truly cared about me. Anything beyond a brief liaison would never have lasted, of course; the gulf in social class was already a yawning chasm, but as Square Basher had said, her true love was the Royal Guard, and though not a jealous partner, it was a demanding one.

The moment could not last forever; for after a period of undefined time she pulled herself out of my embrace with some measure of reluctance, and stood up. Her mane was unkempt and her coat matted with dust and sweat.

“Well, sir,” she said falteringly, blushing deep red with embarrassment. “That was, uh… nice?”

I was lying on the floor still, gazing up at her, and chuckled. “Only ‘nice’?”

Her cheeks turned an even deeper shade of crimson. “I didn’t mean that, sir, it’s just that, well…”

She trailed off, so I finished the thought for her: “I know, we must never speak of this to anypony. Speaking of which, I’m sure you’re needed to keep them in line while I’m stuck in here. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

“Yes, sir.” She saluted with her usual parade ground efficiency. “We’ll be waiting for you when you get out, and then we’ll give it another shot. Escaping, that is, sir.”

With that, she left through the secret passage from which she had come, shutting the door behind her with a final thud that seemed to hammer home how alone I was again. So, there it was, I’d do my time here, hopefully with time off for good behaviour assuming the gifts I had been given weren’t discovered, and then repeat this whole silly process once more. I suppose if I could get somewhat used to military life in the Commissariat, I might even become accustomed to this insane cycle until finally liberated from either the camp or from life, whichever came first.

Still, the books and treats helped to alleviate my sour mood, and the memory of my moment of indiscretion with Square Basher provided some relief during moments of particular loneliness, but aside from that, the following period of time of indeterminate length proceeded much in the same way as that before it. What I feared most, however, between trying to read a Daring Do story I had already read before by fading candlelight and bouncing the cricket ball against the wall and failing to catch it again, was getting used to the solitude, where I would then have to get used to being in ‘normal’ society again.

I found, however, that I could overhear the conversations between the guards at the cellar door if I sat close and pressed my ear against its wooden surface. Much of it was banal, but as it was something new in a cell that lacked anything of the sort, I found myself getting quite engrossed in the pointless, empty gossip they exchanged when swapping shifts -- a drone named Arista was worried about being transferred to the frontline infantry, and was trying to sabotage that by volunteering for work in the kitchens instead, where she made a very nice key lime pie for the prisoners with the scant ingredients they could get; another one whose name escapes me was wondering where his ‘friend’ Thorax had disappeared to, and that particular name would not become important to me for a great while; and so on. It was remarkably reassuring, however, to hear that the hated enemy, hell-bent on the destruction of Equestria and all that we hold dear, was also capable of being so very, very dull.

This time, however, it was interesting, which was deeply concerning.

“I saw her!” one exclaimed.

“What’re you on about now?” said the other, annoyed.

“The Queen! She’s visiting the Commandant right now in the dining room, having a meeting with a load of other Purestrains, and she looked right at me in the corridor. She seemed to give me a little nod to tell me that I’m serving the Hives well here.”

“Or ‘look at that hideous freak, how did someling as ugly as him make it to adulthood without being mistaken for an infant bugbear and killed?’.”

“Screw you. I got to see her and you didn’t.”

I stepped back from the door, feeling an unexpected wave of dizziness at the news that Queen Chrysalis was here, of all places. My first thought was that she was here to see me, and that filled me with a sense of dread that I hadn’t felt since I marched up that damned hill; of course she would want to see Princess Celestia’s favourite nephew and satisfy her enormous but fragile ego by gloating over me, and, to be terribly honest, I was not exactly in the mood for it. If this was all part of a choreographed visit for the purposes of propaganda, and no doubt an opportunity for Dorylus to show off his model camp, then I would pettily try to ruin it by simply not being in my cell when she inevitably came to visit.

That she wasn’t here to see me specifically, and instead had more pressing matters to attend to with Dorylus, hadn’t occurred to me at that moment, but why else would she have come all this way into the middle of nowhere if not to? I found the secret door through which Square Basher had visited me with only a few minutes of fumbling around the stones in the wall, until I found the hidden catch that unlocked it and pushed it open. A sensation of trepidation filled me as I looked into the dark, empty corridor, not for the thought of being caught down here, but merely out of leaving the cell that had been my home for the past week or so; it was a great risk, of course, but all this time of isolation had destroyed what little sense of goodwill that I had for Dorylus, and I was quite willing to suffer more misery merely to spite him.

I crept into the corridor, moving one hoof slowly at a time to move as silently as I possibly could. The tunnel was narrow and low, so I had to squeeze awkwardly through it, and there was no light so I had to feel my way along. I ascended a flight of steps and came to yet another corridor, with a junction that branched ahead and then right; my special talent seemed to pull me to the right, so I followed dutifully.

Though my initial intention had been merely to hide, that Queen Chrysalis herself was here and meeting with Dorylus certainly implied that there was something of great importance being discussed -- well, not so much ‘implied’ as being screamed from the top of Mount Everhoof for all to hear. Far be it from me to want to willingly put myself anywhere near that violent, tyrannical brute, but curiosity had gotten the better of me; besides, thought I, if and when Market Garden’s forces valiantly liberate this place and I’m invariably asked what did I do to serve Princesses and Country here, I could say that I uncovered some invaluable titbit of intelligence that will help us win this war.

With that in mind, I carried on, past those steps leading up into other rooms and straining occasionally to hear the muffled voices in conversation behind them. Soon, after much squeezing through these narrow and low passages, I came to the steps and the door that my mental map of the manor told me led to the dining room. I slowly crept up those steps, and, after a moment of pause where I listened to the faint conversation filtered through a plank of wood, gently pushed it open just enough to peer through the narrow slit between the door and the wall.

“...devoted a considerable amount of valuable resources to your pet projects, Dorylus. Your ambition is admirable, but I demand results.”

There she was: Queen Chrysalis, sitting at one end of the long dining table with her back to me. Her size and silhouette were unmistakable; she towered over the Purestrains who sat at the opposite end, all of whom had taken the seats furthest from her as possible. The light from the many candles on the chandelier reflected off her black polished chitin, and highlighted even from my perspective in the corner and low to the ground her sharp, aquiline face, seemingly fixed in an arrogant and condescending sneer. I felt a sudden chill crawl down my back, and the memory of her standing before me at Fort E-5150 flashed vividly in my mind. Standing next to her, not sitting, was a drone, bearing a notepad and pencil, jotting down what I took to be the minutes of the meeting, and who put me in mind of Celestia’s own personal assistant.

Dorylus sat at the head of the table, directly opposite the Queen, still clad in his incongruous velvet smoking jacket and garish paisley cravat, and nervously fiddled his hooves together. To his right sat Hive Marshal Chela, who certainly looked as though she would much rather be anywhere else than here, judging by her bored expression, but was doing her best to hide it. Opposite her was another Purestrain whom I had never seen before; he was rather shorter and slimmer than most of his ilk, almost resembling an ordinary drone to my eyes, with an almost weasel-like demeanour that was only emphasised by the peculiar set of spectacles perched on the bridge of his short, blunt nose. He wore a plain, grey uniform that was adorned only by an insignia patch sewn onto his upper sleeve -- a jagged black Changeling’s horn.

They appeared not to have seen me or noticed that a portion of the wall was slightly askew, so, despite the very obvious risk, I lowered myself down to my belly, as if that might make me less visible, to listen. I still had my old fountain pen in my pocket and some scraps of paper, so I started doing my best to record everything I’d heard.

[Only fragments of official documentation of this meeting survived the war. Prince Blueblood’s description here, only now unearthed and available to approved individuals, is based on the brief notes he made at the time and the gaps filled in by his remarkable memory, and is now the most authoritative description of the meeting. This is corroborated by the few surviving minutes taken by Queen Chrysalis’ personal assistant and secretary, Asopinae, and by the few Changelings who stood guard in the room.]

“Of course, my Queen,” said Dorylus, with a hint of anxiety inflecting his voice. “But please remember that these are hardened Royal Guard veterans and an Equestrian prince; the common ponies will be more receptive to these ideas.”

“You have so far uncovered no useful information, besides the locations of Prince Blueblood’s top three burlesque houses in Prance.” The Changeling with the glasses laughed with a thin, reedy voice. “Your theories would have our proud species reduced to that of servants, carers, if you will, for a weak, decadent one.”

“They are decadent, yes,” answered Dorylus. “But no longer weak. The longer this war goes on, the stronger they will become. My plan will keep them in a state of decadence and dependency, so that the Hives may never go hungry again.”

“But have you considered what will happen to us?”

“I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.”

“Without the ever-present threats of slave uprisings our drones will have nothing to struggle for; they too will become as weak and decadent as the ponies, until we are all conquered by a stronger, more virile, more aggressive species. I have seen the drones you have recruited for this camp -- aberrants and dissidents all, who ought to have had a spell in a correction camp to become productive servants of the Hives. You will merely encourage more of them to be non-conformists.”

“This is the perfect place for those aberrant drones to still serve our Queen in their own way, instead of having their potential wasted in your camps.”

A slam of a heavy hoof on the dining table and a splintering of wood silenced the inane drivel from the two Purestrains. The weaselly one with glasses almost jumped out of his chitin. “Enough!” snarled Chrysalis. “We waste time with this stupid bickering. Dorylus, proceed with enlightening Chela and Ommatidium with the details of Operation: Sunburn.”

[Ommatidium was the head of the Blackhorns and a leading member of Chrysalis’ high command. By the time of the attack on Canterlot he had gained control of the entire internal security apparatus of the Hives, including what passed for conventional police and militia units as well as the Queen’s Attendants, who maintained ideological purity within the armed forces, making him one of the most powerful Purestrains in the Hives and the chief architect of the system of repression of native ponies in the occupied Badlands.]

“Thank you, my Queen.” Dorylus rose to his hooves, cleared his throat, and was about to read from a sheaf of papers when Chrysalis interrupted him.

“I can’t take you seriously when you’re dressed like that,” she said.

“Oh, right.”

There was an awkward moment where Dorylus disrobed and handed his smoking jacket and cravat to a waiting servant, while that Ommatidium fellow, whom I had taken an instant and almost instinctive dislike of in excess of the normal sense of revulsion that I feel in the presence of his kind, made that hideous laugh again. From where I was hiding, I had no idea that he was perhaps one of the most hated of Changelings in the Hives besides Chrysalis herself, but I sometimes find that my gut reaction is often the right one; his insane ramblings about weakness that echoed Odonata’s half-hearted screeds certainly did not improve my perception of him.

Now suitably attired to deliver the correct information, which is to say in the nude, Dorylus could finally begin:

“The overwhelming bulk of Equestria’s military force and attention is engaged with invading the Heartlands, which our brave war-swarms are valiantly resisting to the last drop of ichor. They hope to bring a swift end to this war, but their single-minded fixation grants us a unique opportunity to end this war faster than they anticipate and in our favour. The defence commanded by Hive Marshal Chela and the sacrifice of her drones has bought us time to plan and execute Operation: Sunburn.

“My Queen, your forces last month invaded and occupied the enemy’s colonial trading city of Marelacca in the east, which they believe is to be used as a staging post for an invasion into the jewel in the crown of their empire, Coltcutta. They are wrong only in the target and the scope of our invasion. With the airships generously donated by our ally, which our infiltrators assure us the enemy remains ignorant of, we are now in possession of a staging post to strike at key, undefended targets on the east coast of Equestria itself: Trottingham, Manehattan, and Fillydelphia.”

My breath caught in my throat, and I could hardly believe what I was hearing. News from outside the manor had been strictly controlled, and I had no idea that Marelacca had fallen to the enemy, but even if I had I could not have guessed that it was merely part of their audacious plan.

“And how certain are you that they are undefended?” asked Chela, and even from where I sat I could see from her face that she already disapproved. That, at least, gave me some small measure of hope.

“Our intelligence indicates that those cities are defended only by reserve units depleted of ponies and weapons for the front and by local police forces. Infiltrator cells in each target city and Canterlot itself will conduct sabotage of key communication facilities and assassinations of key ponies to ensure maximum chaos and confusion as we invade. The enemy will offer only minimal resistance to our war-swarms.”

Chela shrugged in response, but otherwise said nothing, so Dorylus carried on.

“Upon conquering those three key cities we will have taken a third of Equestria’s heavy industry dedicated to war production as well as the population that supports it, who will in turn be put to use feeding our swarms. More importantly, we will have secured a beachhead from which to strike further inland, taking Baltimare within two days and Canterlot within the week before they have a chance to move any divisions to counter our invasion.”

[Dorylus’ estimate is too low here: the industrialised cities of Manehattan, Trottingham, and Fillydelphia together contributed just under half of the total war materiel production in Equestria at the time, though there had been continued rapid expansion further afield in cities such as Stalliongrad and Detrot. He also appears to have forgotten about the Equestrian rail system, which would have allowed rapid redeployment of divisions from the south, which has led some historians to argue that this was only intended as a diversion for Chela’s counter-offensive. However, despite this oversight, this testimony from Prince Blueblood proves that Operation: Sunburn was a real attempt to win the war swiftly.]

I heard Chrysalis growl, like an aggressive beast that had been poked with a stick a few too many times. “I want Canterlot wiped off the map and its ponies enslaved; no trace of the city is to remain on the face of that mountain, and anypony who even mentions its existence is to have their tongue removed. Ponyville, too.”

Even Dorylus seemed to be taken aback by the sheer, concentrated venom in his Queen’s voice, so he meekly nodded his head; I guessed that she was still rather sore about that embarrassing failure with my cousin’s wedding. “O-of course, my Queen,” he stammered out. “With their eastern seaboard conquered and Canterlot… uh, destroyed, we can expect the immediate capitulation of Equestria; they will beg us to come to the negotiating table, and we will be at liberty to demand whatever terms we deem necessary. Operation: Sunburn will win us this war!”

I could only listen in sheer horror at all of this, unable to breath, and scarcely keeping up with scribbling down the notes. Odonata had warned us of this, in her usual cryptic way, that as the war situation continues to develop against the Changelings that Chrysalis will be forced to turn to increasingly outlandish and desperate plots in order to win it, and I had just witnessed this first hoof. Nothing that I could have imagined would come close to the sheer audacity and daring of this plan, which was nothing short of the surprise invasion of almost the entire east coast of our fair realm, or the parts that mattered at least, and assuming that Dorylus’ assessment of our defences was correct, and given the amount of their spies in seemingly every nook and cranny of our society, I couldn’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t be. They might actually be able to pull it off.

Ommatidium laughed that horrid, inane laughter of his, and I wondered how Changelings could stand to be in his presence without slapping him; being the leader of a ruthless secret police force must have helped with that. “My, it is wonderfully ambitious, isn’t it?” he said, grinning. The smile rapidly fell from his face as he turned to Chela, who sat opposite him, “Do you not approve, Hive Marshal?”

A short, tense silence fell, as thick as jelly, as Chela seemed to be carefully considering her next words. She looked to Ommatidium, then Chrysalis, then back at the irritating little tyrant sitting before her. “You’re right, it is ambitious,” she said coolly. “If we consider, perhaps, that this Operation: Sunburn proceeds exactly as planned - the enemy is taken completely by surprise, our forces land unopposed on the target cities, they march inland to take Baltimare and Canterlot, and we somehow keep them all supplied from hundreds of miles away - then what?”

“The ponies capitulate, obviously,” said Dorylus, sneering.

“Will they?” asked Chela. She looked around, apparently for support, but found none and, as I had seen before when somepony realises that they are the last sane one around, decided to proceed anyway. “Equestria is big, my Queen. Suppose that we take the east coast and raze Canterlot to the ground, suppose we capture their princesses and the Elements of Harmony, can we assume even for a minute that the remaining portions of Equestria - Los Alicornios, Vanhoover, the Crystal Empire, Prance, and so on - will just give up? The entire bulk of the Equestrian Army is still driving straight into our Heartlands, and-”

Chrysalis interrupted her: “Why haven’t you stopped them? That is your job, after all.”

“My Queen, the Equestrians possess every advantage in numbers, materiel, firepower, and magic,” snapped Chela, her voice rising and her tone growing short. “The only attribute they lack is initiative; with each advance, Market Garden just stops and waits until she’s ready.”

“I believe it is you who lacks initiative,” said Chrysalis. I could hear her hoof tapping on the damaged table. “Or have lost it when I appointed you Hive Marshal and put you to defending our Hives from this invasion. You halted Market Garden’s advance on Mandarina Hive last week, but did not follow it up with a counter-attack as I had specifically ordered; two years ago you would have chased her all the way back to the border!”

“Two years ago the enemy were not as numerous or as organised as they are now, while my forces are all but spent in Hardscrabble’s meal grinder. My war-swarms are exhausted, understrength, and are running through drones and equipment faster than they can be replaced. The enemy is slowly wearing us down at their leisure, while we are already at our limit just holding them back. Now I find that drones have been taken for this extremely risky operation, when they could have been better used for forcing the sort of breakthrough you demand of me on the only front that truly matters.”

“Excuses, excuses,” Chrysalis sneered, with her voice positively dripping venom all over the table between them. “That’s all you ever bring me now. You used to bring me victories, but now it’s excuse after excuse after excuse.”

“Surely,” began Ommatidium, apparently out of a need to be seen to be joining in, “Chela, as your swarms take casualties, only the weakest drones die, leaving the strongest fighters to thrive, thus actually improving the combat effectiveness of your forces?”

I couldn’t clearly see Chrysalis’ face from where I lay on the floor, but Chela’s was a perfect picture of somepony who had just listened to the most stupid and idiotic thing they have ever heard and will likely ever hear, and could not even begin to form an adequate response to it. All she could do was frown, gape in amazement, and shake her head at such exquisite ignorance of the most basic facts of war and indeed reality itself. Everyone at the table wisely chose to ignore Ommatidium, who merely sat there chuckling to himself as if at some private joke.

“I merely present you with the facts, my Queen,” said Chela, when she had recovered. “It is up to you to interpret those facts and guide us, as you have always done.”

“Don’t you patronise me!” Chrysalis shouted. The drones on guard shuddered at her voice, and even Chela looked suitably admonished. “You only present me with your facts to fit whatever your agenda is. Tell me, Chela, what do you think is the proper interpretation of your facts?”

I could see that Chela was tense, with her hooves nervously fiddling with something, perhaps a pencil, on the table; she looked far from the confident military genius I had dined with. “We are thoroughly outmatched in the field, and the best we can hope for is to delay the Equestrian advance. Ponies have little stomach for war, not in the long-term, and the longer we can drag it out the more unpopular it will be at home, until they are ready to come to a negotiated settlement with us. I have prepared a plan for a defensive line the likes of which has never been seen in all of history; if we retreat, taking enough livestock to sustain us and leaving nothing to the enemy, we can hold out until they are prepared to negotiate.”

[Chela’s plans for a defensive line, which she had first planned on calling the Dynastinae Line after a legendary Changeling hero, would eventually become the formidable Chrysalis Line later in the war, which in the final weeks of the war held the Equestrian advance in a stalemate until it was eventually broken by the Yakyakistani Expeditionary Force.]

“No!” Chrysalis’ voice challenged even Luna’s Royal Canterlot Voice in volume. “Every inch of our land must be defended to the last drop of ichor. I don’t want to hear the word ‘retreat’ from you ever again, Chela.”

“My Queen, please, my swarms are stretched thin defending against three Equestrian armies. If we ret… fall back to prepared positions, then they will bleed themselves white trying to break them, and then they will be amenable to peace negotiations.”

“And have you forgotten,” interjected Ommatidium, “that Princess, no, Warmistress Celestia has stated there can be no negotiated peace with the Hives while Chrysalis is Queen?” He flashed a hideous grin. “Unless, that is precisely what you want.”

“My Queen, no!” exclaimed Chela. “Chrysalis is the Hive and the Hive is Chrysalis! I mean only that even the Princesses must be receptive to the will of their subjects. Celestia will not offer unreasonable terms.”

Like any good host, Dorylus had by now realised that the tone of the evening had taken a drastic turn for the worse and stepped in to try and remedy the situation before one of them ordered the execution of the other. He produced a manila envelope, practically bulging with documents, and tossed it onto the table before him where it landed with the same sense of finality as a judge’s gavel.

“My Queen has already given her assent to Operation: Sunburn,” he said quite loudly, “this meeting was only a formality to bring Chela and Ommatidium up to speed, and to ensure their compliance with all necessary orders to ensure its success. Preparation for Sunburn is already at an advanced stage; we have the airships in the Marelacca docks, the war-swarms are mustered there too, and we are only waiting for our infiltrator teams to prepare for their campaign of sabotage.”

“Very good, Dorylus,” said Chrysalis, and the Commandant preened with pride. “You see, Chela, where you only come to me with problems and excuses, others have been hard at work devising the plans that will win us this war. You are incapable of thinking about the bigger picture; when the Equestrians see their beloved Canterlot in ruins they will scream for surrender!”

I watched Chela carefully; her lips were tight and her eyes narrow, and I could see the tension in her tall, thin body. “Of course, my Queen,” she said finally. “My apologies; I had only been thinking of my own battles.”

“Then I suggest you confine your opinions to the battlefield where they belong. Chela, there will be no negotiated peace with Equestria, only conquest, only total victory. Is that understood?”

“Yes, my Queen,” mumbled Chela half-heartedly.

“Good. As for now, we are all in agreement; Operation: Sunburn will go ahead as planned, and I will go to Marelacca to personally oversee the arrangements.”

The drone by Chrysalis' side, who had hitherto been silently taking notes, spoke: “My Queen, forgive me, but the city of Marelacca has only been under our occupation for three weeks. Compliance is low and the population is resisting your rule.”

[Asopinae was Chrysalis’ personal assistant and secretary, but had by this point used her position overseeing the Queen’s schedule and controlling access to her to acquire a considerable amount of political clout. Though it might seem strange that a mere secretary would speak out of turn, it demonstrates Chrysalis’ trust in her, and her reputation.]

“Oh come now!” Ommatidium laughed again, and I wished I could stab him with my pen and make him stop that sickeningly giddy noise. “Surely it is not as bad as all that. My Blackhorns are already in the city, ready to enforce the Queen’s will; resistance is to be expected, but as before, we will stamp it out with our tried and true methods.”

“Your methods result in a lot of dead livestock,” said Dorylus. “Dead livestock is useless to the Hives.”

“Can we have one meeting that doesn’t devolve into your petty bickering with one another?” snapped Chrysalis. She stood up, pushing the heavy chair back behind her with a loud scrape of wood on wood. “My decision is final; an operation of this magnitude and importance cannot be left to individual Purestrains to ruin with their incompetence. I will be there to ensure that nothing is left to chance. Make the necessary arrangements for me to depart at dawn tomorrow, but now I must return to the Palace.”

The others likewise rose to their hooves with their heads bowed. Dorylus asked if Chrysalis would like to see me directly, at which I felt a sharp pang of fear and readied myself to hide further inside the tunnels, but the Queen merely spat, “Why would I want to see that useless, disgusting wretch?” and stormed out. Though relieved, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit insulted at that, though I suppose I have been called far worse by far better ponies in my time.

I waited until Chrysalis had left, followed by Ommatidium on her heels like a faithful puppy and Dorylus. However, Chela lingered for a moment, then stepped around the table straight towards where I was hiding. In spite of the obvious danger, I remained rooted to the spot, hoping that the oppressive darkness I was bathed in was sufficient to keep myself invisible; any sign of movement might have alerted her and any other drone still in the room that something was lurking behind this peculiar gap in the wall.

Chela approached, stopped just short of it, and peered through the gap straight at me. We made eye contact, and I realised that I was holding my breath. She flashed an enigmatic smile, then placed her hoof on the hidden door, and closed it shut, plunging me into absolute darkness. My heart hammered in my chest, and my extremities seemed to tingle and turn numb; yet no drones were throwing open the doors to wrench me out for interrogation, so after a moment of waiting, where my heartbeat slowed to a level just at the upper limit of ‘normal’ and I felt as though I could move, I picked myself up off the ground and made my way back to my cell, trembling throughout.

It was incredible and insane, this plan, and I was the only pony who knew about it. Even if it was, as Chela had pointed out, utterly suicidal, this sneak attack would still result in a great deal of misery for a lot of ponies in the intervening time. I had to get the news out somehow, and that meant only one thing: I had to escape Camp Joy.

Chapter 11

Sometimes, I find that the best thing to do in this sort of sticky situation, such as the ones that I find myself landing in with a distressing level of frequency, was to do nothing, and eventually the solution to the problem would present itself when it is ready. I suppose, in hindsight, this merely comes with the territory of being a fantastically wealthy prince of the realm, in that quite often other ponies will simply find ways to fix my problems for me on their own initiative; after all, that is what I pay my staff for, and both Drape Cut and Cannon Fodder were exceptional practitioners of that particular craft in their own unique ways. The alternative explanation, that I am acutely aware of, is that my own inadequacy, lack of competence, and my natural tendency to bumble into these situations in the first place, means that I am almost always much better off simply sitting back and allowing other ponies to do the job, and taking the credit if it all goes well and avoiding blame if it doesn’t. In this particular case, however, it happened when the door to my cell suddenly exploded without warning.

It had been perhaps the next day, or even the day after that as I cannot recall with any degree of accuracy, after I had eavesdropped on Queen Chrysalis’ meeting about her diabolical plan to take over Equestria yet again, that it happened. I remained alone in the filthy cell, though my incarceration was eased somewhat by the myriad presents that the other ponies, still ‘enjoying’ the amenities that Camp Joy had to offer, and fretted anxiously about my next move. Being the only pony who knew about this Operation: Sunburn had placed the significant weight of responsibility upon my shoulders, and unlike the others I could not shrug it off quite so easily, until I passed it on to another pony, that is. The notes that I had taken of the meeting, supplemented later in my cell with some furtive and furious writing of points that I had missed at the time, were folded up neatly in my jacket breast pocket, next to Slab, who was to be the custodian of this valuable intelligence until such time as I could pass this oppressive weight onto a pony who could, perhaps, do something about it.

I had thought about trying to find either Cannon Fodder or Square Basher by use of the tunnels, but I dismissed that on the account that I simply could not afford to be caught with them in my possession; that would surely have encouraged Dorylus to ship me off to the Blackhorns wrapped up in ribbons and a little bow. Hiding it somewhere was an option that I considered, but I would have to find a suitable place that I could easily return to when required to share it with another pony, and so I decided that this was an unnecessary complication. For the time being, it would have to remain with me, and the weight of it seemed somehow heavier than the block of stone that it shared a pocket with, so I used a pencil to tear open a hole the lining of my detestable commisar cap and secreted the notes within. It was risky, but, in the case of everything going truly wrong, I hoped that changeling trophy collectors wouldn’t dare risk damaging the hat any more than years of life on the frontlines already had.

Still, I must surely have been nearing the end of my incarceration, though I’ll never know now thanks to what happened next. To explain, first, my exhaustion must have finally overwhelmed my fear and anxiety at what was to come and I fell asleep, for I dreamt that I was in a seedy bordello in Canterlot, Madame Graefenburg’s to be exact, enjoying the intimate company of a most attractive mare. She was lying on her front on the plush bed and I had mounted her from behind, and for those of you with either a nervous or a prudish disposition I assure you that the detail is vital to understanding what happened next. We were going at it in the usual fashion, until her head rotated a full one hundred and eighty degrees to face me directly; her face was Princess Luna’s, smiling idiotically, and she announced excitedly in the Diarch’s voice, “I found you!”

I woke up, screamed, and vomited in the bucket. As nightmares go, that was an especially unpleasant one I can assure you, and would put me off all comforting thoughts of pretty mares for quite a while. At the time, I hadn’t counted on my nocturnal Auntie’s oneironautical escapades; after all, she hadn’t made an appearance in my dreams for quite a while, and I had assumed, knowing very little as I do about the art itself, that she simply had a great many more things on her plate to deal with than tracking down her nephew.

If it was indeed Princess Luna (and given the nature of that dream, I felt much too awkward asking her about it later), she had certainly taken her time in finding me, considering the apparent speed she had done so with the last time I had been captured. Then again, if she had done so with the appropriate level of urgency, then I might not have found out about Operation: Sunburn, and perhaps this war might have taken a rather different turn instead.

[My sister’s dreamwalking is indeed more of an art than a science, for the dream realm is better described as an ocean, and ponies’ dreams are tiny islands in a vast archipelago that she must navigate to. Finding an individual pony’s dream can be difficult depending on the state of the dream realm itself. Princess Luna had attempted to find Prince Blueblood many times after his capture, but the dream realm was particularly tumultuous during Hardscrabble's offensive and finding him proved to be exceptionally difficult. In this case, however, she had formed the dream herself to attract Blueblood, based on an anonymous leak of his whereabouts that has been suspected to have come from Chela.]

It might have remained merely a horrible thing to explain to a therapist years later (and presumably be charged a great deal of bits to be told that I have unnatural desires towards my distant aunt), regardless of whether it was truly Luna or not (and frankly, I took a great deal of comfort in not knowing for certain), were it not for what came next. The effect was not immediate, mind you; some time passed with its usual lack of urgency here, as it always did in this empty cell, before it finally came and once again, just as I had finally gotten used to, if not comfortable with, one state of affairs, something happened to completely upend it.

I remember, I was sitting just under the stairs and against the wall for whatever reason, trying to read a Power Ponies comic by faint candlelight and being thoroughly baffled as to what was happening, who the very colourfully-illustrated characters were, and why anypony would find this sort of thing even remotely entertaining, when the door saved me from continued bafflement and boredom by exploding. The sudden, violent sound of the explosion made me yelp, and I all but jumped out of my own hide. The force of the detonation had wrenched it from its sturdy hinges and hurled it with great force down the stairs, where it broke into two jagged halves and a whole lot of sawdust and splinters. Acrid smoke and dust hung in the air, and I could smell the sharp tang of burnt cordite. It was damned lucky of me to be sitting where I was, for if I’d taken my usual position at the foot of the stairs I’d have probably been struck by the flying door and eviscerated by shards of smoking wood.

Light poured in through the now unobstructed doorway, and after all this time trapped in the darkness it was almost blinding. I picked myself up off the floor, ears ringing from the explosion and eyes blinking in the glare, and I glimpsed a tall, dark figure silhouetted against the bright daylight.

“You were only supposed to blow the hinges off!” the figure yelled to somepony unseen. She was a mare, that much I could tell.

“I did!” a shrill, enraged voice screamed back. “Don’t tell me how to do my job!”

“You nearly killed Celestia’s nephew, you idiot.” The figure began to trot down the steps, and out of the bright light I could make her out better; she was a tall pegasus, slim but well-built and without an ounce of unnecessary fat on her, and her athletic figure was accentuated by a skin-tight flightsuit that hugged every line and sinew of her lithe body. “Prince Blueblood, are you still alive?”

“I’m perfectly alright,” I said, trying to recover as much of my dignity as I could muster by standing. “Thank you for asking.”

The pegasus mare stopped about halfway down the stairs and peered at me, standing alone in the darkness. I could see now that her flightsuit was a glossy black with a shock of acid green on the front, and her coat, where it was only visible from the neck up, was a pale turquoise. Her mane was bright orange and swept back, though seemingly out of flying at high speeds than any intended style. She made a cocky grin that put me instantly in mind of another certain pegasus I’ve had the great misfortune to have met, and I briefly wondered if that sort of insipid smile was just ingrained into every single member of that pony tribe.

“Well, today is your lucky day, because I’m busting you out of here!”

I looked her up and down, trying to find some sort of military insignia and found none. Far be it from me to reject the prospect of rescue, especially with the notes of the fateful meeting weighing heavily on my mind and in my uniform’s pocket, but some voice inside me told me not to trust strange mares with a penchant for blowing up doors. “And you are?”

“Lightning Dust!” She jumped the last few steps, wings flared, and landed just in front of me with a flourish of splayed feathers. “And we’re the Washouts; ex-Wonderbolts deemed too dangerous, reckless, and badass for stunt flying. We’ve been behind enemy lines for months now, killing Changelings, rescuing prisoners, and blowing things up! Now it’s your turn!”

“So,” I said slowly, “I am to be rescued by failed Wonderbolts?”

She pulled a face, shoved it quite close to mine, and I made a mental note not to insult my rescuers in future, should I find myself in this situation once again. “Princess Luna selected us Washouts personally, because we’re independent and can work deep in enemy territory without all of those stupid rules getting in our way.”

That still seemed a tad irresponsible of my dear Aunt, thought I, but I could see the reasoning behind it. I looked at the still-smouldering remains of the broken door, and from the gaping portal it once filled I could hear the sounds of violence and carnage beyond; muskets cracked, steel clashed with steel, and pony and Changeling voices alike roared and cried with pain. Another explosion, somewhere in the distance but still close enough to be felt as a tremor through my hooves, briefly drowned those noises out, and the unseen pony who had blown up the door laughed maniacally. Perhaps, I considered, as what was actually happening began to fully dawn on me, I might have been better off staying down here.

“Hey, Lightning Dust!” yelled the very angry pony at the door. A short, squat pegasus with dwarfism peeked his head through the scorched open doorway. He too wore a skin-tight flightsuit with the exact same colours as his presumed superior officer, and, in contrast to hers, his made his chubby body resemble a sack of potatoes. His uniform was supplemented with a great deal of pouches bulging with sticks of dynamite. “You might want to hurry your stupid introduction up! The bugs are starting to put up a fight!”

“Yeah, yeah, quit your complaining Short Fuse,” said Lightning Dust with a dismissive wave of her hoof. “It’s nothing you guys can’t handle.”

“I dunno, LD.” The midget pegasus looked behind him and winced; there was a crackle of disciplined musket fire, followed by that of a sharp discharge of magic. “The Blackhorns are here. Looks like that Purestrain’s finally woke up too, and he looks pissed.”

Lightning Dust ignored her underling, who disappeared back behind the sturdy wall, and carried on with her little speech. “Princess Luna’s personally ordered us to get you out of here, and I’m not about to let a Princess down, so let’s get moving and you’ll be back in Canterlot having tea parties with all your rich buddies in no time!” She wrapped her foreleg around mine, her grip strong despite her slight build, and pulled. “Now move!”

I didn’t need to be told twice, but apparently I was still too slow for this crazy pegasus, for I was all but dragged, struggling to keep my hooves moving at quite the right speed, up those steps, over which I tripped a few times and was hoisted back up and into the bright light of day for the first time in what felt like an eternity. What I saw, however, made me want to go straight back in my cell and lock the door, after reassembling it myself.

Whatever one might say about Camp Joy, its purpose, and the strange and twisted ideology of its commandant, it was at least a rather pretty place that the Changelings had put quite a lot of effort into designing, building, and maintaining; I had even thought of taking ownership of this place once the war was finally over and using it as a holiday home. Now, however, I saw that such ambitions were dashed, and I would have to rebuild it, perhaps as more of a chalet than a country manor. A fire had broken out, and black, choking smoke rose from one of the wings of the manor house itself; tongues of yellow flame licked up at the skies over the roof, with the faint crackle of burning timber.

Ahead of us, part of the wooden fence that surrounded the grounds had been rather violently smashed in, and the crater that bisected it, as though the earth itself had been scooped out by a gigantic shovel, certainly demonstrated that a great deal of explosives had been used. There were bodies scattered across the grounds, most of whom were Changelings, and judging by the way they had fallen and the lack of weapons with them, most hadn’t put up much of a fight and had been stabbed with spears where they stood. Their green ichor stained the painted dirt. Elsewhere, I heard the continued cacophony of the fight carrying on around the grounds. Some of the drones had surrendered, and had been rounded up and sat forlornly near their old barracks building under the watch of a few native ponies clad in rough cloth robes and wielding spears and the odd musket. I was a little surprised to see them, and wondered just how the Equestrians leading this operation had convinced them to join them in rescuing me of all ponies; the promise of killing their hated oppressors must have been motivation enough. They each bore some form of tribal marking, rather like Buffalo war paint, daubed roughly on their faces with earthy pigments, in a variety of elaborate designs that I did not recognise, which all implied to me that a variety of warriors from different tribes had joined up with these Washouts. A few of my fellow prisoners had enthusiastically joined in, and I saw Switchblade wave at me with the utmost enthusiasm as he trotted out of the Changelings’ barracks with a large bag of muskets, cartridges, and bayonets carried by his teeth.

[Changeling control in the occupied Badlands was strongest around the hive cities and weakest in the countryside, where the remnants of native pony tribes banded together and continued to resist and escape occupation. The Washouts and other Equestrian groups inserted behind enemy lines allied themselves with these tribes and together conducted an increasingly effective guerilla campaign of sabotage, which drained Changeling ponypower away from the frontlines. It is likely the group Blueblood describes here was made up of members of the Jerboa, Kultarr, and Parodia tribes, among others.]

“Is that him?” another pegasus shouted from above, her voice a particularly strong Horsetralian accent that bordered on unintelligible. She hovered in mid-air at about a dozen feet up, alternating between gawking at me and keeping an eye out for those Blackhorns that Short Fuse had mentioned. “I expected somepony taller, and not so chubby.”

I was much too overwhelmed by what was going to respond to the insult, so I let it slide for now. Besides, I thought, if this was a rescue, it would not do to start criticising their decorum and manners until after I was safely back in Equestria and enjoying a well-earned convalescence. Another crackle of disciplined musket fire, this time much closer than before, caused me to flinch.

“Yeah, that’s him,” said Lightning Dust, finally letting go of my foreleg. I almost fell over trying to stand up straight again.

The Horsetralian nodded her head and touched a hoof to her forehead, as if tipping an invisible cap. “G’day, your maj’,” she said. “Afraid we don’t have a royal chariot waiting to take you back to your palace, mate, so you’ll have to hoof it. Short Fuse here wouldn’t reach yoke anyhow.”

The short chap became enraged in the manner only put-upon short stallions can, which was funny enough to encourage bullies such as Yours Truly to carry on antagonising the vertically-challenged. He dashed through the air, almost collided with the other tall, gangly mare, shook his hoof petulantly and roared in her face, “Why don’t you come down here and I’ll show you how far I can reach when I ram my hoof right down your c-”

“Alright, save the banter for when you’re not getting shot at!” shouted Lightning Dust, before adding under her breath a barely-heard comment about how stupid they all were. I had to agree with her; while the amount of times I’ve been rescued from captivity have been relatively low, namely that time I was Earthshaker’s guest and a particularly daring escape from a rural police cell after a colt’s night out ended with the theft of several policeponies’ helmets, this particular prison break seemed terribly disorganised to my bewildered eyes. Then again, these were ponies not good enough for the Wonderbolts working with a band of native resistance fighters armed with pointy sticks, so I should have been impressed that they could muster enough ponies here and point them in the right direction in the first place.

“No worries!” chirped Rolling Thunder, darting expertly out of the way of the angered little pony with a Neighpoleon complex, with the sort of practised alacrity that only a trained stunt flyer could possibly muster. She looked out at something over in the middle distance, which I, stuck on the ground, simply couldn’t make out for the burning manor house in the way, and waved merrily at whatever it was.

Her hoof reached out, circled in the air, and around it a small, dark cloud condensed, growing to about the size of a buckball. It crackled with golden sparks of lightning. Rolling Thunder, still hovering in place, pulled her electrified hoof back, with her other stretched out before her, and then hurled her cloud in an arc over the roof of the manor. A moment after it disappeared behind the building, there was a brief flash of light accompanied by a sharp crack of lightning, which was immediately followed by a shrill yelp of pain.

“Look at ‘em!” shouted Rolling Thunder, almost cackling with glee. “The bugs couldn’t hit an airship at this distance!”

Muskets cracked in response -- a sharp fusillade, much too close for comfort this time. Rolling Thunder hissed loudly in pain, as one wing was struck by musket balls and the other flapped frantically to keep her airborne. The other pegasus, Short Fuse, shouted a string of incoherent obscenities at the Changelings in the distance, apparently daring them to fire again. Another round was fired, presumably by the second rank, and it was only by luck that they missed the small, angry target.

“You useless invertebrates! You think you’re so smart with your shape-changing and your muskets! Why don’t you come up here and I’ll show you who the ‘superior species’ is? You don’t even have spines, you- you spineless cowards!”

[Changelings are indeed invertebrates, lacking a spinal column.]

This was definitely the worst prison break I’ve ever experienced, I concluded, as Rolling Thunder’s one remaining working wing gave out and she dropped like a stone to the ground. She fell with a thud, and I heard something, presumably a wing bone or two, snap horribly. I looked at Lightning Dust, who stood there dumbly, turning slightly pale at the sight of her comrade bleeding with broken wings.

Meanwhile, Short Fuse continued to taunt the Changelings from above, and as he did so, I saw him take from the bandolier around his waist a stick of dynamite, light it with a cigar lighter, and toss it somewhere into the distance. He did this, I should point out, without pausing in his angry tirade at all. Seconds later, an explosion rocked the manor, blasting brick, mortar, splintered wooden beams, and lumps of what I took to be assorted Changeling body parts high into the air to rain down on the roofs and the grounds.

“That’s what you get!” screamed Short Fuse.

Lightning Dust stood there uselessly, her insane bravado having instantly evaporated now that everything had gone so horribly wrong so very quickly; so, as per usual when things started to go belly-up, it was up to me to do something about it. I jabbed her in the shoulder to knock her out of her funk, and shouted, “Move!” at her.

She snapped out of whatever fugue she had come under, and darted over to where Rolling Thunder lay on the ground, her scarlet blood soaking into the parched, cracked earth. The injured pegasus struggled to get to her hooves, but I saw that her wings were bleeding profusely and, while I’m certainly no expert on these things, probably should not be bending at quite so acute angles.

“It’s only a flesh wound,” hissed Rolling Thunder through set teeth. Her face was screwed up in agony, and her breathing was sharp, rapid, and shallow. “I’ll be flying in no time, right?”

“You’re not flying anywhere right now,” snapped Lightning Dust. She shot me a sharp look, with eyes narrowed, as though somehow I was to blame for all of this. “We got what we came for, now let’s go!”

Lightning Dust turned to move, but I stopped her with my hoof and said, “What about the other prisoners?” If we were fleeing to the hills to hide and escape to Equestria, then I wanted as many bodies with me as possible.

“What about them?” Lightning Dust sneered at me. I was rather stunned by her cold response, and I must have betrayed that feeling with my facial expression, as she continued. “They’re Night Guards. They’ll handle themselves. It’s you we’re ordered to rescue. Now go!”

Well, I was certainly not about to argue with that, so I followed her as she took to the air and flew towards the gaping hole in the wall, without waiting for anypony else, I might add. Rolling Thunder hobbled along on her own behind, so, pretending to be the gentlecolt that I’m supposed to be, I let her place her foreleg over my shoulders for support; pegasi tend to be quite light, as a general rule, so I wasn’t much slowed.

Lightning Dust raced over the field littered with corpses, with Rolling Thunder and me lagging behind. From above, Short Fuse still yelled volleys of invectives at the Changelings moving up to our rear, though I dared not to even glance over my shoulder. From our right, a formation, or a mob, rather, of those native heathens in rags and brandishing spears galloped up, and I spotted one or two of my fellow prisoners in between them, trying to cajole them into something resembling a coherent military formation. The gap in the outer walls was straight ahead of us, tantalisingly close, but as we neared, the crater filled with Changelings swarming up from the slope outside, and each was clad in a grey tunic and forage cap the same shade as Ommatidium’s uniform, complete with the insignia of the Blackhorns sewn on their chests.

The drones levelled their muskets at us, ready to fire. I preemptively hurled myself to the ground, taking the injured Rolling Thunder with me.

“You can’t!” she shrieked at me, hissing in pain from her damaged wings. I ignored the strange comment, and held both her and my head down from the volley to come.

There was a loud crash, not of the expected musket fire and the whizz of lead over our heads, but of thunder. I dared to raise my head from the dirt to see Lightning Dust flying in a tight circle just over our heads and at a vomit-inducing speed, forming a churning vortex of dark grey clouds and white-yellow sparks at the centre of her circuit. She lashed a foreleg out at this concentrated maelstrom she had summoned, and those sparks danced vividly across her latex-clad hoof. With a swift, downward stroke, she hurled a lightning bolt down upon the Changelings like a heathen pegasus goddess of old. The bolt struck the ground close to the enemy formation; not terribly accurate, I thought, but it was enough to spook the drones and send them scurrying back into the cover offered by the crater.

“All yours, colts!” yelled Lightning Dust above the din. The mob of natives and their Equestrian hangers-on hurled themselves into the Changelings, driving their spears into toughened chitin with horrid sprays of green ichor. The gap in the wall was filled with this swirling, chaotic melee, as, unlike the scrum of battles, this rapidly devolved into a brutal bar brawl of a fight. There was no battle line that I could see, no pony or drone watching out for his fellow, but merely individual struggles for survival. I could scarcely keep track, but my eyes caught crystal-clear glimpses of the carnage within - splintered spears still used to gruesome effect; bayonets tearing into pony flesh and Changeling chitin alike; and in places the combatants had to resort to their own hooves to pound one another into bruised, broken, twisted, lifeless lumps.

There were more of the drones than the ponies, but they gave a poor showing of themselves. The small band of natives and their brand new Equestrian friends were outnumbered more than three to one, and had fought the Blackhorns into a brutal stalemate. I saw Switchblade atop a drone, plunging a bayonet repeatedly into the creature’s eye socket until his death spasms ceased; Square Basher herself, who swung her dinner plate-sized hooves to beat another until his chitin split and the soft tissue was pummelled into gorey paste. A drone leapt onto her side with the apparent aim to bring her down, but she simply fell on top of him, pinned him beneath her bulk, until Ploughshare finished him off with a bayonet to the throat. Though I had no time to ponder it, Lightning Dust provided a succinct answer to my question on why this band of Changelings seemed to be especially poor fighters.

“That’s right, you cowards!” she roared at them, having ceased her circling. The angry cloud she had summoned swiftly and harmlessly disappeared into vapour with a crackle of sparks. “Not so tough when you’re up against ponies who can fight back, are you?!”

[The Blackhorns’ modus operandi relied on brutal reprisals on native ponies for resisting Changeling rule, as well as pogroms against other species deemed to be not useful to Chrysalis’ regime and dissident drones. As Lightning Dust had demonstrated here, they were not combat troops and thus struggled against an increasingly organised resistance movement trained by Equestrian agents. Later, as the war situation continued to deteriorate further for the Changelings, Ommatidium requested Chrysalis that he be allowed to lead the Blackhorns in frontline combat against the advancing Equestrian forces, despite his lack of military experience. Ideological fervour did not translate into victory on the battlefield.]

The fight at the breach looked as though it was not going to end any time soon and there was certainly no way that I was going to dive in myself, especially with a dead weight holding me back, so if I wanted to get out of this miserable place as quickly as possible I would have to find an alternative route. From what I could tell - call it intuition, a paranoid guess, or an old soldier’s instinct - the main gate itself, from which we had entered Camp Joy in the first place those weeks ago, looked unguarded, and that the main effort, both from the natives and the prisoners trying to escape and from the Blackhorns trying to contain them, appeared to be focused mostly on this breach. There were other fights taking place across the grounds, but these were small, isolated groups of ponies and drones struggling to survive this horrid mess.

“This way!” I shouted above the din, and pulled Rolling Thunder with me in the direction of the gate. She hissed in pain; though her legs were fine, whatever damage the musket balls and the bad landing had done to her wings made every movement agony for her. Lightning Dust gave me a confused look, so I had to elaborate: “The gates!”

“They’re barred!” Lightning Dust shouted back. She was indeed correct; across the gates was a large and heavy iron bar that looked as though the two spindly Washouts and the third short one would struggle to lift together.

“Then blow them up!” I had to wonder if the heathen natives, who, I might add, had been resisting Changeling rule for years prior to Equestrian charging in, had done most of the actual work in the sabotage and the slaughter of guerilla warfare, and these Washouts had only swooped in now and taken all of the credit, if I had to explain the blindingly obvious to them. The most generous explanation, I thought, was that Lightning Dust here wasn’t used to things not going to plan, or for the enemy to fight back once the element of surprise, so vital to all partisan operations, had been spent.

I saw that Short Fuse was still hovering above us, apparently relishing the opportunity to look down on somepony taller. “You there!” I called out to him. “The gates! Destroy them, damn you!”

“I’m doing it! Get off my back!” he shouted at me, as he grabbed another stick of dynamite from his pouch. To be fair, he was doing it. He lit the fuse with the same sort of practised ease as I would a fine cigar, and he hurled it, trailing a thin line of white smoke as it described an elegant arc through the air, where it landed with startling accuracy at the base of those gates. It detonated a second later with a suitably loud, sharp crack, blasting the wooden gates into so many jagged shards of wood into the open road beyond. As the smoke and dust cleared on the hot, languid breeze, I saw through it the path leading down the side of the hill into a deep valley between mountains.

I wasted no time in dragging Rolling Thunder to the ruined gates, and despite being slightly weighed down by the injured pegasus I thought I made rather good time. The smell of burning wood stung my nostrils and made my eyes water, and the two of us broke out into hacking fits of coughing as we passed the burning manor. We were damned close, and though I must have known better, it certainly felt as though as long as I could get through the gaping hole where a sturdy wooden gate used to be, then I would shortly be home with my pack of notes to a well-deserved hero’s welcome. However, as we limped along together, I got a peculiar sense of deja vu, and realised that I had been in a similarly sticky situation before, only with another pony helping me carry the wounded pony.

“Where’s Cannon Fodder?” I asked, stopping dead in my tracks. The thought of him had taken me suddenly, and I felt damned foolish and terribly embarrassed for having waited this long to ask about him.

“What?” shouted Lightning Dust, hovering just above me with a look of profound irritation.

“My aide,” I explained. “He’s a unicorn who looks like he hasn’t bathed in years and smells like it, too. You can’t miss him.”

“Ugh.” Lighting Dust rolled her eyes so hard that she probably gave herself a good view of her own frontal lobe in the process. “Our orders are to get you out of here, so move it!”

“But-”

“Princess’s orders! Look, if he’s smart he’ll fall in with the natives like the rest of your captured buddies, but right now my job is getting you out of here and back to Equestria. Most ponies would be grateful for this kind of rescue!”

I was not in the mood for arguing with her, and I suppose she was right in a way - Cannon Fodder was a damned resourceful chap, and not least in scrounging little bits and pieces for me that I dare not ask their origin, so he’d probably turn up safe and sound in the fullness. Still, that didn’t sit right with me at all, and I felt strangely vulnerable without him and his reassuring odour by my side.

There was little else for it, so I carried on, almost dragging Rolling Thunder with me as I was so damned eager to get out of this infernal place, though she grumbled and swore as she stumbled a few times. Her thin, lithe body was pressed to mine, and she was clearly shivering from fright and pain in spite of the brave face she had put on; I could only imagine that it would be as much a shock to a pegasus to lose her wings as it would be for me to lose my horn. I was astonished that our escape was still clear of Changelings, though when I dared to snatch a glance over my shoulder, I saw that the brawl at the breach had occupied almost the full attention of the enemy, such that they seemingly failed to notice their most valued prisoner trotting merrily out of the main gate. Seemingly every drone in the camp willing and able to fight and whatever reinforcements from the Blackhorns they could muster had hurled themselves to plug the breach, but both the natives and the prisoners fought with a savagery and skill that overcame the more numerous amateurs. I feared for a moment that the ponies would be utterly swamped, but Square Basher led the charge and with sheer brute force tore a bloody gap in the Blackhorns’ lines that allowed her comrades, both new and old, to stream through into the wilderness beyond.

The escapees’ success, unfortunately, would bring the enemy’s attention down upon me. While most of the drones had pursued the fleeing mob, who I imagine would disperse into the hills to regroup later as partisans ought to if they were sensible, a few others held back, apparently to guard the burning manor, and almost immediately caught sight of us. One, hovering in mid-air over the grounds, called out wordlessly and jabbed a hoof in our direction, and he was soon joined by five others brandishing muskets.

I broke into a trot, and Rolling Thunder immediately shouted in pain as I had apparently jostled some shard of jagged bone trapped in her ruined wings. She fell, almost pulling me down with her. The drones were behind us still, and I saw them begin the arduous process of reloading their muskets, their hooves turned to claws to better manipulate the various bits and pieces to do so.

“I’ll carry you!” I shouted. My magic still wasn’t working thanks to the damned ring on my horn, so I had to almost crawl between her long, spindly legs and under her until her barrel rested on my back, and hoist her up.

[It would appear that the Washouts had neglected to bring a small file or a knife to remove the nullifier ring, or had planned on doing that when they reached safety.]

“No worries!” she replied with mock-cheerfulness.

At least Rolling Thunder was light, so I galloped to the ruined gates. She clung on tight to me, wrapping one foreleg around my neck and almost strangling me in the process. As for the other two, Lightning Dust and Short Fuse were already ahead of me, hovering by the gates and waiting with some impatience. They could have done a damned sight more to help, I remember thinking, and it was a pretty poor showing if the rescuee was forced to carry one of the rescuers. Still, it would make for a heroic story when I got back to Canterlot.

“Finally!” exclaimed Lightning Dust. “This way! We can lose them in the hills!”

She waved her hoof in the direction of the aforementioned craggy hills that surrounded the camp, and then darted off to the right of the gates with Short Fuse on her tail. I stumbled as I descended into the smoking crater where the gates used to be, just as Changeling muskets crackled behind me. Something whizzed past my ear, sounding like I had been overtaken by a supersonic bee, and I felt the air stir the hairs on my mane. Small puffs of dust erupted sporadically mere feet before my hooves as I scrambled down the shallow slope littered with shards of broken wooden beams. My heart hammered in my chest and I felt my blood run ice cold; being shot at was never something that I could get used to, and fear gripped me that I would once again feel the hot sting of a musket ball in the flank.

“Bastard!” cried Rolling Thunder.

“Did they hit you?” I asked, as I immediately scrambled up the other side of the crater. It would take the enemy time to reload or to close the distance, but that at least guaranteed me a few seconds of survival.

“No, my wing hit something.”

“Jolly good.” Well, that was something at least. The thought had certainly occurred to me that, if nothing else, she served as a decent equine shield for at least a third of my body.

I hauled myself and Rolling Thunder up and over the other side of the debris-strewed crater to be met with the spectacularly rugged view of the desolate hills that I had only glimpsed from my bedroom; great, rocky hills undulated in ripples stretching right to the horizon, like a tumultuous sea suddenly frozen in an instant, with sharp peaks and ridges and plunging canyons between them shrouded in darkness. All of that open space and sky felt quite daunting after that time in the basement, like I might fall straight into the vast expanse of landscape and get lost in it; indeed, that was the entire point of this venture. Straight ahead, however, the clear blue sky was marred by a number of small dots, clustered together and flitting this way and that, which could only have been another formation of drones ready to pounce on any escapee charging down the path.

Following Lightning Dust, I turned right, off the path leading into the valley that would likely be crawling with Blackhorn patrols by now, and down the slope which plunged sharply into an even deeper cleft between two angular hills. I was as good as free, I thought; once again plucked out of a sticky situation by these enterprising individuals and I barely had to lift a hoof, save to carry their wounded comrade. Though fear still held its icy grip over my racing heart and my limbs still burned with the sort of exertion they hadn’t been put through for a few too many weeks, once I’d crossed the ruined gate and crawled out of the crater I felt the sort of elation I had not felt since perhaps the time I pushed Shining Armour into a pond full of highly territorial swans. I was free, and though the enemy hounded us like griffons on a rabbit, our expert guerilla fighters, whose tribes had lived in these hostile lands for a thousand years, and these resourceful, Equestrian-trained partisans, would surely see me off to the safety of home.

That feeling lasted as long as it took for me to step on a caltrop.

I should have watched where I was going, but my attention was fixed on the open blue skies, the majesty of the landscape around me, and the group of Changelings on my tail aiming their muskets at my flanks. At first I thought I’d simply tripped over a rock or a stick, as something had caught my left forehoof just as I’d placed it down, and I fell on my face, bruising my snout on the hard ground. Rolling Thunder swore loudly and profusely as she held onto my neck and back for dear life, and somehow, in spite of her injuries, managed to avoid tumbling straight over my head.

The expected volley of musket fire to finish me off did not come, which was odd considering that I remained a big, fat, stationary target. I could feel something stuck in the frog of my hoof, a pebble or something, and it was damned irritating, so before I tried to pick myself up off the ground to flee before the enemy’s sudden feeling of fair play evaporated, I pulled my hoof out from under me where I had landed on it, feeling this thing seem to move inside my hoof. When I saw the four-pronged lump of jagged metal stuck rather deep in my hoof’s frog, the mystery of why the enemy held their fire was conclusively resolved -- I had been rendered thoroughly helpless by this cowardly weapon. Then the agony began.

“You alright, Blueblood?” asked Lightning Dust with more annoyance than concern.

“No I’m not bloody ‘alright’!” I roared back. The sloping field ahead was full of those horrid caltrops, and alongside the pain I felt damned foolish for not having seen them, or considered that the enemy would be so under-hoofed as to blanket the ground beyond the camp with so many. I could only hope that the other escapees were a damned sight more attentive than I. “I’ve stepped on a caltrop!”

The pain was sharp and white hot. Blood seeped around the wound, plugged by the metal. There was nothing for it; I couldn’t walk with this blasted thing in my hoof and I couldn’t very well limp along on three legs with the drones chasing me, so I would have to get it out somehow. I clamped my teeth around one of the prongs, wishing that I at least had a gallon of brandy to dull the pain, and then pulled.

“Bad idea! Really bad idea, mate!” shouted Rolling Thunder in my ear, but it was too late, I had already committed.

Few things I had experienced so far could compare to the incredible pain of pulling out a caltrop; it was rivalled only by that of being flogged, and even then I couldn’t possibly pick between the two. Tears stung my eyes and I clenched my teeth down on the caltrop. I could feel the barb severing flesh, ripping sinew, tearing through tendons, and only then did I realise just what a damned idiot I’d been. It burst free and I spat the hateful little thing out. I lay there on my front, panting for air as though I’d run a marathon. The pain did not ebb one iota for having removed its source. Blood gushed from the wound, soaking the dry ground, and I let loose a torrent of most un-princely language that made even the Horsetralian blush.

I tried to stand, but the moment I placed the injured hoof on the ground and applied any sort of pressure to it, the pain increased ten-fold and I fell on my front, crying out in agony. The only thing left to do was to crawl, or…

“Carry me!” I shouted out to Lightning Dust.

She looked at Short Fuse, then at the small swarm closing in behind us at an insultingly leisurely pace, and finally back at me. “What about Rolling Thunder?” she asked.

“Both of us, then! Between the two of you I’m sure you can do it. Rainbow Dash carried two ponies all on her own!”

“She isn’t here,” sneered Lightning Dust. More’s the pity; of all the headstrong and suicidally brave pegasi out there to mount this daring rescue, Rainbow Dash would certainly have been my top choice, but alas I was stuck with this idiot. “You look heavy. I can’t carry both of you, and Short Fuse can’t carry much, either.”

The mare still clung to my back tightly, and, well, I’m not exactly proud of what I said next, but given my circumstances I think I can be excused. “Then leave her! You’re here to rescue me!”

“Yeah, no.” Lightning Dust glared at me with an expression of utter disgust, and I suppose I might have deserved it. Her wings flared and she descended gracefully from above, and her hooves expertly avoided stepping on the caltrops that still surrounded us as she landed. “Sorry, Prince, but the Washouts won’t leave one of our own behind. Come on, Rolling Thunder, this mission is a total failure.”

Rolling Thunder released her grip on me and stood, hissing with pain as she did so. “He’s right, LD,” she said, with no particular enthusiasm. “The mission-”

“I don’t care about the mission!” snapped Lightning Dust, her face dark as a thundercloud. She seized her wounded comrade, while I weakly reached out with my hooves, and with a series of powerful beats of her wings lifted the both of them off the ground. “I’m not leaving one of my own for the Blackhorns just to save Prince Blueblood of all ponies.”

“And he’s fat, too,” said Short Fuse, and I wished I had my magic so I could hurl these caltrops up at him. “He’ll only slow us down. LD, the bugs are on their way; we need to leave now!”

“Damn you!” I cried out. “You can’t just leave me here! Look, I have to get back! I know something that might cost us this war! I have to tell them!”

Lightning Dust and Rolling Thunder had at least the manners to shoot me apologetic looks as they flew away, with Short Fuse just behind them. The latter quietly threw something underhoof towards me, which I recognized in a split second of instinctive terror ingrained by the chaos of Virion Hive to be a grenade. My entire noble life, lived through so many ignobly spent years, seemed reflected in its cold black shell—until I realised the fuse was unlit.

My mind reeled at the implications; Short Fuse had forgotten a match, perhaps assuming I could light it myself—and I could, with my cigar lighter still intact. One last hurrah, one flick of the switch and I'd be gone, denying the enemy their prize, and hopefully taking a few of them with me. It was just the sort of end every place from public houses to smoke-filled boarding rooms would be alive with discussion thereof, mingled with songs of their heroic Prince, lost in a blaze of glory. It was terrible, pragmatic logic, and, I reasoned, these ponies' best idea of showing regret by letting me die with dignity. Still, I held it with my hooves, and thought about how oblivion was merely a spark away.

Apparently, they could just leave me here, for that is exactly what they did; the Washouts raced down the slope, faster and faster, rapidly diminished into specks, and were then subsumed by the darkness of the valley below. All the while, I could only seethe with anger at this betrayal, at having my chance at freedom robbed from me when I was so damned close to grasping it. As I watched them and my future fade away into the blackness, and as the Blackhorns surrounded me, hovering above the caltrop-strewed slope with their bayonet-tipped muskets aimed squarely at me, I could only rant and shout at just how bloody unfair all of this was.

“Lightning Dust, you callous bitch, get back here! When my aunts find out what you’ve done, you’ll have wished the Changelings caught you! Please! Help me!”

Even back then, I knew that, at least from her own perspective, Lightning Dust had made the right choice; aside from being thoroughly undeserving as I am, she and her gang were partisans who lived and fought deep within enemy territory without supplies and support from Equestria. In the grim calculation of war, an experienced fighter like Rolling Thunder was worth more to her and her group than Yours Truly being safe and sound. That didn’t make this hurt any less, however.

The drones became tired of my useless shouting, and one of them slammed the butt of his musket against the side of my head. Pain exploded in my temple, momentarily muting that from my mutilated hoof, and I was knocked to the side and whimpered pathetically.

“Dorylus wants him alive,” admonished one of the drones, with the exact same tone of voice as if his comrade had dropped litter.

“Alive doesn’t mean undamaged,” said another, and he kicked me in the belly for good measure. “Wait, what’s that he’s got there?”

“Shit!”

I heard a frantic scurrying of hooves and buzzing of wings, which all kicked dirt and dust in my face, as a few of them tried to scramble away. Another laughed, apparently an NCO or an equivalent thereof, and the grenade was wrenched from my hooves. “It’s unlit, you stupid maggots,” he cackled. “The little princeling didn’t have the guts!”

The drones laughed, and it was the grim, hideous sort that can only be mustered by the sort of creatures whose senses of humour are derived entirely from the suffering of others. From where I lay on the ground, I could see them passing the unlit grenade as though it was some sort of trophy ripped from a conquered foe, which, I suppose, it really was. However, the noise of the crowd ceased suddenly, as though the needle of a gramophone had been wrenched from the spinning record, and I heard Dorylus’ voice, clipped, refined, but strained: “Do try to keep him in one piece; we don’t want to spoil the Queen’s present, do we?”

I tried to lift my head, fighting the waves of dizziness and nausea to see this ring of Changelings around me part, and the tall, blurry figure of Dorylus approached and slowly came into sharp focus. Short Fuse was right, he did look ‘pissed’, as he had put it; I’d seen him annoyed and frustrated at my refusal to go along with his mad experiment, but as it was now burning behind him, the dark smoke still visible rising over his shoulder and the crackle of the fire just audible over the noise of a myriad different conversations around us, I could see the tension in his jaw and the fire in his narrowed eyes as he seemed to struggle to keep his rage under control.

Dorylus peered down at me, curled up in pain on the ground and shivering from terror, and my rather pathetic display appeared to cheer him up a little. At any moment I expected to feel the agony of a bayonet thrust in my neck or heavy hooves pounded on my head, but instead he merely stood there, considering me carefully for a while as a cat would with a fatally-wounded mouse, and then sat down on his haunches next to me. I had to tilt my head back at a painful angle to look him in the eyes, which was a difficult enough prospect given his tall stature.

“I’m going to let you in on a little secret,” began Dorylus, his voice curiously measured and calm despite his hostile sneer. “I hate ponies.” His thin, lipless mouth curled into a sardonic smile, as he pulled at the ludicrous cravat around his neck until it came free and he threw it on the ground. “I really mean it; not in the same way that you might claim to ‘hate’ a weak martini, oh no, I mean that I utterly despise your kind to the core. I hate how dependent we Changelings are on such a frivolous, useless, decadent species just to survive, and how you selfishly hoard what we need to live for yourselves.”

“It didn’t have to be this way,” I gasped out between ragged, pained breaths. “If the Hives had merely asked-”

“Shut up!” he snapped. The masque of refinement and culture had been torn free and was shattered on the ground, and the monster beneath it was unveiled in all its ugliness to breathe its rank breath in my face. “Hives, you were the worst. Every single day I had to put up with your inane, drunken, perverted behaviour, your pointless, vapid stories about how many intoxicating drinks you had and how many mares you slept with, and every day I had to resist the urge to murder you. And for what?”

Dorylus breathed a deep, defeated sigh, and ran his hoof over his scalp as though he had a mane. His sick, sarcastic smile grew wider, and he let out a pained chuckle and shook his head. “I tried,” he continued. “I really tried, here, to find a solution that would benefit both of our races, to find a path to a lasting peace.” He shrugged his shoulders. “The others were right, of course; it was doomed to fail because you ponies cannot let go of the foalish delusion of your own superiority.”

Speaking hurt, as did everything else, but somehow I felt the need, in what could be my last moments on Faust’s green Equus, for one final show of defiance. “I told you so,” I said. “Nopony will want to give up their liberty for some light pampering.”

“There it is again,” said Dorylus. “That damned arrogance. The carrot has proven useless, so now the Hives must return to the ways of the whip and the bayonet to keep livestock in line.” He reached out with his hoof and placed it on my shoulder, where it felt cold and clammy. “I promise you, Prince Blueblood, you will not die today or even tomorrow. You will live to see Equestria burn.”

With that chilling threat, Dorylus rose to his hooves and turned to the nearest Blackhorn soldier. “Cocoon him.”

Author's Note

A bit late due to Christmas and all that, but here it is. See you in 2023

Chapter 12

I have made a great deal of enemies over the course of my life, most notably when I was a young and impetuous little princeling who had yet to internalise the most important lesson, that life was a damned sight easier if I could trick ponies into believing that I’m not a completely horrible pony to be around, but I think that even the worst of them, including the hack tabloid newspapers who seem to revel in every misfortune and scandal inflicted upon me, would be moved to something approaching sympathy if they saw the appalling state I was in when I was recaptured by the Changelings. Dorylus is, of course, the exception to that; with the destruction of his camp and his little experiment, he could only take solace in the fact that I, whom he seemed to blame for all of his misfortune despite the rescue and its collateral damage being something that happened to me, rather than something that I instigated, was in an incredible amount of pain and swimming in such depths of despair as my mind and soul had never sunk to before. That it was my own damned fault, over something as simple as not looking where I was going and failing to anticipate that the enemy had planned for this sort of eventuality, only made this failure all the more bitter. Try as I might to pin the blame on Lightning Dust, and if I ever got out of this alive and if there was an Equestria to return to I vowed that I would do everything within my not-inconsiderable power to utterly ruin her, it all fell back to me and my own stupidity.

The drones pulled me up to my hooves and forced me to walk, or limp, rather, back to the burning camp. I could only hobble along on three legs behind Dorylus, trailing a dripping trail of blood up the slope behind me from my wounded hoof, and when I was evidently being much too slow for them I was ‘encouraged’ with a few sharp jabs in the flank from their bayonets. My vision was swimming, and stars sparkled and danced before my eyes; I felt bile rising up the back of my throat, forced down by swallowing only to return again and again. Even though I was not walking on it, the pain from my caltrop-injured hoof was utterly excruciating, like burning needs plunged deep inside almost to the bone.

I must have finally fainted from the pain, exhaustion, or perhaps even blood loss considering how much of it was streaked across the dusty slope, for the next thing I remember was sitting at a wooden table in a dank, dark room. The drones had carried me inside, wherever this was, perhaps some other unseen part of the manor or another Changeling camp in the hills entirely. My injured hoof had been bandaged quite crudely up to my fetlock with strips of white cloth, which had been stained a dirty, rusty red-brown where the blood had dried. The wound was still painful, but it had become more of a throbbing ache, timed with that of blood hammering in my ears, rather than the lance of fire it had been when I first suffered it. My mouth was parchment-dry, and my tongue seemed to stick to the roof of my mouth; and much like a hangover, my brain felt many times too big for its cavity, and had made its displeasure known by inflicting a terrible headache. Though I hadn’t eaten in however long, my stomach was quite ready and willing to throw what little I had back up. I don’t know how long I’d been out cold, and I wondered if the Commandant had ordered me drugged to keep me nice and sedate until the ‘cocooning’, whatever that meant.

It felt warm and humid in this small, windowless room, more so than is normal for this part of the world. There was barely enough room for the small table and chairs, plus Dorylus himself who occupied the one opposite me; there were two other guards, Blackhorns, judging by their uniforms, standing at my sides, and next to the Commandant himself was a small native pony; a young stallion with a handsome face and pale grey fur, standing with his head bowed and his eyes locked to the floor. I could still feel my cap weighing heavily and slightly too tightly on my head, so though I could not very well check with the drones watching my every move, I was at least confident that the secret notes I had made remained undiscovered.

Dorylus was furiously writing on a piece of paper on the tall desk between us, as though he was trying to set fire to it with his quill through friction. The desk was clearly designed with a Purestrain of his stature in mind, and as my vision gradually cleared up and I regained strength sufficient enough to lift my head up to see over the edge of it, I saw that it was covered in paperwork. Without any windows, the sallow green light, barely bright enough to read by, was provided for by a single glowing orb affixed to the ceiling by that malignant, slimy chrysalite stuff the Changelings like to build things out of. Come to think of it, I saw that the brick walls were caked in that stuff, and rather unevenly too, where it collected in the dark corners of the room. With the exception of the desk and the chairs, the whole room resembled nothing like the faux-Trottingham country manor decor of the rest of the camp.

“My little piece of the Hive away from Hive,” said Dorylus, a sardonic smile stretching the edges of his mouth. That explained it, then. “I didn’t expect you to come ‘round quite so early, but you, Prince Blueblood, are a remarkably resilient specimen.”

It took me a while to find the words, but eventually I settled on what seemed like the most pressing question: “Where am I?”

“My office.” Dorylus placed the quill down on the desk and leaned back in his seat, looking at me over with a piercing, judging stare.

“I thought I was being ‘cocooned’.”

“My drones are preparing your cocoon as we speak,” he replied. “I didn’t think they would be necessary here, but, well… recent events have forced my hoof.”

I looked at the strikingly handsome young stallion in the corner of the room, so utterly incongruous in this oppressive environment that I could not help but stare at him. One rather unfortunate explanation as to his presence did immediately come to mind, despite the grim situation I found myself in and the persistent pain in my hoof and head, but somehow I didn’t think that Dorylus here, or indeed Changelings in general, would have been particularly keen on that sort of thing outside of base manipulation of emotions for their prey.

“Why do you have a colt in your office?” I asked.

“He’s just lunch,” said Dorylus, pulling a face that implied that he thought I was quite mad for even noticing the poor stallion over there.

“It’s bad form to eat at your desk,” I said, quite snippily; I knew that whatever fate awaited me was going to be terribly unpleasant, so though it might have seemed disadvantageous of me to do so, teasing the Commandant would at least bring me a few moments of grim satisfaction.

The chitinous brow-ridge on Dorylus’ face folded inwards in an expression that I took to be a confused frown. He then shook his head, picked up his discarded quill in a sickly green aura, and carried on scribbling something down on a form in spidery writing; at least stifling bureaucracy wasn’t something unique to the Equestrian military, thought I, as I tried to peer over the edge of the desk to see what he was doing.

“I have a lot of work to do now,” he said snippily, with a dismissive wave of his hoof. “Camp Joy is finished, thanks to you and those cowardly partisans, and now I must answer to Queen Chrysalis for this failure.”

“They didn’t give me much of a choice in the matter,” I said, being quite honest for once, but he appeared to have taken the comment as heroic flippancy in the face of impending horror. At the very least, I felt as though being a mild nuisance while he tried to carry on working would be an appropriate consolation prize for failing to escape. “What happened to the others?”

“They’re being rounded up,” said Dorylus, and though I had no reason to believe him, I did feel my heart sink at the thought of Square Basher and everypony else I had shared this captivity with being caught again as I had, and likely facing the same sort of bleak future that stretched out before me now. Though I hoped that they would all make it to freedom, or as much of it as could be gained by hiding in the hills, a part of me wished that I had somepony here, Cannon Fodder or Square Basher perhaps, so that I did not have to face this on my own.

“The Blackhorns are combing the hills as we speak; they’ll be caught, or the Blackhorns will take out their frustrations on the local population of livestock.” He shook his head with what seemed like genuine sadness. “It’s a stupid waste of food.”

I scoffed. “And you wonder why we ponies weren’t terribly trusting of your promises.”

“We treated you as an honoured guest,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless, “for that is what you were. In truth, Queen Chrysalis didn’t know what to do with you when she learnt that you had been captured. If others in our circle had had their way, you would have been brought to the Hive and tortured. Our surgeons have ways of prolonging a pony’s pain while keeping them alive, and by invoking memories of loved ones as they perform their work upon your flesh they would create in you feelings of love in the depths of pain and despair. The love extracted from this complicated technique is to us what a fine wine is to you, and they would have enjoyed tasting yours.

“It was only Hive Marshal Chela’s decision to send you here, before any other Purestrain could get their hooves on you, that saved you from that fate. Together, Chela and I protected you. You were treated with every consideration, every kindness possible. You repaid this generosity by attempting to escape twice.”

“I didn’t intend to!” I snapped, and Dorylus raised an eyebrow. “I told you that the other prisoners had come up with the tunnel plan by themselves without me, and when I found out I sabotaged it for you! And as for those partisans, I had nothing to do with them; I was stuck in that cell, for Harmony’s sake, so I couldn’t possibly have organised anything from in there!”

“And when the opportunity to escape presented itself, you took it without hesitation,” he replied, and gestured to the mangled hoof I cradled against my chest, “or did you intend to sabotage your own escape by crippling yourself?”

“I couldn’t very well fly over your field of caltrops.”

Dorylus was silent for a spell, and I sat there, nursing my wounded hoof which continued to sting and ache angrily for the misery I had put it through. I knew enough of battlefield injuries that I was at risk of losing the bally thing if it wasn’t seen to, and I could hardly trust the Changelings to know what to do with it. Though, thanks to the war, advances in prosthetics had advanced quite rapidly to the point that losing a hoof or even an entire limb, as Red Coat and Southern Cross had suffered, had become merely an inconvenience that required a regular expenditure of lubricating oil and trips to a mechanic, I was rather attached to this one of flesh and blood and didn’t fancy losing for to one of brass and steam.

The uncomfortable silence was becoming almost too much to bear, and I had one card left to play. It was a damned risky one, but my situation seemed bleak enough already, and I couldn’t see how this particular gambit could possibly make things any worse for me.

“I know about Operation: Sunburn,” I said.

It had the desired effect, at least at first: Dorylus froze in his seat and his eyes widened to the size of saucers, and dropped the quill onto his paperwork with a splatter of green ink. He composed himself quickly, and pulled an entirely false grin. “Two words that you have overhead in passing,” he said, “between indiscreet members of my staff with whom I will have to have strong words.”

“It’s a sneak attack on Equestria’s east coast,” I continued, unable to resist the urge to grin as the Commandant’s expression became increasingly aghast with every word I spoke of his masterplan, “Manehattan, Baltimare, and Trottingham, to be precise, using a fleet of airships launched from Marelacca. Quite daring, I must say. From whom you acquired these airships remains a mystery, but I can make a reasonable guess it’s the same enterprising chappy you bought those muskets from. I can’t imagine what they cost you or what they will get in return out of Equestria’s fall, but I dare say that whoever they are won’t be seeing a return on their investments any time soon. Besides, your Queen Chrysalis hardly seems the sort to share.”

It gave me an immeasurable amount of satisfaction to see the look of dawning horror on Dorylus’ smug face, as fleeting as it was. He seemed to regain control over his lower jaw, and set his face into a grim masque of detachment. “So, you know about it,” he said, and his voice wavered ever so slightly. “I don’t know how, and I suppose it doesn’t really matter anymore. But here you are, the only pony who knows about it, safely back in my captivity.”

Yes, that was the sticking point in my plan, and I certainly wished that I had had the foresight to have told somepony else when I had the chance. In my defence, I didn’t expect to be rescued and I certainly did not anticipate that it would go so badly wrong in the way that it did. However, Dorylus didn’t know that, and all that I really wanted to do here was unsettle him, to rob him of what little feeling of triumph he could muster out of this whole awful affair.

“Am I really the only pony who knows about it?” I said. “Did you really think that I wouldn’t have told anypony else about this? Even if you do round up all of the other escapees and the partisans, the news will have spread beyond your ability to control by now. Equestria will learn about Operation: Sunburn, and your airships will be shot out of the sky before a single drone can land on our soil.”

Dorylus snorted and shook his head. “You’re bluffing.”

I affected a small smile, despite the pain I was in. He was right, of course, but he didn’t have to know that. “Can you truly afford to be so confident about that?”

“No.” Dorylus snarled, and he looked as though he was ready to smash the desk with his hooves and beat me to death with the splintered wood, which made me consider that I might have overstepped the mark somewhat. However, he took a deep breath to calm himself once more, and peered over at the papers scattered over his desk. “Which means that we must now accelerate our plans to compensate. We have come much too far to stop now. The preparations have already been made, and I can’t very well ask our Queen to suspend the operation. Even if Celestia learns of Sunburn, it will already be too late for her.”

At the very least, it might cause them to rush the final parts of their daring plan, and a rushed plan invariably goes wrong when something that was overlooked as a result ruins everything. I might have been captured again, with nothing to look forward to in my immediate future but deprivation and horrific torture, but I could still serve my Aunties and my country by being very annoying to the enemy. Now that, I considered, was something that I could do extremely well, and if nothing else it satisfied the foalish bully in me to see my words stab deeply into Dorylus’ heart when another one of his ambitious plans was burning down all around him.

However, whatever retort that I had lined up in my mind would have to wait. The door, somewhere behind me, swung open, and I heard hoofsteps. Dorylus looked over my shoulder at whoever was approaching, and I presently felt a cold, clammy hoof placed on my upper foreleg, my one remaining good one, in a manner that was likely intended to be reassuring but, coming from a blocky, chitinous Changeling one riddled with gaping holes, it was anything but. I gathered the wherewithal to look up at the new Purestrain, who was clad in a sort of white, glossy apron, stained with great splotches and streaks of some sort of green, viscous fluid that stank horribly, and he smiled back down at me with the sort of look a lepidopterist might have before pinning an interesting new specimen to the cork board.

“Come along, now,” he said, giving my shoulder a little pat. His voice was that of a kindly doctor addressing a worried patient about to go in for some life-saving surgery, and given his species’ knack for mimicry, that was very likely from whom he had picked it up from. “Your cocoon awaits, sir.”

“Braconid, about damn time,” said Dorylus snippily. “Remove this idiot from my sight.”

“My apologies, sir,” said the ‘doctor’. “The staff were more concerned about putting out the fire, which had damaged some of our equipment. The delay is regrettable, but necessary to ensure that our guest does not suffer too much.”

Dorylus responded only with a grunt and a dismissive wave of his hoof, which Braconid, whom I assumed was this strange Purestrain’s name, dutifully ignored. A few more encouraging tugs on my upper foreleg coaxed me out of my seat, and I followed along, limping pathetically a few paces behind on three legs. We were accompanied by a brace of Blackhorns through a maze of corridors, all seemingly underground if my special talent was any indication; the air remained stifling, though cooler than the blazing heat of the surface, and thick with humidity, with an odd, organic smell in the air that seemed to emanate from the slimy chrysalite stuff smeared over the walls. There were no windows here, so light was provided for by more of those peculiar green orbs affixed to the walls and ceilings in a seemingly random manner. As we skulked along I tried to make a mental map of the place, and though I had no idea where Dorylus’ office was in relation to anywhere else in Camp Joy, with the distance I had helplessly dragged myself through, I could make a reasonable assumption that this underground complex, apparently directly beneath the smouldering manor house, stretched on for much further than the grounds themselves. That, I thought, would explain why I saw far more drones working in the camp than I would have thought would reasonably fit in it.

We passed a few drones along the way, and most either ignored me or shot me some particularly aggressive glares even by their standards. A few hissed and snarled as I crossed them, which I took to be expressing some sort of upset at our failed escape attempt; I remembered some little comment made in Chrysalis’ meeting with her Purestrains, about how this camp was not only a place to store captured princes and bribe them into compliance with cheap wine, but also where so-called ‘deviant’ drones, which I imagined included that Daring Do-obsessed fellow I’d met before, ill-suited for the sort of brutally conformist society that their Queen had seen fit to impose upon her subjects, could continue to serve her and the Hives in manners that suited them. Far be it from me to sympathise with their sort, of course, but I could only imagine that they, having been promised a way out of whatever oppressive and aggressive means that their government used to enforce the sort of fanatical loyalty that Odonata had described to me, would have been rather inconvenienced by its very clear failure, and no doubt Dorylus had explained to them that the fault lay with me.

“Have you ever been cocooned before?” asked Braconid unexpectedly. He looked over his shoulder where I was limping along behind him.

Stupid question, of course I hadn’t. “Not that I recall,” I answered diplomatically.

“Don’t worry, it’s a perfectly safe procedure,” he said, which was precisely the sort of thing to make me worry about it. “Some of the livestock even enjoy it.”

I didn’t respond; my mood for witty repartee had been drained somewhat with recent events, and unlike Dorylus, this Braconid fellow did not seem the sort to rise to a little verbal sparring. Doctors, as a rule, have always unnerved me; while I’m sure most are motivated by a genuine desire to help ponies, there are many who I suspect are simply in it for the visceral and sadistic thrill of slicing them up and fiddling around with the insides. So to encounter a Changeling example of their kind was all the more worrying, for unlike our lot, these were unlikely to pay the appropriate lip service to bedside manners and the use of anaesthetic.

I was led into a larger room, and its resemblance to an operating theatre as interpreted through the imagination of a maniac certainly did not help matters. The oppressively dim, green lighting, as opposed to the bright, sterile white of conventional medical facilities or even the warm candlelight of makeshift field hospitals at the front, deepened the shadows so that I could barely make out the array of medical equipment arranged neatly on the walls; I caught glimpses of scalpels, saws, knives, syringes, and so on, along with tubes and pulsating things resembling excised tumours. Drones in stained overalls paced this way and that, checking equipment and poking around at things that I could never guess the purposes of. Where there ought to have been an operating table in the centre was a cylinder of sorts, much like the one I had rescued Saguaro from in Virion Hive, upright and tilted back at a shallow angle, empty of fluid, and with its base propped open in a manner that reminded me of an upside-down can with the lid pulled partly open. The young colt did not seem to have suffered too much from his time inside his cocoon, aside from being obviously distressed when we had wrenched him from the pleasant dream the Changelings had somehow weaved for him, but that still did not make me terribly optimistic about what was to follow.

“If you’d like to pop your clothes on the table please,” said Braconid, gesturing to a slab of solidified chrysalite next to the empty cocoon. “The process is unfortunately messy, and it would be a shame for your uniform to be ruined.”

It was already in pretty terrible shape; the aborted escape attempt aside, having been lived in for a few days in a dank cellar with no access to bathing, I probably stank about half as bad as my loyal aide, wherever he was. Disrobing took a little more effort than I’m used to thanks to my injured hoof, and I was immensely wary of leaving my cap and its precious contents with creatures for whom the concept of individual privacy was as alien to them as standards of personal grooming were to Cannon Fodder. Speaking of him, I thought that this ordeal would have been a damned sight easier with him by my side for moral support, though I could only guess as to what his unique abilities would have done to this whole cocooning business.

Now as naked as a common pony with nowhere nice to go, I was instructed to climb inside the empty cocoon, which I accomplished with all of the grace of a drunken Yak trying to squeeze into a small bathtub. In the end, the drones either grew some empathy and helped me into the chamber, or, as was the most likely explanation, became bored watching me flounder uselessly with my injured hoof and just forced me in. Either way, I ended up standing on my hindlegs in what amounted to a green, slimy coffin. I’m not usually claustrophobic, having spent many happy hours as a foal exploring the labyrinth of dark and tight catacombs under the Sanguine Palace after my cutie mark had appeared, but when the lid sealed shut with a hiss of air, a hefty thud, and an ominous grinding of some unseen machinery, I felt a wave of panic wash over me like a bucket of chilled water over the face. When a foul-smelling fluid the consistency of syrup began to pour in through a series of sluices in the top and collect at the bottom, rising up my hindlegs by the second, I felt the urge to scream.

The front was somewhat clear, so I could still see the room beyond and the Changelings peering in with a sense of routine boredom. With my injured hoof tucked to my chest, I swung my good hoof at this window, only for it to bounce off harmlessly. With little other recourse, I tried again, harder. Though it looked like frosted glass, the substance deformed slightly under my blow, rather than shattering into shards as it ought to. The fluid rose up, over my hips, up to my waist, and showed no sign of slowing down; I knew that it wouldn’t kill me, as I’d seen Saguaro immersed in that same odd-smelling slime before without drowning, but the animal hindbrain, which had warned our primitive ancestors of predators lurking amidst the plains where our species first emerged into civilisation, was loud and could not be silenced by rational discourse.

“Now, now, sir,” said Braconid, his voice sounding muffled and distant through the walls of this cocoon-thing, “it will be a lot easier if you simply relax.”

Of course, any pony told to ‘simply relax’ will invariably do the direct opposite thing, and I was no different. The fluid level was up to my shoulders, and whatever it was made my caltrop wound sting as if acid had been poured into it. The viscosity of this stinking fluid slowed my movements, so rather than punching the clear surface of the cocoon I resorted to pushing with my good hoof, as if I might be able to force a hole in it. There was some give to it, but the harder I pushed the more it pushed back; the fact that the Purestrain and the drones continued to peer in with bored expressions demonstrated that my attempts were both futile and entirely routine for them.

The fluid rose up to my neck. I tilted my head back, straining on my hindlegs to keep my face out of it so I could breathe, but it continued to flood in through the sluices. It rapidly covered my head and I was completely submerged in it. I managed to take a deep breath first, but for some reason that still escapes me, panic probably, I tried to breathe; the fluid went into my throat, stinging my nostrils, and it forced me to cough. What breath I had taken bubbled away before my eyes, which, still open, felt the horrible caress of this foul stuff - cold, itchy, burning, and all distinctly unpleasant. Everything appeared to have turned murky and green, and the tall figure of the Purestrain observing me with the typical dispassionate gaze of a seasoned doctor appeared like a monstrous shadow lurking just on the cusp of emerging from a fog. My lungs burned, and with the viridescent murkiness obscuring my eyes I was all but transported back to that gas-soaked slope outside Virion Hive.

I was going to be fine, I told myself; Dorylus wanted me alive long enough to watch Equestria burn, as it were, but that primal instinct still would not abate. I continued to thrash my hooves uselessly against the walls of the cocoon. The fire in my lungs demanded air, and I could stand it no longer; the sharp, burning sensation, like being gassed again, was agonising enough to utterly overwhelm the pain in my hoof. Against all instinct, I breathed in this putrid liquid, and felt it fill my lungs.

[Though the way these pods worked has been lost to history, it is known that it was standard practice to sedate ponies before being placed in a cocoon to avoid panic. As was the case when I was cocooned in Chrysalis’ attack on Canterlot, Changelings motivated by either haste or sadism sometimes skipped the sedation until after the subject is immersed and restrained in the fluid.]

The pain ceased. In fact, all sensation faded into nothing; the sickly feel of the fluid all around me and soaking my coat to the skin, the lingering ache in my damaged hoof, and the solid bottom of the cocoon itself under my rear hooves was gone. My vision clouded around the edges, darkened slowly, and turned to blackness. This, I fancied, before I slipped inelegantly into unconsciousness, was what it must feel like to finally die.

***

Clearly I did not drown to death in the cocoon, otherwise I would not have been able to write this save via seance and a team of very patient and very literal ghostwriters. I remember little of being inside the cocoon itself, having spent much of my time in it in a coma of sorts and dreaming vividly of various things. Saguaro had told me about the dreams the Changelings had made for him when he was in the cocoon, and as I recalled these were seen as something of a reward for good behaviour for particularly industrious slaves, so I had some inkling of what to expect. However, whether due to problems with the cocoon itself, whatever warped version of Princess Luna’s dream magic they employed, or my own muddled psyche, these dreams didn’t quite take and I found myself waking up periodically. How much time passed between each awakening and, indeed, how many times I did wake up is impossible for me to say for certain, as remembering the entire experience is much like trying to remember a particularly surreal dream immediately after waking, and the little details slowly fade like the lingering after-image of a camera flash in one’s eyes.

The first time, however, I do recall with some clarity; I had woken up again to find that the fluid level had dropped mercifully below my neck so that I could breathe normally once more. Still, my first few breaths were accompanied by a violent fit of coughing that brought up splutters of foul-tasting green gunk through both my mouth and nose. When that was over, it was still a tremendous relief to be breathing air, though the air was stale, warm, and stank of both that disgusting fluid and Yours Truly after a week without bathing. That I was still alive was a pleasant, albeit painful, surprise. My hoof still ached, but it was the dull, itchy throb of an awful wound healing than the sharper agony that I imagine the likes of gangrene and infection would feel like. My entire body felt tired, and it was that very peculiar sort of exhaustion that comes with sitting in one place for too long. It was likely that I had been here for several days and hadn’t moved at all in that time, save for the usual sort of subconscious twitching and fidgeting that comes with sleep.

There was some gunk in my eyes, so I blinked that away as best as I could. My hooves were still immersed in the viscous fluid, so using those to wipe them would only have worsened the issue. However, as my vision returned I saw the face of that Purestrain Braconid peering back at me, like a specimen ready for some ghoulish experiment, and I let out a sharp scream in surprise.

“Dear, oh dear,” he said, his voice muffled by the clear-ish surface of the cocoon but still understandable. “This sometimes happens,” he continued absently. “It’s nothing to be worried about, though; sometimes the equine mind rejects the reality that we have created for it. Do you remember what it was? It would be very helpful for my research.”

Remembering the ‘reality’, as he had put it, was tricky, as recalling the details of a dream just after waking tends to be; it certainly felt very real when I was immersed in it, feeling the cold marble of the Sanguine Palace beneath my hooves and breathing its ancient, stale air. Everything was as I remembered it, and I imagined that, much like dreams, it was assembled using bits and pieces from my own memory. The vast halls, the forbidding statues of long-dead ancestors glowering in judgement from their pedestals, the legions of quiet, industrious servants in their endless battle to keep the entire place clean; all were replicated with perfection as I stalked from room to room, corridor to corridor. And yet, even then there was something off about it that I can only see now upon waking, for having been assembled by memory it appeared that different parts of the dream palace had been selected from a variety of different points in time - the rather charming and gargantuan bust of a pony with his throat slit that a distant ancestor of mine had installed over the main entrance to the palace, which had also been connected to a fountain that sprayed red-dyed water over visitors to symbolically bathe them in ‘blood’, had been removed on my father’s order after a torrent of complaints over ruined clothing and because normal ponies visiting thought it was just too damned disturbing for an entrance hall. Yet, in the dream in which I was an adult, it was still there. However, that was not the discrepancy that had brought me out of the ‘reality’ of the dream.

“My parents,” I said. My voice was strained, and it hurt my throat a little to speak.

“Ah yes.” Braconid nodded his head. “The cocoons also harvest love from you, and they’re much more efficient than the usual methods. Having a few figures you love in your dreams helps us extract as much love as possible, so your parents are an obvious choice.” I saw him squint at something just out of sight, obscured by the walls of the cocoon. “That’s very odd; I’ve never seen an extraction rate so low before. All ponies love their parents.”

“Not this one,” I said. “And vice versa; they would never have told me that, even if they did.”

Braconid hummed thoughtfully, and tapped on whatever machinery that was telling him the opposite of what he wanted to hear, as though it might somehow change. “It’s an alien concept to we Changelings anyway; with the exception of some deviant drones who insist on doing it themselves, nymphs are raised communally away from their birth parents.”

That was certainly not the impression that I had gotten from watching Odonata doting on her - our - daughter, Elytra. Though even back then, it was my suspicion that the current state of affairs in the Hives, as dictated by Queen Chrysalis and her cabinet, was not the natural order among the Changelings, but rather a cynical subversion of it based on her twisted ideology. Increasingly, I saw instances of individual Changelings going against not only our own base propaganda that they were mindless, brainwashed beasts beyond redemption, but theirs too, and I could not help but consider if perhaps those deviants were less of a minority than we had all first thought.

It was then, as I was musing on just that, I noticed the room beyond the cocoon was not the same one as before when I was first forced into it; the grisly medical instruments adorning the walls were gone, and it was certain that I had been moved, while asleep and dreaming of the sort of perfect family life commoners got to enjoy but I missed out on, into some sort of storage area for these things. Behind Braconid I could see other such cocoons lined up against the wall, but I could not make out if they were likewise occupied. I had an unhappy suspicion that some, if not all, of my fellow escapees had been rounded up and put inside those cocoons, and if Lightning Dust was amongst their number then that delicious irony would go some way in making up for her betrayal.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“Hm?” Braconid looked up from where he was fiddling with something on the cocoon’s outer shell. “You’re in the hold of a ship.”

“Oh,” I said. “Why? Where are we going?”

Braconid looked annoyed. “I think it’s time for you to go to sleep now,” he said, and the level of fluid began rising once again. If the first experience was uncomfortable, the second go was no less unpleasant, and once again I slipped into unconsciousness and another dream.

Subsequent ‘realities’, the ones that I can still remember, that is, tended to be variations on the first one -- a pretended simulacrum of an idyllic family life, and only the ponies involved seemed to change. Twilight Sparkle featured quite heavily in a few of them, most memorably when, as I had explained to an increasingly exasperated Braconid, who must have tired of my mind’s continued rejections of the dreams he was somehow creating for me, that the Princess of Friendship was very unlikely to be the one to offer that particular Maretonian indulgence to me without much in the way of prompting and/or pathetic begging from Yours Truly.

[While certainly enjoyable with a willing partner, no amount of begging would convince Princess Twilight Sparkle to engage in that particular sex act with Blueblood.]

Despite being exactly what I wanted, or rather what my file told him I wanted, I could only assume that the reason these failed to ensnare me as expected was that my psyche struggled with a reality free from at least some form of misery, however major or minor, physical or emotional, inflicted upon me as a just reward for whatever sin I had committed. When presented with pure happiness, my subconscious had apparently detected that something was terribly wrong with the world and chose to reject it, which, as I think about it now, is not exactly a particularly heartening thought. Of course, the simpler explanation might have been that the Changelings had gotten it wrong, and whatever sort of perfect dream that would keep me nice and sedate so they could harvest my love was of an altogether different nature than what the files he consulted from had said. They would probably have had far better luck if they had simply repeated the rare happy memories I that still have of spending summers as a foal with Princess Celestia, or even of Twilight Sparkle if they could refrain from utterly butchering her character or misunderstanding why I found that strange mare so damned alluring.

At any rate, this continued a few more times, and Braconid was getting increasingly exasperated with his apparent failure to extract any meaningful quantity—not to mention quality—of love out of me. After a few more goes, the waking up and getting immersed in fluid again became thoroughly routine.

“What is it this time?” he would say, peering in through the transparent window in the cocoon.

I would shrug my shoulders and explain: “I didn’t really have that many real friends growing up,” or “You’ve never met my Auntie Luna, have you?” or “Drape Cut is an excellent gentlecolt’s gentlecolt, but that’s as far as it goes.”

Then he would sigh, try and tease out a few suggestions on what he could do to make it finally stick and be done with this madness, and repeat the process again, over and over.

I wasn’t exactly helping him with my prompts, of course, as, in my own rather juvenile way, I thought to sabotage his efforts in whatever minor way still within my meagre power to do so. Of course, he at first rejected the notion of forming a dream for me involving a Prench boudoir, a dozen soft, plump, pretty mares each with an advanced knowledge of equine anatomy, and enough champagne to drown a dragon on the notion that lust is merely a poor substitute for love, rather like comparing hayburgers and hayfries to a nutritious meal of fresh grass and salad - it would fill up a Changeling, but would leave them feeling rather sick. However, I think to avoid having to deal with me again for the duration of the rest of the trip, for it was clear he was getting rather annoyed by this and his friendly old family doctor routine was starting to wear quite thin, he finally gave me what I wanted, and muttered bitterly something about having to clean out the cocoon later.

When I woke up in the cocoon for the final time it was immediately obvious that something was wrong -- Braconid was nowhere to be seen and the world beyond my little cocoon had changed from the dank little storeroom to what looked like a jungle, with a multitude of thick and exotic foliage, that was also partially on fire. The fluid had again drained down to the level of my neck, and looking down, it seemed that there was some sort of leak out of the bottom. I tried to peer through the murky, translucent membrane, and saw only the vague shapes that hinted at trees with vibrant green foliage and dancing orange and yellow flames licking up dark, thick trunks. Figures moved, but I could scarcely make them out. I could hear muffled voices, shouting and yelling in that unmistakable timbre of a brutal fight to the death.

Great, thought I, yet another silly rescue attempt. Just what I needed. Still, I had better make the most of it, and so I raised my hoof, the one that hadn’t been punctured by a caltrop, and struck the cocoon’s wall in front of me. Or that was my intention, for the damned thing felt as though I was wearing a heavy lead boot and failed to reach the required height to even begin hitting the side of this hateful tube. For some damned reason, though my muscles made a valiant effort in doing something that I knew I was perfectly capable of, so capable that it’s precisely the sort of thing that doesn’t require any thought whatsoever, the entire damned limb abruptly seized up and afflicted itself with a dull ache as though I had hopped an entire marathon on it. I had been lying almost perfectly still for several days, at least, if not longer, so I ought not to have been surprised that I had the strength of a newborn. My only option to attract attention was to bash my own head, horn first, against the wall, and if I was lucky the pointiest part of my anatomy might even puncture it. That didn’t hurt any less, but it made a satisfying ‘thud’ noise.

“Hello!” I shouted, though my voice was raspy from days, perhaps weeks, of not being used. “I say, hello! Is anypony there?”

A head popped into view immediately, and I could have cried with joy when I recognised it. “I can’t seem to get you out, sir,” said Cannon Fodder, looking none the worse for wear. “But hold on. I have a plan.”

Chapter 13

The words ‘I have a plan’ have never filled me with much confidence, but I was so indescribably happy to see Cannon Fodder that I was quite willing to go along with the first rare independent thoughts that had materialised inside his barren mind. My aide had popped down outside of view again, so I tried to see if I could make out what he was doing by angling my snout down and pressing my face against the clear surface of the cocoon. His ‘plan’, as far as I could tell, seemed to involve hitting the base of the cocoon with a large, curiously asymmetrical dagger that he had acquired from somewhere. He wasn’t getting particularly far with that, as whatever seemingly organic substance that this cocoon was made, or perhaps even grown from mended itself with every stab he made. I recalled that Saguaro's cocoon opened of its own accord when Fer-de-Lance had accidentally grazed it with a careless barrage of magic fire, but alas my horn was still rendered as useless as my aide’s with the ring still firmly attached to it.

“Cannon Fodder?” I called out. My throat hurt with every word, but I wanted nothing more than to be out of this stupid, hateful thing as quickly as possible.

My aide ceased stabbing the cocoon and popped his head up again. This was getting nowhere and with each plunge of his dagger the tip came precariously closer and closer to where my numb hindlegs were, and I was hardly in the mood to suffer more damage to my three remaining undamaged limbs. “Sir?” he said.

“Go and find a unicorn,” I said.

I watched Cannon Fodder turn his head left to right in rapid succession, then he darted off before I could tell him not to leave me alone here. Something was going horrendously wrong, clearly; the presence of quite that much fire about the place tended, in my own personal experience, to illustrate that things were not proceeding in a logical and careful manner, quite the opposite in fact. I tried to make out the figures in the smoke, but they were fleeting and quite distant even accounting for the blurring effect of the cocoon’s translucent surface. They were definitely pony-shaped, with four limbs, a body, a head, and sometimes wings or a horn, but which were Changelings wasn’t something that I could work out with any sort of clarity. However, what was very clear from the way these shapes moved amidst the smoke and the burning foliage was that they were fighting, and it was a particularly nasty sort of fracas if fire was involved. Not only could I hear the sounds of brutal violence that I had become much too acquainted with over the years, muffled by the cocoon itself, but I could see these figures charge, grapple, punch, buck, kick, and bite one another. Here and there I would see flashes of flame, perhaps musket fire at an extremely close range, briefly illuminating some of the silhouettes. Two would embrace one another, and the deadly dance of one-on-one combat would ensue, and they writhed on the ground with one another until one silhouette became still and the other darted off for more.

I don’t know how much longer I had waited for Cannon Fodder to return, but it was sufficient to make me concerned not only for my own continued safety, as that a few stray musket shots getting rather close to my cocoon was not lost on me, but also his. Just as I thought I might attempt shouting again, though my throat felt as though I had been gargling with shrapnel shards, his dull, vacant face popped back into view, along with that of a creature I hadn’t expected to see, but in hindsight I probably ought to have.

“Cannon Fodder,” I said carefully. “That’s a kirin.” So that explained why things were on fire.

Cannon Fodder looked at said kirin, who stared back with a quizzical but amused expression. “She has a horn.”

“So do Changelings, but that doesn’t make them unicorns,” I snapped flippantly. Her horn was entirely the wrong shape for either; it was longer, curved in an S-shape with a strange fork in the middle, and was shiny. The kirin mare was a little older than I, probably in her mid-thirties, I’d say, with a pretty, soft face that was just starting to gain a few wrinkles around the edges of her eyes and lips. A shock of electric-blue mane framed her face, and, in that odd way that characterises their race, it resembled more like that of a lion than an equine and complimented the pale yellow shade of her coat quite nicely. I couldn’t quite see her figure from where I was in the cocoon, but if her face was any indication I’d imagine that she was quite soft and plump, as far as they go. At least the presence of kirins explained why everything was on fire, thought I.

“Nihao,” I said to the kirin, with a faint nod of my head; it always paid to be polite to mares, especially if they could burst into flame at any moment.

“I’m Neighponese, you gaijin,” she snapped, speaking in decent Ponish but with an exotic accent that sounded quite familiar.

“Gomen-nasai,” I amended.

The kirin blinked vacantly twice at me, and then shook her head. “I’m only joking, you’re in Marelacca.” She seemed cheerful enough, despite the fight to the death happening not terribly far from where we were having this conversation.

Of course, where else would I be? Commandant Dorylus wanted me to watch Equestria burn, and I imagine that his desire for revenge for my part in the downfall of Camp Joy, despite being entirely not my fault for once, had overridden his own common sense as it often does with ponies more driven by emotion than reason. He obviously wanted to make good his promise, no doubt attempting to maximise my misery by not only dragging me halfway across the sea but also ensuring that I would be around to observe every step of their audacious plan, unable to stop it in any meaningful way, until they pulled it off and Chrysalis had perched her chitinous backside upon Princess Celestia’s throne. Still, I found myself feeling quite relieved at this revelation; my father had served in some capacity in running this place on behalf of Princess Celestia, as he would later do with Coltcutta and various bits and pieces of Zebrica to varying degrees of success and profit, and I myself had spent a few months here as a colt. The relief lasted about as long as it took me to remember that dear old Father had not done a particularly good job of working with the locals, pony and kirin alike, and if anything had briefly united the two races together in mutual hatred of him. Still, I suppose that meant we could all agree on something.

“Would that I had returned under better circumstances,” I said, though I received little more than a blank stare in response. “But to start, do you mind helping me out of this bloody cocoon?”

The kirin looked the cocoon up and down, which made her messy mane swish and bob, pulled a face as if deep in thought, and then shook her head vigorously. “If you’re asking me to nirik-up and burn you out of there,” she said, “then that might boil you alive at the same time. I can’t exactly do it on demand, either; I have to get myself really worked up over something, lah.”

“The fight going on behind you isn’t making you angry?” I asked, incredulous.

“Not really.” She shrugged casually. “What can I say? Meditation works wonders for keeping down the angry thoughts, lah. I mean, it is a little rage-inducing that the Changelings have just invaded our land, especially since we still haven’t gotten it back from you Equestrians, and-”

I quickly noticed that hot blue and red flames began to dance around her elegant horn, and given that I had no intention of being boiled like a potato ration, I interrupted her, which, upon reflection, could have worsened the issue. “Not today, perhaps.”

That calmed her down, and the flames stopped. Of course, there was always something; so much for there being an easy fix for this, but I suppose after being stuck in this blasted thing, which was starting to smell rather horrible, I might add, I could afford to wait a little while longer. It was at that point however, that a crackle of musket fire, much closer and I could see the flashes of tongues of flame through the roiling smoke, ripped through the air and struck something just near enough to me to cause me some concern. The kirin flinched from the shots, emitting a sharp yelp; Cannon Fodder looked up at where they had hit with his usual vacant expression, as though the enemy had hurled a custard pie up there instead. The dark figures in the smoke began to deepen, taking on more solid forms, and they advanced.

“Get me out of this horrible thing!” I shouted, or at least I tried to, for it came out merely as a hoarse, quiet cry, but I think what I lost in volume I made up for in desperation.

Cannon Fodder turned to face them, legs apart and shoulders square with his flanks ready to take them on; as determined and experienced a fighter as my aide was, even he would struggle unarmed against five drones. However, the kirin had other ideas. I watched, unable to do anything to affect the proceedings save shout uselessly at everypony and be ignored, as she grabbed my aide’s shoulder, the urgency of the situation apparently overriding whatever disgust she might have felt at his lack of personal hygiene, which had been exacerbated by whatever conditions of captivity he had been forced into that even I in my sealed cocoon could begin to detect traces of his unique aroma.

“This way!” shouted the kirin, and before I could begin to politely ask them not to just leave me out here, the two of them quickly disappeared from view.

The Changelings emerged fully from the smoke. There were five of them, all wearing that distinctive grey uniform of the Blackhorns, already arrayed out in a firing line with their muskets at the ready. I was about to find out if the cocoon was bulletproof, which I very much doubted.

“Whatever it is you’re doing, hurry up!” I shouted as loud as I could, though I had no confidence that my voice could be heard. Though my limbs still felt stiff and weak, I had managed to get my right hoof up and gave the cocoon’s clear wall a forceful shove. Again, the surface indented slightly under my hoof, but rapidly hardened and solidified until it was as solid as steel.

The Changelings took aim, and I threw up my hooves over my face as though that might ward off the hail of lead from turning my brains into a fine paste. Yet just as the officer hissed out the order, their hooves closed around their triggers, and I saw the priming pan of their muskets flash with smoke and flame, the cocoon lurched backwards, which sent my head rocking forwards to bash my muzzle painfully against the wall. The muskets cracked, and I felt a sudden sensation of shock ripple through my much-abused body. My breath caught in my throat, yet I drew another, for the enemy had missed. My cocoon started rocking, jolting me from side to side. I watched the Changelings seem to drift away, and I finally realised that I had been stashed in the back of a wagon like a rolled-up carpet, which was now being pulled by both the kirin and Cannon Fodder. How enterprising of them, but the enemy quickly gave chase. Quite powerless to do anything, I could only stand in my tube and watch them take wing and charge after me.

“They’re chasing us!” I shouted. “Faster!”

That seemed to spur them on; if there was anything a fat, pampered aristocrat like me could do, it was to annoy the lower orders of society into doing things for me by shouting rudely at them. The wagon lurched forwards, which had the effect of propelling my head forward so that I bashed my snout on the cocoon’s wall again, this time leaving a little imprint there. I could only watch the Changelings chasing on after us, starting to close the distance. Trees with strikingly bright green leaves in astonishing abundance swept past us, along with wooden homes with tall roofs all perched up on stilts for some peculiar reason, and the dirt road rocked beneath our wagon, jostling me this way and that in my tube. At least the thick fluid that kept me suspended within also prevented me from being shoved around too much, at least from the neck up.

It was then, however, that I noticed that my cocoon had sprung a leak. The level of fluid had previously reached up to my neck, but now it had dropped to the level of my shoulders. Feeling encouraged by this turn of events, I looked down, trying to find where it was coming from, and found that there was a rather large hole, the size of a coin, in the cocoon just between my hindlegs. Well, that was dashed lucky, thought I, and if that would-be sharpshooter had lifted his musket just an inch or two upwards, accountants in every brothel from Canterlot to Prance would be beside themselves with grief.

[It is likely that the Blackhorns had orders to keep Prince Blueblood alive, and that they were in fact aiming for Cannon Fodder and the kirin instead of him. This must have been a stray shot from the infamously inaccurate weapons, rather than a deliberate effort to shoot him.]

The impact had created a spider’s web of cracks in the front of the cocoon, and I could see that the musket ball itself had embedded itself in the rather more substantial back of it. I lifted my hindleg, finding that the dense fluid supported my weakened limbs enough for me to move it without too much difficulty and pain, and pressed the hoof against the hole. The outflow of fluid slowed to a dribble, but I began to push with my hindleg as hard as I could. At first, nothing happened, but as I braced my back against the back of the cocoon with my forelegs and pushed again, the cracks began to deepen and spread across the clear surface. The stinking fluid gushed out through the cracks, splashing onto the floor of the wagon. Though my leg ached with the exertion it had not been put through for days on end, this was certainly encouraging and I carried on pushing. The cracks rippled across the entire surface, and then with a peculiarly wet ‘crunch’, the front lower portion broke into jagged shards and the fluid flooded out.

At last! I dropped down, just as the wagon veered violently to the right, tossing the cocoon and me still in it to the left where we both fell against the side wall of the cocoon with a jarring jolt. However, though my shoulder stung from the impact, the angle made it easier for me to drop down and crawl out of the hole I’d made. Well, it was still a terribly clumsy affair, but there I was, gasping on the floor, covered in fluid, limbs burning with exertion, and heart racing with fear, alive and free for the time being.

The enemy were getting closer, almost enough for me to reach out and shake a drone’s hoof with only a moderate risk of falling off, and I wished that I had the full use of my horn. I looked around hastily in the wagon, and found that I had been stored with a whole host of supplies. It was impossible not to feel at least a little insulted that I, an Equestrian prince of long and noble lineage, had been sharing a wagon with mere ammunition, weaponry, and uniforms. However, it suited my purposes fine. I dragged my limp body, covered in that awful slime that matted my fur and made everything terribly slippery, over to a box of crates and pushed the lid open. Inside were muskets. I had seen earth ponies use them before, but I was not about to attempt to imitate them even if I wasn’t in this state, so I grabbed one, finding it rather heavy, and hurled it with as much might as I could muster out of the back of the wagon.

My efforts were rewarded by a sharp, shrill yelp of surprise and pain as my airborne musket smacked one of the drones square on the nose. The others, presumably more shocked that I was throwing the damned things at them instead of using them for their intended purpose, hung back a little, but quickly renewed their pursuit. I had more muskets in the crate, but my legs felt like jelly and so I was not particularly up for throwing another gun at them. The next crate held some Blackhorn uniforms, folded neatly as though they were on display in some gentlecolt’s atelier. I grabbed one, and despite the life-or-death situation I found myself in, I could not help but notice the shoddy construction and the roughness and flimsiness of the rough canvas-like material used, before hurling it out of the back of the wagon at the pursuing drones. The balled-up tunic opened up in mid-air, and then wrapped around the face and torso of the lead drone, and in his efforts to pull the stupid thing off of him, he collided with his fellow and the two struck the ground in a collective heap.

That, however, only served to slow them for a moment and annoy them. The feeling of elation did not last long. The one I hit with the musket rejoined the pursuit, the chitin on his muzzle cracked and his compound eyes full of murder; the other two had pulled off the flying tunic, extricated themselves from their awkward embrace, and were quickly catching up with the others. It looked as though I would have to very quickly learn how to load and fire a musket, despite never having done it before in my life. Surely it could not have been that difficult if earth pony peasants could be trained to do it reliably, though they had to endure weeks of repetitive training to reach that minimum of three rounds a minute. I tried to grab another musket from the box, and looked all over for the cartridges, but found nothing resembling them. Of course they would be in another box, but with the enemy breathing down our collective necks I hardly had the time to go searching for them. I would have to use the damned thing as a club, then.

“Faster!” I shouted.

“Lose some weight, lah!” the kirin yelled back at me.

That should have been obvious to me, but I suppose in my state of panic it simply hadn’t come to mind. There was still the cocoon-thing, leaning up against the side of the wagon like Yours Truly up against the bar on a colts’ night out, and I imagined that would weigh a fair bit. My suspicions were proved true when I tried to shift the damned thing; I squeezed past the crates behind it, and then placed my forehooves on its still-slimy surface and pushed. My forelegs ached with the exertion, but I managed to roll this cylinder along the ground and the wall, leaving behind a sticky trail on the wooden surfaces, and then over the edge of the wagon where it crashed onto the ground. That, at least, was a start, and there was a noticeable burst of speed.

“More!” the kirin shouted.

I was reluctant to throw out the muskets, even though they were probably the next heaviest thing left on the wagon. It was clear that these kirins were part of some sort of resistance group, and quite a well-organised and determined one at that, and so if I was going to ingratiate myself with them it would certainly pay for me to bring them much-needed weapons as an offering. Still, there were the uniforms, likely useless to the kirins, so I hauled myself over to that crate and started tossing as many coats as I could out of the wagon. The Changelings seemed to expect it this time, and deftly dodged the hail of badly-tailored tunics.

Blast, it wasn’t enough. They were close now, on the verge of being able to reach into the wagon and grab me out of it. I grabbed another musket, though barely able to even hold the damned thing, and wielded it like a club, swinging it this way and that as though I might ward them off. The nearest drone flinched, but it didn’t deter him for long, and he, still buzzing after the wagon, reached out with his jagged hooves for me.

There was another crack of musket fire from somewhere to the right. Hot, stinking ichor splashed in my face, and the drone dropped from mid-air like a stone onto the ground. The others ceased in their pursuit, looking for the source of the volley. I heard a shrill battle cry and the sudden roar of something being ignited, like a furnace. From the side streets between two rows of tall, brick homes, kirins, or rather niriks, alight with primal flame, charged out and assaulted the stunned drones. They never stood much of a chance, and as our wagon charged along the dirt path, I watched, as they receded into the distance, as the niriks tore into the hated oppressors with fang, hoof, and flame.

“I think we lost them,” I said, slumping back against the side of the wagon. Gasping for air like a beached fish, I felt my heart, which hadn’t been put through such exertion in a long time, beating frantically as though it was trying to escape my ribcage.

Cannon Fodder and the kirin carried on, then turned into a dark side street, the sort that ponies of wealth and taste such as I would be hesitant to walk down at risk of losing the former. They stopped, after a few moments, which I spent continuing to try to catch what little breath I could, both of them peered around the corners of the wagon at me.

“Looks like we’re safe,” said the kirin. “Now, who are you and why was it so important to rescue you?”

I peered around into the darkened depths of the alleyway all around; it was certainly sheltered and away from prying eyes, though I felt them peering through the shuttered windows all around. Either end receded off into an infinite darkness, and it smelt like an open sewer.

“I’m Prince Blueblood.” I didn’t see much point in lying to my rescuer. “And this is my aide, Cannon Fodder.”

The kirin looked me up and down with a sceptical expression. “Prince Blueblood? You sure, lah?”

“Quite sure,” I said; it wasn’t one of the typical responses that I was used to, being either quiet awe, demands for my autograph, or very deliberately trying not to look too impressed by me. There were no mirrors in the wagon, but I could safely assume that I didn’t look very much like Prince Blueblood after the abuse I’d suffered over the past week or so. I certainly didn’t much feel it, either. “And you are?”

“Spring Rain,” she said with a casual shrug.

“You’re in the resistance, I take it?”

She shook her head emphatically. “Not resistance. I’m a cook, lah. I sell nasi goreng in the market. I just happened to be around when all of… that happened and this pony that smells like belacan and durian made love behind a dumpster grabbed me.”

[Nasi goreng is the local version of fried rice and is a popular street food. Belacan is fermented shrimp paste and durian is a type of fruit, and both, as Spring Rain intimated, have very strong, distinctive smells.]

It was difficult not to feel sorry for Cannon Fodder, who took the abuse with his typically admirable phlegmatic attitude and shrugged vaguely, before staring off into the distance. So, I had just been rescued by a fast food street vendor, but I suppose I couldn’t really afford to be picky at that moment. Still, I had to admit that it was quite brave and suicidal of her to have gotten involved when she would have been well within her right to tell my aide to find some other ‘unicorn’.

“Well, thank you for your efforts,” I said, “but if you’d like to drop me off with the resistance, they can get me back to Equestria and then I’ll be out of your mane.”

“Aiya, do you think I would know where the resistance is hiding so that I can just drop you off?” Spring Rain said, rolling her eyes. “They wouldn’t be very good resistance if anyone off the street can just find them.”

“Fair point,” I said, conceding that yes, a resistance movement in a Changeling-occupied city would probably make an effort to be difficult to track down. Still, that meant I was stuck in a foreign city that I had only a hazy recollection of, and it would only be a matter of time before said occupation forces came across Yours Truly, covered in slime and generally bewildered, along with his aide wandering around the streets. “Still, any idea of where I should look?”

Spring Rain squinted back at me with a thoughtful expression on her face, and then sighed as one would when coming to an unhappy conclusion. “Yes, but not here,” she said. “I’ll take you to my home, you can hide there.”

“Oh, thank you! That’s very kind of you.” In truth, I was rather struck by her generosity, but she had to ruin it by explaining that it wasn’t entirely out of the goodness of her heart and loyalty to our dear old Princesses.

“You want to go back to Equestria, lah?” she said. “I’ll help you, then when this war is over you’ll remember me and send me something nice, or I’ll tell everyone you burnt your privates off mounting niriks.”

“I assure you, any efforts to help me return home will be richly rewarded,” I said, drawing upon all of my previous experience in the fine arts of diplomacy not to tell her which orifices she could ram that threat into. I suppose I ought not to have been too surprised, as it was certainly not the first time that ponies and other creatures thought to do me a favour in return for a share of my prodigious wealth, though most of them tended to be a little more subtle about it. If I did get out of here alive then I supposed I could stand to write a small cheque, assuming that she had the means to cash it here once this misery was over with.

The promise of money or some other material reward cheered up the feisty little kirin. However, there was still the little task of getting me to wherever she lived without me being seen by the Changelings, and the guns we had looted in the wagon too, for that matter. However, Spring Rain had the solution, which involved me lying down on the wagon’s floor, near the boxes full of weapons, and then covering me with some cloth found in the wagon and some banana leaves that she and Cannon Fodder spent a few minutes harvesting from somepony’s garden, presumably without the owner’s permission. I was quite sceptical that it would work at all, but in the absence of any other alternative besides giving up, I went along with it.

Still, relief washed over me, though it was still early and things could, and would, continue to go wrong, for now I was safe. I lay there, still soaked to the skin with the horrible slime and covered with the rag and the banana leaves, catching my breath, and watched the houses of this strange city roll past through a gap in the cloth. When I was last here I was quite young at the time, and even then I spent very little of my stay outside of the governor’s palace, though, as I would do in Coltcutta, still being largely ignored by both of my parents meant I had to spend more time socialising with the palace staff, who were largely made up of Coltcuttan ponies anyway. Nevertheless, I did feel a little nostalgic at hearing the exotic languages spoken and the smell of spices in the air as we passed some sort of market.

Both Cannon Fodder and the kirin dragged our wagon through narrow side streets and alleyways, all under the protective shadows of these buildings, and I peered out from under the cloth and the fragrant banana leaves. We must have started on the outskirts, for the buildings here became sturdier and taller, and, most reassuringly of all, I could hear ponies and kirins going about their daily business. I gathered that it must have been quite early in the morning, no doubt just as some form of enforced curfew was being lifted. It was then, as the adrenaline gradually washed away and I could start to think rationally again, that I realised just how damned hot it was; the Badlands had been hot, of course, it was a desert, but there are varying kinds of ‘hot’, you see. It was one that I had become familiar with as I travelled with my father as he went across Equestria’s various colonial holdings and antagonised the locals with his combination of idiotic incompetence and supreme arrogance. It might have been quite early in the day, but the heat and humidity had already become terribly stifling, and I knew that it was only going to get worse as the day dragged on. Night would be of little respite, for unlike the desert where the temperature would drop dramatically, here it would merely recede to only a slightly less cloying heat.

Despite ostensibly being under Changeling occupation, the scenes that I saw seemed disarmingly normal, at least by my standards. I only spotted a few of their number out patrolling the streets; no doubt many of them would have been dispatched to poke around the wreckage of the kirin resistance attack on whatever convoy I had been travelling with, and it seemed that we had managed to slip out of their net before they had even cast it. Marelacca was not a small city, having started out centuries ago as a trading post built by explorers from Trottingham, who discovered that there was more profit to be made selling the spices rather than using them in their cooking. Certainly, it was no Manehattan, but given the Hives’ problems keeping their frontline war-swarms topped up with fresh bodies, if Hive Marshal Chela’s objections were any indication, keeping the population nice and sedate for long enough for them to pull off this Operation: Sunburn must have been an expense in drones that they could ill-afford. While initially reassuring, it did also imply that the enemy truly were dedicated to pulling off their audacious plan. As I had just witnessed, their hold on the city and its population was tenuous at best, and at the very least showed evidence of an organised and dedicated resistance that would be tripping over themselves to help me get out of here. They could, if I was particularly persuasive, sabotage whatever preparations Dorylus was making out here, but only after I had slipped away to safety, of course.

Speaking of my erstwhile former host, I had to wonder if he had been caught up in that deadly ambush. While I would have preferred that he was slain in the fight as just punishment for his treatment of me, the thought of him surviving and then having to explain to Queen Chrysalis that not only did he fail with Camp Joy, but he had just also lost their most valuable prisoner was a cheering one and would be of immense comfort to me in the days to come. I could only imagine just how awkward that conversation would be, and just how desperate Dorylus would be to save face with Operation: Sunburn.

Still, the journey was tense, and though few ponies, kirins, and Changelings paid much attention to a kirin and a pony pulling a wagon through the streets packed with them, I would feel my breath caught in my throat each time I saw the gleam of polished chitin in the bright morning sun and the foreboding grey of a Blackhorn uniform from under the cloth. After what felt like hours, the wagon was pulled into a dark side street between two of those stone houses with tall roofs; I gathered that kirins tended to build their homes out of whatever least flammable materials were available to them wherever their diaspora took them, and at least there were sufficient flame retardant building materials here that this community didn’t feel the need to resort to a magically-imposed oath of silence.

It was a relief to finally stand, though I was still terribly unsteady on my hooves, which still ached. I had almost forgotten the injury that I had suffered in Lightning Dust’s disastrous escape attempt, and was both relieved and slightly alarmed to find that the jagged wound ripped into the frog of my hoof had mostly healed. The damned thing still stung a little and was rather nauseating to look at, with the puckered, ripped flesh having mostly knit itself back together so that it no longer leaked pus and blood all over the place. Still, it was an improvement, and I found that I could stand and walk without much in the way of too much discomfort.

“In here, quickly!” hissed Spring Rain.

Cannon Fodder and Spring Rain pulled the wagon into a sort of annex by the side of the building, and I followed. The gate was shut behind us, plunging us briefly into darkness before it was banished with a warm yellow-orange glow from the kirin’s horn, like that of a small flaming torch. Now I could see that we were in a garage of sorts, with a door leading into what I presumed was her home; there was another wagon of sorts, much smaller, made of metal, with a small roof over it and a sign written in Marelay, which I took to be a mobile fast food stall from which she presumably sold her goods from. Other than that, it was quite bare.

As Spring Rain busied herself with the wagon, lifting the various boxes of weapons and uniforms from it and piling them up in the corner of the room, I approached Cannon Fodder, who had taken an interest in the fast food stall.

“So, how in blazes did you get here too?” I asked him. “I thought I saw you escape.”

“I did,” he said with a vague shrug. “I came back. Then the Changelings grabbed us again.”

“Us? There are more ponies out there?”

My aide nodded, which dislodged a layer of dandruff that fell like snow on Spring Rain’s swept floor. I saw that he had kept the strange wavy dagger he had found, and tucked it into his belt like a pirate. “When I told them you weren’t with us, half of us came back with me and Square Basher to look for you. The others went off with the natives. The bugs caught us and put everypony except me in a cocoon and shipped us off here. Then when those creatures-”

“Kirin,” I corrected. “They’re called kirins.”

“When those kirins attacked I escaped and found you in that wagon.”

“And what about Square Basher?” I asked; it was damned foolish of her to come back for me, but entirely within her character. I was her officer now, after all, and she would walk through Tartarus itself if she thought it would save me, though, even in this grim situation that I found myself in now, I could not help but think that our intimate moment in that dank cell might have provided an additional motivation.

“Don’t know,” said Cannon Fodder with a shrug. “She and the others might be out there somewhere.”

Though I could have certainly done with a few extra bodies between me and the Changelings who would now be hunting us, I supposed that two ponies secreted amongst the still relatively hostile population, assuming that the ferocity and violence of the resistance attack on the convoy was any indication of their strength and organisation, would be harder for them to find over a larger number of them. Besides, if Square Basher was here, she’d be itching to liberate Marelacca all by herself, and I’d much rather not get involved in the hell of urban partisan warfare if I could.

“Prince, is this yours?” said Spring Rain abruptly. She held up the tattered rags that had once been my uniform and my hat, glowing in her orange aura, and I was introduced to the novel sensation of being quite pleased to see that stupid cap for once.

“Oh yes, that’s my uniform.”

Spring Rain looked at the winged alicorn skull insignia on the cap and pulled a face. “Creepy,” she said, and I wholeheartedly agreed. She then tossed it with the other boxes full of assorted stuff. “Don’t wear it in public or the Changelings will find you instantly, or think you’re crazy. Come on, this way.”

Before I crossed the threshold through the opened door, I picked up my cap and found that the notes were still hidden in the lining there. While they might have been a bit redundant now that I was here and terribly far from where they would be useful, I did at least feel some sense of gratification that they remained undiscovered. I left the cap and the notes there for the moment, and followed Spring Rain into her home.

I have always felt slightly alarmed entering the homes of normal ponies, let alone kirins. Of course, I understand that the overwhelming majority of creatures out there aren’t princes with several grand palaces and large apartments to call home, but always, upon taking sight of the small, cluttered rooms, of which there always seem to be far too few for comfort, I would feel a peculiar sensation of unease, as though my mind struggled to wrap itself around the concept of ponies living like this. This kirin’s home was no exception.

I was ushered in through the door into a single large living room, which had a few doors leading off to other rooms and a tall ceiling that was many times the height of a pony that allowed the cool air to collect at the bottom, and with wide airy windows closed with shutters. The floor was bare, smooth stone that was quite cool under my hooves, and the room itself was sparsely decorated and furnished. There was a sofa along one side, made out of bamboo with several limp cushions, a bookcase, and some pictures along the wall. I noticed blackened scorch marks on the floor and against some of the walls, where I presumed that she must have lost her temper, though some of them seemed to be much smaller than others.

“It’s not much,” said Spring Rain, as she shut the door behind us. “But make yourself at home.”

“Thank you,” I said, standing dumbly by the door with Cannon Fodder, who paced around the room as though looking for Changelings hiding in the corners. “It’s a lovely home.”

“Ah, don’t lie, Prince,” the kirin snapped, brushing past me. She threw herself on this old, abused sofa, and peered at me where I stood by the door. “You live in palaces with many servants.”

“All the same, I have recently spent a week living in a hole in the ground, followed by a sojourn in a Changeling prison camp, where they put me in a basement. I would be grateful for your hospitality; it can only be an improvement on the Changelings’.”

That she could be a Changeling in disguise had certainly occurred to me, but I still had that damned nullifier ring stuck to my horn, so I could not cast the appropriate spell to find out. I knew that such things required magic to remove, and so Cannon Fodder would be of no help here, which only left Spring Rain, whose magic seemed to be almost exclusively fire-based. “Do you mind removing this ring from my horn?”

“Ah? Come here then!” She waved me on over, where I knelt next to her on the cold floor so she could take a look. “It looks like the ones the Changelings put on prisoners to stop them using magic. They would put those on all kirins and unicorns if they had enough of them.”

Her face screwed up in concentration, and the thin lines across her peculiarly-shaped horn glowed. I felt the sensation of heat at the base of my horn, which grew until it started to become quite uncomfortable and then rather painful. However, before I could tell her to stop, the ring was wrenched from my horn like a champagne cork, and Spring Rain presented it to me with a triumphant expression on her face. I could feel the magic flowing back into my body as wine would be decanted into a waiting cup, and I eagerly wrapped my aura around the annoying little ring, unsteady though it was after weeks of unuse, and I could examine the bally thing more clearly; it seemed to be of a more primitive design than the one that Earthshaker had forced on me before, and certainly if it could have been released by a seemingly ordinary kirin.

“Thank you,” I said, before hitting her with the Changeling reveal spell. She jolted in alarm, but remained the small, soft, middle-aged kirin sprawling on a sofa before me, and I felt an immense sense of relief that I hadn’t blundered into yet another trap.

“What was that?” she asked.

“I had to check that you’re not a Changeling.”

“Ah, you could have asked me to turn into a nirik, the bugs can’t do that properly; they look right but they don’t actually burn.” She fixed me with a queer look, pursing her lips slightly. “Why are you here in Marelacca and why were you in that tube-thing?”

I saw no point in withholding that information from her, and considering that the enemy would soon be crawling over her city looking for me and she had thus placed herself at a considerable risk in hiding me, then the least I could do was afford to be honest, for once. There were a few embellishments to my story, which Cannon Fodder refrained from commenting on, and I certainly left out the part about my deliberate sabotage of Square Basher’s escape tunnel. She listened intently and silently as I described how I overheard the details of the preparations of Operation: Sunburn, and how I had almost succeeded in escaping only to be brought low again by the witless idiocy of the organisers of said escape attempt.

Spring Rain hummed thoughtfully. “So, is that why the Changelings invaded?” she asked, but before I could answer she carried on thinking out loud. “They said they were liberating us from Equestrian oppression. Ah, figures. They brought flying ships to the docks; big, dark ones with lots of drones. They have taken many ponies to work there, all day and all night. Some don’t come back.”

It would appear that Dorylus’ plans to accelerate the preparation for Operation: Sunburn was no idle threat, and I feared that I might be much too late to warn Equestria. “That’s why I need to speak to the resistance,” I said. “The same fellows who attacked that convoy. They need to help me get home so I can tell the Princesses about it.”

“I see.” Spring Rain paused, apparently deep in thought, while I paced around the room a bit, pretending to be interested in the paintings of wooden houses on stilts and Cathaynese junks. After a while, she spoke again. “I sell nasi goreng in the market. All creatures go there, ponies, kirin, and even some Changelings, and I see almost all of them. I know some kirins, they use me to pass messages between cells wrapped in rice. Come with me and we could arrange a meeting, only, you’ll have to blend in, so leave the talking to me.”

“I speak the language,” I said, in that perfect Cathaynese that had been drilled into me from a young age to show off.

Spring Rain laughed and shook her head. “You speak like a Prince, lah,” she continued, still in Ponish. “That is how fancy ponies talk with the Princess of the Universe [A direct translation of my title in Cathay], not how normal ponies speak in Marelacca. Speak like that in the market and you stand out more than if you wore that creepy hat.”

She had me there, I suppose; my language tutors had always taught me the most formal version of each language, which can be as far removed from the common lingua franca as standard Ponish is from whatever it is that Applejack speaks. Besides, most ponies here spoke Marelay, which I had only a very passing familiarity with - I could order wine and I could swear, which would ordinarily have been sufficient for me to get by - and the kirins, as it turned out, spoke a variant dialect of Cathaynese that might as well have been an entirely separate language. I recalled that a number of the palace servants were from neighbouring Coltcutta, which I was almost fluent in, having spent far more time there than I had in Marelacca; the only problem was that I still doubted that I could pass for a recent immigrant from that ancient jewel in our empire in terms of appearance alone, even in my current state.

“Fine, I’ll have to stay quiet,” I said. “But won’t they recognise me?”

“I didn’t,” she answered, peering over at me with a sceptical look. “You look awful, lah. Not like a prince at all. Scruffy, dirty, and tired. But you better wash that Changeling gunk off you before we go out.”

“Now?”

“Yes, lah. I’m already late for work, and some other kirin might have taken my favourite spot in the market already.”

Spring Rain let me use her bathroom, which consisted of little more than a tub for bathing in and a lavatory that was really a ceramic hole in the ground with some sort of flush mechanism that I was reluctant to use. There was a mirror, and I could see that she was in fact being rather diplomatic with regards to my appearance. The slime that still matted my fur and the splash of Changeling ichor on my face aside, I did indeed look ‘awful’; I appeared to have lost a few pounds of weight while in that tube, but I certainly would not have recommended it as a method of losing it, and despite having been technically asleep for days on end the sunken eyes and dark rings around them made me look as though I had been wide awake for that entire time. I also had a scruffy beard, which, after a few aborted attempts during adolescence to try and grow one to look more grown up and regal, I had learned it was not a good look for me; some ponies just don’t have the face for facial hair, and I was one of them. However, my cutie mark aside, I thought that perhaps my new host was correct in stating that most ponies and even Changelings might fail to recognise me, at least on first glance.

Bathing in the tub, with that rare moment of solitude, gave me the opportunity to think about just what an almighty mess I was in. Still, after weeks of captivity, it was a relief to be able to use magic again, having an improper amount of fun making the sponge float, and despite being in a terribly sticky situation, both metaphorically and literally given the goo that stubbornly clung to my coat and mane, being able to pick things up with magic as a unicorn should certainly lifted my mood considerably. Furthermore, I was free, in a manner of speaking; though I was still in a terribly hostile place under the tentative control of the enemy, I could see a way out of this madness with this resistance group who I was certain would be tripping over themselves to help their Prince, and more than that, I was at liberty to do something about it on my own terms.

A banging on the door and Spring Rain’s muffled voice imploring me to hurry up interrupted my thoughts. I hastened to finish, and managed to get as much of the slime off as I possibly could; I was far from completely clean, however, but it would have to do, and I would be sweating horribly as soon as I dried myself off anyway. Still, there was nothing like a bath, however brief, to lift one’s mood, which only lasted after I’d wandered back into the living room, my mane still damp, and I found Spring Rain standing there, tapping a hoof impatiently and holding up a sharp, heavy cleaver and a bunch of spring onions.

“You will have to blend in,” she said. “Police patrol the market. We cover up your flank picture and you and the smelly pony will chop spring onions for me. You’ll pretend to be my employees.”

It was far worse than I could have possibly thought; I would have to work.

Chapter 14

Blending in was a novelty for me; being one of the most recognisable ponies around, save for my two regal aunties and maybe Sapphire Shores depending on how her career has waxed and waned over the years, I am usually recognised by whenever I venture out amongst the great unwashed general public, though whether or not I am met with quiet, awed stares, demands for my autograph, or intense opprobrium for some perceived slight that I barely remember largely depended on the ponies around me and their varied opinions of my character. I understand, merely from observation, that the majority of ponies out there would be uncomfortable without the veil of anonymity cloaking them throughout their day-to-day lives, but I, a prince of the realm, scion of an ancient and regal line, Celestia’s nephew, and the most eligible bachelor in Canterlot, had known no other way of navigating the world around me except that I must always be singled out for special attention, whether for good or ill and whether I wanted it or not. So, to walk through a busy city street, even under the watchful gaze of those grey-shirted Changelings, and to be completely and utterly ignored was strangely unsettling to me.

Spring Rain was wise to have forced me to hasten my morning grooming, and her bathroom had lacked much of the necessary assortment of razors, tweezers, brushes, combs, soaps, creams, and oils that I required to look my best anyway. I still did not look quite like a native, being rather taller than most ponies of this part of the world and one cannot abandon a lifetime of regal bearing quite so readily, but after the quick splash in her bathtub and a comb through my mane, tail, and coat, I at least looked presentable enough to pass as a slightly unusual local to anypony or any Changeling at first glance. Second and third glances might have given the game away, should said creatures know to look for me, of course.

There remained, however, the matter of my cutie mark, which is often always the first place one looks when hunting for a wanted pony and has given away many criminals and outlaws on the run from the authorities, at least in those silly adventure stories I used to enjoy. For that, Spring Rain instructed me to first roll about in the dirt in her garden, which consisted more of a small, walled-off space engulfed with abundant vegetation and inhabited by an entomologist’s dream of all manner of buzzing insects, so it all resembled more of the jungle beyond the city than it did any sort of ordered expression of civilisation’s mastery over nature. There was a rather large stove up against the garden wall, sheltered by a sort of veranda, which I understood to be some sort of outdoor kitchen area. If any of her neighbours thought it odd to see a pony rolling around in the dirt like a dog they kept it to themselves; it is a useful quirk of equine psychology that upon seeing somepony act a little strangely, they will more often than not choose to ignore it than get involved.

The dirt dyed my coat, mane, and tail a dusty and uneven shade of pale brown, and my cutie mark was partially covered, but still faintly visible through the layer of dust and dry earth. For this, Spring Rain disappeared back inside her small home, and moments later returned with a set of paints and brushes, and judging by the bright colours I’d have said that they had belonged to a foal more than any serious artist. The odd, slightly sad look she pulled when she arranged the small tins and brushes, only very brief and fleeting, was not lost upon me, and the presence of the much smaller scorch marks in her living room led me to mentally put together the pieces of the puzzle. I was not about to ask her where her foal was, as that would have been quite insensitive even by my own standards of putting my hoof in my mouth at inopportune moments.

“You’re putting a lot of effort into helping me,” I said, as I watched her dip a brush into a tin of red paint and then use it to describe a misshapen circle over the compass rose.

“Like I said,” she said, sticking her tongue out and furrowing her brow in concentration, “I do something nice for you and you do something nice for me, like give me gold, lah. Now hold still; canvas shouldn’t move.”

Something, call it intuition if you will but it was mostly just an abstract feeling that I could not adequately place, told me that there was a little more to that than mere greed, and that this was merely a front to cover up something darker. It certainly wasn’t loyalty to the Twin Crowns of Equestria, being rather distant and absent concepts to a non-pony race a terribly long way away from the alicorns who wore them, but, I thought, something much more personal that pushed this strange kirin to risk everything to help me, beyond simply being ‘nice’ to a lost pony, that is.

“What cutie mark are you painting on me?” I asked; I thought that I really ought to know if this was to be my cover here.

“A plum,” she said. “It represents cooking, or plum wine, or something, lah, I don’t know how these silly things work.”

She had finished with my left side, so I turned my head to take a look at the fruits of her artistic talent. “That’s a pair of flanks you’ve painted on my flank.” I probably didn’t want to know what special talent that was supposed to represent.

“No, it’s a plum,” snapped Spring Rain, as she moved around to repeat the process on the other side. “Your special thing is plum wine.”

“But it really looks like-”

“Aiya, it’s a plum!”

I suppose I’ve been in less dignified situations than this before, so I let her carry on with my other flank until I had a rather suggestive depiction of a plum painted on each. Those would have to do, and I would have to hope that any Blackhorns hunting for me would think that the famed Commissar Prince Blueblood would never dare to appear in public with so ridiculous a disguise, and completely reject the possibility that this dishevelled unicorn with fruit painted on his flanks could be whom they were searching for.

As for Cannon Fodder, his disregard for the niceties of personal grooming would invariably make him stand out on body odour alone, even in what I imagined would be a marketplace already brimming with olfactory overload from all of the various exotic spices and such for sale. I warned Spring Rain not to bother even attempting to bathe him, and she readily agreed that not only would such a thing be completely fruitless, but also render her bathroom thoroughly unfit for further use. He would simply have to do without for now, unless we could find the sort of high pressure hoses used to scrub dirt off the hulls of yachts and solvents strong enough to melt away years of caked-on filth. In truth, him being clean for the first time in his life would have been the most effective disguise possible. With luck, he might have escaped the notice of the enemy now hunting us, and if I was any judge of character I trusted that Dorylus would be so very fixated on both ensuring that Operation: Sunburn proceeds swimmingly and on shoving me back inside a cocoon, that he might completely forget that a certain preternaturally malodorous unicorn with a dodgy horn had been instrumental in my escape.

At any rate, I was all out of alternatives, not that I was in much of a state of mind to think things through properly, and so in the absence of any other course of action to take I went along with Spring Rain’s plan. Cannon Fodder and I were yoked to her cart in what was merely next in a series of indignities I had been forced to suffer through that day, and were instructed to follow her through the streets and to not say a word to anypony. We were also instructed to ‘act natural, lah’, as she had put it, which had the additional effect of making me feel very conscious about the precise manner in which I walked.

By the time we ventured out into the city the curfew had been lifted fully, and despite the vicious attack on the convoy that had just happened an hour ago, the occupying forces had seen fit to allow the city’s inhabitants to carry on with their day. The city was bustling with ponies of all sorts, and kirins too, albeit all under the careful watch of both the Changeling occupiers and ponies who appeared to have been police officers pressed into service; any occupying force invariably takes advantage of any collaboration from the oppressed locals, willing or otherwise, to make up for their own deficient numbers and to maintain some semblance of continuity to keep them sedate. Still, the sight and the noise of the crowds - my ears picking up any variation of Marelay, Ponish, Cathaynese, and Coltcuttan all at once - gave me some measure of hope; it would all provide the perfect screen from anypony on the watch for fugitive princes.

It turned out that I was quite hopeless at pulling the cart, to Spring Rain’s amusement and the annoyance of ponies I bumped into. Well, I could pull it in something approximating a straight line, but steering the damned thing around the dense traffic was another matter entirely. I tend not to be in the habit of pulling my own carts, as that is what servants are for, but it was much trickier than they had made it look. At least I had Cannon Fodder’s dogged stubbornness keeping us all in a relatively straight line, and I hoped that no drone could possibly think that this bumbling buffoon could possibly be the esteemed Lord Commissar Prince Blueblood, Hero of Equestria and all that rot.

The trek to the market was not a short one, which at least gave me sufficient time to practise pretending to be a common pony, at least one common to here. Despite my misgivings, and the fact that I towered over the majority of other ponies here by a clear head, it seemed to be working; none paid me too much attention, save for the few brief, odd looks that nevertheless kept me on edge. Indeed, anxiety was making its familiar home in my gut and making its presence felt in the usual means of inducing nausea. The feelings only sharpened whenever I received a grim reminder that we were in the manticore’s den, so to speak - drones continued to watch the dense crowds, always in groups of no less than three perched on like ravens atop lamp posts and tall buildings, whose walls were often plastered with posters depicting a smiling, welcoming drone with hooves outstretched and open to the viewer, with accompanying text in the local language.

We stopped off at a roadside stall and picked up a quick breakfast of fragrant rice cooked in coconut milk and pandan leaves, served wrapped up in banana leaves with a boiled egg, sliced cucumber, and chilli paste. [Based on Blueblood’s description, this would be Nasi Lemak.] While I quietly ate my breakfast by the side of the road, only now realising just how hungry I felt after having merely absorbed nutrients in the cocoon like some kind of bloody plant, and Cannon Fodder devoured his noisily, Spring Rain exchanged what sounded like idle gossip in Marelay with the unicorn running the stall. However, I barely had time to finish breakfast and ask for seconds, for my recently un-cocooned body still craved solid food, our ‘boss’ decided that our break was over and hurried us down the street.

“Interesting,” said Spring Rain. I made a noise, still having a mouth full of rice as I trotted along the road, to indicate that I was paying attention and would like to know more. “The Changelings took more ponies to work in the docks with the airships this morning. Ah, not only do the Changelings take my city but they take my customers also!”

That was interesting. Judging from what I had picked up about what passed for their society, the Changelings seemed to think that physical labour was beneath them, which made sense for a race that thought itself superior to all others and had a rather large slave population to do all of the unpleasant and demanding jobs that they didn’t want to do. It might sound a tad hypocritical of me, a prince, to point this out as laziness and cruelty on their part, but I do treat and pay my staff, who, I might add have always been free to leave, unlike these pony slaves, a damned sight better. Nevertheless, I knew of the importance of this Operation Sunburn, and this news hinted to me that Dorylus’ acceleration of his daring plan had run into the problem of not having enough hooves on deck to make it happen; I struggled to think that he would leave it up to members of an unwilling at best, downright hostile and defiant at worse, population to undertake something that his life now very much depended upon. Chrysalis did not seem like a ruler particularly forgiving of failure, and I would like nothing more than to contribute in some small way to his inevitable punishment.

We arrived at the market a few minutes later. If one has never been to such a market in a far off land before, then very little can be done to prepare oneself for the assault upon the senses: the sights of so many different ponies, kirins, and other creatures together; the sounds of vendors calling out for attention and of customers haggling over prices; and the smells of spices and fruit and food in seemingly infinite variety. I had only seen them before, as in Coltcutta nearby, with sufficient guards and staff to keep the riff-raff safely away, but now I was thoroughly immersed in it, rubbing shoulders quite literally with the peasants. It would have been quite exciting were it not for the threat of discovery hanging over my head.

[Markets form an important cultural and economic function in any society. That the Changelings allowed it to continue despite the insurgent attack that had freed Blueblood and on-going rebel activity, lends credence to his theory that they lacked the numbers sufficient to shut it down, and had judged it was not worth risking the ire of the local population any more than their invasion had caused.]

“Aiya, my spot’s already taken!” hissed Spring Rain. “You made me late! I must take this out of your wages.”

Her annoyance aside, I dare say that I had the impression that Spring Rain was enjoying bossing me around a little too much. She directed us to an empty spot between a noodle stall and another selling furniture made from bamboo, and then began to set everything up; the cart opened up into a sort of large stove for a wok wide enough to saute Princess Luna and a preparation area where she arranged out the various ingredients - day-old cold, cooked rice, various sauces with unpronounceable names, eggs, and so on.

“Well?” Spring Rain held up two large cleavers and a bundle of spring onions in the sort of threatening manner that had me instinctively reaching for a sword that was not there. “Get to it, lah!”

While food is of course one of life’s great pleasures, I never thought that it was entirely necessary for me to know the various jobs necessary to craft meals fit for a prince; one can appreciate the majestic architecture of Canterlot Cathedral, for instance, without having to first learn how to lay bricks. However, it turned out that I was quite good at chopping spring onions, and only after a false start or two I managed to work out how to use the cleaver properly; it was, in a manner of speaking, rather like any other blade, and I fancied it would be an appropriately deadly weapon wielded by a skilled duellist such as I. As we did that, Spring Rain stood before the wok, took a moment to apparently centre herself, and then her horn flickered with those dancing blue and red sparks again. There was a roar of ignition, a blast of heat that overpowered the warmth of the day, and her entire body became engulfed in fire - she had become a nirik. I hadn’t seen one before, not in the flesh, so I was rather alarmed at this, but she seemed to be fully in control of herself, and projected the white-hot flames into the stove on her scorched cart. Though she grumbled and hissed to herself to keep herself at a certain level of anger necessary for her purposes, she was able to carry on cooking, using the flames from her own burning body, which made my skin smart being this close to her, to directly heat the wok.

Things seemed to be carrying on merrily, and after a while I thought I was getting into the rhythm of chopping vegetables; if I’d ever lost my royal title in a coming proletarian revolution and would have to find gainful employment or face the guillotine, then I might, at a pinch, consider ‘preparer of spring onions’ for a job. However, after the first few customers came and went, each unfazed that the creature they had just bought breakfast from was on fire or that the banana leaves it came wrapped in was quite singed, our little stall was approached by two pony police officers. Both were stallions, and one was a unicorn and the other was a pegasus. They still wore the tan shirts and peaked caps of the old colonial police force, but any insignia that marked them as loyal to Equestria had been removed; indeed, I could make out where the embroidered patch bearing the emblem of our realm was torn out by the circular stitch marks on their left breasts.

The two police officers barked something in the local parlance at Spring Rain, who snapped back with equal venom, and hers was enhanced by a certain gravelly tone imparted to her voice by being in nirik-form. My grasp of Marelay was shaky, not having spent sufficient time in brothels to pick up enough of the tongue of the street to get by, but it was clear that they were unhappy with her over something. The hectoring carried on until, with great reluctance, the nirik extinguished her flames and returned to her normal, un-burning self. I tried to avoid looking like I was paying them too much close attention, not that I understood what was being said in their heated conversation, and appear as though I was focused entirely on the repetitive task of chopping vegetables into tiny slices. Evidently, I failed, as my none-too-subtle stares caught the attention of one of the officers, the pegasus, who strode on over to me, around the stall, and asked me what I took to be a rather pointed question.

Of course, I had no idea what I had just been asked, and I was well aware that the wrong answer could land me stuck in another cocoon again for my troubles. Responding in Ponish, especially in my ‘natural’ accent, which had been beaten into me from a young age, might as well have been pinning a badge to my chest saying ‘Hello, my name is Prince Blueblood, please arrest me’. Spring Rain tried to answer on my behalf, but was silenced by a loud, sharp exclamation from the other officer.

That left only one other option, and it was a bit of a gamble, but I had no other options. I responded in Coltcuttan: “Sorry, sahib, but I don’t understand.”

The officer stared with a sort of dull vacancy in his eyes, devoid of imagination and wit as the sorts of ponies who become enforcers of the law tend to be, and then repeated the question in a slower and louder fashion as though that might encourage me to suddenly pick up the language instantly. Alas for him, it did not work, and I shook my head in what I hoped was a suitably apologetic manner and repeated that I didn’t understand in Coltcuttan. This continued a few times, and I noted that they gave Cannon Fodder a suitably wide berth, not bothering to even attempt to interrogate him, as his body odour overpowered even the pungent smell of the fermented shrimp paste that Spring Rain used in her cooking. After a bit more of the old back-and-forth, he finally understood that I was not about to do in two minutes what normally took most ponies at least a month or two, and gave up, muttering what I took to be obscenities and aspersions about my intelligence and lineage under his breath.

The two carried on with Spring Rain for a bit, and then, after another fairly heated exchange, she brought a small purse of coins out from inside her cart and offered it with two servings of fried rice to the officers. This ‘donation’, as it were, encouraged them to leave us alone, and they slinked away into the shifting, noisy crowd, laughing to themselves at some private joke.

“Ah, that was smart,” said Spring Rain in Ponish, her voice hushed and almost drowned out by the bellowing voice of the furniture salespony next to us. “I didn’t know you speak that language.”

“I used to live there,” I explained, then nodded my head in the direction of the retreating officers. “What was that about?”

“They always want a bribe, lah, every morning, or they find a reason to shut down my stall.” She shrugged, and poked around with the rapidly-cooling wok. “Wanted to know if I knew anything about the attack this morning, as if all kirins knew each other, and wanted to know why two ponies were working for a kirin.”

“How odd. Is that not allowed?”

Spring Rain paused, thinking it over. “It’s allowed, but not normal,” she said, her voice hushed and barely audible above the noise of the crowd all around. “The Changelings say they came to liberate Marelacca from Equestrian imperialism, and to return Marelacca to the Marelaccans. Kirins aren’t included in that. Aiya, you Equestrians took my city’s wealth for yourselves, but at least you didn’t play favourites. It was never this bad for us until the Changelings came and ruined everything, now the ponies will blame us for the hardship the war makes for us and not the invaders.”

“Divide and conquer,” I said. “I hate to say it, but that’s really damned clever of them, and entirely the sort of evil thing they would do. It doesn’t help that your sort have a tendency to burst into flames at the slightest provocation.”

Spring Rain gave me a queer look, as though I’d somehow insulted her with that little remark, but shook her head and cursed in her peculiar dialect under breath; it did not sound flattering.

“Exactly, but what choice do kirins have now?” She sighed forlornly, shook her head, and then apparently having had enough of this, took her wok in her magic and snapped at me, “Aiya, enough lollygagging! Break is over, and back to work, you two!”

Back to maintaining our cover then, and I carried on chopping the spring onions. After a while of this quite repetitive but oddly relaxing task, my ‘boss’ saw fit to promote me to slicing up shallots and garlic and Cannon Fodder to pounding the spice paste in a large mortar and pestle, which he managed with greater efficiency and alacrity than the more delicate tasks of vegetable preparation, though I would personally avoid eating anything that he had any involvement in making. She did not turn into a nirik for the rest of the day, though the occasional flickering of her horn illustrated that it was rather a close thing; instead, she heated the wok with straightforward fire magic, which the chef declared numerous times did not produce the necessary intense heat needed for ‘wok hei’, whatever that was.

Surveying the scene from behind the stall, I was struck by how thoroughly normal it all seemed, or at least what I would think would pass for ‘normal’ in this exotic part of the world. I could only contrast it with what I had seen of the wretches who lived under the occupation of Virion Hive, who had suffered under the cruel hoof of Queen Chrysalis for nearly a century, such that none of their number who remembered life before her oppression still lived. The haunted, gaunt faces, devoid of the merest flicker of joy and life and culture, all of which had been stamped out of them by the decades of a systematic destruction of a unique and hardy culture by a regime that saw them merely as livestock, were still vivid in my mind, and as I observed the sea of equine life before more, I feared that if Equestria were to somehow lose this war, then that would be the fate of all of these free creatures. Whatever I might have said about the conduct of this war in these writings, I had no doubt after witnessing the privations of Virion Hive that our cause was the just one.

The enemy had a process for this, as we would later discover from further interviews with captured and defecting Purestrains disillusioned with their Queen’s increasingly erratic style of leadership, and it was rather a long one - they euphemistically referred to it is as ‘alignment’, and a village, town, city, or other such settlement of ponies that had been successfully brought to a state of utter despondency and dependency by their occupation, to the point that any real resistance on a level greater than a lone, brave individual rebelling on their own was unthinkable, was said to be ‘aligned’. It would take decades, and the Changelings had had time to perfect and refine this process; it happened by degrees, with such slow and tiny increments in their control that though the population may protest at such injustices, these could all be placated with the usual platitudes of the tyrant - that it is for their own protection, that it is necessary due to the war that they claim Equestria started, and that it is only temporary. Of course, anypony in a position to provide a more active resistance to what was happening would be done away with, and others willing to collaborate, either through coercion or selfishness, would be rewarded. All the while, the quota of love they would ‘tax’ from the steadily defeated population would increase gradually, starting small and ‘reasonable’ and ramping up in an inverse correlation to their loss of Harmony and independence, until the ponies were rendered thoroughly helpless and sedate enough not to pose any further threat.

The process was an insidious one, they’d had a great deal of practice in it, but even it was not perfect and there would always be those gallant, if deluded, souls who would rather die than kneel before Chrysalis. Here, I could already see the first signs that it had already started; a poster was plastered on the wall of a department store directly opposite us, depicting a Changeling and a pony, apparently a native to Marelacca, both swinging their hooves to punch a grotesquely obese caricature of Princess Celestia (complete with cake icing around her mouth; I always thought their artists were rather skilled) in the face. Though I couldn’t read the words, the messaging was clear; the Changelings were here to liberate them from Equestrian imperial ‘oppression’, thus appealing to those here who thought they could run their own affairs and were deluded enough by that desire to believe the words of a race whose primary mode of operation in everything was deception. Picking on the kirins, too, was a stroke of genius in its most malicious and cowardly manner, for any further hardship and violence could be blamed entirely on this minority that they were brutalising.

While I certainly wanted to return home for my own safety and comfort, I had enough affection for this remarkable part of the world that I did not want to see it suffer. I simply had to return to Equestria and pass on the warning of Operation: Sunburn, for their sake as well as my own, if that would help encourage these resistance fighters along to do their civic duty. However, all the while I still expected to see a tall, dark, shadowy figure approach the stall, preferably in a trench coat and a fedora hat despite the intense heat of the day, utter a ridiculous code phrase like ‘the naga sleeps under the lake’, and everything would spring into action and before I’m know it I’m on a boat off to Equestria. We paused for a short lunch break where, for the first time in my life, I had the novel experience of borrowing money, for Cannon Fodder had been relieved of any currency he usually carried for me by the Changelings, in order to buy char kway teow [A popular stir-fried noodle dish] from the noodle stall next to us. The gruff pony who spoke only limited Ponish was completely unaware that his little shop could now qualify for displaying a coveted royal warrant.

As the afternoon wore on and there seemed to be no sign of these resistance contacts that Spring Rain had spoken of, I started to get rather anxious about their continued failure to show up. I began to expect the worst; that the enemy had been considerably more competent in rounding up the perpetrators of that ambush than my miraculous escape had otherwise implied, and thus over the course of the past few hours there was no longer a resistance group to speak of. Inevitably, I grew too impatient and asked the kirin how much longer I would have to wait to see them.

“They were already here,” she said, with no small amount of smugness in her voice and facial expression.

“When?” I asked, rather irritated that I’d missed them. “I didn’t see them.”

“That’s the point, remember?” Her focus was still very much on the task of cooking, not once looking up from the hot, sizzling wok before her, and the rice swirling around like a vortex under the skilful ministrations of her ladle. The customer, a pony labourer of some sort tapping his hoof impatiently for his meal, stood right before her, but despite the presence of this eavesdropper, who was evidently more concerned about his lunch than our talk about secret anti-Changeling resistance groups, she carried on: “I told you, if you could pick them out then they wouldn’t be resistance anymore; they’d all be in camps by now, lah.”

Of course, it was obvious; much like those Changeling saboteurs I had to deal with during my brief tenure as the military governor of Virion Hive, these local resistance cells would have to rely on blending in with the local population in order to survive and wage war. Still, I could not help but feel a little put out that formal introductions had not been made, in whatever form they take in these lands.

“What did he say?” I asked.

Spring Rain finished attending to her customer before answering. “Can arrange a meeting with the boss,” she said. “Tonight, after curfew. I know the place and can take you there.”

“This is all a bit much, and you needn’t put yourself at risk on my account,” I said, knowing full well that she’d say otherwise; it paid to remind ponies putting their own lives on the line for my selfish benefit that they chose to help me, and should things not go the way they had intended then it would go some small way to assuaging any guilt I might feel.

“Ah, I can’t have you wandering the city alone at night.” Spring Rain was already preparing the order for the next customer, a pony labourer of sorts in overalls heavily stained in what looked like disconcertingly flammable grease, as she spoke. “You won’t know where it is, lah. I’ll have to show you.”

Well, she did have me there. Unless it was in the governor’s palace, which was very unlikely, I had no chance of finding it, wherever it was. Still, the rest of the day passed without incident, aside from a few brief scares when those groups of patrolling Blackhorns veered rather too close to our little stall for comfort, however, either due to my thoroughly convincing disguise, which had started to streak and become splotchy as I sweated not only from the heat of the day but also the cooker, nirik or otherwise, so that I started to resemble a zebra, or that they had somehow forgotten what I had looked like, I seemed to escape their notice. I could not, of course, fully reject the thought that I had indeed been spotted and recognised, but the enemy had simply thought it more prudent to pick me up when not surrounded by hundreds of ponies and kirins going about their daily business. However, despite the fear of recapture making me jump at every shimmer of polished chitin I saw, the work itself, when it was busy enough to give me something else to focus on other than my fearful predicament, was suitably calming in its dull, repetitive nature; I’d made a game of trying to slice the various ingredients as finely as possible, and imagining that I was working my cleaver on Dorylus’ neck instead gave me some much needed amusement.

The sun was setting when we packed up for the day, and now when ponies accuse me of never having worked a day in my life, and for some reason they often seemed to think that my time in Their Highnesses’ service doesn’t count, I can look them square in the eye and tell that, in fact, I have. The curfew was starting to come into effect, and the occupiers were rather strict in enforcing it; the presence of those grey-clad thugs and their collaborators, exclusively all ponies I am rather ashamed to say, had increased, and they had started moving through the increasingly despondent crowd of unhappy civilians, some of whom I observed receiving a blow with a hoof and a menacing snarl for any defiance, real or merely perceived as such.

Spring Rain placed the various woks, spatulas, knives, and assorted cooking implements I could only guess the purposes of inside the wagon. I’d offered to help, only out of politeness, and she had informed me that I’d only get in her way and make a mess. The chap with the noodle stall next to us likewise followed suit, while a pony in a police uniform with the Equestrian insignia stripped from it shouted at him to get a move on; it would be our turn soon, I expected, and as I’d rather avoid as much attention as possible, our kirin host was quite speedy with her packing, with the sort of efficiency that came with doing this countless times over and over.

“It means no more pasar malam [The night market], lah,” she complained bitterly, without pausing at all in her work; again, another step in the process of ‘alignment’, and one more unique, cultural touchstone was in the process of being erased by the Changelings for the relentless need for love. “After we finished work, I used to meet there with…” She trailed off, holding the grease-stained spatula in mid-air, before shaking her head and placing it in its proper place. “Aiya, never mind. Come on, let’s go, lah!”

***

We spent the rest of the evening back at Spring Rain’s quite meagre little home. She passed the time with ‘meditation’, as she put it, which involved her locking herself in her bedroom; I observed some sort of smoke, heavily scented like incense, seeping through the cracks in the door, and I wondered if I ought to be concerned by that. With her giving up on her duties as a host, Cannon Fodder and I were left to our own devices to amuse ourselves. My aide decided to nap, as all soldiers invariably tend to do when given the rare opportunity to do nothing and catch up on lost sleep, snoring away like a buzzsaw going through an elephant, and though I had been asleep in that cocoon for days on end I made a half-hearted attempt to follow suit.

That, however, proved to be rather difficult; while Cannon Fodder was content to simply curl up on the hard, stone floor like a Diamond Dog and slip effortlessly off into Luna’s realm of dreams as easily as stepping from one room to another, my stay in Camp Joy, with its beds softer than Spring Rain’s old sofa here and the hard military cots I had eventually became used to before, had ruined what little acclimatisation to discomfort and hardship my soft, pampered body had become used to over the course of my unhappy career. Indeed, as the sun was setting outside and the shadows in the corners of the room deepened, I was left alone, of sorts. I had been granted a rare moment of peace, and I felt oddly at ease at that; granted, the burden of the news I carried still weighed heavily on my mind, and the feeling that the fate of this war depended on me delivering it to Equestria was not a pleasant one, but I perched by the window and peered through the slats in the shutters to watch the city outside and found a certain queer serenity in the empty quiet. The curfew was well in effect by now, and Marelacca beyond appeared as a ghost town; aside from the pi dogs roaming around, who all seemed very confused as to where everypony had disappeared to, the birds, and the ever-present insects who love this climate, there was no other sign of life. The stark contrast to the loud and vibrant market scene I had witnessed, and indeed taken part in for the first time in my sheltered life, was more than merely stark. Always in such climates, the Badlands included, the locals will shelter through the appalling heat and humidity of the day and then venture out in the relatively cooler night, yet the streets outside were utterly bare.

I watched the sun set below the tall, square homes, throwing the sky into deepening and vibrant shades of orange, red, purple, and then finally black. In my years I might have forgotten the simple pleasures of watching the sunset, having filled my life with the usual sorts of elaborate debauchery and indulgence expected of a young prince, but I suppose having one’s life constantly hurled into danger against one’s will forces one to find pleasure whenever and wherever it could be found. Once darkness had fully descended upon the city like a velvet cloth, Luna’s moon high in the sky like a watchful sentinel and her stars glittering like spilled diamonds, Spring Rain finally ventured out of her bedroom, looking noticeably calmer and more relaxed than she had done before.

“Ready, Prince?” she asked, getting straight to it. She stood in the centre of her living room, and though I was rather curious as to what exactly she was getting up to in her solitude, my febrile imagination already coming up with all manner of quite sordid theories, I also wanted to get this over and done with quickly.

I nodded. “About as ready as I’ll ever be,” I said. “So, who am I meeting?”

“Uncle,” she said, as if that made any sense.

“Your uncle?”

“Aiya, no. The Uncle, that’s what we call him.”

Of course, the creatures of this part of the world tended to call anyone significantly older than them as ‘auntie’ or ‘uncle’ as some sort of honorific, and I wondered if I should have been addressing Spring Rain as ‘auntie’ all this time. “Values his privacy, I take it? Have you met him?”

“I might have served him nasi goreng once,” she said. “All I know is he’s their boss. Now let’s get going or we’ll be late.”

With that, I woke up Cannon Fodder with a gentle nudge; though he had been in a deep sleep and apparently dreaming in the way that dogs do, he was awake and alert immediately, as far as ‘alert’ goes with his rather dull and languid demeanour. Spring Rain gave him a set of large saddlebags, which we stuffed full with as many muskets and cartridges as he could be expected to reasonably carry as a ‘gift’ to the resistance, in case they needed a bit more of a material incentive to help their prince. As for me, having white fur, though now stained a pale, dusty grey thanks to my rolling around in the dirt earlier, would mean that I might stand out somewhat in the darkness, and so I spent some time removing the shiny brass buttons and glittering medals until it remained a solid black jacket. The rest of me was then concealed by rubbing some burnt ash from her food stall to dull down my coat a little more. As for my aide, there was little that could be masked any better than the unique biome that already inhabited his coat, and none of us were particularly keen on interfering in case whatever it was that caused his peculiar affliction might spread.

We were about as ready as we would ever be, and so we ventured out into the night. As predicted, the temperature and humidity had barely dropped by any appreciable degree with the setting of the sun, at least according to my senses. Still, being out of the sun’s rays did help somewhat. The streets were as empty as before, with nary a sign of life save for the sort of vermin that inevitably coexist with civilised creatures in any urban environment, and all seemed to be rather enjoying having the run of the place now that everypony was locked up inside; feral dogs, cats, rats, and birds were everywhere, though they scattered as we crept through the streets. In the still of the night, I felt acutely aware of just how much noise I was making, though the kirin and my aide seemed utterly silent; my breath was sharp and ragged, my hoofsteps seemed clumsy and awkward, and even my heart pounded loud enough that I thought others must be able to hear it.

Spring Rain led the way, first towards the end of her street and down to a high road of sorts, where either side of this broad thoroughfare were narrow but deep trenches dug between the pavement and the houses, with short bridges to allow ponies not gifted with flight the ability to enter and leave their homes without too much risk of injury. Our guide leapt down into the trench with a sense of practised ease that implied she had done this before, over and over. Cannon Fodder was next, and didn’t so much leap down the trench as fall in it, but he was rather unperturbed by his little tumble and was perfectly fine once he picked himself up off the bottom. I tried to ease myself in gently, only for my hooves to slip as I attempted to brace myself against the sides of the trench, and I fell. When I tell this story to other ponies, who rather irritatingly never seem to tire of me trotting out the same tedious and heavily-censored anecdotes at parties, I say that Cannon Fodder, the ever-faithful aide, had caught me, but really I landed right on top on him and he was much too polite and obedient to complain.

Once I had extricated myself from Cannon Fodder and we both got ourselves in order inside the trench, I found that the bottom was very damp, and the soft ground squelched unpleasantly under my hooves. I found that this was some sort of gutter on the side of the street, somewhat deeper than Princess Celestia is tall and barely wide enough for her ample flanks, designed to deal with excess rain during what the locals aptly referred to as the rainy season, which I also imagined kept kirin-related fires down to an appropriate minimum during that time. It stank down here, as all manner of filth and detritus found its way into this deep gutter and had thus festered. This made it a perfect environment for all manner of creepy-crawlies and germs, no doubt, and almost as soon as I’d stood up I was attacked by a veritable horde of mosquitoes. Here, however, we were quite safe from the prying eyes of any Changelings or collaborationist police on patrol, unless the bugs had decided to take on the form of their nickname and hide in gutters for any fugitive princes to sneak through.

That the enemy could have taken on the forms of inanimate objects to better observe the ponies and kirins here, as they had done to great effect in that appalling battle that precipitated this whole affair, which felt very distant now, had occurred to me. As I followed Cannon Fodder, who followed Spring Rain and therefore was the one to enjoy the view ahead, I thought about every single little stone, lamppost, bin, cart, and so on that, unbeknownst to me, could have been a drone in disguise who would rush back to tell the nearest Purestrain that he’d found me, his heart filled with the anticipation of the extra love rations he would get as a just reward for bringing in an enemy of the Hive. There was no way I could possibly tell, until I found myself forced inside another cocoon again, but it would continue to gnaw at me as I trudged, being eaten alive by mosquitoes all the while, through that dingy, miserable gutter. It was, again, quite intelligent of them, in their usual evil manner; if absolutely anything could be a Changeling, from a dog in the street to the book one is reading to one’s own beloved cousin, and there was no way to know for certain, then certainly most sane and intelligent ponies under the hoof of occupation would behave as if they are being watched even in the privacy of their own homes. They could not watch everypony all the time, but the thought that one could be watched, entirely without one knowing, would, in time, inspire a sense of hopeless obedience.

We forged ahead through the gutter, like lost tourists through a labyrinth, but I had to trust that Spring Rain knew the way. She took us this way and that, in what to my special talent felt like a winding, circuitous route that twisted and turned through the streets, through dark tunnels where we daren’t light horns and so had to feel our way through with our hooves. It was interminable and relentless, and all the more so after a full day of work where I still hadn’t fully recovered from my stint in the cocoon. Every so often she would stop, and we would stand in tense silence, each pressed against the filthy sides of the gutter, holding our breaths and willing our pounding hearts to slow as a dark, faceless shape, silhouetted by the light of a torch, appeared at the edge. They might simply walk on, entirely oblivious of the three fugitives mere inches away from them, and we would breathe a sigh of relief and carry on. Others would stop, peering around in the darkened streets or chattering aimlessly with whomever else had been selected for this clearly unpopular duty, and we would have to wait a little before they would move on. Most were ponies, speaking in their native tongue. It seemed incredible that none of them would consider that we would hide in the gutters, but, looking back now, I suppose the problem with an occupying regime relying on collaboration is that said collaborators are often just as unenthusiastic about this state of affairs as everypony else and will, in their own small way, resist by being just lazy and incompetent enough to be a nuisance, but not so much so as to put themselves and their loved ones in danger. I rather admired that, in a way.

I was thoroughly miserable by the time we emerged out of the gutter. Cannon Fodder had to help pull me up, which he did without complaint or comment as usual, as though I had lost weight my limbs appeared to have been weakened by my long sleep in the cocoon by an almost equal amount. Spring Rain was curiously silent, despite her previously talkative nature, looking around with clear but unvoiced impatience as I struggled out of the gutter, covered in filth and insect bites. Here, we had emerged into another empty street, just next to a closed kopi tiam [A coffee shop]; the lights were off, the door was shut and locked, and a glance through the window, where the light from the nearby street lamps revealed rows of tables and plastic chairs arranged in a haphazard way that bore no resemblance to any sort of organised cafe layout that I recognised. It hardly seemed to be the headquarters of a well-organised and armed resistance group, but, as Spring Rain would say, that was entirely the point.

We slipped into a dark alley to the rear of the shop, where there was a set of stairs leading down into a basement in a way that reminded me of the beer cellars of Trottingham pubs. A quick look around revealed no ponies and no Changelings that we could see, so we rushed down the steps, my hooves making rather too much noise on the stone for my liking, to a shut door. Spring Rain’s horn glowed momentarily, and I understood that she had used magic to manipulate something behind the door to call for attention, for after a few hushed moments where the anxiety-induced urge to vomit was becoming more and more intolerable, the door opened by a fraction of an inch, letting out a thin beam of dim light. A kirin peered through the gap.

“Kaya delivery,” whispered Spring Rain. It was some sort of codeword, for the other kirin nodded and opened the door just wide enough to allow us all inside. We darted inside, one after the other, with me last for having stood at the back, and the door was shut and locked behind us. The basement was quite dark, lit only by a few candles dotted around on tables and shelves, and otherwise very sparsely furnished; a few kirins slept on the floor on bedrolls, three others played a quiet game of mahjong on one table, and another, an older kirin with a short wispy beard and moustache, read a book in the corner. None were particularly surprised to see me; in fact, I felt quite annoyed at being ignored like that, and I wasn’t terribly used to that sort of reaction. Proper etiquette, of course, dictated that everypony stands up and bows when royalty enters a room, but though I didn’t expect quite that level for formality here, a little courtesy would not have gone amiss.

I have to confess, I was not terribly impressed by what I saw, but it would have to do; there were likely other such cells dotted around the place, so that if one was captured then at least the entire resistance movement would not be unduly compromised, I assumed. However, I had at least expected to see a few more kirins and even a pony or two among their number, and certainly more weapons too. This was not going according to how I had envisaged such a meeting would take place. One kirin at the mahjong table I took to be their leader, this ‘Uncle’ as they called him, partly because he appeared to be winning this incredibly complex board game but mostly because he was the biggest and strongest one of the lot, and thus seemed to fit the bill as a tough leader of a embattled team of partisans fighting a hopeless war of resistance. I paid the elderly kirin no heed; presumably one of their grandparents brought along so they could keep an eye on him, I thought.

“Hello,” I said politely; that would be a good start.

The kirins playing mahjong ignored me, carrying on with their game as though I wasn’t there, and the ones sleeping didn’t even so much as stir, but the elder here closed his book, only after finishing the page he was on first, and stood up from his seat. “Prince Blueblood,” he said, smiling and with a smart, stiff bow. “Call me Uncle. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Author's Note

I must admit, it's been a long time since I was last in Malaysia, so I'm relying on decade-old memories for inspiration. I miss the food most of all, as if you can't tell by the content of the chapter.

Chapter 15

It seems like somepony is always waiting for me in one way or another, thought I, as I considered the elderly kirin standing before me. He looked a little familiar, but I could not quite place my hoof on it; he must have been some local figure of great importance whose face I had seen perhaps once or twice as a foal here, and then forgotten about until I saw him again these years later.

Despite his thoroughly un-threatening appearance, looking rather more like every-kirin’s favourite grandfather than the leader of an outnumbered and outgunned resistance organisation, I could feel subtle authority radiating off him like too much cheap perfume from a Prench whore; he carried himself straight and tall, despite his advanced years, with no hint of a stoop or a hunch as one would have expected, and behind his friendly smile and glinting eyes I saw that he was keenly appraising Yours Truly from hoof to horn. When he spoke, his voice soft, measured, and calm with only a shade of the local accent, the other kirins in the room, those awake enough to hear him, stopped to listen. Even Spring Rain, who always seemed to have an opinion on everything and an overwhelming need to share it, could only stand and watch him in quiet awe. Still, age could not be concealed by any amount of good posture and steely looks. What must have been a once-vibrant mane had turned grey, and lines criss-crossed his face like the trenches around Virion Hive, but even then these only seemed to grant this strange little kirin even more of an aura -- a mystique, if you will. Curiously, and quite incongruously, I saw that he carried a dagger in an ornate scabbard, which was tucked into a green sash around his waist like a Saddle Arabian prince.

I had been rather blindsided by his appearance, in truth, but it had also been a very strange day for me even by my recent standards, and with little else to go on I reciprocated with a slight inclination of my head in lieu of a bow, as a mark of respect for a clear elder. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting for too long,” I said. “The Changelings made getting here a little difficult.”

Uncle chuckled warmly. “They have made a great many things here very difficult, sir,” he said, and at least he had a better grasp of the proper etiquette when addressing a prince of the realm than other kirins I could mention, and ponies too.

“I understand it is you I have to thank for that attack that sprung me out of their clutches?”

“The kirins in our small group had more to do with it than I; I merely arranged the time and the location, and allowed them to do what young kirins do best. We were after the supplies and to harass the enemy, nothing more. Freeing you was only a happy accident, I’m afraid, but had we known you were there, we would not have left you for our messenger here to rescue.” He gave Spring Rain a fond smile. “That was very brave of you.”

She didn’t quite ‘squee’, as younger ponies might say, but Spring Rain made a noise almost approximating that infamous noise adolescent fans make when within fondling distance of their favourite celebrity, whomever they may be. Nevertheless, she remained too overawed by the presence of this Uncle to speak using coherent words, and resorted to expressing her glee at being singled out for praise with a grin that stretched from ear to ear and by vibrating on the spot, as though she might suddenly explode at the slightest touch.

However, I could not help but feel a little bit disappointed that they hadn’t made a special effort to liberate me, but the end result was largely the same so I could let that pass. “There were other ponies - Equestrian soldiers - with me. Do you know where they are?”

Uncle shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t. It’s possible that they escaped in the confusion, or that the Changelings still have them. Perhaps one of the pony resistance groups picked them up, but we’re not exactly on speaking terms with them.”

I found myself missing Square Basher, oddly, but I supposed a night of passion in a dank, stinking basement would do that to a stallion. Still, she was a resourceful pony - a big, loud, angry one, but she could put her limited imagination to good use every now and again in pursuit of her goal of smashing Changeling skulls - and even if she and our gallant band of survivors remained within the clutches of the enemy, then they’d be itching to escape once again. With a bit of luck, they might have already sprung themselves out of whatever hole they’d been held in and were actively working with these pony resistance groups Uncle had mentioned to find me. Hope, however, was a dangerous thing, so I brought myself back down to the firm, hard ground of grim reality with a resounding mental thud.

“Speaking of supplies,” I said, gesturing to Cannon Fodder, who was standing at his usual spot just slightly behind and to the right of me. “We thought you might appreciate these firearms we had captured in our daring escape.”

His warm, amber eyes, tinted with grey, sparkled at the mention of our illicit weapons; though I might have used them to barter my escape with, a gift freely given tends to invoke a greater sense of obligation in the receiver that I had always been particularly keen to exploit. We still had more at Spring Rain’s home, anyway. Cannon Fodder unlimbered the heavy, full saddlebags from his body and placed them on the ground with a suitably hefty thud, which finally distracted the three kirins playing mahjong from their thoroughly engrossing game. The muzzles and butts of these stolen muskets, being terribly bulky things that don’t lend themselves to being packed neatly inside canvas bags, let alone being dragged through narrow, stinking gutters, stuck out from under the flaps, making it exceptionally clear to all exactly what was inside them. Well, I thought with no small amount of smugness, that certainly grabbed their attention; even the ones who were napping on the floor lifted their heads and peered over at the two bags of deadly presents.

“That’s very generous of you,” said Uncle, eyeing the weaponry on the floor. To further entice them, Cannon Fodder, in one of his very rare moments of being socially astute, unclasped the flap on one canvas bag and brandished one example of a musket to show. It seemed to work, and the other kirins stared at him as though they were starving Diamond Dogs and he was holding one enormous bone. “But what do you want in return?”

I thought it would come to that, so I was rather amused when Uncle went straight to the point of why I was here. “Was I that transparent?”

“I have had plenty of experience with Equestrian colonial authorities, including your father,” he said, and at the mere mention of the dear old pater I felt my stomach drop just as readily as it did whenever I saw him. “I was sorry to hear of his disappearance, however,” he continued, and though I scanned his tone as closely as I could, my ears could detect nothing but sickening honesty in his words. Uncle gestured to a small, circular table with four chairs in a garish shade of red around it. “Please, sit, all of you. We will have much to discuss.”

We did as we were bidden, and I was relieved at the chance to finally sit after that long and awful trek through the gutters. The adrenaline of our escapade had by now finally faded, and the exhaustion assaulted my mind and body like a lighthouse amidst a violent storm; if only I could have slept earlier, but, perhaps, I thought that if I had then I might not have woken up again. Still, I felt as though I could fall asleep right in that hard, uncomfortable chair, and clearly that possibility must have occurred to our new hosts when a kirin drifted in through the far door, bearing a tray with four ceramic mugs of hot coffee of some local extraction on a levitating tray, which were placed on the quite rickety table between us. I drank mine eagerly, finding that it had been adulterated with plenty of sugar and condensed milk, without waiting for Uncle to take the first sip as etiquette would normally dictate. The jolt of caffeine did not completely perk me up to the point of full wakefulness, but I felt that I could now at least follow along with the conversation.

“I knew that the Changelings had captured you,” said Uncle, nursing his cup of hot coffee. Even in this heat, the steam rose from the drink like smoke from an incense burner. I must have betrayed my surprise in my expression, for he smiled to himself with faint amusement. “Some news of the outside world does make its way here. Much of it is only what the enemy wants us to hear, but some Equestrian news slips through their net. We knew that you had been captured in a war that is fought on a front hundreds of miles away, yet we found ourselves the subject of an invasion and you appeared on our doorstep a mere week after your armies abandoned our city. I do not think the two are unconnected.”

Clever old chap, I thought, and sharp too; I had to tread very carefully with what I told him now. Though we were ostensibly on the same side here, being opposed to the Changelings and their brutish ways in a rather general manner, I was still placing my life in his hooves, and whether or not I could entirely trust him with such a precious thing remained in the air. That his entire group, at least the ones sitting around in this dank little basement, were entirely kirin seemed to be what was setting off that uncomfortable feeling, and it gradually dawned on me that these creatures might not have had the best impression of Equestria and its ruling class.

Still, I was already there and I had to make the most of it. “It’s called Operation: Sunburn,” I started; it was best, I thought, to simply go straight to the point without trying to lay on the old Prince Blueblood charm as he’d very likely see straight through it. “A Purestrain, Dorylus, has a secret plan to invade the east coast of Equestria and force a capitulation, using Marelacca as a jumping-off point for his invasion fleet. He wanted me around to see Equestria burn, as he put it, but your kirins ambushed the convoy and, well, here I am now.”

I didn’t think it was worth explaining Dorylus’ bizarre experimental prison camp and all of that nonsense to him, as fascinating as I’m sure he’d find it. Uncle listened intently, and then sat back in his seat thoughtfully, stroking his thin, white, wispy goatee all the while. “Interesting,” he said. “It did occur to me that, from their perspective, invading our city was a very strange decision; we are very far from the frontline, we are not friends of the Changelings, and any amount of love or resources they can extract from us would not be worth the effort of occupying Marelacca and running it through your blockade.”

[Fighting on the eastern front, where the Equestrian 3rd Army and allied Badlands tribes aimed to cut off the Changelings’ access to the sea and stop the flow of weapons from the southern pirates, had reached a stalemate, as more Equestrian troops were dedicated to Field Marshal Hardscrabble’s drive on the Queen’s Hive and Hive Marshal Chela bolstered that front in turn to maintain the trade in arms. Therefore, a naval and aerial blockade was maintained by Equestrian forces until General Inkpot’s offensive broke through the defences along the Apis Line and seized the last seaport occupied by the Changelings. How effective the blockade was remains a topic of fierce debate among military historians, and if the aerial assets used could have been better employed to directly support the land campaign, but certainly blockade runners frequently made it through and continued to supply the hives.]

“Well, there you have it,” I said, nursing my hot coffee; I already felt rather invigorated by this highly caffeinated, sweet, sugary drink, though I still would not trust myself to perform tasks more complex than tying a cravat. “We are the only creatures who know about this ambitious little plan of theirs, which is why I simply must return to Canterlot to warn the Princesses as quickly as possible.”

“I see.” The elderly kirin continued stroking his chin, apparently deep in thought, while Cannon Fodder and I continued to sit in awkward silence. Behind us, the dozing kirins went back to sleep, the threesome playing their game carried on with dull, thin taps of tiles interrupting the cogitating silence, and Spring Rain quietly sipped her kopi and gazed in silent admiration at the contemplating figure sitting across from her. Finally, he spoke with a voice that implied dredged up age-old wisdom: “You wish for us to assist you in this?”

“I would be most appreciative, yes,” I said, meaning that I had no bloody choice at all except to ask for their help and hope that they were in a generous mood. Saying ‘I am your prince and I am bally well ordering you to help me’, while well within my right, would have had the precise opposite effect. It was, as many of these conversations where I can’t pull rank to get my way go, a delicate balancing act of appearing desperate enough to invoke a modest level of pity, without looking so thoroughly pathetic as to be utterly useless and not worthy of help.

“And do you believe that this Operation: Sunburn has a chance of succeeding?”

“It’s impossible to say,” I said, choosing my words as carefully as I could. “There is always a chance they could pull it off, of course. These sorts of audacious plans are remembered as either strokes of military genius or embarrassing blunders; one or the other, really, with no middle ground. Our east coast is not completely defenceless, but with the element of surprise and our best troops engaged in the south, all I can say is that it’s likely they could gain a hoofhold there and march on Canterlot. Whether or not they’ll reach it before our colts get there first is up to the fortunes of war, as they say, and I’m sure we ponies still won’t give in so readily even if our capital is in flames, but at the very least Sunburn poses a significant threat.”

There was that contemplative silence once more. Damned, bally awkward silence. I felt the urge to say something more grow within me, as this Uncle fellow sat there with his head bowed and his eyes staring through the table between us, until he finally, mercifully spoke: “Equestria is many hundreds of miles away from Marelacca, and yet we find ourselves ensnared in your war against our will. You come here, asking for our help to save a distant land in a conflict we did not want.”

“None of us wanted this bloody war,” I snapped, not liking where he was taking this conversation. “Queen Chrysalis is the enemy of all free creatures. If you think she’ll pack up and leave your little city here once she’s finished with Equestria, then you are terribly mistaken.”

“I know that of the two tyrants, Chrysalis is the worse. We know she cannot hold both Equestria and Marelacca, and we will drive her into the sea. If that is what it takes for a free and independent Marelacca, then so be it.”

I scoffed at the mention of the word ‘tyrant’ to describe my dear old Aunt, having had my fill of it with those Badlands heathens. “You cannot believe that your rebellion has any hope of succeeding without Equestrian help. If Equestria falls, then Chrysalis will be stronger than ever, and nothing will stand in her way.”

“That may be so,” he said, a faint smile on his thin, dry lips, “but it means we will succeed and fail on our own terms. Come now, sir, I think you know what is really meant by Equestrian ‘help’; the re-establishment of distant rule from a land that has for hundreds of years taken the wealth of mine while leaving it impoverished.”

“I can vouch for the independence of Marelacca,” I said, somewhat hastily but I was quite desperate at that point, as you could understand, “contingent upon Equestrian victory, which you can help guarantee by returning me to Equestria as quickly as possible.”

It was a hollow promise, and one that I had no real authority to give; Parliament, having taken power away from where it was truly deserved, from ponies such as I, had also taken the responsibility for such things, and this was an arrangement that I was more than happy to exploit for personal gain. I would go back to Equestria, make a few vague noises about perhaps dismantling our overseas empire and the importance of self-rule for all creatures, since after all, that was what this damned infernal war was supposed to be about now, and then when nopony important enough to do anything about it listens to that drivel I can hold up my hooves and honestly say that I gave it my best shot. We aristocrats losing our political power had its upsides; I don't have to deal with the crushing weight of responsibility that comes with it, especially when it invariably goes hooves-up and ponies look for a certain prince to blame, and instead I can sit back and watch the lower orders flounder about with the glorified popularity contest they’ve turned our grand old hierarchy into. What I did not expect, however, was a change in the political atmosphere in Canterlot when I wasn’t paying attention and that ponies in positions of power would actually take me seriously for once in my life, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

[Prince Blueblood spoke here with the honour of the crown as an implied plenipotentiary, which technically made his ‘hollow’ promise a binding one. The Treaty of Dodge Junction that had formalised relations with the Badlands ponies and the liberation of Virion Hive had transformed the goal of the war from punishing Chrysalis for the attack on Canterlot to one of freeing the oppressed ponies under Changeling enslavement, which laid the groundwork for the long-overdue dismantling of Equestria’s overseas empire and the formation of the Association of Friends. Despite his modesty, my nephew's ‘token’ efforts initiated this process, and even the half-hearted backing of such an influential pony generated support for the movement.]

“I remember your father, sir.” I felt my stomach drop for a second time that night, much in the same manner as when Market Garden informs me that she has a very special and deadly assignment for me. It seemed like wherever I went I could never escape that hateful blackguard. “I wrote many letters to him broaching the subject of greater autonomy for Marelacca, and those were ignored.”

Not entirely ignored, mind you, for now I remembered finding this correspondence as a foal, great stacks of letters that demonstrated an admirable if stubborn commitment to hopeless causes, and using these sheets of paper with their neat horn-writing and large words I did not, and still don’t, understand to make paper darts and draw pictures of dragons in crayon. That I did not receive a beating from my father for going through his desk and playing with his paperwork showed just how little he cared about what the locals thought of how he ran the places he ruled in Celestia’s name.

“And I am pleased to say that I am most certainly not my father,” I said, and I imagined that everyone else in the room was too. “The fact of the matter is this. We both need each other here; you cannot gain independence for Marelacca if Equestria loses this war, and I cannot stop Operation: Sunburn without your help. If I cannot gain your help without promising that I will raise the topic with Canterlot, then so be it, as you say.”

That seemed to mollify him, and Uncle smiled and nodded his head. The astute reader will note, of course, that I only said that I would ‘raise the topic’; no one sitting around this table had any inkling that was all that I needed to do to set the dominoes falling.

“Very well; just one thing, though,” said Uncle, and his horn glowed as he unsheathed his dagger from its scabbard. It was very similar to the one that Cannon Fodder had picked up and likewise carried tucked into his belt, with a long, undulating blade reminiscent of a Flammenschwert, but much smaller and more intricately decorated. He placed it delicately on the table between us, along with its ornate scabbard. The blade had an interesting rippling pattern to it, and the hilt was carved into the shape of a naga with eyes studded with gems. “This,” he continued, “is a kris. It is a sacred heirloom weapon among the ponies here. This was presented to me by a pony friend before the Changelings came, before they divided our races further. I want you to have it now.”

It was a beautiful blade, and it would certainly fill a gap in my ever-growing collection of sharp, pointy objects in my palace. “I couldn’t possibly accept,” I said.

“It is not a present, sir.” Uncle pushed the weapon and its scabbard closer to me. “It is a reminder of your promise.”

Well, either way, I couldn’t really say ‘no’ to a weapon out here in a city crawling with Changelings, so I accepted with as much grace and gratitude as I could muster without being too fawning, and sheathed the blade and tucked the scabbard into my sash. “So, how do we go about this?”

“There are two ways back to Equestria for you, as far as I can see it: by boat across the sea, or across the jungle, over the Changeling frontline, and into Coltcutta,” he answered.

Neither of the two options sounded particularly appealing to me, but traipsing through a tiger-infested, mosquito-filled, disease-ridden jungle only to run headlong into yet another brutal warzone that I could only imagine the unique horrors of was one that I knew must be avoided at all costs. That left crossing the Celestial Sea, which, on reflection, did not seem much more a valid option than the aforementioned jungle trek. For one, I knew nothing of sailing boats, again being more content to allow other ponies to be paid to do that for me on the off-chance I felt like taking the yacht out for cruise. Knowing my luck I’d end up adrift with Cannon Fodder for weeks on end, run out of food and fresh water, and then end up on a cannibal-infested island further from Equestria than when we first set off. Perhaps the overland route wasn’t so bad a prospect after all; at least I would be relatively dry.

“But those might take too long,” Uncle carried on. “In the time it would take for you to walk to Coltcutta or sail to Equestria, the Changelings will have launched their attack already. It may already be too late.”

I was afraid of that; Dorylus did threaten that he would ‘accelerate’ his plans, and Spring Rain mentioned that the occupiers were conscripting more and more of the local population to work in the docks. I slumped in my seat, wondering if this was all hopeless. “Is there no way for me to send a message to Canterlot from here?”

Uncle shook his head with what seemed like genuine sympathy. “Unless you have dragon’s fire with you, any messenger would have to take the same routes as you would.”

Would that I had dragon’s fire on me, and I made a mental note to demand some from Spike if I ever saw that obnoxious little runt again, should I ever be lucky enough to survive. Considerable bribery might have to be called for, but I had a sufficient stockpile of gems in the family vault to offer. Luna’s dreamwalking remained another option for me, after all she found me again in that blasted camp, but that she took so long and could only leave a garbled, truncated message for me implied that it was not as reliable as I’d have hoped. I was in an entirely different continent, just to complicate matters, and while I had no idea how it all really worked, I imagined that would make this a rather trickier affair than when I was stuck in the Rat Pony Tribe’s dungeon.

This left only one other option, and it was by far the absolute worst one. However, needs must as the Nightmare rides and all that, and it was the one that a war hero of my reputation was supposed to have picked as the very first one. Still, I briefly considered communing with my grim Auntie Luna by painting a pentagram on the floor in the blood of one of these kirins and chanting ‘I summon thee’ three times in backwards Old Ponish, and it might have even worked.

“So we must stop Operation: Sunburn ourselves,” I said, defeated by circumstance once again. “Destroy or disable the airships, somehow.”

“Yes,” said Uncle, and he fixed me with a sudden, piercing stare, the sort Princess Luna gave to underlings when they had failed her in some manner, and I found myself abruptly rooted to my chair. “But I will not throw away kirin lives in a suicidal attack; each are ready to fight to free Marelacca from the Changelings, but I’ll not sacrifice them purely for the sake of Equestria. The docks are heavily guarded by an elite war-swarm, and as you say, there is a Purestrain leading the operation there. No kirins are allowed in.”

Worse than that, Chrysalis was there, too, personally overseeing the operation and likely keeping Dorylus’ blood pressure high enough to hopefully cause a heart attack, but I kept that to myself lest Uncle here decided that facing down the dread Queen of the Changelings was a step too far.

“Of course, I wouldn’t have asked that of you,” I said with a defeated sigh. Despite the caffeine and sugar electrifying my blood, I struggled to think of another solution; unlike the ponies in the Equestrian Army, I could not very well order him to do this and expect him to salute crisply and carry out this insane plan. I certainly was not about to do this myself, naturally, but as I sat there, cogitating on this conundrum of how to motivate this Uncle to do this for me, Cannon Fodder, who had hitherto been sitting silently with his kopi suddenly piped up with one of his rare questions.

“Why aren’t kirins allowed in the docks, sir?” he asked. We all looked at him, Uncle and Spring Rain apparently having forgotten he was there, as if his odour did not give it away, and he suddenly looked rather shy and bowed his head.

“The gas for the airships is highly flammable,” I answered. “Just like in that airship with Countess Coloratura that the Changelings blew up, remember? We were there. The fuel’s also liable to catch fire at the smallest spark, too. I’d imagine an errant kirin turning nirik in there would…” I trailed off, as my thoughts finally caught up with my speech, and my spirit suddenly felt lighter as the first inklings of a plan out of this awful mess began to form in my mind. My aide might have had a simple mind, but like a foal he could ask those basic questions the overthinking adults had overlooked as being too simple, and lay bare the obvious truth that had been staring at us in our collective faces all this time. “Would blow the whole thing up like fireworks on Celestia’s birthday. That would put a damper on Dorylus’ plan!”

“Indeed it would, sir,” said Uncle. “There is the small matter of finding a volunteer and getting them past the guards and inside the docks where they can cause the most damage, and without getting any other creature caught in the resulting inferno.”

“I’ll do it,” said Spring Rain abruptly. She had spent much of the conversation before in near-total silence, aside from noisily slurping her coffee with a lack of grace that almost approached Cannon Fodder’s. At first, I thought she was making an inappropriate joke at a tense moment, but her stern expression told otherwise.

“Are you certain?” asked Uncle, his voice much softer than it had been when speaking with me, taking on the warm, familial tone that his nom de guerre implied. “Niece, there is still every chance that your son-”

“I said I’ll do it, lah!” she snapped, then her soft, round cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. “I want to do more than just pass on your messages in rice; I want to hurt the Changelings for what they did to my family, and whatever has happened to them I want to make sure there will be a world worth living in left for them, even if I won’t be around to see it.”

Uncle took the interruption with the grace and understanding that I’d come to expect from him over our short discussion, and I, at last, finally knew why Spring Rain had been so ready and willing to aid me. Ponies who have lost something dear to them are often willing to throw away what little they have left, including their own lives, for a mere chance of getting it all back; though I would still consider this to be irrational, suicidal, and thoroughly insane, I thought about if I’d do the same for Elytra, and while I would perhaps stop short at setting myself on fire in a large airship hangar filled with highly flammable gases and fluids, since unlike kirins and their incendiary alternate forms ponies are not immune to burning, I think I might at least face down a horde of hissing, screaming, snarling Changeling drones armed with nothing more than a pen knife for her. Parenthood does strange things to ponies, I concluded.

“Ah, Prince Blueblood will help me too!” said Spring Rain, sending my train of thought careening off the tracks.

“I will?” I blurted out; I do wish creatures, especially certain generals, would stop assuming that I was chomping at the bit to put my own life in danger.

“You want to stop this Sunburn thing, lah? You get me into the docks and I’ll nirik-up and burn the place to the ground for you, and burn a few of the bastards at the same time. If you’re lucky, you can even steal an airship and fly it back to Equestria!”

Oh, was that all? thought I, gaping blankly at her like a wide open door. Just pilot a highly-complex machine across the Celestial Sea back to Equestria without it falling out of the sky or crashing into any errant pegasi homes along the way and land the damned thing safely, but only after fighting through an entire war-swarm of Changelings, all of whom were more than eager to set hoof on Equestrian soil and enjoy the open buffet that was our largest cities their leaders had promised them, and setting the whole place on fire. As far as ‘lucky’ went, I’d have to call in some serious favours with whichever pagan deity had the misfortune of still keeping my accounts topped up. Unfortunately, it was the only thing close to a viable plan that any of us could come up with, partisan warfare being rather trickier to plan than drawing lines on maps and totting up numbers of ponies, food, and equipment as Market Garden loved to do, and so even Uncle here seemed to be going along with it, even though he continued to poke at the holes large enough to fly a cargo airship through.

“We still need to get you inside without the Changelings seeing you,” he said, with the sigh of one who has come to an unpleasant but inevitable conclusion, “which means we’ll need to work with the ponies.”

“Would that really be an issue?” I asked; if anything, I’d imagine that they would require far less convincing to help their Prince save the equine motherland than these kirins. “There must be enough ponies who want the Changelings gone as much as you do, and the enemy can’t keep up that rot about liberation and self-rule and all that for long before everypony realises it’s all lies.”

Spring Rain snorted and shook her head. “Aiyah, you have not been paying attention, lah?” she said, and rather snippily too. “Easy for you to come here from Equestria and tell us all to just work together to help you. You said it yourself! The Changelings are clever, and now ponies blame kirins for the curfews and the shortages when we fight back.”

I did say that, and in my defence I could hardly be considered to be operating at peak efficiency at that point; it was difficult for me to remember the last time I was, come to think of it.

“Not all ponies, certainly,” I said. “I can’t imagine ponies will keep falling for that trick for long.”

“By then it will be too late,” Uncle said solemnly. “But there is a chance they might listen to you instead.”

“Well, they bloody well ought to,” I snapped, fast losing patience with this; was it too much to ask for everyone here to put aside their petty grievances with one another and focus on the far more important issue of getting me home? “I’m their prince.”

Uncle laughed, and it was so loud and full that I was worried for a moment that any patrols lingering around outside might hear it and decide that it was far too much merriment for a city under occupation. This carried on for just long enough to be uncomfortable, before he stopped, gasping a little for air as though he’d ascended a few too many flights of stairs too quickly, and then peered at me with a curious expression. “Oh, you meant it.”

“Of course I did.”

“Prince Blueblood,” he said, using that same tone of voice a kindly teacher would when very patiently explaining something very obvious to the sort of foal who eats glue, “there isn’t much of a pony resistance movement here. Not yet. It has been not much more than a week since the Changelings invaded, and the only group of them large enough and well-armed enough to speak of are not ponies likely to kneel before you and obey your every command. They’re pirates.”

The word took a moment or two to navigate its way from my ears, through the various synapses in my brain, and into my consciousness. “Pirates?”

“Yes, sir. Pirates.”

It seemed incredible that they were still around. “As in the swashbuckling variety with eye-patches, parrots on shoulders, and buried treasure?”

Uncle nodded his head with that same sense of slightly condescending patience. “Less of the swashbuckling, more of the looting of merchant ships and the taking of hostages and the ransoming of them back for money, I believe. They aren’t happy with the Changelings coming here and taking over their business.”

“Yes, the bugs are quite good at that.”

[The Strait of Marelacca is a vital part of the lucrative spice trade between Marelacca, Cathay, and Neighpon, among other regions, and the Equestrian mainland (indeed, it had been theorised that the Changelings took Marelacca to halt the spice trade and damage the economy, until the news of Operation: Sunburn came to light). It has therefore been plagued by piracy for centuries. Piracy has historically played a significant role in the power struggles between local rulers, and some went on to found small kingdoms of their own. Despite the best efforts of colonial authorities to stamp down on it, piracy in the region continued to intensify as trade increased. By this point, Equestrian and colonial forces had fought numerous campaigns to end piracy in the region with some success, though piracy still remains seemingly impossible to stamp out entirely.]

Well, that was some rather unpleasant news, and this Uncle fellow’s capacity to smash one’s hopes and dreams with the hammer of logic upon the anvil of reason was something to be envied; I wished he could do the same with a few of our generals and politicians, and then perhaps this war wouldn’t be quite so bloody. Still, I failed to come up with any other solutions. This was a puzzle, only the prize for winning was not a sense of smug satisfaction at having bested it, but surviving long enough to feel smug about it later. In order to escape I needed to sabotage the docks and steal an airship, which was already a tall order by itself, but I would have to deal with that particular detail when I got there, assuming that I survived long enough for it to become a problem. I would then have to somehow smuggle this suicidal kirin through what was likely to be the most heavily guarded and defended complex in the entire region without being rumbled, get her into position where she can do the most damage possible without blowing me up in the process, and while everything is burning down around me, somehow hijack an airship that is not on fire and pilot it to safety. There were an awful lot of ‘somehows’ in that. Looking at this logically, with that particular sequence of events in mind, getting past step one, which was getting Spring Rain inside somehow, was a task of not-inconsiderable difficulty and risk.

“Still,” said Uncle, apparently sensing that I was ruminating on this problem and getting absolutely nowhere with it, “if you could get the pirates on our side, then it might work. The enemy may not expect an attack from the skies.” He waved one of the kirin servers over, who trotted on eagerly, and issued some sort of request in whatever peculiar dialect of Cathaynese they all spoke here. Moments later, the intrepid fellow returned with a ledger, which he placed carefully in front of Uncle. “We took the liberty of taking some photographs and sketches of the docks.”

“How organised of you,” I said dully; I was starting to think it was all hopeless and that I might be better off staying put, chopping vegetables with Spring Rain in the market, and hoping for the best. Perhaps I could even fake my own demise.

Uncle opened up the ledger, revealing it to be filled with scribbled notes, receipts, and assorted financial documents that, to me, might as well have been arcane knowledge dredged up from the Hyponian Age and beyond for what I understood of it. I watched, sipping my gradually cooling coffee until it was all finished, as he patiently looked through the assorted paperwork with a lack of urgency that just about bordered on irritating, until arriving at a small, unassuming manila envelope stained with drops of tea. “It’s our job to keep an eye on what they’re doing,” he said, smiling to himself as he opened up the envelope and deposited them on the table between us.

The docks, as it turned out, were not a single building as I had first thought (but then I am hardly an authority on such things), but more of a sprawling district of the city, which these photographs and pencil drawings illustrated quite well. Each were taken at a fair distance, apparently from some high ground around the city itself, and showed a mess of buildings, warehouses, hangars, piers, wharfs, and so forth stretched out in a sort of line along the seafront. However, the fellow who took the photos and sketched the drawings had also seen fit to annotate them, and had circled quite clearly a much larger, newer structure that appeared to be made out of gleaming chrysalite; an airship hangar, undoubtedly, apparently large enough to house the Sanguine Palace with room to spare for one of my summer mansions, stood out amidst the smaller warehouses of conventional construction. One side of this vast hangar was open to the sea, like a gaping maw that would vomit forth the fleet that would invade Equestria unless we stopped it.

“Are the airships inside?” I asked, peering down at the photos to try and catch a glimpse of them.

“Yes,” he said, though I couldn’t make them out. “From what we can tell they arrived in pieces, and the Changelings are using pony slaves to assemble them inside that hangar.”

“And where are the slaves kept?”

“In the other buildings,” he explained, indicating the warehouses around this new hangar with his hoof. In the photo I could make out a wall ringing this portion of the docks, with checkpoints and the odd guard tower. “They’ve shipped in slaves from their hives, but they’re not enough for the job, so they’ve also taken to conscripting workers from the local population. The native ponies have been treated somewhat better and are allowed to return home at night, most of the time, to keep up the pretence that they’re here to liberate the Marelay ponies from Equestrian oppression. It won’t last, of course, but I’d say that gives you an in. If the enemy still has your friends, it’s very likely they’ll be held there.”

Unless they’ve escaped already, which was starting to look increasingly unlikely; I liked to think that if the likes of Square Basher and the other band of merry, violent misfits we were incarcerated with had slipped out of the enemy’s hooves, I’d have likely heard about it now due to the path of destruction and ichor they’ve carved through occupiers of this city, or something to that effect at a bare minimum. Nevertheless, that did, as he said, give me an ‘in’, and even if my comrades weren’t in there, that still left a relatively large group of ponies with significant and valid grievances against the Changelings that I could exploit to hopefully inspire them to rise up against their oppressors. I might even manage to arm them too.

“Can you help me get inside?” I asked, then hastily adding: “And get me out again? I need to see them, if they’re in there.”

Uncle peered over at the photographs and sketches arrayed out before him. “Your best chance of getting in and out is with the ponies being taken in for work. Join the column of workers, without being noticed, and you’ll be taken inside the docks. We don’t know exactly what goes on in there, so once inside, you and your friend will be on your own.” He then looked up, and there was a glint in his grey eyes. “Am I to assume, sir, that you have a plan?”

Not exactly, merely the germ of one, but frankly it was all that I really had to go on, and for all of the build-up of his reputation here, this Uncle was not exactly forthcoming with any better solutions. “Something like that,” I said. “We’ll smuggle as many weapons as we can get in and stage an uprising from within. Your kirins can stage a diversion to draw off the enemy at those checkpoints and clear a path for anypony escaping. If we can get those pirates on our side then that will balance the odds in our favour. In the ensuing chaos, Spring Rain and I will destroy the hangar with the airships inside and then make our escape.”

There were still a few steps still missing in that plan, of course, namely how we would gain the assistance of these pony resistance fighters, or pirates as it happened, and just how I would extricate myself from the burning wreckage, but it was a start at least. I’d have to come up with the rest later, and as ever I’d have to do most of the thinking by myself if nopony else would. Uncle listened patiently, nodding his head, and when I finished he remained silent for a spell, deep in thought once more.

“Kirins and ponies will die,” he said. “This had better be worth it, sir.”

Well, yes, it’s war, thought I; it was not as though I was enthusiastic about that particular detail either, especially when this plan put me right square in the centre of shot and shell. He might as well have asked me if I thought Virion Hive was ‘worth it’, or Black Venom Pass, or any other one of the battles we had fought in this long, hideous war. Ponies and drones were being fed into Field Marshal Hardscrabble’s relentless mealgrinder as we spoke (and I dreaded to think what General Market Garden was up to without my supervision) sipping coffee and bickering about the rights of self-determination, so why should it be any different over here? However, like most of my honest thoughts I could not voice it, and all that I could do was look as solemn as possible, as though I was remembering the brave souls I had seen perish so nobly by my side for Princesses and Country, and say, “I would not have dared suggest it if it wasn’t. What we will accomplish here will be witnessed by the entire world, and they will see that kirins can and will fight for Harmony. It will not be forgotten.”

Utter rot, of course, but words used to motivate others to do something unpleasant often are. Still, he seemed to buy it, as he nodded again. “Very well,” he said, at length. “You will have our aid.”

Chapter 17

“I could very well ask you the same thing,” I said, pushing myself away from Square Basher’s strong grip and smoothing down the front of my messy, stained undershirt with my hooves on instinct. She let me go and stood there rather sheepishly, with her head bowed and her ears flat against her head in admonishment, though the relief in her voice was certainly palpable. Her re-capture by the enemy after a failed attempt to break me out of Camp Joy for a second time, assuming that Cannon Fodder’s version of events was correct, and presumed subsequent cocooning had not left her much worse for wear, unlike me; she was still built, as the common soldiery who affectionately nicknamed her ‘Marezilla’ would say, like a brick shithouse, and I assumed that being thrust back into the physically demanding job of unloading heavy boxes had allowed her to maintain her bulky physique. It did, however, raise one other alternative: “How do I know it’s really you?”

Square Basher blinked vacantly at me, and looked left and right to see if anypony other than Cannon Fodder, who stood guard and kept an eye for us, was listening in on our conversation; it was a fair question, given the nature of the enemy we had been fighting for the past two years of war, and that she looked much the same as she did before did send that particular alarm bell a-ringing loudly in my head. Lacking the use of my horn, I couldn’t very well cast that trusty little spell that I’d become so dependent upon, despite having thoroughly failed magic school, and so I’d have to rely on her telling me something that the real Square Basher would know, but the Changelings didn’t, and the only thing that I could think of was…

“In Camp Joy, sir,” she began, her eyes dipping down to the floor between our hooves, “you were alone in the basement, sir, and, well, we…” She trailed off, and her cheeks flushed red with uncharacteristic embarrassment.

I was not exactly enjoying this either, but there was only one way to be certain. “Go on, Sergeant Major.”

“We had a roll in the hay, sir,” she said meekly.

“Well, that’s a start,” I said. “Can you remember any specific details?”

The crimson flush to her cheeks grew more intense and she chewed on her lower lip. She made a sideways glance towards Cannon Fodder, who could not have demonstrated any less interest in the direction of this awkward conversation, then leaned in close to whisper in my ear, and as she did so it became readily apparent to me that she had not bathed in a considerable amount of time. “You rubbed my flanks and described them as ‘magnificent globes, cut from the finest marble by a sculptor whose skill was overtaken by his vigour’.”

It was my turn to blush. “Yes, I did say that, didn’t I?”

Look, I had been in solitary confinement for several days by that point, so my pillow talk was hardly at its very best, especially when the only pillows available at the time were made of stone. Given my partner for the night’s particular physique, I was also stepping quite far out of what I was used to when it came to nocturnal liaisons, so I could only work with what was presented before me. However, that at least confirmed that she really was Square Basher, or the same creature who I had slept with in that filthy basement, and that I admitted to saying something as thoroughly embarrassing as that ought to have confirmed my identity in her eyes. Still, I felt an immense amount of relief wash over me as a healing balm on a wound; something was going right, for once.

“Your turn, sir,” she said.

It was indeed my turn, and I stole a glance at Cannon Fodder, who remained thoroughly unperturbed by the racy turn this conversation had taken. I almost begged for a drone to come along and spare me the further embarrassment, but they were apparently distracted by something else. “You then flipped me over and returned the favour by striking me on the rear several times until I asked you politely to stop.”

“Sorry about that, sir, I got a little carried away.”

“I think we both did,” I said. “It’s good to see you again, Sergeant Major.”

“We tried to get to you,” said Square Basher, her voice hushed, barely audible above the noise of the ponies working all around us, and tinged with the shame of failure, “but there were too many of them and only so many of us. We were rounded up, put into those tube-things, and brought here to work on their airships.” She glanced around quickly again, and then, apparently satisfied again that no Changelings were listening and that we were unseen, leaned in closer still. “What’s going on, sir?”

In the darkness behind those heavy crates I explained in as much detail as I could cram into a few short sentences Dorylus’ audacious plan, and Square Basher listened intently. When I finished, she had been stunned into a shocked silence, as she seemed to be struggling to grapple with the immensity of what she had been unceremoniously dragged into.

“Well, sir,” she said, at length, “I can say if they land in Trottingham, the East End will be sure to give them a warm welcome. The bugs’ll never get as far as Celestia’s Head.” [There are several pubs in East Trottingham with that name, which I am still yet to decide is flattering or not, but Square Basher is probably referring to the one closest to the Tower of Trottingham.]

“I’m sure.” I wasn’t, really; while the roving gangs of ruffians and thugs there armed with lead pipes and incomprehensible accents might threaten slumming nobles and Neighponese tourists who have wandered off the safe paths, they would find the vast swarms of fanatical drones armed with muskets rather trickier to deal with.

The sound of work and of Changeling voices grew closer. Cannon Fodder waved his hoof in alarm, and we immediately affected to look as those the three of us had been struggling with a particularly heavy box, and fortunately there were many to choose from around here, as drones and slaves trudged past us too busy in search of further boxes to carry to notice us. This was fortunate, as I suspected the three of us would not have been nominated for any acting awards based on our performance, as the box we had selected was unusually light and whatever it was that had been packed in there shifted about as we pantomimed straining under its weight. The eyes and ears of the Changeling overseers were everywhere now, even though they were quite inattentive due to their apparent belief that pony slaves were somehow incapable of organising sabotage, still meant that the conversation I’d wanted to have with Square Basher was exceedingly difficult.

It was not impossible, mind you. We stuck together, and carried on working as a ‘team’ shifting the assorted boxes and sacks from the cargo airship, catching very short and brief snippets of conversation each time we delved into hold. The constant and unending sound of work all around us, of idle chatter and of some sort of arcane machinery buzzing away elsewhere, provided us with some decent cover. Cannon Fodder acted as our lookout, and alerted us to approaching overseers by way of careful nudging.

“How many?” I whispered, as we pretended to be digging a particularly large box out. The other slaves and ‘volunteers’ milling about behind us, many, I noted, standing around aimlessly without direction, gave us sufficient cover from the severely outnumbered but armed drones.

“Four,” Square Basher hissed back, “plus me. The others took their chances with the partisans and ran to the hills.”

Not exactly a good basis with which to start an uprising, I thought. Still, I hoped that the others were well and making merry mischief with the Changelings in the Badlands, though I couldn’t help but be feel a little put out that only five of the ponies I’d met over the course of our imprisonment came back for me. Though it might have been the sensible option, now that I was thinking about it.

“What about the Badlands slaves?”

“Hundreds, sir,” she said with a sad shrug. “Not enough.”

That much was apparent, and I could see that she was starting to feel as hopeless about this situation as I was. Later, as the crowd had cleared and we had to relocate, we carried on our truncated conversation, during which I attempted something different, just in case my hushed whisper was not as secret as I’d hoped.

“I’ve pearly queen’d the quinine,” I said.

Square Basher gave me a long, vacant look that was halfway between being insulted or amused by my ridiculous attempt at Trottish Rhyming Slang, and could potentially tip either way. “You mean you got the beer in, sir?”

I nodded. That was probably what I meant, but I had to take her word for it. “They’re going to, uh…” Damnation, this was harder than the inhabitants of those smog-filled slums made it look. ‘Blow the place to Cloudsdale and back’ didn’t have a particularly easy rhyme, so I did my best to mime something exploding by bringing my forehooves together (I was sitting down for this, I should add) and then swinging them out again with exuberance, blowing air out of my pursed lips for an accompanying sound effect. Square Basher grinned so wide that I feared her face might crack in two, or that she had been Pinkie Pie this whole time and her most convincing disguise had finally slipped.

“Thank Luna, sir,” she said, which I bristled at - my Aunt had almost nothing to do with this, it was mostly me blundering into the right ponies and kirins, as usual. “The ships are all gassed up, but there’s storage in this building at the back, heavily guarded. Fuel too. Locked up tighter than a Breezie’s fanny, but I’ll send the word around, don’t you worry, sir. When the time comes, we’ll be ready.”

Of that, I had no doubt; like any good non-commissioned officer worth their salt, she would do the hard work of getting the great unwashed mass that made up the common soldiery of Equestria to do what the commissioned officer wanted by way of a combination of encouragement, coercion, very colourful language, and, if the situation called for it, which it almost always did with Square Basher, threats of and actual use of violence. Knowing her, after she’s had sufficient time to whip the slaves into a fully-fledged uprising, hopefully with any weapons that Cannon Fodder and I might be able to smuggle inside the docks, we might not need the assistance of nautical and/or aeronautical cutthroats and reavers after all. Still, far be it from me to leave something as valuable as my continued existence and my right to waste it in whatever decadent, trivial manner I see fit to mere chance, and so I would still have to try to enlist their help, somehow.

We were allowed a lunch break, of sorts, albeit one only just short enough for us to wolf down a bowl of something purporting to be congee, which at the time I thought was the sort of gruel my mother used to tell me I would be forced to eat at an orphanage should I prove to be enough of a disappointment to her that I would be disowned and expelled from the royal lineage. This was served out of large, steaming cauldrons that had been wheeled up to the loading dock, and dispensed by a bored-looking drone in a stained apron and armed with a ladle, which he used to pour servings of inconsistent size into enamel bowls for us. Thus, we ate in the shadow of the cargo ship, which in turn was shadowed by the monstrous warships that filled the rest of this enormous hangar. We ‘volunteers’, though we had been free to mix with the Badlands slaves as we worked, were kept apart from them during lunch. Though the Marelay ponies here complained to each other and to their guards about the quality of the food they were fed, and the guards simply ignored those complaints or threatened to take their lunch away and force them to work hungry, I observed the enslaved ponies from the Badlands, who sat a short distance away with Square Basher and the other Equestrian prisoners towering over them, almost gorge themselves sick upon this empty, flavourless meal.

Some of our guards, too, took this as an opportunity to have an impromptu break from their onerous duties of standing around and watching us do all the hard work. A group of four stood about not far from us, one leaning against a guard rail that was bowing slightly under his weight, chatting aimlessly about this and that. The tedious conversation, disconcertingly familiar in its all-too-equine banality, started to drift to a topic quite universal to all species.

“Hives, I’m starving,” said one. “How come the slaves get to eat and we just have to watch them? What’s the point in having them here if we can't all have a bit of their love?”

“They’re workers,” said another bluntly. “Not for feeding on.”

“They need their energy to work,” opined a third.

“Can’t we just have a little bit?” suggested the first. “I can feel the love radiating off them.”

“We all can, you twerp,” said the second. “You’re making me hungry now. Shut up about it and just ignore it like a good drone.”

“You’ll get us all into trouble,” said the third. From that, they went on talking about some sort of show that was taking place that evening, which left me wondering just what Changelings actually did for fun when they weren’t trying to take over Equestria. From what I gathered from their conversation, it seemed to involve teasing slaves for personal amusement.

[The Changelings had a complex classification system for their pony slaves, ranging from merely foodstock, to manual workers, agricultural labourers, and clerks, who were low-level members of the Hives’ bureaucracy and administered portions of the slave population on their behalf, each with various grades between them. In practice, the distinction between them was often ignored in areas of the occupied lands, and became increasingly disregarded as the war situation worsened for them and the bureaucracy broke down.]

However, it was during this all-too-brief lunch break that I had my second run-in with Dorylus. I was forcing myself to eat this tasteless rice-based gruel, while resisting the urge to be facetious and inquire about the wine list from one of the armed ‘waiters’, when I noticed a sudden and startling change come over each of the Changelings around us. It was though a switch had been flicked in their brains, all simultaneously, and they immediately stood straight and tall; those that had been casually leaning against walls and precarious rails over precipitous drops, taking advantage of the break as much as I was, snapped to attention, and their own inane chatter and gossip was immediately silenced. Then I heard her voice rising from the quiet, like a shark’s fin breaching the still waters.

“...unacceptable, Dorylus,” said Queen Chrysalis. She stepped into view, her heavy hoofsteps ringing loudly on the metal gangway, like the tolling of a funeral bell, almost reverberating up my spine. There she was, standing not much more than half the length of a tennis court away from me, with a rather put-upon Dorylus who, had he a woollen cap, would have been wringing it with his hooves. She was surrounded by a section of ten drones, each wearing sturdy armour, lacquered purple, with elaborate spikes all over, and were armed with spears with just as extravagant and impractical blades. Most notable, however, were their decorative helmet horns, which certainly gave one the impression that they were compensating for something and made Celestia’s appendage look modest and stunted by comparison. I suppose that’s why they earned their rather unfortunate nickname when our forces finally encountered these absurd harlequins on the battlefield.

[The Queen’s Guard was one of several units dedicated to the personal protection of Queen Chrysalis, though their impractical armour implied that they were more for show and intimidation. However, they had a reputation in the Hives as her elite personal bodyguard for their fanatical devotion to the Queen and their brutality to her enemies. As Blueblood intimated here, when the Hives continued to run out of soldiers they were pressed into battle, where their distinctive armour earned them the nickname ‘Dickheads’ by amused Equestrian soldiers. They did not live up to their fearsome reputation.]

Chrysalis swept her hoof in my direction, seemingly singling me out. I stifled a yelp of surprise, as I felt raw fear wash over me like an all-consuming tidal wave upon a tropical shore, but soon realised she was only indicating the group of volunteer workers in general. Still, I dipped my head down in the hope that she would not recognise me. “Why are they sitting around eating?”

“Ma’am, the livestock need to eat in order to work,” said Dorylus. His voice was hushed, as though he was trying his best not to be overheard by said livestock consuming congee as devoid of taste as Rarity’s brief foray into country and western wear.

I dared to look up, and saw Chrysalis regard a sheepish Dorylus as I would a servant who has mislaid my evening shirts. Her eyebrow arched and she sneered down at him. “Do they?” she asked with faint amusement. “Are there not tens of thousands of able-bodied ponies in this city, each able to step in should any of these wretches starve to death?”

Dorylus stammered uselessly, and were it not for the ominous presence of Queen Chrysalis herself, I would have found the display deeply amusing. He bowed his head in pathetic supplication, almost bruising his chin on the filthy metal floor, and spoke to her hooves. “My Queen, Marelacca has yet to be fully integrated into the Hives system! We must tread carefully here, or risk a general uprising!”

Chrysalis’ laughter sounded like a cat choking to death, loudly. It rang out throughout this vast, vast hangar, echoing off the far distant walls all around, so it sounded as though it emanated from all around us. “A good joke, my dear Dorylus,” she said, grinning horribly with many sharp fangs visible. She cupped her hoof around her underling’s chin and guided him back to standing. However, the grin evaporated in the time that it took for me to blink. “But these delays,” she continued, “must cease. I have been patient, very patient, but we can afford these no longer.”

“My Queen, our patrols are recruiting as many ponies as we dare to without risking a revolt.”

Her head shook, which made her gossamer mane swish and float in the air like cobwebs. “All my Purestrains bring me are problems and excuses. I want solutions, radical solutions, that will bring me the final victory over Equestria.”

That she said ‘me’, as opposed to ‘us’ or even ‘the Hives’ was not lost on me; it was generally accepted that a bad ruler was one who saw the realm they were supposed to rule over as merely an extension of themselves, rather than a polity to guide gently. Now, I’m far from an expert at this sort of thing, after all, I have a butler to perform the onerous tasks of managing the small army of servants and maids I employ to maintain my many estates, but I could not help but notice that it didn’t seem to occur to them to put the drones sitting idle outside to productive use. I kept that thought to myself, I’m sure you’ll understand.

I saw Dorylus swallow hard. “We could…” he began at length, and received a few encouraging nods from his queen. “I mean, we could increase the quota of ponies picked up off the streets. They’ll complain, though.”

“I don’t need to know the details,” snapped Chrysalis with a dismissive wave of her hoof, like swatting a fly. “Just do it. Let them complain, they won’t dare to once my Blackhorns enact my order in their precious little city.”

“Forgive me, my Queen,” said Dorylus, his voice barely above a whisper and almost drowned out by the sounds of machines and work, but just audible enough for me to make out, “but the livestock can hear you.”

“So? Do you think I care about what ponies think?” Chrysalis shot Dorylus the fiercest death glare I had ever seen, and I’d met Princess Luna; were I the recipient of it, I think I would have been forgiven for voiding my bowels under its withering stare. She held it for a few seconds, while Dorylus looked around at anything but the smouldering, bright emeralds of his Queen’s eyes, and then let loose an exasperated sigh that sounded as though one of the airships nearby had just sprung a leak. “My dear Dorylus, you know what I truly care about; my drones, who starve without the love so jealously hoarded by the Equestrians. The news from the front is dire. Hive Marshal Chela is barely holding back the enemy, but you know she’s lost her touch. You are the only one of my Purestrains I can rely on. Do you understand, Dorylus?”

[It may be of interest to some readers if I briefly summarised the situation at the front line during Blueblood’s capture and subsequent escape, as he continues to keep his narrative to events that only affected him directly. The 1st Army under General Market Garden had fought two major battles during this time, the Battle of the Grey Wastes and the Battle of Coronet Hill, and several small skirmishes. Under orders from Field Marshal Hardscrabble, Market Garden had attempted to circumvent Chela’s war-swarms and cut the supply routes between the Queen’s Hive and the northern hive cities, but was surprised by a sudden attack in the open ground that resulted in heavy casualties on both sides. Market Garden did not withdraw, but manoeuvred to the south-east and attacked Chela’s defensive line in the Bleak Hills. The battles were inconclusive and no breakthrough was accomplished, but Chela could not afford the losses and would eventually retreat. This sort of back-and-forth attritional warfare would characterise this part of the Heartlands Campaign. There is considerable scholarly debate over whether the forces assigned to Operation: Sunburn could have turned the tide, forced a stalemate, or would only have delayed the inevitable.]

“Yes, my Queen,” he said meekly. “Perfectly. It shall be done.”

Not if I had anything to do with it, I thought wryly to myself. I considered, if I was lucky, I might be able to assassinate Queen Chrysalis while I was here, if I hurled this enamel bowl at her head with sufficient force to smash her skull, thus ending the war entirely at a single stroke. Then I would be lauded as the greatest hero Equestria had ever seen since Princess Twilight Sparkle did… whatever latest thing she had done to save the world, and be able to retire happily and never have to fight ever again. I would never be able to pull it off myself, given my rather lacklustre performance during the only time I had to face off against the all-powerful Queen of the Changelings, and I ought to focus on letting the kirin resistance and the pirates flatten the docks and these airships while making my daring escape, it did provide an amusing fantasy for me to indulge in as I carried on eating the last bits of my congee.

“What about Prince Blueblood?” asked Chrysalis, and I felt the icy grip of terror around my bowels again. I dared to glance up, trying to use my bowl of congealing rice porridge to conceal at least the lower portion of my face, which I liked to imagine was the most identifiable part of my visage, but that she wasn’t directly staring at me gave me hope that I still remained undetected.

“We are…” Dorylus trailed off again, clearly trying to figure out how to rephrase yet another failure that wouldn’t result in being shouted at again, or worse. “We are pursuing leads as to his whereabouts. He may already be on his way back to Equestria by now.”

“Then that wouldn’t be an issue, would it?” Chrysalis grinned again, and Dorylus seemed to shudder in response. “Because Operation: Sunburn will start before he returns to his stupid, weak Aunties, won’t it, Dorylus?”

He swallowed hard, and nodded his head with furious disregard for the health of his own neck. “Yes, my Queen.”

“Good! Now, I want to see my flagship again, Dorylus, with the cannons that will turn that trumped-up cad’s palace into a smouldering ruin.”

“My Queen, it’s still being assembled.”

“I know, but perhaps if they see me watching, the slaves may be motivated to work harder for their Queen.”

I doubted that very much; if anything, I find it tends to have the opposite effect if my servants knew that the master of the house was peering over their shoulders and offering directions on the dusting and the ironing. Speaking of my house, even I, a stallion known to challenge just about anypony to a duel over the most minor of insults, thought that it was a bit much to flatten it out of a fit of pique. After all, compared to, say, Shining Armour, Cadance, Twilight Sparkle, and even Cannon Fodder here, I’d done very little of actual worth in thwarting her devilish plots.

[My nephew is once again underselling his contribution to the Equestrian war effort here—directly and indirectly. From the beginning he proved to be a continual thorn in the enemy’s side, stymying their plots at nearly every turn. The myth of the Black Prince had become an exemplar of what all commissars should aspire to and was heavily exploited by the Ministry of Information. While reality could never match the increasingly absurd heights that propaganda had put forth, and Blueblood himself understands this, his efforts as described in these frank memoirs should not go unrecognised. It has since become clear that, aside from Chrysalis' obvious personal hatred for him, the enemy saw him—correctly—as a symbol of hope and pride for Equestria, and resolved to extinguish that hope to cow us into compliance.]

The two trotted off, their guards scurrying along behind them in a sort of awkward gait that implied that their extravagant uniforms were terribly uncomfortable to wear, and it was all I could do to stop myself from bursting into a great fit of nervous laughter. It was rather hilarious in hindsight, I must admit, to be sitting there close enough for me to spit at Queen Chrysalis’ head if I felt the need to descend so low, covered in dust, wearing a kirin’s stained old undershirt, and with my flanks crudely painted over, and for them to simply not notice me. I could only imagine they did not see through my lace-thin disguise because these docks were the very last place that they expected to see Hive Enemy Number One. However, there and then, the outburst I fought so hard to repress, bordering on bringing tears to my eyes, was merely the attempted release of all the tension and anxiety and fear I’d felt. I held my breath until Chrysalis and Dorylus disappeared from view, stepping down one of the very many flights of stairs, and then breathed an immense sigh of relief that merited a queer look from the nearest drone, who presumably chalked it up to a strange pony thing and left it at that.

With that over, our bowls were taken from us, regardless of whether or not we had finished our meals and with Cannon Fodder demanding a second course. It was back to work then, and the thought of having to do more of it when I’d already done a few hours that day felt downright criminal. I suppose it was, actually, but the enemy didn’t particularly care for the niceties of fair treatment of civilians, princes or otherwise. Still, at least I was allowed the opportunity to spend more time with Square Basher, catching small snippets of conversation in between moving boxes from ship to loading area.

“How are they treating you?” I asked. The overseers were distracted by some incident or other, which I took to be either a local of Marelacca or perhaps even a Badlands slave protesting this unfair treatment, and judging by the noises I could hear, these reasonable complaints were being answered with beatings.

Square Basher shrugged her broad shoulders. “Not great, sir, thank you for asking,” she whispered back. “Don’t you worry, sir. Like I said, we’ll be ready. I’ll keep them fit for you, even the Badlands slaves. They’ll be wanting a pop at the bugs.”

I nodded. “I’ll see if the ‘beer-in’ can get some weapons for you.”

“They’re getting lazy,” she said, commenting on how the drones were standing about chatting instead of watching us. She shot them a sideways glance over her shoulder. “They think they’ve already won, sir. We’ll show ‘em.”

“Becoming complacent, I see,” I said with a shrug, while attempting to extricate a particularly buried sack from a small mountain of boxes. I was getting rather tired by this point, despite not putting in too much more than the most minimal amount of effort I thought I could get away with. Muscles that I generally don’t have to use very often had been exerted for several hours without adequate rest, and registered their complaint with considerable pain. “When do we stop for tea?”

Square Basher shook her head. “Changelings haven’t heard of tea.”

“Heathens.”

“Yes sir,” she agreed heartily, with a sage nod. “We’ll be ready for your signal.” Square Basher paused, frowned slightly, and said, “What is the signal, sir?”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Indeed, I was making it all up as I went along, more or less, and saw no reason to stop. “When something big catches fire, I suppose.”

***

The rest of our ‘shift’ passed without much in the way of incident. I don’t know how much longer it had taken, but it was starting to get dark by that point and I was about ready to give up, curl up on the floor, and accept whatever beatings and abuse the overseers would see fit to inflict on me if it meant I wouldn’t have to work. The ordeal finally ended, and I could only make a guess based on what I’d seen of the expansive but poorly-maintained bureaucracy of the Changelings, when some other put-upon middle manager of sorts, also in a uniform starched so stiffly that it must stand up on its own without anypony in it, strutted onto the scene with the air of a drone eager to prove his meagre authority, and declared loudly that we, the Marelaccan ponies, had worked ‘overtime’ by seventy-four minutes and must be released back into the wild immediately.

This, however, brought him into conflict with our overseers, who insisted that the job had yet to be completed (and despite having at least four dozen ponies that I could see working on unloading this airship, it still had yet to be fully emptied of its cargo. Again, I was starting to see that slave labour was not all that it was cracked up to be). Nevertheless, the new drone had a piece of paper with him that proved it, somehow, and the overseers acquiesced to the authority of the piece of paper and grudgingly let us go. And when I say ‘released back into the wild’ that is not too much of an exaggeration of what happened; we were all as a group escorted back along the gangways, down to the ground floor where I was finally relieved of that inhibitor ring (I would not have put it past the Changelings to conveniently ‘forget’ to take it off), and were then taken back to the front gates from which we first entered the docks and told to go home. The gates were slammed shut behind us and we were all left to our own devices. I suppose showing us the way ‘home’ was a bit too much to ask of an oppressive occupying regime, but I was at least relieved to be free of that wretched place. A feeling that was marred somewhat by remembering that Square Basher was still in there.

The locals seemed to know where they were going and immediately wandered off, complaining to one another about the unjust treatment they had just suffered and the wasted day, from what little that I could understand. I, however, had to rely upon my special talent to show me the way ‘home’, as it were. The city was rather well-ordered, though the streets did not follow quite the same level of unnatural neatness as Manhattan's ridiculous grid system, so the old special talent didn’t have to work as hard as, say, when I would have to go crawling through the mercifully unused sewers of Griffonstone, but that’s a story for another time. After all of that I was terribly hungry, and so was Cannon Fodder, as, though he didn’t show it by any outward means, the sound of his stomach rumbling had been loud enough to muffle the sound of my covert conversations with Square Basher in the hangar and convince a few of the more imaginative guards that there could be monsters lurking in the bowels of the ship. That the street food vendors were out, filling the air with the heady aromas of exotic spices and the sounds of conversation and laughter, only made it worse, and I lacked the funds with which to buy anything. I certainly was not about to take up petty theft.

It seemed to me that we hadn’t long before curfew would be imposed, and that the oppressed inhabitants here were trying to eke the most amount of joy they could before the Changelings could put an end to it, as if in microcosm of what was happening to this colony as a whole. I crossed foals playing in the street, stallions and mares arguing over prices of baubles and food in the market, becoming more scarce with each day under occupation, and all under the watch of the Blackhorns, who stood poised to swoop in and put an end to all of this.

I carried on, hunger hollowing me out from the inside with each step, but adrenaline was enough to keep me going; every time I accidentally made eye contact with a uniformed drone sent an electric shock down my spine, forcing me to snap away and keep on walking. Despite only having had that bowl of congee for lunch and nasi lemak for breakfast I felt the urge to vomit rise and rise until the bile burned the back of my throat. There came the intrusive thought that I was walking much too unnaturally, and that my gait would somehow give me away as a stallion of regal bearing who had been forced as a colt to march up and down corridors balancing books on his head or he’d receive a beating if he dropped one. Yet thinking about it only made me half-stumble, half-run, almost tripping over all four hooves. I slipped into the crowd, Cannon Fodder just behind me, and hoped that the press of bodies would shield me.

The crowds, however, thinned as we passed through the dockworkers’ homes, and in the suburban streets here I felt terribly exposed. There were fewer patrols, and most paid very little attention to two little ponies wandering the streets. One helpful drone shouted at us in Ponish to get home before the sun set, and I could only smile, nod, and wave as though thanking him. I wanted to run, but I felt that would have only brought more attention, so I carried on in this awkward, stumbling half-trot, until I finally found myself face-to-face with Spring Rain’s front door.

The door swung open just as I raised my hoof to tap on it. An irate-looking Spring Rain peered out in the gap, sparks dancing over her horn momentarily before dying. “Ah, what took you so long?” she said. “You got lost, lah?”

It wasn’t quite the warm welcome that I expected. She invited me inside, stepping out of the way, and with leaden hooves I dragged myself inside and fell upon her creaky old sofa; I never thought I’d be quite so relieved to feel its hard lumps pressing into my back, but it kept the weight off my tired hooves. Cannon Fodder followed and curled up in the corner to likewise rest, having not uttered a word of complaint throughout this entire ordeal.

“Sorry, the Changelings kept us a bit long,” I said. “Were you worried about us?”

“No!” She meant yes, of course, but wouldn’t admit as much. Spring Rain closed the door, shrouding the room in a gloom lit dimly by the orange glow of the setting sun through drab windows. Disappearing through a door to what I presumed was the kitchen, I heard the sound of something catching fire, a few loud expletives in a mixture of Marelay, Ponish, and a dialect of Cathaynese, and then the reassuring sizzle of something being stir-fried. Minutes later, during which I had an all-too-brief nap, she returned with two bowls of steaming hot fried rice, which she demanded that I eat immediately.

I hardly needed to be told, and ate it all far too rapidly. She watched me intently, having loaded it with sufficient spices to incapacitate a dragon, apparently expecting me to burst into flames. However, a foalhood spent in Coltcutta had prepared me for this, so I got away with only drenching my coat and the undershirt I still wore with so much sweat that I looked as though I’d been thrust into a pool of water. Cannon Fodder, on the other hoof, seemed perfectly fine, and had consumed the entire bowl’s worth in half the time it took for me to wallop most of it down.

“Did you find what you wanted?” asked Spring Rain, taking up position on a bamboo chair close to me.

“Yes,” I said, my mouth full of rice. “My comrades are in there. They’ll help.”

She nodded her head, and that’s when I noticed a dark ring around her left eye, which had also become swollen. Her cheek too had been cut, then scabbed over and washed, so it left a thin red line. Neither had been there when I last saw her that morning.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing!” said Spring Rain, much too quickly for it to be truly ‘nothing’. She turned her head away from me, which only drew more attention to her wounds.

“Was it those collaborators?”

“Ah, never you mind!” she snapped. “You don’t need to pretend to be concerned about me. Equestrians always have to make everyone else’s business theirs. You just want to go back to Equestria and leave us for the Changelings, lah.”

Well, she wasn’t entirely wrong on that account; the sooner I was out of this sweltering, humid heat and back in Canterlot, telling awestruck ladies the gallant tale of how I survived the myriad horrors of a Changeling torture camp (one must exaggerate these sorts of stories for one’s audience, of course. They didn’t need to know that I spent most of that time drinking wine, reading Daring Do books, and rutting my way through the on-site harem), the better. However, I also couldn’t say that I was entirely dismissive of her plight; contrary to what some ponies have said about me, I am not completely without empathy, and I felt some responsibility for what had happened to her, given that it was for my benefit that she had put herself in this much danger.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and she shot me a look as though I’d spontaneously sprouted a pair of feathery wings. I imagine those two words must sound odd coming from me.

“They roughed me up a bit, that’s all,” she said with a defeated sigh. “Nothing they haven’t done to any other kirin or pony here who embarrassed them in front of the Changelings, lah. At least they didn’t steal my cart.” Spring Rain shook her head and stared out of a grimy window at the setting sun. “I want them to go away and never come back. That’s why I’m helping you.”

“And for your family?”

Spring Rain snapped her head around to glare at me, and she held what amounted to an amateur’s attempt at replicating Luna’s infamous death stare for a few seconds until she relented. “You don’t know, lah?”

I shook my head. “I think I have enough to figure it out myself,” I said, “but you know what they say about making assumptions, and all that.”

“The first thing the Changelings did after they kicked out the Equestrians was take hostages,” she explained, her voice level and low, and her expression flat but tensing up with the exertion of keeping her emotions in check. She picked up a framed picture, which had hitherto been resting face-down on a table, and held it in front of me; it showed her standing with another kirin, male, and with a wispy thin moustache and goatee, and held in her forehooves was a kirin foal, not much younger than the Cutie Mark Crusaders. “My husband and my son, Blazing June and Bright Spirit. Other families too, kirins and ponies. For their own protection, they said, but we all know it’s to keep us all in line. I haven’t heard from them since, lah. No letters or messages at all. Don’t know where they are or if they’re safe. Uncle says there are camps outside the city, and some are being taken to the Hives to work or be food.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated; there wasn’t much else I could say to that, and I was scarcely good at this sort of thing anyway. It was unimaginable to me. Then again, even Twilight Sparkle would have struggled to come up with any appropriate words of comfort in a situation of this monstrous cruelty.

“Aiyah, no need for you to be sorry! You will stop the Changelings, yes? I promised I’ll help you and I will.” Energised by the thought of vengeance, Spring Rain picked up a folded note from a wicker table with her magic and thrust it in my direction. Naturally, I accepted it, and found that it was stained with what I assumed was soy sauce and Faust knows what else she’d used in her day job. When I unfolded it, I saw that it was filled with hastily scribbled Cathaynese writing. “The pirates agreed to meet you,” she explained, seeing that I was struggling to decipher an already difficult writing system made all the more incomprehensible by the stains and clumsy horn writing. “Tomorrow. They have a hideout in the jungle. The kirins will take you there.”

“Pirates,” I muttered, partially to myself.

“Yes, lah. Pirates.” Spring Rain peered over at my bowl and scowled. “Aiyah, you haven’t finished your rice? It’s crying, lah!”

“Pirates,” I repeated in resignation of the absurdity of the course I had found myself set upon. “I can’t believe we’re really doing this.” I returned the note, and set about shovelling the scant few grains I had left into my mouth. “This will either go brilliantly or brilliantly wrong.”

Chapter 18

Spending the second night on Spring Rain’s sofa granted me a more intimate and illuminating view of the sort of conditions that the common pony must endure than any late evening spent ambling through the slums with one’s valet and a hired guide to clear a path through the swarms of proles and the accumulated filth in the streets. Granted, my short life in the military had not been without hardship, and I don’t mean simply being shot at, gassed, stabbed, or bitten, but still, as an officer and a gentlecolt certain privileges, such as the officers’ mess and not having to do physical labour, allowed one to maintain that all-important distinction between the social classes. That said, I doubted that my host here would have taken it as a particularly gracious compliment if I told her that staying in her home and sleeping on her lumpy sofa was a damned sight better than what I had endured atop Hill 70.

Nevertheless, I was grateful to her for her hospitality, and though this was all very far removed from the sort of carefree and idle luxury that I was used to and still longed to return to, there was something rather comforting about knowing that, even if her motives were not entirely altruistic, she was looking after me. There was a sort of simple domestic pleasantness to this that offset the sparse surroundings and distinct lack of staff and fine things, particularly coming ‘home’ from ‘work’ to a hot and comforting home-cooked meal. I suppose it is another thing that the common pony takes for granted that we nobles can never truly appreciate, as though we gave up the basic pleasures of a true familial relationship in exchange for power, wealth, and prestige. It might perhaps go some way in explaining the sort of vicarious contentment I felt momentarily in these twilight hours between sleeping and waking, and what some young, bored chaps see in strolling through run-down slums.

Nevertheless, I would not be able to enjoy it for long; we were going to see the pirates, which, even with the benefit of several decades worth of time to process and come to terms with, still feels like a very odd thing for me to write. I’d be lying a little more than is usual for me if I said that I wasn’t at least a little bit excited, for I suppose most stallions who have not had the misfortune to run into the real ones still out there in the world still holds onto those stereotypes of peg legs, funny accents, parrots, and not a whole lot of actual piracy from treasured foalhood adventure stories. I was to be disappointed, of course, but I already knew to expect disappointment, as with most things in life, and so the impact would be lessened somewhat.

We were to set out quite early, though not so early that we would be picked up again by the roving bands of Changelings rounding up workers for the docks. Once was more than enough for me, as seemingly every muscle in my body that I was aware of and a few more whose painful existence I’d only just discovered that morning ached abominably. It was rather like a hangover, but with exercise, and unlike with drinking this experience served as a more than adequate deterrent to repeating the process. Unfortunately for me, however, I still had a lot of walking to do that day; the pirates, I had been told, did not exactly take up residence in the city itself, especially after our navy’s best efforts to eradicate them and their bases, but had spread themselves out across the a variety of coastal villages, caves, and isolated islands far off into the sea where the long span of colonial authority was less keenly felt than in the city itself.

“Just where am I going?” I asked Spring Rain, as she was getting ready for a day of work and I was waiting around to be escorted to wherever it was that I needed to go. In truth, I was getting rather annoyed at being pushed and pulled in various directions without much of an explanation as to what was going on. After years of that in the military, I ought to have been used to that.

“A small village, just along the coast,” she answered, not bothering to look up from where she was loading bags of cold pre-cooked rice into her cart.

“What’s it called?”

“Ah, how should I know?” she snapped, though did not look up or slow her loading at all in the slightest. “I never go to those places; creepy, backward places with flammable wooden houses on stilts. Kirins not exactly welcome there.”

That sounded like a few isolated, rural places in Equestria that I could mention, where even ordinary unicorns were greeted with a degree of suspicion by earth pony peasants for whom the printing press was seen as a dangerous new invention. At any rate, it seemed she knew about as much as I did, and so I gave up trying to interrogate her about what was in store for me and let her get on with packing. The more that I thought about, the more it became apparent to me that simply getting to this mysterious rendezvous was going to be a challenge by itself.

We then went through the undignified process of applying my disguise again, which had long since lost much of its novelty. Spring Rain apparently felt much the same way, and the stylised peaches she had painted on my flank cheeks had by now turned into two red balls, which I thought I would have to explain as actually being a cricket ball, which represented my love of a thoroughly tedious game with arcane rules and somehow lasts several entire days.

A tattoo of pounding knocks on the door some time later, which I had spent by pacing around in a circle around her living room and fretting silently to myself while Cannon Fodder looked on with vague uninterest, signalled either the arrival of our guide and escort or that of the Blackhorns about to haul me away and present me trussed up on a silver platter to Queen Chrysalis. To my immense relief it proved to be the former, when Spring Rain, muttering exasperated epithets under her breath for being interrupted from her important task of counting ingredients for the day, opened the door and revealed three kirins, each of whom I recognised from Uncle’s secret hideout under the coffee shop as the fellows playing mahjong. They slipped inside quickly, closing the door behind them; there was an awkward moment where none of the three wanted to be the first to speak, instead exchanging a series of meaningful glances to try and silently prompt another to address their new charge, but I ran out of patience, of which I had a very limited supply to begin with, before one of them could sum up the courage.

“Good morning, gentlecolts,” I said, hoping that I didn’t sound too sarcastic. “What’s the plan? I do wish somepony will tell me what in blazes is going on for once.”

“Sorry, boss,” said one, his voice heavily accented. “Uncle says the less you know the better, should you get captured again.”

“I certainly don’t intend on that; I didn’t much like it the first time, or the second for that matter.” The sensation of stumbling around alone in the dark, groping my way towards some sort of concealed exit to whatever predicament I found myself in, while harried and hunted by all manner of unseen horrors was one that had persisted throughout my career, but I felt it especially acutely here. Still, there was nothing to do but to carry on putting one metaphorical hoof in front of the other until I found my way out.

The three introduced themselves in turn: White Spirit, Silver Star, and Guiding Light.

“Just where are we going? I’d quite like to know if I’m to meet with a band of cut-throats and sea-reavers.”

The three kirins looked at each other again, then Guiding Light finally found the courage to speak. “The Batu caves, along the coast. Uncle has arranged a meeting for you with Golden Hook. You will need to bring those muskets to parley with.”

“Golden Hook?” I wracked what was left of my brain to try and remember where I’d heard that name before, but came up with only a cartoon caricature of what a pirate ought to look like - enormous, unkempt beard, eyepatch, clothes that went out of fashion more than four centuries ago, and a parrot atop a shoulder. “Who is that?”

I might as well have asked them who Princess Celestia is, given their stunned reactions. “She’s only the leader of the Black Flag Fleet,” said White Spirit. “The biggest fleet of pirate ships in the South Cathay Sea.”

“Sounds like the right pony, then,” I said. “Is there anything I need to know about her before we head off?”

“Don’t make her angry.”

Yes, very helpful, thought I; I could have made the calculation that these nautical outlaws might have a few issues respecting such things as the sanctity of equine life entirely by myself. Then again, these kirins might have been thinking about my old reputation for putting my hoof in it by saying something terribly witty that might be construed as offensive. A tendency, I might add, that I had since grown out of when the consequences of social faux pas started to become a little more severe than a glass of champagne hurled at my face with great force. Still, this infamous pirate leader was a she, and that implied a little dose of the old Blueblood charm might help ease things along—or result in me being keelhauled.

“I wasn’t intending to,” I said, realising that I was unlikely to get much else out of them.

We made the necessary preparations, loading up Cannon Fodder’s saddlebags with a few muskets wrapped up in cloth in the hope that any Changelings and police that we ran into were not particularly attentive. However, Uncle had clearly thought ahead and realised that a strange pony walking around with heavily-laden saddlebags would likely attract unwanted attention even in this metropolitan city, and so the other three kirins were likewise outfitted with saddlebags filled with disassembled fishing rods, with the cover story that we were all out on a fishing trip in the countryside. The reasoning, when I asked, was that most ponies would be too disgusted by the thought of eating fish, Yours Truly and his tastes for the exotic excepted, to confront them. Though I doubted it very much, the occupying force seemed unwilling or unable to police who could enter and leave the city, and we were simply waved through the security checkpoints along the way. I thought this very odd until we finally reached the jungle beyond and I realised that even the most dedicated of resistance fighters would be reluctant to escape there.

We left quickly, barely stopping to say goodbye to Spring Rain. The bruise and the cut on her pretty face hadn’t healed yet and both were certainly still noticeable, so I felt a slight twinge of guilt at the thought of leaving her alone in the city again. However, she seemed like a tough old mare; she’d taken the beating from those cowardly collaborators without losing her spirit, at least outwardly, and as with all forms of overt oppression it only served to strengthen the will within to resist such base tyranny.

“Uncle will see to it,” said one of the other kirins, with an air that certainly suggested that this Uncle fellow had connections and the means to enact some sort of revenge for this assault upon a kirin under his care.

The journey through the city was mercifully uneventful, thank Faust, though there were one or two moments that were too close for comfort, but we made it to the outskirts. Civilisation and its requisite trappings had sort of faded the further we walked, with the paved roads flanked by shops, apartment buildings, restaurants, and houses receding gradually into dirt paths populated by ramshackle buildings built of wood and the only amenities being a few kopi shops and things I’ve heard are called ‘convenience stores’. The further out we ventured, the more accusatory glares I noticed the kirins received from the pony locals, and the apparent flammability of the buildings this far out provided one explanation. There were fewer Changeling patrols here, and the only other tangible signs that I could see that this place was under any kind of occupation was the occasional on-duty pony police officer standing in the shade and lazily watching the street.

“Changelings’ control is strongest in the city centre,” explained Silver Star. “Not enough Blackhorns, lah. The police rarely come out here much anyway. The ones who are still here can only be trusted for as long as you can present coins.”

I thought about the sheer multitude of drones sitting idle in the docks, and considered that it was probably a good thing that I wasn’t in charge of the occupation here. Though the only time I’d actually exercised any political authority, aside from that brief appearance in the House of Lords and having to attend meaningless rituals relating to the Blood Clan every year, was when I’d served as the military governor of Virion Hive and I made certain that I’d do as little work as possible, I like to think that if I was in Dorylus’ ill-fitting horseshoes that I’d at least ask if there was something productive that they could be getting on with. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have said that Queen Chrysalis’ presence here, peering over Dorylus’ shoulder at all times like a disapproving governess, had made him terribly single-minded in his pursuit of Operation: Sunburn that he was unable to see the very real rebellion fomenting right under his sharp little nose, or perhaps just as likely, unwilling to. I would also not have put it past those drones blessed with both strong ambition and a keen sense of self-preservation to have omitted the more obvious signs that something was clearly up in order to avoid the wrath of both their Queen and her Purestrain.

After a while, the city simply stopped. The mostly-empty suburbs gave way to fields and rolling hills all smothered with vibrant green vegetation. A single dirt track carved a winding path through the fields, leading off somewhere. We followed this track, my limbs already complaining about being put through yet more hard work in the only painful way that they could. Along the way we passed acres of paddy fields, where sullen earth pony peasants in soaking wet clothes and wearing those peculiar conical hats laboured quietly under the growing heat of the morning. The landscape was stunning, with its distant hills shrouded in the mist of the early day and the fields punctuated by curious wooden houses built on stilts above the flooded marsh, but force a pony to walk through it without much rest under a blazing sun and he will soon be sick to death of the sight of it. I was in much the same position, and started to loathe the picturesque fields and idyllic rural life untainted (so far) by the cruelty of war and occupation.

Fortunately, I would not have to put up with the quaint, pretty countryside for much longer, for our guides guided us down the right hoof path, which took us straight into the rainforest, and I soon wished that I was back on the dirt path.

“The roads are patrolled,” explained our Guiding Light. “Not often, but Changelings don’t go into the jungle unless they really have to.”

I began to see why. The path we were following stopped part way through the jungle, and from that point on we had to hack our way through the dense undergrowth. We waded through vegetation - leaves of brilliant green hues and flowers exuding intoxicating scents, trees with thin sinewy trunks whose fronds blanketed the ground below in shadow - whereupon our kirin guides produced wickedly-sharp machetes that had been concealed within their laden saddlebags and commenced the arduous task of chopping our way through. In addition to the sights of the vast multitude of greenery all around, forming a dazzling mosaic of varying emerald shades punctuated by the splattering of brilliant colour from the flowers, and the heady smells of exotic flowers in bloom that reminded me of wandering into a perfumer’s shop, the noise was equally incredible. A cacophony of myriad calls, screeches, and growls, not unlike the dissonant noise made by an orchestra warming up before a lengthy and very serious Germane opera wherein one could still pick out a few individual instruments, formed the thoroughly constant background music to our intrepid expedition.

“Excuse me,” I said, abruptly remembering something salient about the local fauna native to rainforests, “what are the chances of us meeting a pony-eating tiger here?”

“Low,” said Guiding Light, not bothering to look up from his arduous task of hacking away at the plants unfortunate enough to be in our way. The machetes tore through vines and bark with ease, and had put me in mind of those Pattern ‘12 sabres; I would have assumed that they had a very similar effect on Changeling bodies.

“Just ‘low’?” The only satisfactory answer for me would have been ‘none at all, sir; there is nothing for you to worry about at all’.

“They tend not to attack kirins.” He chuckled. “Not much does, unless they want to get burned, lah.”

“Fair point,” I conceded, and resolved to stick as close to them as possible in that case. “Is there anything else I should be worried about out here?”

“Many things, sir,” he said, which did not fill me with much confidence. “Snakes, poisonous ones that look like vines until you get too close and they bite you and fill you with venom until you die in pain. Monkeys, too; they look harmless, but a fully-grown one will tear your head off, lah. I heard there’s a naga in one of the lakes, but no one bothers her and she doesn’t bother anyone.”

A naga. I was already familiar with the rather friendlier sort of dragons over in Cathay, and to a lesser extent their boorish Equestrian cousins, who tended to be either strict loners who think of themselves as being so superior for having vast wealth and doing sod all with it or loud, brash imbeciles with little concept of manners or self-preservation. The ones from Coltcutta, who I had just learnt had spread themselves somewhat, I had only a passing notion of, and that they were rather offended if referred to as ‘dragons’.

“Do you think she might help us?”

Guiding Light barked a short laugh and shook his head. “No. No one has seen her in centuries. It is said the naga would flood the valley if she did not receive pony sacrifices, but nopony has been sacrificed for a long time and the town only floods when pegasi mess up the monsoon season again. She will not help.”

I was desperate, but not so desperate that I was about to enlist the services of a creature with a penchant for equine sacrifice and violent tantrums if villagers thought the exchange was a little unfair, so I left it at that.

We pushed onwards, thick mud squelching around my hooves with every leaden step. All the while I was assaulted by swarms of mosquitoes, who seemed to find my royal blood to be of a far superior vintage than that of the kirins around me. After an hour or so of trudging through the jungle, I had been bitten so many times that I was starting to resemble a chickenpox victim. They completely avoided Cannon Fodder, and he emerged entirely untouched by mosquitos throughout this entire ordeal. To this day I wonder whether it was the result of his unique deformity or his inability to maintain the minimum standards of personal hygiene that kept them away.

However, now that I had been made aware of all manner of beasts lurking in the forests, more than just the ones that I could hear, I found myself jumping at the sound of every snapped twig or the half-glimpsed sight of something shifting in the vegetation beyond. The dark shadows in the foliage, shifting with the movement of the leaves and fronds above, was interpreted by my febrile imagination as panthers stalking us. White Spirit apparently saw my heightened sense of trepidation, and decided to tease me about it.

“The only things you need to be afraid of are ghosts,” said White Spirit, flashing a huge grin as he carried on hacking and slashing the defenceless greenery. I shot him a look of utmost scepticism. “It’s true, lah! The spirits of mares who die giving birth to foals become, ah, like what you call vampires. They hide in the banana trees in the day, then come out at night to eat the insides of stallions.”

“Don’t bother me with such nonsense,” I snapped dismissively. “Just take us to where we need to go, and don’t talk so loudly, anypony could be listening.”

“Or anything, lah!” He grinned wider, but carried on with his arduous task in silence. The problem with reason is that sometimes emotion, particularly fear and anxiety, tends to be louder, and both were very easily aggravated and could only be calmed down with a great deal of difficulty.

There are still parts of the world that are as yet untamed by the gentle hoof of equine civilisation; the Everfree Forest is the one most ponies are familiar with, along with the frozen northlands beyond the Crystal Empire and those parts that still paid lip service to the fading glories of Griffonstone, but these jungles were certainly gave those wild, monster-infested lands a run for their money, at least in my eyes. Looking through the dense foliage, those dark shapes and shadows took on the forms of great beasts glaring at us, but as we forged onwards, hewing our path through bark and mud, I saw that some were shaped more like ponies. Hidden in shadow, such that I almost dismissed them as another figment of an overactive imagination given fuel by the kirins’ teasing until I looked more closely, they were clearly creatures in the form of small, slim, lithe ponies of indeterminate sex and tribe. Their features were indistinct, hidden in shadow, of course, but what little I could make out seemed to shift each time my eyes fell upon them. They each stood still, merely passively watching us hack our way through what I presumed was their home.

“Kuda bunian,” said Silver Star as though I ought to know what those words meant, when I pointed out these figures to our guides. He called a stop to our trek. “We are trespassing through their forest. We must ask for permission to continue.”

“Oh.” That was rarely a good thing, especially in old stories of ponies getting lost in the Everfree to be never seen again, at least alive and in one piece. “Are they evil?”

The kirins looked at me as though I’d just asked them what two plus two equals. “No, lah. They keep to themselves. Sometimes they can be friendly, but we must ask them for permission before we go further. They don’t trust kirins because we might burn down their homes.”

That was most creatures, but I kept that thought to myself. “Do you think they’ll help?”

“Aiyah, you not listening, boss? Unless you are a bomoh, you might as well ask the plants to help you!”

That was me told, then. We halted, and one of the kirins, who had taken the lead in our journey, sat on his haunches, bowed his head, and pressed his forehooves together in the manner of a prayer. I watched with faint bemusement as he mumbled something in Marelay that I didn’t understand, but from what I gathered it was something old and arcane. Whatever it was seemed to placate these odd creatures, and the moment he had finished his prayer they melted away into the darkness once more. I had no doubt that they were still around, watching us stumble about clumsily in their home and smashing up the furnishings, so to speak. Not seeing them again did very little to assuage my fears, and though I had been told that these creatures were at least tolerant of us, the trepidation I felt would not fade in the slightest. I suppressed a shudder, and carried on. Perhaps they were one reason why the Changelings did not go into the jungles often, though slogging through the undergrowth was disincentive enough as far as I was concerned.

[The kuda bunian remains a mystery to this day. They are traditionally thought of as benevolent supernatural spirits in folklore, inhabiting the forests and occasionally interacting with rural pony villages. A modern hypothesis is that they may simply be groups of native ponies living in small communities in the forests, isolated from other ponies, or even a new, undiscovered tribe of pony altogether. However, all attempts by Equestrian anthropologists and researchers to meet them have resulted in failure, with the kuda bunian avoiding all efforts to establish contact with them entirely.

A bomoh is a shaman, particularly involved with invoking and controlling spirits and undertaking healing rituals. They still practise their craft in rural areas, though some continue to operate in the cities to sell their services to gullible tourists.]

We paused again briefly for a short and much-needed break in silence, with one of the guides on the lookout for tigers, Changelings, and anything else that might be lurking within the rainforest. Quite what we were supposed to do if one or more of the above presented itself with murderous intent was not made clear, but I gathered that there would be a great deal of running away and screaming. One could hide an entire army in here, thought I, as I sipped water from my canteen and stared out into the all-consuming jungle that surrounded us, though I doubted that they would be particularly happy about it and would hardly be in a fit state to fight. We had marched for about an hour, by my estimate, and the thought of pushing onwards was not a particularly encouraging one; I was already damned tired, in not-inconsiderable pain, and feeling rather sick.

Watered and fed, we recommenced our expedition. Our guides, like me, apparently did not want to spend too much time in this miserable place. The remainder of our journey proceeded in much the same manner as the first half; full of such trepidation that something would come tearing out of the foliage and rip us all into bloody little ribbons at a moment’s notice that it felt almost like a let-down when we emerged safe and sound on the other side.

The jungle stopped abruptly, as though nature had decided that this was sufficient and had clocked off after a long day of crafting one of the most unpleasant and inhospitable places known to ponykind. Our party emerged as if from a dark cave into an open field that had been obviously cleared for some purpose, and beyond a hill that gradually sloped downwards to the open sea lay a collection of wooden houses perched upon stilts that I took to be the tiny village that Spring Rain had mentioned. The sea, that vast open blue beyond which lay Equestria and home, sparkled and shimmered with the morning sun beyond. Out of the jungle, I could taste the salt in the air. Small rocky islands were visible, some seemingly close enough that I thought a trained athlete might be able to swim there with only a slight risk of drowning. These appeared as tall, steep mounds that emerged out of the still sea, with sheer cliffs that were topped off with green bushes and trees.

The village itself certainly matched her description of a backwards rural hamlet that shuns outsiders, and if it had transpired that I had somehow gone back in time over the course of our journey through the jungle I would not have been overly surprised based on the sight presented before me. This was a scene that had remained unchanged in centuries, seemingly untouched by the war; at this distance I could make out the tiny figures of ponies working in the paddy fields that surrounded their tiny home and others in the village itself attending to market. I could even see the smaller shapes of what must have been foals playing, chasing after one another with the energy that only the young and hopeful can possess.

“This way.” Guiding Light directed us along a path that ran to the side of the village, avoiding it, towards a series of vegetation-smothered hills just to the side. I was a little annoyed at this, as I’d hoped that there would be time to stop off briefly at a small village hostelry before setting off; I’d have appreciated a glass or two of whatever passes for alcohol here to brace oneself before seeing a dread pirate queen. We received more than our fair share of accusatory glares from the earth pony farm workers as we passed them in their fields, and they gripped their sharp scythes a little tighter when, to try and lighten the tense mood, I fell back on that old royal staple and waved politely at the peasants. They did not reciprocate.

“What’s the name of the village?” asked Cannon Fodder, apropos of nothing.

The kirins seemed to have forgotten that he was with us, lumbering under the strain of all of the very deadly presents he was lugging about in his bulging saddlebags, and reacted with surprise when he finally said something after spending the entire journey in near total silence.

“Who cares?” said White Spirit. “I got chased out of it, before the Changelings came.”

“What in blazes for?” I asked.

“For that,” he said with a shrug. “Kind of, lah. I was passing through on the way to Marelacca. The bomoh said I would burn the village down and that was enough for an angry mob to run me into the jungle. I only wanted to get out of the monsoon rain. Aiyah, not even nirik fire can stand against that.”

“Did you make it to Marelacca?”

He rolled his eyes and shook his head in an exaggerated manner. “Aiyah, no, I was eaten by a rakshasa in the jungle.”

“The sarcasm was unnecessary.”

“Very necessary,” he said, flashing another grin. “How else will you learn not to ask stupid questions, lah?” He looked to his two friends, and said in that odd strain of Cathaynese that I’d been gradually picking up from Spring Rain, “Can you believe this idiot? No wonder the Equestrians lost Marelacca so quickly!”

I decided to refrain from speaking after that; ordinarily I’d have informed him that under no circumstances was it appropriate to speak to a prince of the realm in that manner, but, to put it in the frankest possible terms, being an uncomfortable number of miles away from home and surrounded by inhospitable jungle and Faust knows how many Changelings around, I needed them more than they needed me, regardless of how much weight me putting in a polite word with the government about the prospect of their independence might have. That I would eventually be rid of this place, one way or another, was solace enough.

The path we followed winded around these paddy fields, and then forked at a junction. We took the one that led to a sandy beach, the sort that, given sufficient investment, might become a rather attractive little tourist spot. The steel-blue sea, stretching on to an infinite horizon beyond which lay home and a war that felt both so very distant and thoroughly inescapable, invited me to bathe in its cool waters. Yet a prince, much less a commissar, was not supposed to frolic, as that would be too unseemly, and I was quite eager to get this next part over and done with. Still, as we traipsed along on the sand, thoroughly devoid of ponies, I amused and distracted myself by imagining what would happen if one immersed a nirik in water. A steam explosion, most likely.

To our left, the land rose up into sheer cliffs, with sharp and jagged surfaces. Our path along the beach brought us to a cave, into which a small stream of water forward from the open sea. A couple of ponies stood guard at the mouth, and they’d watched us stumbling along towards them with the sort of vague interest that only bored sentries can muster; I wagered we were the first even slightly stimulating thing that they had seen all day. They waited patiently for us to get closer, never once taking their steely gazes off us. Our arrival was rather less dignified than I had hoped for, as I had slipped and fallen face-first in the sand at least twice; the first was bad enough, but I’d foolishly hoped that I might get away with pretending that it hadn’t happened, at least until the second time.

They were two unicorns, clad in Cathayan style with a high collar shirt of sorts with frogs, worn unbuttoned. Both were slim and slight, and one had a rather nasty scar on his chest that might have been caused by a cutlass and he had worn his shirt in a way so as to show it off. Speaking of weapons, they both carried short, curved blades that had been thrust into sashes around their waists. They each looked me up and down several times, and I tried to stand up as straight and erect as I could, given I’d been walking however many miles to get there, and failed miserably.

“This him?” asked one guard in broken Cathaynese. Considering what I had been through it was likely that even Princess Celestia would have a difficult time recognising me now. He turned to his friend and said, “I thought he’d be taller.”

“Aiyah, you blind?” said the other. “He looks like a big, fat, clumsy Equestrian.”

“Smells like one, like gone-off milk. They eat that over there.”

“If by ‘big, fat, clumsy Equestrian’ you mean Prince Blueblood,” I said, responding in that perfect tongue of the imperial court, “then yes, I am he. I have business with Golden Hook.”

The twin bug-eyed, shocked expressions I received from both ponies was worth the journey; they must have gambled on the thought that I would be unfamiliar with their language, or the debased version of it that they speak, and it was entertaining to disabuse them of that notion early on. I hoped, however, that I had not revealed my hoof too early, so to speak.

“Inside,” said the other pirate, gesturing appropriately. I doffed an imaginary hat and trotted on inside, my equally stunned entourage in tow. Inwardly, I was positively beside myself in fear, but they certainly didn’t need to know that.

The cave extended quite a way into the cliff, the path carved by the flow of this underground stream. The atmosphere was cooler here, mercifully, and almost tolerable. At the far end I could make out the glow of several lanterns, candles, and braziers, with a number of silhouettes of figures of varying shapes and sizes gathered around them, dancing with the flickering candlelight. The air was filled with the sharp tang of smoke, subtle at first, but it was sufficient to entice certain images of battlefields saturated with the smoke of burned powder from the depths of my subconscious. The surrounding darkness and the deep shadows cast in this cave from the flickering lights, which danced upon the rocky walls, did little to help to banish those bloody daemons, and I could not help but consider that this little parlour trick was a deliberate attempt to unsettle me; the damned thing was that it was almost working.

As we neared, I could see that there were four individuals gathered around a central brazier -- two ponies of as yet undetermined tribe, a griffon, and a kirin, judging by their shadowy silhouettes. I could sense them watching and judging me as I approached, and I tell you, reader, those lessons spent marching up and down the corridors of the east wing of the palace with heavy books balanced on my head certainly paid off here in making sure that my nervousness was concealed beneath a veneer of aristocratic detachment.

I had no idea what this Golden Hook fellow was supposed to look like, but when I reached the point where I could see the gathered entourage more clearly, it became quite obvious which of the assemblage was she. Power identifies power, so to speak, and the pegasus mare who carried herself in the manner that only a pony in charge and who was confident in her authority can muster. She was a small mare, slim and lithe, probably in her late forties judging by lines that marred what was once a pretty, youthful face, but the aura of authority that radiated off her made her presence seem that much bigger than even that of the hulking griffon who stood by her side. She hardly matched the image one might have of a feared pirate captain, but if there’s anything that I’d learnt over the past few years is that reality often fails to live up to the expectations one gains from a diet of silly escapist adventure stories. Her black mane was tied back in a long queue that fell over her back like a long, thin, sinewy cord, and she wore a vividly-decorated ru [a type of Cathaynese traditional coat for mares] in what appeared to be red silk, woven with embroidered dragons on each half, but with the traditional long, flowing, and thoroughly impractical sleeves trimmed into a much more form-fitting shape that was more suitable for combat. Sharp eyes peered imperiously at me as I came into the circle of light cast by the brazier, and a thin smile played on her lips.

“Prince Blueblood,” she said, speaking in slightly-accented Ponish.

“Golden Hook, I presume?” I said.

It was then that I’d noticed she was armed. Pegasus wing blades are banned in the Equestrian Army for the simple fact that they are as much of a danger to the wielder and to everypony unfortunate enough to be within their wingspan during an ill-timed wing-stretching as much as they are to the enemy, but such niceties appeared to be lost on these pirates. She, however, seemed entirely at ease with the vicious-looking things attached to her wings, and I had no doubt that she knew how to use them to great and bloody effect. Her entourage were armed with large, single-edged swords with curved blades called dao thrust into sashes tied about their waist. Should things take a turn for the worst, which I always anticipated they would with a sort of depressing regularity, I had the kris that Uncle had presented to me, Cannon Fodder had the one he had apparently stolen, but our kirin guides were unarmed, as far as I could see, though their ability to burst into flames at a moment’s notice ought to have counted.

She laughed softly and extended her surprisingly well-hooficured hoof towards me. “At your service,” she said, with a slight bow of her head.

Quite perplexed by the display of manners from a mare whose entire source of income came from the looting and pillaging of innocent merchant ships, it took a few seconds before I remembered myself and took her hoof politely. I refrained from kissing it, as aside from not knowing where it had been (though I could imagine that the conditions on a pirate vessel were hardly sanitary) it was an affected gesture that only would have suited me in my later years.

Her soft smile grew wider, it was like the snarl of a timberwolf before it pounced upon its helpless prey. Ponies likewise bear their ‘fangs’ in a smile, I’ve found. “I understand,” she said, placing her hoof back down, “that you intend to take on the Changelings.”

“It appears everypony knows that,” I said, “except for the Changelings themselves.”

“Why else would Lord Commissar Prince Blueblood arrange a meeting with me?” She sat down at the table and invited me to do the same.

An imperious wave of her hoof summoned her kirin companion from the shadows, who produced a bottle and two earthenware cups and placed those on the table between us. Upon pouring the cups and raising it to my nose, I was a little disappointed to find that it wasn’t rum, as I somewhat foalishly expected based on those fun little adventure stories I used to read, but baijiu. Still, it had an alcohol content and I’d been sober for far too long, so I did as tradition dictated and spilled a little from my cup onto the ground to show gratitude to nature, before taking a small sip.

“Very good,” I said, in a rare moment of genuine honesty.

“It ought to be,” she said, reciprocating the gesture. “We stole it from a shipment from Cathay intended for Princess Celestia herself.”

“I’ll be sure to tell her what she has missed when I next see her.” Again, in accordance with tradition, I downed the remainder of the baijiu, which went down rather nicely, and placed the empty cup back on the table. “So yes, I’m here to ‘take on the Changelings’,” I said as she poured a second cup for me, “and I need your help.”

“I see!” she exclaimed no small amount of amusement. Her sharp eyes sparkled in the dim light. “Prince Blueblood needs the help of a band of pirates, brigands, thieves, cutthroats and… ah, shall we say, not very nice creatures at all!”

“Yes, that’s the long and short of it. We have weapons to give you.”

“We do not want for weapons,” she said, her smile never failing to leave her lips. “If you mean those fancy new muskets of yours, well, when it comes to boarding actions, a sharp blade and a thirst for blood is all you need.”

I was quite prepared for a little reticence on their part, having anticipated that they would not exactly be chomping at the bit to help me out of the mere goodness of their black hearts. Before, however, I attempted bribery, I thought I would at least try reason. “I imagine the Changeling occupation has put a little dent in your operations.”

“We have an unofficial arrangement with the Changelings.” Golden Hook leaned back in her seat, and peered over the rim of her cup at me. “We leave the bugs alone and they leave us alone. We have no reason to poke that dragon with a stick.”

“They won’t honour their side of the arrangement for long,” I said. “No threat to their Queen’s power will be allowed to survive. Besides, them shutting down the spice trade means fewer of our merchant vessels to raid; I dare say Changeling cuisine has little need for such things.”

Golden Hook nodded her head softly; she took only small sips from her cup, barely noticeable, in stark contrast to me positively downing them with all of the gusto of a college colt on spring break. “It is true that the harvest has been barren as of late, and my beloved crew are becoming quite restless as a result, but it will not last forever. We have weathered worse storms than this, and once you have won this war the trade will pick up again, greater than before, and my fleet will again return to its unofficial toll duties.” Then, as she arched her eyebrow curiously and her smile grew unsettlingly wide: “Unless you think you cannot win this war, and need us to help.”

I suppose one didn’t become the leader of a pirate confederation without being at least a little bit canny, thought I. “Operation: Sunburn,” I said, deciding that my best option was, as ever, to get straight to the point. “You might have heard of it. The Changelings have a fleet mustered in the Marelacca docks, ready for a sneak attack on Equestria’s east coast. I aim to destroy it before the attack can be launched. The kirin resistance has already dedicated itself, and besides them, yours is the only force strong enough to pull this off. So yes, I do need you and I am asking for your help, and I am willing to pay for it.”

“Oh?” There’s a curious inflection that is particular to the Canterlot aristocracy of exclaiming ‘oh’ in response to something both interesting and intriguing; it’s a long and dragged-out sound, starting quite low, raising in pitch to a peak, and then declining rapidly, rather like one of those graphs certain deluded ponies like to trot out to prove one tribe is inherently more intelligent than the other. I was rather shocked to hear it come from Golden Hook.

“Money, gold, gems, artefacts from my family’s private vault,” I said. “I expect you’ll put it all in a chest and then bury it on a remote island somewhere, with only a single map to guide you back to the treasure. You’ll then lose it, and it’ll end up in the hooves of a plucky orphan colt.”

Her right eyebrow slowly arched throughout the length of my admittedly bizarre tangent. “You’ve read a lot of pirate adventure stories, haven’t you?”

“A guilty pleasure,” I admitted, choosing not to mention the trunk of self-aggrandizing stories my much younger self had scribbled down, which my parents later discovered and had burned to teach me that a prince does not concern himself with such frivolity.

“I do hate to disabuse you of those guilty pleasures,” she said with what seemed like genuine contrition, “but we don’t bury treasure chests. Most of what we acquire is placed in the fleet’s fund and the crew are paid accordingly from it. It’s all above board and very fair. But as charming as this diversion is, I will commit my fleet to your plan for one thing and one thing only: a pardon.”

I paused, I thought I hadn’t heard her properly. “Pardon?”

“Yes, a pardon. A full royal pardon for me for everything.” Golden Hook noticed the look of utter shock on my face; I wasn’t even sure that it was in my limited authority to grant such a thing, and I realised that I would have to do a lot of tugging on Auntie Celestia’s fetlocks to fulfil even half of the promises that I had made for ponies and kirins here. “I want to retire. Ah, who ever heard of a fifty year old pirate? I have been doing this for so long that all I want to do now is to stop and settle down, and maybe run a gambling den or two. But this…” She grinned broadly, showing off a set of surprisingly impeccable teeth for a pirate. “This will be one last shot at glory before I hang up the black flag for good.”

“Well,” I said, at length. “I’ll see if I can pull a few strings for you in Canterlot, but it won’t be easy.”

Golden Hook shook her head and scowled, fixing me with the sort of stern glare that I imagine she reserved for one of her crew who had been caught stealing from the fleet’s fund she mentioned. “No, no, sir,” she insisted. “We’ll have none of that. If you want our help you will promise me that you will secure a royal pardon for me. And don’t think you can get away with reneging on it; you are a prince of Equestria and your word is your bond, and we will not let you forget that.”

I’d have thought that letting an infamous criminal go free, escaping the consequences of her villainy, would be the greater dishonour for Yours Truly, but I was already here trying to make some sort of deal with her. In that grim calculation, I concluded that, on balance, it was better to have an Equestria to return to that would ask me awkward and uncomfortable questions about my circumventing the judicial systems of multiple component vassals of Equestria’s empire, than none at all. At the very least, ‘I did what I had to do’ ought to suffice for most ponies with a reasonable sense of perspective about the world. I didn’t know how Golden Hook would go about exacting any sort of revenge should I renege upon my promise, but, I considered, it was probably not worth the risk.

“Very well,” I said. “Upon my return to Equestria I will petition Princess Celestia for a royal pardon for you.” And only you, I mentally added; the rest of her crew would be pushing it a tad.

“You promise?”

Well, I’d hoped that it wouldn’t have to come to this, but one feature that pirates share with princes is a taste for the theatrical. I carefully unsheathed my kris, and the pirates reacted accordingly by reaching for their weapons. A wave of the hoof from Golden Hook, who watched with keen interest, stopped them from running me through on the spot. The sleek, rippling blade glinted in the multitude of flickering lights, and the gems studded into its hilt seemed to glow from within. I winced as I pricked my fetlock, drawing a small spot of red.

“Sealed in royal blood,” I said.

“Ah.” She screwed her face up in disgust. “That’s a little… unsanitary. A hoofshake would have sufficed.”

“Oh, I feel a little silly now.” I placed the weapon down on the table between us, and we shook hooves accordingly.

A beaming smile dawned on Golden Hook’s face. She rested her hooves on the table, leaned in rather close, and said with a low, sultry voice, “Good! And now, the fun part; just how much carnage and extreme violence do you need from us?”

Chapter 19

I should have known it was going far too well for me. We’d secured the services of the pirates in exchange for me arranging a royal pardon for their leader, and those services would come in the form of a muster of every available ship they had, mainly what we would call Cathaynese junks armed with cannons and the odd airship, with all available hooves on deck to raid the docks and all timed, in theory, to coincide with a slave uprising from within and a kirin resistance attack from land. There they would wreak as much havoc as possible, which, I had been assured in the strongest possible terms without resorting to a live demonstration, was a lot, and they were free to make off with whatever they pleased from the enemy by way of additional compensation to the crew, not that I particularly cared about that. The Changelings wouldn’t know what hit them, and I’d be home free before the week’s end, hopefully sipping perfectly chilled champagne from Chrysalis’ own flagship as it flew across the ocean back to Equestria, observing the smouldering remains of the docks as they disappeared beyond the horizon.

[The Black Flag Fleet was not known for its record keeping, but Equestrian colonial anti-piracy operations reported that the majority of the pirate fleets were made up of civilian ships of varying size known as ‘junks’ and a small number of airships that had been outfitted with cannons. Exact numbers are unknown, but intelligence had placed an estimate of around one hundred to five hundred ships, albeit spread out over a wide area. This proved to be both an advantage and a disadvantage to anti-piracy measures, as colonial forces always had numerical and material superiority over any raiders they encountered, but the losses inflicted with each engagement were relatively low. Only a hoof-full of ships were known to be what one might consider a true ‘warship’, but these were employed sparingly.]

Once we’d hashed out the arrangements, aside from when exactly we’d launch this daring raid of ours as we still needed to coordinate the efforts of multiple different groups, we took our leave. It was around midday, after being given a quick lunch by our pirate hosts consisting of dry biscuits of such hardness that they could be used as roofing tiles, washed down with diluted rice wine, when we set off again. I felt strangely confident about our chances, which, looking back now, really ought to have been a warning of what was to come; nevertheless, at that moment it looked as though I, for once, might finally have everything sorted. The kirins were on my side and so were the pirates, and Square Basher and her fellow slaves were ready to start smashing things the moment things would finally kick off.

The journey back to Marelacca held little indication of what was to come; if anything, it was about as equally uneventful as the journey out and just as tense. We did encounter those mysterious figures, the kuda bunian, again, and as before they did nothing but stand in the shadows, their features seemingly obscured by more than mere shadow, and watched us trespass through their forest homes for the second time. This time, I waved politely at them, and I think I saw one of them smile, though I could not say for certain that it had a mouth to smile with, and they melted back into the forest never to be seen again. We took fewer breaks this time, as each of us, buoyed by our apparent success, was quite eager to get back before the sun set and curfew began and to tell Uncle that we were one, small step closer to his eventual goal of a free Marelacca.

It was around mid-afternoon when we arrived back in the city, passing through those same dreary suburbs as before, towards its vibrant, beating heart. I was hot, sweaty, and I probably stank about as half as bad as Cannon Fodder after that very lengthy trek, and all four of my legs expressed deep anger at being put through far more walking than I have ever done before in my life by inflicting a great deal of pain, but the rare sensation of something approaching optimism had wormed its way into my soul. The city was its usual charming self; the ever-present crowds of ponies plying a trade or just talking were everywhere, under an afternoon sun that was utterly merciless. The presence of Blackhorns and their ridiculous propaganda posters did spoil the scene somewhat, but it was still inspiring in a way to see ponies and kirins going about their daily lives while they still had the liberty to do so. The ever present noise of conversation, of wagons laden with goods dragged through the streets, of vendors and hawkers announcing their goods filled the air with its multitudinous cacophony. In spite of myself, I found myself almost smiling. The sensation lasted right up until I felt a huge, cold hoof on my shoulder, and I looked down to see the glistening chitin of a Changeling Purestrain. Silence fell like a heavy woollen blanket, even in this busy street.

“Hello, Prince Blueblood,” said Dorylus.

I turned my head, following the path of this hoof clamped firmly over my shoulder along a leg riddled with holes, and then up to see the Purestrain’s grinning face beaming down at me. A cold sneer of indulgent triumph was on his stupid face, and I felt my blood drain from my face. I pushed myself away from him and clasped my magic around the hilt of my kris, and was a little surprised when he simply stood there grinning like an idiot and let me do that, but I looked around and saw that we were surrounded on all sides by Blackhorns armed with muskets. I inelegantly returned it to its hilt. The three kirins had dropped their saddlebags, sat on the haunches, and held their forehooves up in a gesture of surrender; the damned thing is they looked to me in apparent hope that I could get them out of this mess. Cannon Fodder had already drawn his kris, holding it earth pony-style in his mouth, but he dropped it when I sadly shook my head. Beyond the ring of muskets aimed at us, the crowd of native ponies and kirins had gathered around to watch, under the supervision of more Blackhorns who held them back from the proceedings.

“Come now,” he said in that sickeningly sweet tone he reserved for gloating, “did you really think that we wouldn’t find you eventually?”

“Frankly, no,” I said, drawing myself up as tall and straight as I could; it took the utmost effort on the part of my princely reserve and bearing not to be reduced to a blubbering, shaking wreck. Short of a miracle, I was finished. It was about this time in silly adventure stories that somepony swoops in to save our hero at the last moment, but this was not one of those. “But how?”

“It was simple,” he said, still puffing out his chest like a damned peacock. “Somepony told us, though not without duress, if that makes you feel any better. You can paint yourself whatever colour you like, but you still look like Prince Blueblood. You don’t exactly blend in with the crowd. I must say, it was very entertaining to read the reports of you slumming with that kirin fried rice vendor and going off to see pirates, but I’m afraid it’s time to put an end to this little farce.”

“What have you done with her?” I demanded.

Dorylus shook his head, but that insipid grin of his only grew wider. Though I was filled with fear, I longed to wipe it from his face. “She’s nothing for you to be concerned about. In fact, you won’t have to worry about anything ever again. You’ve become tiresome, and I’ve already wasted far too much of my time and effort on you.”

He pointed his jagged hoof in the direction of the wall of what I assumed was an office building of some sort; it was a blank sort of wall, with bare concrete and only a few windows. By the side of this structure was a narrow alleyway that receded into a pitch black darkness even in the stark bright light of the afternoon. The drones parted, pushing the curious crowd that had gathered away to form an equine tunnel that led to this nondescript wall. A sensation of utter dread overcame me when it rapidly dawned on me what he was planning.

“Up against the wall, if you please,” said Dorylus. Two Blackhorns advanced to grab me by the shoulders, their muskets jostling against their shoulders, but he interrupted them with an imperious wave of his hoof. “No, wait.” A cruel grin formed on his face. “The kirins first. Make him watch.”

White Spirit swore profusely in Cathaynese; when the Blackhorns moved to grab him he threw a punch, striking one in the cheek with a hoof. However, another drone seized him roughly by the shoulders. Bright sparks flickered over his horn, like a cigar lighter about to ignite. The drones saw this, and a drone transformed his hoof into a sharp blade and plunged it into the struggling kirin’s neck before he could burst into flames. He died gurgling on his own blood, which spread across the ground under his twitching body, sparks still dancing over his horn. Somepony in the crowd screamed in horror, and the Blackhorns barked orders at them.

“Someone always has to spoil it,” said Dorylus, shaking his head.

“You bastard!” I spat; rarely had I been filled with such rage. It boiled up inside me, briefly overcoming my fear.

“Ah, I can walk there myself!” snarled Guiding Light, pushing away from the advancing drones. Silver Star immediately broke down; a great, sobbing wreck, howling at the injustice of it all, he begged them on behalf of his wife and two sons. His friend helped him up, and sensing the futility of it all, he half-walked, half-carried him over to that foreboding wall, where they stood, embraced together.

“You don’t need to do this!” I shouted. A drone grabbed my upper foreleg as I tried to lunge at Dorylus. “You have me! You wanted me! This barbarism isn’t necessary!”

“Oh, but it is,” said Dorylus, his voice disconcertingly calm and amicable. “They helped you, Prince Blueblood, and that is why I must set an example.” He turned from me to address the crowd of ponies and kirins, who watched aghast at the murderous proceedings. “Gather ‘round, my little ponies and kirins, and see the price for defying the Hives!”

At a barked command a line of Changeling drones formed in front of the two kirins, Guiding Light staring defiantly at them and Silver Star sobbing pathetically into his chest. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t; I owed them that much. Another shouted order, and the Blackhorns raised their muskets, and the final command brought the rippling, sharp crackle of musket fire. The shots ripped into the kirins’ bodies, and they fell in a bloodied, still heap, wrapped in each other’s hooves. A chorus of horrified screams rose up amidst the gathered crowd, some ponies and kirins, incensed by this outrage, began to push against the ring of drones around us, shouting profanity and insults at their so-called liberators.

“You’ll pay for this,” I hissed, fighting in vain against the strong grip of the drone restraining me. It wasn’t bloody fair; war never is, but they weren’t soldiers, as if that makes the wanton slaughter of modern warfare any more acceptable. To this day I ask myself what I could have done to have stopped this, but then if I had nobly gone first then I would not be here to write this for your elucidation and they might have still followed. Though I knew them only briefly, they remain three faces to haunt my dreams and mock me for surviving where they did not.

“I’ve heard that phrase more times than you’ve had whores,” said Dorylus with a casual shrug. “Your turn now.”

Cannon Fodder loudly and wordlessly protested, but he was pinned down by no fewer than three drones, and still he struggled in vain against them. As for me, I saw the futility in defiance and went along quietly, dragged along by this single drone, stumbling as much from fear as from the rough state of the tarmac. My heart was hammering in my chest, sounds became unclear and indistinct so that I could barely make out what my aide was shouting to Dorylus. The noise of the increasingly volatile crowd sounded as though they came from behind a sturdy brick wall. I think I heard one of the drones pointing out the increasing anger of the crowd to an oblivious Dorylus, but when I looked over my shoulder I saw that he was far too invested in watching me die to worry about such trivialities.

I fell, my legs giving out under me, and the drone was joined by a second to drag me on my hindlegs to the bloodstained, bullet-marked wall. The two dead kirins stared up at me with empty, accusatory eyes - I should have done something, they seemed to say. The drones dropped me next to their bodies, their blood splashing on my stained coat. I looked up to see the dreadful sight of the firing squad: five drones, having reloaded their muskets, stood at ease before me under the eye of a sergeant. My body shook uncontrollably, tears streamed down my eyes, and I might have soiled myself; hardly an inspiring sight, but I think I could be spared judgement over this.

“Chrysalis wants me alive!” I shouted in desperation, as if that might save me. “What will she do when she finds out you just had me shot?”

“Oh, I’ll lie,” he said. “You and your kirin friends were gunned down trying to escape, of course. She’ll soon be too busy ruling Equestria to worry about that.” Dorylus looked as though he was about to leave the grisly business of commanding the firing squad to the sergeant, and the plucky drone looked to be quite keen to be the one to give the order that ends the life of Lord Commissar Prince Blueblood, Hero of Equestria and Scourge of the Hives, but with the eagerness of a foal with a new toy the Purestrain darted forwards and all but knocked the sergeant aside. “Let me do this. I’ve always wanted to lead a firing squad, and I’ve waited so long for this moment. Atten-SHUN!”

The drones snapped to attention immediately, their disciplined hoof stomps sounding like a single crack of a musket. I shuddered at the sound.

“Present!”

The barrels of the loaded muskets were levelled directly at me; five black holes from which would spit fire and lead that would rip my flesh into ribbons as it had done for those two poor kirins. This was it. The end. Nopony was coming to save me this time. There was nothing for it, except…

Dorylus had only taken the intake of breath required to shout the word ‘fire!’ when I took my chance. The dark alleyway was to my left, not more than a few pony-lengths away, so I picked myself up off the ground and ran for it.

“Fi- hey! Where is your honour?”

“In your wife!” Do Changelings even have wives? I don't know, but it was the best quip I could come up with.

I didn’t look back, but I imagine that if I had I would have seen the five drones and Dorylus watching with slack-jawed amazement that I would simply run away. I’d already thrown myself bodily into the rank, disgusting, refuse-filled cleft between two buildings by the time they’d recovered their senses.

“Don’t just stand there, you idiots! Shoot him!”

A volley of musket fire followed me into the alley. I heard the thuds of the musket balls smacking into concrete. One whizzed close past my head and struck the wall ahead. I galloped hard; they would not be far behind. Inside this alley was all manner of detritus, apparently having served as a dumping area for rubbish by the homes and businesses all around. I scrambled over piles of empty, rotting cardboard boxes, decayed food, and smashed furniture, not daring to look behind. The sound of a crowd cheering my name, oddly exhilarating, was ringing in my ears as I plunged head-first into the darkness, but was overcome by the buzzing of wings behind me.

The alleyway forked, like a maze. I scaled over the remains of a broken armoire, and gave it a buck with my hindlegs to send the mass of wood sailing into the air behind me. Whether or not it struck any of the drones I’ll never know, but I like to think it did. At the time, however, there was very little thinking that I was capable of doing; there was only run. My instincts led me back out into the street, but I was greeted with a scene of extraordinary mayhem.

I have never been in a riot before; they’re normally things that princes are supposed to run away from when the lower orders take offence to a cake-based quip when they can’t afford to buy bread. Here, however, the churning mass of shouting, screaming ponies and kirins provided the perfect cover for me to slip from the Changelings’ grasp. An angry mob had formed, so spontaneously that they hadn’t had the time to make placards or signs with pithy slogans to explain what they were so upset about, but I quickly got the gist of it.

From what I could tell, based on my special talent’s instincts rapidly putting everything together for me, they were marching straight towards where I had last seen Dorylus and…

“Cannon Fodder!” I shouted to nopony in particular, as the realisation that I had left him behind with the Changelings hit me with the force of a rampaging yak. Guilt and fear make for a potent mix, and I was positively swimming in it. He was going to be fine, I reassured myself, as I paced about in the street and fretted about whether or not I should go back for him. My aide was a resourceful pony, at least in certain situations when he was allowed to use his initiative, and he would invariably get out of this mess by himself.

However, right then, there was little that I could do for him on my own, and the sounds of shouting and of things being hurled and smashed, distant but growing louder in intensity and volume, from the direction of the increasingly embattled Blackhorns had somewhat reassured me that the enemy was not having a fun time of it. The crowd continued to surge forth, chanting aggressive slogans that, though I did not understand most of their language, certainly made their feelings on the public execution of three of their neighbours open to very little interpretation. ‘Changelings go home!’ was about as much as I could understand, and I would have assumed that the other slogans were nowhere near as polite.

Though the city had seemed relatively calm for the few days I have lived there, at least the very brief snapshot of the city under occupation that I had seen, it seemed as though all of the underlying tension had finally come bubbling forth, like a pot on a stove. I slipped into the crowd, relieving one confused earth pony peasant, who I assumed had visited from the countryside for the day and found himself swept up in the madness, of his bamboo conical hat and placing it on my own head along the way, not quite advancing with them, but aiming to get to the other side of the street where, I hoped, the pursuing Changelings emerging from the alleyway would not spot me. From there, standing in the shadow of another building, I watched with growing trepidation as this unruly mob advanced; I could not see what was going on further ahead with Dorylus and the Blackhorns, and I certainly had no desire to go and see for myself, but it could not have been good.

It was not long, just enough time for me to catch some of my breath, before the inevitable happened. The sharp crack of musket fire cut through the noise of the mob. A pony or a kirin somewhere screamed, and the defiant, volatile atmosphere of the crowd was instantly replaced with one of fear, like a wave had swept through them. As one, they all seemed to flinch, as though possessed of one mind that was now ridden with mortal terror. A few continued to advance, still bellowing themselves hoarse with their catchy slogans. I heard another crack, and this time a chorus of screams arose as a response, and those amongst the mob blessed with a healthy sense of self-preservation strong enough to overcome their outrage turned hoof and fled.

I was swept along in a tide of equine bodies. From all around I was pressed in by the panicked mob, and forced with little recourse but to go along and, much like a roiling sea itself, try to keep my head above the surface. Panicked shouts filled the air. The Changelings were behind us, I was sure of it, pursuing this most visible defiance to their rule yet. The crack of musket fire continued intermittently, amidst the screams and cries of the crowd, but, as I was helplessly pushed along by the panicked ponies and kirins all around me, they seemed to grow more distant. As I pushed, pulled, and kicked my way through the press of bodies towards a relatively empty side street, occupied only by a few more citizens of sufficient sense to get out of the path of the mob, and paused to catch what remained of my breath for a second time, I heard the unmistakable sounds of combat; the clash of steel and the bark of orders was faint, but it was something that I’d heard more than enough times for it become ingrained in my memory. There was the roar of fires being started, kirins turning into niriks, I assumed, too, amidst the general cacophony.

Lost and alone in a city that was on the verge of tearing itself apart, I decided that my best course of action was to try and find Uncle or Spring Rain and let them sort it all out for me. Her house was closest, at least according to my temperamental special talent, and so I pushed and kicked my way through the mob, followed its subtle tug down the side street away from the obvious sounds of violence, and out into another main street. Here, ponies, kirins, and Changelings alike milled about in a general state of confusion, with some on both sides having banded together. A Blackhorn officer argued with a collaborationist police officer, who, in broken Ponish, objected in quite strong terms at being ordered to stand against his fellow ponies. Another shouted at a growing mob of ponies, some armed with kris daggers and others with bricks, bottles, sticks, and anything they could find, that had formed around his beleaguered little unit. The news had travelled exceptionally fast and, as ever, had gained a few embellishments along the way. As I could see it, unless Dorylus was clever (he might have been cunning but from what I had seen he certainly lacked in terms of intelligence) he would have a full scale insurrection on his hooves. I, for one, did not want to be a part of that, so I hastily turned away from the tense scene before further violence could erupt and scampered away down the street like a spooked cat.

My special talent led me through wide thoroughfares and back alleys alike. Away from where the mob had formed around the impromptu execution wall, which I have heard is now the site of a memorial of sorts, the city was calmer, but still quite tense. [The site has indeed become a memorial to the uprising and the victims of the Changeling occupation of the city. The bullet holes in the wall and the scorch marks on the ground are still visible in that street.] I didn’t exactly stop to speak with the ponies and kirins I found wandering the streets, but each of them seemed to be in an understandable state of frightful confusion and apprehension about what had just happened. Rumours were already spreading -- a public execution of kirin resistance members that rapidly got out of hoof and resulted in the Changelings firing on a spontaneous demonstration was how I recalled the situation, but from picking up the snippets of hushed conversation that I could understand one would be forgiven for assuming that the occupiers had suddenly and without provocation fired on innocent civilians and as a result the entire city was rising up to throw out the invaders. There were a few more extreme theories being voiced, such as the Blackhorns rounding up all of the kirins in the city to shoot them en masse or that they were going to force all of the ponies in the city onto those big, strange airships that nearly everypony had by now seen in the docks to ship them back to the Hives. Most worrying of all was the rumour that Prince Blueblood was in the city, somehow, had miraculously survived a firing squad (that I did so by running away from it was a detail that hadn’t survived going through the rumour mill), and was about to lead a glorious uprising that would cast out the invaders, liberate the entire city, and then ponies and kirins will live in harmony in a free and independent Marelacca.

Aside from the obvious reason of keeping myself safe from the Changelings actively trying to hunt me down, I’d endeavoured to keep myself as hidden as possible to avoid that sort of thing. Now that the metaphorical cat had been released from its bag-prison, the citizens here were going to have expectations of me that I could not possibly fulfil. Still, my primitive disguise, such as it was, seemed to be holding up for the time being. I still passed squads of Blackhorns trotting along the streets, ponies diving out of their way, their muskets jostling against their shoulders, in the direction of the carnage. Overhead, small swarms of drones swept overhead in loose formations that would have given Rainbow Dash a fit due to their sloppiness, low enough that I could have downed one by throwing my new hat like a frisbee heavenwards. Instead, I pulled said chapeau low over my eyes and walked on through the streets, and when it occurred to me that I might be making myself look even more suspicious by wearing a rice farmer’s hat like Shadow Spade’s fedora when she’s stalking her mark through seedy San Franciscolt, I was rather amazed that my disguise was working. So much for ‘not blending in’. However, as I would find out, the Changelings had rather more immediate and deadly problems on their hooves.

After a few more turns through twisting back alleys, where I was accosted by a homeless pony who demanded money from me and wouldn’t stop until I kicked him into silence, I came out into that same market area I had ‘worked’ in with Spring Rain before. I cursed my special talent as the place was absolutely crawling with Changelings, but as I crouched behind a large rubbish bin overflowing with discarded food packaging, I saw that they did not wear the same dull grey uniforms as the Blackhorns. No, they were the drones in Dorylus’ war-swarm, who had by now spent the entire occupation sitting idle in the docks. Armed to the teeth with muskets, I observed them from my hiding place as they went from stall to stall, shop to shop, rounding up terrified ponies and kirins. They segregated the two, bringing the kirins to one corner of the market square and the ponies to the other, though their treatment of the two races was equally harsh; I saw one elderly pony fall, and for that he received a musket butt to the side of the head. He did not get up.

This, understandably, incensed some of the creatures here, kirins included. The roar of ignition was soon followed by the anguished screams of Changelings, who burned as these incandescent niriks charged them and wrapped them in a fatal embrace. All Tartarus broke loose. Muskets cracked and smoke quickly filled the square. Ponies grabbed whatever was at hoof - rocks, cooking implements, and cleavers - and turned on their oppressors in an instant, and a hideous brawl to the death broke out.

This was my chance. Darting out from behind the safety of the rubbish bin, I scrambled across the square. I leapt over a collapsed drone, his face caved in by a hot wok, and collided with a pony and another Changeling engaged in a frantic struggle for survival. Instincts kicked in, and I drew my kris and plunged it into the drone’s neck, the spray of ichor splashed down onto the pony's face and he was pinned beneath the twitching, bleeding corpse. Shouts and cries of pain filled the air, and I kept moving.

Ceremonial but deadly dagger in my magic, I squeezed through the melee to a corner of the square. This wasn’t a battle as I’d known it with clear lines and formations, but something worse. The Changelings, being disciplined, fanatical soldiers were clearly having the better of it. I saw ponies and kirins, innocents who had been caught up in this horrendous mess, cut down alike with bayonets as they tried to flee. Others, seemingly knowing that they were doomed, were determined to go down fighting, and fought back with clumsy, amateurish strikes with whatever improvised weapons they had. Only the niriks seemed to be able to meet the enemy on a relatively equal level, and the stench of burning flesh stung my nostrils and throat.

A shrill cry from behind distracted me. I turned, and saw a gaggle of foals - ponies and kirins - huddled behind a stall. They stared back with wide, terrified, tear-rimmed eyes. Faust, they shouldn’t have been caught up in this; they looked no older than seven years. Looking back at the brawl, I saw a gap in one wall where another alleway led to an empty side street. It was our only chance.

“Follow me!” I shouted at them. Well, I couldn’t very well leave them there; I didn’t know for certain if anypony had recognised me, and Yours Truly abandoning foals to save his own skin was hardly going to be a great look.

For some reason they all seemed to trust me, and the youngest only required a little additional coaxing to encourage them to follow. They stuck close to me as I trotted against the wall, the foals galloping to keep up. A kirin seemed to take notice of what I was trying to do, and threw himself against a charging drone, checking his advance, and they rolled into the melee, never to be seen again. One foal tripped, so I grabbed him and threw him on my back where he wrapped his little hooves around my neck for dear life. We tore into the alleyway and kept going, not stopping until we emerged into the relative safety of the next street.

I had assumed that they would thank me graciously for the brave rescue and trot off merrily home to excitedly tell their parents about the fun adventure they’d just had, when I realised that their parents had probably been left behind in the market square. The sounds of carnage and violence continued to echo down the alleyway we’d just ran through, so their fate didn’t particularly bear thinking about. So that’s how I found myself the custodian of four little brats, who, upon reaching the relative safety of the next street over, immediately began complaining about being hungry and scared. When I rescued them, what I was supposed to do with them after hadn’t really occurred to me.

Again, leaving them to their own devices in a city rapidly descending into outright civil war, alone, defenceless, and unsupervised, would not reflect well upon me or my dubious reputation, so now I was saddled with looking after them until I could find somepony else to take that onerous task. Spring Rain was a mother, I recalled, and was clearly missing her taken foal, and in my fear-addled mind that made her the perfect individual to unload these foals on. If anypony thought it odd that a strange stallion was leading a gaggle of foals away they kept it to themselves, and the growing number of Changelings stalking about the streets occupied the majority of their attention anyway.

In fact, the only attention that I received from then on came from a few of the collaborationist police officers, those that were still trying desperately to keep some sort of order, telling me to ‘remain indoors’. Well, I can safely say that remaining indoors was precisely what I wanted to do with the rest of my life after yet another near-death experience, so I nodded politely and trotted off with greater urgency. I did stop every so often to look behind me, and before long I saw plumes of roiling black smoke rising into the air, drifting on the hot breeze.

As for the foals, well, they seemed to be handling the grim situation about as well as could be expected. The one whose sobbing had quietened down into gentle weeping expressed what I felt but had to keep inside. He at least was being comforted by a filly I assumed was his older sister. Quiet words of reassurance were not something that cropped up particularly regularly in my limited vocabulary, but as their grasp of Ponish was about as limited as my grasp of Marelay, as long as whatever I said was in an appropriately comforting tone then the exact words didn’t particularly matter. But as the more precocious of the foals started speaking, apparently bombarding me with the sorts of questions that foals invariably ask of all adults, I managed to pick up a bit more of the vocabulary. Before we reached our destination, I would know the local terms for ‘cat’, ‘tree’, and ‘Power Ponies’.

I was almost dead on my hooves by the time I reached Spring Rain’s home; sick with fear and exhaustion, but relieved that I had finally found at least some semblance of safety. My charges too, the foals, were likewise tired, but hadn’t complained too much for the entirety of the journey there. The streets here were curiously empty, most ponies having presumably taken the advice of the police officers and hidden themselves inside or perhaps joined this spontaneous outpouring of dissatisfaction at having their city taken over. This time I didn’t bother to knock, but simply pushed the front door open. It was a little surprising to find that it was unlocked, and I feared the worst when I felt the door open under a gentle nudge of my magic. However, where I feared to find drones raiding the house, that sense of dread turned to relief when I saw Spring Rain, Uncle, Cannon Fodder, and three other kirins gathered in the living room. So much relief, in fact, that I almost failed to notice the drawn daggers and loaded muskets aimed in my direction.

“Ah, I told you he’d turn up!” exclaimed Spring Rain excitedly.

“You were worried about me?” I asked, truly surprised at her concern.

“Aiyah!” She pulled a disgusted face, but even I could tell it was an act. “We just need you to help blow up the docks, then you can go back to Equestria and we never have to see you again, lah!”

One of the other kirins scoffed. “So much for that, eh?” he said. “Now the city’s crawling with Changelings, and they’re rounding up everyone.”

“How do we know it’s really him, anyway?” asked another one of the kirins.

It was a fair question, and unfortunately none of them seemed to know the appropriate spell that would answer it in a second’s time. “The three kirins you sent to take me to see Golden Hook,” I said, “their names were White Spirit, Guiding Light, and Silver Star. I’m sorry, I couldn’t save them.”

"Names are too easy," he shot back, narrowing his horn an inch towards me. "You must do better than that."

I took only a second to think about the answer. "White Spirit," I began. "He told me some ridiculous story about mares who die in childbirth becoming banana vampires. Or… vampires who hide in banana trees? Chewing on our guts like noodles?"

Spring Rain let out a long, mournful hum, though a hint of a smile touched her lips for an instant. "Ah, that's him alright, lah."

Uncle nodded his head solemnly, and with a wave of his hoof the other kirins lowered their weapons. Tentatively, I stumbled in, and though I was tired, I managed to summon sufficient mental energy to cast the appropriate spell enough times to confirm that the ponies and kirins here were not devious Changelings. The sofa that had served as my bed for these past few days looked so very inviting, and I wished that I could simply throw myself upon it. The foals followed me in, likewise with wide-eyed apprehension at the heavily-armed strangers all around them, that is until Spring Rain darted into the kitchen and emerged with jars of sweets for them.

“It’s chaos out there,” I said with an exhausted shrug. “I pulled the foals out of the brawl in the marketplace. I hope their parents are well.” I looked to my aide, who stood there with his usual empty expression. “Cannon Fodder, how in the blazes did you get here before me?”

“When you escaped the Changelings and the ponies started throwing things at them I walked away,” he said. “I don’t think they bothered to chase me.”

Of course, only Cannon Fodder could have escaped from a firing squad by simply walking away as though from a gaggle of overly enthusiastic peddlers on the street trying to sign one up to charity donations. Still, I was immensely relieved to see that he was safe, though I refrained from bounding over and embracing him, both for the reasons of propriety as much as concerns over cleanliness.

“We’ll look after the foals,” said Uncle. “You look awful, sir. Please sit down before you fall over.”

I didn’t need to be told twice, only once, and I collapsed onto the much-abused sofa. Instantly, I felt a wave of exhaustion take me, as though whatever energy I had that sustained me through this awful day had been sapped from my body. I might have fallen asleep right there if Uncle hadn’t kept on speaking.

“What happened?” he asked.

I lifted my head with utmost effort from the sofa; he must have known, I thought, but probably wanted to hear it from the prince’s mouth. “There was a firing squad. Dorylus and a group of Blackhorns caught us as we returned to the city. They shot the three kirins, then they lined me up. I escaped.” It was prudent, I thought, to gloss over the manner in which I had made my not-so-heroic escape. “And then a mob formed and attacked Dorylus. I didn’t see what happened, but I heard musket fire, so I would assume that the Commandant had done something terrible and cowardly. With nowhere else to go I made my way here, and saw Changeling soldiers, not Blackhorns, rounding up civilians in the market square. A fight broke out and those foals followed me here. Do you mean to say, Uncle, that this uprising was not your doing?”

He shook his head gravely. “No, we had no intention of causing this kind of uprising before our mission, sir.”

“Then who did?”

“I expect…” he said, then trailed off, stroking his wispy beard in contemplation. “I would believe that executing three kirins in public provoked a spontaneous outpouring of anger, and when they voiced their anger in the only way a mob of enraged creatures can. The Changelings’ heavy-hoofed approach will only lead to an escalation. This is fortuitous timing.”

I boggled at him. “I’m glad my near-execution and the outbreak of civil war has been so convenient.”

Uncle had the sense to look a little bit ashamed of his remark. “No, you’re right, it is a tragedy,” he said. “But think about it, sir. The entire city is on the brink of open rebellion. The Changelings will try to clamp down on this before it spreads, and while they’re doing that the docks will be vulnerable. The last thing that they will expect is to follow through with our plan now. If we’re going to do this then we need to do this now, before the occupiers can re-establish their hold on the city.”

“Right now?” It was insane, madness, and I’m certain I’ve used those exact words far too many times to describe a great number of the operations I’ve been involved with over the years, but few words come close to matching my feelings on the matter. “I’ve only just spoken to the pirates, and Square Basher and the slaves may not be ready either.”

“And neither will the Changelings!” Youthful energy, in stark contrast to his advanced age, seemed to flood into his withered frame, and he was almost vibrating with excitement. “We must strike now!”

His reasoning was sound, as much as I hated to admit it; knowing Dorylus, his attention would be diverted not only by the rampaging mobs and fires in the city but also by Queen Chrysalis no doubt screaming at him for failing not only keeping order in her occupied city but also in capturing me again, if he too hadn’t already been lined up against a wall and shot for his repeated failures. Besides, in a way I thought it might be best to get this next horrible thing over and done with sooner rather than later. Every moment that I spent here and not safely on an airship flying back to good old Equestria was one closer to the roving squads of Blackhorns and soldiers finding me and not even bothering with selecting a nice wall to line me up against before just shooting and/or stabbing me. There was, however, just one other thing:

“May I at least have a nap first?” I asked. “I’ve had a rather emotional day.”

“No,” said Uncle, still beaming happily. “They’ll find us here soon enough. We move now.”

Chapter 20

So, that was that; I wasn’t even allowed a damned nap before being thrown straight into danger once more. Still, as any good soldier learns after sufficient time on campaign, I eked out as much rest as I could while the other kirins busied themselves with whatever final preparations were necessary. I’m not sure if I actually slept or not, and if I did then those brief snippets were mercifully devoid of any nightmares; those, should I survive the coming inferno, would come later. However, there was one burning question that only came to mind as I could no longer lie on the sofa and rest, a thought bubbling up through my subconscious like gas from a swamp.

“Dorylus said that somepony betrayed us,” I said to Uncle.

“Most likely a random informant,” said Uncle, almost dismissively. I noticed that he seemed to do very little real ordering of underlings about, and his kirins appeared to have quietly anticipated his intentions and simply went about doing them. “Some ponies receive preferential treatment if they tell on their neighbours. A pony probably saw you leave this morning and informed the Blackhorns.”

Grim business indeed, but at least that meant that I could rule out anypony I might have known and trusted. Square Basher had come to mind, and Dorylus had said ‘under duress’, though that could also have meant that said random informant might have got cold hooves when he found himself in a dank cell speaking with the uniformed Blackhorns, and thus required a little ‘encouragement’. Besides, there was no possible way that the concept of betrayal could ever have crossed her mind, not even for a fraction of a second under the worst torture Dorylus’ twisted mind could conjure, and the same went for all of the other ponies in the hangar with her. This, however, left my over-active paranoia with one other alternative explanation: that Uncle had arranged the leak in order to accelerate his plans. I could not entirely put it past him to have done something so callous, as under his kindly exterior he was a kirin of a singular drive to free his city, perhaps by any means necessary. Even then, putting my frame of mind into that of a sociopath, the calculation simply did not add up; the pony with all of the necessary regal connections and who had promised to bring about the independence for his city he desired, me, could very well have been shot.

‘You don’t exactly blend in’, Dorylus had said. I suppose we relied on the locals seeing me painted with dust and with plums painted on my flanks in the streets, thinking ‘that dashing stallion looks remarkably similar to that handsome Prince Blueblood, what an astonishing coincidence!’, and then carrying on with their day a little too much.

I left it at that; there would be time for speculation on the flight home, if I ever made it that far. The preparations were quick, as though Uncle and the kirins had carefully planned this in advance, and in less than fifteen minutes we were ready. That the enemy didn’t think to raid Spring Rain’s home, being the obvious place that I would flee to, was nothing short of a miracle. There is an old adage that if an opponent’s potential course of action seems too obvious then ponies, and indeed Changelings, will immediately rule it out. It was either that mental blind spot or that the riots had spread to the point that the enemy could not spare the drones to raid just one little house. With that on my mind, however, we finally left for battle.

While I was grateful to Uncle for coming up with what seemed like an organised plan at seemingly such short notice and without my prompting and input, I would have felt a lot happier if he had disclosed this plan to me much earlier. However, as we slipped through streets crawling with roving gangs of angry citizens armed with sticks, bottles, rocks, and daggers, and encountered more organised groups of Changelings chasing after them, his explanation of the plan did not inspire much hope within me.

“The kirins will attack the front gates, drawing the enemy to us,” he said, when we paused in another stinking alleyway and I demanded to know what we were doing. “What few Changelings remain in the docks who aren’t putting down this uprising, I mean. You, your friend, and Spring Rain will use the confusion and chaos to sneak inside, meet with your fellow ponies, blow up the airships, and escape.”

“That doesn’t seem very detailed,” I said.

Uncle smiled in response. “We don’t have the luxury of in-depth planning here. Very often we just have to make it up as we go along. If we don’t know what we’re doing, then the enemy certainly won’t!”

“And the pirates?” I asked; I’d gone through a lot of trouble to get their help, and in some way I wanted to make sure the sacrifice of those three kirins was worth it.

“Let’s hope they can see the smoke from out at sea.”

While I might have some sort of knack in improvising my way out of messes, the lack of such a detailed plan, which I had become very much used to when serving with General Market Garden, whose plans would include an array of precise timings that would inevitably go out of the window when the enemy would quite selfishly and rudely do something not accounted for in said plans, only made me feel even more anxious. I had only been inside the hangar once before, and while I had an idea of where the fuel and gas stores were, if one asked me to draw a diagram of the environment we were about to blow to kingdom it would only have been slightly more accurate than if I’d been asked to use my own imagination instead. My special talent would only go so far, and it worked best when it had something concrete to work with. Still, we had little else to go on, and I had to concede to the old kirin here that it was unlikely that we were going to get such an opportunity again; we had to strike now, and hope the inherently chaotic nature of partisan warfare would work to our advantage here.

Our small group was only one of several making our way through the streets. This part of the plan, as I understood it, had been carefully organised in advance before events had forced our collective hoof. To better avoid detection, as a veritable army of armed kirins moving in a single column through the streets would attract the occupiers' attention even with the riots taking place all over the city, the resistance had split up into multiple small groups of varying size, and each took their own route from whatever safehouse they had called home to the docks. One or two kirins of each group, and Cannon Fodder and Spring Rain in ours, were selected to carry saddlebags laden with muskets, bayonets, homemade incendiaries that consisted of a bottle filled with a suspiciously straw-coloured liquid (I drank one, found it to be both foul-tasting and alcoholic, and then drank a few more to steady the nerves until Spring Rain told me to stop and to seek help) and a rag for igniting, and other assorted tools of mayhem and destruction. If one such group had been caught by the Blackhorns, the Changeling soldiers, or the collaborationist police, then they would not be able to give away the location of the other groups and the loss to our little uprising would be kept to an appropriate minimum. Of course, their ultimate fate would not bear thinking about. That, however, brought up one unsettling question in my mind.

“What happens after we destroy the ships?” I asked.

“You go back to Equestria,” said Uncle. There was a subtle glint in his eye. “I thought that was the entire point of this venture, sir. Either you hijack a ship that we haven’t blown up or you walk all the way to Coltcutta through the jungle.”

“The point,” I emphasised, “is to stop the invasion.”

“Of course,” he said, with a knowing tone that I found a little concerning.

“I meant with you and your kirins, and the city, too.”

“Ah.” The old kirin’s expression grew sombre, and he bowed his head slightly. “You know full well how the Changelings enforce their Queen’s order. Chrysalis is here, she will be outraged, and any of her officers who survive our attack and her wrath will compete with one another to earn her approval after this disaster. That means reprisals, sir. It will be bloody.”

Again, it seemed counter-intuitive to me that the Changelings would be quite so willing to wipe out parts of their own supply of food in the middle of a famine, but my stint with Dorylus and conversations with Odonata indicated that they, and especially Chrysalis, were apparently incapable of thinking in the long term. I don’t know how old their Queen was, and frankly I was not terribly interested in keeping track and sending her birthday cards, but I’d hazard a guess that her lifespan was roughly the same as that of our alicorn Princesses, give or take a millenia or two. I would have thought in that time she might have at least entertained the notion that the problems facing her Hives might have been self-inflicted to a degree, but I would also imagine that there might be a tendency for such long-lived creatures to become a little set in their ways, so to speak. Violence or the threat of it, might have worked well for them with the divided and isolated pony tribes of the Badlands, but in this large and densely-populated city, their old ways were becoming more of a hindrance (though that Ommatidium fellow would argue that the constant struggle was a bonus).

[Immortal creatures have a tendency to become resistant to change, especially after the first or second century of life has passed along with our first set of mortal friends. We each find our way to cope with the weight of the years, some with greater success than others. Chrysalis’ seems to have been to devote herself to the pursuit of power, which, as Blueblood had intimated here, had clouded her judgement over the effects of her rule over the Changeling Hives.]

I suppose I had always known that Chrysalis would respond to the failure of Dorylus’ plan with another tantrum, and the thought of her taking her frustrations and disappointment out on him had kept me going through this dark and bleak period, but in truth the thought of causing yet more misery to the citizens of this already-suffering city as a result of this did make me feel rather guilty about it. Contrary to popular belief, I am capable of feeling guilt, but only for those who truly deserve it. Uncle seemed to sense this was troubling me, and though I’d done my best to keep my sense of aristocratic detachment and regal bearing, the rather troubling events of the past few hours must have made a crack in that masque through which he had glimpsed my true self.

“We will do our best,” he said. “The fires of resistance will only be inflamed by the injustice of the oppressors. It will be up to you to make their sacrifice worthwhile, and end this war.”

I nodded gravely, feeling rather sick at the mere thought of that. No pressure, then, thought I, but there was mercifully little time for me to sit there and contemplate the grim task ahead of us and its equally appalling repercussions. The words that I tell myself so that I can grasp a few precious hours of tortured sleep each night - that it was indeed all worth it when we finally won this horrid war, that I had no choice in the matter, and that ultimately it was the enemy’s choice to behave in this bestial and depraved manner befitting the worst excesses of our black propaganda - are of little real comfort.

The streets were emptier as we neared the docks. From what I could work out, the bulk of the unrest was in the city’s commercial centres and had shown very little sign of dying down anytime soon. The pent-up anger and frustration directed at the occupiers, which had thus far been kept in check by false promises of liberation, had finally exploded with their blatant display of injustice. I could not help but shake the thought that this precipitous uprising, serving as it did as a most fortunate diversion for our own little insurgency, was being stoked somewhat by Uncle’s kirins. It was certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that this abrupt wave of violence had been planned for, and while the incident that sparked it could not have been predicted to any degree of accuracy, it seemed that what had followed was a little too convenient to be entirely spontaneous. Then again, perhaps I am being much too cynical, and when push came to shove, ordinary ponies, kirins, and whatever sapient creatures out there could put aside their differences and band together in a common and just cause.

A few run-ins with Changelings put a definitive end to any such contemplation on my part. The streets were wider here, with the industrial buildings and warehouses spread out a little more. Cover, therefore, was a bit of a premium. Swarms of drones, their lack of uniform identifying them as soldiers of the war-swarm and not the glorified police-drones of the Blackhorns, poured through the streets, forcing us to hide in the derelict warehouses and officers until each mob passed and we could continue. Most of these structures were unoccupied by equines, but were still full of desks, equipment, boxes of goods, and so forth, as though they were rapidly abandoned in the Changeling invasion and never reclaimed. The entire industry of commerce that had fueled this city and made quite a few Equestrian merchants obscenely rich had simply halted with the occupation; I even found rotted food left out on desks where presumably workers were sent home during lunch.

I would sit, close to a cracked, grimy window and peeking out as much as I dared to, to see the drones march obliviously past us. Each formation was approximately platoon-strength by my guess, and each drone was armed for battle rather than putting down a riot. One could be forgiven, after watching another group pass, for believing, or hoping, rather, that the entire hangar area had been emptied of Changelings, save perhaps for an irate Queen Chrysalis and a deeply apologetic Dorylus; however, I was under no such illusion. Dorylus might have had poor judgement and an unrealistic impression of his own greatness, but he was not a complete imbecile, and if he had more than a single neuron firing in what passed for a brain among the Purestrains then he would have at least suspected that we might strike at the docks now.

Leapfrogging through the abandoned offices and warehouses took time, especially when we found that some of these buildings were not so abandoned after all and found small groups of terrified and panicked civilians sheltering there. Most were much too traumatised to do more except huddle and whimper, though some, having determined which way the wind was blowing, volunteered their services to our gallant show of defiance. Others, however, blamed us for their present misery; by daring to defy the occupiers, or ‘liberators’ as some of the more deluded individuals had put it to us, we had brought their wrath upon their city. It was a view not entirely without merit, thought I, but this was hardly the time or the place for a civilised discussion on whether the ends justifies the means when it came to armed revolt against foreign occupation, so Uncle wisely moved us on whenever we encountered such groups.

As we proceeded towards our goal, the vast hangar building looming over the surrounding area like a tumour on the flesh of the city, I noticed that Spring Rain was being uncharacteristically silent throughout. Being a mare of strong opinions and zero apparent need to keep them to herself, her sudden sense of tact seemed jarring and, if anything, rather unsettling. Granted, every one of the kirins and the odd pony we’d collected along the way seemed to be under the same sort of tension that soldiers must suffer before battle.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said to her, when we’d found another quiet spot to catch our breath.

“Aiyah, what are you on about now?” she snapped, in her usual fashion. She, like some of the other kirins here, were laden with saddlebags, though when I asked her before what she had inside she merely said that it was a ‘surprise’ and not to bother her about it until we reached the hangar.

“You have already done enough for me, and I’m very grateful, but there’s really no need to risk your life like this.”

Spring Rain glared at me, nirik-fire appearing to dance in her dark eyes. “I told you. I’m not doing this for you, Prince, and I don’t need you to tell me what to do with my life, lah.”

I almost said that it was my job as a Prince to tell other ponies what to do, but I thought better of it. “I know, you want me to send you something nice and expensive once this all blows over.”

Her glare softened a little at the mention of a reward. “I was joking, lah,” she said, a little quieter now. “But I wouldn’t mind. Make me a lady of something, with a title and everything. I already said, I do this for my family.”

If she wasn’t careful, I might unload one of the more unfashionable bits of Equestria that I have the misfortune to own on her, and see how she likes being the Countess of Our Town and dealing with their inane, rural little problems. [The province currently known as Our Town was owned by Blueblood’s family for centuries. It had been very profitable for its ice, which was shipped south to the rest of Equestria, but the invention of the domestic freezer put an end to that and it was forgotten and the ponies left. Starlight Glimmer reports that she had personally asked Prince Blueblood if she could build an ‘autonomous self-funding commune’ on this neglected land, and that he responded by complimenting her on her flanks and ordering another bottle of wine from the bar, which she took to mean ‘yes’.]

“Wouldn’t you be putting them at risk by doing this?” I asked, recalling the photograph of the smiling kirin and the beaming foal she had showed me; if she was to help us in this venture, and for me to put my life in her hooves, I had to know that she would not pause or hesitate when it came to the crucial moment.

“They were always ‘at risk’,” she said, her cold gaze not leaving mine. “When the Changelings first took them I knew I may not see them again in this life. Now the ponies and kirins have had enough of the Changelings and have risen up, and whatever they choose to do with who they have taken from us has already been decided. I told you, lah. I help you because you hurt the Changelings, and because you will win and when you do you will make them all pay for what they did to us.”

Well, that was me told then, thought I; at least any concerns I had that she might have a sudden attack of good sense and self-preservation had been well and truly crushed, which made it one less thing for me to worry about then while being shot and stabbed. At any rate, we were nearing the hangar, and as a result the need for idle chatter was diminished somewhat. The remainder of our journey was conducted in near-silence, save for a few necessary orders barked here and there. Each time we ventured out from the relative safety afforded by the abandoned and not-so-abandoned buildings there we saw the vast, dark structure of the hangar, looming ever higher with each furtive excursion into the streets. It would do well to finally be rid of it.

Before long, however, we came to a security checkpoint in the wall that surrounded the hangar, much like the one that I had passed through the day before, occupied by a gaggle of Changelings who probably thought themselves lucky for having been assigned this duty and thus escaped the worst of the fighting. Some paced up and down boredly in front and behind the barricade, while others simply sat and stared off into space. We waited for a few moments, while I drove myself to higher states of restlessness wanting to get this over and done with. When I saw the barricade lift and another unit of drones march through, knocking one of the slower checkpoint guards out of the way, I understood that we were in fact waiting for the moments between them.

“Ah, Blueblood!” Spring Rain called out suddenly. She waved me over from the other side of this miserable little warehouse we were hiding in, and I, grateful for a small distraction from my growing anxiety, dutifully obeyed like a well-trained dog. “I have something for you.”

“It’s a little late for presents, isn’t it?” I said.

“Aiyah, why would I give you a present? You’re a rich prince, lah! You can just buy whatever you want!”

Well, that wasn’t quite true, thought I, but I didn’t feel like arguing about how most of my wealth was tied up in land, properties, and titles. She popped open a saddlebag and dug her hooves into it, pulling out a few boxes of cartridges, knives, and a few lifestyle and cookery magazines and tossing them on the floor, before pulling out a bundle wrapped in pale beige cloth. This she placed on the ground with a little more reverence than the other things, then, after scooping everything else back into the saddlebag without much care, opened it up to reveal it contained an all-too-familiar black tunic with red piping and its accompanying peaked cap.

“Oh, my uniform,” I said, rather perplexed as to why she had elected to bring this now.

“It was dirty,” she said, unfolding the neatly folded wool tunic and holding it up for me. “I cleaned it for you.”

“Thank you,” I said, “but why?”

“Aiyah, you were not going to clean it yourself, were you?”

“I mean why did you bring it?”

Uncle had crept up on me so silently that I almost leapt out of my hide when he suddenly spoke. “The kirins and ponies need a symbol,” he said. “One that will also inspire hope in us, but also fear in the enemy. You are that symbol, sir.”

Which, I was considering pointing out, would also make me a rather obvious target for any Changelings out there. However, if it would also inspire my newfound comrades, along with Square Basher and her fellow enslaved ponies, to better protect me in the coming storm of steel and fire, then putting on this rather heavy wool outfit and the accompanying stupid hat in this brutal heat and humidity was something that I would be perfectly happy to put up with. The sight of me in uniform might even further enrage Dorylus, should he have escaped from the riot before and made his way back here (though given Chrysalis’ infamous temper, if I was in his position I’d have faked my own death and escaped to take my chances amongst the kuda bunian instead).

Discarding what was left of my disguise, I donned my old uniform. Though the Changelings had repaired and cleaned it after that stint on Hill 70, it had suffered a little in the subsequent escape attempts and after the final one that led to me being cocooned they were less motivated to provide a laundry service again. Spring Rain had brushed out the dust, repaired the holes and nicks in the fabric, and even shined the brass buttons and medals until they shone brilliantly in the bright sunlight, so I’d stand out even more, apparently. Still, it was my uniform, and it still fit me as well as any bespoke tailored garment should, like easing into a beloved and well-worn old Saddle Row suit, or a pair of pyjamas for an analogy that might be better understood by the common pony. [Records from various Saddle Row tailors indicate that Prince Blueblood commissioned a number of commissar uniforms through his career, apparently having lost or discarded the off-the-rack one that Princess Luna had provided.]

While I was busy getting dressed, the kirins and the few ponies we had collected along the way prepared themselves in whatever manner they saw fit. Though they were all civilians, and some had only picked up a weapon, besides their ceremonial kris daggers, with intent for the first time that day, they still instinctively went through the same sort of rituals that our trained, professional soldiers would undertake before battle. One of the kirins instructed the others on how to load a musket for firing. Some prayed to whatever heathen deities are worshipped around here, though a few others, in particular the ponies, would seek the blessings of Celestia to bring them through the coming ordeal. A few cracked the same sort of awkward jokes, or I assumed that they were; the language remained something of a barrier, but resulting laughter made the meaning quite clear. Others were quiet, and either stared into space or kept themselves busy by checking their weapons.

I suppose I ought to say something, and indeed that was what a commissar was supposed to be for. That the few ponies and kirins in this abandoned building with me only constituted a small part of our uprising mean that not every creature would hear it, but that at least meant that if I made some sort of gaffe then it would be contained to these dozen or so. Fewer still, if any of them were unfamiliar with Ponish, but as I yet I still hadn’t met anypony without at least a basic understanding.

“I know that none of you wanted this war to come to your city,” I started, and to my surprise they actually stopped what they were doing and listened. “I did not want that either, but the enemy does not care for such things and the war has been brought to your homes regardless. You have shown me that the spirit of resistance cannot be crushed by the enemy’s tools of oppression and terror, and that though they walk the streets of Marelacca they can never truly own it. Across the ocean, the war is still being waged. Equestrian armies strike into the dark heart of Chrysalis’ empire, and once vanquished it will bring forth a new world of friendship and harmony. The eyes of the world may be fixed upon that titanic struggle, but today, what we do here will be seen by all of Equestria. We will show them what the free creatures of Marelacca can do!”

As speeches went it was not one of my best, but I think I did well for something I made up entirely on the spot. Usually, I have something prepared for me from the Commissariat, but I tend to omit the more ridiculous parts; soldiers are not completely stupid and can spot naked and empty propaganda as readily as the nearest whorehouse. Still, I think the language barrier here helped me somewhat. Though most creatures here were familiar with Ponish, and indeed with a number of different languages spoken here it served well as a means of communicating across those social divides, I couldn’t help but think much of it went over their heads, but it wasn’t so much what was said that was truly important but how it was said. ‘Smash the Changelings’ seemed to be the message they all took from it, and so I was rewarded with a resounding cheer for my efforts.

I was still bloody exhausted from my ordeal, and almost dead on my hooves. Yet somehow I always found some small reserve measure to draw upon, just to get me through the next few hours until I was either free in one sense of the word or free in another, more final manner. One day, I thought, there might be nothing left in this shell.

Well then, it was time to get this misery over with, thought I. I drew my kris from its ornamental scabbard, still stained with the coagulating green ichor of the Changeling I’d stabbed, which the few ponies here seemed to be impressed by, and ventured outside. Of course they expected me to lead from the front, but not too far in front; I made sure that Cannon Fodder was by my side, his odour ripening to its fullest in the afternoon heat and likely alerting everyone within a mile’s radius, and that the kirins and ponies just behind me were still close enough that I could dart behind them when violence inevitably broke out. The other groups, the ones that had evaded the enemy’s patrols at least, had caught up with us, and descended upon the small guardpost.

I fully expected to be greeted with a hail of lead shot to the face when I first stepped out of the building in full view of the Changeling guards there, but nothing was forthcoming. Instead, they stared at me with vacant shock as I marched up to them at the head of a small army.

“Hives, It’s the Black Prince!” I heard one shout in amazement, and I realised that was the reason why Uncle wanted me to dress up in this silly uniform.

It worked better than Uncle could have hoped for, and said drone turned on his hooves and scrambled away in fright. The others held their post a little longer, grabbing their muskets to face the oncoming tide. Muskets cracked from behind me, and though none of these notoriously inaccurate weapons wielded by untrained civilians and resistance fighters hit their target, the sporadic volley was enough to convince the remaining Blackhorns to abandon their checkpoint.

A great cheer rose up from behind me, as though we had somehow won a great victory by forcing these four guards to retreat. Emboldened, the equine tide surged past me before I could get a word in edgewise, and charged as a disorganised mob through the guardpost. This was already getting out of hoof, but I could hardly expect military discipline out of them. Still, the more chaos the better cover for me to use to slip through. As the furious cries of combat and the anguished screams of the wounded and dying filled the air, I grabbed Spring Rain, who stood there dumbfounded by the bloody carnage unravelling before eyes, and pulled her in the direction of the violent display.

The kirins might have been resistance fighters, yes, but said resistance had only been in action for a month, if that. There had been little time to train them for a protracted fight against an enemy who believed it was their inborn right to dominate their lessers through force. Still, what they lacked in discipline they made up for in spirit and in being to light themselves on fire. The initial shock of the attack carried them through, and the kirins had forced their way into the compound. We followed the surging horde, which acted without direction and put me in mind of an enraged minotaur trapped in a confined space filled with many small, breakable objects. They didn’t need directing, of course, as their only objective here was to cause as much destruction as possible, and judging by the plumes of smoke they had made a great start on that venture. In its wake, the dead and wounded lay on the ground - gutted, burned, stabbed, or stomped.

“We have to find Square Basher and the others,” I said. Usually one just had to follow the sound of her shouting obscenities at both her own ponies and the enemy, but here there was the risk of being drowned out.

We trotted the open square, the stench of blood and fire stinging my nostrils and the mad noise of combat assaulting my ears. Here, I lost sight of Uncle, but I would assume that he had wisely stayed back; a stallion of his advanced age would be unlikely to be anything but a hindrance here, and I found myself grimly looking forward to being too old to have to fight. I passed a drone, his chitin scorched with nirik-fire, but despite the horrendous burns to his flesh he clung onto life, gasping for air with ravaged lungs and throat. I had witnessed scenes like this before far too many times than I’d care for, but the shock of seeing it never truly leaves. Since then, I have chosen to take that as a sign I hadn’t lost myself.

“Miss, we need to move.” I looked over my shoulder to see Cannon Fodder politely tugging on Spring Rain’s upper foreleg, and that said mare was too busy vomiting. Before her, the body of a pony lying on its back, chest torn open and innards exposed to the hot sun and had already attracted the attention of flies, festered.

Spring Rain didn’t seem to hear my aide, so I trotted back, anxious for every second wasted. “You don’t have to follow,” I said.

She looked up at me, sick still dribbling down her sagging chin, but the sight of me seemed to restore her somewhat. “Aiyah,” she hissed, wiping her chin with the back of her hoof. “I go away and you’ll just screw up without me. Go on, lah! I’ll follow!”

By now, the unruly mob had split up into several smaller blobs, and each were enthusiastically engaged in some act of arson. As we trotted on, heading towards the squat, square structures that I thought the slaves were kept in, I saw that the enemy had recovered enough of its wits to organise a more effective defence. It was still rather sporadic, given the unravelling situation, and entire groups of niriks were setting fire to whatever they could get their incandescent hooves on without a care in the world, but soon, organised units of Blackhorns and Changeling soldiers had mobilised, and in serried block ranks and armed with muskets they mustered quickly from those hastily-constructed barracks huts. Whoever directed them seemed to have a decent idea of what they were doing, for instead of throwing those units directly into the rampaging mobs one at a time, they manoeuvred themselves around the resistance to cut off their obvious line of retreat back into the city. This stroke of basic competence ruled out Dorylus in my mind, but left only one other valid alternative.

I saw her. Queen Chrysalis hovered in the air above her troops, her face twisted into a rictus of anger and irritation. ‘Must I do everything myself?’ seemed to be what she was thinking as she bellowed orders to her drones, who responded with the sort of alacrity that could only come from being personally ordered about by royalty. I immediately ducked behind an old, worn-out shed, dragging my two companions with me. Up there was another Purestrain, but whether or not it was Dorylus himself, having extricated himself from the sticky situation at the execution wall, I couldn’t make out from down here; they all look very similar, anyway. There was plenty of cover for us down here, but unless Square Basher did something obvious to announce herself, and considering the incredible noise nopony could possibly say that she had missed the start of the uprising, it would be exceptionally difficult finding her in this complex. Still, I had to try.

We darted to the next structure, a large warehouse where a couple of drones dressed incongruently in denim overalls, apparently civilians or what passed for civilians in the Hives, were hiding. They were no threat, rather too afraid of the flames spreading through the compound to do anything, and so we left them to their own devices. As before, we dashed to each warehouse when we thought it safe, but it was to my immense relief that Chrysalis was much too distracted by the demanding task of stopping an unruly horde from burning down her hangar to notice two ponies and a kirin scurrying beneath her. Still, it was damned stressful work. If she happened to look down and slightly to the left at precisely the wrong moment then she would have spotted me as I darted between each building, and, well, I wouldn’t be here writing this.

The crack of disciplined musket fire split the air and sent a shock racing through my body. I couldn’t see what was going on from behind those warehouses, but I shuddered to think what the Changelings’ massed musketry had done to the kirins. The kirins might have had the advantage in the hell of close combat, thanks to their ability to become living torches, but they would have to get there first. Another volley followed, but that itself was accompanied by the most tremendous roar of hundreds of fires igniting, and a chorus of distorted screams filled the air. Battle, it seemed, was truly joined, and for once I was heading in the opposite direction to the violence.

That is until one of the warehouses ahead exploded. The blast of hot air struck me square in the muzzle, singeing my nose, and the deafening roar drowned out all else. Wooden beams, bricks and mortar, and glass were turned into a storm of shards of shrapnel. On instinct I leapt backwards and threw myself onto the ground to avoid the worst of the deadly hail of debris, but I’d collided with a shrieking Spring Rain and forced her down with me. Something punched me in the flank - a small lump of masonry that would leave a nasty bruise. I lifted my head to see a churning ball of fire rise up into the sky from the hollowed-out shell of a ruined warehouse, trailing a huge smear of black smoke.

“Aiyah, get off me you fat lump!” yelled Spring Rain, jabbing her hoof quite painfully into my belly. “You’re heavy!” I dutifully obliged, but refrained from pointing out that I might have just saved her from being shredded by debris with my body.

Cannon Fodder helped her back up to her hooves, and while he did that I peered over at the wreckage. A fire had taken hold in the ruins, with hot yellow flames dancing spasmodically and a pillar of smoke writhing in the wind. I heard a cheer, which sounded quite distant to my ears but I think that was due to the shrill whine of tinnitus. It was unlikely to be Changelings, so I grabbed Spring Rain once again, receiving a torrent of obscene language in a variety of different dialects, and half-led, half-dragged her in the direction of the burning warehouse.

Getting closer, it looked as though a large beast, like a dragon, had scooped out a chunk of one wall and spread the crushed masonry all over the place around it. As we neared we stumbled and scrambled over the ragged lumps of brick and concrete, precariously dodging the sharp shards of glass and steel poking through it. Whatever was stored in this warehouse must have been extremely flammable, for the fire raged with no sign of abating. Fuel or gas for the airships, I would have thought.

As we neared I heard a familiar voice; a loud, gruff, and deep Trottingham accent despite coming from a mare. “Alright, lads, that probably got their attention! Good work, Switch Blade, now let’s see what else you can blow up.”

And there she was, Sergeant Major Square Basher standing with a group of ponies at what one could hardly call a safe distance from the fires. I recognised Switch Blade, too, grinning like a maniac and beaming with pride at the destruction he had wrought. There were other ponies that had shared our stint in Camp Joy, plus a few of the Badlands pony slaves who appeared to be enjoying their newfound freedom and the opportunity to avenge their enslavement upon their former masters immensely. One of their number spotted us, poked the mare’s broad shoulder, and pointed in our direction with a series of sharp, energetic jabs. Her eyes widened to the size of saucers when she recognised me.

“Sir!” she bellowed, snapping to attention apparently on instinct and offering a crisp salute, despite the fires raging around her. I suppose me wearing this ridiculous uniform had something to do with it.

“At ease,” I said, as I trotted on over to her, stumbling here and there in the mass of debris all around. She relaxed, but only slightly, but a huge grin was stretched across her face. “It looks like you’ve started without me already.”

“Yes, sir,” said Square Basher, nodding eagerly. “Something got all the bugs running around in a panic. They talked about some kind of uprising in the city over there, sir, and we figured you had something to do with it, and if you didn’t it seemed like a good opportunity to try a bit of sabotage anyway.”

I dreaded to think what would have happened if it hadn’t, but at least here her impatience had paid off. Another crack of muskets reminded me that we hardly had the time or space to stand here and exchange pleasantries; the thought of what was going on elsewhere with the kirins was not a pleasant one, but I dared to turn and look in the direction of the sounds of horrific violence to see a number of pillars of roiling dark smoke rising into the sky. To hazard a guess, neither side were having a particularly fun time of it. I had to keep this brief.

“Good job,” I said, and Square Basher beamed with pride. “All of you. We’re getting out of here now. Spring Rain here is going to help us burn this place to the ground. We’ve brought muskets and weapons for you.”

The Equestrian soldiers were already familiar with such things and seemed much happier with them, but as for the formerly enslaved ponies they would have to use them as either clubs or spears. Knives, swords, and bayonets were distributed amongst the rest, and soon our little band was armed to the teeth, as it were. I felt marginally safer with about half a platoon’s worth of ponies to hide behind, except they seemed to expect me to lead from the front as usual.

“These are where the bugs stored the airship fuel,” explained Square Basher, as she stepped back and observed her ponies distributing the weapons amongst themselves. I assumed that she meant all of these warehouses, and not just the one that was still burning merrily away before us. “It turns out young Switch Blade here has a gift for arson.”

She shot a glance over at the spotty teenager fiddling with one of the muskets we’d brought, and he flashed a cheeky grin in response. I decided that I was probably happier not knowing how he had acquired those skills in the slums of Trottingham, but at any rate with Spring Rain here those would no longer be required.

“I’m glad he’s putting that ‘gift’ to the good of Princesses and Country,” I said. “We need to destroy the airships themselves; the Changelings can always bring in more fuel, but those ships will be harder for them to replace.”

Square Basher nodded her head. “Yes, sir!” she said, with unbridled enthusiasm for more violent and reckless destruction. “The airships are already fueled up and filled with gas.” She looked to the overwhelmingly colossal structure just beyond, towering over us, and likely thought the exact same thought that was occupying my fraught mind: just how are we supposed to destroy all of that? “It’s good you came when you did, sir. They were close to finishing them. Chrysalis demanded they be filled with fuel and gas so there wouldn’t be any delay to the invasion.”

“That should make it a bit easier for us.”

Square Basher nodded with exaggerated eagerness.

Our rag-tag team of former prisoners-of-war, slaves, a middle-aged kirin mare, my aide, and me were about as ready as we could possibly be, and it wouldn’t be long before the enemy realised that the ships themselves were the true target. We passed the burning warehouse at a brisk trot, hoping to use the flames and the smoke as cover as we made our way to the hangar. The air itself stung my throat to breathe, and given the still unhealed damage to my lungs from that horrid gas attack before, I was lagging behind somewhat. So was Spring Rain, being a civilian who, until today, her most arduous activities involved leading a fast food cart through streets, and making sure that she could keep up with everypony else gave me an excuse to slow down and slip back. The fire showed little sign of abating, apparently having found sufficient fuel to sustain itself, and with a bit of luck and this warm breeze, it might spread to the surrounding warehouses and engulf this entire miserable place. Preferably, I might add, without me in it.

Chapter 21

While Switch Blade’s act of wanton arson was immensely satisfying to anypony present who had suffered under Changeling incarceration, which, come to think of it, was everypony present, it did have the unwanted effect of attracting the enemy’s attention. They had total mastery of the skies, of course, the resistance lacking sufficient pegasi to take aerial superiority, as is the technical military term for it, and so it was impossible for Queen Chrysalis and her staff, who were hovering on buzzing wings some short distance away in the sky, not to notice the sudden and violent explosion occurring conspicuously and suspiciously far from where the main battle in the docks was taking place.

We swiftly got a move on when this awful realisation silently dawned on us; the enemy would know that there was more to this than merely a head-on, suicidal, frontal assault by the resistance on their docks, and that we were up to something. Here, the spaces between the warehouses were much wider, presumably to allow stevedores to drag wagons laden with goods around, and put me in mind of the boulevards through Canterlot where extravagant military parades took place to give the Royal Guard something to do in one thousand years of celestial peace. I felt exposed out here, as if on a stage with a bright spotlight exposing my position for all to see, and with my daft uniform on I might as well have been wearing a sandwich board with my name printed on it in neon letters. We clung to the sides of the ‘streets’, as close to the buildings as we could with our shoulders rubbing against those bare concrete walls.

[The nature of airships complicated usual nomenclature for their workers—'longshorecolt' is the typical term for a dockworker, while 'stevedore' is an internal cargo hauler and crane operator for loading and unloading the ship. The lack of traditional docks or, for that matter, a shore, likely led Blueblood to approximate to the next closest term.]

Ahead the hangar loomed over us, drawing closer and closer with every rapid gallop, and the way ahead looked clear. There were quite a lot of us, and more joined our little gang as we ran until it grew into about two platoons’ worth of ponies. They were all Badlands slaves who had freed themselves in the confusion, as identified by their similarly dusty-coloured coats and the curiously bastardised version of Old Ponish they spoke. They chattered amongst themselves excitedly, eager for their opportunity to revenge themselves upon their hated oppressors and grateful to the ‘Black Prince’ for liberating them, as though I’d personally cut their chains for them. It looked as though I was never going to get rid of that damned sobriquet now.

By now the smoke from the kirins’ battle filled the air with its acrid taste and scent. The black pillars of smoke, roiling in the hot breeze, must have been visible from miles around, and I imagined Princess Luna in the observation tower in Canterlot Castle would be able to see it if she directed her telescope east. I looked up, observing the churning obsidian clouds overhead and imagining the hellish conflagration that had taken hold at the gates, when I barreled straight into Cannon Fodder’s outstretched hoof.

“Sir!” he cried. I came to an immediate stop, and where his foreleg had struck my chest had already started to ache.

Ahead, blocking our path directly, was a unit of Blackhorns, perhaps fifty, perhaps more, and each armed with muskets. They’d apparently crossed the road from a path on our right, not much more than a dozen yards away or so, and stopped when they’d unexpectedly spotted us here. They stood curiously still, as if as shocked to see us as we were them. One, some kind of officer perhaps, stood there with his jaw gaping at us. At me, I quickly realised; my dubious reputation had just as much an effect on the enemy it seemed.

They had muskets, but so did we. But they were better trained with them than the majority of freed slaves on our side. If they fired off a volley then Yours Truly, standing out in front, would be thoroughly ventilated with shot. The calculation was made in a fraction of a second, and there was only one thing for it.

“Charge!” I roared. The cry was borne up by dozens of enraged voices; the battle-cry of ponies who had suffered most grievous injustice at the hooves of the hated enemy. With kris drawn I put action to that singular word and galloped headlong into the stunned drones.

The ponies all followed, to my relief and mild surprise, and even Spring Rain was still by my side. Fear all but overtook me - I must have been insane to do this - but the Blackhorns recoiled visibly at the sight of our suicidal charge. I saw the officer scream at his drones to fire, though I did not hear it with the heathen curses and shouts all around me, and before their panicked formation could even begin to sort itself, form a line, and let off a volley that would have decimated our ranks, I plunged the rippled steel into his exposed neck. His barked orders faded to a gurgle as his mouth filled with blood, and I tore the blade free with a hideous spray of arterial ichor.

The ponies swept past me and collided with the drones. There was a hideous crashing sound from the impact of bodies, like a heavy safe dropped from a great height, as the weight of the charge forced us deep into their ranks. Some drones, presumably used to murdering defenceless colts and fillies, dropped their weapons and ran from the vengeful ponies. Some stood their ground, and were swiftly cut down. I saw Square Basher, steel glinting brightly in the hot sun from the bayonet held in her mouth, swat a bladed hoof thrust at her out of the way, and slash the drone in the face. Switch Blade, true to his name, held his bayonet in his hoof, and tore into Changeling bodies with precise, deadly stabs that found the vulnerable gaps between their chitinous plates. As for the freed slaves, buoyed by their apparent success, they whooped and yelled like buffalo braves; what they lacked in training and skill, they made up for with enthusiasm and a thirst for vengeance. Three or four of them piled onto a hapless drone, too slow to retreat with his fellows, and they wrestled him to the ground and repeatedly stabbed and kicked him until he ceased to move.

Yet we would not have it entirely our own way. The Blackhorns rallied with the arrival of reinforcements; grim-faced, professional Changeling soldiers, who, if they were anything like Equestrians, were grateful for some excitement after weeks of sitting around and doing nothing, joined their amateurish brothers-in-arms. They surged into the flank of our disorganised mob in close ranks, Royal Guard-style, and the freed slaves who rushed to meet them were swiftly cut down.

As for me, I was preoccupied with my own survival. The kris was a ceremonial weapon, worn now for tradition, but the example that Uncle had presented me with proved to be just as lethal as any blade in the Equestrian arsenal. I think I got the hang of it quite quickly, not having much of a choice in battle, and swiftly adjusted my usual techniques to account for the shorter reach and the unique wavy blade. It didn’t take well to hacking into chitin like a Pattern ‘12 sabre, and I feared that trying to do so would break the blade, so, rather like using a rapier I sought those vulnerable gaps between the chitin.

The world shrank to within the range of my blade - blood, ichor, gore, and steel; the smell and the taste of it was overpowering. I frantically stabbed into any flash of gleaming black chitin and grey tunic I saw. Shouts and screams chorused all around me, as did the clash of steel and the sickening wet sounds of flesh ripped and torn. My head was pounding and I felt sick. I'd been struck in the shoulder by a hoof or the butt of a musket, I don’t know, but I felt the pain only dully. Fear and adrenaline kept me going. Somewhere, Square Basher yelled above the din, something about how they weren’t killing Changelings fast enough for her liking, and with the way they kept on coming I was inclined to agree. Cannon Fodder stuck to my side as always, wielding his bayonet-tipped musket like an old Royal Guard spear, gutting whomever came too close with an almost mathematical precision.

Spring Rain was shrieking in raw terror; I was surprised, and considering that she clung to me tightly I was rather grateful too, that she hadn’t turned into a nirik, but I suppose her fear had overcome her anger here. Still, she’d grabbed a discarded bayonet off the ground, stained with blood along the length of its blade, and swung it with wild slashes that nevertheless kept any drones at a hoof's length from her.

It could have been seconds, or minutes, or even hours, I don’t know how long this hideous ordeal lasted. Our numbers had thinned, and the dead were piling up around us in grotesque heaps; lightless eyes stared out, bodies streaked with bright crimson. The survivors fought with the ferocity of the truly desperate, getting close without fear for they had nothing left to lose but their freedom and their lives. They would overwhelm drones one at a time, dragging each one down to the ground and plunging their blades into writhing bodies, yelling their hatred for their oppressors with every clumsy thrust. Their savagery overwhelmed even that of the Changelings.

Yet it somehow made its way through into my blooddrunk mind that we were being surrounded. As much as I fought and killed, the enemy just kept on coming as a seemingly endless horde that battered itself against our desperate position. Soon the drones were climbing over the dead and wounded, theirs and ours, to get at us. The more enterprising sort took to the air, dodging frantic thrusts with bayonets to dive down and slash at anypony foolish enough to raise their head. A Changeling blade struck my left shoulder, but all I felt was something warm and wet trickle down my foreleg. My horn ached with the exertion of swinging this blade around; Faust, I just wanted it to end.

A dark shadow fell upon us. Cannon Fodder, his front splattered with stinking green ichor, tugged at my arm as I sank my blade into a snarling drone’s eye, shouted something that I couldn’t make out above the din of battle and pointed upwards. I looked up, and was grateful that the compulsion to stop and look up at a passing airship affected the Changelings as much as it did ponies. Hovering at what I thought was quite dangerously close to us ground-bound ponies, that I might touch the bottom with my outstretched hoof if somepony threw me upwards with sufficient velocity, and blotting out the sun, the underside of the gondola was a dark, wooden structure, seemingly patched together from parts of other ships, and from it trailed a number of black flags of varying sizes and shapes, from standard rectangular bits of cloth to long pennants. The gondola itself, about the same size as my yacht, hung from a rigid, pale grey envelope patched with seemingly any cloth that its crew could get their hooves on.

A shrill, almost impossibly loud cry split the air. A figure stood at the side of the gondola, peering down at the carnage below, and was soon joined by another, and another, and so on. Ponies and other creatures of all shapes and sizes joined them. The first one leapt over the side - a pegasus, plunging like a dropped stone straight into the enemy’s formation. Her wings flared at the last possible moment, arresting what might otherwise have been a damaging fall. The edges of her wings were tipped in polished steel, which glittered like diamonds even in the shade. As she landed, she flexed her long, elegant wings, and the bladed tips ripped into the stunned and astonished drones around her. Green ichor fountained as Golden Hook had finally arrived.

Ropes fell from the side of the ship, and those creatures not blessed with the gift of flight descended down them. They were mostly earth ponies and unicorns, but in addition to those it seemed that almost every sapient race able to fit onboard a small airship was present: kirins and griffons in the main, but even teenaged dragons and a yak, who must have been suffering even more than I in this awful heat. Armed with a variety of weapons to match the diversity of their origins, though most were short blades of some sort, the pirates fell upon the stunned Changelings and slaughtered them in a matter of a few horrific seconds. Their swordplay was amateurish, but Golden Hook was something else entirely; to say that she fought with the grace of a dancer would be an awful cliche to use, but in certain occasions such cliches are most apt. She weaved through the battlefield on hooves that barely touched the ground, her wings fluttering elegantly and their bladed tips catching the bright sunlight, and with each delicate beat of her wings those thin little daggers sliced effortlessly into exposed flesh between chitin plates. Despite being in her late forties and therefore just old enough to be my mother, it seemed that her lethal skills in battle were undimmed by age.

Then it was over. The last of the drones had fled, pursued by more pegasi into the docks. I could take stock of myself and our force; I’d received a little more than the usual assortment of minor cuts in addition to that stinging slash on my shoulder, and Spring Rain’s hard work in repairing and cleaning my uniform had been thoroughly undone with all of the blood, ichor, and holes in it. Cannon Fodder, on the other hoof, looked and smelt exactly as he had done earlier that morning, which I took to mean that he was in as close to fine health as was possible for him. My aide calmly sat on his haunches and, despite the awful sight of disembowelled drones and ponies all around, reached into one of his voluminous pockets and produced a ration bar to munch on, and I declined his offer on account of not feeling particularly hungry after all of that. Spring Rain seemed unharmed, but the shocked, vacant stare at nothing in particular and the quiet shivering of her body showed that her wounds were more than physical in nature. Square Basher had suffered a few bruises and a rather nasty-looking cut to her cheek that would likely become yet another scar, and she busied herself going around the other survivors - the freed slaves, some of whom were relieving their frustration and grief by mutilating the corpses of dead drones. Switch Blade’s foreleg was sliced open by a Changeling blade, and he hissed and grunted in pain, though insisted that he was fine, as one of the calmer freed slaves applied a bandage and a tourniquet.

“Prince Blueblood!” shouted Golden Hook, a huge, psychotic grin on her pretty face as she trotted on over. “You started without us! I would have been ever so disappointed if I missed this party.”

“The Changelings gatecrashed,” I said, not quite in the mood for witty badinage with my head pounding, limbs aching, and my mouth full of blood. “How many are you?”

Her wings folded carefully at her sides, and I wondered how many would-be pegasi warriors had inadvertently punctured themselves doing that with wingblades on. The manic smile softened to something a little less disturbing, but her eyes were still wide with excitement and her cheeks flushed crimson, and her breathing had become low, deep, and husky. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that this mare was aroused by the violence, and, without meaning to be so vulgar as to brag, I’d seen enough of that in my time to know. She still wore her embroidered crimson ru, with the addition of a white sash tied around her narrow waist into which a number of small daggers had been placed. Her movement was cat-like, as sensual as the hungry look in her glittering eyes, with a slow, deliberate gait that scarcely left hoofprints in the dusty, bloodstained ground. If it wasn’t for the not-inconsiderable amount of weariness weighing me down as much as a real weight upon my shoulders and that dozens of ponies were all around us, I might have seized her right then and there and had my way with her.

“I scraped together what I could of the Black Flag Fleet together when we saw the smoke from Marelacca,” she said, stepping rather close and peering up at me, her hot, scented breath and wafting perfume filling my nostrils and briefly masking that of blood and effluence. She held that gaze for a moment longer, then with a sharp bark of laughter she playfully swatted my chest with an impetuous hoof and stepped back to a far more comfortable distance; she was teasing me while ponies and kirins were dying, and I was hardly in the mood to put up with it.

“It doesn’t look like much,” I said, sniffing with affected haughtiness at the ragtag group of ruffians who were already going through the pockets of dead Blackhorns and finding not much interesting or valuable to loot. In truth, after everything that had been said about the feared pirates of the Strait of Marelacca, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit let down; I’d expected a damned sight more than a single airship apparently held aloft by the collective prayers of its crew, and had hoped instead for a veritable armada and an army. It was my fault really, having set my expectations much too high; after a lifetime of disappointments I really ought to have learnt by now.

If Golden Hook was offended by my lack of gratitude she didn’t show it. “Don’t you worry, we’ve landed crew all over the docks and more are on their way. I have also sent a few raiding parties into the city itself to keep the enemy’s attention divided and, well, to steal anything and everything they can carry.”

“Not from the civilians, I hope,” I said.

Golden Hook shrugged. “They are pirates, after all, it’s what we do. You knew this when you asked for our help.”

That I did, and to say that I was desperate was underselling my feelings on the matter by several orders of magnitude. I hoped that the ponies in this city and I would not come to regret the decision I had made, though I imagined what they would do now would pale in comparison to the Changelings’ reprisals. Nevertheless, there was no point dwelling on it now, and I still had a job to do.

“The ships in the hangar,” I said, nodding in the direction of said blight on the landscape. “That’s our goal. We need to destroy them.”

“Such a shame.” Golden Hook shook her head with mock sadness. “The Black Flag Fleet could do with a battleship or two.”

[The precise classification of the ships gathered for Operation: Sunburn is still heavily debated among military historians, and it is unlikely that these pirate vessels conformed to the same standards as that of Equestria or other kingdoms. ‘Battleship’ is not an official classification for airships, so it is likely that Golden Hook used the term merely to describe large and heavily-armed and armoured airships.]

“We’re destroying them,” I insisted. “I can’t risk them falling back into enemy hooves.” Or the pirates’ either, for that matter. Should I survive this, the Equestrian admiralty would be less than enthused if they found out I’d outfitted the pirates with state-of-the-art military airships. “Besides, I thought you were going to retire.”

“Oh, I am,” she said, breathing a husky sigh. Her wings flittered against her lithe body, and the blood that coated the blades splattered messily around her hooves like morning dew shaken from leaves. “I will miss the thrill of battle, though. As a warrior, I’m sure you understand.”

I have to admit, I was rather struck by the staggering difference between the almost demure mare I’d met in the cave earlier that day and the psychotic maniac who stood before me, and I could only conclude that she must have been showing a sort of ‘front’ for me for the negotiation. The bloodthirsty lunatic that stood before me was her true self, as it were, uninhibited by such social mores about not gutting creatures, and yet the masque she wore earlier was most convincing. She might make a fine commissar, I thought, though I was hesitant to recommend her to Princess Luna. Despite her insane lust for violence, she still kept a very tight leash on her crew; as I sat to drink from a water canteen, I observed one of her crew, a unicorn missing one ear and much of the side of his face, wrest a prized musket from a freed slave pony, and for his efforts received a sharp blow to the intact side of his head from his captain and a tirade in half a dozen different dialects of Cathaynese concerning his dubious parentage. After a few moments of such vile invective that even Square Basher blushed even though she understood none of it, she was able to form coherent sentences again.

“You son of a Diamond Dog, we do not steal from slaves!” she shrieked at the cowering pirate, his one good ear flat against his head. “We do not steal from those who have had everything taken away from them but their lives! No, we give them a weapon and we invite them to join us so they may avenge themselves. Have you forgotten where we come from?”

She returned the stolen weapon back to its original thief, the bewildered slave who was nevertheless grateful for its return, and then, in Ponish, addressed the gathered mass of surviving freed slaves: “The forgotten of Equus are all welcome under the banner of the Black Flag Fleet! Fight with us today and earn your freedom with the blood of Changelings, and you may prove yourselves worthy of joining our ranks!”

That ‘retirement’ was looking less and less likely by the second, either that or managing a gambling den in Cathay might involve considerably more violence than one would normally find at the Casino Royale in Monacolt. It occurred to me that I had no idea of her background, and I thought that it was quite rude to ask, but I would later find out that my impression that she had clawed her way up from a life of destitution over a mountain of corpses proved to be true. [Golden Hook’s origins are not well-documented, but it is believed that prior to her career as a pirate she was a prostitute, and later a concubine of a succession of pirate captains until she seized control of the fleet herself.]

I caught Square Basher’s eye, who understood perfectly that last speech, and, though she would never dare question the judgement of a superior officer, seemed to be saying ‘I do hope you know what you’re doing’. In truth, I thought much the same thing too. Besides, only a few freed slaves showed any particular interest, and those were mostly out of politeness too. Innumerable leagues from home, they had never heard of Golden Hook and the Black Flag Fleet, but one pony they had heard of was the Black Prince, scourge of the Hives and the Liberator of the Tribes and what not.

One of their number, a tall, slender stallion with his back criss-crossed with scars so that it looked like a game of noughts-and-crosses had been played on it with a knife (rather like mine), approached me and bowed low. “Black Prince,” he said in accented Ponish, and I immediately felt rather self-conscious and embarrassed at the almost reverent use of that silly nickname, “we fight with you this day, tomorrow, and forever if need be. Return us to our homeland, and we will see its soil bathed in the blood of the oppressors.”

Well, that sounded rather unhygienic, though I had heard that blood makes an excellent fertiliser. I muttered something about how grateful I was to have such brave warriors on my side and patted him on the head, and that seemed to make him happy.

It took but a few more minutes to get ourselves organised again. Those too wounded to continue to fight were dragged away, either to expire or to await either rescue or, as was more likely given the nature of partisan warfare and as this was, for most of them, a suicide mission, await re-capture by the enemy once the smoke cleared. Square Basher, slipping effortlessly back into her old role as Sergeant Major, directed much of it, though she left the pirates to their own devices, perhaps wisely. In the too-short reprieve we were granted, the survivors drank from shared canteens, snacked on whatever was available, and readied themselves for what was to come next.

While that was going on, and the sounds of violence that had formed the background music to this gorey scene had intensified with what must have been the arrival of yet more pirates all over the docks, I took the opportunity to check on Spring Rain. It was not lost on me that our positions had been reversed that day; before, it was she who was my guide in this foreign city, upon whom I was reliant for almost everything related to my survival there to the point that I might have referred to her as a surrogate mother without fear of contradiction or much embarrassment on my part, but now in the maelstrom and chaos of battle I was her reluctant guide through its myriad horrors. I think we much preferred the previous arrangement. She had seen violence before when she rescued me, but the tableau that stretched out before her now made that previous engagement look like an elementary school tussle. She sat on her haunches, one of Cannon Fodder’s ration bars in her hoof opened but uneaten, and stared out into space. Her eyes seemed to rest upon the pile of bodies where the Equestrian soldiers had dumped the bodies (a pointless exercise that Square Basher had come up with to keep them occupied).

“You can come back with me,” I said to her, and she snapped out of her daze with a jolt. “To Equestria I mean, you’ll be safe there.”

“Ah, what?” she said. “To live in your palace?”

I shrugged vaguely; making tedious conversation with her would at least take our minds off the horrors all around us for a few more moments. “Someone needs to keep an eye on the servants,” I said. “I can never trust them on their own; I’m sure one of the maids steals my pocket squares when I’m not looking, much to the irritation of my valet.”

Spring Rain looked up at me with a strange expression. “Aiyah, we really are from two different worlds. I just want to cook.”

“I’ve acquired a taste for nasi goreng. My chef Guiseppe is a temperamental sort; a certifiable genius, yes, but prone to going on strike at the slightest perceived insult. I think I’ll need a more reliable chef if I want to have meals at a consistent time.”

“You offering me a job? Ah, don’t talk cock, lah.” She shook her head, but she was smiling at least, albeit weakly; the opportunity to insult me seemed to perk her up a little. “Is this what it’s like for you?”

“More or less,” I said, following her gaze to the bodies all around us.

“Your life sounds awful.” No argument there, thought I.

“It’s all for a good cause, one hopes, and I can return to my palace when it’s all over.” Should I survive the war, of course, which, given the circumstances I found myself in, seemed rather unlikely. The chances of me making it through that day looked terribly remote, but I was hardly going to give up after having come so far. Fighting gave me a slim chance of survival, versus letting myself be captured again, which, after everything I had been through, left no chance.

There was no time like the present to find out. The few minutes of rest had only worsened my anxiety about it all, making the metaphorical ice-cold serpent writhe and convulse in my stomach until I felt the urge to vomit once more. I’d taken to pacing to try and relieve the energy, affecting to look as though I was deep in thought when I was merely fretting about my immediate demise. Everypony else seemed ready, so I gave the order that we were to move out and get this misery over with, though not exactly in those terms. The Equestrians were eager, practically chomping at the bit to get stuck into the Changelings, and fell into rank quickly, while the freed slaves, undisciplined, excitable, and very enthusiastic, took a little more time to get themselves organised. The pirates, on the other hoof, while I took them to be little more than a disorganised mob like the kirin resistance, had prepared themselves quickly, and formed themselves into our ranks with disciplined ease; I suppose one doesn’t rise to the title of the most feared pirate queen in the region without learning a thing or two about organising cutthroats and blackguards, and Golden Hook flashed a knowing smile as I observed her crew checking and readying their blades.

We moved at a brisk trot towards the hangar; Equestrian prisoners of war, Badlands pony slaves, a band of pirates, a kirin fast food vendor, and a Prince - it sounded like the opening to an overly long and not very funny joke. The kirins and the pirates elsewhere must have been doing their jobs as very loud and violent diversions very well, as we were not attacked again before we reached it. That is not to say that we did not encounter any Changelings along the way; small scattered groups, some clearly fleeing the carnage elsewhere, crossed our path a few times. Upon seeing us they each fled, either galloping away or taking to the skies where they would, in theory, be safest. A few of the freed slaves would attempt to chase after them, but a bellowed order from Square Basher reined them in. Even with the language barrier, her intent was very clear.

“There’ll be more Changelings inside the hangar,” I said, to appease them.

As it turned out, I was absolutely correct in that assessment. We reached the small door in the side of the hangar unmolested, a different one from the one that I had been led through earlier. There was a small group of Changeling drones guarding it, and they promptly scattered like cockroaches upon seeing us; the sight of us, all quite heavily armed and covered in blood and ichor, led by Yours Truly, must have prompted them to take the logical response of running away, and for that I felt a slight degree of envy. It occurred to me when we reached the hangar that I had lost sight of Chrysalis, and I had a dreadful feeling that the full scale of the problem had finally reached her by way of a hapless drone nominated to tell her bad news, and was therefore waiting for me inside. Few things made me quite as anxious as a shut door, more for my overactive imagination and paranoia conjuring all sorts of horrors to lurk behind it, such that it was a relief when Cannon Fodder shoved it open and was greeted with a hail of musket fire.

I hissed and flinched away from the open door. Terror gripped me, but I saw that they had completely failed to hit my aide at all. He raised his bayonet-tipped musket over his head and hurled it like a spear somewhere into the hangar. A yelp of pain informed me that he had found his target.

“They’re reloading, sir!” he shouted.

“Everypony inside, and find cover!” I ordered. It would take them a few moments to reload - three rounds a minute was supposed to be the ‘standard’ - so I made sure that I was first in. The hangar itself was just as I remembered it, and still with the assortment of large boxes and crates full of supplies and things. They were better than nothing, so I galloped as hard as I could and threw myself behind one. And when I say ‘threw’, I mean it; it damn well hurt when I belly-flopped on the concrete ground, but at least my hide remained un-perforated. There, mostly safe from another volley, I could peek around the side of my new favourite box in all Equus and see for myself just how royally screwed I was.

The Changelings had positioned themselves above us on the walkway; there were about ten of them up there, and I could see them going through the tricky process of reloading their muskets. The small clouds of smoke swirled around them. I was immensely thankful that though they had sufficient time to plan this ambush, they hadn’t removed the assortment of wooden boxes here. If they had, they would have been able to pick us off at their leisure. That said, they were clever enough to hurl a grenade in my direction. I saw it, arcing through the air towards me, trailing a thin white trail of smoke from the lit fuse. With a yelp of panic, I aimed a telekinetic blast in its direction. The grenade bounced away from me, exploding in mid-air with a sharp, loud ‘crack’. I ducked under the box again as shrapnel showered from above, and then peered over again to see that the sudden explosion had briefly scattered the drones.

[It bears mentioning that Blueblood's desperation tactic here, while quite effective, is difficult to efficiently perform in the heat of battle. Spotting and deflecting ordnance was taught to unicorn Guards after the casualties at Virion Hive, but it quickly became clear that doing so regularly with any degree of precision while under live fire can be dangerous to the caster and their unit, as a single panicked miscalculation can ricochet said ordnance into one's own lines, and it places high stress on one's magical capacity. "Deflector" thus became a revered special class of Guards, especially as the conflict settled into trench warfare.]

There were bound to be more elsewhere in this hangar. As the rest of our cobbled-together unit swarmed through the open door, I fired off a few magic blasts in the direction of the drones as they regrouped on the walkway. I don’t think I hit any of them, the energy sparking harmlessly against the metal grating, but it was enough to throw them off for a bit.

The airships were still there - the huge, floating structures, plated with steel armour as I remembered them - and were in dire need of igniting. I’d done it before, albeit entirely accidentally with a poorly-aimed flare spell that set the airship I was on ablaze. It would be possible for me to replicate that, I thought, provided that I could get close enough to reliably hit the highly flammable gas cells. That, of course, was a problem, as I needed to get up on that gangway to have a decent chance of directing the flare between the armour plates.

The others swarmed in after me. Those with loaded muskets fired off a volley at the Changelings above, which, while not hitting them, at least spoiled their reloading a little longer. Spring Rain, almost dragged along by Cannon Fodder, joined me in the safety behind this enormous box, followed by Square Basher, Switch Blade, and the other Equestrians. Huddled together, it occurred to me that we were sitting ducks if the enemy grew bored of taking potshots at us with muskets and swarmed us from the air. The stairs up to the gangway were further along in the hangar, across a path that was desperately exposed and devoid of reliable cover. The drones might have been poor shots, but there were enough of them up there that should we take our chances and gallop across, and somehow not falter, then at least a few of us would be felled by the next volley, and given the distinctive uniform I wore that made me stand out like a pre-tied bow tie in high society dinner they’d all be aiming directly for me.

It was a fine mess, as usual. I heard the next volley, a rippling crackle that briefly drowned the incessant shouting, and a yelp or two of pain. The air stank of burnt powder and blood. There was no time to stop and look to see who had been hit, but we had another brief window while they reloaded.

“Follow me!” I shouted. Whether or not it was heard I couldn’t be sure, but when an officer runs off somewhere ponies will usually follow, one hopes, even into the lungs of Tartarus if sufficiently motivated. Not daring to look back, I nevertheless heard and felt the sound of hooves on concrete behind me. Above, griffons and pegasi, each clad in a multitude of exotic garb from all over the region, swarmed into a loose formation of sorts above us and hurled themselves into an oncoming swarm of drones. Battle, it seemed, was truly joined inside this structure vast enough to host one. A veritable horde of drones massed between us and the stairs, buzzing around like a hideous cloud of fat, ugly flies in the air, ready to dive straight upon us. It seemed the only way was to try and punch our way through with brute force, but as was more than likely they would bog us down with numbers; they only had to keep us from getting to the airships themselves.

A shrill, ululating cry from above pierced through shouts and screams and roars of battle. I felt the wind briefly over my coat, as Golden Hook swept straight into the heart of the formation, polished wingtips glittering brightly. The drones were stunned by her brazenness, and her wingblades were a veritable tornado of steel as they sliced and ripped into chitin and flesh. From where I was, galloping away on the ground, I saw only a spinning, chaotic mass of flailing limbs and buzzing wings, and intermittent splatters of emerald ichor that fell like waste hurled from an earth pony villager’s window. The other airborne pirates joined her; the war cries of griffons were sharp and ear splitting as they hurled themselves with their pegasi brethren into swirling formation. Still, the enemy had numbers on their side, and though they fought with as much savagery as their legal status as outlaws implied, the pirates were not enough to keep the drones off our backs.

Drones in twos and threes dove into our beleaguered group, picking out the stragglers, it seemed. I saw one such group dive straight for one pony, and pile upon the poor blighter and hacked at him with blades. Another tried it with a kirin, but with admirable self-control he burst into flames at the right moment, and the drones were immolated in a burning embrace.

“For Celestia’s sake, stick together!” I cried; the last thing I wanted was to be left alone here and picked off.

“You heard the Commissar!” bellowed Square Basher. “Close formation!”

Our group bunched up tightly, still galloping on to the stairs; I was still at the front, wedged in with Cannon Fodder on one side and Spring Rain on the other, who in turn was sandwiched against Square Basher’s hulking form. We were near. A section of drones descended from above to block us, too close for them to fire off a volley but I had no such issues; a mad spray of unrefined magic flew from my aching horn, hitting one to form a deep crater in the chitin on his chest, and getting the others to duck.

We smashed into them, this time with enough momentum to carry the charge through. Bodies were crushed and pulped underhoof as we stampeded into them. Shoulder to shoulder, we forced our way through their blockade, but with the dense press of bodies our charge slowed to a crawl. I could scarcely breathe, wedged in with so many ponies and drones, and had hardly enough space to even swing my kris. A jagged hoof struck my nose, and the front of my face exploded in pain. Blood flowed out of my broken nose like a stream and stars swam before my eyes. My vision was filled with gnashing maws and fangs, thrashing hooves, and glints of steel, my mouth with blood and ichor. Hoof-to-hoof combat was never my forte, I’d rather have a nice length of steel between me and the enemy, or, failing that, magic. Unfortunately, whatever magic I summoned to try and blast the enemy directly in the face fizzled and faded the moment I summoned it, and my panic turned into frustration when I worked out that Cannon Fodder was by my side. I could only throw my hooves against hardened chitin, and hope to open up enough space to plunge my blade into any glimpse of exposed flesh.

At long last I’d forced my way to the foot of the stairs with my fellow ponies, having butchered a bloody path there. Everything hurt to some degree or another, and to top it off I’d have to climb stairs while being assaulted by the enemy.

“Go, sir!” shouted Square Basher. She’d turned around to guard the foot of the stairwell, her front bloodied and a nasty set of hoofprint-shaped bruises spread over her bare chest. “We’ll cover you!”

I don’t normally take orders from the lower ranks, but in this case I was happy to make an exception. After a brief second to make sure that Cannon Fodder and Spring Rain were still with me, I scrambled up those metal steps. My hooves were slick with blood and ichor, so I slipped on a few steps with a heart-stopping lurch. I felt as though my own blood, or as much as was still in me, was on fire, making every single desperate exertion agonising. At about halfway up I looked back to see that Square Basher and the ponies had grouped around the stairwell and were fighting off savage attacks from the enemy surrounding them. It was then that my hooves began to itch, heralding some disturbing thing that my subconscious had noticed but had yet to articulate fully in a coherent way.

Upon reaching the top of the stairs and the gangway suspended over the hangar, I felt about ready for death. I had trotted as fast as I dared up those stairs, and considering how I was already in a fragile state, it was no wonder that I was a coughing, wheezing wreck. That Spring Rain was in much the same way, leaning against the railing creaking precariously under her weight and gasping for air, stopped her from making another inevitable comment about my weight and lack of exercise. [Blueblood’s unduly low opinion of his character seems to have extended to some physical traits. He has consistently demonstrated excellent endurance, despite his injuries, diet, and vices, but unfortunately was incapable of recognising it.] As for Cannon Fodder, he only seemed modestly out of breath, and I marvelled at the example of peak equine physical fitness standing before me, staring into space with the air of a stallion waiting for a train to arrive.

The gangway was clear, though the battle on the floor below and in the air all around was still running its grisly course, and the itching in the frogs of my forehooves that had made itself felt above the sensations of exhaustion, pain, and nausea grew more noticeable. My hindbrain was shouting at me that something was wrong, but as ever could not articulate it in a way that my conscious mind, already being quite overloaded with the madness all around, could interpret. Here, however, as I fought to catch my breath, sucking in deep lungfuls of air reeking with blood and smoke as I too leaned against that fragile-looking railing, I looked through the fuzzy dancing stars before my eyes to see what in the blazes was all around me.

I remembered the gangway, of course, dragging boxes from a cargo airship and catching furtive bits of conversation with Square Basher, but this wasn’t anywhere near the same place as before. We were much further along, and the gangway here spread out to a larger platform that reached the back of the hangar itself. There, I saw huge metal tanks, like grain silos, from which an array of pipes led to hatches in each airship. An assortment of exciting warning labels in vivid colours led me to believe that these were the pumps that fueled each of the airships. Further along behind us, I spotted the smaller cargo ship that I had worked on before, still there and dwarfed by its more imposing brethren. In seconds I quickly formulated a hasty plan.

“This way!” I shouted, tapping Spring Rain in the shoulder. She looked like she might protest, but instead nodded wearily and trotted on after me towards those tanks. This, I hoped, was her moment to shine.

Chapter 22

I should have known that it was going all too well for me. I was alive and well, in a manner of speaking, and we had what looked like a clear run to the fuel tanks. However, the itching in the frogs of my forehooves persisted, even as they ached from pounding against the metal as we half-galloped, half-trotted to our goal. The realisation came to me, like the glaring bright light of the sun piercing through a dull overcast sky, when I noticed that more than an entire minute had passed without us being shot at, stabbed, or otherwise attacked. Anypony else might have taken that as a good sign; after all, not being assaulted by murderous Changelings out for one’s blood is usually seen as a net positive by most creatures of the world, but over the course of my career I had since learnt from first-hoof experience that all that it really meant was that the little blighters were up to no good again and I was running head first into an ambush.

[Blueblood has well described the 'healthy paranoia' that characterised much of the Changeling wars, especially in dealing with such an insidious foe that can appear as anypony or anything. The popular belief amongst many soldiers was that time spent in heavy combat was the most relaxing of all, for at least then they would know where the enemy was.]

As ever, this dawning realisation that I was running headlong into a trap came rather too late, and my subconscious would only have sufficient time to gloat and say ‘I told you so’ before it all went to Tartarus in a hoof basket. The battle in the hangar raged all around us with little sign of one side or the other gaining a decisive upper hoof; under the elevated walkway the murderous brawl between the Changeling garrison and our ragtag army of misfits stained the hangar floor in crimson and emerald, while all around, above and below us on this unsettlingly wobbly metal walkway, Changelings, pegasi, griffons, and even the odd teenaged dragon soared, dived, and clashed in their lethal aerial dance. Yet as we neared the huge fuel tanks with enormous pipes, each large enough for me to comfortably swim through were I a seapony, leading up and over to the airships, and I could see those interesting and exciting warning signs in greater detail, it occurred to me that since we'd ascended those ghastly steps to the walkway that no one had tried to stop us reaching the fuel tanks.

That stopped me directly in my tracks, and might have saved my life too. Cannon Fodder and Spring Rain likewise stopped, the latter confused and the former apparently assuming that all of this was intentional on my part. There, to the left of us and rising from below with a dozen Changeling drones armed with muskets at the ready, Dorylus sneered at me with an expression that was filled with equal parts triumph and gloating vengeance.

“Fire!” he bellowed, and I could hear the sheer relish in his voice above the din of battle. Entirely acting on instinct, I hurled myself to the floor, grabbing Spring Rain’s small, soft body with me. She yelped as I all but fell on top of her, shielding her body largely by accident (that’s what I now tell ponies), and the walkway itself shuddered with the impact. Cannon Fodder likewise threw himself down. Muskets cracked and the otherwise lethal hail of shot ripped harmlessly into the empty air where, had we carried on running, we’d have occupied.

“You idiot!” The distinctively unhappy tone of what was unmistakably Queen Chrysalis’ was enough for me to dare to lift my head up from the relative safety of under my hooves. I saw her, her aquiline face twisted into a rictus of pure apoplexy, hovering in mid air before a now-cowering Dorylus. Her skeletally thin chest heaved with barely-contained rage, as though her internal organs might suddenly erupt forth from them and attack the terrified Purestrain that was the evident source of her considerable ire. She raised a long, elegant foreleg and swung it in a wide, back-hoof arc and struck her subordinate square in the cheek with a loud ‘smack’, and his head snapped to the side under the blow and he hissed in pain.

Chrysalis then thrust her snout against Dorylus’, her eyes seeming to glow with the fires of her evident contempt for him. “You’ll hit the fuel tanks!” she snarled. “You’ll blow us all up! Can’t you do anything right?”

“My Queen, I-” Dorylus stammered out pathetically. A comparison to a kicked puppy would be a most apt description of the expression he pulled. I watched as the drones seemed almost embarrassed by the display of their boss being berated so by their Queen, and, while they all seemed to be distracted by what was going on, inched my way closer to the tanks by crawling on my belly with agonising slowness.

“Enough!” bellowed Chrysalis. “No more! No more of your insipid excuses. I was a fool to listen to you! To think even for a minute that your competence could match your boundless ambition!”

Now, contrary to the impression that silly adventure stories might give of the inherent volatility of large metal structures containing highly flammable fuel, they tend not to immediately blow up if even a bumblebee happens to nudge into them a little too hard. Fuel needs something to ignite it, and a fusillade of musket shot or even magic would do little more than puncture its container. This is exactly what had happened; while it was, in its own way, very satisfying to watch Dorylus being told off by Chrysalis yet again, I tore my attention away from the spectacle to those fuel tanks. Most of the volley that was fired at us struck the far wall beyond, but these weapons are infamously inaccurate, which is why earth ponies had to stand in large clumps in the hope that at least one of them might hit the metaphorical barn door, and two, perhaps even three, had struck the tanks themselves. These had formed rather large holes, almost as wide as my hoof, with jagged edges, from which the fuel within spewed forth to form a slowly-growing puddle on the suspended platform. [Musket shot was made of lead, which, as a soft metal, tended to shatter when it hit a target. This explains why the holes made by the shot were so large.]

I could smell the acrid tang of fuel, even above that of my own sweat and fear, and that, I assumed, could only be a good thing. Science was never my strong point, and neither were any academic subjects for that matter, but I’d smoked enough cigars to know that air was needed to ignite something, and the fumes were mixing well with it. I nudged the cowering Spring Rain in the belly, and she looked at me with fearful eyes, however, when I indicated to the leaking fuel tanks with an energetic nod of my head, she got the message and began to follow me in crawling over there.

It was probably too much to ask for Chrysalis and Dorylus to carry on with their little discussion while Spring Rain and I burned their hangar to the ground, but I’d made the not unreasonable assumption that Chrysalis’ rage at her underling’s apparent incompetence would distract her long enough. The floor just in front of me exploded in a bright emerald flash, and I felt a momentary intense blast of heat singing my nose.

“I am not done with you!” Chrysalis landed before me, and the walkway shuddered just as I did. I looked up, following the line of her long, slim legs, riddled with those peculiar holes, to her equally narrow, almost emaciated-looking barrel, and up to see her face sneering down at me as though I was something distinctly unpleasant left in her path on a nice morning walk. That look of utter contempt, however, slowly changed to an amused grin.

“Look how the Prince of Blood bows before the Queen of the Changelings!” she roared. Sycophantic laughter bubbled up from the drones, who, still hovering in mid-air, moved to surround us.

In spite of my fear, that little jibe awoke some measure of aristocratic arrogance within me. I began to struggle up to my hooves, though they ached and my stomach lurched with the effort. My kris was still in my magical grasp, floating a short distance away and wreathed in my glowing aura. If I could just send it hurtling into the Queen’s neck. “The Prince of Blood bows only to Pri-”

“Oh no, you don’t!” My horn and the front part of my skull exploded in blinding agony as Chrysalis smacked my horn with her hoof, like the combination of the mother of all migraines and the worst hangover I have ever experienced. My vision was clouded with stars, so I heard, but did not see, my dagger drop harmlessly to the metal floor with a loud clatter somewhere.

“Sir!” I heard Cannon Fodder shout. Twisting my neck awkwardly to my right to see him, my aide, in defiance of all sense of reason and self-preservation charged at Chrysalis armed with little more than a discarded bayonet he’d picked up.

“You dare?” Chrysalis’ horn became shrouded with her sickly green aura, drawing in magic from beyond the veil. Yet as my suicidally brave aide, apparently filled with the old feudal spirit that demanded he protect his master, rapidly closed the distance, as the drones all around raced to get him, the magic sputtered, sparked, flickered, and vanished with a sudden ‘snap’ and ‘crackle’. Blinking through the stars that swam before my eyes, I saw a most gratifying sight - an expression of shock and fear on her face.

Chrysalis raised her hoof to ward off Cannon Fodder, and his wickedly sharp blade sliced into the tough chitin, carving a thin line into her royal flesh and drawing a trickle of blood. She hissed in pain. Faust, I wished I could do more than just watch, but trying to summon even the smallest amount of magic to move my kris to within reach to hack the Queen into neat little chunks brought blinding pain to my injured horn. My aide drew his head back to go in for another swing, but the drones that had gathered around us to watch swarmed in to protect their Queen, and buried him under their bodies.

“Keep that one alive!” roared Chrysalis. “I must know how he can stop my magic! I want him vivisected!” Her malevolent gaze then snapped quickly to me, as I was struggling to rise to my hooves once more. “And you!”

Chrysalis’ cold, clammy hoof pressed onto my back and pushed down. She chuckled to herself as she watched me struggle against her; she was strong, surprisingly so considering her gangly frame, and had no problems forcing back down on my belly once again. Damnation, thought I, we were so damned close. The fuel tanks were right there, spreading their flammable contents on the platform floor, close enough for me to have ignited it with a well-thrown cigar match. I could have fired a flare there, but with the Queen standing almost on top of me, she’d have struck my horn the moment she saw it begin to glow with magic and before I could even get a shot off.

“Get off him!” shrieked Spring Rain. She started to lunge towards the dread Queen of the Changelings, but stopped dead in her tracks, shaking with terror. Whatever iota of bravery she had rapidly evaporated under that withering, silent stare. All the kirin could do was look away, and mutter under her breath a frustrated, “Chi-bai!”

I was rather irritated that she had yet to burst into flames and consume this entire hangar in purifying nirik fire (though I ought to have been a little relieved at her restraint, seeing as I was still inside said hangar). But, as I turned my head around the other way to look at her, standing there beside me before the most hated creature in most, if not all, of Equus, I could see that she was much too afraid to be angry. It was a perfectly justifiable reaction. I could hardly be upset or annoyed at that, for I felt much in the same way; her eyes were wide, ears flattened against her head, and she shivered and whimpered to herself. I had to get her angry enough to transform, and making other ponies angry at me to the point of incoherent rage seems to have been a unique skill of mine as Rarity would attest, but I had to do so without the Changelings noticing.

So, Chrysalis knew about Cannon Fodder, one of the many aces up my sleeve that I was running very low on here. I expect that she would have found out anyway, though I hoped that she remained ignorant about the exact mechanism by which his unique debility worked. As the enemy was quite fond of saying, there was little that escaped their network of spies, so really it was only a matter of time. However, quite how that information would help them in the long run remained to be seen. The drones pinning him down dispersed, taking to the air again, while leaving two to keep my aide restrained against the ground. He’d received a few bruises from being struck with hooves and blood flowed freely from his nose, but other than that and a look of embarrassment on his face, he seemed relatively unscathed.

“Sorry, sir,” said Cannon Fodder. He sounded rather sheepish, as though his failed attempt at regicide was little more than a minor inconvenience, like allowing one’s tea to grow cold.

“Quite alright,” I said, despite everything being the precise opposite of that. “It must be difficult to aim for her heart when she doesn’t have one.”

The pressure on my back increased, pushing me painfully into the hard, metal floor. My flogging scars did not like that one bit, nearly to the same degree as my spine and ribs. It felt as though something was on the verge of snapping like a twig under the pressure, but the monstrous Queen here seemed to know exactly how much force to exert to inflict pain but not permanent damage. I was under no illusion that, if she wanted to, she’d burst my chest like a ripe tomato underhoof. She lowered her head almost down to my level, and over the tang of fuel fumes and blood I could smell her rancid breath.

“Dorylus was right on one thing,” said Chrysalis, her voice lowering from angry yelling to something a little more tolerable to the ears, “you are very annoying.”

“One does one’s best,” I croaked out. I made another half-hearted effort to push myself up to maintain some semblance of equine dignity here. My shaking hooves struggled in vain, but Chrysalis, apparently tired of torturing me like this, mercifully relented and stepped back, allowing me to stand unsteadily.

“I should have had you killed the moment you surrendered,” she hissed at me.

“That’s rather unsporting, and against the rules,” I said, knowing full well that she didn’t care about such things. “Out of interest, why didn’t you?”

Or, for that matter, why don’t you now? Once again, she had me entirely at her mercy. She could have blasted me into my component molecules with a single burst of magic, or, if she felt that I was simply not worth the effort, wave her hoof and one of her many drones would plunge their blade straight into my neck. Yet she still did not, after all, I survived long enough to write this. A tyrant such as she loves to gloat; their egos are vast and hungry, requiring constant feeding lest they wither and die, and she is forced to confront the fact that, really, there was very little of worth to her existence beyond the shallow pursuit of power. It was not enough that she had won, she had to feel that victory in order to satiate that ego.

My head was pounding like a yak wardrum, and I felt sick, both from the exertion of running and fighting and with the fear. The Queen towered over me, exuding malice and menace. She was shortly joined by Dorylus, who landed next to her with an uncharacteristically ungainly touchdown on the metal floor, with his head bowed in admonishment and shame. At first she didn’t seem to notice him, but I could tell that she was deliberately ignoring him, but after a few moments of this she finally turned her head to acknowledge him.

“Because this imbecile had somehow convinced me that you were of more worth to us alive,” she hissed.

“My Queen, I only wished to-”

“Serve me?” interrupted Chrysalis, and Dorylus quickly clammed up and bowed his head. “Or serve yourself? I expect only two things from my Purestrains, Dorylus, loyalty and discipline, and you have been deficient in displaying both. You, with your self-serving schemes, allowed an enemy of the Hives to live long enough to almost ruin everything again! Not only that, you failed to ruthlessly crush the resistance movement that-” She waved her hoof in the vague direction of the titanic struggle still being fought all around us “-is inside this hangar as we speak! I should have taken personal control of Operation: Sunburn sooner.”

Suitably admonished, Dorylus could only keep his head bowed, staring at the space between his hooves. I very nearly felt sorry for him, but then I remembered that he locked me alone in a dingy cellar for several days and any feelings of sympathy swiftly evaporated.

Chrysalis drew in a deep breath and released it as a heavy sigh, and her rage seemed to be quelled at last. “These are only setbacks,” she said, and then she turned her attention to me. “The Hives grow stronger in the face of adversity. You have ultimately failed, princeling; your kirin resistance and your pirates cannot hope to win against the full might of a Changeling war-swarm, and once we have removed them from these docks we will begin our invasion of Equestria. I will not make the same mistake that Dorylus made. You will die now, knowing that you have failed.”

The growing puddle of fuel had by now spread across much of the platform, reaching Dorylus’ hooves. He, having spent much of the conversation staring down at them, had clearly noticed this, and finally worked up the courage to point this out: “My Queen, we should-”

“Shut up, Dorylus!” snapped Chrysalis, and rather than press this quite important issue, the Purestrain did as he was told and regarded the pool with quiet but increasing alarm. There was a danger that she would finally pay attention to what was really going on here, so I had to keep her distracted for long enough for me to provoke Spring Rain. It was all a tall order, but I had I like to think that I had a knack for improvisation as well as being ‘very annoying’, as she put it.

“What will happen to the hostages?” I asked; I heard Spring Rain beside me take a sudden intake of breath. I almost felt a little guilty about where I was about to take this line of conversation, but if it worked then I might be forgiven for this, and, more importantly, alive.

A small, confused frown formed on Chrysalis’ face. “What are you bleating about now?”

“The Changelings took hostages from this city when they invaded,” I said. “My kirin friend’s family amongst them. I hope that they are being treated well.”

“I don’t understand. You are about to die, princeling, and Equestria will fall, and you are concerned about a group of mere kirins?”

“That you don’t understand is the reason why your cabinet is filled with pathetic, useless yes-drones like Dorylus and why you will ultimately lose.” Careful, thought I, I was on the verge of giving her some useful advice that she might actually take heed of, but the flash of anger on her face told me that she was in no danger of being sensible. “But if I am about to die, as you say, then indulge me. It is tradition, after all, to grant a condemned pony one last request.”

I had thought to ask for one last cigar before being cut down, but aside from it being exceedingly unlikely that she, Dorylus, or any of the drones present would have any worth smoking on them, they were also unlikely to be so stupid as to actually grant me one so close to the fuel tanks. After all, one of the very many warning signs plastered over their metal surface warned that smoking was not advised so close to them. Besides, it was best to let her carry on believing that she had won; creatures who think themselves to be secure in their victory were far more likely to make stupid mistakes.

“My husband and son,” said Spring Rain, her tone almost pleading. She took a cautious step forward closer to Chrysalis, who regarded the kirin as though she had only just noticed her for the first time. “I don’t care what happens to me. I just want them to be safe.”

“Kirin, if you wanted to keep your family safe, then why would you throw your lot in with this idiot prince?” sneered Chrysalis. I felt a glimmer of hope blossom within; the Queen could not resist another opportunity to indulge her ego by flaunting her power, and for that reason alone I still drew breath. “That is the entire point of us taking hostages. If you choose to defy the Hives then you and those you love must suffer the consequences, and it will be your fault. You will die knowing that what happens next was down to you. It would be a terrible shame for your foal to grow up without his parents, but before you and your husband too are executed for this ridiculous show of defiance then you can at least take some comfort in knowing that your foal will serve the Hives well as cattle.”

Spring Rain’s body trembled, and her breathing became quick and shallow. Tears rimmed her eyes. Good, she was starting to get angry, but she needed that little push to bring her over the edge.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “I never asked, but tell me about him.”

“He loved to paint, lah,” she said. “That paint set was his. He filled the house with his paintings; trees, kirins, ponies, dragons, anything, lah. I hid them after they took him because I can’t bear to see them. And- and-” Spring Rain stopped, her breath frozen in her throat, and she looked up and glared at the Queen of the Changelings, the one who stole her family from her and who listened to her pleadings with faint amusement. Her horn flickered with sparks, and she roared with an anger that had been bottled up and suppressed ever since the enemy raised their flag over her city, “I won’t let you take him!”

Chrysalis looked at her with a blank, curious expression, and broke out into a fit of laughter that sounded distressingly earnest. “I look forward to feasting on him. I will take your shape and gorge on his love for you!”

That was it. Flames licked around the length of Spring Rain’s horn, and I fancied that I could feel the heat radiating from her as a small prelude of the inferno to come. Still, I had to make sure that she would fully tip over the edge and transform and that I was at a reasonably safe distance from the blaze, so I raised my hoof, which had the added benefit of momentarily distracting everyone present from the kirin about to explode, and slapped her flanks. I am not particularly proud of doing that, but from personal experience I knew that was the most consistent way to make a mare angry (and stallions too, come to think of it), and, most importantly, it worked. The slap launched her a few steps forward away from me, and her hooves splashed into the puddles of fuel.

A pillar of blue and red nirik-fire engulfed Spring Rain’s small, outraged form, through which she was visible as a black silhouette whose eyes glowed with fury. She roared like a dragon as her body turned to fire. I turned and threw myself onto the floor with Cannon Fodder as the blast of intense heat struck us, stinging my hide and making every breath of hot air painful. The pillar evaporated as swiftly as it was summoned, leaving her body ablaze, but the flames swept through the spilled fuel. I heard drones shriek and cry out as the fires engulfed them.

Daring to look back, I saw the nirik, screaming heathen obscenities that sounded downright daemonic with her distorted voice, lunge for Chrysalis, who had escaped the fire by jumping into the air. Apparently stunned by the sudden eruption all around, the Queen hovered there, gazing in stunned horror as her drones fled the flames. Dorylus, whose body was being consumed by the flames so that he almost resembled a nirik himself, crying out in what must have been excruciating agony, threw himself into Spring Rain’s path and dragged her flaming form to the floor.

“My Queen!” he shouted, his ruined lungs and throat giving his voice a horrible, rasping quality. “Help me, please!”

Shaken out of her horrified stupor, Chrysalis darted over the side of the platform, escaping the flames, and disappeared from view, presumably to fly away from what would otherwise have been a fiery tomb.

Speaking of which, Dorylus’ wordless, agonised screams continued as he burned. Spring Rain had squirmed out of his grip, and he crawled about on the floor. I, of course, never thought highly of him, even amongst his fellow Purestrains, but those hideous wails, cracking as his flesh was eaten by the fires, haunt me still. The screams seemed to follow me as I picked myself up off the ground. I had sufficient wits to pick up my kris, which had become rather important to me right there for some reason, and, thrusting it into my sash for safekeeping, I ran, as I ever do, for dear life.

The next few moments are a blur in my memory, but piecing together the snapshots of clarity, the flames had swiftly reached the fuel tanks and exploded. I recall a second blast of heat, more intense than the first, hitting me in the rear as I ran down the walkways, and despite the urge to get the blazes out of there as swiftly as possible, I stopped to look over my shoulder. The fuel tanks looked as though they had been gouged open from the inside, as though a trapped dragon had ripped its way out with its claws, and they were thoroughly ablaze. Black smoke, acrid and foul, rose and smothered the high ceiling. White hot flames lapped around the blacked steel, shrivelling those warning stickers, and they travelled upwards, along the pipes that led straight towards those airships. I knew that they were done for—even if the spreading flames did not reach them, the damage to this structure and the equipment and such that kept them operational would render them as very expensive paperweights, but I still wanted to make certain.

The fight in the hangar had ceased with this new development, save for a few skirmishes between isolated groups. The need to escape the fires had wisely superseded the greater conflict, and drones and ponies, kirins, and so on alike scrambled for the exits. Cannon Fodder and I were still on the walkway, along with a few other individuals further along who I could not make out. There was no sign of Spring Rain, and I felt a sudden pang of horror and guilt; niriks might be fireproof, but I wasn’t so sure about shrapnel. Jagged chunks of flame-blackened metal was scattered around the platform.

A figure burst from the flames, wreathed in fire of a different, unnatural colour. A nirik, who I slowly recognised as Spring Rain galloped towards us, still clearly outraged judging by the snarl on her lips and the murder in her eyes.

“Aiyah, wait for me!” she cried out, her voice still distorted and unnaturally loud. She came to a stop just before me, just close enough that the heat radiating from her burning body caused the sweat to positively flood down my face like a waterfall. “You expect to leave without saying ‘goodbye’? I thought a prince would have better manners, lah!”

“Sorry,” I said, “but I didn’t plan to stick around while everything burns down around us.”

The fires reached one of the ships, and a moment later the walkway we stood upon was shaken by another blast as its fuel tank exploded. A great gout of fire ripped open a jagged hole in its hull, from which black smoke poured, and the flames spread to engulf the envelope above it. That was one down, at least, I thought with some satisfaction.

[It is more likely that the fire had reached the gunpowder stores inside the ship, causing the explosion that Blueblood described.]

“Are you not coming with us?” I asked. In truth, I had grown rather attached to her; a stallion doesn’t have his life saved several times over by another without feeling at least a little bit of affection for his saviour.

Spring Rain shook her head, and her fires dimmed slightly. “I stay here and fight,” she said, after the briefest moments of thought. “Now go! I’ll see you when this is all over, lah. You better bring me something nice, too!”

A second explosion from another airship, closer this time, which tore a large gash along the length of a single deck of its hull, gave me the impetus to make good on my escape. I’d have shaken Spring Rain’s hoof, but it was still on fire, so I settled for a quiet nod and a smile, before turning on my hooves and galloping down the walkway as fast as my remaining strength and endurance would allow me to.

The hangar, as vast as it was inside, was rapidly filling with smoke. It stung my eyes and burned my throat, causing me to break into fits of painful coughing that hurt my chest. Still, I pushed myself onwards, Cannon Fodder in tow. We passed panicked drones likewise fleeing to whatever safety they could manage. The roar of the flames filled the air, interspersed with the barked orders of those still trying to maintain some sort of order. It seemed improbable to me, even as I was running for my life and freedom, that the Changelings hadn’t implemented some sort of fire safety system; I’m no expert on such things, and indeed many other things too, but I’d imagine that sprinklers of some sort might have been the bare minimum, or some sort of magic involved. Given Queen Chrysalis’ impatience and Dorylus’ willingness to go along with it to placate her, I could only assume that they skimped on such things in order to speed along Operation: Sunburn, and now they were paying for it.

[Commercial and military airship services take safety very seriously for reasons that should be obvious, but Blueblood’s assumption that the Changelings had cut corners in following internationally-accepted rules on safety to accelerate their plans for the invasion are backed up by surviving evidence and witnesses. Had those safety standards been followed, it is unlikely that a fire of this magnitude would have spread and most of the airships would have been saved.]

The smaller cargo airship was still there, thankfully un-burned, and as I raced into the hold, still yawning open, I found out why when I almost barged straight into Square Basher there. Here, the ponies had all gathered, our band of escaped Equestrian soldiers and freed slaves who didn’t fancy their luck with the pirates alike, along with the odd kirin who apparently decided that partisan warfare was not for them and they ought to try their luck as refugees.

“Couldn’t leave you behind, sir!” said Square Basher, grinning inanely. She was positively smothered in Changeling ichor and blood, likely hers as I gathered from the assortment of cuts and gashes she had earned in the fight.

I wasn’t sure I could say the same were I in her position, so I expressed my gratitude with a curt, stately nod. “Does anypony know how to fly this thing?” I asked, eager to get underway before the inferno reached us.

“We’ve captured the crew,” she said. “This way, sir!”

She led me through the hold, up a flight of stairs to the deck. Cannon Fodder had elected to remain behind in the safety of the hold; we hadn’t even started moving before his pallour took on a rather sickly green tone and his stomach made ominous gurgling noises that heralded much horror for him to come. I would be relieved to be as far away from him as possible when his aversion to flying took its inevitable course. There, a small crew of Changelings experienced a reversal of their station in life as they laboured frantically at the various ropes and cables and what not under the careful watch of their former slaves and prisoners. The engines spluttered into life, their rumbling roars muddled and drowned by that of the fires, and the ship itself drifted forwards, towards the yawning exit of the hangar and the wide expanse of sky and ocean beyond.

“Can we trust them?” I asked. My words came out as a hoarse, ragged whisper; I felt dead on my hooves, which were made of lead and now required a monumental effort to slowly drag them along the metal floor. Fatigue almost overwhelmed me entirely, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up on the floor then and there and sleep until death finally took me. That is, if the pain in my limbs and from my singed coat would allow me to. I needed a drink, but I doubted that there would be anything approaching a well-stocked bar here; typically a journey by airship called for a perfectly chilled gin and tonic, but it would appear that I might have to settle for something used to clean out the engines.

Square Basher nodded. “Yes sir. We gave them a choice—either do what we tell them or they can stay behind and burn, or face Chrysalis if they survive. They chose the first option, sir.” She stopped suddenly, and stood rather awkwardly. I received the impression that she almost wanted to hug me, or at the very least place a reassuring hoof on my shoulder, but decorum and the gulf between our respective stations in life, quite rightly, halted her from doing it. “If you don’t mind me saying, sir, that was bloody incredible.”

“I think you and the kirins did most of the work,” I said, being quite earnest in that way that only inflates my reputation for heroics. “Are you certain the drones won’t turn on us?”

The awkward moment passed as I steered the conversation straight back onto the business of getting us out alive. “Absolutely, sir. They’re just as afraid of Chrysalis as they are of us. I did have to name-drop you, sir. Hope you don’t mind.”

Sensible drones, then, if they could be believed. I wasn’t quite so certain myself, but I had little other choice but to accept; I obviously had no idea how to pilot an airship, and if I didn’t know then I highly doubted that Square Basher or anypony else present, Equestrian or not, knew either, unless Switch Blade had an unexpected history of joy-riding airships, which it transpired he did not.

We emerged onto the deck, and the scorching heat from the burning hangar once more stung my skin and eyes. I sat on the wooden floor, watching passively but with growing anxiety as our intrepid little craft surged forwards, faster and faster, and the flames consumed the hangar around us. Another airship, closer now, had caught fire, and its gas envelope had become an incandescent globe of raging flames. The black smoke swirled around us, growing denser like a descending fog, filling my nostrils with its acrid stench and singing my damaged lungs. The roof above us had likewise caught fire, and to look up and past our own airship’s envelope one could imagine that the sky itself burned as though Celestia had accidentally nudged the sun a little too close to the world. A stray piece of burning debris would end our daring escape right there and then. I thought that we might not make it, for the fuel had spread to the ground level of the hangar beneath us and likewise burned, sending great tongues of flame licking upwards at our tiny craft, but our Changeling crew was just as keen on self-preservation as I was, and the horrid smoke parted to reveal the expanse of clear blue ocean, sky, and and the limitless horizon beyond. Finally, I could breathe; relatively cooler, crisper air soothed my aching lungs and stinging flesh.

As our airship accelerated and climbed into the air, I stumbled on over to the rear of the gondola, to look back at the burning hangar. I watched, as we drifted slowly away, expecting to see drones or other ships in hot pursuit, as portions of the ceiling, weakened by the intense heat, collapsed in on themselves. The black smoke continued to rise in great, churning pillars ascending to the heavens above. I could scarcely imagine that such a conflagration would be put out soon, and I could feel confident that we had utterly destroyed the invasion fleet.

Watching the docks recede into the distance, I could take in the view of the rest of the city of Marelacca. Smaller towers of smoke could be seen elsewhere, dotted here and there amidst the dense city streets from the fighting. Any feeling of triumph was squashed by the weight of knowing that for the city it was only the beginning; that through my actions here I would unleash the petty vengeance of an enraged Queen Chrysalis upon an innocent population, and the reassurance that, as far as the greater war was concerned, this was ‘worth it’ was of no comfort at all. I thought of Spring Rain, and, while I was never one to bother Faust with my tedious prayers, I did pray that, whatever happened, she would live and be reunited with her family. For the both of us the fight would invariably continue, and in our own ways we knew it would be filled with nothing but pain and terror.

As was always the case, the sweet taste of victory turns to ashes in one’s mouth when one understands its cost, and the realisation that many more will be needed before the misery can truly be over brings the bile up one’s throat. Yet it was only one part of a greater conflict that still raged halfway across the world, where such horrors were a daily occurrence to the ponies we had liberated along the way, and one that I would, after a momentary hero’s welcome, a pat on the back, and a medal or two, be thrust straight back into.

It would not do well to dwell on such things; I was alive and going home to a well-deserved rest that I was determined to drag out for as long as possible, and that, I tried to convince myself, was worth feeling happy about. I’d had enough of watching the city recede into the distance, for my part in their fight was thankfully over, and as I crossed the deck something rather important had occurred to me:

“Does anypony here know the way to Equestria?”

[It is on this note that Blueblood’s account of Operation: Sunburn comes to an end. The airship crossed the Celestial Sea in three days and crash-landed near a small earth pony village in the vicinity of Hollow Shades, just as the supply of food and fresh water was about to run out. Every creature on board was swiftly apprehended by the local police force and militia, who believed them to be the spearhead of a Changeling invasion fleet. Prince Blueblood would spend another two days in a police cell before the news filtered to me and I could arrange for his release. When I arrived to greet him at the police station, he remarked that his pony jailers were not much of an improvement on the Changelings.

Given this rather abrupt end, it would be appropriate to provide readers with further context around this relatively unknown front of the Changeling War. As ever, we turn to Paperweight’s A Concise History of the Changeling War for a short but informative description of the conflict beyond my nephew’s personal involvement in it.]

Whether or not Operation: Sunburn was a genuine effort to invade Equestria from across the sea, a wild fantasy that was doomed to fail, or a merely a feint to draw forces away from the Badlands fronts remains a point of much scholarly discussion that is beyond the scope of this book to explore fully. However, though the Marelaccan/Coltcuttan campaign is regarded as a mere sideshow compared to Field Marshal Hardscrabble’s three-pronged offensives into Changeling territory, it cannot be denied that Queen Chrysalis’ strange decision to commit to such a costly drain of resources could only have accelerated the demise of her regime.

With the almost complete destruction of the fleet at the hooves of a combined kirin, pony, and pirate uprising led by Commissar Prince Blueblood, any hope of invading Equestria, real or imagined, was crushed. This, however, left a sizable Changeling force all but stranded in Marelacca, hundreds of miles from where the ‘real’ war was being fought.

Queen Chrysalis was in Marelacca at the time, and ordered a brutal crackdown on the anti-Changeling resistance in the city before departing for the Badlands. After the initial invasion she had used a softer approach to imposing her rule through working with local anti-Equestrian groups, but her anger at her plot unravelling pushed her to fall back on much harsher methods. However, the brutal methods that had worked well against the small, relatively isolated and disparate pony tribes of the Badlands that rebelled against her rule were less effective in a large and diverse city such as Marelacca.

Plans had been drawn up to deport the entire population of the city to the Badlands to serve as ‘livestock’, but the destruction of the fleet made that impossible. Smaller shipments across the seas were made, but were raided by a resurgent pirate fleet, and the liberated slaves often bolstered their ranks. In the city itself, however, martial law was imposed. Hostage-taking and random reprisals against civilians were the main tools the Changelings used to attempt to maintain order, but these only served to stoke the fires of resistance. Chrysalis’ promises of independence following a Changeling victory were increasingly exposed as the lies they were. In the countryside and the jungles, Changeling rule was virtually non-existent, providing the resistance with a base from which to strike.

Resistance to Changeling occupation would grow in strength, supported and supplied from afar by Princess Luna’s ‘Ministry of Unladylike Warfare’ to the point where, by the time Teratoma Hive was being sieged, the city was in open revolt and the Changelings had lost effective control over it. Attacks on Changeling supply lines and infrastructure and assassinations of key officers and the few remaining collaborators were their main methods of resistance, though few actions matched the spectacle of the destruction of the fleet. The partisan warfare, however, would exact a terrible toll on the civilian population, particularly in reprisals by occupying Blackhorns that would only drive more and more citizens into the ranks of an increasingly organised resistance. This would lay the groundwork for independence from the city following the end of the war.

The Ministry of War, who were not aware of Operation: Sunburn until Prince Blueblood’s return to Equestria, believed that the occupation of Marelacca was a prelude to an invasion of Coltcutta, and sent XVI Corps led by Lieutenant General Willow to defend the colony. While both sides would pour soldiers and weapons into this ‘sideshow’, it was one that the Equestrians, with their superior numbers and industry, could better afford to maintain, and one that the Changelings could not. Unwilling to admit that she had made a mistake in approving this plan, Queen Chrysalis ignored the advice of the remaining Purestrains willing to contradict her (especially Hive Marshal Chela who had requested the war swarms assigned to Sunburn be returned to her command) and ordered an invasion of Coltcutta to save face, which was to be led by Hive Marshal Chilopoda.

The speed at which the Changelings advanced through the jungle had caught the Equestrians and Coltcuttans by surprise and sent them into a retreat. Changeling infiltrators attempted to work with independence organisations within Coltcutta, but while this was of deep concern to the colonial authorities, the conspiracy failed to bear fruit even as war-swarms crossed the border into Coltcutta. The largest Coltcuttan independence groups were unwilling to exchange one mistress for a harsher one.

The environment here shaped the campaign on both sides. The tempo of operations in this theatre was dictated by the yearly monsoon, which effectively shut down all operations for three months in a year. The single track dirt roads through the dense jungle strangled supply lines. Exotic diseases, worsened by the heat and humidity, took their toll on both sides.

As the Equestrians retreated further into Coltcutta, the Changelings outstripped their supply lines and were exhausted and starving. The Equestrians too were in a poor state, having taken severe casualties. However, buoyed by the unexpectedly successful advance, Chilopoda believed that victory was merely one more battle away, and that his starving troops would feast on the love of captured Equestrian and Coltcuttan soldiers and the civilian population of Coltcutta. Changeling forces would launch a series of futile attacks against entrenched Equestrian positions at the villages of Imfilly and Coltima, until starvation forced junior officers to order a retreat. For this act of mercy to their drones many were executed for disobeying Chilopoda’s orders to attack.

Despite their victory, the Equestrians were in no fit state to pursue; they had suffered horrendous casualties in a desperate fight that ought to be commemorated as much as the Battle of the Virion Hive, and Lieutenant General Willow was cautious enough not to repeat the same error his enemy had made. Liberation for Marelacca would coincide with the end of the war in the Badlands, as Equestrian forces landed and occupied the city without resistance, and following a political campaign instigated by Prince Blueblood, the process of decolonisation and the founding of the Association of Friends would follow.

Author's Note

And that is the end of Bound by Blood. However, Blueblood will return soon in Old Blood

Chapter 1

The Blueblood Papers: BOUND BY BLOOD

Prince Blueblood and Operation Sunburn

Explanatory note:

The following extract is from what is now commonly referred to in our circle of memorialists by the somewhat unimaginative name of ‘The Blueblood Papers’. The rather more dramatic names proposed by my sister with a peculiar focus on the word ‘blood’, more befitting the sort of picaresque adventures that my nephew’s life had inspired and he later despised, has not gone unnoticed, and appear to have been adopted by the more casual readers of this work who I suspect are reading this extracts for the purposes of light entertainment than serious scholarly study. While it was not my intention upon finding and compiling these extracts, this behaviour leads me to consider the possibility of heavily editing these texts further to be suitable for wider publication within the next two hundred years after all living, mortal memory of these events has expired.

This fifth extract concerns his involvement in Operation Sunburn, another one of Queen Chrysalis’ ambitious secret plots to conquer Equestria. It follows on directly from the previous extract, which described the passing of the Twilight Sparkle Reforms, the Battle of Virion Hive, his short-lived role as the military governor of that place, and the exposing of a war crime committed by Equestrian soldiers. The present instalment will be of historical importance as it provides a unique perspective into a variety of fascinating topics that have only just recently become of interest to historians, and perhaps offers one convincing answer to a question that has been debated heavily since the end of the conflict: was Operation Sunburn merely a half-baked idea by an ambitious Purestrain, or a genuine attempt to knock Equestria out of the war with a single, devastating strike?

As with the previous extracts I have done my utmost to maintain the integrity of Prince Blueblood’s original text. Editing has been limited to correcting his occasional lapses in spelling, punctuation, and grammar in order to ensure that the text is readable, though I have restrained myself from touching his fondness for the semi-colon. As a memorialist, though his powers of recollection have resulted in a startlingly accurate and vivid description of the historical events he had personally witnessed, his tendency to ignore a great deal of what happened elsewhere that did not directly affect him can be frustrating to those readers unfamiliar with the historical context. Therefore, I have continued to provide explanatory comments in the text where appropriate, which will be in parenthesis, italicised, and in red ink. Where even further elucidation has been necessary, I have included extracts from additional sources.

H.R.H. Princess Celestia

***

Our maps referred to it simply as ‘Hill 70’. I am all but certain that the local heathens who lived in its shadow had a rather more eloquent name for it (one that evoked exotic images of a desolate but hauntingly beautiful landscape and of the primitive herds of noble savages who had fiercely defended their independence from Changeling oppression for centuries, but was really only the native word for ‘hill’), but thanks to me having had the great misfortune to make a last stand upon its barren summit it will always be remembered by ponies everywhere merely as ‘Hill 70’. As I think back on the events that had led to this famous last stand (one of several I’ve had to endure, and to think most ponies only get one) and my subsequent capture by the enemy, I cannot help but feel a peculiar sense of sadness at that tiny, trivial thing, as though some minor part of a rich, albeit primitive, culture had been unwittingly erased by my bumbling attempts at mere survival. I like to imagine that some wizened old crone, skin turned to leather by age and the sun, remembers what it was called before Yours Truly set hoof upon the hill and ruined everything, as usual.

The immediate events that had led to one hundred ponies of the Night Guards and me huddled on that hill are likely well-known enough to all ponies, and Faust knows that I’ve spent enough time re-telling the heavily abridged version at parties and in private members’ clubs as though it was a fun anecdote to tell and not six of the most miserable days and nights I’ve had to endure in my entire life. A not-insignificant section of that appalling motion picture allegedly based on my life is dedicated to what happened on that bloody hill, most of it as utterly divorced from reality as Fleur-de-Lis’ attempts to prove her fidelity with Fancy Pants. Some popular rock group even wrote a song about it decades later, and to this day I still wince in embarrassment whenever I spot a young fan wearing one of their T-shirts with a grotesque, muscle-bound caricature of my younger self printed beneath a very pointy logo.

[Prince Blueblood is likely referring to the song ‘Prince in Black’ by the heavy metal band Barding, who write songs about military history. At the time of writing, they have released three songs directly about me and two about Luna (the ones about Nightmare Moon don’t count).]

I sometimes wonder how, out of all of the misadventures that I have suffered through over those long unhappy years spent in service to Princesses and Country, that it is this one in particular that seems to endure the most in the Equestrian public imagination, at least enough for the modern equivalent of travelling minstrels to sing triumphant songs about what was, in effect, a defeat. Ponies seem to love a good last stand, the more hopeless the odds the better, and if one has never had the opportunity to partake in one it might be easy to see why -- the image of the doomed hero and his plucky little band of loyal soldiers, all motivated by a sense of duty and honour that transcends their own lives, spitting in the eye of an overwhelming force is a powerful, inspiring one. More simply, however, it might be the case that this myth allows ponies to turn such a defeat into a glorious victory of sorts; one that is not of the purely material sort, had gained no ground and had accomplished nothing to aid in our cause, but only in that irrational, emotive sense that tends to drive ponies more than they like to admit.

Needless to say, I hated every second that I spent on that bloody hill, but if a foolish sense of uncharacteristic generosity on my part hadn’t placed me on the summit of that geological protuberance at precisely the wrong time then perhaps we might have lost this war. Readers of my previous memoirs, whoever they are, and indeed those ponies who know me enough to look past the myths bolstered by my self-serving lies might be shocked that I think so much of myself as to actually have an effect on the grand events of history, but I implore you, dear reader, not to mistake this for misplaced ego on my part, for I merely found myself in a position to be able to encourage other ponies to do such things on my behalf while others heaped the credit upon me instead.

I shall start, as ever, by putting these events in their correct order and starting from the beginning, as it were. That mess in Virion Hive was over, as far as my own involvement was concerned, of course, but a scandal of such magnitude would take a great deal of time for other ponies to unpack, and its legacy would linger on like a cake icing stain on an ivory dinner jacket. I know that Princess Celestia had to take numerous breaks from being Warmistress of the mightiest armies the world had seen to go and placate the local native Badlands ponies each time Earthshaker threatened to withdraw from the Treaty of Dodge Junction, and what further concessions that irate little cuckold and the other heathens managed to squeeze out of her I dreaded to think. [I made a public apology to the ponies of Virion Hive, made a donation of bits from the Royal Treasury, and reaffirmed Equestria’s commitment to fighting for the safety and Harmony of all ponies everywhere. However, the Medusita Massacre continued, and still continues in some way, to be an obstacle in Equestrian-Badlands relations. Maintaining the support of the local tribes was a major concern for the remainder of the war, especially as Changeling propagandists exploited the tragedy.]

Fearing that I might be implicated somehow by overzealous bureaucrats eager to add another scalp to the growing pile, I had taken the unusual step of requesting a transfer back to frontline duties with my old regiment, where I would be much too busy to answer summons for inquiries and such. It was not a decision that I had taken lightly, as one would imagine, but I was reasonably certain that the continuing upward trajectory of my reputation would be sufficient as to keep me out of the way once General Market Garden started drawing arrows on her maps again, which, as it happened, was much sooner than I had felt comfortable with.

For once, it seemed that Lady Luck had taken a look at the old accounts book and realised that I was very much in arrears. A rare, golden opportunity fell right into my lap when I was offered the position of an independent commissar attached to the Two Sisters Brigade, which I practically seized at with both hooves with all the desperation of a drowning pony to a life-preserver. That is to say, I made my decision the instant I had finished reading the letter from Princess Luna, but then waited a couple of days before responding to give everypony else the impression that this was a very difficult decision that I had positively agonised over before conceding to my aunt’s wisdom. You see, the Virion Hive business had caused yet another shake-up in the halls of the Ministry of War and the Royal Commissariat, not just the firing of Iron Hoof and Second Fiddle making everypony else look fearfully at the safety of their own careers. The answer to the question of who stops commissars from misbehaving again had turned out to be ‘even more commissars’, according to Princess Luna, and the concept of the ‘independent’ commissar was born. If anypony dared to ask me if I’d much rather be with my old regiment I merely had to look solemn and explain the importance of proper administration, and trust that Colonel Sunshine Smiles was quite capable of running his own regiment by now without me poking my nose in. Besides, I’d still be close enough to make the sorts of unexpected visits that officers just love, so it was not as though I was abandoning them forever. As it happened, that proved to be a non-issue, but I’ll get to that.

The idea behind the independent commissar, as far as I could work it out once I had Cannon Fodder distil the lengthy articles sent to me into a few terse sentences, was that they would monitor their fellows in black uniforms for incompetence, cowardice, corruption, and so on, just as they were supposed to supervise officers and the enlisted. Just who was supposed to watch them in turn had apparently yet to be decided, and I pondered this question until I then realised that this was an eternal problem with equine society as a whole, and I was unlikely to succeed where brainier ponies had failed. I imagined Princess Luna assumed that she would be monitoring them, which left a further question that came dangerously close to heresy.

At any rate, the job seemed ideal for my purposes, at least on paper, as it would keep me close enough to the action that ponies would not start thinking that I was suffering from its absence, without actually putting me on the field directly in the way of Changeling fangs. Reality has a tendency to set fire to that paper and then dance a merry jig upon the still-smoking ashes.

I barely had the time to unpack my pencils at my shiny new desk at Brigade Headquarters when the news came that we would be on the march once again. Over the course of the years I discovered that it was possible to define generals according to two axes: the energetic/lazy and the competent/incompetent spectrums. This Hardscrabble fellow turned out to be reasonably competent, but most worrying to me was his place high up on the ‘energetic’ side of the scale (nowhere near as bad as the worst possible combination of energetic and incompetent, but Twilight Sparkle’s bureaucratic axe had done away with enough of those for me to safely dismiss from thought).

I expect ponies reading this might desire an appraisal of this divisive individual, at once the pony who won us the war, as if the hundreds of thousands of ponies-at-arms executing his orders in the field had nothing to do with it, with his relentless drive and keen understanding of the requirements of modern warfare, and an appalling butcher whose lack of finesse in strategy led to unnecessarily high casualties. Those ponies will have to be disappointed, I’m afraid, for military historians and the like - the sorts whose nether regions become all warm and tingly with the mere mentions of flanking manoeuvres and encirclements - are far more qualified than I to dispense such judgements. I will instead provide merely what I had made of the pony named Hardscrabble who happened to wear the stars of a field marshal on his strained uniform.

My first impressions of the stallion were less than encouraging; when I first laid eyes on the chap as he visited his generals at the front I merely saw a small, slight earth pony stallion with a rather scruffy little beard and a well lived-in uniform that he hadn’t bothered to button up all the buttons for. I recall feeling rather put-out standing there in my neatly-pressed uniform, with polished buttons, medals, and horseshoes glistening in the bright, hot sun, but in his defence, there were a lot of buttons on service dress uniforms in those days. If he did not exactly look like the sort of pony who would break the back of Chrysalis’ swarms then he certainly did not sound like it either; his voice was a soft midwestern Equestrian accent, the sort that gave one the impression of white picket fences and smiling neighbours waving at you as you walked down the street, thus imparting a certain uneasy sense of overt friendliness that simply had to be an affectation masking something sinister.

This turned out to be his infamous drinking habit, which, while I am unsuited to pass judgement considering my own fondness for alcohol, has been very greatly exaggerated over the years. I can only recall a hoof-full of occasions where he had gotten drunk, and I must make plain and clear that he was never inebriated while he was actually engaged in the business of commanding the largest army Equestria has ever fielded. The first time I saw it was partially my fault, however, as I had encouraged him; he matched me drink for drink, certainly, but whereas my constitution with regards to alcohol was considerable, his was not.

I’d decided to host a small, private gathering to welcome the new Field Marshal to his new prestigious command in one of the function rooms of the officer’s mess in Virion Hive, but it was mostly to commiserate that its luxuries would no longer be available to me once Hardscrabble started ordering Market Garden to stop counting cans of beans here and take the fight to the enemy. Naturally, I served whisky from my own private collection, aiming to impress him with my generosity, of course. So there he was, a rather shy and quiet stallion who seemed to be embarrassed by the attention I, a prince of the realm, was heaping upon him, who stumbled through small talk and, mercifully I might add, was reluctant to drone on about the war in the manner that certain other generals would. Nevertheless, he listened attentively as I spoke some nonsense about hot summers in Coltcutta in comparison to the climate here with Colonel Sunshine Smiles.

He had initially refused my offer of a drink, saying, “That’s very kind of you, sir, but I’m afraid I must decline.”

“Oh come now!” I said, loud enough that the other officers in the room stopped to turn and look at us. I held out the glass of golden liquor in my magic. “This is a fifty year old Dalwhinny. Imagine that; fifty years it’s spent waiting in a barrel for you, Field Marshal, so it’d be a shame to disappoint it.”

I felt Sunshine Smiles kick me gently in the hindleg with his. I looked at him, mildly insulted, but I saw the grave look on his mutilated face. As he shook his head at me, with only the tiniest of motions in the horizontal plane, I wondered if I’d overstepped my mark and those rumours I’d heard were not as exaggerated as I’d first thought.

It was too late, and Hardscrabble had already downed it with enthusiasm. Sunshine Smiles raised an eyebrow and I grinned inanely when my guest of honour announced that it was delicious and asked for another.

The evening then proceeded promisingly enough, but as we carried on discussing the best curry houses in Canterlot, two drinks turned into three, then four, and so on, and very quickly Hardscrabble had become insensible with it while I remained merely pleasantly tipsy. Drink affects ponies in different ways, of course; one might become the most fascinating raconteur in the room, another might simply fall asleep, or one might become angry and belligerent. Through inebriation one can glimpse into another pony’s true nature, which is why I tend to encourage it when I meet a new pony for the first time, and thus far it has been a reliable if crude indicator of such things -- alcomancy, if you will. However, Hardscrabble had turned into a babbling, drooling wreck of a stallion. So, we sat him in a chair in the corner of the room with a glass of magically-chilled water as he muttered incoherencies about missing his wife and the multitudes of failures he had endured in civilian life; hardly the most encouraging results of that test.

The party atmosphere evaporated like spilt water in the desert outside after that, and failed to return after Hardscrabble’s adjutant turned up to drag him off to bed, giving me the dirtiest of looks possible in the process. Perhaps I was just not meant to enjoy parties anymore, I thought.

The following morning I found a little note on a coaster in my dinner jacket’s pocket; written in Sunshine Smiles’ neat and elegant mouth-writing, it suggested that I ought to go and say ‘sorry’ to Field Marshal Hardscrabble at my earliest convenience. It occurred to me that goading a recovering alcoholic into relapsing might not be a particularly good look for Yours Truly, especially when I was under a great deal more scrutiny than usual, so I thought I ought to go and apologise to him just in case.

In my defence, I thought that such things were exaggerated, as rumours always are. He already had a reputation for it, but as I hadn’t been paying much attention to this stallion until the path of his life had unfortunately bisected mine, I really thought it couldn’t have been quite that bad. However, the Changelings would seize upon this little incident and run a very successful little smear campaign, which was so enduring that it’s all common ponies who aren’t interested in the finer points of strategy remember about him these days. It’s impossible to know for certain, but I do hope that the party I’d attempted to host was not the main contributing factor to that myth.

I found Hardscrabble in his new office in the castle in Virion Hive pouring over a map table, adopting that peculiar stance generals like, with their forehooves spread wide on the surface so that they might hover over it like a crane. As I saw him there, I could not help but wonder if they believed that stooping over their maps in such a manner helped them plan battles better. His adjutant, the stern-faced, thoroughly humourless unicorn who carried him away the previous night, had asked me to hoof over my hipflask before allowing me inside. Most of his things were still packed up in boxes even after a week of living here, indicating to me that he hadn’t intended on staying for very long and that he was planning on yet another merry excursion into Changeling territory in the near future. Stealing a glance at the maps, as though I could discern anything from the arcane scribblings and multitudes of arrows, I could make an assumption that he was simply going to throw everything at his disposal at the enemy until they or we were all dead. As it happened, I wasn’t too far off the mark there.

“Good Morning, sir,” he said, cheerily enough as I approached. Hardscrabble didn’t seem to have suffered much, and I assumed that was down to the work of his adjutant, who continued to linger by the door to keep a wary eye on me. Perhaps I was not alone in having Cannon Fodder, and every good officer out there is only remembered as such because they have their own aide behind them whom history will forget.

“Good Morning,” I replied, taking off that rather ugly cap of mine. The following took a considerable amount of effort, but somehow I scraped together the necessary courage to look him in the eye and say, “I’m sorry about that last night. I didn’t know.”

Hardscrabble looked up from his precious maps and cast an analytical eye over me, during which I had affected to look as contrite as I could possibly manage with a mild hangover. “I thought everypony knew,” he said. “Iron Hoof does, at least. He never fails to bring it up at every given opportunity - the command of this entire theatre has been given to a drunkard. I hadn’t touched the stuff in months until last night, but when a prince insists on it, it’s very difficult to say ‘no’.”

He didn’t need that much encouragement, I thought, but I held my tongue. “Iron Hoof is a tired, old fool desperate to hold onto his failing career,” I said with a shrug, “and I don’t pay attention to gossip. As I said, I am sorry.”

That was only a partial lie; I certainly keep an ear out for gossip, but only when it involves me or ponies important enough to warrant my attention. Until he suddenly soared into the limelight, I simply hadn’t had cause to even think about him.

[It is very unlikely that Blueblood was completely unaware of Hardscrabble’s problems with alcohol, indeed this contradicts what he wrote just a page earlier. Hardscrabble’s unfortunate reputation was already entrenched by this point in the war, spread by Changeling propaganda, and was very frequently brought up against him. Knowing my nephew, he might have felt some guilt about this or saw a possible reflection of his own problems with alcohol, and chose to try to deny it even in his own private memoirs.]

“I accept your apology, sir. Let us speak no more of it.”

With that, he turned his attention back to the set of maps arrayed out before him on the oversized table, the size of which I theorised was proportional to an officer’s rank and ego. I think he expected me to leave, and ordinarily I’d have been perfectly happy to let him get on with the rather tedious business of planning an offensive, which, as I had the misfortune to find out over the course of my career, tended to involve a lot more than simply drawing large arrows all over maps. However, to say that the two of us had gotten off on the wrong hoof was something of an understatement, so it couldn’t hurt to put on a bit of the old Prince Blueblood charm and try and ingratiate myself into the Field Marshal’s good books again.

“Already planning the next offensive?” I asked, having struggled and failed to come up with anything else to say besides commenting on the weather; Hardscrabble’s preference to listen rather than pontificate, a trait most certainly not shared by his colleagues, made small talk not directly related to the one thing in common we shared, being soldiers of Equestria, rather difficult.

Hardscrabble lifted his head up again, and gave me a look that implied that he was exerting an inordinate amount of effort to hold back on a sarcastic comment about what else he could possibly be doing with all of these maps. “We’ve squandered far too much time sitting pretty in Virion Hive, sir. We must retake the initiative and advance.”

“Of course, and about time too,” I lied; sitting pretty in Virion Hive for the rest of the war was precisely what I had wanted to do before Second Fiddle had lost what remained of his sanity and honour. “If you don’t mind me asking, Field Marshal, but just what is your plan?”

“It’s quite simple enough,” he said, with a little self-satisfied smile. “We fight, and we keep on fighting until we win.”

“That…” I trailed off, trying to think of a way to put it delicately, but my wit failed me and I gave up. “That sounds rather too simple.”

Hardscrabble hopped down off the table and trotted around it to approach me. He was rather short for an earth pony, so the top of his head roughly came up to my chin, and that, I pondered, might have explained the failure of his farm to produce anything of worth. “The art of war isn’t as complicated as ponies pretend it is,” he said, “you must find your enemy, hit them as hard as you can, as fast as you can, again and again until they submit.”

I wagered that there were a great many ponies in the Royal Academy, writers of countless volumes on tactics and strategy, who would strongly disagree with that distillation of the art of war down into a single maxim. I, as an amateur on the subject who had picked up a few bits and pieces by mere osmosis thanks to this awful job, was in no position to pass judgement, but I did it anyway:

“Doesn’t that also sound a little too simple?”

“I don’t think so.” Hardscrabble shook his head. “That’s what it all comes down to. The only problem with the Changelings is that they’re reluctant to fight us in a straight-on battle. Market Garden had the right idea, just her method was too slow and costly. We must therefore be bold and strike directly into the Changeling heartlands; Chrysalis will not be able to ignore three Equestrian armies running rampant in her own backyard, and she’ll have no time for her secret plans before we take her last Hive.”

So that was that, apparently; there was a paradox emerging, in which in order to hasten the end of this horrid war and secure the peace Equestria had apparently descended into the depths of barbarism to preserve (already its own little paradox), we must accelerate the escalation of violence and bloodshed to a degree not seen by ponies since the darkest nights of the Nightmare Heresy. That if I was to return home to the life of indolent, decadent luxury that I sorely missed sooner rather than later, I must accept the even greater risk that I might not even live to see it again. The thought of it made me feel quite unwell, and I was glad that I had at least managed to tilt the odds further in favour of my survival by securing that coveted position as an independent commissar, but of course that bubble just had to be burst, too.

With that, however, I wished him good luck in his planning and made my leave, remembering to collect my hipflask from his waiting adjutant as I was damned certain I would require the illicit comfort it brought sooner rather than later. Unlike other generals I’ve met - Market Garden in particular - Hardscrabble seemed to feel awkward about rambling on at length about his war-winning plans in detail to just any pony willing to stop and listen (which must have made the ponies in S.M.I.L.E. a little more relieved, for the main source of leaks to the enemy turned out to be simply their infiltrators overhearing gossip). I didn’t feel like pressing him further, and he certainly didn’t look as though he was about to divulge his entire plan right there and then, so all that was left was for me to slink back to my quarters and stew in anxiety, awaiting the inevitable call to arms once more.

[Eavesdropping on conversations proved to be a cheap and invaluable source of intelligence for the Changelings during the war, which prompted the Ministry of Information to launch a campaign to put an end to this. These have gone on to be emblematic of the paranoia around Changeling infiltration at the time, with such posters as the now iconic ‘Keep it sub rosa’ showing a pony’s mouth plugged with a bouquet of roses. S.M.I.L.E. would also use this to feed false intelligence to the Changelings, as Chrysalis and her high command tended to trust everything their spies overheard. We have confirmed but classified reports that Market Garden was heavily involved in this.]

As it turned out, I only had a few days’ grace before we were on the march again; not as much as I’d have liked, certainly, but given the atmosphere of the army as a whole then it was a miracle that they had managed to stretch it out as far as that. Everypony else was positively pulling at the lead to ‘have a go’ at the Changelings again, and the entire camp at Virion Hive was filled with a tremendous sense of anticipation, just like the lead-up to Celestia’s birthday celebrations. The arrival of a new general has that effect, and indeed I felt a strong sense of deja vu, as it was much of the same feeling as when General Market Garden took command of the 1st Army in what felt like aeons ago. I was almost looking forward to seeing how this one would disappoint everypony.

In that time, I had done my very best to try and think of another way to get out of this offensive, fearing that the position of an independent commissar at Brigade HQ was not sufficient to keep me safely ensconced behind a desk. Ponies seemed to think that I was just as eager as they were, if not more so, to go and carve up the Changelings again, and as ever my protests to the contrary were taken in entirely the wrong way and garnered a great deal of unwanted sympathy. My attempts to explain the importance of having experienced commissars to guide the neophytes in their solemn duties of making sure their officers don’t get funny ideas about running away and watching out for signs of infiltration in the ranks were taken as false modesty, and I was assured, multiple times, that I’ll have my chance to once more bring the Princesses’ fury down upon the hated enemy soon enough. Trying to deflect that sort of talk with more lies about how I agreed with them, but I had to consider how I could do more good enabling other ponies to seize glory for Equestria, only had the opposite effect and I was soon inundated with offers to accompany their units for the next Big Push. It was only a matter of time before somepony that I couldn’t dismiss with an empty platitude came along and ruined it by granting what they thought was a favour, and it happened to be the pony I had least suspected.

We had been marching south for a day, starting early in the morning, stopping at noon when it became far too hot for the ponies in armour to march, then starting again in the early evening, and finally stopping for camp late at night. After months of living in the relative luxury of a small office in Virion Hive, I would have to get used to living in a tent again for the foreseeable future, though at least Cannon Fodder could still carry my all-important drinks cabinet with us. Compared to the rest of the army, who bivouacked under a stunning night sky that I liked to believe Auntie Luna had made just for them, the tent still provided me with a modicum of privacy that was otherwise denied to the common soldiery. Therefore, I exploited the security of four walls and a roof of thin canvas to indulge in reading some of my personal mail; even out here, thrusting deeper into Chrysalis’ lands, Corporal Derpy Hooves made sure that the mail always got through.

There was the usual array of nonsense - Ministry of Information pamphlets and yet another edition of the Equestrian Infantrypony’s Uplifting Primer - which I’d skim-read and then tossed aside to be better used as kindling for campfires later. A rather touching bit of fan mail sent from a mare, I hoped, detailing the very interesting and strenuous things she’d like to do to me, was kept for those particularly lonely nights out in the field. There was a letter from the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who had written to tell me that Saguaro was settling in quite well in ‘civilised’ Ponyville, despite the odd bit of culture shock when he became outraged at watching a villager wasting precious water on her flowers. He had even received his cutie mark, a cactus standing proud and alone in the empty desert, when he had discovered a source of freshwater when they had gotten lost in the Everfree Forest again. Quite what they were doing in that last untamed wilderness in the Equestrian heartland was not expounded upon.

Odonata too, had sent a letter, which was so heavily redacted by the censor that I wondered why he had even bothered sending it anyway. As far as I could make out, for sometimes they get rather sloppy with the black marker pen and one can make out the hidden words if the letter is held up to the light of a candle in just the right way, she had been meeting with Celestia quite frequently, now that the Princess was Warmistress of Equestria, to discuss what she thought Chrysalis might do now. The answer seemed to be merely ‘accelerate her increasingly desperate schemes to end the war favourably’, now that Equestria seemed to be taking this war with the seriousness it deserved. Other than that, she mentioned that she had been confined to a comfortable apartment in the castle, albeit under very heavy guard as to be expected. She also mentioned that she had tried to organise a playdate between Elytra and Flurry Heart, Cadance and Shining Armour’s new daughter and my first cousin once removed, but the rulers of the Crystal Empire had ignored her letters. And that was how I found out that my cousin Cadance, perhaps my only true foalhood friend, was pregnant and had given birth -- a letter from a captured Changeling general.

It was as I was reading this, with only a few guttering candles and the remainder of that bottle of the fifty-year-old Dalwhinny for company, when Sergeant Major Square Basher slipped into my tent. The big mare had to duck under the awning pole, as I had to lest I catch my horn on it, and she immediately pulled an apologetic and guilty expression when I looked up at her from the letters on my desk. She removed her cap, and pressed it against her chest tightly, crushing the wool fabric as she wrung it with her hoof in that peculiar manner the working classes do when meeting a pony on precisely the opposite end of the social spectrum.

I was rather surprised to see her come into my tent uninvited and of her own accord, it was not like her, nor any of the enlisted ponies at all for that matter, to simply wander into an officer’s quarters unannounced and without a prior appointment. Indeed, it was only because I knew Square Basher, had worked, fought, and suffered on the gas-soaked hills overlooking Virion Hive with her, that I did not angrily demand that she leave me to my ‘work’. As a career soldier, whose entire adult life had been the old Royal Guard, I knew that she would not have intruded unless she felt that she had a very good reason to, and even then only if she had completely exhausted every other possible option. For her to come directly to me for something, it had to be serious.

Square Basher stood there, with her front half in my tent and her rear out of it, and with the tent flap draped over her back like a stained cloak. Being in the camp and off-duty, she wore the simple uniform of a plain tunic made of undyed wool and the cap she was now squeezing against her broad chest.

“I’m very sorry to disturb you, sir,” she said. Her entire demeanour was in stark contrast to the Sergeant Major routine she presented so perfectly well to the enlisted ponies of her company, now being of that same deferential nervousness the common pony tends to feel when in the company of a prince.

“Not at all,” I said. “Please, sit down.”

Square Basher hesitated, then apparently took my invitation as an order, and marched herself inside and sat on the faded old cushion opposite my desk, still with her cap pressed to her chest. “Thank you, sir.”

As she sat there, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Square Basher at all since the hospital, where that Doctor Breathe Easy had, through whatever arcane and unnatural means she had devised, somehow repaired most of the damage to our lungs after the gas attack. I remembered seeing her tell heavily-sanitised stories about her lengthy career in the Royal Guard to the Cutie Mark Crusaders when they had unexpectedly broken into the military hospital, but after that there was that horrid slaughter in the breach and the business of running Virion Hive. Neither of us had the time or opportunity to catch up, as it were. Life in the military tended to leave very little time for socialising (unless one took a cavalier approach to one’s job as I did), especially across that social vast gulf between the officers and the enlisted ponies, for all manner of things could get in the way of any blossoming friendship, such as it was. Nevertheless, I did feel a little guilty about having unwittingly ignored her, especially since Captain Red Coat fell in battle, so I did the polite thing and asked her how she was.

“I’m doing alright, sir,” she said in a manner that was clearly rehearsed.

“And how’s the company?” I asked.

Square Basher sucked in a deep, hissing breath through her teeth. “I’ve got a new officer to look after, sir. Captain Frostbite’s taken over the company from Captain Red Coat, and that’s what I’ve come to talk to you about.”

I had a bad feeling about this already; when one has been in this sort of game for as long as I have, which I later sat down and worked out was only two years and three months, one develops a certain instinct for when a carefully-charted course for self-preservation was about to be run aground on the rocks, and usually without any particular malice intended at all. Perhaps I should have told her then that I was in fact too busy after all, but it was much too late for that.

“Is he not settling in?” I asked, hoping that this was merely a matter of boosting the morale and confidence of a newly-promoted officer with a few choice platitudes. “He has a set of very large boots to fill. It can be daunting for a new officer to take the place of one who has fallen in battle, and for the stallions and mares to accept him.”

“He’s fine, sir,” said Square Basher. “I’ll look after him, that’s what a sergeant does. But…” She trailed off, and stared into space as she tried to consider her next words. “We’re going into battle again soon, I can feel it. The soldiers all know what’s expected of them, to follow their orders and to fight like timberwolves when the time comes, and I keep them all in line for Captain Frostbite. I just thought, sir - if you wouldn’t mind, that is - it would do the Captain and the company some good if you were there too. You were there with us right at the beginning, in Black Venom Pass, then Fort Nowhere, and then Virion Hive.”

There it was, I was being asked to once again put myself in mortal danger to be little more than a good luck charm to satisfy the vulgar superstitions of soldiers. I could have told her where she could take that ludicrous request, and perhaps the course of this war would have taken a very different turn if I had, but the big mare, appropriately nicknamed ‘Marezilla’ by the ponies she had made certain feared her more than the enemy, sat there before me with that damned puppy-dog expression on her scarred face. Nevertheless, despite the knowledge that such a request would be far more dangerous than anything Brigade HQ could possibly dream up for me (I was still a little more naive back then), I felt a peculiar sense of obligation towards Square Basher and the memory of Captain Red Coat; it is said that a soldier does not fight for the sort of lofty ideals poets and writers like to romanticise, such as Harmony, or country, or the Princesses, but for their friends. I personally never saw much point in wanting to fight in the first place, it all seemed like a tremendous waste, but there and then I began to have some inkling of the notion of fighting for friendship.

“Of course,” I said, and I could feel my soul die a little inside with each word. “I would be honoured to.”

Square Basher looked instantly relieved, and I feared that there might be more to it than merely giving a new officer an encouraging word or two just before the bullets started flying again. Had I known what was to follow, I’d have made up some excuse about Market Garden wanting me elsewhere and reassure her that this Captain Frostbite fellow was in perfectly safe hooves with her anyway, but how many times must one say that when looking back on one’s own life? Yet I felt compelled to indulge her in this little favour, and as she said an awkward goodbye and slipped out of my tent, I tried to reassure myself that the Equestrian war machine was now well-oiled, well-maintained, and running smoothly thanks to the tinkering of its bureaucratic mechanic Twilight Sparkle. It was not the same broken system that had placed the likes of Crimson Arrow, Scarlet Letter, Iron Hoof, and Second Fiddle in positions of power and authority -- nothing, now, could possibly go wrong.

Author's Note

I know I said it would be called 'Captive Blood', but I couldn't resist the alliterative appeal of 'Bound By Blood'.

Chapter 8

As I stared into the dark corridor, I fully expected a Changeling drone to emerge screaming out of the coagulating blackness and tear my face off. However, none were forthcoming, and so, though my mind imagined all manner of nightmarish monsters within, I dared to poke my head through the open door and peer in a little harder. I tried to light my horn on reflex to banish the gloom, but the noticeable lack of any light and the sudden and unpleasant sensation of pressure in my forehead, as though my frontal lobe had just tried to batter its way out through my skull, reminded me of the nullifier ring still affixed firmly to my horn. Still, from what I could make out as my eyes began to slowly adjust to the darkness, it was a short set of stairs that led down to a long empty corridor, devoid of any sources of light besides that cast from my room. It was quite narrow, too, and a tall and only slightly overweight stallion such as myself would have to bow one’s head and find the rough wooden walls uncomfortable against one’s sides, but a small and lithe Changeling drone would be able to slip through without much difficulty. The corridor itself was not entirely uniform, and slowly I began to make out oblong shapes along the walls, which I took to be other short stairways that led to other such rooms.

“They’re everywhere,” said Cannon Fodder.

“I imagine they would connect to every single room in the building,” I said.

I tried to work out a rough plan of the place in my head based on my earlier wanderings, trusting my special talent to do its damned job for once and help fill in the gaps. As far as I could work it out, the corridor must have run along the entire length of the long gallery, cunningly constructed to be concealed inside the outer wall itself, but halfway between ground floor and the first floor so as not to get in the way of the windows on either. Assuming that it went further along than that, it could certainly have reached those rooms on the ground floor along the outer walls, such as the library, the servants’ quarters, and the dining room. I had to admit that it was rather clever of the Changelings, and altogether not particularly surprising of them.

“How in Tartarus did you find out about this?” I stepped away from the open doorway, back into the bright light of the mid-afternoon sun streaming through the windows.

“I saw one of the drones do it in the servants’ hall.” Cannon Fodder made another one of his casual shrugs, as though he was merely describing an interesting pigeon he saw on the way to the market, or wherever common ponies get food from these days. “I don’t think he knew I was watching him, though. I found another one in the drawing room.”

His unique fragrance aside, Cannon Fodder had a peculiar knack for almost disappearing into the background that I am at times envious of. Few ponies, or even Changelings for that matter, ever paid him much heed, being a rather dull-witted chap with little in the way of personal charisma, physical attractiveness, or personal hygiene, but though he would be amongst the last ponies I would select to be my partner in a game of Trivia Trot, he at least seemed astute enough to use this perception of him to his own advantage. The thought that this might be some sort of side effect to his unique affliction had occurred to me, but given the rarity of the condition and Twilight Sparkle’s strange mania about the subject contributing to his intense reluctance to submit himself for further testing (and who can blame him?), I expect that it would have to remain a mystery for the ages.

[Blanks are exceedingly rare, so research into the condition has suffered from a lack of subjects. However, what little is known seems to indicate that many seem to ‘fade into the background’ to an extent that implies that it is indeed an effect of the condition, though the evidence is anecdotal.]

Secret passages, of course, are nothing new, particularly in old grand houses. The Sanguine Palace, my ancestral home over which the burden of millenia of blood rests heavily like an iron cloak, has a great many such obscure passages and hidden tunnels all over the place, not all of which are mapped or known at all, for the use of servants to navigate my humble little home without having to disturb the occupants too much with their unsightly appearances, as a certain number of my ancestors regarded the necessary work they do too unseemly. Such passages, I must admit, also served the secondary, but no less important, purpose of allowing the master of the house to make clandestine visits of a more salubrious nature to his favourite guests without the risk of another finding him stumbling around the corridors at midnight. I doubted very much that the Changelings had built these passages with those innocent purposes in mind, or that I would be making much use of the second one during my stay here.

I bade Cannon Fodder to show me how it worked; there was a chair rail along that wall at about shoulder height, and he demonstrated that there was a hidden catch just underneath it that unlocked the hidden door. When he shut it again, I could find almost no indication that there existed such a door. Where there should have been an identifiable gap, however small, it appeared to be smooth, uninterrupted wallpaper instead, but when I ran my hoof over its surface I could just about feel a slight groove around the outline of where it should appear to be. If I had to make an educated guess, there was likely some small degree of illusory magic involved, though how exactly the Changelings could project it presumably from afar escaped me -- it made me wonder what else around here was merely an illusion, which was a deeply unsettling thought.

Well, I was not about to go exploring through dark, Changeling-infested tunnels in what amounted to merely a fancier sort of prison camp almost immediately upon arriving, despite my curiosity, so we left it at that for now.

“Let’s just keep this to ourselves,” I said to Cannon Fodder. “No need to let anypony else know just yet.”

The last thing I wanted was for Square Basher to find out about these and start turning her ridiculous thoughts of escape into anything resembling a coherent plan that she could reasonably act upon, so I would have to keep as much information about this place from her as possible. Come to think of it, I would also have to keep it from the other ponies too, lest the lower orders do what we nobles have always feared and start organising into a collective front. It was then that I started to consider that perhaps manual labour, disease-ridden barracks, and a diet that would be considered unfit for a Trottingham orphanage would not be quite so bad after all, if conditions were so dire that I could not possibly think to oppose even the most ambitious and foolhardy escape plans, thus avoiding this infuriating dilemma I found myself trapped within.

Still, as ever, I would have to take it all one day at a time, as I have always done since I first donned the peaked cap and Auntie Luna sent me on the train straight to the front. I met Commandant Dorylus again at dinner, and though I had been very tempted to pass the intervening time by calling upon the personal services of one of the too-perfect mares he had paraded before us earlier, I thought perhaps that it was not particularly helpful to my intentions of keeping our ponies on side if I was to be seen taking advantage of the more questionable of the camp’s amenities quite so enthusiastically. However, I needn’t have bothered, really, as when I ventured out again to try and walk off those certain urges that the thought of those mares had awakened in me, no doubt having been fueled by a week sharing a hole in the ground with the likes of Square Basher, I spotted Ploughshare escorting one of them, and it could have been any of them as their illusory disguises all looked more or less identical, to his quarters; their bodies pressed together, his foreleg over her slim shoulder, and she giggling as mares do, left very little doubt as to what they about to get up to. He had the good sense to look guilty when he saw me, not that the hypocritical look of disapproval I had affected dissuaded him at all, and the two slipped through the door and slammed it shut behind them.

“Less than a day,” sneered Square Basher, peeking her head out from the half-open door to her chambers. Her lip curled in intense disgust. “They’re already in bed with the enemy, literally. Wave a bit of flank in front of them and they’re willing to turn theirs on the Princesses.”

“It’s not entirely surprising, given what we’ve been through,” I said with a vague shrug.

“Don’t you worry, sir,” said Square Basher. “I’ll keep them in line for you. Like you said, the Princesses will need us soldiers, and they don’t want us going soft and weak in this putrid hellhole.”

A Changeling drone in formalwear trotted merrily on over, carrying a tray with a full jug and several glasses upon it on his back. “Good afternoon, sir and ma’am. Would either of you like some lemonade? I made it fresh myself!”

“Piss off.” Square Basher slammed the door shut, and the sound of her hooves stomping off to what I presumed was her bed could be heard through it. I was left feeling rather embarrassed, alone in the corridor with this distraught drone. The lemonade turned out to be rather lovely, and I thought perhaps the Changelings had actually missed their calling in life by trying to be conquerors instead of the more edifying jobs of making beverages. It all seems obvious now, of course, given the strange circumstances that ended the war, but at the time we still considered them to be merely monsters, barely sapient or capable of reason, independent thought, whimsy, or joy, so it was still all rather shocking.

What was not shocking, however, was that very few of the ponies attended dinner with Commandant Dorylus. There were three others, in addition to myself, sat around a modest dining table with places set out for two dozen. Square Basher had decided to host a separate meal in her bedroom for those of us whose loyalty to the Twin Crowns of Equestria remained unquestioned, and surprisingly the Changeling staff here were happy enough to oblige by bringing the food and drinks up for the eleven crammed in there, apparently sitting on the floor and eating from bowls like Diamond Dogs. This, however, had put me in something of a quandary, as while I had to remain in the Commandant’s good graces if my captivity here was to be a perfectly safe and relatively enjoyable one, free from the sort of hardship and misery that characterised my last brief incarceration with Earthshaker, which I was determined not to repeat, I had also to keep in mind my perception amongst my fellow prisoners. I was still their commissar and so commanded at least a modest amount of their respect by default as much as through my reputation garnered through the years, but that could all so very easily be lost if I was to be seen to be getting much too close to the enemy.

If the distinct lack of dinner guests had upset Dorylus he masked it very well, though I thought that even he could not have believed that the others would so enthusiastically accept his invitation. Dinner was a single course of dried hay served with a side salad of seemingly whatever leaves and flowers they deemed edible from the gardens outside, all paired with an agreeable if unspectacular Pinot Grigio apparently bought, or perhaps stolen, from somewhere called ‘Barnyard Bargains’. I hadn’t heard of that particular vintner before, and so I made a mental note to avoid them in future, if I could ever return home again. Still, however, it was the first drop of alcohol that I had seen since I crawled up that slope to the summit of Hill 70, and considering that the drones were ever eager to top up my glass I might have over-indulged somewhat.

Dorylus himself sat at the head of the table, as the master of the house, with myself as his guest of honour sitting to his right hoof. He still wore his smoking jacket, though as traditional dress codes dictated he had swapped his paisley cravat for a black silk bow tie. The other guests had filled up the seats closest to him, despite their clear and obvious anxiety about sitting so close to a Purestrain of all creatures, much less the drones standing around as wait staff, which had left more than three quarters of the long dining table peculiarly bare.

The dining room was quite small, with not much space for ponies to move between the large, sturdy oak dining table and the wood panelled walls. There was an entirely superfluous fireplace in the corner of the room, mercifully not being used for its intended purpose in this heat, framed with an ornate mantelpiece filigreed in intricate designs of gold. Aside from the small windows, wide open to let the cooler air of the deepening evening inside, light was provided by candles, whose flames flickered and danced in the draft, from a chandelier hanging precariously over the centre of the table, and did a rather inadequate job of illuminating the whole place. This had the rather unfortunate effect of casting the portraits hung upon walls all around us into deep, dancing shadows, and considering that the largest one was that of Queen Chrysalis herself, hanging directly behind and above where Dorylus sat, with the dread monarch perched upon a most terribly uncomfortable-looking throne, judging by its sharp angles and the sour expression on her face, it was almost enough to thoroughly put me off my dinner were I not still peckish after my recent ordeals.

“To tell the truth,” said Dorylus, as he swirled the glass around and sniffed the cheap wine with an overly dramatic flourish, “I hadn’t expected to receive so many guests so early, and certainly not one as esteemed as yourself, Prince Blueblood. We are still in the process of finding a suitable chef for you, but Boiling Point is proving surprisingly difficult to foalnap.”

[Award-winning but volatile chef Boiling Point escaped no fewer than three foalnapping attempts by Changeling infiltrators, though the reasons why he was specifically targeted would not become known until the news of Camp Joy’s purpose had become public knowledge. On one occasion he had beaten a drone to death with a stale baguette, then served him on a bed of wild rice to the ambassador from Griffonstone.]

The name Boiling Point meant very little to me at the time, but I doubted that even the greatest cooks in all of Equestria and beyond could have crafted anything resembling haute cuisine with the resources available here, but at least this dry, tasteless hay and the wilting plants were a damned sight more appetising than both brown stew and those miserable ration bars (the off-putting portrait of Chrysalis with its sickly green hue aside).

“We’ve been eating wild grass for the past week,” I said. “Anything your staff can provide can only be an improvement.”

I made an encouraging smile at the other ponies sitting at the table, who each looked more than a little uncomfortable wearing the approximations of black tie provided for them by our hosts. Switchblade, who I certainly hadn’t expected to see at the table, kept fiddling with his collar as though it might strangle him. After the last time with Chela, I had elected to forego the proffered dinner jacket and instead wore my only slightly dusty uniform complete with medals, though with the requisite black bow tie; as a Prince I had a certain amount of liberty to be creative with the black tie dress code, and unlike certain other stallions residing in Applewood who believe they can just do as they pleased, I possess the knowledge of the rules to know when and how to break them. With the uniform’s tunic worn open at the collar and chest like a dinner jacket and the bow tie peeking out from between the turned-over lapels, I looked rather dashing, if I might say so myself.

Dorylus laughed, or tried to, at least; it sounded like a seal dying of dysentery. “I am glad you are so understanding,” he said. “When I read Chela’s letter saying that I’ll be looking after you, I was beside myself with worry. How can my humble little home be suitable for a prince?”

“You needn’t have. My expectations of Changeling hospitality were not particularly high.”

“We are learning. The Hives are nothing if not adaptable.”

Dorylus turned his head to look up at the painting of Queen Chrysalis leering back down at him, and there was a fond smile on his thin lips, as though he was gazing upon the portrait of an absent lover and not a brutal tyrant. The artist, whomever they were, and I certainly would not have put it past the Changelings to have foalnapped any one of the very many talented portrait artists in Canterlot who sell their services to self-important nobleponies like Yours Truly, and forced them to perform the same for their dread queen, was certainly a very talented one. It was almost as though she was in the room with us.

There seemed to be no attempt to paint her in a more benign light, and indeed he appeared to have had very little of that to work with in the first place, for much of her was still shrouded in darkness; she did not smile, nor pull the empty, blank expression typical of most classical portraiture, but instead her lip was curled slightly in a domineering sneer and her eyes were like narrow slits, as though regarding the artist as merely a half-eaten rodent dragged in by a pet cat. The painting inspired the very same feelings of mortal fear that I had felt when I saw her in the chitin in that bloody quagmire of a courtyard in Fort E-5150; in my drunken state, head spinning with cheap wine, it was almost as though she was right there in the room, peering over the Commandant’s shoulder. As the artist had painted her from much lower down, presumably from the floor unless she had, as her ego would have dictated, raised her throne upon a dais tall enough to bungee jump off of, it made her look toweringly huge. The portrait most likely depicted her as she desired to be seen by all sapient creatures -- powerful, mysterious, dark, and perhaps slightly constipated.

“Awe-inspiring, isn’t she?” said Dorylus.

“More like awful,” I retorted drunkenly, with a sly wink to my fellow prisoners at the table.

Dorylus smirked, then shook his head. “You ponies wouldn’t understand,” he explained, and as he started his little speech I immediately beckoned the nearest drone over to fill up my glass and leave the bottle. “She took a race that had spent thousands of years cowering in the darkness, living off whatever scraps of love we could find from ponies, and forged a new, virile empire that’s ready to take its rightful place on the world’s stage.”

“Or damn it to failure,” I said, swirling the pale wine around in the glass. “As I recall, King Sombra had rather similar ideas, and look where he ended up.”

“It’s funny you should mention him.” Dorylus chuckled, and I decided that I didn’t much like the sound of that. His hooves folded on the table, and it was then that I finally noticed that he hadn’t eaten for the entire meal and that his plate was bare and clean. “How does ‘King Blueblood’ sound to you?”

I stared at him, not quite certain what to make of that unexpected remark. “I’m quite attached to ‘prince’, thank you. I’ve no intention of trading in my title.”

“Just give it some thought, sir,” he continued. “The Hives must consider how we are to rule Equestria once your Princesses have been deposed, and I feel that your ponies will be much more amenable to the new order of things if there was some… some continuity, shall we say, with the old regime, in the form of yourself. I can think of no better pony to rule Equestria on behalf of Queen Chrysalis than you, sir. And to further cement the bonds between our two races, in the spirit of the old ways of diplomacy, perhaps a more personal union would be appropriate.”

“A personal union…” The meaning took a moment or two to navigate its way through the wine-addled synapses of my brain, at which point my instinct for self-preservation sounded the metaphorical siren and I was almost overcome with an intense feeling of primal disgust, as one would when presented with the sight of a maggot-ridden corpse.

“You are suggesting that I marry… marry that?” I pointed up at the painting behind him. Switchblade broke out into hysterical giggles, and an attempted death glare from Yours Truly only made it worse.

Ever since I was able to grasp the concept of marriage I had long surrendered myself to the inevitable fate of all royals, which is to be locked into a loveless political marriage for the purposes of securing land, titles, privileges, and the production of an heir and sufficient substitutes, but until then I had thought that the worst possible case would be my future wife being Norikerian. One could certainly have mistresses, and it was downright expected, of course, but I could not imagine Chrysalis to be anything less than the possessively jealous type. The image of the potential wedding night and the consummation thereof rudely manifesting inside my head, like an uninvited distant aunt coming to stay, almost threatened to bring up my dinner, and indeed I had to swallow some of it back down again for a second time.

[Blueblood's reference to the Germane-adjacent province of Norikeria likely reflects aristocratic prejudice towards their oft-ridiculed policies of broad cultural acceptance and integration leading to 'mixed blood,' especially during the Clapsburg dynasty. This has survived to the present day, as ponies sometimes unfavourably compare Equestria to them.]

My obvious distress at the mere thought of such an absurd idea as marrying the Queen of the Changelings was clearly a source of great amusement for the other guests and Dorylus, who grinned inanely. The problem, however, was that I could never be completely certain that it was just a foalish joke at my expense, but when the thought occurred to me, I could not help but feel a certain sense of aristocratic indignation at being made the subject of mockery. Were he some upstart noble and were I not entirely at his mercy, I’d have reached across the table and slapped him across his smirking little face with my hoof and challenged him to a duel right then and there. I could only sit quietly, suppressing the fury that threatened to boil over.

“She would have to agree, of course,” said Dorylus, once the laughter had finally ebbed. “But she has taken a personal interest in you, sir.”

“I’m flattered,” I sneered, taking solace in the abundant wine provided. Inebriation seemed to help calm my anger somewhat, or at least put me in a state where I lacked the physical coordination necessary to act upon it.

“Between you and me,” he carried on, leaning forwards over the table in a rather conspiratorial manner, as though he was worried that the drones might inform their local friendly secret police officer on him. It was an act of course, but we all fell for it when we all leaned in to hear his scurrilous gossip.Then, with a nod to the other slightly bewildered dinner guests, “And your friends, of course. Our Queen might not be in the right frame of mind to meet you now, sir. You have been quite the thorn in her shell, so to speak, and with her sharp and decisive mind focused on the tasks of ruling the Hives and winning this war, she is unlikely to be in a forgiving mood. It took a lot of convincing from Chela not to have you sent straight to her.”

Dorylus let the implication linger in the air like a fat, lazy pegasus -- if I didn’t behave and do as I was told like a good little princeling, then the worst sort of conditions that my all-too-vivid imagination could manifest of a more traditional sort of prison camp would seem like a lovely holiday in the Prench Riviera, compared to the sorts of horrors that Queen Chrysalis was prepared to inflict upon me, and she was positively itching for it. It was only his goodwill that kept me from her clutches, so I’d better fly straight and support his absurd little project, or it’s off to be brutally tortured by a power-mad tyrant. The thought was only marginally more horrifying than that of marrying her, and I was certain that still constituted a war crime. Still, I suppose it was nice to have someone looking out for me, even if he was a Purestrain and only did this to further his own career within the convoluted hierarchy of the Hives.

The evening proceeded with the usual sort of awkward atmosphere that I had come to expect, like a sombre funeral after one of the guests had loudly passed wind at the emotional height of a touching eulogy, and everypony else trying desperately to proceed as though it never happened regardless. Dorylus was not particularly gifted with small talk, but to give him his dues, none of his guests, myself included, felt particularly amenable to idle chatter. Polite inquiries about one’s family might be all well and good in a typical sort of dinner party, but coming from a Changeling Purestrain they could only sound terribly invasive. There were no safe topics, for even the weather felt as though that might be giving too much information to the enemy, and that’s when it struck me like a lightning bolt.

Information. If the Changelings could be said to possess one significant advantage over us, aside from the fact that they were clearly more experienced at this war business, it was in information gathering; as we had learned more about them, it became clear that they were not the innumerable horde that would sweep us away like a tidal wave we had first feared, but significantly deficient in both ponypower and firepower compared to our newly reformed military, and so they must make up for that with sly cunning and intelligence. Equestria, however, had learnt to mitigate that to an extent, or, at least with Market Garden and Hardscrabble, to elevate our two advantages to render theirs ineffective; as far as our generals were concerned, it mattered little that the enemy knew how much artillery, magic, and ponypower would come bearing down upon them if the quantities we had were so thoroughly overwhelming and could be readily replaced. Dorylus could very well have been sincere in his beliefs about ponies and Changelings living together in some sort of unsettling co-dependent arrangement, and indeed he had seemed to put rather too much thought into this for it to be entirely a front, but the prospect of this ulterior motive was enough to make me feel suddenly and unpleasantly very sober.

“I’ve read that you were in the Royal Guard before the war, sir?” asked Dorylus, addressing me once he’d apparently tired of Ploughshare describing his favourite flavours of crisps.

I instantly felt wary of the comment, though I couldn't imagine what the state of the Royal Guard prior to the conflict had to do with anything. “Yes,” I answered. “It was quite an unspectacular career, however.”

“Still, I understand you were involved in the colonial wars in Zebrica.”

“Again, rather unspectacular,” I said. “Compared to this one, those little spats overseas barely count as wars.”

“Nevertheless, sir, you’ve clearly been around in your life: Zebrica, Neighpon, Cathay, Coltcutta, and Marelacca, to name a few. Have you ever been to Manehattan? I hope to visit there very soon.”

“My role as prince takes me all over Equus, yes.” The line of questioning seemed quite peculiar, and though the frankly ludicrous amounts of alcohol I was being readily given was most likely intended to loosen my tongue to the point where I’d give up every single state secret I knew, from the precise spell to open Celestia’s forbidden library to Market Garden’s preferred brand of toothpaste, he hadn’t counted on my rather considerable tolerance, born out of years of fine appreciation and proper breeding. “Manehattan is hardly as exciting as Coltcutta, though, but one can catch a fun show on Bridleway and stalk the bars afterwards. I tell you, the best place to get a Manehattan cocktail is in a rather seedy little bar on the West Side I know called Dirty-”

[Prince Blueblood spent a great deal of his leisure time in Manehattan, when he was not in Canterlot. Many bars and other establishments, mainly brothels, claim to have been his favourite haunts, though as ever it’s impossible to verify.]

“And the barracks?” he interrupted. Ordinarily I’d have been annoyed, but as that little slip of his mask of refinement illustrated that he was getting frustrated by my deliberately meandering story, I found it quite amusing. “I’d also read you were stationed there.”

There it is, thought I, and it could only be a more obvious ploy to uncover military secrets if he seized me by the throat, shined a bright lamp in my eyes, and demanded to know precisely how many ponies-at-arms were ostensibly protecting the city of Manhattan from the microscopically minute risk of a Changeling sneak attack. Still, if they were daft enough to even consider such an attempt, Dorylus also hadn’t counted on the fact that I had absolutely no idea myself; perhaps they had counted upon me being privy to the entire array of information concerning our gargantuan war effort, and I might even have the appropriate security clearance to find out such obscure things as the precise shade of gunmetal grey our supply airships were painted in, but they had clearly miscalculated if they believed I had bothered to even read any of the forests’ worth of literature I was sent on a daily basis. The less I know of things unrelated to my own self-interest the better, and that maxim has served me well for much of my life.

“Yes, I was,” I said. “The mess there wasn’t as well-stocked as in the Canterlot barracks, unfortunately, so my fellow officers and I often had to make trips into the city itself for entertainment. As any young bucks would, we’d start off with a show on Bridleway, and then we would see where the night would take us. Once, we were drawn into a drinking competition with some chaps in the Navy, and I tell you, sirrah, never get into such things with ponies in a service whose chief traditions are rum and buggery. Thankfully, there was no lash that night; I usually have to pay extra for it. I think I won, but I woke up on the floor in a Kirintown restaurant with my legs wrapped around a fiery little waitress and a rather large bill to replace the marble in their bathroom shoved in my face. It was a simpler time, before this beastly war ruined things.”

“Yes, very interesting,” said Dorylus, as he beckoned one of the drones over for more wine for himself. “But speaking of the barracks…”

This carried on for a few more rounds, with more tales of princely debauchery, before Dorylus realised that this line of questioning was futile and gave up. He tried the same with the other ponies, asking them about the conditions in the Trottingham barracks, but having taken my lead, they too told pointless stories about anything but military matters.

Golden Ticket spoke of his problems with the authorities about the working conditions in his chocolate factory, before he was ‘encouraged’ by the magistrate to escape the crippling fine and imprisonment by joining the Equestrian Army, and then he went into great detail about how inadequate and downright insulting the chocolate rations were. Switchblade told tall tales about the street fights he had won, and threatened that any Changeling invasion of East Trottingham would be met with such extreme violence from the local gangs that they would surrender before they even reached the East Coltcutta Docks there. And so on, until the evening dragged on and it became apparent that, even with our inhibitions freed by the sheer amount of wine drunk, we had actually gone much too far and would chatter pointlessly about everything but what he wanted from us.

Still, I was surprisingly having a great deal of fun, drinking and sharing sordid stories with these common soldiers at the expense of our host, who sat there observing this rather inane display with increasingly obvious frustration. Eventually, after the sun had set fully and the view outside had turned to an opaque blackness, he gave up trying to extract any useful information and retired for the night, citing the need to turn in early so he could get some work done in the morning. We, however, continued, and a few others from upstairs joined us, until we were all paralytically drunk with the free-flowing wine and required some assistance from the drones to go to bed.

Needless to say, I woke up the next morning with the most appalling hangover I’ve had since I first discovered that absinthe can be mixed with champagne. However, for the first few weeks or so things went well, for a given definition of ‘well’. When it came to matching the sort of holiday atmosphere that Dorylus was aiming for, he had clearly fallen short of the mark, but on the face of it I had still lucked out as far as my choice of incarceration was concerned. A prison camp was still a prison camp, with fences and guards almost all over the place, but for the most part I was at my leisure to do as I pleased within the restricted confines of this ‘manor house’. Under the constant watch of the guards, or whatever inanimate objects they might have disguised themselves as, one could never truly relax; we were each all on edge at all times, wary of every potted plant, vase, and even of each other. It became quite maddening.

For the most part I spent my time reading in the library, discussing adventure stories with Musca (whose company I was unexpectedly coming to enjoy), and simply pottering about aimlessly; it was still all rather dull and tedious, with little in the way of excitement or variation once the routine had been established, but I’d much rather be bored and paranoid than breaking rocks with my bare hooves all day. The others likewise continued in this rather pointless existence, and just when I finally felt I could let my guard down and relax I would be called upon to sort out an argument or fight that had broken out. These were always over ridiculously minute and inconsequential things -- one pony slapped another for breathing too loudly, others devolved into foalish name-calling over a game of croquet, and on another occasion Square Basher and I had to restrain two ponies lest they strangle one another over a game of scrabble. I could hardly blame them, for I too was feeling the weight of this monotonous, empty life, where the days blended together, and while we had every need catered for, it did not feel like much of a life worth living.

Regarding our host, however, I still did not know what to truly make of him. Superficially, Dorylus was genial enough, and well-mannered and willing to provide for his ‘guests’ within reason. The ponies had made a game of asking the Changelings for increasingly outlandish things, and the damned thing was that they actually came through with many of them. Light Roast asked for an espresso machine and one of sufficiently high quality was provided for; Square Basher asked for a spear and she was granted a practice stick with soft foam padding; and Switchblade asked for a manticore but his request was sadly rejected. I asked for the small portrait of Princess Celestia that hangs in my Canterlot apartment, in the living room to remind me of the importance of kindness and cakes, and was rather disturbed to find that they had procured precisely the right thing, or otherwise made a damned good forgery of it. Her motherly smile, however, made me feel terribly homesick, so I tucked it away where I couldn’t see it.

Dorylus remained a constant presence, seemingly on the prowl around his modest mansion and trying, and usually failing, to ingratiate himself with the ponies. Anypony who is much too friendly in a very obviously disingenuous way is unlikely to make many genuine friends, and he was finding that much to his frustration. I would find him lurking around the camp, trying to engage any one of the ponies unfortunate enough to be out and about at the time in conversation, and while most of them were not what I would consider to be impolite or outright rude, it was evidently clear none were interested in speaking with him. He had the manner of a pony who had read how to make friends from a book, and was trying his best to put it all into practice.

I, however, indulged him a little by attending dinner and whatever little events and games he tried to inflict upon us. “I have to make him think I’m on his side,” I explained to Square Basher when she asked why I was spending so much time with the Purestrain, and she seemed to buy it. His generosity with cheap wine was an added bonus.

I was under no illusion that he was still trying to extract information from me; most egregious was the time he convinced me to play chess with him, which I did primarily to alleviate the growing tedium of captivity here. He had arranged the board in the library, and it was rather an attractive set -- the black pieces were Changelings, of course, with Queen Chrysalis as the king and drones as pawns, and likewise the white pieces were Royal Guard ponies with Princess Celestia taking the place of the king. They all seemed well-carved and were even painted, and I was a little embarrassed to see that my likeness had been used for the white knight pieces.

[Based on this description, this chess set appears to be one of many commemorative sets that were produced early in the war, which are now collector’s items.]

“Ah, chess,” said Dorylus, admiring his set. “Since time immemorial, creatures of all kinds have put aside their differences to play a nice game of chess.”

I could hardly imagine the Hooffields and McColts taking a break from their exceedingly bitter feud for a stimulating and civilised game of chess, but I mumbled in the affirmative and got to work right away by opening with the King’s Pawn Game. He followed up by sending his Queen’s Pawn forward to meet it.

“I like to imagine General Market Garden and Hive Marshal Chela as two chess players,” he continued as I pondered my next move. “The Badlands as the chess board, and the divisions of infantry as the playing pieces, and each commander perched over, formulating their plans while considering what the other will do. Their keen minds focused single-mindedly on keeping up with all the potential ploys and traps and stratagems, like, uh… chess masters. It’s so very evocative, n’est-ce pas?”

“Market Garden is terrible at chess,” I said, as I moved my King, the lovingly carved and painted figurine of Princess Celestia, forward into the space vacated by the pawn in a move that was officially known as ‘bloody stupid’ by the sorts of mentally-afflicted ponies who take this game too seriously. Dorylus raised his eyebrows in surprise at the move, and I simply gazed back with an expression of mock-innocence on my face. “I played against her once, and she complained that she couldn’t use logistics to bring more rooks onto the board.”

Again, he hadn’t counted on me not having a damned clue about our strategic plans in any detail, and in particular what went on in Market Garden’s neatly-organised mind, and to be fair it wasn’t much besides getting as much stuff as possible and throwing it directly at the enemy’s face until it caved in under the pressure, so I’m not entirely sure what insights he thought he could glean from me. Still, I played stupid, which tended to fit in well with what many ponies think of me anyway.

“Do you think she’d make a straight drive for the Queen’s Hive, or maybe make a diversion for Teratoma Hive to hit our industry?” he would ask, and I would shrug in response.

[Teratoma Hive was the Changelings’ second city, and had rapidly industrialised as part of Marshal for Armaments Isoptera’s efforts to keep pace with Equestrian military production. It became a city-sized forced labour camp housing a huge population of enslaved ponies and dissident drones to work in the armament factories under appalling conditions.]

“I wouldn’t know,” I’d say, taking inspiration from Cannon Fodder. “I just go where the Princesses will.”

I won the match, despite having handicapped myself with the suicidal opening move, and left Dorylus staring in shock at his checked Chrysalis.

As for the rather less tasteful activities on offer, well, all that I can truly say is that it had been rather a long time since I had last been with a mare, and though it was enough to make Sergeant Major Square Basher seem like an attractive option for a roll in the hay, she was not exactly in the mood to lift her tail for me. So yes, I had indulged in carnal delights with those Changelings, who apparently had done their homework in finding out where my specific tastes lie. Yet it still felt like something vital was missing from the whole experience; it was certainly enjoyable from the perspective of slaking one’s animal lusts, but they were each far too submissive for my liking, and too eager to do whatever depraved thing I wanted without asking for anything in return. I might have had the more than justified reputation as a concupiscent debauchee who’ll dive into bed with any pretty mare(s) capable of saying ‘yes’, but a tip from Yours Truly to any young stallion of a certain age who might have stumbled across these writings, it’s altogether much more satisfying if she’s having fun too.

Contraceptives were provided, this time, so, assuming that these could be trusted, I was reasonably confident that I could avoid yet another paternity scare. Unless, however, there are now dozens of strangely pale and blond-maned Changelings of indeterminate parentage living amongst the Hives.

Speaking of Square Basher, she had certainly made good her promise to ‘keep the ponies in line’ for me and stop them from going ‘soft’, as she had put it. Each sunrise, without fail, she would be out there on the manor grounds with whomever she could drag out of their bedchambers and line them up for an inspection, often while they were still in their pyjamas (provided for by our hosts, of course). On occasions when she felt as though they were being spoilt by the Changelings, she would even make them march up and down the grounds in parade fashion. I would attend, in uniform if I could remember, just for appearances, and observe as she carried on as though she was a drill sergeant with a section of fresh volunteers sent straight from the recruitment centre. They all complained, of course, but they still did it, and I wagered that they went along with this absurd charade because they were still more afraid of her than they were of the Changelings.

The little moment of peace that I had earned could never last, for like all good things in life they bloom but once like a rare rose and then rot away. However, I like to think that I made the most of that limited time, as best as I could given the circumstances. It was just after another one of these inspections, and I could not help but notice the number of ponies who turned up for these diminished with each day. This time, Square Basher cut it short, and just as I was about to flounce away and see about some sort of breakfast, she trotted up next to me.

“Sir,” she said, looking this way and that in a manner that instantly set me on edge; she was up to something. “Excuse me, sir, but there’s something I need to show you.”

I should have told her to get lost, but I didn’t, and I followed her back inside the manor. She led me through the hall, down a corridor, and straight for the downstairs loo. We paused to wait for the hoofservant at the other end to totter off with his feather duster, then she opened the door and beckoned me inside.

“In the ladies?” I whispered.

“It’s fine, sir,” she whispered back. “Quickly, before they see us.”

With that I followed her into that sacred, unknowable sanctuary, and noted that even here it was in much better condition than the gents next door. My hooves itched, and there were two possibilities that my febrile mind could come up with: the first was that she was planning her long-awaited and much-anticipated escape attempt and it somehow involved the latrines; and the other was that she had been secretly lusting after me all this time, and in which case she could have picked a rather more appropriate and sanitary location for a secret liaison. I wasn’t sure which I feared more, but, and I must admit this, now that she was out of her armour I found that there was a certain appeal to be found in her impressively bulky build.

“What’s this about?” I asked, once the door had been shut behind me. Here was quite possibly the most truly private place in the entire mansion, or at least one would hope that the Changelings were not so curious as to see what ponies got up to behind the privacy of the locked cubicle door.

Square Basher said nothing as she slipped silently to a cubicle door that had been marked with an ‘X’ scratched into the wood just above the lock. It was the furthest from the door, up against the outside wall, and through the window just over her shoulder I could see the clear sky and the tall fence that surrounded the camp. Curious, and filled with a sense of mild dread too, I followed to see her casually lift the porcelain throne from the floor, from where it carefully concealed a much larger hole in the ground than would otherwise be required for the purposes of plumbing, and place it delicately to the side of this rather spacious cubicle. She beamed proudly, as though displaying a piece of art, and in spite of myself I stepped closer, tip-hooving awkwardly as though the guards might hear me, to peer down into the darkness. There, I saw that the concrete had been crudely chipped away by some large and heavy implement, which Square Basher had wordlessly explained by presenting me with a weathered dessert spoon she must have stolen from somewhere.

Oh no.

“That,” I said, once I’d finally worked out what I was staring at, “is an escape tunnel.”

Chapter 16

To this day, I still struggle to understand how common ponies can put up with this state of affairs, but I suppose working every single day until blessed retirement comes is their lot in life and somepony has to do it so that we nobles can get on with the arduous task of running the country. Though I had rather enjoyed my first day of what might be considered ‘gainful employment’ since Spring Rain had seen fit to pay me for chopping vegetables for her, when I woke up the next morning and pondered the thought of having to do this monotonous duty every single day for the rest of my life if I did have the great misfortune to lose my titles, my spirits were deflated somewhat.

The cold light of early morning, or rather the blazing heat as it was here, had illuminated the deeply troublesome position I found myself in. As I lifted my head from Spring Rain’s lumpy sofa, alternating as it did between lows lacking adequate stuffing and lumps harder than diamond, and spent a few moments working through the post-awakening confusion and remembered where I was and why, it was all that I could to keep myself from falling again into a state of utter despair. Uncle had done quite a good job of making me believe that there was a way out of this mess, and I supposed that’s why he was so well-regarded amongst the kirin here, but after the lengthy crawl through the filthy gutters back to Spring Rain’s home, Uncle having decided that keeping me in his safehouse was too much of a risk, and a fitful, dreamless sleep that somehow left me feeling even more tired upon waking than when I’d fell upon the sofa in the first place, I struggled to see the bloody point of carrying on like this. I had, somehow, found myself agreeing to a thoroughly suicidal plan, one involving pirates of all things. Yet it was the only plan we had, and say what you will about your good friend Prince Blueblood but he certainly does not lie down and accept failure when there still remains the merest glimmer of hope for returning to a life of idle, decadent luxury; I concluded, as Spring Rain barked at Cannon Fodder and me to get up and ready for another monotonous shift of slicing spring onions, that in the hopefully likely event that Operation: Sunburn was to fail, either shot down over the Celestial Sea or defeated on the slopes of Mount Canter, and when ponies invariably start asking questions about what I was doing when I was within trotting distance of those docks, ‘chopping vegetables’ was not going to impress ponies back at home, who might then start asking all sorts of interesting questions about what I was really up to during other momentous events in my far-too-eventful career.

The thought of personally ruining Dorylus’ plans myself was one that appealed to my base, bullying nature, and was the main factor in convincing me to very reluctantly go along with what I had agreed with the previous night. Call me petty, amongst other apt things if you will, but I could not wait to see the look on his face as Operation: Sunburn burned all around him, hopefully from the safety of the deck of a liberated airship, slowly flying away into the sunset. Finding these pirates was easier said than done, being criminals and reavers of the sea who had apparently been hunted down like adorable bunnies on the plains around Griffonstone by the very forces loyal to the same crowns my Aunts wore, they were, as Spring Rain had explained to me relentlessly over the previous day regarding the kirin resistance, very reluctant to be found easily. I left Uncle and his loyal followers to deal with organising that particular rendezvous, while Spring Rain, Cannon Fodder, and I thought about how to secret myself inside the docks.

“The Changelings collect ponies each morning off the street,” said Spring Rain, as she re-applied the false cutie mark to my flanks after the necessary roll around in the dust. “They usually drop them off when the sun sets. Usually.”

“So why don’t ponies just stay indoors?” I asked.

“Ah, don’t ask silly questions, lah,” she snapped. “Changelings break into homes and drag ponies out. You think they care about privacy?” Spring Rain stepped back, ostensibly to admire her hoofwork, and appraised me from horn to hoof as though I was a rather pretty vase she was considering buying for her drawing room, if she had one. “They look for strong ponies,” she said, her eyes running over my dusty, dirty, painted frame, and I couldn’t help but feel a little self-conscious about how spending much of my youth indulging in a little too much wine and cheese and not much in the way of regular exercise had left me a little on the larger side. “Strong ponies who can lift heavy things. You’re a big stallion; I’m sure the Changelings will grab you and your smelly friend, if they can stand him.”

I wasn’t quite so sure myself, seeing as how multiple patrols of both native police collaborators and Changeling Blackhorns didn’t give me so much as a second, sneering glance the day before, and I saw no reason why they would regard me in any way different this day. As I found out, once I was suitably disguised again, covered in a layer of dust and with a pair of suspiciously callipygian plums painted each of my flanks, and we ventured out into the streets a little earlier than we had done yesterday, it was a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This time, my disguise was supplemented by the addition of an old, stained undershirt, with which to cover the distinctive scarring that marred my back; it had escaped notice last time, but as we were going straight into the dragon’s lair I wanted to leave nothing to chance.

Yoked to the surprisingly heavy cart with Cannon Fodder and dragging it through the quieter streets, Celestia’s sun cresting above the jagged outline of the city beyond and throwing the clear, dark sky into brilliant hues of oranges and reds, it did not take us long to encounter our first group of these pony-snatchers. A half-dozen Blackhorns in grey tunics and a half-dozen local police in tan uniforms watched over a long line of perhaps double their total number of rather sullen, unhappy ponies, who, judging by the slow way they loped along the road, were clearly about as enthusiastic about having been taken at this early hour from whatever it was they wanted to do today to perform manual labour as I was. If it led to me getting out of this Changeling-infested place then I was just about willing to go along with it, though I was certain that the enemy would find me an as unproductive worker as I could get away with; that’s rather the problem with using slave labour, the Changelings hadn’t quite worked out the obvious thing, that forcing individuals to work without adequate recompense or at least a feeling that it was all worthwhile in some way tended to lead to some terribly substandard work. Perhaps I might even organise an act of casual sabotage, I thought, if I could get away with it.

The line of conscripted labourers and their escort walked along the road towards us, and soon we would meet. As the distance between us closed, I could see that only the Changelings were armed with muskets, which they kept casually slung to their backs, while the native police had nothing more lethal on them than truncheons. The occupiers had sufficient foresight not to arm their collaborators, it seemed, being of rather dubious loyalty.

“Aiyah, it’s those two,” muttered Spring Rain under her breath. I followed her glare to see the two police ponies who had extracted a bribe from her in the market the day before, one, the individual who had attempted to interrogate me, barking something insulting at a stallion who looked as though he was seconds away from inflicting grievous bodily harm upon the officer, were it not for the presence of the Changeling drones around them. His fellow, as before, marched along off to the side, observing the rest of them for any sign of potential resistance. The drones keeping an eye on them seemed to find their behaviour amusing, judging by the fanged grins and chittering laughs shared between them.

Spring Rain led us along the street, closer to the approaching line of conscripted labourers and their armed escorts. She tried to nudge us away from them, as far as the open street would allow without us and her precious cart falling into the same gutters we crept through the night before, which only had the effect of drawing their attention. Being rather sharper than her loud mouth and lack of verbal filter otherwise implied, this was likely very intentional, and worked as well as one could have hoped for. The second officer, the quiet one, looked to us as we tried to not-so-discreetly slip past him, and immediately barked something in the local dialect that, while I was still unfamiliar with it, likely translated as ‘stop!’, for that is what Spring Rain did immediately, and Cannon Fodder and I only did when we both walked straight into her stationary backside.

The patient reader will have to forgive me for not providing the details of the conversation that took place, as my grasp on this particular local dialect was still stuck at the very basics of ‘Hello, my name is Prince Blueblood’ and ‘I would like a dry martini with one olive, please’. I managed to get the gist of what was going on by context and what few snippets of words and phrases. The officer, a tall and gangly unicorn with a scratchy beard, demonstrated his intent to conscript Spring Rain’s employees for the greater good of the Changeling war effort. Spring Rain protested that she needed us for the far more important cause of preparing hot and filling meals for the good, free, and hard-working citizens of this great city, and that we couldn’t possibly be spared. She seemed to be exaggerating somewhat in her pleading, and while it would not have won any awards in terms of acting, it still had the apparently desired effect of aggravating the officer to a sufficient degree to cause him to shove her out of the way, thus ensuring that my aide and I would certainly be conscripted, if only out of spite.

Language barrier aside, ‘come with me or I’ll lamp you’ translated quite well with the assistance of that rather hefty-looking truncheon being held menacingly within skull-smashing distance. Spring Rain, keeping up the pretence that this was an undesirable course of action so as not to arouse suspicion, barked what could only be aspersions on the stallion’s honour and parentage and those of the Changelings he served, which was universal in all known languages, equine or otherwise. However, with as much reluctance as I could possibly fake, I made my apologies to my ‘employer’, un-yoked myself from the cart with Cannon Fodder following suit, and fell into line with the band of other conscripted natives. Aside from a few queer looks from said natives, whom I still didn’t quite blend in completely with, Cannon Fodder and I slipped effortlessly into this line, of sorts.

However, the officer still argued with Spring Rain, holding up our march to the docks, and it was getting quite heated. Whatever was being said it had certainly long gone past the mere point of stealing her two best employees; the kirin, though clearly doing her damnedest to keep the infamous temper of her kind in check, looked to be on the verge of losing that self-control she had mustered through those long hours of solitary meditation. Sparks and flames, white-blue hot, danced around her horn, crackling audibly with the rising magic that fuelled the transformation, as she spat verbal venom and insults at this smug, sneering stallion in uniform. She was ranting by now, about what exactly I could not say as her voice was quite low, but I could at least pick up one or two words relating to various immediate family members. Her face was twisted into an enraged snarl, and her compact little body was starting to tremble. If I didn’t know better, the stallion was trying to goad her into turning into a nirik, and since that would incur some risk of physical harm to himself, I assumed he was only doing so to give him a pretence to arrest, hit, strike, assault, or whatever.

[Kirin-baiting, in addition to being an unpleasant thing to do to a creature, was used by some ponies to demonstrate the perceived dangers of cohabitation with kirins, as well as an activity for bored juvenile delinquents in cities with a kirin diaspora. Kirins have developed and perfected methods to control their anger to avoid turning nirik, including zen meditation, over thousands of years to the point that they can live together with ponies and other creatures. However, by provoking individual kirins into these destructive transformations by personally antagonising them until they lose that self-control provides a convenient excuse for some narrow-minded ponies to encourage repressive measures against them.]

I was quite powerless to do anything, held back by my need to maintain cover, besides one thing. “Boss!” I called out in Ponish, affecting an almost comically heavy Coltcuttan accent, which immediately attracted the attention of the Changeling Blackhorns still loitering nearby and reminded them that they still had a job to do.

“I told you, no kirins,” snapped one of the drones. “Leave that one alone, we don’t need her.”

The smugness evaporated from the officer’s face like spilt water left on hot plate armour in the Badland’s hot sun. He spluttered a few times, turning quite red with what I took to be embarrassment. “But she called me a-”

“I don’t care!” The drone stamped a hoof, and the officer flinched. “Do your job, or you’ll join the others working in the docks.” Apparently having re-asserted his authority with the sort of petty vehemence typical of the ambitious low-level enforcers of tyrannical regimes, this Blackhorn, who I noticed wore an extra green pip alongside his green flame insignia, thus marking him out as some sort of leader of this group, turned and marched off, ranting to himself and any other drone who would listen about the perceived incompetence of their equine ‘helpers’, as he described them.

As the officer, suitably admonished, sulked and rejoined our group, Spring Rain made good her opportunity to escape, and was already halfway down the street with her cart, trotting merrily away with sparks still dancing around her horn until she turned a corner and disappeared from my view. I found myself missing her, oddly, and though Cannon Fodder was still by my side, the two of us being strangers in this exotic city made me feel quite alone and exposed. Still, I had only to make it through the day, which, while perilous, when couched in those flippant terms made me feel as though there might be a slender chance that I would see her again.

We carried on down the street, shuffling and shambling forward at the speed set by the slowest of our number, which was swelled periodically each time an able-bodied pony had the misfortune to cross our path, at least those who hadn’t spotted us coming and suddenly remembered that they had something very important to do elsewhere immediately. While most did join us, usually following some argument that was quickly won by the Changelings owing to their weaponry, a few had managed to weasel out of this duty by presenting slips of paper, stamped with the green flame insignia of the Hives, that presumably marked them exempt from this due to being needed for important war work or having some sort of medical complaint like cracked hooves. My new colleagues were not ones for conversation, quietly ambling along and speaking only amongst themselves; it was a damned good thing, though, as I was well-aware that any time I opened my mouth and attracted undue attention entailed a risk of being uncovered.

The city was still rising languidly from its torpor, much like Yours Truly crawling out of bed after noon after a late evening, and the streets gradually filled with more ponies and kirins. I gathered that our Blackhorn patrol here operated on some kind of quota of ponies they had to recruit, for after picking up more than perhaps twenty-five (I didn’t exactly count them all), we hurried on down the road without stopping to pick anypony else up, and the remaining civilians, emerging from their homes as the sun rose in the East, gave us and our Changeling about as wide a berth as they would if we’d all been visibly infected with the cutie pox.

The terrain changed somewhat as we neared the docks. The low, squat, concrete and stone houses favoured by the kirins gave rise to larger tenement blocks, which I presumed were the homes of the ponies who worked on these docks before the Changeling occupation, loading and unloading the vast array of goods and maintaining the ever-growing fleet of merchant ships that served this place. They were rather ugly buildings, I must admit, reminding me of the similar workers’ housings I’d seen through the window of my carriage when travelling through the seedier parts of Trottingham and Manehattan, where multitudes of families inhabit a space not much larger than the master bedroom of my Prench summer house. The locals here, as with those aforementioned Equestrian metropolises, had seen fit to make as much of a home of these rather unpleasant buildings as possible; street food vendors and market stalls were on every corner, foals played, and older ponies gathered as they always do to exchange opinions on the state of the world and how to put it right. The latter would have much to discuss about the increasing presence of the Changeling occupation, with the painted walls and decorations on the drab buildings becoming more obscured by the propaganda posters depicting smiling, happy drones and the patrols of Blackhorns skulking through every street.

The sun was higher in the sky by the time we finally reached the docks, and already I was all but exhausted from the mere walk over. I’m not sure why, but walking slower than usual can feel more tiring than the same distance travelled at a brisker pace. Nevertheless, we were there, and from what I’d gathered from the Blackhorns’ incessant grumbling about this rather onerous and unpopular job, we were quite late and much of it was the fault of the ‘incompetent’ and ‘lazy’ pony police collaborators. The huge hangar building I’d seen in the photographs had been visible from quite some distance away; vast, dark, and glistening with a malignant emerald sheen in the bright morning sun, it towered over the smaller buildings all around and had formed a beacon of sorts for us to navigate our way to, once it had hoved into view. It was about as imposing as the photographs had implied, for it looked nothing like anything else within the local architecture, and appeared like an enormous monument to the unassailable power and authority of the Changeling occupiers as much as a practical building for storing airships.

A tall brick wall ringed the docks area, and we passed through a security checkpoint manned by more Blackhorns with muskets. There was an imposing metal gate, with a relatively small hut where the few drones who supervised the checkpoint resided. This, however, took perhaps an hour to pass through (I hadn’t my watch with me, so I could only guess), as, with the typically over-wrought, complex, and ultimately pointless bureaucracy that characterised Chrysalis’ oppressive regime, allowed petty functionaries like the little uniformed tyrant who commanded this checkpoint to satisfy his ego and exert as much of his minor authority as possible by inconveniencing his fellow Blackhorns. He, a tall, slim drone with a pristine grey uniform starched so stiffly that it was a miracle he could still move in it, spent a great deal of time faffing about with bits of paperwork, and when it eventually dawned on me that he was examining each individual ponies’ identification papers with excessive and deliberate care, of which Cannon Fodder and I had none, I soon began to feel the sense of rising panic return. Blast, I’d walked straight into the dragon’s den, and I’d might as well been wearing the Blood family jewels arranged into a neat little sign that read ‘please eat me’.

I could only watch helplessly as he moved down the line, making a great show of ensuring that absolutely everything in each pony’s identification papers was all in order and instructing his assistant, another drone who bore that familiar expression of having gone through this countless times before and was invariably beyond the point of caring to even try to speed things along, to take down notes on a clipboard. He drew closer and closer to me, and my mind raced to find some sort of excuse or explanation; I was a Coltcuttan servant, perhaps, who had worked in the governor’s palace before the invasion, and therefore had no papers that I could provide. Or I could flee, and though the guards seemed inattentive and the surrounding tenement blocks were dense enough that I could lose myself in them, the city was still crawling with sufficient drones that any reprieve I might find would only be temporary.

It was then, however, as this officious, ill-mannered bureaucrat, who continued to ignore the protests of our armed guard to just get on with this so they can return to barracks, that Dorylus of all Changelings wandered into view and came to my rescue. It was the first time I’d seen him since being forced into the cocoon, and even then it was much too soon; he had ditched the absurd velvet smoking jacket and cravat ensemble, and had instead gone for the simple austerity of being without clothes entirely. Changelings, even Purestrains, looked much the same as one another, so it took a second or two before I recognised that face, and as that sudden shock I felt at the realisation tore its way up my spine I immediately dropped my head to look at the ground by my forehooves and shrank back into the crowd around me, only daring to take short, furtive glances in his direction. He, escorted by two drones, swanned on over, with his entourage struggling to keep up with his swift, long strides. Murder was etched on his sharp features as he bore down upon the petty bureaucrat who was clearly holding up his work.

“What is it now?” hissed Dorylus, with the air of an exasperated lord of a manor who has found his servants slacking off in the pantry for the third time that week. He looked tired, despite putting on a brave face, and had no doubt suffered a great deal of telling-off from Queen Chrysalis for the undoubtedly enormous waste of resources that was Camp Joy and for losing me in the process. Changelings don’t quite get bags under their eyes, but there seemed to be a little less life in them than before, and his posture was rather more sagged than the formal, ramrod-straight demeanour from before.

The uniformed drone snapped to attention and saluted the Purestrain with parade-ground efficiency. “Sir, I’m checking that these workers’ papers are in order.”

Dorylus glared down at the drone, whose belief in bureaucratic rules and regulations were so absolute that he was entirely unfazed by the tall, imposing beast bristling with fangs and magic. “There’s no time for that,” he said with a dismissive, exasperated wave of his hoof. “Just let them go to work.”

“Sir…” The drone shuffled from hoof to hoof. “Their papers need to be checked before I can let them through. We can’t risk-”

“Your diligence is admirable,” interrupted Dorylus, “and under normal circumstances I would be applauding your commitment to procedure. Perhaps there would even be a medal in it for you.”

The drone straightened his posture and puffed out his chest, which was soon deflated, however, when Dorylus carried on speaking.

“The Queen is here, drone. Every day she asks me, ‘Dorylus, why aren’t my airships ready yet? My war-swarms are waiting to take Equestria, but the lack of progress on assembling my airships is taking too much time. You told me they would be ready by now. I should be in Canterlot already, having Princess Celestia’s throne adjusted for my more royal behind’. She doesn’t quite put it like that, but I’m sure you get the idea. Now, I can only come up with so many excuses to protect those diligent little drones who remain so committed to sticking to the rules and regulations that keep our Hives running in a fine and orderly fashion, but sooner or later I may just run out of patience and ask, no, order you to personally explain to her why you are causing the delay in getting these pony workers to where they’re needed.”

The colour drained from the drone’s face. Being covered in chitin, I didn’t think it was actually possible for Changelings to go pale like that, but this one managed it admirably. “I believe their papers are all in order, sir.”

“There’s a good drone,” said Dorylus, smiling in an overly wide manner that I found distinctly off-putting. If he patted said drone on the head I would not have been too shocked. He then turned away from the trembling little drone, who, suitably admonished in front of both his peers and the ponies, skulked back into his hut, and addressed the assembled ponies:

“Now listen up, my little ponies!” It took a considerable amount of effort on my part not to sigh loudly and dramatically at his strange imitation of Celestia’s most famous catchphrase. “First I just want to say ‘thank you’ for volunteering to help us today. I know each of you have other jobs and things you need to be getting on with, so let me tell you now that this is so important. So very, very important. What you do here today will help us bring down the Tyrants of the Sun and Moon, who have grown fat off your nation’s wealth, and will usher in a bright new future for free ponies and Changelings together!”

I hadn’t heard a more ridiculous amount of drivel compacted into such a few short sentences before in my life, except perhaps when I heard Lord Windy Mere drunkenly but sincerely pontificate over the granting of citizenship to the Diamond Dogs, and judging by the scant amount of applause Dorylus here received, which bordered on outright sarcasm to my ears, neither had the overwhelming majority of the assembled ponies either. It was impossible to imagine anypony falling for that utter nonsense, so blatantly cynical and self-serving as it was, and about as honest as one would come to expect from their kind, but amidst the silently standing ponies and the ones rhythmically pounding their hooves on the ground out of mere social obligation, one or two amongst our small crowd appeared to be voicing their approval with genuine enthusiasm. They would, of course, be looking back on that with some considerable embarrassment, as the Changelings would slowly but invariably tighten their stranglehold upon their city and take more from it than Equestria ever would in centuries of imperial authority, and I knew that even without the benefit of hindsight. Either that, or we’d picked up a group of actors.

With that, apparently unconcerned about the lacklustre response he had received, Dorylus turned hoof and strutted away, entourage in tow and struggling to keep up with him. Clearly, that little display told me that Chrysalis’ presence here had rattled him somewhat, as I’d expect it would for any one of her Purestrains unlucky enough to have his new pet project attract her personal attention; it almost gave me some measure of hope, if security here was truly as lax as this in the name of hurrying along Operation: Sunburn to its culmination. If I was truly lucky, then I might not have to actually do very much to initiate a sabotage to bring it crashing to the ground in flames.

Still, I was getting too far ahead, and I reminded myself that my intention here really was to gather information and see if I could find Square Basher, if she was even still here, and then I could begin to think about what I would have to do next. The commander of the checkpoint had been shaken by the mere mention of his Queen to a sufficient degree that he simply waved the rest of us through, which was a blessed relief as I feared that he would carry on when Dorylus’ back was turned. We were marched through the gates and out into the docks themselves. Warehouses surrounded us on all sides; large, sprawling buildings made of brick, each almost identical in shape and colour, with large open doors for the admittance of various goods. More Changeling drones milled aimlessly about the place, as soldiers do in the absence of any particular orders, passing the time by napping, chatting, or playing strange games with dice, papers, and small models.

“Must be an entire war-swarm here,” whispered Cannon Fodder, close enough for me to hear without the drones overhearing and for me to be met with the full force of his halitosis. There certainly did seem to be an awful lot of them even in the open space between the warehouses, and only Faust knew how many more inside those structures. As for the ones we could see, there certainly seemed enough of them along to deserve the title of ‘swarm’; most ignored us, mercifully, though a few took to some half-hearted jeering as we passed them before returning to whatever activities they were doing before.

Nevertheless, we made it to the hangar without further incident. I could see, now that we were much closer to it, that it was in fact made of a series of metal sheets glued together with that distinctly slimy and unpleasant chrysalite stuff. This, I imagined, was what had allowed them to construct it so quickly. That, and slave labour with a large and expandable workforce, which probably contributed more. There was a small door in its side, one of many that I could see, and we were ushered inside with some rather aggressive posturing from our guards, who apparently seemed eager to be finally done with us.

The interior was suitably vast, and as the photographs had demonstrated, the wall facing the open sea simply was not there, and from where we stood I could see the blue ocean and the sky, beyond which lay Equestria, home, and a well-deserved recuperation. However, from the moment that I crossed the threshold, my gaze was not on the infinite majesty of nature and the promise of freedom, but on the airships themselves. Now, when I heard the word ‘airships’ when I eavesdropped on that fateful meeting with Queen Chrysalis, I, and most likely anypony else who could have been there in my stead, had imagined the sort that I and all ponies would have been quite familiar with. Even somepony plucked from the most isolated of rural peasant communities out there could draw a picture of a crude approximation of what one might consider to be a typical Equestrian airship: a large envelope for holding the lighter-than-air and more-flammable-than-anything-else gas that keeps the bally thing afloat, a gondola which holds the passengers, cargo, and all-important crew precariously beneath it, and the necessary cables, beams, and struts that keep the latter very much connected to the former. Our hypothetical peasant might, if possessed of an artistic spirit beyond his meagre means to indulge in, include the engines with which to propel the airship forwards and rudders to steer it by, or perhaps include decorative embellishments on both the envelope and gondola typical of both luxury craft and the most utilitarian of our cargo transporters. The point is, just about everypony has a broadly similar view of what an airship ought to look like. What I saw there, sheltered within the dubious protection offered by the hastily-built hangar, scarcely conformed to those basic principles I have outlined above.

These ‘airships’ were a damned sight bigger than any such aeronautical craft that I had ever laid eyes on, not that I partake in the wearing of anoraks and hanging around aerodromes during my free time, or thought that could be built and remain comfortably airborne. There was a row of them, each filling the width of the hangar from prow to stern, and each certainly looked as though they could carry an entire swarm of drones in reasonable comfort across the Celestial Sea. These were huge, dark aircraft, seemingly made entirely of steel and armoured to a sufficient degree so as to seem utterly invulnerable to my thoroughly uneducated eyes. Great sheets of armour plating covered the upper part of the gas envelope, and upon its armoured prow were the twin lightning bolts that I had seen engraved onto the Changelings’ bought muskets, giving one the impression of a shark diving after its wounded prey. The gondola itself was similarly armoured at the front and on its underside, and it lacked what I would call a conventional deck on its top. Ports for what I presumed would be used for cannons were dotted in rows along its length, currently empty. Upon its side, the green flame of the Hives had been freshly painted by its new owners.

My hopes that, in the increasingly likely event that I failed here, that these would be shot out of the sky or stormed by pegasi troops were dashed upon seeing them, and I felt a horrible sinking sensation that, once again, it would solely be up to me to stop this, somehow. I tore my eyes away from these imposing machines and looked elsewhere; crates containing Faust knows what were stacked up everywhere, and ponies and Changelings alike scurried between them. Elsewhere, I saw stacks of strange machinery, all wires and gears and tubes as arranged by a madmare or a modern artist, guarded carefully by drones, who would allow their pony slaves or indentured workers near them under particularly close supervision. The gas and fuel storage was what I was really after, and from where I stood, under the shadow of these monstrous airships, I struggled to see any large tanks conveniently marked with obvious signs warning of flammability.

There wasn’t much time to stand and gawk, unfortunately, for our escort, now consisting of only drones as our pony police escort had presumably gone off to harass more innocent stall owners in the market, directed us to the closest corner of the hangar. There, another security detail had set up shop, this time staffed by that other variety of bureaucrat - the one who’d much rather be doing anything else besides his job, which suited me perfectly fine.

“Send them to the unloading docks, I guess,” a drone with a dishevelled uniform said with a vague shrug.

“I thought the volunteers weren’t supposed to mix with the slaves,” said another, clearly more diligent in his work than his boss.

“And the unloading is supposed to be happening faster.” The drone waved his hoof dismissively in the direction of the airships. “Look, they keep sending us any idiots they pick up off the street and expect us to teach them how to assemble airships. I don’t have time for that. Carrying boxes is the easiest thing for them to do that doesn’t involve me having to explain these very complicated machines to a bunch of dumb peasants who barely speak Ponish. One of them’s bound to wreck something. All they have to do there is pick something up, carry it somewhere else, and put it down. Diamond Dogs can be trained to do that.”

“But the Commandant said-”

“I’ll deal with the Commandant. There’s a trick to it; you just remind him the Queen wants results quickly, ignore his threats, and remind him that he’s the one who really has to answer to Her Majesty if it all goes hooves-up here. Just send them to the unloading dock and be done with it.”

In light of such lazy wisdom, his underling shrugged and moved to escort us to wherever it was that we needed to go to pick something up, carry it somewhere else, and put it down. However, in what was probably a very rare moment of diligence from this inept bureaucrat, he looked up from his desk to observe this latest batch of ponies, in what I took to be idle curiosity than any sort of professional rigour on his part, and his gaze focused sharply on Cannon Fodder and me. I feared that I had been recognised, still not entirely blending in well with the locals despite my convincing disguise of dust and paint.

“The two unicorns,” he said to his underling, “fit them with nullifier rings before they blow something up, intentionally or otherwise.”

As these rings were retrieved from his desk drawer, I considered how I’d gone most of my life without even thinking about these irritating things, and now that the whole world had been turned upside down by this war I’ve had to wear them three times in the space of a single year against my will. One was placed clumsily on my horn, with a fair bit of knocking of said appendage as the drone was clearly rushing to be rid of us as quickly as possible, followed by another on Cannon Fodder, which was quite redundant but I didn’t want to tell them that. The irritatingly familiar feeling of numbness, of being disconnected from the wellspring of creation itself, returned, and my hopes of not having to use my physical form in this work were dashed upon the wall and stamped on repeatedly. What’s worse is they didn’t pick the right size, so it pinched around the base of my horn in a way that was almost calculated to drive me insane over the course of the day.

Still, I’d just have to put up with it, as with most inconveniences in life, and now that we were suitably blocked from accidentally blowing the entire hangar up and becoming the first ponies to leave Equus’ atmosphere unaided by the Elements of Harmony, we plodded along with the rest of the ‘volunteers’, as Dorylus had called them. We were led to the back of the cavernous hangar, along the opposite side of the great opening, up a flight of stairs that left me quite out of breath by the time we reached the top. There, we crossed a gangway with a precarious guard rail that I would not trust to hold my weight should I be hurled against it with great force. The grating under my hooves didn’t fill me with much more confidence either, and I found that I could peer through the small holes there to see the drones and ponies scurrying around beneath us. It creaked ominously too, as we crossed it, and I felt as though I had merely to jump up and down a few times and it would bring the whole thing crashing down.

We passed the airships, allowing me the opportunity to see them up close, or at least their rears. These sections, at least, were less heavily-armoured, likely a concession to weight or the bally things wouldn’t have been able to fly at all. I fancied that a particularly daring pegasus, like Rainbow Dash for instance or that Lightning Dust even, might be able to weave her way through to the under-protected stern, and with the assistance of some sort of explosives could even bring one of them down in flames. There were five of them that I could bother to count, but if there were others hidden somewhere in this vast open space then it was entirely possible that I might have missed them entirely. I had thought that Chrysalis might have her own flagship of sorts, gilded to the gunwales with gold (likely stolen), from which she might observe the invasion, as her enormous ego demanded, but from my position I couldn’t see anything that might fit the description.

One airship, however, did not resemble the others; it was a small cargo ship that more closely followed what our aforementioned hypothetical peasant would recognise as an airship, and bore a superficial resemblance to the one I had very nearly been immolated in with a pop star (when I write these things down, it often strikes me just how implausible much of my life had become in those days, but it’s all true). Parked with its stern to the wide open gangway, which was also suspended precariously over a very lethal drop, and held in place with anchored chains, the rear of the gondola had opened up to allow the teams of shackled, despondent ponies to enter and retrieve the large wooden and cardboard boxes and sacks of supplies and place them at the back of the gangway, which I was not terribly confident was adequate in supporting the weight of. Further teams of ponies, however, were tasked with taking these unloaded supplies and taking them to a large goods lift that creaked and groaned with the near-constant use.

There were quite a lot of enslaved ponies there, working alongside the Marelay locals. These were clearly natives of the Badlands, judging by the small snippets of hushed conversation in their native tongue that I could pick up, and with their thin, undernourished physiques they already had some considerable experience with working under the Changelings. I always found that to be rather counter-productive; I’d have thought that a race that relied so heavily on slave labour to do all of the unpleasant but necessary jobs that a functioning society required, inasmuch as the Hives could be considered a ‘functioning’ society at all, and all in addition to serving as a source of food, would think about providing actual nutrition to their slaves to extract the maximum amount of productivity and love out of them. As ghoulish as it might sound, it did occur to me then that it would make identifying Square Basher, who was about twice the size of these poor wretches both in terms of height and girth, and any of my fellow former guests of Camp Joy all the easier for me. They hardly blended in even at the best of times.

[There was considerable variation in conditions amongst the Badlands tribes enslaved by the Changelings, depending on the quantity of food that could be transported to the hive cities and the callousness or pragmatism of individual Purestrains. The larger hive cities of the Heartlands often struggled to feed their populations even during peacetime, with supply routes from the more agrarian west being raided by free tribes and Equestrian-backed partisans in the countryside where Changeling control was weakest. Some administrators did consider ponies to be an expendable resource, and would expend as few resources as they could get away with in feeding them. These conditions would deteriorate as the war worsened for the Hives.]

I was anxious to get started, as one might well expect, however, the Changelings were unlikely to be understanding of my need to find my comrades so that we might arrange a method to turn their hangar and its airships, bought and transported here at great expense, into a smoking, burning hole in the ground. Upon arrival, we were placed under the supervision of one drone with a whip, which he liked to drag around behind him and wiggle so that it slithered like a snake on the floor. Others had them, but kept theirs wrapped up around their waists, and that I never saw them in use led me to believe that the whips were merely an indication of rank and not an actual method of coercion, and since I wanted to avoid a repeat performance of my flogging, I was most relieved when I realised that.

This belligerent fellow, who, judging by his manner, felt rather oppressed by the system he lived under, and saw fit to take out his frustrations on the one group in the Hives who could not fight back - ponies. He came out from the ship’s hold bellowing at the top of his voice, rendered quite thin and reedy by the odd accent most drones speak in. “Queen’s flanks!” he started with, providing a fascinating insight into his psyche. “More livestock? They must think I’m running a nursery here! Alright, now pay attention. This should be really, really easy, but a lot of you still screw it up. You go in the airship, you pick up a box or a sack, you carry it over there, and you put it down again. Then you go and do it again, and again, until that ship is empty. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you ingrates are dropping things on purpose.”

That was about as much orientation, as I think they call it in the depressing world of gainful employment, as we were going to get on this ‘job’, and so we got to it. After some hesitation, which I took to be the result of our merry band of ‘volunteers’ struggling through the language barrier and their apparent bewilderment and understandable confusion at everything that was happening to them, the braver of our lot followed the direction of the outstretched hoof of our overseer and into the darkened hold of the cargo airship. It was rather like going into a large cave, I mused, and given that pirates were on my mind I imagined smugglers going into a cave to retrieve their illicit contraband. The interior of the hold, which I would usually consider to be large had I not seen the hangar just prior, was about half-full of those boxes and sacks, and were stacked up rather haphazardly with little regard as to how these objects would fit together in this limited space.

There were ponies everywhere, picking up the goods and carrying them outside as instructed, but in this dimly-lit hold I still couldn’t make out Square Basher, who should have been towering over them. I struggled to grasp how a mare with such a distinctive appearance could disappear into a crowd so readily. It was a vast complex, and if she was here, it was so huge and so sprawling that I might never encounter her.

As it turned out, she found me. My cunning disguise must not have been as convincing as I’d thought, or, as was most likely, she’d picked up Cannon Fodder’s distinctive scent and followed it. We were poking around the boxes, where they had formed a veritable maze from which one could quite easily hide from the Changeling overseers if we were quiet enough. Dim light was cast by a series of lamps set up all around, though the haphazard way in which the slaves had removed the crates, clearly and intelligently favouring the smallest and lightest ones, left areas shrouded in darkness, which at first made me feel rather confident about my chances, until I remembered that drones can see body heat and I was better off standing near something hot. Nevertheless, we fumbled about, passing slaves who scarcely lifted their eyes at us, until I felt the presence of something quite large immediately behind me.

Before I could react, I was grabbed with a great deal of roughness; a hoof the size of a dinner plate clasped around my muzzle and another had seized my arm, dragging me behind a wall of enormous wooden boxes. My yelp of surprise was stifled most effectively, though I was rather more confused as to why Cannon Fodder was not immediately coming to my rescue as he’d always done. However, that perplexing question was answered when I was abruptly turned around and found myself staring in shock at the very apologetic face of Company Sergeant Major Square Basher.

“Sorry, sir,” she whispered, “but where in Equestria have you been?”