Author's Note
A huge thank you to:
Mephia
Evo
Korenav
For supporting me on patreon.
This story was written as part of my patreon campaign as a request.
Coronation
Courage Fire’s mind was alight with possibility.
It had been like any other day. Until the arrival of a missive from Canterlot, and not just from any one client or pony, a royal missive from Princess Celestia herself! She nearly leapt through the roof in excitement. Most ponies could only dream of being called upon by one of the royal sisters, it was an immense privilege like no other. The urgency of the letter was clear. She was to travel with the royal carriage to Canterlot the following morning.
After a hair-raising ride over the hills and peaks of Ponyville and Canterlot, she found herself in the royal quarter. This was no tourist trap. The royal quarter was the most heavily guarded place in the nation. It contained both Celestia and Luna’s living quarters. It was where they ate, slept, decreed and studied. Awaiting her arrival was the Princess of the Sun, the serene and loving leader of the Kingdom, Princess Celestia herself.
Courage bowed as far as she could go, “It’s an honour to meet you Princess!”
Celestia gave her a reassuring smile, “Thank you for coming on such short notice. It’s rare that I must call upon one of my subjects like this, but it is a matter of grave import.”
“It’s no bother at all,” she insisted, “Working with you is its own reward.”
Celestia and Courage exchanged further pleasantries as a contingent of heavily armoured guards escorted them through the gleaming marble corridors. The worry in Courage’s mind only increased the deeper they travelled. The polished metal and gilded halls were soon replaced with utilitarian stonework and large, metal bulkheads.
The bit would soon drop.
Celestia greeted the guard waiting by the final door, “Vigil, is there ought to report?”
“No Ma’am. No activity. Not exactly a talkative lot,” the guard sighed, “Ever since Chrysalis disappeared, they’ve been like this.” Courage now realized why such security was necessary. She was dealing with the changelings who had attacked the royal wedding months ago. The Queen had been slain in the battle, although many were disbelieving of such a tale.
Celestia urged Courage forward. Courage Fire peered through the slot in the cell door. Inside was a white padded room, which contained several Changelings confined to beds with chains and cuffs. They stared blankly, unmoving and unfeeling. They were connected to different pieces of medical equipment, designed to take care of their bodily functions. They were a queer sight to a Ponyville resident like Courage. Black skin like coal, sharp horns that could be used as deadly weapons both physical and magical, and glossy blue eyes that covered their true individuality.
They were still as still could be. Staring upwards to the ceiling without flinching. The only indication that they were even alive was the slow rise and fall of their chests. Courage could tell that something was wrong, why weren’t they trying to break free?
“What happened to them?”
Celestia’s muzzle was clenched tight, “We don’t know. The foremost scholars on the subject suspect that without a queen, they can’t take care of themselves. Ever since we apprehended them, none of them have spared as much as a word to us for their captivity. When the Queen was defeated they fell to the ground, still breathing, but not living.”
“No matter their crimes, I cannot sit back and watch these lives meet their end in such a way. We’ve tried everything, and now we come to you. As an expert in enchantment and alchemy – you are our last hope of reviving them from this state.”
“Me?”
Celestia nodded, “Medical experts from across the Kingdom have little news to share. And our attempts at connecting this phenomenon to the Changeling lore we have on hand have failed. Twilight told me you are an exceptional alchemist, I hope that your perspective can assist us.”
Courage smirked, “You came to the right mare! I’ll have this problem of yours solved right away!”
Courage had no love for the Changelings herself, but she’d be daft to refuse such an earnest request from the Princess. After briefly studying the comatose creatures, she hurried down to the Canterlot archive and scoured the towering shelves for any and all information on them. Changelings were mysterious beings – skilled in disguise and subterfuge. Much of the writings on them were nothing more than hearsay.
The designated Changeling section of the library’s bestiary was sparse. No more than ten books in total were placed upon the designated shelf. Courage quickly gathered all of them and brought them down to the nearest table. Starting from the top, Courage found the more professional and well pressed books. Unfortunately, they had little to offer that she did not already know, and no suggestions on how Changelings worked.
Courage whittled away the afternoon by reading as much as possible and taking many, many notes with theories and ideas for how she could awaken them from their slumber. The other books were much the same. She left the strangest book for last, but before she could crack it open she was joined by a surprise guest.
“Ah, there you are.” Courage turned in her seat to find Princess Luna standing tall behind her, “My dear sister asked me to ensure that thou have everything you need.”
“Ah! Don’t trouble yourself for my sake Princess. At the moment I’m just studying up on my patients.”
Luna bent down to get a closer look at the covers, “I am familiar with many of these from before my banishment. Has our knowledge of the Changelings truly stagnated so?”
“That appears to be the case,” Courage sighed. She put aside the second to last book and pulled the last towards her. Courage immediately sensed that something was wrong. She surrounded it with her magical aura and quickly diagnosed the problem. “This book, it’s been enchanted,” Courage revealed, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
She gripped the tome between her hooves and studied the front cover. Mysterious runes of a foreign language were embedded into the dark leather. A thick clasp kept the book held shut. It was a thick thing, several hundred pages in length. The pages were weathered and brown from years of use - handed between scholars and collectors until it ended up in the royal library.
Courage could discern the true nature of that enchantment. Whoever had made, or received the book, had cast a spell on it. A spell to hide the true contents from prying eyes. Whoever cast that spell was talented. This was a devilishly complex series of misdirections and illusions. Such was the intricacy of the interwoven magic that every layer peeled away revealed a new trick.
Luna watched with interest as the young mare unpicked the magic using her own. The tangled ball of string soon came undone under her keen eye. Courage opened the first page of the tome and witnessed the text changing before her eyes from an unintelligible scramble to something useable. “T’would seem that Twilight was correct – you have a fantastic mind for the arcane.”
Despite this, Courage felt a deep sense of unease. None of these spells were designed to attack the reader, just to nudge them in the wrong direction. Casting a transformation spell on a private entry was a common defence mechanism. Instead whoever had cursed this book did so hoping that none would ever uncover its true nature.
“Not my type of bedtime reading, but… I would like to take it to my chambers for the time being.”
Luna nodded, “Do not let us stop you. You have my express permission to do as thou pleases.”
“Thank you.” Courage tucked the tome into her saddlebag and bid farewell to Luna. Courage hoped that her wife back home in Ponyville wouldn’t feel blindsided by her staying in Canterlot for longer than expected. The room that Celestia had picked out for her was lavish to say the least. Courage could only imagine how much the antique furniture within the sleeping quarters cost. All she needed to know was that there was a wonderful oak desk pressed against the window. The view over the valley was breathtaking, but Courage needed to keep her head down and study the book.
Courage took great pride in her work. If the job was given to her by the Princess, she’d spare no expense in getting results. Still, the book was long and daylight was waning. It had no title, nor a table of contents, and the wild variation in print, style and page bindings painted a picture of a journal passed down through dozens and dozens of hooves, all adding their own notes and chapters in the process.
She returned to the first volume. The opening pages were aged, she feared that they would crumble apart at the slightest of touches. This was not an academic piece of writing, and the styling and wordage used immediately dated it even more than the crusty parchment the ink was stained into. The first entries in this diary were simple observations about living on a rural farm in Equestria by a stallion named Healthy Harvest. “Observation #1” had been added to the top afterwards by the book maker.
Courage read aloud to herself, “My neighbours’ daughter has been stricken with a bout of ill health. I fear for her safety and hope for a fast recovery. Plough told me that her skin was flaking from under her fur, a curious symptom indeed.”
She turned the page.
“Plough’s daughter is up and about again. Though she seems to still suffer from a cloudy complexion, she seems forgetful and scatter-brained. He is overjoyed to see her out of bed for the first time in weeks, as am I.”
And again.
“I have ought to say to Plough on the subject, yet I find myself stricken with the profound strangeness of how his daughter has been behaving as of late. I find myself feeling that this is no mere illness, long after the spectre of the reaper has since passed, she still behaves in much the same way. I saw her hiding in the hayloft, eyes burning like lit coal.”
Courage wondered why this diary had been included. The other pages were more focused on Changelings, with diagrams and explanations. Yet this entry seemed entirely random. The heading indicated that it was relevant information though.
“Plough is beside himself with grief, I heard him wailing from my own bedroom late last night. I hurried to his house and pounded on the door. I feared what may have happened to him – he’s a stoic stallion at the best of times. Plough was not under attack, but his daughter was missing. We scoured high and low, every hiding place that we knew of around our farmland, but there was no sign of her.
Her bedroom had been destroyed. Plough believes that somepony broke in and foalnapped her, but there were no signs that anypony had forced their way inside. The doors and windows were locked tight, and there were no signs of damage. Books, belongings, pillows and bedsheets. Shredded and thrown to the ground like confetti.
I don’t know what to say to him. The only thing I can offer is my assurance that she’s out there, somewhere.”
Perhaps a changeling related foalnapping? Courage pondered. Changelings were known to foalnap and replace ponies in families to take love from them. There were no further entries from the diary, that must have been the end of it from him. She wondered if the culprit was every found, or if the daughter returned home. The book was beginning to frustrate her. Courage knew that what she needed to know was buried in here somewhere.
The next section was much the same, marked as a second incident – the diary of a Pony from Manehattan long before it became the huge city it is now. Again, a pony acting strangely, again they recovered miraculously, and again they disappeared a few weeks later. They were never found. The author of the book, or one of the authors, clearly believed that these disappearances were important.
Courage decided to skip ahead. She needed to understand how the changelings worked if she was to concoct a solution to the Princess’ problem. Courage eventually settled on the first page that properly caught her attention, a diagram of a changeling drawn by a scholar from Canterlot. Each part of the changeling was named and marked, and there were even cut-outs included that displayed some of their organs. How the pony in question had discovered such a thing was an unpleasant thought.
The real meat of the page (no pun intended) came underneath the diagram, where the pony responsible attempted to describe the physiology of the changelings. According to him, changelings had adapted to perfectly imitate any pony or creature they chose, and were capable of long-distance communication with each other. Not a hive-mind like Courage expected, but a collective knowledge that the individual personalities that made up the hive shared. With that said, he made a pertinent observation – the death of the hive’s queen triggered some kind of system in the changeling’s mind, preventing them from moving.
There was the answer she was looking for! Queen Chrysalis must have gotten her hole-filled butt kicked all the way to the other side of the continent and died somehow. This in-built obedience that every changeling had triggered and made them fall asleep. Courage patted herself on the back for a job well done. She then had to remind herself that she’d only diagnosed the cause. Rescuing them from their biologically induced slumber would be a genuine challenge, one that wouldn’t be so easily surmounted without further knowledge of the matter.
But it was getting late, Courage needed to sleep. She yawned and stretched herself out, but out of the corner of her eye something caught her attention. The next page peered from under the one she was reading, and the thing was drenched in red ink. She took a note of the useful information and where to find it, and then used her magic to move on. She was taken aback by the following entry. The material of the page was different once again, and the hoof writing…
It was nigh incomprehensible. The ramblings of a mad pony scrawled outwards in an ominous spiral, stained in blood red ink. The tome had changed from an ordered collection of changeling sightings and study to… whatever this was. She leaned in and started to decipher the text, her eyes hanging heavy due to a lack of sleep. Her curiosity burned bright, this would be the last entry, she told herself.
“Rumination. Rumination. A dark spot on the surface of your eye. A sheathed blade hidden under soft fabric. The mould grows in the damp corner. A prophet attaining the truth as his flesh is consumed. As my shell cracks and my heart withers, I understand that I am nothing more and nothing less than a being which lives. I seek my desire endlessly and without remorse. I live a life of war, with every word and glance an act of violence. My comfort at your expense.”
Courage whipped around in her seat as a shadow moved. It was just the moonlight breaking through clouds above. Courage could feel a pounding at the front of her brain, like a headache. Though it was much more present than a normal headache would be. She could count each beat of her heart. Bang, bang, bang, bang. She took a deep breath and returned her gaze to the book. There was something very wrong with it.
“Heavy is the crown, lay upon a bed of bones and ash, reject that which you hear with your ears and see with your eyes. The truth is more terrifying than we can ever know. We are vermin beneath the toes of great giants. The first lesson imparted onto us – fear not harming others, for we seldom consider the full breadth of our sins.”
Courage shook her head, what was this?
“A young mare appears. A head filled with uncertainty. Called forth by greater purpose. Her body is the egg that will give way to a new form. She will touch the surface and breathe the air for the first time, and the full truth will be made clear. The flood will come, the flood will consume, the flood will demonstrate the folly of living.”
Courage felt a chill run down her spine.
“And she walked amongst us brighter.”
“Brighter.”
“Brighter.”
“Brighter.”
Courage’s head swelled as a myriad of voices joined the chorus, echoing his words again and again. “We are stronger together. We stand together. We think together. When the crust of this earth has given it’s last, we shall endure.”
“Queen.”
“Queen.”
“Queen!”
Courage’s body moved. She grabbed the book and threw it as hard as she could using her magic against the wall. The thud of the leather tome snapped her back to reality. Her chest heaved as she sucked in a deep lung full of much needed air. She blinked the fog from her eyes and tried to collect herself. Candlelight allowed a clear reflection of her own face to stare back through the window’s surface – her yellow orbs speckled with an unfamiliar shade of purple.
She didn’t notice.
Courage, finally returned to reality, hopped down from the chair and walked over to the tome. She’d thrown it as hard as she could. She bundled the book into her arms and closed her eyes. What was that? It felt like someone was speaking to her. Stricken with fear, she returned the book to the desk and hurried into bed, hoping that the warmth of the covers would protect her from the cold that seeped through her fur.
It was a restless night.
Courage Fire was not feeling well. Luna and Celestia were surprised to see their guest in such a state the following morning. Heavy bags had gathered under her once pristine eyes, and her mood had taken a turn for the worse. She moped to the table and consumed the breakfast provided to her without any further words.
Courage Fire was of two minds. One suspected that the evil power of the book she was reading had affected her mentally. The other half admonished its counterpart; she’d simply stayed up too late reading it and when Celestia’s pet phoenix started cawing before the sun rose, the consequences came back to roost.
But she’d be lying if she said that the book and its contents weren’t occupying a large quarter of her mental capacity. The imagery evoked in her mind was that of a large spherical structure, floating in a blank void. Like a ball of yarn, it was made from hundreds of small, interwoven threads. She drifted closer and closer, she felt the warm embrace of the bundle touching her mind. All she needed to do was reach out and touch it, and then the answers she sought would be clear as day.
“Courage Fire, are you okay?”
Courage turned to Celestia and gave her a weary smile, “Ah, yes. I may have stayed up too late reading last night. Heh. Silly me.”
Celestia nodded, “I appreciate your dedication, but don’t endeavour to fulfil my request at the sacrifice of your own health – I only ask for your time.”
“For sure Princess. I’ll make sure I don’t do it again.”
Courage quickly finished the last of her meal and returned to her lodgings. There was no good place for her to conduct her research. The restricted section of the library was a ghost town, and she was the only one in her own personal chamber. Courage had been put on edge by her experience the previous night. She’d bookmarked the offending page so she could avoid it in future. It was possible that those sections were cursed with some kind of spell.
She carefully navigated around the insane ramblings and moved onto the next scholarly section of the book. To her surprise, it was a very detailed description of the hive’s hierarchy, and in particular the importance of the Queen. “When the Queen dies or is otherwise incapacitated, all of the Changelings under her rule will enter a coma. Scholars believe that this is designed to prevent rebellion and turmoil within the hive structure. No one changeling can remove the shackles that bind them, without running the risk of losing their own lives in the process.”
Further affirmation of what she’d discovered before. The question was if it was possible to stir the changelings from their slumber? Courage started to scribble down an idea on her notepad. She knew a few herbs and compounds that could stimulate various systems in the body, something a little more powerful than a cup of coffee. Perhaps stimulating their brains would allow them to awaken on their own?
“Interestingly, the changelings that were captured for study returned to their senses. At the same time, we received word from the Manehattan College that they’d observed the arrival of a new changeling queen. On questioning, the changelings seemed irritable and expressed knowledge of this development despite their confinement in a prison hospital. Bright Spot’s long-standing theory of long-distance communication may not be as far-fetched as once believed. If these mental signals can be turned into magic and dispersed into the air, they’d have no need of speech.”
“Wouldn’t that be convenient?” Courage muttered to herself sardonically. Courage couldn’t find a comfortable position to sit. She felt an itch under her fur, it felt like someone was poking a small needle into her flesh, leaving behind a prickly sensation. What Courage had neglected to notice was that small bundles of her fur were falling to the chair and ground beneath. After trying and failing to scratch the itch, an irritable Courage flipped the page.
“Oh great, more of this crap!” she cried. Yet again the book had descended into madness. The words on the page coalesced into an intimidating and complex structure. Red ink cried foul in much the same way that the previous ones did. Still, despite the overly negative feelings Courage felt about the previous passage that followed the style, she felt a deep curiosity burning in her chest.
“In the hallowed halls of coal black stone, there is a coldness of mind and body that can only be defeated through the warmth of others. Bound closely, tightly, to huddle together with flesh and thought. Any place can be home if you try hard enough.”
Courage settled into reading the coiled text. She tried her best to decipher the meaning of the poetic prose, after all, it wouldn’t just be included in the book for no reason. She’d had the smarts to figure out that the passages came from the changelings themselves. The strange way of speech, combined with the implicit meaning of the words, was totally foreign, something only a shared consciousness could create.
Courage felt vertigo grip her body as she leaned back. She had read the whole passage without hearing any voices this time. With a weary sigh she clambered down from her seat and recovered her neglected bag at the foot of the bed. She opened the flap and carefully retrieved the various pieces of glassware she used to make her potions. She had also brought some basic reagents with her just in case. Canterlot had some very influential stores that sold all kinds of potion making goods, but they were a little too rich for Courage’s taste.
To make a potion of the like that she was considering wouldn’t need anything special. She’d done this a hundred times before. This particular potion was good for keeping ponies awake, increasing their focus and their physical stamina. It stimulated the brain, which was exactly what she wanted to try. The first domino would fall, and maybe it’d be enough to kick start things again. Courage went through the motions of creating said potion, all the while enduring a bevy of strange sensations that had been afflicting her ever since she started reading through the book. After half-an-hour of mixing and infusing, the mixture took on the characteristic yellow hue that she was looking for.
Recovering her saddlebag, she pocketed the sample and quickly left the bedroom. Her destination was the castle’s hospital wing, where the changelings were being kept. It took Courage a moment to get her bearings in the huge, expansive castle. How Celestia and Luna kept up with it she didn’t know. Eventually she found her way to the wing, where the same guard was standing still as a statue by the doorway.
“Good morning,” she greeted. The stallion looked down at her and nodded. “I have a potion I’d like to try.”
“Ah. Just one moment.”
The guard retrieved a key from his armour and unlocked the heavy door, pushing it open and ushering Courage inside. The wing was still as distressing as it had always been. The only sounds being the medical machinery being used to keep the comatose changelings alive. It was almost enough to make Courage feel sympathy for them despite their numerous crimes. Sympathy wasn’t going to help them though.
The guard escorted her over to the first patient. Courage could see his chest rising and falling thanks to the assistance of a mask strapped over his muzzle. There was an IV needle inserted into one of his arms. It wouldn’t be as easy as force feeding it to them. “Don’t worry about taking the mask off,” a voice suggested. A new pony rounded the bed and smiled, “My name is Doctor Heart. I’m the stallion responsible for looking after our bedridden guests.”
Courage reacted quickly, “Ah, nice to meet you!” She pulled out the bottle and handed it to him.
“You too. I’m sorry I wasn’t around yesterday to get you acquainted, I had a lot of work on my plate.” The Doctor took the vial from Courage’s magical grip and swilled the liquid, “Not that I want to cast doubt on your work, but could you be so kind as to tell me what this is?”
“It’s a stimulant. Not the kind of thing you buy over the counter. I did some reading in the archives, and as far as I can tell not having a queen near causes them to shut down. So perhaps by stimulating their nervous systems we can awaken them again.”
Courage spent nearly an hour explaining the contents of the vial to the Doctor. She wasn’t so naïve to expect him to insert it into their IV without checking what it was first, but she still found herself growing frustrated.
“Why can’t you just do it already?” she thought to herself, “They’d happily die for me anyway.”
The intrusive thought went unnoticed. The Doctor finally conceded and poured the liquid into a second IV bag. Courage waited by the bed for an hour, but aside from slightly raising the changeling’s heart rate temporarily, it did not have the intended effect. Courage, deflated and frustrated, left and returned to her chamber to try again.
And again.
And again.
Time stretched on before her like a long and winding road. Courage created dozens of potions of various types and strengths, each one failing to elicit the response she needed, she wanted. Her competitive and hot-headed spirit has morphed into something else entirely. She could hear someone whispering into her ear, telling her that was an easier way. That single day felt like months. Courage entered a daze. She would blink and find that a brand-new idea had sprouted forth, her hooves and magic working on their own without her consent. But it was no good, no good, no good!
The sound of glass shattering dragged Courage back to reality.
Courage stared at the shattered vial and spilled liquid with contempt. How could her work have come to naught so easily? She’d worked her hooves to the bone, frayed the edges of her sanity for the sake of those changelings, and who was to say that they’d be thankful for her assistance? The white-hot anger that had filled her head a moment before was replaced with regret. A knife twisted her guts. Was that any reason to lash out and make a mess?
Earning the Princess’ respect was the reward, she told herself. She could establish herself as a leader in the field, and with their endorsement she could provide for her wife – buy her anything she wanted even! Courage sighed and looked down to the book, which through sheer chance had landed upon one of the cursed pages. How did the ponies feel when they wrote these, she wondered? What drove them so?
Courage moved to the bathroom to take a break. She was haggard. Her usually lustrous fur was matted and damp with grease and sweat, and it made the bald patches that had formed all the more apparent. Her eyes glimmered with a touch of madness. Courage Fire ignored the small discrepancies in her appearance. She could worry about that later, after she showed the Princesses how good she really was.
She could picture it. All of those changelings opening their eyes for the first time in months, leaping from their beds and celebrating their newfound freedom, bowing at her hooves and thanking her for rescuing them.
Courage blinked.
Who was looking back at her in the mirror now?
Delirious from a lack of sleep, she shook her head and returned to the bed. Sleep it off, she told herself, something is going wrong with you. Courage buried herself under the thick covers. Normally it would be far too warm to sleep in such a way, but she was freezing! She shivered and rolled over, wrapping herself into a tight, comfortable pony-burrito. The darkness was a welcome change from the incessant stinging that occurred when she looked at the light.
Courage fell unconscious quickly.
Her dreams took a strange form. She was standing in the middle of a grand hall, like the throne room in Canterlot, but the floors, walls and windows were formless and colourless – deep black stone that reflected what little light could come through. The harsh edges and blocky construction were unsettling. It was an alien place. There were no features that defined it beyond how the pieces stacked together.
She was atop the throne. A long, long set of stairs sprawled out before her. Movement drew her eye. It took a second for her eyes to adjust, but there were changelings hiding there in the dark corners of the room. They skittered to and fro, hanging from walls and ceilings. Their dull blue eyes stared at her, silently, judging and menacing.
Courage Fire was beset by panic. It felt real. The subconscious world she’d found herself in was convincing, lucid. The still air choked her breath. A moment later a large black orb had appeared in the chamber, floating just above the ground. It was made from the same material as the rest of the room. An inky blackness that reflected light from it’s shine covered surface.
“A pretender?”
Courage whipped her head to the left, where a tall, mossy pony leered at her from behind the throne. The green hair and eyes, and the sheer height of the mare left little doubt as to who she was. Queen Chrysalis – the madpony who had invaded the royal wedding and died for the effort. The words escaped her, “Y-You aren’t real, you died!”
Chrysalis scowled, “What a font of knowledge you are. What’s next? The sky is blue? The grass is green?”
“…What?”
“Don’t be mean Chrysalis. Surely you remember the first time this happened to you.” On Courage’s right another changeling emerged. Shorter, stockier, with orange hair and eyes that looked like wildfire. Despite her intimidating appearance, her tone of voice was much kinder and welcoming. “I’m Queen Poxes, and my grumpy friend is Queen Chrysalis.”
“Charmed,” Chrysalis sneered.
The two Queens turned to face the ominous black orb. It dominated the space it inhabited, yet seemed so far away from Courage’s touch.
“What an ugly thing you’ve created. Not the artful type, are you?”
“I made this?”
“You read the book. You created this throne room. You created that. My depiction was much more elegant!” Courage’s mind worked overtime to try and piece together the puzzle. She read the book? The book she took from the archives.
“Slipping that thing into the Canterlot library was a stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. And now your unbridled curiosity has led you here.”
“Where is ‘here’ exactly?”
“This is your mind,” Poxes smiled, “You’ve been chosen. Touched by the great knowledge.”
“You want to save those worthless grubs,” Chrysalis smirked, “Assert your supremacy over those foolish princesses. To do something that even they, with their great and almighty power, cannot. But a potion won’t save them. The changelings demand a leader, and now, the throne is empty.”
“How do you know this?” Courage demanded, hopping from the throne and turning on them both.
“Ah, so aggressive! But if you must know, the moment you began meddling with that tome, your fate was sealed. You became connected to the collective consciousness, what you know, we know. Your body is already undergoing the change.”
“Change?”
Poxes’ smile had a sinister edge as she leaned down to eye level, “You… are becoming one of us.”
Courage froze, she was becoming a changeling? “No, you’re lying to me – that can’t be.”
“Fufufu. Lie to yourself if you must. But the truth is plain to see.”
“You will replace us,” Chrysalis stated, “You will take the throne and lead our people into the future once again. Oh, I think your dear wife will love the new you – what a wonderful source of energy. If only I could have been so lucky!”
“I-I’m not going to use Starlight like that! I’d never hurt her!”
Chrysalis tittered, “Hurt her? Why would you do that? Love freely given is no issue at all. You’d be a fool to harm a willing slave like that.”
Courage backed away from the pair, only to finally notice why she felt so strange. Her legs were completely hairless and covered with black skin. She used her magic to bring down a strand of her once brown mane, revealing a dark purple replacement. This wasn’t happening. She was going to accept this, “I’m not a changeling!” she yelled at the top of her lungs, “Leave me alone, both of you!”
As if to respond to her demands the two Queens were gone. Disappeared into thin air like they’d never existed. The next moment she was back home. Now cognizant of her own dreamscape, Courage sighed and studied the mental recreation of her living room. There were obvious discrepancies, the couch she was sitting on had been thrown out two years ago. The clock’s hands changed every time she looked away.
Starlight Twist entered from stage left. “Oh, I didn’t realise you were back from Canterlot!” she smiled, an obvious lie constructed by her mind; how could Courage Fire enter their shared home without her knowing?
She played along, “Yeah, I finished the job that Celestia and Luna gave me no problem!” She jumped down from the couch and pulled her wife into an affectionate hug. A hug that would keep her going for a few hours at most. She needed something more if she didn’t want the hunger to come back. Courage found herself moving in for a kiss. Starlight quickly opened her own muzzle and allowed Courage’s tongue to enter her mouth.
Courage felt a pleasant, addictive heat filling her body – like eating a full meal after a long day at work. Starlight pushed her away with a blush on her cheeks, “What’s gotten into you Courage? You seem affectionate today!”
“I missed you.”
Starlight smiled warmly, “I missed you too.” It felt like a pleasant dream, much nicer than the one she had just left. Wrapped in the familiar comfort of her wife’s arms and enjoying the smells and sensations of her home. It put her heart at ease. All of that changeling nonsense was just that, nonsense. She’d clearly driven herself a little silly worrying over the potions again. All she needed was to relax and have a little… introspection.
Courage found herself swept into the setting so deeply that she forgot it was a dream. She spent her evening with Starlight, and slept through the night, waking the next morning to do her job as the local alchemist. She sat behind her counter and whittled away the hours completing orders made by various customers.
Everything was going smoothly until the arrival of a familiar customer. Courage’s unwaking mind faintly recognized that this was a memory, based on something that happened to her recently. The customer, a belligerent and bossy stallion named Clay Tile, was looking for a potion to help him dye his mane. That was something Courage could do easily, but not one of the many number of potions she provided fulfilled his specific demands.
“This isn’t the right type of grey,” he insisted, “It’s not dark enough.”
Courage shrugged, “The last time you said it was too dark.”
“How hard is it for you to understand?” he yelled, growing angrier by the moment, “I asked for slate grey! This is coal grey!”
Courage remembered. She’d begrudgingly accepted the minute difference between the two and promised to produce another magical dye potion by the day after. It had infuriated her! How dare some stupid stallion enter her workshop and storm around like he owned the darn place! He had no idea how much time and effort it took to make the potions he was disparaging with his careless words!
Courage’s eye twitched. She felt a strong upswell of anger gather in her chest that was just begging to be let out. And let it out she did, “If you have such a bucking problem with my work, how about you go find somepony else to do it for you?!”
He shrank away from the inflamed mare with shock on his face, “H-Huh?”
“You think you can just come into my shop and make fun of my work? You know nobody gives a damn about the bucking difference between these shades of grey?! The only reason no mare wants to touch you is because you’re a huge plothole! You snivelling worm!”
To see the larger stallion shrinking back from her filled Courage with a sense of pride. She was the one in control of the situation. She cleared her throat and sat back down on her stool with a smug grin, “Now. Are you happy with my product?”
Clay Tile nodded mutely.
“Great! Please come again.” The brow-beaten builder quickly made his exit. Courage was sure that he wasn’t going to be back, but that was for the best. She didn’t need his custom. After all, ever since she successfully revived the changelings imprisoned in Canterlot, she became the talk of the potion-making town. She enjoyed a slew of new customers who weren’t a bunch of picky assholes.
Her hoof tapped the wooden surface of her workstation.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Pitch black skin like coal. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“How amusing.”
Courage twisted in her seat, hanging from the ceiling was Queen Chrysalis. She tilted her head, “Hello again, Courage.”
“I thought I told you to go away.”
“You did, yet you didn’t specify for how long.”
“I’m not playing your games. None of this is real. You’re just a delusion in my head. A book doesn’t have this kind of power.”
“It’s a lot more than a mere book,” she sneered, walking down the wall and finally standing upright before the wilting Courage. “It is an invitation into something special, something wonderful. When you decrypted the book’s locks and opened it, you touched the surface of our collective memory. This war was over the moment you opened that book,” Chrysalis declared solemnly.
“No, it’s not, I can still go back!”
“That stubborn nature will serve the few who remain well. Bold, confident, intelligent – you are everything they need. And in return for your protection they will fulfil your grand ambitions, boundless and hungry, all-consuming and never-ending.”
“I’m not ambitious, I don’t want to conquer the world!”
“Maybe not,” Chrysalis laughed, “But you demand respect from the ponies that surround you. Yet despite your immeasurable talent and drive, they do not. They sneer at you, call you a moron and a foal. They are blind to the fact that you are their better. In such dire circumstances, the only way to prove your supremacy is through force.”
“I’m not listening to any of this!”
Courage lost control again. The comfortable and familiar feeling of her warm home again changed to the cold and utilitarian black stone of the throne room. Poxes and Chrysalis stood at the foot of the steps, looking upwards at the inky black orb that hovered about, “Sink into us,” they demanded, “Sink into us.”
Courage steadied herself. She needed to shock herself awake. The focal point of her mania was clear. The orb that floated above her head under an unknown power. Courage fluttered her insectoid wings and levitated upwards to the mysterious object. As she drew nearer, she could feel a thousand strange sensations run through her waking body.
What was this thing?
Courage reached out and pressed the tip of her hoof against it.
Courage’s epiphany was nigh. The doors were thrown open, and the knowledge that the book had sought to conceal flooded into her mind unbidden by concern or mercy. Courage tried to weather the tidal wave that crashed over her rationality, but the dark, murky waters were beginning to erode her inside and out. She cried out as her body started to twist, a rotten branch springing forth from her head and spiralling into the air.
Still asleep, her real body had little regard for preserving the bedsheets she wrapped herself in. They were set ablaze in royal purple flame. She grew taller, stronger, not as tall as Chrysalis or Poxes were, but still enough to overpower anyone who wasn’t a princess themselves. The last of her fur fell out of her weeping pores, the skin underneath hardening and turning black.
The pieces had fallen perfectly into place. An ambitious, impatient, curious pony finding the book that the infiltrators had left behind in case of failure. Picked from the shelves, opened using her magic, infecting her mind and her being and corrupting her from the inside out. Courage knew every step of that plan now as the collective intelligence of the changelings filled her empty vessel, she rued herself for falling into its arms so easily.
The newly born Queen awoke to ash and smoke. She quickly flung open the bedroom window and ushered the pollution outwards before it drew undue attention. The momentary action was nothing more than instinct. Inside Courage’s head, what little of her own personality tried to piece itself back together. Her memories were there, somewhere, inside the black mass of her mind. Her… wife. Wife! Starlight. Food. Love.
“Queen! Queen! Queen!” Thousands of unseen voices chanted.
She paced. She grabbed fragments of her self from the collective, but inevitably some of that information had been corrupted itself. Mixed and melded into a boiling cauldron of experiences and feelings. Amber Song? Amber. It sounded right, didn’t it? Or maybe not. She was a Queen now, she could name herself what she pleased!
Courage Fire’s mind has been warped beyond recognition. The parts of her that existed on the surface became set dressing, needed only to project a convincing image of normality to the ponies around her. She knew what needed to be done.
She needed to wake up.
Her eyes snapped open and an uncontrollable wail of anguish escaped from her muzzle. Courage tossed and turned, finally burning away the sheets using her magic. Her body heaved as a thick layer of sweat soaked into her fur. She looked down at herself, her body, and discovered that… she was still okay.
Everything was okay.
It was just a bad, bad dream. She wasn’t filled with holes, or twisted into a strange shape. She could remember everything. In the midst of her sheet soaking nightmare she was struck with a sudden bout of inspiration. The pieces that she’d agonised over for hours the day before suddenly rearranged themselves into a new shape.
A new potion.
It took her barely a minute to complete, using all of the same ingredients as before…
The Doctor couldn’t believe it.
Just hours after Courage Fire’s last attempt had amounted to nothing, she had stormed into the medical wing with a brand-new potion and bundles of confidence. He was deeply sceptical that it would work, but he soon discovered that his doubt was misplaced. Only Ember knew the truth. Luna and Celestia were both gathered for this fifth try, so confident was Ember that it would work.
The moment the first drops of the fluid entered her servant’s bodies, they awoke. Their eyes snapped open, they were confused and afraid, tugging on their restraints and asking questions about where they were or what happened to the Queen. Courage Fire smiled as Celestia’s face was warped with shock and surprise.
“The Queen is dead?” one of them whispered, “The queen is dead!”
“We’re free!”
“Hooray!”
To see the Changelings thanking her for releasing them from Chrysalis’ control! Even in her most optimistic projections she had never believed such a thing could happen. “Told ya’,” Courage declared pridefully, corking the potion and placing it back into her bag; another piece of well-crafted alchemy. “Look at them, full of energy and ready to get back to living.” The rest of the captured bugs soon stirred and began to explore their surroundings in a similar manner.
“I must say, thou hast surpassed out expectations,” Luna admitted, “Still, we must tread carefully to ensure that no harm comes to our subjects.”
“Indeed,” Celestia affirmed, “I am very happy that all of them are okay. We can discuss arrangements for what to do with them later.”
“Thank you both,” Courage smiled, “It’s been an honour to work with you.”
Her first priority was getting back home. Through the crack peered a single purple eye. A deception so perfect that not even ‘Courage’ knew of it.
The sound of the front door being unlocked was what Starlight Twist had been waiting for.
Courage’s trip to the capital had taken much longer than she’d initially expected, and she was feeling lonely. It was the longest that the two had been apart since they got married. She had to admit that the house was more than a little dull without her firecracker around to cause trouble. She hurried out of the kitchen and into the hallway, where she was waiting.
Starlight Twist was thankful to see her wife again, she stood in the doorway with her gleaming smile and a puffed-out chest. It was self-evident that whatever task the Princess had given her was no challenge at all. She waited in the doorway for Courage to hug her, or begin speaking a mile a minute about what happened in Canterlot, but she stood there and stared. That cocky, familiar smile soon took an entirely new edge, one that she found unsettling.
“Um, are you okay?”
The faint echo of what was once Courage Fire emerged from the surface. The energy radiating from this mare was delicious, she would not want for food with her compliance. “Oh yes,” Courage replied, “I’m so happy to see you again, love.” She leaned in and kissed her wife, enjoying the burst of romantic energy that filled her belly as a result.
The door slammed shut, what wonders she had to show her…
