“This is stupid,” one yeti growled to another as they stalked through snow. They stood out against the snow like sore thumbs, the first a deep cyan color with amaranth mane around its face, the other lime green with a bright orange mane. “You are stupid.”
“These bodies are perfect for the snow, and if we flew up here as rocs we probably would have been shot at before they realized we weren’t a threat,” the second yeti reminded its comrade, his voice strangely nasal for his size. The snow crunched beneath their broad paws, still coming up to their knees despite their natural snowshoes. “You could have stayed back at the hive, if you’d wanted to!”
“I want to be there when you end up starting a war because you stepped on the wrong stick,” the first muttered. “Maybe if I can knock out a few of their warriors, they’ll cool down instead of coming for us.”
“I’m not going to start a war,” the green ‘yeti’ sighed. “Trust me, Pharynx, I know what I’m doing! If you want to go back home, I’ll be fine.”
“Thorax, Twilight Sparkle almost started a war with them. If Princess Perfectionist can piss them off, so can you.”
“Oh, I know I can. But I’m not going to.”
Pharynx stopped, scowling at Thorax until the slightly smaller yeti stopped and turned back towards him.
“Is something wrong, Pharynx?” Thorax asked innocently. Well, as innocently as you could act with a mouthful of fangs meant for ripping apart yaks, polar bears, and worse.
“You’re up to something,” Pharynx muttered, narrowing his eyes. “And I don’t like that you aren’t telling me what it is. I can’t keep you safe if I don’t know what you’re planning.”
“If I tell you what I’m planning, you’ll just try to talk me out of it,” Thorax sighed. “I’m just going to be respectful, straightforward, and not act like I expect them to crush me underhoof if I sneeze wrong.”
“They’re yaks,” Pharynx deadpanned. “That is a distinct possibility.”
“Pharynx, the pony they get along best with is Pinkie Pie. Remember? The one you tried to tackle after she pulled out a cannon at Gorbfest? They aren't as short-fused as the ponies think. Just be polite and try not to get into any fights, okay?” Thorax stepped closer, taking advantage of his improved reach and pulling Pharynx into a hug. “If we don’t make them mad, they won’t threaten to smash either of us.”
“If you don’t let me go, I make no promises that I won’t smash you,” Pharynx sighed… though he did return the hug before pushing himself back. “Fine, I’ll trust you. Just remember, the hive needs you un-smashed. I get a hint that things are getting dangerous, I’ll be in there before they can get their hooves off the ground!”
“I know. And I appreciate it," he added before turning back around to continue the walk towards the wooden palisades they could just make out through the snow.
Meanwhile, inside that wooden wall, Prince Rutherford prowled around the village commons, supervising the final preparations.
<“Lochan!”> Rutherford shouted in his native yakkish. <”Use smaller tables, these are small guests! Ygrid, is yovidophone tuned?”>
The yak musician rolled her eyes, running her instrument up and down the scales before scowling at her Prince.
<”Prince Rutherford, please calm down.”> Lochan walked up to his prince, lightly brushing one of his horns against the ruler’s finely adorned ones. <"You are a great host, and Yona has said the changelings want this, yes? They will not be like the Glacier Lords.">
Rutherford muttered darkly, but nodded his acceptance. Lochan was right; he needed to forget what had happened.
<"Get me when guests arrive, I'm going to go smash some firewood.">
Lochan nodded his approval before going to finish his preparations. He had just gotten the smaller settings used for when pony guests joined them when he heard Ygrid begin playing.
The yovidophone was used for many purposes among the yaks. The most obvious, of course, was for the joy of creating something the ice couldn't swallow. But every yak also learned the kaluut, the language used by the masters for signaling news throughout the valley without setting off an avalanche.
Two yeti, strange colors - it had to be them.
<"Get the prince, little one,"> he ordered a nearby calf before rushing to make sure someone would be there to greet them.
Outside the walls, Thorax and Pharynx were coming out of the deeper snow away from the camp. They were each consumed with flame, their yeti forms shrinking down into their native changeling shapes. Pharynx took the lead, his eyes darting between the points where he could see lookouts at the walls. He formed a properly defensive mental image, a gargantuan tortoise who could take anything the yaks might throw at them, and held onto it so that he could transform the instant he knew he had to.
They each heard the droning tones of a yovidophone start playing on the other side, a few warmup notes before the player set into a complex harmony. As they approached the gates, they opened to reveal a towering yak with an iron helmet and his dark brown beard braids held in gleaming golden beads. He was wearing a simple green blanket over his back, and he stepped out to greet them, taking a knee to the two princes.
“Greetings, prince changelings, welcome to Yakyakistan!” He said as he stood back up from the bow. “Prince yak just overseeing final preparations, will be here quickly! Yak is Lochan, aide to Prince yak.”
”The Changeling Kingdom is grateful to meet the Yaks,” Thorax said with a winning smile as he inclined his head to Lochan. <”Changelings can speak yakkish, if yaks would like, though may not be best at it.”>
<”It is not necessary, but appreciated,”> Lochan admitted. <”Unusual to meet non-yaks who try!”>
<”Changelings best at blending in,”> Thorax laughed, looking over as he saw the gold-banded horns of Prince Rutherford approaching quickly from deeper in the camp.
<”Greetings, Prince Rutherford, good to meet you when not emergency,”> Thorax said as he bowed his head respectfully again. Rutherford paused for a moment, visibly surprised before he shifted mental gears.
<”It is!”> He said cheerfully, lowering his own head to bump his horns lightly against Thorax’s antlers. The changeling met the gesture, but didn’t try to push back.
<”I am Prince Thorax,”> he said, gesturing towards Pharynx, his accent improving practically by the word. <”And this is my brother and head of security, Prince Pharynx.”>
Rutherford repeated his light horn bump with the elder brother, meeting a bit more resistance from the more stubborn changeling. For a moment, he thought Pharynx was going to push back, but a disapproving look from Thorax made the darker changeling back down.
<”Please excuse my brother, he’s a bit overprotective.”>
<”That is good for a leader of warriors!”> Rutherford pointed out, stepping back from his guests with an easy laugh. <”Please, join our camp, while you are here your safety is my duty.”>
He led the two of them in, Lochan making sure the gates were closed behind them as the tune of Ygrid’s music spread throughout the village.
<”We have prepared a guest hut for you,”> Rutherford explained as he led them through. <”We did not expect you to walk all this way, but feel free to rest as long as you need.”>
<”We did take the train up to the Crystal Empire, and flew as far from there as we could before the wind became too strong,”> Thorax reassured him. <”But some time to clean up before any events would be appreciated.”>
<”Of course! When you are ready, just let any yak know and they will tell me.”>
The two changelings disappeared into their guest hut, and Rutherford heaved a great breath of relief. It was going well, better than expected even! This was going to work out, just like Lochan had said.
Rutherford just wasn’t going to say it out loud; he couldn’t be paid enough to jinx things like that.
Not jinxing it seemed to be paying off, as the day continued and finally started to turn towards night. Dinner was a fine feast, every yak in town laughing and celebrating the presence of visitors from out of town, and the extravagance it brought on. Couscous, barley soup, butter tea, vanilla mountain-cake, and all the other luxuries the mountains and tundra could provide were plentiful, and aside from their visitors eating little, everything seemed to be perfect.
<“The food is wonderful,”> Thorax said, seeming to anticipate Rutherford’s question. <“But when changelings are in our normal form, we really can’t eat much in the way of solid food. Your people being happy is enough to feed us for weeks without touching anything else!”>
<"It must make the Badlands easier to live in,"> Rutherford noted. <"Your people don't seem like the type of creatures that would stay there.">
<"That's actually part of why we're visiting. I don't want to ruin the night with business though."> The lime green changeling looked at the sky, still bright as day. <"When night is?">
<"This far north, the sun is a bad sign. We would sleep all winter, but never in the summer!"> Rutherford laughed. <"It’s evening, our normal time for dinner. Most yaks will prepare for the sleeping huts in a few hours.">
<"Yaks share a hut for the entire village?"> Pharynx asked, tearing himself away from watching some yaks at the edge of the group literally butting heads.
<"Only warriors and other single yaks in the main sleeping hut. Families have their own huts, more peaceful for little yaks.">
<"And for making them, I imagine,"> Thorax chuckled.
Rutherford turned over the expression in his head for a moment, and then laughed heartily.
<"Much! Though yaks have huts for that too. Changelings prefer living together too?">
<"Even after the transformation,"> Pharynx confirmed. <"Even more than the yaks. The hive doesn't usually do private, and it's never really quiet either.">
<"Like full-winter,"> the yak prince mused. <"When the sun never rises, most families move to the main hut to stay warmer.">
<"More like that,”> Thorax agreed. <”It’s just kind of strange to not have the voices from the rest of the hive to listen to. Especially for changelings who weren’t infiltrators before. That was probably even harder than being hungry before I was accepted in the Crystal Empire. But it’s why I’m trying to find more allies for the Hive.”>
<”Your letters said you were interested in trade,”> Rutherford noted, keeping his tone even.
<”I am,”> Thorax sighed inwardly. Apparently tonight would involve talking business after all. <”But the changelings don’t really need the normal trade goods, we can make virtually everything we need ourselves by changing forms. Everything except for safe places to live, if anything happens in the badlands. So I’m hoping to trade some of the more unique resources we have for more places we could move to if we had to. If we’re going to talk business, I’d rather do it somewhere private.”>
<”It’s good to get things out in the open early,”> Rutherford pointed out. <”It lets us consider things longer, and stop trying to get an advantage over each other sooner.”>
<”Don’t worry, I’m not going to declare war on you,”> Thorax smirked as the two stood up. <”Pharynx would be split between wanting to strangle me and trying to figure out if I was actually serious or not.”>
Rutherford shifted awkwardly, leading the way to a well-lit, heavily decorated hut.
<”This hut is for official business,”> he explained. <”As for war… yaks and ponies have a complicated history.”>
<”I’m sure,”> Thorax said easily. <”Please, Princess Twilight is a dear friends to the changelings, but I am not here on her behalf, or to try and get information for her. I’ve come to appreciate the value of having some leverage in things like this, and making her afraid that she was going to upset Princess Celestia used to be really good leverage.”>
<”And then the train got stuck behind sheep,”> Rutherford muttered. <”If we’d made it back here, it would have worked.”>
<”So you were just trying to get her into a position where she’d give you just about anything,”> Thorax grinned.
<”Old yak trick,”> Rutherford agreed. <”Everycreature assumes yaks are violent and stupid. So if we act violent and stupid, they’ll usually do anything to calm us down. When most of your trade is milk, barley, and vanilla, you need to take any advantage you can get, especially with… well….”>
<”Especially with ponies?”> Thorax guessed. Rutherford huffed, settling down at a small table in the hut and pawing at the dirt with a hoof.
<”Yaks were friends with ponies for many, many moons. Even before the ponies brought the windigoes down, before this camp existed. After they left, Yakyakistan and the Crystal Empire were the only kingdoms here. Even so, the Crystal Empire kept its magic all to itself. Traded gems and berries for fur and vanilla, but that was enough for yaks. Yaks are used to living hard, without pony magic. Then Shadow King came, took the Empire, and tried to invade Yakyakistan.”>
<”And pony magic meant that he did a lot more damage than the yaks ever wanted to see again,”> Thorax guessed. <”That’s why the yaks built this city?”>
<”In the pass the armies would need to take to reach true Yakyakistan,”> Rutherford agreed. <”There are other cities further north, but here we act like we are all the yaks, in case another invasion ever comes. So you see why pulling the snow over the Princess seems fair. Ponies control the sun and moon, can bring down the mountains on yak villages, make their own weather? Yaks need any advantage we can get!”>
<”And I’m here to offer you a couple more advantages,”> Thorax said. He flashed with fire, turning into a kangaroo and pulling a leather sack out of her pouch before turning back. <”Changeling trick, makes things easier to carry. Do you know what this is?”>
He upended the sack, dumping its contents onto the table - several small, dark, blue-green rocks. Rutherford’s eyes narrowed as he looked down at them, considering the stones before he reached into a pile of apparent clutter to pull out a small cloak clasp with a glowing red stone. He sat it next to the stones, and the stone on the clasp flickered, then went dull until he moved it away.
<”Mana stone?”> He asked Thorax seriously, looking the changelings in the eyes, taking the time to push his hair back out of his face.
<”It’s tuned to allow changeling magic, but that’s it. It’s why the Hive has remained intact as long as it has - Chrysalis had her entire throne made out of it. We gave most of the throne to the ponies, but… well, it had to come from somewhere. Let’s just say that the Hive knows where.”>
Rutherford looked down at the stones, then back up at the changeling. Thorax could almost see the yak’s mind putting the pieces together and weighing the consequences. Having access to a resource that could cripple ponykind, to say nothing of countless other magical threats… against having access to a resource that could cripple ponykind, among countless other magical threats.
<”Yaks and ponies are friends now,”> Rutherford said evenly. <”Princess Twilight is a good ruler, cares about more than just ponies. Yaks live with ponies, ponies are welcome to live with yaks if they want to. One of the Princess’ friends has a business here, she just isn’t here right now to run it. I will not risk that.”>
<”I’m not asking you to,”> Thorax said quickly. <”But we both know that pony rulers can change… and how quickly things can change for the entire kingdom after that. If Chrysalis, Tirek, and Cozy Glow had kept Equestria, we would all have suffered. Princess Twilight is a wonderful friend to everycreature. But the yaks still hide their kingdom behind the ice. You don’t trust them enough to move your village from the pass. You know that if Princess Twilight ever leaves power, we don’t have any way to know what will come next. Which is why we need to make our own friendships and alliances.”>
<”Who else are you making friends with then?”>
<”Everycreature I can,”> Thorax said honestly. <”It’s like I told you before; we don’t need regular trade. We need places we can live. To the best of my knowledge, our Hive is the only Hive right now. There used to be more, but… well, you had King Sombra, we had Queen Chrysalis. I want to have more places where my changelings can live, places where they can have peace and love to feed on while they make lives for themselves. Places that will still be safe if the ponies, or the griffons, or the hippogriffs, or anyone else decides that the main Hive is just too dangerous, even if we have reformed. I’ve already made alliances with the Abyssinians, the dragons, and the hippogriffs. And the ponies, of course. But I’d like to be friends with the yaks too.”>
<”Winter is best for those with many huts,”> Rutherford nodded. <”You and your brother will be here for a while?”>
<”I’ll have to send him back in a few days, if things take longer than that, but yes. I’d like to get to know the yaks better. From what Ocellus tells me, you’re the best hosts.”> Thorax winked at the yak prince. <”Among many, many other things that the changelings might like some tips on.”>
Prince Rutherford grinned, standing up to thump Thorax’s back firmly, almost knocking the little changeling over.
<”Then come! Let me show you that yaks are the best friends the changelings could want. Let’s go back out to the party, and I’ll show you our firemilk! My family’s own recipe!”>
Thorax smiled, quickly changing back to his kangaroo shape to stash the sack again before following Rutherford out.
If everything continued to go well, the changelings just might be able to weather whatever the future held for them.
Author's Note
These two could have a *weird* dynamic, I think. That's why I still pushed through to try and submit this right under the wire. May come back to them in the future, we'll see!
