Closing my bedroom door behind me I make my way towards Luna's room, just a few steps away. Putting my hand against the door the defensive enchantments detect my mana and I hear the door click. Pushing it open I stride across the room, it’s changed a lot from the first time I was in here. Originally the room didn’t look much different than my own, but now the gem embedded lighting fixtures and presence detecting candles emit a blue light instead of natural pure light. Black pillows and a deep blue blanket on the bed. She could use more decorations if I’m being honest, but the tone fits her much more now.

Approaching the mostly empty desk I find the left side of the desk has a small cup of gems, paper, and two inkwells with a quill in each one. How am I supposed to be able to tell which one of these is her magical quill?

Investigation.

16 +5 = 21.

My gut tells me it’s the one on the left, closest to the cup of gems. She likely scribes something on the paper with the quill and embeds it into the gem. I bet that’s why all of the light in here is blue now. Picking up the quill I notice the ink underneath it is very strange looking, it’s like a swirl of black, purple, and blue with specks of glitter. Well there’s no way she’s using that ink on official paperwork, so I’d say this quill is the safe bet. Regardless I pull out the sending gem and squeeze it.

“Hey Luna, got the quill and my backpack. I’m going to see if I can find your sister though, I need to talk to her about something. Figured I’d give you a small update.” I close the door to her room and start making my way towards the lower floors.

“I appreciate it. She should still be in the throne room, but court will break for lunch soon. It will likely be easier for you to just wait near her office, she typically has lunch there as opposed to the dining hall.”

Hmm not the worst idea, I’d like to be a bit more efficient though. “I think I’ll just wait outside the private exit. I can just talk to her while we’re walking and it’ll let me get outta here faster. Wait… I just saw a handful of guards running that direction, something’s happening.”

“Tia hasn’t called out to me, so it likely isn’t too serious. Keep me updated.”

I slide the gem into one of my pockets as I reach the stairwell. Jumping over the railings I make my way down to the first floor and start bounding for the first floor. Reaching the public entrance for the throne room I spot a wall of guards explaining to a group of ponies that court has unexpectedly closed early for the day, and to come back tomorrow. I don’t even bother trying to make my way through that crowd, a light cloud of fog disperses from around my feet as I misty step right up to the door.

I don’t know what exactly I was expecting to find when I stepped into the throne room, but it wasn’t this. I could’ve guessed like 10 times and it wouldn’t have been this. Celestia and Cadence are quietly talking to each other on the throne and Force, along with 30 or so guards, is standing spread out along the edge of the room. In the center of the room there is a large group of changelings, at least 100, bowing towards the throne. All of the changelings are different shades of gray and very light black. Aurora’s changelings managed to get away from Chrysalis?

As soon as the door clicks closed behind me several eyes and heads turn. Force gives me a big smile and waves her foreleg in the air, Cadence and Celestia pause their conversation and look at me with confusion. A few of the changelings rise and turn to look towards me. As soon as they see me they gasp, “It’s the savior!” “The devil of fire is here.” “It’s him, the one that challenged the usurper.”

After that they all rise to turn and look. I recognize one towards the front, it’s the one who was being executed when I lost it. They all start quietly murmuring and looking at each other but that drone just stares at me. The drone buzzes her wings and flies over the crowd, eliciting a few shouts from the guards in the room, telling her to stop. She quickly drops back to the ground in front of me, lowers her head, and quietly speaks, “Thank you. The cave-in you caused trapped the usurper in the rubble and allowed for some of us to escape. You saved us.”

The rest of the group lowers their heads as well, causing me to awkwardly rub the back of my head. “My original intention was to save my own friends, and the cave-in was completely unintentional.. If Chrysalis hadn’t ordered an evacuation then I would’ve killed all of you. So, you can raise your heads.”

Celestia speaks up, “You could’ve left after you completed your mission, but you chose to let the portal close. You chose to stay and investigate their situation. Too much modesty can lead to resentment, you should be proud, Ignis.”

It’s not like I saved all of them. This has to be a fraction of the original numbers. I don’t say it out loud but the thought does cause my face to shift into a somber stare. I walk towards the throne and the group of changelings part to let me through. “Sorry I missed breakfast.” I flash Force a small smile as I walk past her.

“It’s fine, I missed it too. Guess we’re both lightweights.” She releases a small giggle after her statement.

Climbing the stairs I exhale a big sigh as I reach the two alicorns. “So what exactly is going on here?”

Celestia responds, “Court was moving along the same as always when suddenly the next petitioner was called and over 100 ponies stood up. They grouped up in the middle of the room, bowed, and all dropped their disguises. They’re requesting asylum and integration into Equestria. I called Cadence here to see what we can do for their dietary needs in the short term and after that I was going to reach out to Luna for her thoughts on what we should do with them.”

I look at Cadence, “Oh yeah your domain is love right? You must be like an infinite source of food for them.”

She shakes her head, “Not quite. I can increase the potency of the love as they extract it from a source, but I can’t just produce it infinitely.”

“How dire is the food situation?”

“I’d say most of them are starved to some degree. You can tell because their carapace is starting to develop holes.” Cadence points to a drone towards the front and I notice what she’s talking about. They literally have small holes all the way through on their legs.

I look at Celestia, “Well my opinion depends on if they’ll be attacked randomly in public, how much did we release to the public about what happened at the summit?”

“All they know is that there was a conflict between us and the dragons and the unrelated news that the changeling queen perished.”

“Then I say we just let them loose? Probably worth checking if any of them are still in disguise and are actually one of Chrysalis’ drones, if there’s a way to do that.”

Celestia sighs, “That was the original intent but they do wish for that. They want to create a new hive inside the mountain, but we have active mines in the mountain that give us a constant supply of magic crystals. There is a large chunk of the mine that is depleted, so we were thinking of allowing them to set up there. When, not if, they expand is when the true problem will come into play.”

“I say we cross that bridge when we get there and let them move in, but that’s just the opinion of a lowly knight.” Looking towards Cadence I continue, “You ready to increase some potency, Princess?” I start walking down the stairs and pause a few steps away from the still quietly murmuring group.

A few seconds later Cadence steps up beside me, looking slightly confused. “We sent for volunteers to come by and offer love, it’ll probably be another hour or so before they arrive.”

“That’s fine, I assume Celestia forgot to mention it to you but apparently my love output is quite abnormal. As far as I know I can probably feed all of them in one go, especially if you’re helping with the output.”

“It was in the reports but even so you cannot feed this many changelings at once. It would literally kill you!”

I pause for a second. “Nah, I’ll be fine. Get ready.” Speaking louder so the entire group can hear me, I continue. “Alright changelings, get ready to feed.”

I hear Cadence call out, but her voice gets tuned out along with everything else as I enter my trance state. I start to recall the same scene with my mother that came to me when I was donating love at the colosseum, but the scene blurs. My subconscious replays that drones words, romantic love is more efficient and potent than familial love. That train of thought railroads my trance into flashing the same scenes from both my previous lives of crushes or dates that led to nothing, and just I try to reign my subconscious back in the scene changes again.

It’s from last night. The scene of Force and I laying on the roof of the cloud house staring up at the sky. It’s a romantic scene but I hardly think that qualifies as love, even if I wouldn’t mind replaying the scene a few times.

Constitution Saving Throw. (A/N: DC 10)

19 + 2 = 21.

The scene flashes again, but this time to the night when I watched Luna raise the moon for the first time. Her mane transforming into the ethereal form it is now. I will admit that did fluster me much more than I anticipated, but again I wouldn’t go so far as to call that… love. Maybe their definition is much more loose than I originally thought?

Constitution Saving Throw. (A/N: DC 15)

10 + 2 = 12.

Exhaustion Level: 1.

Everything in the trance state blurs as I find myself back in the throne room. “-diot, stubborn, foolish colt. Luna’s gunna kill me.” I’m laying on my back watching Cadence rant as she pinches the bride of her nose with a forehoof.

I sit up and roll my shoulders, letting out a gasp as they crack and pop. “Relax, I’m fine.” Looking ahead I see all the changelings no longer have holes, and I smile as they all lower their heads toward me again.

-2 Hit Points: 73/75.

I let out a yelp as something hits me in the back of the head. I turn and find a furious Cadence glaring at me, “That’s for my knight, you deserve it.” Looking back towards the throne I see Force at the bottom of the stairs. She’s chewing the inside of her mouth with worry in her eyes.

Ah. Yeah I won’t argue with the princess on that one. I stand up and use my hands to straighten out my wrinkled clothes as I approach the pegasus. “Sorry Em, didn’t mean to make you worry.”

“Em?”

“Yeah if you were to write it down it’d just be “MM” it’s Magic Missile. Your cutie mark looks like a bolt of my Magic Missile and you resemble it a bit too when you perform your special talent. I told you it’s hard to come up with nicknames for you. It was either that or Pablo and I don’t think you’d have liked Pablo. Unstoppablo.”

“Nope, come up with another one. You’ve got a few weeks to think about it. Reckless fool.”

“Ah come on, you like reckless. I knew I’d be fine, gotta have a little more faith in me.”

She rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t worried at all until you collapsed. You were out for several minutes, you know?”

“I was? Huh. Listen, I’ll try to come up with some more ideas, but I think Em will grow on you. Nice and short.” I stand up and look up the stairs towards Celestia on the throne. “I gotta go talk to the sun and head back to Ponyville, take it easy.”

“Stay safe.” As I start up the stairs, Force walks over to Cadence.

Once I’m a few steps away Celestia speaks. “Shouldn’t you be in Ponyville right now?”

“Yeah, but I needed my backpack and Luna’s quill. The reason I came by was to talk to you about the statue you’re building in the middle of the street where we killed the hydra.”

“What about it?”

“I heard it’s going to depict all of us that fought?” She nods. “It should depict a filly named Cursive Hoof and her parents. She’s a deaf filly that was orphaned when her parents were consumed by the Hydra. Her deafness prevented her from the mental influence of the hydra and it’s only because of her and the loss of her parents that we were able to even discover the hydra. There’s no telling how long that thing would’ve continued unchecked if it weren’t for her.”

A pained expression forms on the alicorn's face. “The original idea was to put Luna in a positive spotlight, but I was unaware of that filly. I’ll speak with the sculptor. Was that all you wanted to talk about?”

“Yeah.”

“Very well. Try not to be so reckless while protecting my sister.” With that she makes her way down the steps and starts speaking with the group of changelings.

I squeeze the gem in my pocket, “Alright Luna, I’m ready for the teleport.”

With a flash and a pop I open my eyes and I’m in…. a bakery?

Author's Note

I'm not done writing for today, but this felt like a good stopping point for a chapter.

Little bit more than a 10 minute adventure, but nothing too serious, just expanding the political landscape.

Next chapter will probably bring us right up to the start of the fashion show, or I'll slam through an wrap the whole thing up. Probably the former though.

Thanks for reading!