Chapter 2: With a Brother

"It looked like me!" Twilight shouted.

Shining took a defensive step back. "I thought itwas you!"

"THEN WHY IN TARTARUS DID YOU HAVE SEX WITH IT?!"

"Um, Princess, we can't be absolutely sure it was a Changeling—" Thorax tried to interject, but Twilight carried on without paying him any mind.

"Because I love you!" Shining Armor shouted. "I love you in a way no brother should, and I for just a moment, I thought maybe... maybe you loved me back!"

Twilight shrank back. "I do love you, Shining... but you need to go," Twilight mumbled, pointing a hoof back in the direction of the castle. "Please leave. I don't want to see you right now."

"B-but..." Shining tried to protest. "Let me—"

Twilight's horn illuminated brilliantly, and with a familiar burst of magical energies, Shining Armor was gone.

"That... wasn't necessary," Thorax chastised. "Where did you send him, anyway?"

"Back to his wife," Twilight hissed, anger flaring up again momentarily, before her shoulders suddenly sagged, and she sat back on her haunches. She took a deep breath and then screamed at the air around her.

One of the disadvantaged of being a Changeling was the intimate familiarity with all of the emotions of other beings, and this was no exception as the air around him began to fill with the taste of despair... with a powerful flavor of love added. And the ringing of tinnitus in his ears.

Twilight's head drooped as she ran out of air, bracing herself from falling forward with her hooves. Thorax wasn't the best at providing comfort, but he wasn't even sure what to say. Without any further ideas, he simply approached her and put his hooves around her, pulling her in for a hug.

She buried her face in his chitinous chest; Thorax immediately transformed into a much more suitable form: a bear. Burying her face in his fur, she cried.

And cried.

And then she suddenly stopped, pulling her face away from his chest. She looked up into Thorax's eyes. "He told me he wanted to do it again!" she wailed, and buried her face into his chest. She cried some more.

After a while, she pulled away from him, wiping tears from her face with the back of a hoof. "Wait... what... what did you mean, it wasn't a Changeling?"

"It doesn't matter now, does it?"

"It does!" Twilight shouted. "Thorax, I want to know the truth!"

Thorax was taken aback; Twilight had never been so forceful with him before. "It...it might have been a Changeling. But I couldn't find any signs of Changeling magic of any kind. No transformation. No teleportation. No kinesis. If this happened only last night, I should be able to detect the residue from the spells... There's just no way it could have been a Changeling, unless that Changeling did all of it's transformations elsewhere and... got here without magic."

Twilight sat back, wiping snot from her nose. "Then, what... could it have been?"

Thorax shook his head. "I don't know. I honestly do not know." A question burned in the back of his mind, and he had to get it out. "Why... why exactly are you so upset about this? I'm sorry, but I cannot help but taste your emotions, and this response, it... it isn't normal."

Twilight stared at the stone floor, seemingly lost in thought for several minues, sniffling occasionally, and wiping her tears away. "I've been so mad at him," she finally said. "I've been mad at him for years. I've always wanted Shining to love me that way, but I knew it was wrong."

Her eyes finally met his as she continued talking. "I kept those feelings locked up, deep inside of me. I knew nopony would ever consider me normal if they found out I lusted for my own brother. So for many years now, I've been shoving my own desires away. But even though I couldn't bring myself to admit it to anypony, I turned down so many stallions because deep down inside, I knew I wanted my BBBFF. And I also knew that I was doomed to be unhappy and alone. There was no way he would return my love."

"And now?" Thorax asked.

"And now, it seems I was wrong. But it's too late, now. He's married Cadance. I was too little, too late."

But in listening to Twilight's story, Thorax found himself dwelling on a story from his own misery. "I... I think I can relate," he replied. "I... I love my broodmother. I wish to breed with her, and expand the hive."

"Uh... You mean Chrysalis?"

Thorax nodded quietly. "We Changelings didn't understand or embrace love back then, but it was always there, in some limited capacity. Now that I understand love even more, I can recognize it for what it was. We Changelings loved our Queen, but she could not find it in herself to do the same."

"I... I see." Twilight pulled away from Thorax, and Thorax shifted back into his normal form.

"Even though she did not return my love, I truly wished that she would choose me as her next breeding drone," Thorax continued. "But now... I would not want to build a hive from my broodmother's selfishness. And it no longer matters what I desire; she is stuck in stone. And if Equestria is to survive, she will remain there for eternity." It was his turn to get misty-eyed and emotional, it seemed.

"I struggle in silence every night," Thorax said, shaking. "Desiring the love of a Changeling who will never love me back."

"Isn't that... really weird?" Twilight wondered.

The question was so unexpected that Thorax did a double-take. "Weird? What do you mean?"

"Well, you want to breed with your own mother. That's very... unorthodox."

"Oh, not at all," Thorax explained. "Changeling reproduction is quite odd, you see."

"I haven't had the courage to ask about it," Twilight confessed. "But I do admit to being curious."

"Having sex with our mothers... it's strange to you ponies, but for Changelings, it is essential to the survival of our species. We mate with our broodmother, and each other, because if we didn't, we wouldn't survive.

"Your siblings?" Twilight asked, cautiously.

"Oh, yes. Every Changeling in a hive is descended from the same mother—or sometimes the mother before her, though that's less common. Which makes us all siblings. I suppose in pony terms, it would make us half-siblings, but all of our fathers are also related to us; if not as siblings, as uncles—so the whole thing is heavily interwoven."

"Why, exactly, are you all born to the Hive Queen?" Twilight asked, confused. "Surely some other females—"

"Nymphs."

"—Nymphs would have their own children?"

Thorax shook his head. "Nymphs—females that are not Queens—have no womb to incubate eggs. They are capable of carrying a fertilized egg within their genital pouch for a short period, but as the egg matures and grows, they are incapable of continuing to carry it. So a drone places the egg inside the broodmother."

Twilight stared at Thorax with a puzzled expression. "I think... maybe we need to go back to basics. How exactly do Changelings reproduce?"

"Ah, umm... well, it's a bit more complicated than ponies, but the processes individually are similar. A male 'drone' Changeling, like myself, has an ovipositor. It functions mostly like a penis, except... well, it is designed for the transfer of eggs. The drone finds a receptive nymph, and they engage in... erm... reproductive behavior."

Twilight frowned. "You make that sound dirty."

"Well, it's just very strange by pony standards. You see, the nymph will release an egg during copulation, and the male's ovipositor will latch onto the egg, and our actual penis—a tiny, needle-like penis—penetrates the egg and deposits a single sperm cell."

"That sounds unpleasant," Twilight said, wincing.

"It's not. The whole process is rather enjoyable, much like pony reproduction. Once the egg is fertilized, the ovipostor opens up and the tip of the penis flares outward before retreating into the ovipositor. This hooks the egg and drags it all the way back through the ovipositor and into the drone's body. Then, if the Broodmother is receptive, we copulate with her and deposit the fertilized egg into her womb, where the eggs grow until they are too large for her to carry."

"And then they are born?" Twilight wondered.

"No, no, then she lays the eggs, which must be protected until they hatch. The broodmother and the other nymphs can secrete a gooey green that sustains the growing Changeling inside until they hatch a few months later."

Twilight sat back, seemingly lost in thought for a few minutes. Thorax looked around the cavern, inhaling deeply of the fresh air, still tainted by the lust from the night before, and Twilight's earlier outpouring of despair. The flavor of lust, however, seemed... fresher?

"Thorax?"

"Yes?"

"Who is the current Broodmother?"

Thorax sighed. "We don't have one."

"Then how are you going to survive as a species!?"

Thorax looked around the room, hoping that something would derail this conversation now that it was heading this direction. "We need to—No. I need to... choose a mate. There is a reason I am called a King. Every hive has a few King drones. We're given special treatment by the hive and I hated it. That's why I ran away."

"Because you didn't want to be a King?"

"A King is special. We're actually nursed by a Queen directly as we grow up; she gives us our Royal Jelly, and it causes our gonads to develop slightly differently: our sperm, when implanted into an egg, will grow a new Queen. We're protected by the hive, because if all of the Kings were to die, and the Queen died without producing another one... the hive can't continue. In that regard, we're even more irreplacable than the Queen, even though there's more of us."

"I see. But you said only Queens have a womb. Without a Queen, even if you were to... breed... how will your species continue?"

Thorax closed his eyes. There was no way he could just tell her that... right?

... But, no. He'd come this far. And she was always voraciously pursuing knowledge. If he didn't tell her now, she'd pry the information out of someling at some point.

"We... use a surrogate womb. Usually a womb from a pony. And usually a mare that has been fooled by a fake husband who is actually a King. The King mates with a Nymph, and then the pony, and then the hive will kidnap the pony, keeping her safe until it is time to lay the egg.

"How have I never heard anything about this? Surely she would tell somepony after she returns?"

"They... they don't, um... return."

Twilight faltered. "They... don't..." A flash of recognition. "Oh... the process is fatal, then?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that," Thorax laughed. "But... Changelings secrete a substance to feed the growing egg, as the mare is not a Changeling and cannot produce it herself. It requires... repeated copulation. And it has a slightly... intoxicating effect on ponies."

"They get drunk?"

"And it's addictive. They... they don't want to leave. Once the egg hatches, they attain a sort of special status within the hive: The Matriarch. The Mother of the Queen. It is... a somewhat pitiful existence, though. They want nothing more than to be bred, repeatedly."

The taste of lust in the air intensified, and Thorax eyed the Princess warily. "How are you being aroused by this?"

Twilight's purple cheeks turned a deep shade of crimson. "I... uh..." She shuffled her hooves, pawing at the stone awkwardly. "Would... would you judge a pony for wanting to have sex with a facsimile of her sibling?"

Thorax laughed loudly. "Princess Sparkle, surely you realize how silly that question is? I already told you, we almost exclusively breed with our siblings or other close relatives. And there's no shortage of Changelings who have chosen to make their living in this new Changeling reality by selling their bodies to make such fantasies real."

"And you need... you need a pony who can establish a new hive for you. To birth a new Queen for the Hive?" she asked. "If I were willing, would you let me... with... him?"

"As Shining Armor?" Thorax replied. "Princess, you cannot afford to become addicted to..."

"I'll be fine," Twilight replied. "We'll... we'll research it. I'll find a way to negate the addictive properties. Just... promise me... nopony can ever know about this.

"Well... one ling will need to know. But... I have already chosen the Nymph that will bring our hive back. That's why I chose Ocellus for your school. I wanted her to have a positive relationship with ponies. We need to build new hives. We need more than one Queen, or else a single rogue Queen might once again try to consolidate their power."

"You have to start somewhere," Twilight insisted. "I promise. Please... I... I need to feel him. Let me help the Changelings to grow again."

The taste of lust in the air was nearly intoxicating to Thorax already. It was getting difficult to deny her. "We'll need Ocellus first," he said simply.

"Where is she?"

He told her. They both flashed out of existence.

Twilight Sparkle watched at a distance as the other Twilight Sparkle and the Changeling King disappeared from sight. She rubbed her belly with a hoof.

The seed had been planted. And now it could grow.