Summoning Ocellus

Four pegasai dropped out of the sky on top of the pony on guard duty (who Ocellus recognized as Cloud Chaser, not that it mattered).

“Food delivery for our brave guard pony!” Ocellus said, handing her a box of donuts.

“Oh thanks!” the pony replied. “I’m not allowed to eat on duty, though.”

“Oh no! I’m so sorry! I didn’t want to make you break the rules.”

“Nah, it’s fine, rules were made to be broken.” She giggled, and took a pink-frosted donut, scarfing it down in a few bites. “Huh, that tasted a bit off.”

Ocellus took the green donut from the box. “Hmm, tastes fine to me.”

“Probably just a case of horrible guilt, then,” the pony on guard said, with a short laugh.

“Mark us down as important couriers, and let us through the portal,” Ocellus said, quietly. “And give us courier badges so we don’t get any questions on the other side.”

Cloud Chaser’s eyes swirled. “Of course. What are your names?”

“Jester, Worrywart, Black Ink, and Fidelity.” Ocellus pointed to each of them in turn.

“Eat the purple donut two minutes after we’re through,” Ocellus added.

“Yes ma’am!” Cloud Chaser said, saluting.

On the other side, they showed their perfectly legitimate courier badges, and left the base camp post-haste, which was not unusual for couriers.

“That seemed too easy,” Keeper remarked, in his black and grey form.

“We couldn’t have done it without you,” Ocellus replied. “Change Self isn’t a normal sort of magic in Equestria. Also, I give us ten minutes to make ourselves scarce before they start sending out patrols. Cloud Chaser won’t give us away, but our identities won’t hold up if someone compares them to the master list.”

===

That night, Parieto met Ocellus in her dream, forcibly shifting it into an interrogation room. “I understand you escaped Equestria. What are you planning, little one?”

“Treason most foul,” Ocellus responded. “My wizard is worried, for good reason, and I can’t dismiss her worries. I tried, I swear.”

“Explain, and you might not be thrown in the Pit forever,” Parieto said.

“The Pit’s a myth,” Ocellus said.

“So were traitors to the swarm, before Thorax,” he replied. “If necessary, we can dig one. It won’t take long.”

“Still, no. I’d prefer to only be a traitor to *one* side, thank you very much.”

“I’ll just get the answers from your friends,” he replied. “None of them have any more defenses than Pharynx has mercy.”

“It’s like Dash said in Loyalty class. Sometimes you have to balance the possible harm.” Ocellus frowned. “Which means I should be loyal to the swarm, but I can’t dismiss Tixi’s worries. Kobolds she cares for could die.”

“Ah,” Parieto said. “Thank you for the information. I’ll be visiting her next to verify it.”

“Please, don’t tell anyone…”

“I only have loyalty to one side, so choosing a side is much easier for me,” he replied.

Ocellus awoke. It was still the middle of the night. She shook the others awake. “We have to go, now. They know everything.”

===

Three days later, they stumbled, exhausted, back into the city, leaving the ferry they’d stolen on the docks. The water rushing through the dam’s spillgates made the current fast, even as far downstream as they were, but Ocellus had spent what time she could as a giant snake, hanging off the back of the boat and pushing it faster like a big snaky outboard motor. Unlike a motor, she didn’t have the limitless endurance of a come-to-life spell, but she was pretty sure they’d at least beaten the army.

They still weren’t *safe*. Fast flight – the kind they didn’t dare use – could have gotten a few changelings there before them, and anyone in the crowd could be a hunter. Still, they could blend into the crowd too, and she’d forgotten to give them a kobold shape, so if they could make it to the tribe – no, no, there were kobolds that the changelings could be copying scattered throughout the city. Nowhere was safe, even with Ocellus in a fake human form. Change Self was good for getting through a checkpoint, but it didn’t last all day. They were flush with Equestrian diamonds, though, and used a few them to buy the kobolds hats of disguise, which let them at least pretend not to be kobolds so long as no one touched them.

“A trenchcoat would have been much cheaper,” Tixi complained, flicking the feather in her cap as she walked around looking like a halfling. “There are three of us, so we could have used it as a disguise.”

“This is better,” Keeper said. “’Three kobolds in a trenchcoat’ is a joke that people play along with, since we’re supposed to be friendly with you tribals.”

“It is not! People were fooled! We bribed a guard and everything,” Tixi protested.

“Whatever you say,” Keeper said with a sigh.

Then they headed to The Inn and hired some adventurers to guard them while they slept. It was the middle of the day, so it didn’t cost much.

When they woke, their hired guards reported a strange human asking around about kobolds. “We told them we hadn’t seen any. You’re not kobolds in disguise, are you?”

“No,” said Tixi, obviously a kobold since she’d been asleep and unable to keep the hat of disguise active. “We’re halflings, see? Let me turn this off.” She tapped her cap to turn it on, and shifted into halfling form.

“We just like pretending to be kobolds in bed,” Ijj said. “It’s a sex thing. You know what they say – once you go scaly, you’ll be back daily.”

“I don’t think anyone has ever said that,” Keeper remarked under his breath.

The guards didn’t seem convinced, but Keeper gave them each an extra diamond to at least stay quiet.

===

They headed directly for the tribe, finding an old unused entrance to the storm drains and navigating the labyrinthine tunnels until they arrived at the front door. The kobolds on guard duty pointed their spears at the presumed adventurers, before they deactivated their hats and revealed themselves.

“We have to talk to the eldest!” Tixi cried. “I know I’m banished but this is really, really important!”

“I’m sure it is,” said a voice behind them, as various rocks and debris flashed and transformed into changeling infiltrators. “Which is why you won’t be telling anyone anything.”

The warriors stared in confusion, until the shopkeeper shouted at them, “Open the door! We’ll hold them off!”

“Will you,” said one of the infiltrators, his brightly colored pink and purple contrasting with his aura of menace. “Goop them all! Let none escape!”

Tixi and Ijj ran into the tunnels, deftly dodging the traps they’d memorized. Ocellus turned into a giant centipede, grabbed Keeper, and scuttled across the ceiling where she trusted there were fewer traps. Tixi saw what she was doing, and yelled at her to stay to the left. “No, my left!” she cried as the upside-down Ocellus swerved the wrong way and had to dodge a volley of darts in addition to the goo. Seeing the trap go off, and correctly figuring it was one of many, the changelings didn’t enter the tunnel, but managed to tag Ijj and send him tumbling into a pit which Tixi doubted was full of pillows.

“I’m okay!” Ijj yelled. “I mean I’m dangling by a string of changeling slime over a bunch of poison spikes, but I’m not hurt!”

The others ignored him and moved on.

Once they were past the gauntlet, they were hustled deep into the lair, to explain themselves to the kobold elders.

===

“Why have you brought trouble to our doorstep, Tixi,” the elderly kobold in charge of magic spoke. “We sent you away to avoid this, yet here you are, and here is trouble.”

“The trouble was coming despite me,” Tixi replied, prostrating herself on the ground before them. “Trouble moves. I raced here to try to tell you before it was too late, but, um, I was too late.”

“What is the nature of this trouble,” said the elder warrior, who looked quite young compared to the others.

“An army of changelings, here to avenge Ocellus against the Wizard,” she said. “You can’t withstand them – they outnumber you twenty to one and can look like anyone, or anything. You need to let them have the Wizard, and not intervene.”

“The Wizard has done well by our tribe,” the eldest kobold of all said. “Some would say our tribe exists because of him, and they would not be wrong. Why should we betray him now?”

“Because you can’t win,” Tixi said. “It’s not pragmatic to fight against this enemy.”

“Then we’ll do our best to be reliable,” the eldest warrior replied. “The Wizard can replace us; we can’t replace him. As long as he lives, the tribe will live on, even if none of us are there to see it.”

“You should not have come,” the elder of magic replied. “You should have stayed away, and safe.”

Tixi cried, sobbing at the oncoming death of her tribe.

Ocellus stroked her back, trying her best to radiate reassurance. “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “They haven’t killed anyone yet, not even Ijj. They were slinging goop, to capture. We might all be prisoners, but they won’t just murder us out of hoof.”

“That’s an interesting weakness,” the elder warrior said. “I wonder if we can capitalize on it.”

“Brutality leads to brutality,” the eldest said, shaking his head. “If they want to fight to capture with their goop, we can do the same with our traps. They’ll learn what it means to face a tribe of dragons.”

===

The changelings spent an hour or so gooping up the entrance tunnel so that none of the traps there could go off. Then they left, or so it seemed. A few hours later, the guards and shopkeeper made their way through the gooped up tunnel into the lair.

The kobolds weren’t fooled.

One of their sorcerers cast glitterdust on the group so they couldn’t change form and hide, and soon they were captured and tied up, dragged deep into the lair and locked into a pit.

The next group looked at the goop strangely, and the lack of activity in what should be the main gathering room of the lair with alarm. They rushed forwards and were soon tangled up in nets. Ocellus stunned each of them with her horn zap, and none of them reverted. “I think these might be real kobolds,” she said.

“Does the horn zap always work?” Tixi asked.

“90% of the time, it works 100% of the time,” she replied. “There are a few who know how to resist it.”

So they got put in the pits anyway.

There were a few more attempts – sneaking in as cats or bugs, trying to shift camouflage to blend in with the walls, and at last an attempt at diplomacy, complete with a white flag – but none of them got far.

“Is that all of them?” Tixi asked. “All the ones sent ahead to the city I mean.”

“Maybe,” Ocellus said. “But the main army isn’t going to be far behind, and I’m sure they sent word of where we went before they tried sneaking in.”

“We can hold back an army,” the elder warrior said. “You should go, if they’re chasing you. Go to the wizard.”

“He will literally kill us,” Ocellus said. “He already killed me once.”

The elder mage replied, “Then go out of the city, and take your pursuers with you. We have been warned.”