The Last Stand of the War Engineer
The changeling stood before the judge, head held high.
“War Engineer Faux Pas, you stand on trial here today for your actions during the recent raid on Canterlot. The charges against you have been made quite clear by now, so: how do you plead?”
He looked around the room, a great golden hall with shining floor and rows of judgment up above him, at what they presumed was a safe distance. He was surrounded by unfamiliar faces, each one devoid of any sympathy for him and some even cringing at the mere sight of him.
As his Hive’s War Engineer, Faux Pas knew the mechanics of combat, even if he wasn’t a true warrior. His legs were slender but deceptively strong, the holes along the edges grown in a bit to make razor-sharp hooks for whichever creature was foolish enough to underestimate him. His eyes were unshielded; he’d never seen the need for hard lenses, always keeping his crystal-blue orbs on display when he wasn’t in disguise. His tail and short mane were green, decorations to set him apart from the bald attack drones he once had at his disposal.
Today would be the day. He had to face judgment and probably his end, but he wouldn’t go down without a fight.
“I plead ‘not guilty’, Your Highness.”
A wicked smile appeared on the vile creature’s lips, making him cringe. How that one had ever gotten to power still puzzled him. The mere virtues of having wings and a horn certainly didn’t make her qualified for the job.
“Very well, then. Let’s proceed. Present the facts of your case as you see them.”
“Well, for starters: the attack wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been there. I made all the strategic and tactical decisions for the invasion. I picked out the members of the first wave of the strike force myself and infiltrated Canterlot long before Cadance was removed. The whole plan of threatening the ponies to get them focused on a shield, exhausting their captain and even finding the blind spot that let our troops penetrate their territory, all that is on my account and mine alone. You might say I’m quite the asset.”
“I’ll admit, you are an exceptionally clever specimen. Yet here you stand, captured and on trial. I’d say you’re not quite as clever as you think, Faux Pas.” The insult came accompanied with that confident grin he’d come to loathe since his capture.
“I suppose you’re right. Then again, there aren’t a lot of changelings to compare with, are there? Most of my fellow hivelings are brainwashed as infants, their minds emptied of everything but blind obedience. They’re closer to sponges than they are to ponies.”
A little tumult started in the rows above him, but it quickly silenced itself.
“But I carry a title because I’m considered special. I was deemed too smart to be mentally fettered, and the Hive was stronger for it. Without me, the Hive wouldn’t even be in existence anymore,” he stated with a roll of the eyes. The casual glance it yielded of all the witnesses told him they were tense, like they were scared he was about to strike at their liege.
Good. Looks like the old charm is still working.
She snarled.
“Quite a bold statement. Need I remind you where you are?”
“Of course not. But you wanted me to explain myself, so I’ll explain. I’m a War Engineer. I make stuff up, and most of it has proven pretty effective. The spiral pentagram form of the outer defence lines, the addition of death moats on the second line of defence, and camouflaged anti-air installations, our entire war machine sprang from my mind. And not just defence, either: the attack formations and our offensive spells… I invented most of the ones we changelings use today. It’s because of me that the other Hives couldn’t destroy us. We went to war with all five of the other Hives, and because of me our Hive was the only one left standing in the end.”
“Don’t stray away from the point. Trying to make yourself look good won't affect your chances here. I know how valuable you are, that’s the only reason you’re getting this chance to begin with. You know the accusations. What did you do during the attack?”
“I disguised myself and quietly stalked three scared fillies on the streets of Canterlot. There were two Royal Guards nearby, tied up and neutralised. The fillies were being herded away from the main hall with the rest of the captives, and I was the highest in command who was present. So I had a free reign, as it were.”
“And you decided to have your way with the fillies, correct?”
“Correct,” he replied casually.
To that, his judge bared her teeth.
“Why?”
“You will have to be a little more specific, I fear.” The changeling steeled his resolve.
No backing out now, this has to be it.
“Why did you set those prisoners free and why did you attack your own kind?”
“To see what would happen, my Queen. I wanted confirmation of something that I’d suspected a while before we invaded.”
Queen Chrysalis raised an eyebrow at that.
“And what might that be?”
“That attacking Equestria is, was, and will always be a folly. The Guards I freed did nothing to form a counter-offensive and the fillies went the same way we saw the other civilians flee. They were not the panicking mob we were expecting, but a well-prepared population with plenty of escape routes.”
"Oh, this story again?" The Hive Queen groaned, raising a perforated paw to her forehead.
"My plan was perfect, just as you asked, but it should never have been executed," the changeling general insisted. "As I warned you repeatedly."
“Really, now, why must you still insist on questioning your Queen? Did I not bring down Celestia herself? We had the city, and we would have gotten all of Equestria if things had gone according to plan.” The massive changeling spread her arms wide as she recalled her victories.
“No.”
“No?”
“If things had gone completely according to plan, the poison you slipped Princess Cadence would have killed her, the ponies would have fought us off, and the retaliation would have ended in us being exterminated,” he spat.
Chrysalis sighed, almost sadly. With only a handful of free-willed changelings in her Hive, arguments were rare, and with one as talented as Faux Pas, it hurt just a little.
“Don’t make this harder for you than it already is, or for me. You're my most trusted advisor, why would you betray me and your kind with these lies? What more could you want than what I’ve given us?”
Faux Pas growled at her ignorance, even the hint of sadness in her voice didn’t sway him.
“Betray my kind? I've spent my whole life trying to protect our kind! I am still trying to protect us all now! You were the one who wouldn’t listen to reason, you were the one who wanted all the treasures from the other Hives destroyed, and you were the one who wanted war with the strongest nation in the world!”
“Yes, I did, and we have grown stronger because of it. Next time we --“
“There won’t be a next time! Look around! Our species is dying, our children first. The Akishra acari infestation is destroying us from the inside out. The only reason the new mothers aren’t stricken with grief is because your magic clouds their minds!”
Faux Pas shook his head and suppressed an angry tear.
“We are dying, my Queen, and the ponies had a cure. We have no technology of our own, barely any civilisation to speak of, and you send us off into war with them? You know our history: we were ponies once. We could have gone in peacefully, asked them for help. They would have welcomed us.”
Silence fell as Chrysalis’s anger rose. Sparks started flying off the tip of her horn, a prelude to the only reaction he could expect from his ranting.
So much for me being her favourite.
“We could have gone home. And now you’ve condemned us to die out like a plague with nothing to contaminate.”
Chrysalis closed her eyes for a moment, then shot a glare at him that would have put a cockatrice to shame.
“Your treason is one thing, but your disrespect to the throne is inexcusable. I made us strong, not you. I pulled this Hive through the wars, I killed every other Queen in existence. You think we have no civilisation? We have the greatest civilisation in the world! Thanks to my magic, our drones can become anyone they wish to be. Their minds are empty so they can be filled with whatever they must be to infiltrate. We’re untouchable thanks to me, Faux Pas. Other civilisations may come and go, but we can always feed on them. You call us a plague like it’s a bad thing, but you know as well as I do that our throne is the only one that will last the ages.”
Faux Pas scowled.
“Please. You don’t even have a throne, you just sit on a pile of wax like the rest of us. Face it: even if we last past this generation, we've become a joke of a race. Our whole species has been reduced to a charade. What little we have is scrounged together from other civilisations. We barely have irrigation set up for our medicinal herbs, and even those herbs we know next to nothing of. We have some of the finest mould and mushroom cultures in the world, yet we cannot even figure out basic fermentation and we can barely make bread worth eating. There is not one nation, not one, as backwards as ours. And why? Because our beloved Queen thought it necessary to destroy the combined knowledge of the Hives when we were at war with them. Because you felt that only your history would be worth remembering and that anything we could gain would weigh us down.”
“That I did. And we didn’t need any of it to conquer Canterlot. We had paradise in our grasp, and you would question how I got it?” She raised an eyebrow in a mix of confusion and amusement at what she felt was a delusional underling.
“Begging your pardon, my Queen, but thou art an idiot.”
This caused a few jaws to drop, pacifying magic or no.
“We did not take the city; the Royal Guard managed to fight us off long enough for most of the civilians to escape. Our attack was perfect, and it accomplished nothing. All our forces managed to do was put themselves in between a mountain and Cloudsdale. Their winged troops could have swept in at any time to clean us up or just open the floodgates of Heaven to make holding the city a nightmare. We were lucky that we were driven out. If we’d gotten a foothold in the city, the ponies would have destroyed every last one of us.”
“You really mean to say my attack was a bad idea? After nullifying the Elements of Harmony, after imprisoning Celestia?”
“Celestia is immortal. She doesn’t think about combat the same way we do. I’ll admit, I didn’t think you could defeat her, but you did. As to how or why, it doesn’t matter. That one victory wouldn’t have meant anything in the long run. I’ve had a good look at their maps, and I would never want to try and invade them again. Celestia, Canterlot, the entire military device of Equestria is designed for second strike capacity. The moment your back is turned, the second the civilians leave the room, they can turn a losing battle into a rout. All that stops them from destroying us now is their sense of mercy.” The black and green War Engineer never broke his gaze as he spoke. He tried to see any change in his liege's demeanour, some hint of his words sinking in.
Please, just listen. Don’t make me do this.
“They can't destroy us because they are weak. And I’m beginning to think that your incursions have made you weak as well, Faux. We are stronger than they are.” She bared her fangs as she ranted.
He sighed.
That’s it, then. After everything we’ve said and done, it all boils down to this.
Well, I may as well give her what she wants.
“If you truly believe that, then you are blind, my Queen. Have you even considered what we went up against? The ponies have magic we can’t even comprehend. They have averted global catastrophes -- disasters that would have affected us – twice. What would we have done if we’d won and that dragonequus thing got loose? Suppose we did take the nation, we don’t even know where this ‘Tartarus’ place is, what is in it, or how to keep those things in it. We don’t know enough about the ponies to try to fight them. I learned a lot about them, and I know enough to not want to try.”
He took a deep breath, and adjusted his position. He noted the eyes of the other changelings tracked his every move, and some of them tensed when he moved, anticipating an attempted escape, no doubt. Everyone was just staring now, but he was feeling quite peeved, and he’d dug himself this far down, so he figured ‘In for a bit, in for a round.’
“Don't you see? Even if you remove the Elements of Harmony and Celestia, we know next to nothing of princess Luna’s capabilities, nor of what their Wonderbolts are really capable of. And that is just their military. They have an elaborate system in place to control the weather, where we can barely water our weeds. Their society treats every individual fairly, ours reduces the bulk of our talent to mindless drones. They teach their young about their past, we don’t even have a written history anymore.“
Chrysalis’s ears perked in surprise.
“So you no longer wish to live as a changeling, is that it? You don’t agree with me shedding all the things that weigh down the other civilisations of this world? Would you like an early retirement of hiveling life, perhaps?”
Faux Pas saw the change in her demeanour and clung to it desperately.
“I’ve dedicated my life to protecting this Hive, and I’ll sooner die than see my work undone. I followed through with the attack, hoping that perhaps we might get something out of it. But we were never going to gain anything from war. Equestria’s civilisation is superior to ours in every respect. You've very nearly destroyed all hope for our race. What chance we had of a unified changeling nation, or peaceful existence with the ponies, all that died when you came to rule. You can’t keep making these decisions and expect it to work. You are failing as a Hive Queen, Chrysalis, and had it not been for your advisors this entire Hive would have fallen-“
The bolt came in fast and hard. The changeling barely managed to brace himself and hold up his forelegs to take the impact. He was washed in green energy as the spell silenced his insolence.
The anger of his Queen hung in the air. Her eyes widened as the anger made way for surprise. There was a buzzing in the air, of thousands of angry wings, and it wasn’t coming from her or her loyal subjects.
“What?”
The bolt hadn’t struck him. Instead, a mass of small wriggling beetles had appeared as a shield, devouring the energies as fast as they could. Granted, they hadn’t protected him perfectly, but they’d managed to turn a killing blow to a mere shove.
“I have kept my eye on you, my Queen, but you have not kept your eye on me. While you obsessed over stealing more power from superior beings, I evolved on my own.”
Chrysalis chuckled. Her restrained laugh turned to a mocking cackle as the facts sunk in. She descended from her throne to face the little minion-turned-hive.
”You insufferable little hypocrite. You’d stand there and accuse me of destroying our knowledge while you hoard one of the great secrets of our progenitors? The Summon Swarm spell, I take it? Oh, I know that little trick well enough. You split your consciousness into smaller shapes that can attack and drain an opponent’s energies. Truly a marvellous breakthrough, War Engineer, I’m proud. But what are you hoping to accomplish? I own every pair of eyes watching you. You know you can’t reach them, even with your vaunted powers. Were you hoping the rest of my advisors would step in? They’ll never stand against their Queen, and even now they’re safe from your little instigations.” She stepped closer as she sized him up.
The little beetles crawling over him had taken to the ground, no doubt preparing to fend off another energy bolt. She had to keep her eye darting from the swarm to their controller to avoid any shenanigans, but all in all he didn’t pose much of a threat at first sight. The puddle of insects on the ground stayed still as Faux summoned more on his paws.
“I’m warning you, my Queen. Stand down and release my fellow hivelings from your control, or I bring to bear the full might of the ancients.”
Another chuckle, another cackle.
“You are just precious. You’re bluffing, it’s obvious. You have no idea what you’re wielding, you just rediscovered it by chance.”
“What makes you so sure?”
She sent a violently crackling whip of lightning over him with a backhanded blow. The beetles swarmed around it to absorb it, but the wisps of smoke that came from the attempt revealed their weakness.
“For one thing: I lied when I called it ‘Summon Swarm.’ You don’t even know what it’s really called, let alone what you can do with it. Besides that, even if you've mastered the secret of splitting into different forms, you don’t have enough power to summon a mass large enough to matter. You can get a little cloud going, but that won’t protect you forever. And lastly, if you don’t know what you can do with it, you don’t know its prime weakness, either,” she taunted as her horn started glowing.
Faux Pas gasped, and immediately regretted it. The air came in hot and dry like a sauna’s as his Queen’s horn turned a bright orange.
With a whine and a hiss, the jet of flame raced towards its target. The swarm of beetles retreated into Faux Pas’ body as he curled up, and his body hardened to take the brunt of the assault. Trails of smoke came off him as the air around him turned to a haze, the wax of the hive’s floor beneath him melting under the assault of the flamethrower spell. Chrysalis kept it up long enough for him to sink a little into the goo.
As he uncurled and rose up, little flecks of golden wax fell off his body. Underneath, his face had lost nothing of its defiance. The beetles crawling over him had changed shape to get swollen bodies and wriggling hind legs that wove some sort of protective shell over him. Chrysalis made a mental note that apparently her War Engineer did have a little more foresight than she’d given him credit for. He’d not only mastered a long-forgotten spell, he’d actually managed to foresee and compensate for the obvious counter.
He was just too clever for his own good, that one.
“I know enough to encyst myself, my Queen. And unlike you, my strength doesn’t fade when I run out of alicorns to feed on. I can outlast you.”
“Oh? Let’s test that, shall we?” She grinned before a green bolt streaked past him from behind, narrowly missing his head but making his ear ring nonetheless.
He ducked away from another bolt, then another, then blocked one with his living shield. Chrysalis chuckled unpleasantly as her target had to dance around the bolts coming from above.
“What were you thinking? Did you seriously think you could fight me in front of a firing squad?”
He didn’t reply. He was too busy ducking and weaving through the attacks, constantly moving as the floor around him was peppered with green light.
With a growl, he fired his own bolt, narrowly streaking past his Queen’s face and singing her hair as it passed. She didn’t bother to look back as it impacted the wall, she just smirked. He rolled to get some distance between him and her, then disappeared in a smoke screen.
Another different shape for those beetles, Chrysalis realised as she gave the command to cease fire. She’d only caught a glimpse, but she swore those things had turned grey right before spewing that smoke out. Just how far had Faux Pas gone in his studies?
She flew up and dodged another bolt, then got grazed by another that came from close by. He was keeping up the smoke -probably poisonous, knowing him- to launch his attacks from an angle she couldn’t predict.
Of course, that sort of trick doesn’t work all that well against a flying opponent.
Snarling, Chrysalis flapped her insect wings and sent power into the wind to disperse the cloud, readying her minions for a final shot.
“Got you.”
Chrysalis grinned, then plummeted. Looking up, she noticed the wriggling things dropping from the ceiling and attaching to her back, pulsating as they rapidly tried to suck her energies dry. A second blanket formed over her lower legs, then went up to her knees. In a matter of moments, she was feeling numb up to her midsection.
Faux Pas smirked. The smokescreen had manoeuvred her right where he’d wanted: up high where no one could watch her back.
She hissed angrily at the traitor. She'd fallen for a childish distraction. That first bolt he’d launched was decoy, just a bit of light surrounding his parasites. And that smokescreen had tricked her into letting her guard down.
The War Engineer allowed himself one confident grin as the other hivelings stood patiently, awaiting commands in their magic-induced stupor. She tried to call out with her magic, but the subtle traces of her control were blotted out by the squirming beetles.
She was disconnected.
“Deception is our way, my Queen, as you yourself have frequently demonstrated. I wasn’t thinking I could fight you in front of the Hive. I was thinking you'd be too busy trying to kill me to notice my true intentions.”
The changeling Queen growled at the insolence. She couldn’t feel her legs or her wings with those things devouring her carefully gathered energy. But still, the things could only feed on the surface. While her body was being drained, her magic reserves remained mostly untouched. And by now, her patience had reached its limit.
“Enough!” With a great roar, she dissipated the offensive extensions of the traitor’s consciousness, shooting out a pulse wave of flame and thunder. The blue mass of light incinerated the offending insectoid budwills and rushed forward towards the hapless changeling.
His whole world turned blue for an instant, before turning white with pain. He was launched in the air, a few shreds of his armoured skin fell off as the wave tore through him, and his wings carved into the waxy floor as he landed abruptly.
He just lay there, ears ringing and body quivering. A few smears of red on the floor marked his path, and the smell of changeling blood hung in his nose to mix with that of singed skin.
The War Engineer tried to breathe, but something inside of him was still boiling. Every heartbeat was agony, every breath a wheeze. It was over, even he couldn’t heal up that quickly. He tried, though, to the royal’s delight. What little beetles he had left were scurrying to patch up the holes she’d torn, filling them up with webbing and even plugging them with their bodies. He looked infested, little wriggling bodies poking out of him. She chuckled as she noticed one or two trying to drag some errant pieces of skin back to his body.
The Queen stepped over to his prone form and raised him up in a green glow. She hissed with every breath, her legs slowly regaining their lifeblood.
He still bared his teeth in a chuckle. He knew, and so did she.
He’d touched her.
He’d hurt her.
“Tactical error, War Engineer. Good try, though. You even put up a better fight than that weakling Celestia. You might have gotten me if you hadn’t overextended your little minions.”
He still smiled, much to her confusion. He couldn’t quite speak, though. The wisps of smoke coming from his ears made her wonder if he could even hear. No matter, a military ‘ling like him could read lips. She made sure to lean in close so he didn’t miss any word of her threats.
“Still defiant, I see. I’m going to enjoy prying those secrets from your brain, Faux. Your rebellion achieved nothing. That great secret of the ancients did you no good. But don’t worry, I’ll be sure to put it to good use. You’ll see that what I am doing is right. We will last forever, preying on the weaker civilisations. And who knows? A fine specimen like you, I think I'll keep you around as a pet after I’m through with the… extractions. I really am quite fond of you, you know, I’ll do my best to keep you around as long as I can. And if you’re really good, I might even let you keep all of your limbs, how does that sound?”
A single beetle -bright blue, unlike the grey masses keeping him together- crawled out of a cut in his face and went in his ear. The changeling closed his eyes and took one final breath, ignoring the pain as his organs had just started cooling down from the last attack.
As he exhaled, he opened his eyes and shot the Queen one last determined look. His grin widened and turned downright vicious. It was the same look she’d shot Twilight Sparkle right before sending her underground.
Funny, she’d never realised how fundamentally unsettling that expression could be.
It was only then that she realised some of the bugs closing the wounds on his body being wrapped in a green haze, turning them into clunky, green-shelled swollen masses that began singing like crickets. It almost looked like they were just containers for some strange green liquid.
Chrysalis’s thoughts slowed down as it happened.
Wait, another shape? What’s he trying to do? He can’t shoot out anything, he doesn’t have the power for it. And if he did, what’s he waiting for? He must know I can see what he’s doing.
Her eyes returned to Faux Pas’ body. His skin bulged with the little outcroppings. He managed just two last words before it finally dawned on her.
“I win.”
It was over in a flash. One moment she’s holding a traitor, the next she’s reeling away from a green splash. The sizzling sounds on the floor, as well as the lack of pieces remaining, confirmed her suspicions.
Suicidal acid beetles. Not even their ancestors had ever resorted to something that drastic. He hadn’t gotten her, thankfully: the majority of the acid blast had been spent obliterating his own body. Her face itched, though, but she was afraid to scratch. More than likely she’d just gotten a few droplets of the stuff on her, or vapour. A minor tap into her healing powers eased the pain, but not her wounded pride.
He was gone, his own power had made short work of his body. But what a fight he’d put up, though. Given a few more years, he might have been strong enough to defeat her. It was a real shame he didn’t have enough power to make a body double; that would have made him a serious threat. Actually, if he’d played his cards right, he could have defeated her before this whole trial.
It didn’t make any sense. Faux Pas, her own master strategist, had clearly been brooding on a scheme to destroy her. He’d gained access to an ability no changeling had had for at least a millennium, including Hive royalty. He could have drawn first blood, caused some serious damage and turn the tide in his favour if he’d just struck first. Victory wouldn’t have been certain by any stretch of the imagination, but his chances would have been a lot better.
He’d barely tried launching any offensive, he’d merely defended himself as best he could, then went all-out trying to drain her in his final attack. And when that didn’t work, he’d ended it himself. He could have let himself be captured, try and regain strength, or even drain his fellow hivelings first. It was almost like he hadn’t even considered victory after failing to persuade her.
The gears in the Queen’s mind began to turn.
What does he mean ‘I win’?
“Well, princess Celestia, I honestly don’t know what to make of it,” sheriff Silverstar started. “These guys just showed up right on the border. They didn’t attack anyone, don’t take any food besides what they brought with ’em, hardly even talk. They just sit there, and we’re not really sure what to do. And, if you don’t mind my saying, we’re gettin’ a mite nervous about it.”
“I can imagine. Well then, let’s see what they have to say.”
Entering the clearing behind the Appleloosa orchard, the princess with her entourage of fifty-odd guards and one sheriff saw the changelings huddled together. They didn’t look like a strike force, at least. Each one had a slightly different mane and tail -though most of them were still a uniform green in that regard- some had larger wings, some had sharper ones. Presumably Celestia and her guards had only met soldiers in the shapeshifting equivalent of uniforms, complete with armour and grown-in helmets.
One of the insect-like creatures sprang up when the princess came into view. On a first head count, the guards managed to pick out four changelings with very distinct colourations: light blue, silver grey, amber yellow and even a coral pink. Next came about a dozen drones with the recognisable black and green colour scheme, but they lacked the fangs and harder shells of the soldiers. Lastly there were about six in between adult and baby age, and, judging from the cocoon-like blankets they’d brought, four infants. In all of them, their eyelashes were visible, as were the whites of their eyes. They didn’t look like a uniform hive-minded group, more like pilgrims.
And Celestia’s guards outnumbered them roughly three to one, the young included. If this was supposed to be a trap, it wasn’t a very well-placed one: clear fields and skies beyond allowing no surprise reinforcements, the ambushers forced to move forward if they wanted cover, while the ponies were flanked by an apple orchard. The changelings had ceded every advantage they could get, which was uncharacteristic of their kind, to say the least.
The light blue one dusted herself off as the rest of her group tried to make themselves look as normal as possible, not an easy trick when one’s legs look like a kitchen utensil. Celestia nodded in greeting as her guards darted their gaze around for potential traps.
“Hello there. You requested an audience?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. My name is Sapphire Gaze, these are my compatriots. We’ve fled the Hive of Queen Chrysalis, the one who attacked your city. We have come here for a trade proposal.”
The guards and sheriff gave their ruler a questioning look. Celestia herself didn’t betray any emotion at the odd request. Celestia kept her most diplomatic smile up and did her best to hide her chagrin.
“Very well. Tradition demands that you state what you require first. What is it you would want from me?”
“Sanctuary,” Sapphire replied bluntly.
Celestia raised her eyebrows at that.
“Sanctuary?”
“Well, yes. A safe place where we can live as ponies do. Or, barring that, a place where we’re safe from our former Queen. She’s going to be pretty angry at us if she finds us, you see.”
“You mean you’re asking for citizenship of Equestria?” Celestia asked, a little incredulous. If that’s what they wanted, no need to beat around the bush about it.
“I’m not sure if that’s wise, or even possible. By our nature, it’s very difficult for others to keep track of identity, so policing us would be a little complicated. We also have young with us who are carrying parasites, and we really don’t want to infect any ponies with those. We don’t absolutely need to live in Equestria, if that’s not an option. If you have any detention camps or trials we need to be put through, we’re willing to risk it. We just don’t want to be subjects of our Queen anymore. We’ve abandoned her and her war. We surrender.”
Princess Celestia nodded in understanding.
“Well, at least you know what you’re getting yourselves into. As for diseases, how large is your Hive compared to the invasion force that came our way? The ones that made it into our city, I mean.”
“Um, I’d say more than half of our Hive went to that battle, easily, maybe three quarters. That was pretty much an all-in rush.” The guards noted the larger horn on this one, and the lack of a sharp point at the end. Presumably this one was proficient with magic.
Celestia shared a look with her pegasus guard. They were silently assessing the group, and so far the changelings didn’t seem to pose much of a threat.
“Then you are not going to get any of my ponies sick, I assure you. We have a larger population here, we’ve developed immunity to a few major epidemics and we have a thorough knowledge of medicine. If anything, I’d be more worried of ponies transferring diseases to you.” She raised her head to get a good look at the little foals, or larvae, whatever they were called. "What parasites did you say your young have?"
“Akishra acari, Your Highness. 'Magic mites,' I suppose you would call them. They thrive in environments where anger and hate linger in the air, they are drawn to creatures of magic and -“
“ -drain their life essence, resulting in lethargy, loss of appetite, and eventually death. I haven’t seen those in three thousand years. They can’t stand higher energies, can they?”
“Indeed, Your Majesty. Higher energies and emotions like love do make it impossible for the things to hold on. But, as you may be aware, we don’t actually have that sort of energy. We can get it from others, but right now we just don’t have enough love to protect our young.”
“Ah. Well, we can mend that. Even if you don’t have enough love, there are some older herbal remedies that help, we have those in abundance. It’s been a while since we’ve needed to, but we can fix that problem quite easily.”
A few weak smiles appeared on the faces of the other coloured ones, as well as the ones looking after the little wriggling ‘lings in their cocoons.
Celestia leaned in closer to Sapphire, lowering her voice.
“I couldn’t help but notice your colours are different. I assume you had some higher position in your Hive?”
“We did. In fact, the four of us were Queen Chrysalis’ personal advisors. We are colour coded, you see, most of us are green in the mane because green is a war colour to us. Things have been rather unpleasant where we come from, so everyling was green for a long time. The four of us are specialists, the ones we’ve brought with us are our next of kin and friends, the ones we could save. But to answer your question: yes, we did have a very high position, second only to the Hive Queen herself. I was Chrysalis’s Archmage, I did research into spells. One of which could put a pony into stasis and drain them completely.” She lowered her head at the admission.
“A frightening prospect.”
The changeling nodded.
“I’m also the only changeling alive who knows how the spell works. If you take the four of us as captives, you’d be crippling Chrysalis’s Hive. Although I guess we’ve already done that by leaving. We could still think, you see. The rest of our hivelings have their free will suppressed when they’re young. Aside from us and the Queen, changelings are mostly conditioned and programmed drones, they are whatever the Queen tells them they are. I guess you could say the Queen is the Hive Mind and the four of us are, or were, the Hive Memory.”
“You were the Archmage. That makes it easy, then. If your Queen had one of your stature, then I can only assume she also had a military advisor. Could I speak with that one, perhaps? The strategist or tactician?”
“War Engineer, we call him. And no, he is not with us. Nor is his talent a threat to your kingdom anymore. He gave us directions to bypass our own security. He also covered our escape.”
It took a moment to sink in, but the implications quickly dawned on every pony.
“I see. So let me get this straight: you are the ones who masterminded the operations of your Hive. You are the brains of the enemy, and you are asking for sanctuary. I can certainly see why, but I am still confused. What exactly were you hoping to offer me that I would agree to do so?”
The changelings looked at one another. Of course they knew they couldn’t just waltz in and expect to get what they wanted, but they didn’t have much in the way of bargaining chips. All they’d ever really had was their minds, a luxury most of their kind had been denied. Yet they lacked the education even a normal pony could enjoy, their magic required a resource only others could give, and any pegasus pony could fly circles around them.
Sapphire Gaze looked up at the princess. What they were willing to give for a new home didn’t matter, what mattered was what they were capable of giving.
"Well, anything?"
The alicorn raised an eyebrow at that. Not quite the desperation she was expecting.
“We made our Hive the strongest there was, then the only one there was. We did that with what little we had. Our talent, our intelligence, is the main reason we left. We're not more advanced than you in any way, but we have some technologies and ways of thinking that you might find some use for. We’re terrible farmers, but we know moulds and yeasts quite well. It's just that aside from eating mushrooms we don’t know how to do anything productive with them. We can domesticate insects too, but the recent wars sent some of our more productive species on a migration.”
Celestia let that sink in. Ponies did have honeybees as a domesticated species, but they didn’t have a lot of variety at that. There was also still room for improving pollination in at least five cultures she knew of, so that knowledge was certainly welcome. A lot of their antibiotics came from moulds and yeasts, which wasn’t the most reliable of cultures. The changelings wouldn’t be useless, at least.
“So you are willing to give all your knowledge to my little ponies, and in exchange you’d want to live with them, is that it? What would you do if I told you to leave my territory and never return?”
“Then we’d have try our luck somewhere else and hope Chrysalis doesn’t come after us.” Sapphire replied with no small amount of trepidation.
Celestia narrowed her eyes, and Sapphire shrunk before them. She’d expected some friction, but this? The stories she’d heard about Celestia’s overpowering presence did her no justice. The monarch could crush her in an instant, she was sure of it. The rest of her company shivered at the sudden shift in the air.
“You didn’t choose this place at random. You know this is free land, belonging to the buffalo nomads. I know your Hive is far up the north-western continents, so you must have teleported here to evade detection. You know I can’t just drag you over my borders and imprison you, not by our laws. So I have to ask: why here? The griffons harbour many races, your chances are better with them.”
The former Archmage gulped.
“Because you are immortal, Your Highness. Whatever you give your word on, we know it’ll last past our generation. If we try a mortal monarch, who’s to say their successors will treat us as well?”
“Then you understand what it is you are asking. Even if I sympathise – and believe me, I do – it is my duty to do what’s best for my little ponies. And if I am to offer you sanctuary and protect you from an enemy who’s already struck us once, I’m going to need more than mushrooms and insects.”
“Well, we have a few other things that might interest you. We can make structures that require less resources than your average home, we have a more elaborate knowledge of farming honey and different kinds of nectar. We also have a wide array of adhesives, as I believe you yourself experienced during our last attack. We know a little bit of building and reinforcing structures with various forms of cement. We can make things pretty sturdy,” she added with a weak smile.
Celestia went silent for a few moments, and even sheriff Silverstar and the guards were confused as to what she was thinking.
“You make it sound as though you don’t really need ponies to live. If you were made independent, with your own territory, do you think you would survive?”
“I’ll admit, we’re sorely behind compared to you in pretty much every respect. But yes, I suppose we could. Our kind is little more than parasites right now, and we want to be a civilisation, but it’s just not in the cards right now. We don’t even have a proper writing tradition. We’ll write down everything we know, you can use it however you want. We’d be glad to have it preserved, either way.”
“So what you are asking is sanctuary, but what you want is to be acknowledged. Is that right?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The great white mare considered it. A town of changelings in Equestria? Only a fool would accept it without being wary of the potential trap. Yet these changelings were weak, and she could tell this Sapphire was speaking the truth. Celestia had seen the eyes of slaves once, as well as the light that came from hope.
She found herself stuck. If she did nothing, they’d wander into other realms and either wind up dead or be set up for a nightmare in a generation or two. If she welcomed them with open wings, she risked public outrage, a trap and a possible nightmare for this generation. The best course of action she saw would be to just acknowledge them as a race and nation. The question was: how was she supposed to do that with the other nations to keep in mind?
She suppressed what would have been a very inappropriate chuckle as she realised the oddity of it all. These changelings had just shown up on her doorstep, like a baby in a basket. So was she supposed to protect them as her own now? Sending them away certainly presented an obvious problem.
If nothing else, she didn’t want the brightest minds of the enemy going to another enemy.
“Guards, escort these changelings to Canterlot. I think we'd all rather discuss this out of the desert sun.”
A visible weight fell off Sapphire’s chest at that. The guards circled around the group and ushered them on, some even bearing the weight of their food rations. The apple orchard, with the stampede lane in the middle for the buffalo, seemed to finally open for them.
“Thank you, Princess.”
“Do not thank me yet. You understand that I cannot be expected to trust you just like that. We will have to quarantine you for security reasons. And even if I agree to let you stay, and that’s not a given, there are other nations that you will have to take into account. Not every ruler on this world shares my perspective.”
As Sapphire and her group entered, the orchard and the guards shut the group off from the wide open fields. They were in Equestrian lands now, with no turning back. They were at a very real risk of being imprisoned or worse. But they all knew what had become of their finest military mind. When the blue signalling beetle had dissipated just as they’d slipped away to safety, it could only have meant his demise.
Faux Pas never made mistakes. All they could do now was trust that he hadn’t made one when he’d sent them out to freedom.
“We understand completely, Your Highness. None of us here will object. We know our kind has a history of deception. I promise we’ll do anything to put that past behind us.”
The winged mare tilted her head at that admission.
“If you are going to swear off deception, how do you plan to gather the love you need to survive?”
This brought a nervous chuckle from the refugee changeling.
“The same way your ponies do, I suppose: the old-fashioned way.”
The End
Author's Note
Edit around 20/1/2020: some minor formatting errors to fix, and a few more horizontal lines to indicate perspective shift. I don't really know how to do third-person omniscient that well, or I don't remember if that's what I was aiming for in this one. Whatever, what's done is done.
While it did end up well-received, there's obvious 'old fic' problems with this one. Not going to have the time or energy to fix all of them, but I do want it at least presentable when the next entries into this 'Verse are finished.
