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                     A Loveless Tundra                     
                       -by Dworthy-                        
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                    14: News from Home                     
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14: News from Home
The weather of the Crystal Empire's lands finally stopped its relatively rapid rise in temperatures and began to cool again as fall approached. At least, in the lands outside of the city. Nothing said ancient magical artefact created to protect a location from threats like built-in climate controls.
Thorax found this to be a bit of a relief. While it was stupendously easy to find the glacial ravine he had previously taken shelter in now, it made for a terrible sleeping space as it tended to melt around in. Not only that, but the sun liked to stay below the horizon for only four hours; he stuck around a clock to make sure one sleepless night. The crystal ponies seemed to take this in stride, however, so it must be just a part of life in the tundra.
Speaking of ponies, the streets were packed for half an hour and now were practically barren of them. He didn't notice where they went, still feeling half asleep. Being able to sleep underground with magical lights that brightened on a schedule was one of the few things he missed from living in the hive, even if the legacy of that has been wreaking havoc on his sleep schedule.
Outside of that, the only variation in his recent life was that time that Pinkie and her friends visited again. He stayed at the train station until he was sure they were gone, not wanting to get chased by Fluttershy again. Not much changed after that, outside of the Guard's training field getting some construction work. Trying to learn why from leftover gossip was ineffective, and as best as he could tell, it was for an 'Equestria Games'. Annoyingly, they all knew exactly what they were talking about, leaving him with nothing to go on.
Well, there is the location. He might as well check it out to see if that's where the populace congregated. He prepped his feathery bird wings to fly but was interrupted by two pegasi zooming past. Out of idle curiosity he checked their emotional states and disregarded most of it to zero in on levels of hunger only found on creatures dying of starvation and changelings. As they seemed perfectly healthy in form, they were obviously the latter. Doing his best to repress his emotions to hide from them should they glance his way*, he took off and gave chase.
*Queen Chrysalis was paranoid enough to realize that any enemy changelings could still detect the emotions of herself and her drones. In order to combat this weakness, she included in the changeling curriculum a lesson on how to hide your own emotions from the sight of other changelings. She was, however, not quite paranoid or prescient enough to realize that later turncoats could use those teachings against her and her hive.
They were heading for the center of the Empire, and it was obvious as to why: while not quite as bright as when it was first reawakened, it was still a literal beacon of love that overpowered any individual source as far away as the train station. Hearing the conversation would probably have made him even more certain about it, but alas, the words lost in the winds of the flight. They eventually landed where he expected them to, and not only could he hear what they were saying, he could also identify them by their voices.
As he transformed into a random crystal pony (plausible deniability and all), he could hear what was almost certainly Damselfly's voice say, "And here we have the biggest source of love we've ever seen, and it's a heart shaped crystal. Really?"
"Well, I guess we 'lings aren't the only ones who know the power of extracted love." The reply came in the entirely expected voice of Mayfly. The two clutchmates were practically inseparable, partially due to every other changeling finding them mildly annoying. They were way worse on their own, and it quickly became policy of the hive that they were always given the same assignments, as not doing so made their superiors (bar the Queen, as they weren't insane) the target of what amounted to psychological warfare.
"They probably stole the idea from us," Damselfly said as she shuffled her light green wings that were folded to her torso. It seemed she wasn't used to feathers yet.
"Inferior species have to use every dirty trick they can to stave off our inevitable victory," Mayfly replied, dismissively waving a light brown hoof. She then squinted at the Crystal Heart and added, "Wow, any changeling that had that much love packed in them could take down Celestia and then level Canterlot without stretching their chitin."
"If they don't explode first."
"True. We'll only take as much as we know we can carry; we can always come back for more, right?" Mayfly opened her mouth to start feeding off the artefact.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Thorax interrupted. The two changelings turned around and sneered at him.
"Well, well, it isn't Thorax the Coward," Mayfly mocked. "Did you blame yourself for the invasion failing and decide to hide away here, because that'd the only good decision you've made."
"Eh, he's such a lightweight, he probably landed all the way here and was too weak to go anywhere else," her counterpart joked.
As the two laughed, Thorax swallowed a barb on what that implied about their weight. Fighting back always made it worse, so it was just easier to keep quiet and take it until he could escape.
Damselfly suddenly stopped and brought a hoof to her chin. "How did you survive out here for so long, anyway? You're too soft to take love from an animal, let alone a pony..." She glanced back at the Crystal and her mouth bent into the sort of predatory smile that never looked right on a pony face. "You took it off of that, didn't you? Scavenging off the dregs of the inferiors' latest ploy because you're too weak to even think about taking it straight from them, huh?"
Thorax winced. Mayfly grinned triumphantly, taking the wrong conclusion from it. "Hah, you have. Your warning's just a way to keep us from stealing your lifeline. Selfish, selfish. Just for that, we're going to bring the rest of the hive here soon to drain it dry. That'll teach you a lesson in neglecting your hive."
In near sync, the two turned to the Heart and opened their mouths to feed. They never got the chance do so, as it immediately launched a hefty plate of pure love energy straight at them, hammering them to distance. Luckily, Thorax had good enough reactions to duck out of the way and turn around, watching his former hivemates vanish into the distance.
He stared in the direction of their sudden departure for while. Depending on what they report when they return to the hive, he might never be able to enter again. He didn't feel much about it until he remembered that likely meant he'd never Pharynx again, giving him a small ache in his chest.
He stood and turned back to the Crystal Heart. He walked to it, muttering, "I wonder if anything's..." He trailed off and stopped when he felt another thin sheet of the Heart's magic shatter to no effect against his form. Nothing's changed.
He changed into yet another tundra bird and flew off towards the training grounds/arena. Maybe those 'Equestria Games' would be entertaining to watch.
The sister changelings slowly woke up, blearily shaking their heads. "What was that?" Mayfly asked.
"Some kind of defense," Damselfly answered.
"Yeah, obviously. How did Thorax get around that?"
"One of the crystal ponies must've taken pity on him or something, he couldn't be smart enough to find a way around it himself."
"You really think he'd be dumb enough to reveal himself or the inferiors dumb enough to fall for it?"
Damselfly simply stared back at her.
"Right, stupid question. That makes him a traitor."
"And that means that if we ever see his sorry face again, we can crush it under our hooves," Damselfly finished with a savage smile.
Her sister mirrored it, then fell back to a more neutral expression. "First we have to return to the hive, though, to ensure everyling's aware of this. To do that, we have to know where we are."
They looked around from their crash-landing site. The area had a patchy dusting of snow, and there were several yurts nearby. The place was ringed with a wooden palisade, and some snow-capped mountains poking over the tops of it.
While already obvious, what sealed the deal was the faint shouts that sounded a lot like, "Yak smash!"
"Of all the inferiors to land near-"
"-it had to be the dumb, smelly yaks, hadn't it?"
Author's Note
Time to throw in (and way more quickly boot out) a reminder of Thorax's past. Most of the changelings in the hive aren't that bad, though, they mostly just willfully ignore and exclude him. Neglect is still abuse, though, if a bit more redeemable than outright bullying.
On the Heart itself: insofar as it's a sentient object (really debatable, but why not), I figure it would perceive things with an emotional sense similar to that of the changelings. Using that, it can guess identity and intent and react to the presence of hostiles and parasites appropriately.
Oh, I forgot to mention: the parts with Sunburst were Act 3. This is the first bit of Act 4.

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                       00: Prologue                        
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00: Prologue
The jet streams whipped around, attempting to bring the upper atmosphere back to thermal equilibrium and undo the uneven heating of the sun with high-speed air movement, though constantly hindered (and thus, made long-lived) by the very rotation of the planet. This phenomenon was, for the most part, just a novelty for the local scientists and something of an invisible nuisance to those on the frontiers of societies practicing local weather control, as the air over nine kilometers up has less than a third of the equivalent oxygen content of sea level. This is fatal for most of the flight capable species, and any exceptions will usually find the low air density blocking their wing’s effectiveness at gaining altitude, assuming the freezing air doesn’t force them to descend.
Still, nature always has a part in history, and as luck would have it, an unusually large number of macroscopic creatures called changelings ended up launched into the air by a spherical shell powered by love. This was entirely unintentional, and most of them were barely conscious for most of the flight, given that unexpected physical trauma and rapid temperature changes are not conducive to continued awareness.
One outlier, who was hovering a good distance above the rest of their kind due to a reluctance to partake in combat, ended up gaining much more altitude than the others, and lost consciousness entirely from the pressure and temperature changes. The initial trajectory intercepted a jet stream almost directly overhead, and the limp body was quickly flung by the strong winds northward. Despite mostly being a black carapace pocked with holes, the changeling caught the wind fairly well, though the rapidly deteriorating wings flapping uselessly in the buffeting jets made such a prospect rather poor in results.
Of course, flight by any object with zero awareness and less than the escape velocity is doomed to end by gravity, and its inexorable pull brought it down and out of the jet stream. Even if that had not happened, the stream was about to make a sudden bend in another hundred kilometers or so, and that would have ejected the changeling anyway, though far further north.
Returning to the most interesting thing in kilometers, the literally-battered-by-thin-air changeling was quickly dropping to the ground. The fall was particularly chaotic as the near-useless wings made the rotation particularly unstable and rapidly shifted around the terminal velocity. Nevertheless, rapid descent was guaranteed.
The rapidly approaching ground was covered by thick clouds. Most flight capable creatures, thanks to magic suffusing the environment, were perfectly capable of interacting with clouds under normal circumstances. This did not include speeds that were usually only flown by daredevils attempting a Sonic Rainboom. The changeling’s form smashed a hole through the clouds with ease, slowing the fall down far more effectively than the gradually thickening air, and the far floatier snowflakes helped a little, too.
Below the expansive cloud cover, only briefly marred by the descent, an expanse of snow stretched ever onward. Precipitation such as snowflakes was fairly rare at these areas normally, with how little water is in the air, but the area held a mostly forgotten curse that locked away the center from the outside space-time, as well as ancient evil whose legacy had long degraded into holiday tales. Overall, despite the definite evil lurking in the area, these circumstances were extremely lucky for the creature forcibly set apart from the hive, as it changed the fall speed from most likely fatal to survivable… maybe.
Out of all the natural surfaces on a wet planet, snow might just be the best for minimizing the physical impact of a landing. Unlike most other materials, the fluffy nature of undisturbed snow provides a massive crumble zone, spreading out the force needed to stop over time. In fact, this distribution tends to be the deciding factor for the survivability of any large fall, as the lethal factor is the necessary acceleration to stop the fall at the moment of hitting the surface of the planet again. There have been a few tales of wingless ponies surviving falls from the cloud cities of the pegasi by landing in hay bales, though also a couple on the surprising rigidity of water at high speeds. To be short, when falling near terminal velocity, avoid bodies of water if a perfect diving position is impossible, as it would be just as bad as landing on bare mountain rock.
All in all, the changeling had a great deal of luck, not only having the help of the weather to slow down, fresh snow to provide a soft landing, but also managing to land on a snowbank, all without even being aware of what was happening. Outside of the wings ripped to uselessness and hypothermia slowly setting in, the hapless victim of circumstance was entirely uninjured from a very, very fast journey.
Now, this creature would go on to change the fate of the entire species… assuming death of frigid temperatures or starvation is avoided.
Author's Note
Non-Technical Summary: Thorax gets launched higher than Mt. Everest's peak, hitches a ride north on a jet stream, and manages to stick the landing in the tundra near where the Crystal Empire ends up returning, all while unconscious.

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                        01: Arrival                        
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01: Arrival
The first thing he noticed was the wind, loud, but oddly, he couldn’t feel it on his chitin.
The second thing he noticed was the cold. He felt it everywhere. It was like some towel that someling sprayed cold water on and draped over him. It was even a little wet to complete the experience.
The third thing he noticed was how he couldn’t move anything. Something kept him from moving his legs, wings, neck, head… he couldn’t even open his eyelids.
He felt oh so tired, though. Maybe he should just… rest for a… little… wh…i…l…e….
A freezing drop of water splashed onto one of the softer, more sensitive parts of his chitin at the base of his neck, waking him back up. An unconscious shiver managed to dislodge a bit of whatever was keeping him trapped, and a strong shake of his head freed him from his frigid prison.
Finally opening his eyes, he could see a blank expanse of white. Looking from left to right changed nothing, looking down provided the same view, and looking up finally gave a different color: gray checkered by moving white spots. It really wasn’t that much different.
It took a while, but he was finally able to dig himself out of the snow he was buried in. Now, he needed to leave the crater he was in, and the best way to-
A jolt of pain broke his train of thought as he extended his wings, and he looked back at them. With horror, he saw that the previously ragged wings were barely more than stubs. While he could regrow them with time and energy – rough-housing often tore a wing at the hive – he wouldn’t be able to fly anytime soon with how bad they looked. With a sigh, he started carefully climbing/digging his way out.
He slipped a few times on his way up the crumbly and squishy snow walls, but when he finally managed to get out of the hole that he made on his landing, and saw nothing but snow in every direction, including up if the snowflakes and snow clouds counted.
It was then that it sank in: Thorax had no idea where he was, outside of far away from anything and anyling he knew.
He had no idea how far he travelled. The falling snow made it impossible to see anything far away, and difficult to see anything that wasn’t close. The only landmarks he could see were the crater he made, long out of view, and the prints he was leaving behind, which were being slowly filled in.
He wasn’t even sure what he was walking on. To be more precise, he wasn’t sure how far down it was before the ground became solid again. It could be just a hoof length or two under the snow, or he could be walking on top of some massive amount of ice, with snow just dusting over the top like a thin layer of barren dirt, as it was near the hive.
He belatedly added to the list of possibilities that there could also be a thin sheet of snow suspended over thin air when a hoof broke through snow and found nothing underneath, and in his surprise lost his balance and fell into the hole. Thankfully, it wasn’t that deep, so all he got was a light ache in his jaw when he landed on it.
“Why does this always happen to me,” Thorax moaned.
He got up and looked around the small cavern he dropped into, taking note of the floor of dirt with some grass here and there as well as the walls made entirely of compressed snow. There were also a few passageways that led to somewhere else, and what was down one of them caught his attention: a group of small, white-furred foxes, staring at him with some shock.
He said with a calm, quiet voice, “Don’t worry, I don’t mean you any harm.” The snowy foxes still fled down the corridor into a small branch partway in, likely their den.
With a weak sigh, he looked back up at the hole, and the snow slowly drifting down. While it was surprisingly warm in this cavern, considering it had snow for walls, it was rapidly cooling with that sudden opening. However warm that nearby den was, it wouldn’t be nearly as pleasant soon.
However, he had no idea how to patch that hole, and he was too tired to think something up. This was also the only shelter he had found so far, and not even the Queen would know when he would find another in the snowfall. Coming to a decision, he laid down in the entryway to the foxes’ corridor, back to the outside in the hopes of the chill keeping his wings numb, and let himself drift off.
Soon, his snores filled the otherwise silent caverns.
Something tickled Thorax’s nose. Something light and fuzzy was pulling him from his sleep. Well, unless one of the other changelings of the hive were pulling a prank on him… again…, everything that happened wasn’t some strange dream he was having while camping out outside of Canterlot’s walls and shield.
He slowly opened his eyes and blinked a few times to clear them, as all he saw was white. A little more time to wake up along with refocusing his eyes let him see the differences in texture. There was the flat white of snow at the front, which were the walls, and some fuzzy white downwards. That’s right, he fell asleep in that entry way, and he had his back to the chamber he fell into. His wings didn’t ache much, though he didn’t know if that was from the cold or because they were healing.
Lifting his head a little bit, he could finally get a good look at why his underside felt so warm. The little foxes were all huddled up against his stomach, except for one bold enough to nap under his chin. That one’s tail was the culprit for his ticklish nose. He kept himself from chuckling at the adorable sight, not wanting to wake them up.
Whatever warm feeling he felt froze solid when he finally bothered to look down the corridor again and saw the cold, angry glare of a fox that was much larger than the small ones.

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                        02: Shelter                        
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02: Shelter
The older fox, presumably the mother of the little foxes, tilted her head down towards the ground, keeping her eyes pointed towards Thorax, and let out a short bark that almost sounded like a cough. While the changeling had no idea what that meant*, the cubs that were napping along his belly likely knew, as all four of them opened their eyes, looked to their elder, and started huddling up closer to the black legs they were sleeping by.
*Changeling education was highly specialized, focused on using natural abilities as well as how to blend into various societies for infiltration. Animals and their behaviors, especially of those that did not live near the hive, were one of the categories that Queen Chrysalis considered unnecessary, with other examples being advanced mathematics, critical thinking, and swimming.
Tapping into his abilities to sense the emotions of nearby creatures, Thorax could tell that the parent's spiky rage was just shell over a watery but vibrating core of fear, so it was probably the case that she wanted her offspring to find somewhere safe to hide from him. Supporting that was their emotions, which, while obscured by the cloudiness of confusion, were changing from some baseline, solid contentedness to a similar fear, though it didn't change completely.
As the younger foxes weren't moving, the changeling put two and two together and realized that he had accidentally gained their trust... somehow. Apparently, the adult fox did too, as she narrowed her eyes, then made a deep growl while moving her belly a bit. This time, the smaller foxes quickly got up and dashed their way over to her, most of their emotions replaced with anticipation, which had its outer part shudder and spike periodically.
As he took notice of the parent's emotions reducing in intensity, he decided to try and say something. "Well, I'm sorry for coming in here with your nymphs, or, well, what ever words are used for the members of your clutch, but I fell into the caves on accident, and I can't fly out yet." He took another look at his wings, which managed to grow back a few inches since last night, a bit faster than he expected. "Is it fine if I stay here? I'll try and fix the hole I made, too."
The family of creatures gave no indication of understanding what he said, which Thorax wasn't particularly surprised by. What few animals lived near the hive either fled or ignored changeling conversation, and getting the latter in this situation was probably for the best. Instead, the older fox brought to her offspring a small pile of what looked like smaller versions of the moles that often burrowed into the hive.
As the original occupants of the snow caverns were busy eating, Thorax decided to check himself over. As he previously noted, the wings were growing back even faster than he expected, even when he was regularly eating the love the infiltrators brought back. They seemed a bit shinier than they usually were, though that might just have been the stronger lighting compared to the hive. While the hiverock did let light through, it wasn't nearly as translucent as snow, and the ceiling here was much thinner, too.
After sitting up, he checked his other limbs, which moved just fine, and his disguises functioned just as well. While his magic was a little weaker than usual, that was probably from how poorly supplied the camp was, worse than the hive. Considering the latter was under permanent rationing...
Thinking about food gave him a sudden realization. He felt less hungry than he usually did, despite the fact that he barely fed at all during the invasion and didn't quite get enough at camp. He didn't run into anyone at all since he landed in this tundra. In fact, the only creatures he even saw were these foxes, so.... The only explanation that he could think of was that he somehow fed in his sleep, but everyling knew that that you had to actively pull from a source to feed off of love, and that animals usually weren't worth the time. He had heard that it was easier to do so if the target was fooled into it rather than if it was just taken by force, but he never heard it being literally effortless.
Thorax dropped that line of thought for later when he saw that feeding time was over, and the young foxes started playing with each other and some leftover bones. After a moment of watching them, the older fox stood up and walked towards the changeling. By now, the anger and fear were mostly gone, replaced by a very observant mix of curiosity and unease. In other words, about the same that he was feeling. He let he sniff him, as it didn't seem all that different from eyeing each other over. Plus, if she did anything aggressive, his fangs were far longer, and a kick from him would likely hurt, so he wasn't that afraid of her. Evidently satisfied, she walked past him, and looked up at the hole in the ceiling from the previous day. Beyond it, the sky was still overcast, but it wasn't snowing anymore.
"I should be able to fix it with the snow on the floor," Thorax said, and lit his horn to try just that.
Not used to magic, the fox glanced warily at him, then at snow he was lifting, but she stayed put and watched. He gently lifted it up to the ceiling, slowly inching the mass towards one of the edges of the hole, hoping to gently press it together. It didn't work. The edges crumbled down into the caverns every time he so much as brushed it with his load. Eventually, he gave up and haphazardly dropped it in the center of the chamber.
Thorax groaned. "It won't work without some support. A pillar in the center would work, but I don't have enough snow for that, and I don't want to risk taking any from the walls."
He looked at the fox, but, well, she wasn't there any more. Checking down one of the other tunnels, he could barely see her, mainly from movement and some lingering emotive energy. Having nothing much better to do, he followed her.
The path taken through the various tunnels, which Thorax did his best to memorize, eventually led to another opening to the outside. This one much easier to go through, as instead of a sheer drop, it was merely a steep incline to the surface. While the elder fox wandered off, likely to look for food, he instead doubled back to where the hole was, just on the surface.
He found it with no trouble, and started looking nearby for a good place to dig up snow to drop in. He stopped once he realized that, with an invisible cave network underneath, any digging might destabilize some of it, and the last thing he wanted to do was make even more holes.
The solution he eventually came up with was to dig near the main entrance in the direction of the walkable slope. That way, he had little chance of damaging the caves, and could even make it easier to get in or out to boot. Of course, that meant yet another trip back, but the walk was only a few minutes, and even with the cold weather he preferred that over sitting bored in the invasion camp.
Digging up the snow was a little difficult, as it was a formless mass that, for the most part, was stuck together as a giant mass covering the entire tundra. He had to kick hard to pick grooves into until it was loose enough that could rip it away with his magic, and then he had to carry it back. After that, he had to carefully drop it in without touching the unstable ceiling and making sure he wouldn't drop it in any unsuspecting foxes. Thankfully, a few trips provided enough building material by his reckoning, and he made his way into the caverns again. The proper way, this time.
Managing to make it the whole way back was quite a feat of navigation, what with the walls and ceilings made of pure white snow and the ground a mix of mostly dead grass and uncovered dirt that occasionally dirtied the lowest layers of snow, but he still managed it, even if a little slower than before due to a lack of confidence. It did help that, near the end, he could hear the younger foxes playing, which made his decisions at any crossroads far less hesitant.
The pile of snow in the middle was almost exactly as he left it; a couple depressions and a score of paw prints was evidence enough that the little foxes had a bit of fun there in the meantime. Thorax smiled a bit at that, then got started carefully forming the snow with his magic. Again, this was driven by caution and a lack of experience, as the Badlands rarely saw snow. It didn't take long for him to figure out that compacting the material hardened it and stuck it all together, and he began in earnest.
Outside of the occasional interruption of a cub coming in our of either curiosity or, in one case, rolling right into the chamber with another while play fighting, it was peaceful work for him. He shaped a pillar that he hoped was thick and sturdy enough to ensure it would survive something small and fuzzy barreling straight for it, which broadened at the top and fanned outwards just underneath the edge of the hole. With that, not only was it better supported and less liable to fall inside should, say, the wind start blowing the wrong way, but it also sealed the chamber in again. He could already tell that, without the chill air from the surface coming in, it was a bit warmer inside the caverns. Not enough for the snow to melt, but still warm enough for a creature with enough insulation to find it comfortable.
Of course, he did test the structure to make sure it was stable, and while he had one front hoof carefully pressing on the new ceiling and the other using the pillar for balance, the elder fox returned, carrying the result of successfully hunting rabbits. Thorax happened to be facing the wrong way to see her, but it was hard to miss the cubs running in with vibrating anticipation. She left the meal to them, and looked toward the pillar. Wanting to give her a better view, he pushed off from it and dropped back to his usual quadrupedal stance.
It was hard to gauge what she was feeling, as outside of some slowly fading, but still bright pride over the hunt, and a small core of love for her offspring, it was all a gray, listless mass of neutrality. As a result, the changeling stood there in silence, unsure what exactly to say while his work was inspected. It seemed that the fox was satisfied, as she went to the family's storage and returned with a mouse, placing it on the ground in front of Thorax.
"I, uh, appreciate the gesture, but I can't eat that," he said, pushing the chilled corpse away.
She glanced between him and the rejected offering a few times, before just going ahead and biting into it herself. Having nothing better to do, he watched her for a while, until one of the little foxes pounced on some of the leftover snow right next to them.
Just like earlier that day, they were playing with the bones that remained, batting them about and jumping on them. This one (which had larger ears than the rest, Thorax noted) happened to send the rabbit femur his way. He took it as a sign that they wanted to play with them, and lifted the bone using his magic.
The youngling was a bit surprised by this, but then realized that it was a brand new way to play, and got very excited and barked in anticipation. After shaking it a bit, he tossed the bone down one of the corridors, the little one dashing after it. The other siblings all watched, pick up their own toys, and brought them over to Thorax for some fun, too.
While he already knew about how much the young ones like him, he did learn something from the elder's reaction, or more precisely, the lack thereof. She just kept an eye on them, trusting him not to do anything to hurt them.
'I could get used to this,' he thought, and played with the rest of the cubs, a small smile on his face.
Author's Note
The sounds the foxes made are based on the vocalizations of real world red foxes, which are better understood than those of snow foxes.
I'm aware that the lack of names for them make it a bit clunky in places, but Thorax'll give them names next chapter.

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                    03: A Fox's Life I                     
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03: A Fox's Life I
It's been a couple days since Thorax reinforced the ceiling to what ended up becoming his chamber of the snow cavern network. Things have settled into a bit of a routine: he woke up with at least one of the young foxes curled up against him (so far, the first morning had Ears, the second had both him and Nosy, though on the current day it was only Spot), who raced away once their mother, who he'd been calling Vix out of a vague memory of what the term for a female fox was, gave the morning meal call. He checked his wings to ensure they were still growing back, wondered if they really were shinier than before, and slowly got up once the foxes were done with breakfast.
Usually, at this point, the younglings would be running over for him to start playing. However, it seems they finally got bored of him, and to be frank, he was running out of ideas. It didn't help that yesterday evening was when the bone chandelier incident occurred, from which he learned three things: changeling goo made a great adhesive for connecting the leftover bones, it wasn't nearly as good when gluing onto snow, and creating a toy that got the foxes to apply weight on an unstable ceiling was a terrible idea. Thankfully, the only reminders left were an indentation in the snow at the top of one of the tunnels and the last of the names he gave to the foxes, Hops.
What's especially strange was that he'd start playing with them with the intent to feed off of their joy and excitement a little, but by the time they finished, he had forgotten it entirely, and yet still felt a bit less hungry than he started. He was missing something, but couldn't tell what exactly. Either he was somehow getting nourishment, or his body had given up on survival... which still didn't seem right with how his wings were growing back so quickly.
Anyway, as the little foxes no longer had as much interest in what he was doing, he might as well follow Vix to her hunt. As per usual with her, she glanced at him to see what he was doing, but otherwise didn't acknowledge his presence.
He kept silent the whole way, especially once they left the cave network. While changelings did not hunt, at least, not in the traditional sense, it was fairly obvious to him that it would be a bad idea to shout to anyling nearby that they were a potential enemy. Besides, it wasn't as if she would talk back.
Eventually, she stopped and smelled the air, ears swiveling all the while. Thorax halted as well, patiently watching. As far as he could tell, there was no other creature around.
Soon, though, Vix bunched up her hind legs, kept into the air, and planted her head into the snow. The changeling just blinked, unsure of what he just saw, until she backed out of the hole she made, triumphantly carrying a small rodent in her jaws. He strained his ears to try and hear if there were other rodents nearby, but even if there were, he probably couldn't hear them through the layers of snow, unlike Vix. He then had the idea to swap to his emotional sense, and while it usually didn't work through solid things, the snow was fluffy enough so he could just barely catch glimpses of emotion moving around underneath, likely more of the same prey.
An idea formed, and Thorax turned himself into a copy of Vix, which caused her to jump back in mute surprise, though she calmed down again after sniffing him. Then, he scoured the underground while quietly moving until he found a relatively stationary bundle of emotions. Finally, he imitated her leaping pounce and successfully grabbed a burrower in his borrowed teeth.
The flailing against his jaws made him hesitate. He never, ever wanted to hurt anything, not even a small insect, and what biting down would do seemed far beyond that. Still, Vix did it all the time, and she and her young needed to eat something. That thought got him to strain his jaws closed, and he felt the struggling quickly still.
While he felt a little empty inside about doing that, he did notice when glancing at her that while shelled by the usual aloof indifference, there was a small amount of respect underneath, which wasn't something he usually has directed towards him. It did help a little with that, even if not by much.
Apparently satisfied, Vix turned around and wandered off, likely to go hunt for more prey somewhere else, leaving Thorax with his own thoughts along with his catch. Normally, he'd never do something like that, but the thinking about how Vix had to silence prey all the time as well as how overjoyed Spot and his siblings would be with it pushed him to do it. Was that... what taking care of someling a part of the family was like*?
*Thorax never had the opportunity to be responsible for another being. Firstly, none of the changelings in the hive liked him enough to be cordial with him, let alone sire nymphs with him. Secondly, Queen Chrysalis kept him as far away from the nursery and school as possible to minimize the chances of his ideas spreading. Finally, changelings never kept pets, as any decently sized animal that wasn't a mole of some kind was assumed to be a nymph practicing their shapeshifting and were placed back in the nursery, which hadn't always gone well.
Thinking about his family inevitably led to him thinking about his brother Pharynx. Unlike Thorax, he stayed behind at the hive as ordered by the Queen. The surprising part wasn't that he obeyed without question, as her temper was not to be tested, but that he personally wanted to stay. His calling was to defend the hive, and he felt that the invasion was far too risky for it to be good idea. Of course, this was told in private and in confidence, as disagreeing with the Queen openly was tantamount to treason, especially when she was thoroughly invested in a plan.
Still, Thorax had to wonder if his brother knew anything about his fate. Heck, before he came to this place, he had no idea there could be flat land covered in snow like the mountain peak Canterlot rested near. His best guess was that he must have gone quite far north, as the weather was a good bit cooler at that mountain city compared to the Badlands where the hive was. The rest of the invasion force might have landed somewhere even more dangerous, like a bottomless pit or an endless expanse of water. With his previous conceptions about how the world could look like busted, anything seemed possible.
He shook his head to clear his mind. Something about this place just made him think more. Maybe it was the blank white visible in almost every direction, the lack of anyling to talk to, or maybe the invasion gave him a lot to think about. Either way, he was always taught that too much thinking never helped anyling, and he knew he could help those foxes he lived with by hunting some more. And so, he did.
The wonderful mix of surprise and joy he sensed from the first fox he ran into when he came back to the snow caverns, Hops, made all that trouble worth it, and getting the same from her siblings just added to that.
Author's Note
By this point, I've mixed in a couple of red fox behaviors, including that it would be the wrong time of the year for an arctic fox to have cubs, assuming the Season 2 finale occurs in mid spring, which is what I'm using as a starting point. Oh well, I'm willing to bend science a bit of it makes for what I feel is a better story, and the fox kits make it all the better.

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                    04: A Fox's Life II                    
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04: A Fox's Life II
Another few days passed. Thorax's wings had managed to regrow to about half their original size, and if he shunted a lot more magic into them than usual, he could hover or even ascend. It likely also helped that there weren't any holes in them, which was a bit odd, and that they stopped hurting when moving the day before.
Speaking of magic, his had fully recovered. While transforming into something with similar size or mass was easy, the same could not be said of more general shapeshifting. To ensure he wasn't completely out of practice (though hunting did help, Vix wasn't that much smaller than him), he decided to take on the form of one of the burrowing animals he once caught and test himself to see how long he could hold it.
Turned out, looking like prey in the den of a fox family was not a good idea. Spot, who had a noticeable star pattern in her coat around one of her eyes, noticed him rather quickly with a hungry look in her eyes, and crouched down to pounce.
Thankfully for him, he noticed her before she committed to it, and squeaked out, "Uh, Spot, what are you doing?"
Having heard his voice often enough to easily recognize it, she relaxed from her crouch and looks around for him. She was a bit confused when she couldn't find him, but then noticed the prey animal looking straight at her, so she quickly leapt for it while it was presumably still in shock.
Thorax had a bit of a reputation in his hive. While he was, at heart, a pacifist, his whole conflict avoidance quickly branded him as a coward in the rough-and-tumble culture of changeling nymphhood, and when his default response to bullying or straight up getting attacked was to run or hide, he started thinking of himself that way, too.
Any progress that might have been made in growing away from that was tossed aside by bolting from the much larger fox. Undeterred and craving some fun, she gave chase.
Naturally, any young creature scampering about and apparently enjoying it would attract the interest of bored siblings, and once they realized what their sister was chasing, they joined in as well. The pack quickly herded him to a part of the snow caverns he found unfamiliar, which just added to his panic.
After what felt like an hour of fleeing, he finally took a wrong turn and hit a dead end. He turned around and pressed up as close to the wall as possible, as if it would help. Naturally, Hops went for a pounce, but Ears did too at the same time, resulting in them colliding with each other and falling onto Spot, leaving the three in a dazed heap.
That left the last of the siblings, Nosy, who carefully stalked up to him and then grabbed him before he could react. His claws kept Thorax in place, but weren't digging into the skin, and he went for a sniff, as he always did with something new. Apparently, the smell wasn't what he was expecting, and he let go and backed off a bit.
Now that he finally had enough room to think things through, the changeling finally realized what would've been the most sensible thing to do from the start: change back to his undisguised form. Once that was done, he held a hoof to his chest and tried to breathe slowly in the hopes of calming down his rapidly beating heart. It was quite successful, helped along by very obviously being the biggest thing in the tunnels again.
It also didn't hurt that Nosey walked up to him again and gave him a nuzzle. The pile of siblings also started shaking their heads to get rid of some cloudiness and looked at Thorax in confusion. After a few seconds, it dawned on them that the mouse they were chasing was just Thorax in disguise, and they bounced over to him again, doing their best to express that they wanted to do it all again.
"You-you want to do all that again?"
Spot gave him a nod of affirmation.
He tried to look more calm and collected. It didn't go very well. "Well, you have promise me that you'll let me go after you catch me. I don't want to be badly hurt while playing."
She nodded again, and let out a playful mewling sound to her siblings. It was almost odd how well she understood him, possibly better than Vix.
Still entirely convinced, but willing to give it a try, he walked past them to the crossroads and took on the rodent form once again. "Just give me head start to hide, and then we can get started."
The response was one shake of the head and four foxes crouching low to ground.
"Uh oh."
The (far more playful) hunt was on again.
Author's Note
Now that all the foxes have appeared as actual named characters, here's a short character sheet.
Vix: the mother of the family, stoic and protective. She doesn't know where her mate went, but he was presumably lost to unusually harsh cold of the spring.
Ears: has bigger ears than the rest of the little foxes. He's usually the first one to notice when Vix or Thorax return from outside, but not always.
Nosy: likes to sniff everything new. He's bolder in approaching things compared to his siblings, but only to get a good whiff of it. Otherwise, he's more cautious and patient.
Spot: has a star-shaped mark over one eye, as a reference to an experiment where Russian scientists tried domesticating wild foxes through selective breeding and that pattern emerged among the most docile of foxes. True to that, she was the fastest to warm up to Thorax, and is the best at understanding him.
Hops: loves to jump after things. She does it even when pouncing isn't the best way to catch something. Prefers the taste of bird over rodent.

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                    05: Cursed Weather                     
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05: Cursed Weather
Less than two weeks into his stay, and Thorax's wings had finally recovered in full. However, it was another two days until he could try them out again, as the weather outside was so bad that Vix didn't even bother to go hunting. With the skies once again free of falling snow, he left to do some real exploring.
He first rose high into the air, trying to see if he can get a better view of what lay off into the distance. The east and west were fairly boring, leading to more snowy flatlands as far as he could tell. To the north was a wall of mountains that were almost entirely covered in snow, and the parts that weren't looked like sheer cliff faces. The south finally had something under than the greyscale that dominated the region with dark greens, though based on how there were even more white over there just above the green, it was likely a forest covered in even more snow. Any place warm enough to reliably get above freezing was more than a day's flight away, and Thorax didn't want to risk trying to leave just yet.
After that part of the reconnaissance, he glided his way nearer to the ground and started circling around the entrance to his shared shelter while slowly increasing his distance. The spiral would allow him to thoroughly scan the surrounding area while minimizing the chance he'd get lost along the way.
To keep his mind occupied while staring at the frankly boring terrain, he thought further on his future plans. He would have to leave eventually, as there would come a time when Ears, Spot, Hops, and Nosy would be old enough to strike out on their own. Even if it only took a year, he should've left a long time ago by that point if he wanted to get back to the hive without the chance of a desertion charge.
On the other hoof, traveling in the area could be very treacherous, especially when the weather turned bad. He's seen it happen in minutes with next to no warning there, and if it struck while he was heading back south, he would have to rely on luck yet again to find shelter. That's just too dangerous to risk.
With that reasoning out of the way, he readily came to the conclusion that he'd wait with foxes until the snow melted. His conviction in the whole thing was a lot weaker on that last part, truth be told.
Two hours into the search pattern, so about a fifteen minute flight from the snow tunnels, he noticed it suddenly get colder. Thinking the weather would swap to a blizzard yet again, he made a 90 degree turn towards the center of the spiral. A few seconds later, the air warned back up to its original, less frigid temperature, which got him to hover in place and turn around. He stuck one of his forelegs out, and as a reward got a chilly hoof.
That was very strange, and feeling curious, he flew in deeper. It visibly got darker as the ever-present cloud cover thickened further. Not only that, he could feel the magic of the area slowly intensify above the natural background. It wasn't like any other magic he ever felt. A part of him wanted to figure out what it was and maybe take that power for himself, but the vast majority of himself found it oddly icky and wanted little to do with it, outside of using to know which way not to go.
It even started to snow, but it was light enough to not bother his flight too much, so he pressed on a little further, the precipitation gradually increasing. He knew he would have to stop eventually if kept worsening like that and promised himself to keep going until just before then, pushing through the drifting snowflakes and that odd-feeling magic.
He never made it to anywhere close to that point. His eyes picked up something that made him stop, stare for a good minute to be sure, then race back to safety again.
Near the center, there was a lot of snow in the air.
It wasn't falling. It wasn't even moving at all.
Author's Note
Don't mind me, just setting up for some future stuff.

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                   06: A Fox's Life III                    
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06: A Fox's Life III
Thorax trudged his way through the familiar snow caverns, a small pile of fresh game on his back. It was barely enough to feed the foxes for a day, but hopefully Vix had just as much luck, if not more. Neither of them had much of any in the last couple of days.
The weather, which was slowly warming until a week after he had found that... thing that he really didn't like thinking about, had taken a turn for the worse in that next week. It quickly got colder than the day he had arrived, and harsh winds and snowfall became the norm. What's worse was that the food stockpile had already started to slowly dwindle before that happened, and now...
Now, every chance he got, he went out with Vix to try and find prey for the little ones. When combined, their catch was usually enough for a day and a half, maybe two. Normally this would be fine, but with every other day just too bitterly cold, wet, and windy to spend any large amount of time outside...
The worst part was that the foxes weren't the only ones struggling to get by. The burrowers he had found lately were all thin and lethargic from a lack of food. It made them easier to catch, especially for someling with his lack of skill in a fox's particular way of hunting, but there was much less nutrition provided.
As he mused over all this yet again, he turned the final corner to where the most lived in areas of the caverns were, and the four fox kits greeted him. While the joy of seeing and seeing fresh food was there it was a bit muted compared to when he hunted just as a means to get above the surface. Maybe it was the fact they were older and a little more mature, as they had they gotten bigger over the last month, or maybe it they understood how good was running low. Either way, they were much less interested in playing lately, which Thorax found very disquieting.
As for the changeling himself, he felt better than ever did before. He only felt hungry when he thought about it, and not in the way a growling stomach forces forces the thought, but more as an idle question on the matter. He had more magical power in his reach than ever before, and his legs felt even sturdier than usual, with the holes in them slowly shrinking. Oh, did he feel terribly guilty about it. The once lively fox family struggling to get by, while he was the pinnacle of changeling health.
Once he had dropped his burden off at food storage chamber, he walked back to the chamber the fox siblings were laying about in. Soon after he arrived, Ears' namesake swiveled towards the cavern entrypoint. His siblings took notice and did the same, and moments later, their mother appeared, carrying her own catch in her mouth.
Thorax's heart sank at the sight. For the first time, he managed to catch more then she did. Obviously, there was no pride in that; the situation was just too precarious, and he was never the type to gloat.
With the kind of world-weary groan he made way more often before he landed here, he laid himself down on the floor of the chamber. Spot quickly bounded up to him and curled up against his belly, and her siblings soon followed. It seems she had guessed that the best way to cheer him up was a repeat of that first night. It wasn't quite the same, as Ears barely fit next to his sister and Nosy took the below-the-chin position, so Hops made the emotional equivalent of a shrug and hopped over the bunch to curl upon against his back. Still, it pulled him out his fugue.
Eventually, it was mealtime, and the foxes left the chamber to go eat. He lifted his head off the ground to watch them go. A thought struck him: if the hunting remains this bad, they might need to find somewhere else to stay, where food is more plentiful.
He concluded with zero hesitation that he would follow them. They got him back up to his feet, and who would he be if he didn't return the favor? Certainly too similar to some of the changelings he knew for his liking, that was for sure.
As was usually the case lately, Vix walked straight to her sleeping chamber, melancholy dragging behind her like a tattered cape. Her offspring followed behind, glancing at Thorax as they passed within view. It seems that they all decided that she needed their company more than he did, and he fully agreed with them.
Having nothing better to do, he settled his head to the ground, did his best to set aside his worry, and slowly fell asleep.
Thorax fitfully stirred from his sleep far earlier than usual. Once he was awake enough to think, even if the thoughts were groggy, he felt the shaking of the ground he was laying on. That was probably the cause for him waking up. He also heard pebbles of packed snow start to fall down from the walls and ceilings. All this got him to open his eyes sleepily, not quite understanding what was going on.
The first thing he saw was the snow pillar he made on that second day toppling towards him, along with the ceiling it supported.
It was also the last thing he saw for a good while.

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                    07: Hope Dies Last                     
//-------------------------------------------------------//
07: Hope Dies Last
The pile of snow in the hole shuddered before falling apart as Thorax burst out of it, gasping for breath. While changelings needed very little air, spending a few hours buried under snow was one way to hit the limits of that. He looked around, confused at why there were snowflakes in his chamber, then how the roof managed to collapse on him.
And then the memory of the collapsing caverns hit him. He pulled himself the rest of the way out of the snow that was burying him, hovered up several hooflengths above the surface and started yelling out the names that he had given the foxes.
After a few minutes of doing this and getting no response, he had the terrifying thought that they might not have escaped from the tunnels. He dropped to the ground and started digging away at where the tunnels used to be, hoping to find something, anything that could tell him what happened to them.
A couple hours of digging, and most of what he found was just little clumps of fur. He dismissed it as a bit meaningless, as they were fairly easy to find before the tunnels were destroyed.
What was interesting was that he managed to dig his way into the food stockpile chamber, still mostly intact. It had nothing in it, so either something managed to sneak in and steal it all, or one of the foxes had the foresight to grab it while trying to flee.
He found no other traces of them, which was a good thing, in a way. The last thing Thorax wanted to see was the unmoving body of one of the foxes stuck in the snow he was digging away at. It gave some hope that they made it out, but they must feel terrible about needing to leave him behind...
Another epiphany arrived, and he fluttered his wings to gain altitude in the snow storm. He swept a circle while focusing on his emotional sense, hoping that the falling snow wouldn't block it too much. There was direction that got a ping that he ignored until he made three full sweeps. It was in the last direction he wanted to go, the one with the repulsive magic.
Still, if it was his only hope to find them, it he could push through. Probably. He grit his teeth and shot out in that direction. The icky magic was a lot closer then he remembered it being, but it didn't intensify nearly as much as it did before, which he was grateful for. It did get a bit colder as he went along, but again, it did not worsen much.
He expected to see the creepy frozen-in-the-air snow again, but that was not what he found, as the snowflakes fell as they should. Instead, he saw a set of silhouettes reaching for the sky, the middle one both taller and wider the ones surrounding it. It reminded him of Canterlot's castle, though the shapes weren't quite the same. He could also barely see some smaller obstacles that looked like structures. They and the towers reflected the weak sunlight in weird ways, making it hard for him to tell what exactly they were by sight.
His emotional sense wasn't affected by that, though, and what it told him was disconcerting: there were simply too many sources of negative emotions to easily identify the foxes. Even worse, the ones he could tell apart were all far too strong to be the foxes, either. Animals in general didn't have very strong emotional energies, and the only beings he ever saw outputting that much were fellow changelings that have recently fed and the ponies.
He glided his way down as discreetly as he could manage and landed near the outskirts of what was now obviously a city of some kind. What it was doing in these frozen wastes, he had no idea, but it was there all the same. With no guards of any species racing his way, he either avoided detection or was deemed no threat.
Erring on the side of caution, he took on Vix's now familiar form and stalked his way into the depressed city, hoping to find those he was separated from. The pawprints he left behind quickly vanished, with the snow in the air slowly filling it in while the winds brushed the surface snow back to uniformity. The footprints from his landing persisted longer, but they too faded in the face of the weather.
Author's Note
Some wisdom I found while studying philosophy and politics:
Hope always dies last, for once a person loses hope, they regress to surviving, which isn't truly living anymore.
Anyway, depressing bits set aside for the moment, Act 1 is over. The burst of writing I just had is starting to slow down, so newer chapters are going to take longer to come out than once every two days... especially since I'll need to do a bit more character research just to ensure I'm writing a couple of them correctly. :raritywink: https://static.fimfiction.net/images/emoticons/raritywink.png

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                   07a: Second Honeymoon                   
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07a: Second Honeymoon
"I can't believe we were woken up at six thirty on the morning and told 'I hope you didn't unpack your luggage, because you're going on a train in five minutes to the middle of nowhere'!"
"Cadance, honey, that's an exaggeration and you know it. We were given half an hour to get ready, and the train wouldn't leave without us," Shining Armor replied, not bothering to look at her despite sitting next to her. Instead, he watched the trees outside the window gradually convert from deciduous to evergreen as the train chugged ever northward.
"I know, but can't I complain about how quickly Auntie dumped all this on us? I mean, we got back from our honeymoon yesterday evening, and the next morning I wasn't even given enough time to curl my mane! Do you know how hard it is to do that on a moving train?"
Her husband decided not to answer that, as he had helped her with that earlier. Instead, he went for an indirect route. "Well, maybe thinking positive about it will help you feel better about it."
Cadance almost scoffed at this, then her eyes twinkled a bit. "Oh, that's a great idea, I'll think of it as our honeymoon."
That got Shining to look at her. "Didn't we just have one?" he asked, not-so-secretly hoping for a specific response.
She smirked. "Well, yes, but what about a second honeymoon?"
He laughed quietly in response, and she giggled at how easily the reference could do that in the right situation. He used it a few times when they started dating, and he had explained it was from one of his favorite books (or was it book series? It was long enough ago so that she couldn't remember that, let alone any titles). It didn't take long for her to get the gist of it and start making her own versions of the joke, which left him overjoyed. She treasured the memory of his expression the first time she did it.
After he settled down again, Cadance said with more seriousness, "I'm just trying to unpack how I feel about all this so I can put it behind me, and you're the best pony in the world for me to confide to." She then added with a light snort, "And the only pony on this train."
Shining leaned his head against hers. "And I wouldn't have it any other way. Minus the bit about the train, of course. And I know you would be there for me, too, if I needed to do the same. In fact, I will right now." He pulled away and let the moment stretch on with a self-depreciating smile, "I'd feel a bit better if we went over the plan again."
The young alicorn sighed and rolled her eyes in mock frustration (her husband could easily tell by the grin she had the entire time), muttering loudly enough to be easily heard, "That's what I get for marrying a Guardstallion," and pulled a scroll from her saddlebags hooked on the wall. On it were the instructions that Celestia wrote for them while they were getting ready to leave. The magical flow transitioned from baby blue to pink as her husband took it in his own magic.
"Right, so first things first, when we reach the end of the railroad, we'll get out with our luggage and make the rest of the way in hoof," Shining said, paraphrasing what was written as the first instruction.
"Oh, I'm not going to like that part. I bet twenty bits that Sombra's Curse has a blizzard for gift-wrapping."
"I'd be twenty bits poorer if I took that bet. Though I do wonder why the track ends there, a good distance from where the Empire should be, but also so far away from the nearest town or even village."
"Oh, I was actually there for that in the castle. See, Auntie wanted to build a railroad to Yakyakistan, although I wouldn't put it past her for this mission being the real reason, and the rail builders went on a strike partway through. While one demand stood out, the rest were all about better working conditions, all of which should've been given to them already, as a crown corporation handles railway building, and those are supposed to follow a stricter version of our labor regulations. She checked the Labor Ministry as to why that never was dealt with, and it turns out it was a teensy bit corrupt."
The unicorn raised an eyebrow. "How did that happen under the watch of the Ministry of Good Governance?"
"Oh, that got really corrupt since the last time Auntie thoroughly checked on it. Apparently, the nobleponies had been doing their best to bribe it for the last decade so that they could do the same to other parts of the government. In a way, it was lucky that the strike happened so that all that could be rooted out before it got any worse."
Shining quietly let the gears in his head turn. He could vaguely remember her talk about it some years back as it had happened, but he didn't find politics all that interesting, neither then nor now. Still, something didn't quite add up, and he soon figured out what the missing piece was. "What was the unusual demand the strikers made?"
"Hmm? Oh, they didn't want to build all the way to Yakyakistan while we were still at war with them. It's not like we've had any battles in decades, but Prince Yoki was adamant that nopony could enter his territory, not even the diplomats we sent to negotiate a peace treaty."
"Well, that part hasn't changed yet, as far as I know." He moved on to the next part of the plan. "We're to appraise the situation when we arrive. Once we get a reasonable idea of how things are, we'll have a guard deliver a message to the train, which will take it back to the Princess so she can act on her part, assuming it's safe to stay. If not, we gallop back to the train and ride back to prepare multiple full guard complements for a war."
Cadance shuddered at the thought, but didn't add any remarks.
Shining continued, "That's only the worst case scenario and the one Princess Celestia found least likely. The most likely is where we get there safely but have to defend the place from Sombra's Curse, in which case we should hold the line until Twilight and her friends arrive." He lowered the paper as his eyes turned towards his wife. "Any reason why she wants us to wait for my little sis to come save the day for us?"
She shrugged. "I think Auntie has big plans for them. You know how she is."
He nodded and resumed with the plan. "Should we get to the point where we cannot maintain a defense, we are to try and neutralize the threat. Should we fail, a tactical retreat is to be attempted." He grimaced at that. "That'll be difficult without a train engine letting us make a quick getaway. The final possibility is where the crystal ponies manage to defeat the Curse by themselves. If that occurs, we are to officially congratulate them, offer them aid in adapting to the new millennium, and pave the way for future diplomacy."
"Is it bad that I'm hoping for the last one?" Cadance asked half-jokingly.
"No, no it's not," he replied, nuzzling her. "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, expect the most likely. It's an old guard saying."
The two quietly enjoyed each other's company as the train rolled along. Far too soon, a knocking came at the car's door a guard walked in. "Sir, we're almost at the end of the tracks."
Shining sighed, knowing that their moment was drawing to a close. "Thanks for letting me know. Tell the rest of the guards to prepare so that we can leave for the Empire as soon as the train stops."
The guard nodded and left the way he came. Cadance gave her husband a quick squeeze before the couple got up and walked to the wardrobe.
"Everything we'll need to brave the tundra is right here," Shining said as he opened the wardrobe. "We've got enough scarves to cocoon the both of us and snow blinders."
Cadance incredulously lifted with her magic what looked like a black rectangle with two slits cut into it. "Snow blinders?"
"Yep. They keep the snow out of your eyes and prevent the sunlight reflecting off the snow from blinding you."
She took a glance at the snowflakes rapidly increasing in quantity outside the window. "I think we'll just need it for the first part."
Her husband frowned at the view. "That's got to be the Curse. The last snow this heavy should've been a month and a half ago at the latest, and most of the snow on the ground should have melted by now."
"How do you know so much about the tundra, anyway?"
He blushed a bit at the question, a rare sight that his wife always enjoyed. "Well, the thing is, Twily always liked to play trivia games, and she got good at them very quickly. I had to start working to keep my lead, and started studying for those during the times when I usually studied for school." He chuckled sheepishly and added, "I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing that my grades actually improved when I started doing that."
Cadance laughed at that last sentence. "Just admit that your little sister is a good influence on you, Shining!"
He echoed with his normal laughter. "I never denied it."
The two decked themselves out in as many scarves as they felt necessary. Cadance rolled her eyes at Shining only taking a single one. A long and bulky one, yes, but still only one, while she took five of them. It looked frightfully cold outside, after all.
It wasn't long until the brakes were hit and the train slowed to a stop. The couple left the car and quickly joined up with the guards. All of their manes and scarves whipped in the wind as Shining gave a quick speech. "Men, we're heading for the long lost city of the crystal ponies, sent to today from the distant past by the curse of their dark enslaver, King Sombra. We are going to do what we guards do best for our ancient brethren, defend them from the evils that lurk. To arms!"
The guards hefted their spears into the air and shouted back his last words. They quickly began marching to the city's silhouette barely visible in the distance, and Shining made to follow them until he noticed his wife wasn't moving.
"Cadance? Are you coming?"
She shook her head and tried to fight down the blush she had ever since he started the speech. "O-oh, yes, of course."
As they followed the guards to the snowed-on city, she mused how, for a moment, her husband looked like the cover art of some of the... steamier books she had read in her late teens. Any teeny-tiny lingering regrets on marrying him have been blasted out of the water with that.
Author's Note
Given how we get zero idea of how the couple went from 'sent on a mission to save the Crystal Empire'(-ish) to 'crowned rulers and barely holding it together' (well, okay, maybe not that last bit, but you get the picture), I figure a short look into their trip would be interesting. Plus, it lets me space out the doubly depressing nature of Thorax's and the Empire's situations with something more heartwarming.
Anyway, second longest chapter so far, mostly because of dialogue. I wanted to do some worldbuilding to set the stage for later chapters and I couldn't help but add some fluff in there, too.

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                    08: The Other Side                     
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08: The Other Side
Thorax continued sneaking around in Vix's form, keeping to the alleyways to avoid attention. He didn't really need to: the locals all seemed to be too worried about something else to pay a snowy female fox any mind. There also weren't any guards around, or at least not any that were on duty and suited up.
Now that he was in their midst, he could see the individual details of these ponies' emotional states. While of course all unique, a pattern emerged: a core of wild fear was being suppressed by a hefty mantle of dejection. Whatever it was that they were afraid of, they'd taking it as a foregone conclusion.
Even the pony nymphs he walked past were like that. Well, not the freshly hatched ones, but the ones who had seen at least a dozen seasons were all feeling just like the adults.
Normally, this would be unsettling. Normally, he'd see if he could figure out a bit more. But he had a job to do. If it took searching the entire other half of the city like he did this one over the last few hours, so be it.
They had to be there, after all.
... He didn't know what to do if they weren't.
Another hour or so later, he finally noticed a positive emotion. It's faint and a bit distant, but it would be a welcome reprieve from the cloying negativity. While it was only a small chance of being one of the foxes, he'd take any chances he could get his fangs on.
The disguised changeling prowled towards the source, stealthily avoiding the attention of the locals. A few were also heading the same direction he was, and soon, more joined in. Normally this would make sneaking around harder, but Thorax found he had to watch where those ponies were going, because they certainly weren't.
Successfully avoiding getting stepped on, he managed to find a perch where he could get a good view in an out-of-the-way corner. While he couldn't recognize the alicorn or unicorn that stood out in the center of the crowd, their entourage were another thing: Royal Guards from Canterlot with their signature golden armor along with the concession of a scarf due to the weather. They were just so creepy with how they looked and acted all the same, as if they were puppets to some greater mind.
Shaking his head to to rid himself of those disturbing thoughts, he focused on what the stallion was saying: "Citizens of the Crystal Empire, we are here to provide aid against King Sombra's evil machinations!"
There was some muttering in the crowd. While it was difficult to make out anything specific, the general sentiment was, "Why would it matter? The King will return, and any resistance will be punished harshly."
"Sombra is not invincible. In fact, he only cursed this city to vanish because he was on his last leg from Princess Celestia and Princess Luna defeating him in battle too many times. If we stand together and face him, he'll finally be defeated for good and you can live the rest of your lives free from him!"
The changeling could feel hope start to ripple through the crowd, but it wasn't enough to overcome the despair quite yet.
The unicorn looked around and inaudibly sighed, then asked, "Can anypony point is to the local government so we can coordinate the defence plans?"
The crowd silently looked amongst each other with a bit of confusion. This was quickly mirrored by the newcomer ponies, who apparently didn't expect a lack of real response. Eventually, an aged voice said, "Oh, I guess I must step up, then."
The crowds parted to let him through, and Thorax was able to see him as he approached the center. He was an older stallion, several wrinkles on his face, though his body had not yet shriveled from time. His coat was a light blue, his mane and tail were a light reddish hue, though if he squinted, he could make out various thin streaks of both far more colorful and gray hair. Oddly, the large beard he had was a brilliant orange, having avoided any graying.
At his arrival, he bowed down and said, "Princess Cadance, Prince Shining Armor, I am Fading Script, the librarian of the castle's private library."
The royal pair with oddly familiar names shared a glance before the alicorn asked, "So, are you the ranking member of the government here?"
"Your Majesty, I'm the only member of the government still in employment."
"What? What happened to all the rest of them?"
"Well," he shuffled his hooves slightly, "His Fearsomeness was quite enraged with the progress of the war, and any of the staff who would bother him would be masked and sent to battle. I was the only one left once his Awesomeness left to oversee the fighting himself days ago."
Another glance was shared between royals before the prince spoke up, "Well, a city is too much for one pony to handle, so we should form a council and-"
"With all due respect, Prince, are you daft? A council will just bicker the time away while threats could march in, take what they want, and leave before they could order the guard to mobilize. What we need is strong ruler, iron in her will and loving in her care, like a mother leads her husband and children."
The newcomers (Thorax included) raised an eyebrow at that. The resulting lull in conversation was broken by Cadance. "Okay... why not have one of the local nobles become monarch?"
"I cannot remember any events that occurred before his Darkness took power, and his first act was to strip them of all their privileges. I do not know who, if any of us in the crowd, have noble blood." He looked to the crowd and asked, "Might any of you remember a grand heritage, or anypony that has one?"
Every pony that the changeling could see shook their heads to the negative. It seemed that the pony princess came to the same conclusion, as she asked the castle librarian, "Well, as the sole member of the government, you should be able to act as regent until-"
"No, never. Any stallion who manages to take power will by his baser instincts pull as much of it as possible to himself, fearing that the mare would use any smidgen of leftover influence to retake her rightful position as leader. I would surely do the same if given the reins, so I must refuse."
Thorax could easily sense the confusion radiating from the royals and their guards, though some of the latter had something else that he couldn't quite figure out. The prince asked, "Why would you say something like that? Aren't you a stallion, too?"
He scoffed. "Of course. It means that I am fully aware of my place and failings as a member of the fairer sex, and help to ensure that an event like the ascension of his Terribleness would never again occur. A land not ruled by a strong and righteous mare is doomed to fall to either to irrelevance, cruelty, or both."
Thorax was finally able identify the hidden emotion that the entire entourage was feeling: anger. He wasn't too surprised, as the other nymphs in his class had reacted similarly when the teacher taught them how the other species of the world looked down upon the changelings. It instead made him feel little sad when he learned that, and a bit uncertain what to think when the teacher added that as the superior species, changelings would one day take their rightful place through hard work, great strength, and enlightened leadership.
Returning to the present, the princess not only felt the anger, but also seemed aware that the others were feeling it too, so to end the conversation with the source, she proclaimed, with a bit of venom in her voice, "Well, as I am likely the mare with the most political experience in this city, I shall act as regent until the present situation has been resolved and a more permanent government has been set up."
Appeased, Fading Script walked back to his previous position in the crowd, the guards trying to burn holes in his mane with their stares all the while. The princess had a hoof to her face while regret started welling up, and the prince had a leg over her withers to comfort her.
At that point, something brought a strange chill up Thorax's spine. It was very, very familiar to him, especially as it came with a very weak yearning to have it for himself. He looked in the sky where it seemed to come from, and saw a tornado made of the blackest clouds stretch towards the top of the local castle.
"That must be Sombra!" The prince had noticed the funnel cloud as well, and cast a massive pink shield... identical to the one that covered Canterlot before the invasion. Was he Queen Chrysalis's target in her plans for infiltration?
The forming tornado hit the top of the shield and bounced back up. It bent its end back in a way that was more reminiscent of arm movements than air flows, sharpened its tip, and punctured its way through the shield, causing it to shatter into harmless glitter.
The princess then stepped up and shot a wide beam of what felt like raw love contained by magic, and was so tempting that Thorax couldn't help but lick his furry lips. The attack did the trick, successfully repelling the dark funnel cloud back into the far more normal looking cloud cover. Then, a mass of black mist fell out and landed a distance beyond the outskirts of the city, and began approaching again.
"Shining!" she yelled, "I need your help with a shield!" The prince quickly placed the tip of his horn near hers, and together cast a spell that created another dome over the city, this time infused with some love energy and looking very much like the wave of energy he saw that catapulted him all the way here. It not only stopped whatever dark thing that was outside and resisted any attempts at puncturing through it, it also kept the magically harsh weather out and gradually warmed the city, too. Although, it flickered a bit when the princess weakened her magic output, so she quickly pushed back to full.
It probably wasn't possible for him to pass through, either, so now he was stuck in a city being run by the two ponies who managed to defeat the entire changeling army on their own and likely had a personal vendetta to his kind as well as the innate bias against them. At least he had as much time as he could possibly want to search the city multiple times, and could maybe sneak some food from the shield.
Author's Note
The librarian's political views are based on the actual views found in most medieval European courts, just gender-flipped to match Equestria's presumably matriarchal bent. It did take a little bit of morphing to fit in properly, but that was the ideology of the times. It's also plausible for an individual to hold bigoted views against themselves; for a reference, search what Victoria I had said about feminists. And that was less than than two hundred years ago, not the thousand plus that the Empire was dragged from.
Honestly, I feel a little dirty after writing historically accurate arguments for sexism. Ugh.
Oh, and in ye olden times, awesome was used in a similar way to fearsome (as in inspiring the kind of awe used in shock and awe), so getting called that was only a compliment If you wanted to inspire terror in others. :rainbowhuh: https://static.fimfiction.net/images/emoticons/rainbowhuh.png

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                 09: Heroes To All But One                 
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09: Heroes To All But One
Thorax slowly pulled love from the barrier surrounding the city. He did it with great care, as weakening it too much would give Sombra an opportunity to break through and attack the ponies that lived in the city. He needed to eat, though, so pulling from there put him between an angry Queen and her elite guard.
In theory, he could just extract it from the ponies, but not only did he feel less bad about the idea of taking it from the shield, there was also very little love to be had inside the hearts of the populace. It soon became common knowledge that the spell had to be constantly maintained by the Equestrian princess, and the sparks of hope soon were drowned out by a mass of dull acceptance of the inevitable.
Another thing he had to worry about was that draining enough energy to last him half a day left a window to the outside that persisted for an hour or two. He wasn't sure if it was a addition made by one of the spellcasters after the fact or a long term element of the love shield spell, but a couple hours after it was cast, the white ground and gray skies of the outside world were replaced by illusions of grassy meadows and blue, cloudless skies. It did not help the sullen mood of the Empire, but it was pretty to look at. Plus, the improved weather meant that he didn't need to find any shelter from the elements, just somewhere secluded to sleep for the night.
Still, he was hungry when he woke up, and so made a beeline to the shield itself. He finished once his stomach felt satiated again, but the constant hunger of a changeling seemed a little stronger than it was before. He certainly didn't miss the feeling, and it was yet another reason to find the foxes again.
Yes, he had zero luck the previous day, despite spending the whole of it searching the city as thoroughly as he could without arousing suspicion. Twice.
Shaking his head as if it would dismiss the ever-growing dread, he forced himself to walk away from the barrier. While Vix's form helped to escape attention, standing around the temporary hole was pushing it. He also pressed himself to pay more attention to his surroundings, as an infiltrated changeling ought to do.
This halfway situational awareness led him to jump behind a nearby crystal pillar when he noticed emotional signatures suddenly appear very close by. Normally it was difficult to surprise a changeling that's paying attention for that reason, but a quirk with the shield made it impossible for him to sense anything outside of it. Plus, infiltrators were generally taught to act as if nothing happened when they are surprised to minimize calling attention to oneself, but with a couple hours of hindsight, hiding was absolutely the right call.
It took only a second for him to recognize the six ponies gasping for breath, as they were the mares that had managed to fight off a large fraction of the swarm despite being outnumbered. While he himself was terrible at fighting, the other soldiers of the invasion were trained well enough to take down a civilian with little to no effort and keep an experienced guard distracted long enough for another changeling to make a sneak attack. These ponies had managed to beat ten to one odds, though, and were only defeated once most of the rest of the swarm had converged on them, being the last point pf major resistance after about fifteen minutes of fighting. That amount of skill was frankly ridiculous, and the only explanation he could think of was that they must have been some secret wing of the guard that, while extremely proficient, also hid in plain sight, based on the lack of uniforms.
There was also another creature with them that was mainly green and purple that he couldn't tell the species of. They had scales, which pointed to a dragon, but there was no way dragons started off that small. With how big they could get, their newly hatched nymphs had to be at least as big as a full-grown changeling, if not bigger than the Queen.
His reasoning on why the kinda cute creature was not scary enough to count as a dragon was interrupted by another pony passing through the shield, the prince. He was a lot for wear than the last time Thorax noticed him return from a trip out beyond, as he not had something wrong with his horn, though the black spots were just barely visible from this distance, but there were also black spikes of pain shooting out of his emotional core.
After a bit of time spent making sure he was fine, the group of newcomers followed the prince into the city, and figuring it was best way to avoid getting them, Thorax followed them, too. He bounded off into an alleyway the first chance he got, though, as he still had more important matters to deal with. Even if the Empire's dread was slowly getting to him.
"Oh my!" Thorax, stilled disguised as Vix, reflexively turned to the source of the exclamation, the yellow coated and pink maned pegasus from the powerful six. She was looking straight at him. "A fox with a coat white as snow! You should be native to the area, so you must know something!"
Predicting an uncomfortable interrogation in his near future, he ran off. With enough speed, he could lose her and hide in a random alley until she gave up.
"No, wait, I just want to talk to you, I promise!" Thorax risked a look back, and saw that the pegasus was flying just a bit faster than he could run. Losing her would take a bit of trickery. At the first opportunity, he made a couple of tight corners and borrowed the form of one of the older crystal pony nymphs he saw.
Less than a second after the transformation finished, the pegasus reached the intersection he was just at and she looked around, not finding the object of her pursuit. She instead saw the changeling's new form, fluttered down to the ground, and hesitantly walked up to him.
"Um, did... did you happen to see a fox run by?" The juxtaposition between the determined mare he was running from and the shy one asking for directions made him blink, but he then nodded and pointed the way further along the path he was on.
"Oh, thank you," she said, amazingly looking relieved that she didn't need to talk to him anymore. As she walked by him, she also muttered, "Don't worry, Fluttershy, this won't be like the Gala was."
Thorax couldn't stop himself from asking, "Who's Fluttershy?"
Not only did the hair on her hackles rise, she also blushed a bit. "O-oh, you h-heard that. Um. That's me." She smiled awkwardly and here eyes darted back and forth, as if seeking an escape from the conversation. Evidently deciding that simplicity was the soul of grace, she flew off to the next intersection and called out, "Mrs. Fox, I'm so sorry for scaring you, I really just want to talk to you."
Left alone once again, Thorax pored over the emotional observations he managed to make while she was in close proximity to him. Her entire surface was made of fear, most of it latent, though he saw some of it awaken when she tried to talk with his current form. There was also a shell of dark repression underneath that. What it was covering was hard to tell, as repression that deep-seated was entirely opague, but he did get small hints of rage, hatred, and love poke through before being ruthlessly shoved back in. Who knew what could happen if the repression was undone too quickly... and that might be a source of the fear as well.
"Hey, what do you know about how the Crystal Empire defended itself before King Sombra?"
He looked up to see a pony that looked like Fluttershy on the outside. The voice was wrong, the mare looked a little bigger than she should have been, and her emotions were different. While there was still a shell of repression, it seemed to be holding in despair similar to the general mood of the Empire and was itself encased in light joy tinged with a bit of frustration.
"You're not Fluttershy."
The pretend-mare's eyes flashed with a bit of bit of panic. "Of course I am," she replied, her mouth not opening at all. "Why, I just love animals and am terrified of... talking to... new ponies...." She sighed, put a hoof to her mane, and unzipped her head in half, revealing that the pony underneath was none other than the all-pink one of the six mare team.
He might as well get some information for himself. "What are you weird foreigners doing here, anyway?"
"Hey, we're not that foreign, we're ponies too! Except for maybe Spike, but he grew up with Twilight, so he's basically a pony anyway, even if you have to watch out for his fire breath when he sneezes or has hiccups, and not give him too many presents on his birthday, which is just sad! What's the point of a birthday without loads of presents? I mean there's still the party, but-" As the mare kept blabbing on and on, one of her costumed hooves slowly rose before lightly slapping herself on the face, breaking herself off. "I'm Pinkie Pie, and we're here to save the Crystal Empire from King Sombra."
Thorax stared in stunned silence for a second. He talked to Kevin a few times, the weirdest changeling in the hive, but even this would be strange for him. Still, he asked, "Wasn't that what the prince, princess, and their guards came here to do?"
"Well, yeah, but the princess has to keep to her spell going constantly, so we're looking for something that can last longer than an alicorn's magic reserve, which can last a while, don't get me wrong, but Princess Cadance hasn't been taking it well, so we need to find something before she's forced to drop the shield and let Sombra just waltz in. Wait, forget I said that, keeping the Crystal Ponies happy and oblivious of their potential enslavement is going to be important soon, even if I'm not supposed to know that yet."
Thorax, uncertain what to make of all that, decided to just ignore most of it and ask, "Why aren't you going out and fighting the king, then? If you're the reinforcements, then you have to good at fighting, good enough to scare him off or defeat him forever?"
She giggled in response. "No, you silly fil- colt, it's way too cold out there. Plus, I'm just a party pony, and I've never been trained to fight. None of my friends have, either. Well, except for Shining Armor, but he's a little busy with other things, and Twilight knows a couple of combat spells, but just as extra stuff for self-defense, not the mind-blowing stuff you can find in other stories where pony mages fling massive spells like they were nothing."
Thorax's transformed jaw hung open for a while, until he voiced his thoughts. "Why are you the ones supposed to save the Empire, then?"
"That's because we're really good friends," she answered, grinning while poking him in the side with her elbow.
He just gave her a confused look.
Pinkie stepped back, saying, "Say it with me, everypony," before rearing up on her hindlegs and raising her forelegs straight up in the air. She spread them out to draw an arc in the air as she shouted, "Friendship Is Magic!" She looked around with a bit of annoyance at noling else joining in, then dropped down to all fours again, grabbed the pretend-colt, and pressed him against her side cheek-to-cheek while pointing her other arm into the sky. "We always have each other's back, and so long as we believe in each other, we can do just about anything!"
Thorax continued to silently look at her, less confused, more incredulous, while also struggling his way out of her grip.
After he managed to escape, Pinkie suddenly raised her wrist near her face and said, "Gosh, look at the time, I'll miss our meeting under the castle if I don't hurry it up. Bye, random crystal colt!" She zipped up the head of her costume and dashed off, leaving Thorax with a lot to think about.
After a minute or so, he pushed it to the side and went back to what he was doing before getting distracted, swapping to Vix's form yet again.
Thorax was at the outskirts again when the barrier truly fell. He had just been feeding off it earlier, though he had stopped early with how much it had flickered. While it was worrying, he learned to ignore it as it had been happening since around midnight, though the frequency has been steadily increasing. It even collapsed completely for a few seconds, just long enough for Sombra to react to it, but it came back in the nick of time.
This time, the darkness outside took no chances, and rocketed inside the shield's radius. Once that was done, the mist swept a wide area, though much more slowly than that initial movement. Thorax, of course, turned tail and ran, wanting nothing to do with anything that happened here.
Hoping the buildings would slow it down, he ran into the city, avoiding the center that he expected Sombra to aim for. However, every time he looked back, not only was the blackness gaining on him, it was also corrupting the crystals that made up the buildings behind him.
All the running was in vain, as another part of the dark fog suddenly appeared in front of him, and the two waves washed over him. He could feel the darkness encroaching, trying to change him... then it suddenly receded.
He looked around at the darkness surrounding him, confused. The only difference he could find was his hunger growing to a level he never, ever felt before, but the suddenness shocked him out of acting on it.
Some time later (the hunger fighting to take control made it hard to tell how much), he could sense a massive amount of love and hope suddenly appear nearby, and the unnatural need to feed shoved his mind from the controls. He dropped the disguise, prepped his wings (which were rapidly gaining holes, but it didn't hurt at all), and flew at a leisurely pace towards the center of the city.
Something gave his mind enough of an opening to force him to hover in place. The love had densely concentrated to a single point, and he could remember two other times when it happened. In both of them, it had been used to devastating effect.
The point then emitted a lot of that love energy in an expanding sphere, convincing the ravenous need to feed to give up the wheel again with the agreement that leaving was top priority.
Nothing could escape the Crystal Heart's power, though, and the pulse hit him hard. As it launched him away from yet another pony city, it at least had the courtesy to remove Sombra's influence on him, banishing almost all of the hunger from his mind.
Eventually, he landed in the snow yet again, still awake, the city easily visible with the clouds clearing up to show a bright, sunny sky. Apparently, the Crystal Heart was too busy ridding the Empire of its old oppressor to really do much anything about him. In fact, he might even have just been collateral damage.
Then, he could sense the Heart's influence yet again, this time pulsing with hope. It launched into the sky streaming lights stretching off into the distance, announcing to the world that the Crystal Empire was back, with a bright future ahead of it.
It was enough to give even him hope, and swelling with the conviction that even if he couldn't find the foxes again, he might find someling willing to accept him as the changeling he was, he stood up and started walking back to the Empire.
A few steps later, his hoof broke clean through a suspended snow layer and fell down the tunnel underneath, sliding until his head hit a stalagmite of ice, knocking him unconscious.
Author's Note
Something I thought of while writing this is that the old changelings (or at least their hunger) acted a lot like dark magic, with the need to keep feeding mirroring the need to keep casting the spell. Especially with how the changelings look like after they reformed, it's entirely possible that someone (not necessarily a changeling) corrupted the entire species with dark magic to the point where it became hereditary to some degree, even if only in a way similar to how bloodborne diseases can transmit from mother to child.
Also, I might have a serious habit of turning focus characters into the universe's playthings.

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                     10: Access Denied                     
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10: Access Denied
Thorax slowly opened his eyes, not yet awake enough to remember what happened. He looked around, his senses slowly sharpening. The cavern, though it had icy walls on one side, looked a lot like the snow caverns he was more used to.
Of course, that thought led him to the foxes, and he finally remembered the last couple of days. The hope he had felt just before he lost consciousness seemed so misplaced now, and he lowered his head to the ground again.
Not wanting to see the uncannily familiar setting, he closed his eyes and focused on his recent experiences to try and get an idea of what to do next. Although, it was hard to come up with a reason to do anything at this point, getting kicked out everywhere he went.
He got a reason eventually, hunger. He had not fed since Sombra attacked, and however long he spent rigid in that cave (he eventually decided to take it as two days) was enough for his digestive system to send a small box of formal complaints to his brain.
He flew out of the cave through the tunnel he came, figuring that find an actual exit would take too much time an energy. Outside, it was fairly bright and sunny, which wasn't that unusual compared to how the temperature was now noticeably above freezing. There were even birds flying in the sky, likely coming here now that it was warmer and the lands held promise of soon-to-come nourishment. Less encouraging was how the Crystal Empire was still the only beacon of love visible, so no choice but to head there for a meal.
After a few minutes of learning the wonders of walking through half-melted snow, he gave up, flew into the air again, and took on one of the birds' form. While more energy intensive overall, a lighter body had an easier time with flight, and it was usually faster than travel on the ground.
The trip was uneventful. While he was spotted many, many times, the crystal ponies (plus the occasional Equestrian guard) were just idly watching the birds soar overhead. It took him a while to find a part of the sky that very few were watching so that he could get close to the castle and dive to his target.
The thought of feeding off of living creatures always left a bad taste in his mouth, so an inanimate object was much easier to do it from. It also helped that the Heart itself had more stored emotional energy than the rest of the Empire combined (based on how it hurt to look at with his emotional sense), and unlike any living being, it was purely positive as well. It was literally perfect for providing a changeling food.
Even better was how there were no guards in the vicinity, letting him feed with little chance of being disturbed. He hovered in front of it and began to pull a small stream of energy. Even at a tiny size, it was so densely packed that he made up for his impromptu fast in a second.
That was all the time he got. The Crystal Heart emitted small, translucent square of love that slowly shoved him away from it before harmlessly dissipating in the sunlight. Confused, he started to fly back to it, then stopped when the Heart released yet another square. This time, it was much faster, giving him no time to react. He didn't need to, as it collapsed around him, so thin it was almost invisible, barely enough substance for him to feel it.
That was almost certainly a warning shot, and Thorax flew away to perch on a nearby house. His first plan was a bust; while he could definitely sustain himself off the Heart without noticeably draining its reserves, it was built to defend itself.
He did have two other plans for survival, though, so he just had to figure out which one to implement.
Here he was, a few days later, perched on the windowsill of a restaurant and feeding off the love of a couple sitting inside. It was filling, it was delicious, and he felt empty inside as he did it.
He wanted to do something else. As far as he could tell, the foxes (moreso the little ones than Vix) willingly gave him their affections, which he passively absorbed for energy. However, unlike the stories of infiltrations that he heard about, he was himself, not pretending to be someling he wasn't. So, if he could make a friend like he always wanted to that would also accept him for what he was, he'd be set. Assuming no one would give him away.
He was so afraid of that happening that he ended up dropping that idea for another one. This was the safe, conservative plan, where he'd act mostly like an infiltrator and snatch something to eat whenever he can. Instead of taking on the shape of a random pony, he'd stick with a local bird for now. While the Crystal Empire was a city, there couldn't be that many that lived in there, which made it hard to long-term a character with no history. He could pick an Equestrian pony to imitate instead, but what Equestrian that isn't affiliated with the guard would want to move here?
Sunburst sneezed and wrapped his cloak tighter around him as a chill wind blew over the train platform. His nose never liked sudden temperature changes, and while some of Canterlot's early summer heat that stuck around inside the train kept it comfortable for most ponies (his favorite cloak was a little warm for that), it made the tundra feel even colder. It also didn't help that it was colder than it usually was at this time of the year, with there still being snow in the area.
Nasal annoyances aside, he was finally here. Finally he could start again, leaving behind that legacy of dropping out of Celestia's School For Gifted Unicorns*. As an added bonus, he also 'accidentally' left off where he was moving to in his latest letter to his mother, so he won't be bothered for a long, long while.
*It was hard for a dropout to make a living in Canterlot. This was not because a lack of available jobs, but because employers wrongly assumed that he failed due to lacking intelligence and lowballed salaries to the point where he would not be able to pay for rent, let alone food. Lack of connections made the situation even worse due to having nopony of importance to vouch for him. Luckily, there's a job any desperate stallion can do, and it pays well, too, thanks to the efforts of the Servant's Union that since its inception had broadened its scope to represent all service workers in the city. It's just not the kind of job that should be mentioned in polite company, or worse, within earshot of his mother.
Even better, he actually owned a place here instead of renting an apartment, and it was so astoundingly cheap that he could easily afford it with the nest egg he built up over the years and still have enough left over to not need a job for three years**. He could spend as much time as he wanted studying magic. If he got lucky, he might even find a low-cost way to cast spells, which would finally make him as employable as the average unicorn.
**The Crystal Empire, as an independent realm, minted its own coin, an engraved disc of stained glass. As these were so easy for the crystal ponies to make, they never suffered from a currency shortage and even helped to alleviate such issues within their sister nation of Equestria. They also made for a convenient fractional bit, as many exchanges at the time were simply not valuable enough to be made in even a single bit. As these times were literally a couple years ago for the crystal ponies, they expected such to still be the case, with bits worth many times more. The Equestrians thought the opposite: they never had the crystal artisanship that the Empire possessed, and assumed the coins were works of art worth many bits. This was eventually noticed and fixed with official exchange rates within two weeks, but not before Sunburst's purchase was completed.
Still, he couldn't do that until his personal library (along with he himself) arrived at his new home. He was planning on renting a cart for that and the rest of his luggage, but it turned out that hiring the full draft-pony service cost only two bits, less than any of his books except for the foal's bedtime stories he kept as a keepsake. That was kept inside the luggage; no need for anypony else to know about it, after all.
The pony pulling the cart was a very young crystal mare who looked like she had just finished her last growth spurt. Her body was a translucent sky blue while her mane shaded everything behind it pink, it was that clear. Her Cutie Mark was a contraption of some kind made of wood, and her name was Ballistic Clarity, though she preferred to go by Ballista.
Conversation was awkward, to say the least. This had nothing to do with him having problems talking to girls (leave off the last two words for the correct version), nor with how she spoke late Middle Ponish (knowing Olde Ponish made it even easier to understand). Instead, the two regularly made incorrect assumptions, with her assuming he was a lord of some kind old enough to be her father, and he assumed that she was well-educated noblepony's foal on punishment pulling carts. this lead to several denials, some awkward laughter, and strained silence.
While he was used to quietly minding his own business, the draft-pony was not. "Well, milord, this certainly is quite the stack of books. Are you studying to become a great wizard away from prying eyes?"
He groaned. "Could you please stop calling me that? It makes me feel like somepony I'm not, older and more important than me."
She studied his goatee for a moment. "Anypony with that kind of facial hair must be old. Everyone from the Empire with it had seen at least fifty summers, if not more."
This made him bring a hoof to his face before looking at her with an annoyed expression. "I'm only nineteen. I'm older than you, yes, but not by that much!"
She gave a haughty sniff. "Well, if you must know, I am as old as Sombra's Curse upon these lands. The fourteen years prior are but mere trivialities."
He rolled his eyes. At least that was settled now. "To answer your question, I do plan on studying magic. I'm hoping to discover ways to lower the cost of spells so that I can finally start casting them."
After seeing his mood lower a bit, she tried to give him an encouraging smile. "Brighten up a bit. If I had so much as a bit's weight in magic, I'd be able to position gears in an instant."
Sunburst quickly glanced at Ballista's mark. "What is your cutie mark, anyway? I've never seen a ballista or catapult quite like it."
She smirked. "That is a trebuchet, a new weapon the engineers were designing a few years back. It should be an antique by now, the idea of it." She shrugged, and added, "My interests are in mechanics, not just weapons of war. This job just affords me to tinker to my heart's content."
He hummed in interest but didn't say anything.
Taking it as a signal to keep going, she asked, "May I ask what your cutie mark is? I mean no insult, for I do not know if the stallion of the future hides it from public view."
Ignoring the second part in the hopes it was just an innocent question, he lit his horn and floated a transparent illusion depicting it. "As you can see, it's a sun with rays. I at first thought it meant I would become a prodigy at magic, but, well, here I am."
The topic being exhausted meant that the awkward silence had returned in full force. Sunburst didn't really mind it; he was used to ignoring uncomfortable situations.
It seems Ballista wasn't, as she then asked, "Do you how those trains work?"
He gave her a confused look. "What makes you think I know how a locomotive functions?"
She glanced at the cartload she was pulling, three quarters of it being books. "It is apparent that you are a scholar, and unless the Equestrian State prefers to keep it a secret, it would not surprise me if you were to read on it from passing interest." She then muttered, "And every other newcomer only knows the name if they bother to honor my request with a reply."
He had to admit the point, as he had a sudden interest in trains when he was eleven that vanished just as quickly after a week. "I don't know the details, but burning coal heats water into steam, which applies a hefty amount of pressure. This pressure is used to power a mechanism that causes the wheels to turn as it escapes into the air. There's also safety valves to keep the pressure from getting too high, because when it does, the steam can rip the boiler and the engine apart in an explosion. That's about all I can remember."
"And what of the iron struts they roll on?"
"The rails are there to make sure the train goes where it should. With how fast they can go, and how hard they are to steer, they can do a lot of damage before finally stopping. I think they also help to save on fuel by reducing friction."
Ballista fell into silent contemplation, with the only sounds the two made being their hoofsteps, their breathing, and the squeaking of the cart wheels. After looking at the ground a few times, she said, "If one were to embed the rails into the road and ensured that the train were to drive at a safe speed, perhaps a brisk trot, it would make convenient transport for ponies and cargo alike."
Sunburst looked at her in genuine surprise. "I can't think of any city that's tried that. It-it might actually work extremely well, so long as several safety measures are put into place; after all, city streets are a completely different matter than mountain ridges nopony ever walks on."
She smiled and replied, "Perhaps we can make Empire a land of the future in but a few years. Either way, we have arrived." The two stopped and looked at Sunburst's new home. Outside of the crystal architecture, a hallmark of the Crystal Empire, the most striking feature is the roof draping over the dwelling like a giant wizard's hat. "Quite a fitting home for a wizard."
"I'm not much of a wizard," he grumbled as he helped her unload his belongings from the cart.
"Mayhaps not, but you seem quite the scholar in the mystic arts." She paused as she turned a crank in her head. "I do believe that 'Scholar Sunburst' sounds quite pleasing to the ears."
He mulled it over in his head. "Yeah, I guess it does."
it wasn't long before they were finished. Ballista hitched herself to the cart again and waved to Sunburst, saying, "'Til we meet again, Scholar Sunburst. I must return to my work."
He nodded and waved back, replying, "Until then," then turned to sorting the books he brought into shelves. A few minutes later, he had finished, and he surveyed his work with a grin. Now, nothing will bother him in his studies.
His stomach grumbled loudly as if in response to that thought.
Well, almost nothing.
Author's Note
The last two thirds of the chapter could have been separated out, but I really wanted a strong Gilligan Cut, so... hi Sunburst.
OC's in this story are basically made up at the point where I need them, though I usually take some thinking time to hammer down who they are and what they'll do for the grand total of one scene in which they exist. Originally, Ballista was supposed to be an old coot who was worried about trains taking his hauling job, but then I remembered the librarian was rather similar to that, so I jumped in the opposite direction. However, I still wanted to have that conversation about trains, so now we got a pony who might've become a DaVinci analogue in her own time but instead invents trams and makes them common in the Crystal Empire after a decade or two.
Anyway, with the situation in the Crystal Empire and Thorax's life stable once again, Act 2 is over, and Act 3 begins.

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                       11: Mirrored                        
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11: Mirrored
Thorax, disguised as a different bird (just because he can copy them perfectly doesn't mean he knows what they're called) than the last couple of days to hopefully keep from getting suspicious, was perched on the roof of a market stall.
He wasn't here to collect love, that was best done in the evening, when the hustle and bustle of the day had died down and many chose to stay with their loved ones. It was easy to tell the most lucrative spots were from the air, they were where the little fires burn brightest to his emotional sense. He definitely avoided any too close to the Crystal Heart, though, for there above all else, love is victorious. A few minutes spent siphoning away the love slowly, and their brightness would dim slightly. Not wanting to cause any permanent damage, he would leave for another source as soon as it happened. An hour or so of this was enough to sustain for two days, though it never quieted the gnawing at the darkest parts of his mind. However he disliked it, it was a living.
But that was all that it was, and while it was an excellent use of his transformation skills, it quickly got boring after two weeks of this. He had already learned all the romance hot-spots of the city, could recognize all the landmarks from just about any angle, and even managed to fly into a castle window to explore for a bit before getting herded out another by some guards. The public library was also a no go, as most of that books in there were far enough beyond his reading level to make them impossible to understand.
And so, he was listening to marketplace gossip, having little else to do within the Empire. He did learn some interesting things about the ponies that lived there, like their enthusiasm in seeing what to them the future was like, and doing their best to fit in. They even talked more like normal, too, even if it wasn't perfect.
Most of it was rather inane to him, about the recent exchange rate debacle, how handsome one of the guards were (he couldn't tell them apart even if he tried), and the latest embellished story of how their new royalty stood against tens of thousands of changelings entirely on their own with their undying love. Next week would probably have it include the Gates of Tartarus somehow.
He idly noticed a unicorn walk towards a nearby stall selling various pony foods. It wasn't that unusual, as tourism was picking up and they had to eat, too. Unlike most tourists at this time of day, he was utterly bedraggled, and the merchant seemed to have a passing familiarity to the stallion.
"Have you emptied your refrigerator again, Sunburst?" the mare asked with a business-friendly smile.
Sunburst nodded, though he didn't need to, as his stomach growled loudly enough for Thorax to hear it easily. He sighed and bought a basket-full of various fruits, plus an apple he immediately started munching away at as he walked back the way he came.
Normally, Thorax would have left it at that and continued what he was doing, but not only was he already pretty bored, he also noticed at a glance an emotion he hadn't seen since he arrived in the area: loneliness. The misty, cloying gray was hovering over a brightly shining core of curiosity, which led him to think that this Sunburst might be a kindred soul. So, the false bird followed the unicorn.
The path taken wound through the city, first taking one of the main roads towards the train station, then veering into the side roads at a sharp angle before taking as straight of a path as possible to his destination. By the time the unicorn and his shadow arrived, Thorax had already figured out the best path from start to end, though he did have the advantages of a literal bird's eye view and already having thoroughly looked over the city on the ground multiple times.
Regardless, as the unicorn opened the door to his residence, the not-a-bird flew in without getting detected, figuring that coming in would be the best way to learn more. Sunburst shut the door behind, fished a cabbage at random from the basket he was balancing on his back, and tore away at it as his eyes adjusted to the dimmer lighting that he preferred.
Meanwhile, Thorax flew to a very dusty corner inside the personal library and changed his colors to better match the shadows present all over the room. He settled in place and prepared to stay for a few hours, figuring he could just fly out a window come dinnertime.
...Then again, making assumptions like that for escape plans was one of things he was drilled to never do, so he transformed into one of the smaller lizards found in the badlands, sticking with the dark color palette for camouflage. While the Empire was too cold for such a form to be comfortable for long, it did have the neat benefit of somehow allowing him to cling to even ceilings. All he knew about that was that it had nothing to do with magic.
He proceeded to check every window, starting with the study. Kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, it made no difference: all the windows were tightly shut. Even better, the door was well sealed, and he couldn't shift into anything small enough to fit through the cracks.
By the Queen, he should have thought this through...
Author's Note
I applaud anyone who gets the reference in paragraph two, or finds a suitable equivalent.
Shorter chapter because there are multiple cliffhangers in short succession, and I think this one would be the best to put a chapter break in, partially due to a perspective shift. Yes, we'll be seeing more of Sunburst.

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                       12: Science!                        
//-------------------------------------------------------//
12: Science!
With the latest biological distraction out of the way, Sunburst threw himself back into his research. It was especially annoying when his stomach started acting up and he happened to be out of food, necessitating a supply run. He occasionally fantasized about magicing those needs away, but having even less magic than the average unicorn already made it a pipe dream, let alone him never finding a spell of the sort.
Back to the matter at hoof, he was working with a dark magic detection spell. The reason for this was that he found two versions of this: one that searches in a specific direction, and another that looks in all directions. After looking through the exact construction, he realized that the former was just the latter with a partial barrier erected just after the pulse is formed to block most of it, greatly increasing cost but improving utility in certain situations.
Feeling inspired, he started removing various components that weren't necessary, just there to provide convenience to a caster that can afford it. He stripped away things like distance calculations, strength analysis, visual feedback, and the like. Brought down to its bare skeleton, it was a spell that expanded in a shell and bounced back to the caster's horn where dark magic was found. Even better, he probably could cast that without much trouble, so long as he didn't try scanning the entire block. That cost increased by the square of the range, so he'll stick to his house at the maximum.
He charged his horn and carefully used the stripped-down spell construct he wrote in his notes, grinning when he felt the magic leave his horn in a pulse. The smile vanished when he felt an echo wash back weakly over his horn. He didn't remember how much range he gave it, so he quickly calculated the energy needed to cover his house and cast the spell again, getting a stronger echo back. Finally, he steadily decreased the power of the spell and recast it over and over again, stopping when he could just barely feel the echo and marking down that power level.
A part of him marveled at the success in severely reducing the drain of what was normally a high-level spell to the point where he could cast it so many times, but the rest wanted to know if he accidentally tore out a part that prevented a false positive from appearing. He walked to the middle of his kitchen, cast it at that last intensity, and... nothing.
It took half an hour of repositioning and varying the range before he was finally able to narrow down the source of the echo. It did give him a realization as to why there were so many moving parts, as the bare-minimum version of the spell didn't even give him a direction to look for, let alone size or distance.
He cast a final pulse with just enough power for that dark corner above the bookcase he was suspicious of, and grew more convinced when the echo returned. He pulled his reading stool from his desk and placed it in front of the shelves. He then stood on it with his hindlegs and braced his forelegs against the furniture to bring his eyes as far up as possible. It was enough for him to see a very panicked-looking arctic tern in there, which quickly flew straight for his face.
Sunburst flinched back, which was not the best idea, as he lost the support of the bookshelves and pushed his center of mass behind the stool. It was only a matter of time before he fell down hard on the floor with a groan.
After the pain subsided, he stood back up slowly. As far as he could tell, nothing was broken. He let out a final pulse of his stripped down dark magic detector spell, with just enough range to reach a little past where that bird was sitting and got no response. Either the bird or something it was carrying had a little dark magic infused, perhaps a remnant from King Sombra's curse. He shook off the slight headache indicating low mana reserves and started wandering through his home, contemplating how he could find it and study it.
Well, this was unlikely to work, but it didn't hurt to try. "I don't mean any harm," he said in a vague direction while sitting down at his dining table, as he was unsure where the tern was. "I just want to figure out why you're setting off my dark magic detection spell, and maybe try to cure you of it."
He sat there and waited for a while, and was just about to get up and formulate a new plan involving a net when the corrupted bird flew into the room and landed on the far side of the table. Sunburst was finally able to get a good look at it. Hopefully, the far darker coloration compared to other members of its species was the only symptom of the weak curse.
The bird was still eyeing him warily and looked poised to take off at any moment, so he added, "I'm not going to hurt you, I just want to help."
The wild creature that apparently can understand him to some degree relaxed a bit, but still seemed on edge.
"If it makes you feel better, and if you can even understand this, I promise that what I said is exactly what I plan on doing."
The bird seemed mollified, but still hopped off the table outside of Sunburst's line of sight. He got up from his stool to walk around the room so he could see it, but stood in place when he saw a flash of coppery fire.
Standing in the flesh in front of him was a sight he thought he'd only see in the newspapers, a changeling, prominent fangs shining slightly in the weak light.
Author's Note
Distance and direction are extremely helpful for finding things. Only having one makes the whole experience very painful, to say the least.
Found another good breakpoint (in other words, cliffhanger) here with some dramatic irony, but we'll be continuing with Sunburst's perspective next chapter. Probably. I haven't written it yet, but I have some ideas that work better with that.
As for Sunburst only knowing about the Changeling Invasion via newspapers despite living in Canterlot: in his debut episode, he seems like even more of a bookish shut-in than start-of-the-show Twilight, which is saying something. It seems like something he might miss.
Last bit: copper not only rusts to a green shade, it also makes a green fire when burned.

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                   13: Not Much to Tell                    
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13: Not Much to Tell
Sunburst's mind was working in overdrive as his body (metaphorically) petrified. The survivalist part of him that usually only reminded him that eating and sleeping were good ideas noted that he had exhausted his magic in a setting that, while his, was still unfamiliar and included a potential predator, so overrode everything else for now and locked his limbs in place. The part of him that loved action stories and often imagined himself doing awesome feats clammed up, not wanting to do anything life-threatening near those massive fangs. His studious side rifled through his memories for more information on changelings, and the best it could come up with were self-admitted legends and hearsay due to how secret the beings were, although almost all the illustrations had those fangs in them. His social side, while having somewhat lopsided development, was able to note that, if the fangs were ignored, the mouth was in a awkward smile he often saw when he was practicing asking ponies out in the mirror in his teen years.
He really wanted to stop focusing on the fangs, but they were eye-catching, especially in an adrenaline rush.
The changeling's smile grew strained as the silence dragged on. Eventually, he broke it with, "I know this won't sound convincing, but I promise I don't mean you any harm."
Ironically, the echoed words did make him feel a little less on edge. "W-what do y-you want with me?" Apparently not enough to keep from stuttering, though.
"Well, I noticed that you were very lonely, which is the only time I've noticed that to any degree since I got here. You're also not from here, so I thought that maybe you needed a friend." The awkward smile grew a little wider.
Sunburst blinked. He was expecting that unusual things might happen around, but a friend request from a changeling was a little out there. It wouldn't be the first time in recent memory that somepony tried to pull a fast one him, so he cautiously replied, "I don't need any friends. So long as I have my studies, I'll be fine on my own."
"Oh. I could use a friend, so-"
The unicorn didn't pay attention to the rest of what the changeling said, instead dealing with an unbidden memory from many years ago. It was a few weeks into his schooling and Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. He had gotten a letter from his hometown, the one he was looking forward to reading the most. That was, until he got to it, angry words inked onto tear-stained paper. It took the wind out of his sails for weeks, and the message written between the lines still haunted him.
"I make for a terrible friend!" He blurted it out, interrupting the changeling.
"Uh-"
"Look," the unicorn continued, having calmed down, "I've hurt everypony I've had a connection with. No one deserves it, so for your sake, no."
The changeling sighed but otherwise remained silent. Surprisingly, the ensuing awkward silence lasted for several minutes. It seems he was also somewhat used to them, just like Sunburst, but few were as good as he himself was with them, and lacking the home field advantage, the changeling asked, "Is the offer still open?"
"...What offer?"
"You did say you wanted to help out with the dark magic inside of me. I know you were just talking to a bird, but, well,..." he trailed off, not knowing how to continue.
Sunburst brought a hoof to his chin. While he did want to be left alone again as soon as possible, here was a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn about a species that was mostly in the realms of myth and legends, and lately an endless wellspring for the tabloids.
His curiosity always got the better of him. "I can't promise anything, since very little is known about your kind, but I should be able to learn what's going on and maybe find a way to dispel it."
The changeling thanked him for that. The unicorn sat down on one of the dinner stools, and after being motioned to do so, the other being did so as well.
Since he was beginning to tire of always thinking of the changeling as, well, that, Sunburst asked for a name, and got Thorax as a response. It might've been a pseudonym, but that didn't matter anyway.
Now came the tricky part of diagnosing what the dark magic even was. He didn't know many spells involving dark magic, and even if he wasn't magically exhausted, the one he was using was just about the only one at his level of power. All he could do was ask questions and use his limited knowledge to come to a conclusion.
Over the next hour, Thorax recapped his 'encounter' with Sombra and his dark magic, the effects of it, how it got removed, and also clarified that the hunger was ever present for changelings and that (as far as he knew) he was never exposed to any similar magic before. Sunburst took notes the entire time, and looked them over once the session was finished.
"From what I can tell, the dark magic has been there for as long as you can remember," Sunburst explained. "For all I know, it's fully integrated into your biology, I can't remove something this deep-seated."
Thorax's ear frills drooped, but he didn't bother asking the obvious question.
Sunburst answered it anyway. "I could maybe spot cleanse a small bird's tainted feathers, but removing dark magic takes a similar level of conventional magic to erase an instance of it. If it's always been with you, then your ancestors must have been hit all at once with a massive dark magic attack. To curse an entire species..." he shook his head. "It would take an alicorn to brute force it out, especially when the Crystal Heart couldn't."
Thorax sighed, disappointed, but not surprised. It was not the first time his hopes were dashed, and it would certainly not be the last."
"Still," Sunburst continued, regaining the changeling's attention, "there is another way. Part of dark magic's core is that you take tradeoffs to get extra power." He shifted his eyes across the room, as this was the sort of thing he was not supposed to know. "A very common sacrifice made is durability. Many, many spells have a weaknesses baked in that can cause it to crumble under the right circumstances."
"So what would need to happen for my hunger to vanish?"
The unicorn rubbed the back of his head with a hoof. "That's the tricky part. The original spell would have it, but it would be tricky to find, assuming it had been written down at all. If a spell exists to figure that out, I don't know it. I don't even know a concrete example of this, just something I read in a few books on the subject. In other words, no idea what it would be, and no good idea on how to find it."
The frills drooped again. "I guess that's not surprising. If it were easy, someling would've done it by now." The changeling got up from the stool and said, "Thanks for the help. I didn't get exactly what wanted, but it was great of you to try."
"I'm sure there's somepony that's willing to have a changeling as a friend, though it might be easier if you started off using a disguise."
"I'd rather not. It... just seems like a better idea for there to be no false pretenses and for them to truly like me for who I am."
Sunburst winced slightly. "I fully understand that sentiment. I've felt it myself plenty of times."
Thorax looked awkwardly around the kitchen. "I guess it's a good time for me to leave, then."
"Good luck," the unicorn said as his acquaintance left for the main hall.
A few seconds later, the chitinous head popped back into the room. "Could you please not tell anyone about this? It would be really troublesome for everyone involved if the guards started making changeling sweeps."
He nodded in response. It was too much trouble reporting to the guard and spending time answering their questions was not nearly as appealing as further studies.
After hearing the sound of a changeling transformation and his front door swinging open and shut, he also saw an unfamiliar pegasus fly by his kitchen window into the sky. Since that was almost certainly Thorax, Sunburst was finally alone again, and could let himself relax in full.
Well, that was an experience. At least he learned that the changelings were cursed and a bit driven by their unnatural hunger. There was also the strange fact that the Crystal Heart was perfectly capable of banishing Sombra and his magic, but not the innate corruption of a changeling. He couldn't help but wonder if there are other limits to it, and high as they seem to be.
That settles it, then. He'll go looking for more information about it next. Especially interesting would be the possible insights into magic it could provide as well as possible improvements that could be made thanks to the advances made in the last thousand years.
Author's Note
Sunburst's definitely getting a place in a/the epilogue, if only to tie some loose ends here. I also tried to keep sections that would've amounted to repetition of older parts of the story as short as possible. Dialogue still tends to take up more space than anything else I write, though.

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                       14a: Recluse                        
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14a: Recluse
The main streets of the Crystal Empire were packed on the first morning of the Equestrian Games. It was no surprise, as every tourist and most of the residents wanted to see the opening ceremony. The rumors that Spike the Brave and Glorious was going to be part of it spurred many of the latter group to come, and made the rest of them even more excited to see it.
This included Ballista, who had avoided the crush of the crowds by taking a few shortcuts in the alleyways. While she certainly commanded more presence than a few years ago thanks to her growth spurt, she was still smaller than almost every grown-up she knew, so she figured it was safer that way. Plus, she could gallop her way there, not only potentially getting better seating for her and her friends, but also providing a bit of fun. There was still a little filly in her heart, though it was sometimes a bit embarrassing to indulge it.
She stopped at an intersection and looked down a dead end at the house with the wizard hat roof. The curtains were drawn, but that was the case since the day Sunburst moved in. It wasn't a sign that he wished to be left alone, as she had visited plenty of times to borrow and return books of the future from his personal library, and he always spoke in a polite, if awkward tone that she quickly learned was not the norm for Modern Ponish. She had asked him about it, but all he said on the matter was that he wanted his privacy.
She went up to his door and knocked. Knowing him, he'd forgotten what day the Games started (he didn't even know it was being held at the Empire until she offhoofedily mentioned it last week). The excitement of seeing them made it hard to stand still and made the wait seem longer than it probably was.
After a short eternity, the door finally opened, and Sunburst stepped out. "Good morning?" he said, rubbing a hoof over his eye in a daze before he saw her. "Ballista, why are you here so early? Aren't you usually at work or the remedial school the guards set up?"
She rolled her eyes, half wondering how he didn't know. "Today's the opening of the Equestrian Games. I came to see if you wanted to watch it, since you, you know, didn't know about it until recently."
"Oh. I don't plan on going."
Ballista stood in silence for a while, trying to decide if she was surprised or not. This was the biggest event in Equestria and associated states, but the unicorn wasn't interested in sports or any physical activities, really. She figured he kept his physique stable by accidental fasts more than anything else.
Not getting any response, he continued. "I'm trying to get as much information that I can get my hooves on about the Crystal Heart, and that involves digging through as many library books and writing anything interesting as I can. I have to return them, though, so I can't waste any time!"
"...Shouldn't you take a break from that at some point? The Games are a perfect opportunity."
"No. Compared to what life I had before, spending my days delving into magical mysteries is practically a vacation," he answered, capping it off with a grin.
Ballista gave him a judgmental look while her mind tried to make sense of what he said. Several words came to mind, but the one that seemed the most fitting was one she had recently read in one of those new-fangled novels, 'weirdo'.
She shook her head to get everything back on track. "I best be going now; I'd rather not have the best seats taken by the early morning rush. How did it go... see you later?"
Sunburst nodded, confirming her phrase to be correct. "And I'll see you later as well." As Ballista quickly left, he shouted, "Have fun!"
She galloped to the stadium, putting the matter of the Scholar behind her, both physically and mentally. While she knew the alleys better than the fronts of her forelegs, moving down them so fast took some concentration. Not enough to keep her mind from wandering, though.
If she got really, really lucky, she might even find Spike the Brave and Glorious. Assuming the rumors were true, that is, and he didn't head to the stadium early to prepare for the opening ceremony. And also that he wasn't being swarmed by other crystal ponies, since he was a big deal.
It would be amazing if she got his autograph. It would be even better if she convinced him to, as future ponies put it, 'hang out' with her. He ought to have a cool personality, all the heroes in the stories do. Even if she-
Ballista narrowly dodged a lamppost she was about to run into. She blushed and looked around, thankfully not seeing anypony around that could've noticed that.
Sunburst idly marveled at how quickly Ballista's Modern Ponish had developed (even if she was a little iffy on some phrases) before returning to his studies.
The Crystal Heart was fascinating, as it was already more than a thousand years old before Sombra's time displacement curse kicked in. While it technically didn't age since then, it still had the earliest creation time of any surviving pony artefacts. It was so long ago that the original documents on it have long since vanished, and any information about it was scattered throughout many old tomes. It would take a massive research effort to compile all the known information and identify where future studies on it lay. And he was enjoying it immensely.
He was so enthralled by it that he had forgotten many things in the process: eating, sleeping, and the occasional shopping trip, though the latter wasn't exactly unusual. More vexing was that he couldn't quite recall why he embarked on his studies of the Heart in the first place. It probably wasn't all that important, since he should remember if he needed to.
Now, back to his studies in earnest. There was ancient knowledge to be had.
Author's Note
Just a little something to tie together the Sunburst in Act 3 and the one in Thorax's debut episode and the upcoming epilogue. And also worldbuilding, one of my favorites. I really can't help myself with that. After all, if Luna's banishment and Sombra's first defeat were anywhere close together temporally, then the crystal ponies needed to have learned modern speech just as Luna did.

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        15: Band of Brothers (and Their Kid Sister)        
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Author's Note
This took way too long to come out, as just after writing it I started wondering if I was pushing the canon timeline too fast to make everything fall into place as I want it. Then other stuff got my attention for about a week, and now that I've got a clear head again, my conclusion was obvious: it's reasonable to have this chapter where it is in time, but the conclusion needs to be a year later for logistical reasons, as having Flurry Heart born less than a year before the Empire returned would be hard to justify. Anyway, on to my original AN.
Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about the Beatles. Any of the minimal characterization their pony counterparts get from me has zero basis in reality and can hopefully be explained by IRL and Equestria not having a one-to-one correspondence. You have been warned.
15: Band of Brothers (and Their Kid Sister)
The cold slowly entrenched itself as fall continued and winter was preparing for its inevitable return. It snowed a couple times a week, creating and then maintaining a hefty layer of snow. Outside of a couple of the more hidden entryways, the ravine he took shelter in was once again cut off from the outside world. The latter was looking more and more like the snowy wasteland he originally fell into all those months ago.
The same wasn't true of the Crystal Empire. Inside the barrier protecting the city from the ancient, near dormant curse of the Frozen North, it was about the same conditions as the coldest days of the Badlands, which was too warm for all but the thinnest of scarves. In other words, prefect weather as always for the ponies.
Outside of making travel between these two locations more difficult for Thorax, the changing seasons meant that he soon learned that his bird disguises now attracted attention instead of diverting it. The other local animals he could emulate weren't great either, as the ponies would shoo away snowy foxes, try to catch arctic hares as pets, or whack rodents with brooms.
The only form that didn't attract much attention was that of a random crystal colt, which only got the occasional glance from both adults and hatchlings. Sure, it offered less mobility from the lack of wings, but held up better in the harsher weather of the lands beyond the city limits.
This was why he was wandering around as a little colt near the central castle, pulling as much love as he could from the ponies in the area without getting noticed. As this was more difficult than in the past, as a bird can be just about anywhere discreetly, he'd taken to gathering food all day before retreating to his hideout, returning again the next day. All the while, he was vigilant, sweeping his eyes constantly to ensure he knew everything that was going on and when it was safe to feed a little.
That just made Pinkie Pie randomly appearing in his face and shouting, "Hiya, random colt I've met before!" all the more shocking, and he leapt cartoonishly high into the air. He then landed quite comfortably in Pinkie's arms, who said as she put him down, "Wow, you're quite the jumper!"
Thorax needed a few seconds to get his bearings, then asked, "Pinkie, what are you doing here? Is there something dangerous going to happen, or are you just here on a random visit?"
"Just visiting," she hummed, "I was heading on a train here so I could go to Yakyakistan, but then it turned out sheep were blocking the rail in Dodge Junction. But thankfully my friend Cherry Jubilee was willing to give me a ride on her carriage. Buuut, she and the ponies pulling our ride were pulling an all-nighter, so they fell asleep while galloping onward. Then came a ravine out of nowhere, straight in our path! I tried to get them to stop, but nothing I did worked! We drove right over the edge, and we were falling, and falling, and falling-"
Thorax, who was watching Pinkie slowly lower a raised hoof to the ground, interrupted by asking, "And then?"
Pinkie froze, then swung her other front hoof to catch the first. "Then bam! The Wonderbolts managed to save us! They took us to Manehatten, and what do you know, I ran into a travelling band looking for a drummer and a new direction, and boy, did I deliver! I wrote a ton of new songs, planned a tour route with plenty of shortcuts, and we're about to make it big! Our next concert's in ten minutes, wanna come see?"
Thorax blinked a few times, realized the last line was a question, and opened his mouth to respond. "Uh-"
He was immediately cut off by a stallion behind him, who was flanked by two others. "Pinks, we have to talk."
Her happy demeanor dulled slightly. "Hi boys. What do you want to talk about."
The three stallions glanced at each other. The one on the left sighed and said, "With the latest songs, we've been stepping on each other's hooves too much. I think we all need to spend some time apart, practicing our own music."
Pinkie began to tear up. "You're... you're breaking up with me?"
"...Sort of? We're breaking up the band. Don't get us wrong; it's not you, it's us."
The one on the right spoke up as well. "Seriously, you're the best thing that's ever happened to us. The last two hours have been the most amazing in all of our lives. We wouldn't trade it for anything."
She sniffled, but had a weak smile. "You guys really mean it?"
The left stallion grinned and nodded. "Of course, we love our little band sister. The three of us just learned a little too much about each other." The other two stallions rolled their eyes preemptively, already knowing what was coming. "Like, those two won't give classic rock the time of day."
"Dude," the middle one interjected, "that stuff's so old-school, it's not even funny."
Pinkie giggled, if a bit sadly. "Well, I guess that friendly banter wasn't quite as harmless as I thought it was. I'm really going to miss you guys."
She pulled her bandmates into a massive hug. Thorax got pulled in, too, as he happened to be sitting between them, utterly confused at what was going on.
One of them (Thorax couldn't tell them apart anymore) said, "Pinkie, girl, remember this: go find another band and rock their world like you rocked ours."
A sniffle. "Yeah, but it's never going to be as special as the first time."
Everyone was silent for a moment, until one of the stallions spoke up. "I think it's time to go."
Pinkie let go of them, and she and the rest of the band exchanged their good-byes. Meanwhile, Thorax sat there wondering if he was reading too much into their conversation, or too little.
The pink pony sighed. "What am I going to do now? I had a whole concert planned and everything."
Thorax blinked. "Uh, weren't you trying to get to Yakyakistan?"
"Oh, right! Thanks for reminding me!" Pinkie gave a hug to the disguised changeling, who had by that point given up on struggling out of it. She dropped him and said, "I know, Princess Cadance can help me get there," then made her way to the castle with her strange hopping gait.
After she left, Thorax sat there and stared off into space for a few minutes, blindly grasping for an idea on what to do. Eventually, he decided that the best thing to do would be to continue on with his day as if his second meeting with Pinkie Pie had never happened.
Oh, and he's never using this color pallet in a colt form ever again. And just to be safe, he's not using it for any other pony form, either.

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                    16: Lost and Found                     
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16: Lost and Found
It should come as no surprise that the harshest season of the tundra is winter, when the snow fell heavily every few days and stayed on the ground until it all melted away in late spring, turning the less frozen patches of ground into mud. After all, the Frozen Wastes of the Crystal Empire were named such for a reason.
Perhaps a bit more surprising is that the winter is a bit more mild in Yakyakistan to the north. The few times that ever comes up in conversation, most figure that it was a combination of mountainous terrain blocking wind and snow clouds as well as lingering remains of Sombra's Curse on the city. While true, there was also the presence of ancient beings barely ever remembered by most, which is likely better for their stress levels than it would otherwise be.
Details of the local climate aside, Thorax wasn't really there to appreciate it. He counted himself lucky on that: one of his trips to the ravine was suddenly beset by a massive snowstorm a couple minutes after he left the city. It was harsher than any he'd ever been in at that point, so he immediately turned around. It was the right move, as it raged outside the city barrier for two days until it finally left for another part of the icy wasteland. Assuming he had managed to reach the ravine alive, he would have been stuck there for far too long without food.
Inside the city, days were as cool as had been the nights he had camped outside of Canterlot. That was just around the lower end of the 'comfortable without clothes' range, and that meant that he couldn't just brave nights out in the open as would've been the case in the summer. Plus, laying around on the streets would have garnered attention, no matter what he looked like at the moment.
He eventually lucked into the solution as he wandered around the streets late at night. Using Vix's form at the time, he noticed a house that had no emotional energy inside of it, not even the lingering trails that ponies and other creatures tended to leave behind. The door was unlocked*, so he pushed it open, tried his best to ignore the thick layer of dust everywhere, and laid himself atop an ancient bed to sleep, trying not to think about what happened to the previous inhabitants.
*King Sombra abhorred locks on doors. After all, if somepony wanted to bar him access to somewhere, they obviously had something to hide from him, and those that didn't had nothing to fear from him. Well, nothing more than the usual. Naturally, this didn't apply to the doors of his castle, even those leading to the quarters of his servants and guards. However, he was the only one with the keys to all those, and woe betide a servant who was ordered to obtain something from a room he had previously locked.
He awoke the next morning feeling refreshed and a bit curious about the building. Carefully traipsing around as a snowy fox, he learned that the house contained little more than beds, some mementos (the largest one being a faded painting depicting a stallion in armor hugging two hatchlings, probably his), and a room that he wasn't sure what the purpose was, but had many empty storage spaces packed around and a place to keep water.
The house itself was in a rather convenient location for him, too, as it was just outside the marketplace of the city. After all, he did spend plenty of time there trying to keep an eye on the pulse of the city. Should something serious be happening, he was likely to learn quite a bit there, even if the only thing of real importance was the Games months ago.
Life went on, as it does, for months. It could take a long time for a routine to break, especially if the individuals involved had not the will or the power to change it.
One day in the early spring, he noticed from afar a pair of Equestrian ponies enter the abandoned house he was sheltering in, one a guardstallion, the other an unarmored mare. Intrigued, he followed them, doing his best to avoid getting noticed. Once he got inside he was able to take a closer look at them. While the unicorn guard was, unsurprisingly, white and blue like the rest of them, the mare was instead marked with an apple with a worm sticking out of it and had a cream coat and wings and a light orange mane. Thankfully, neither seemed to notice him eavesdropping or keeping to door open with a hindleg.
The pegasus looked at the underside of her hoof with mild disgust. "Wow, this place is dusty, isn't it?"
The guard nodded, his face impassive. "It was already abandoned for a couple of years by the time the Crystal Empire was sent to our time, so that's not surprising."
She turned to the painting. "Was that the family that lived here before? What happened to them?"
His frown deepened. "That stallion was one of the ponies in the Empire's army. As Sombra started to lose against the forces of Equestria, he used... 'stronger' means to keep the army under his control. While everypony knows of the mind control masks he used, it was just the last in a series. Before that, he made the soldiers fear him more than any enemy, and one way he did it was by threatening insubordinate and incompetent soldiers with the execution of them and their immediate families."
The mare grew rigid. "He went through with it sometimes, didn't he?"
The guard solemnly nodded. Silence reigned in the abandoned building for a while. This stretch of time was especially tense for Thorax, as he could easily detect inside her the sort of dark rage that he'd previously only seen in the Queen. He had to suppress the groveling reaction that practically every changeling in the hive developed.
Eventually, the anger in the pegasus subsided, and her stance weakened with a heavy sigh. "You know, I figured something must've happened for this place to pass into the hooves of the local crown, but I wasn't expecting it to be that bad."
The unicorn nodded again. "Nopony wanted to risk the notice of the King, so it went to him. Plus, there's the memory issues from the mass mind control."
"How bad is it?"
He let out a weary sigh. "The first couple of days, they could only remember Sombra, and not much else. The Crystal Heart managed to deal with much of that, but, well, the best way to put it is that the oldest of the crystal ponies can't remember how many years old they are, and the ponies in general can't remember anything about their parents if they died more than what was to them a few years back."
She silently stared at the portrait again before asking, "Does anypony even remember their names?"
The unicorn shook his head. "Sombra rarely bothered with names in his records, and nopony we asked so far knew. Sadly, this is the case for many of the places like this."
Thorax watched firm, rugged determination expand within the mare. "That just convinces me even more that giving the foals of this place a better future is the right thing to do. Can we run over everything again so that I know for sure what'll happen?"
The changeling could detect a slight tang of annoyance from the stallion, but it was well hidden. "Of course. We'll be converting much of the lower floor into a classroom, while you'll be staying upstairs and using the kitchen facilities down here. Because we are providing housing, you'll be getting the reduced teacher's pay."
She nodded and asked, "And even if we need to expand the building to make the classroom large enough, there's still enough space in the yard for a small flight camp, right?"
He skeptically replied, "Yes, but why is this so important to you?"
"Well, I know the Crystal Heart is what's keeping the weather around here nice, but what if anything happens to it?"
"Miss, I don't think-"
"Sombra got around it somehow, right?"
The soon-to-be teacher got a nod in response.
"So there has to be weaknesses to it, right? What if something happens to it during winter?"
The other two in the room shuddered. "I got caught in a snowstorm while out on patrol, and almost got lost. If I did..." the guard trailed off, the light fear evident to Thorax in multiple ways.
"That's why it's a good idea to keep an emergency weather team. Getting one means we're going to need a stable population of pegasi like me, and that means families. They're more likely to stick around if we teach their foals how to properly fly, and if everything goes right, we might be prepared for the harsh winters in a few years."
While difficult to see, the guard had a small smile. "I haven't thought of it that way. Do you have any other questions?"
Thorax decided it was best to leave now, as if there weren't any, one of them might turn around to leave and spot him in the process. He silently pushed the door open and slipped out, going back to wandering the streets as he usually did.
It looked like that shelter was no longer an option. A pity, but at least it was warm enough again for travel to and from the ravine to be safe, even in the worst of conditions. Besides, he had by now learned that he shouldn't think of places as homes. It made losing them all the harder.
...although it might be interesting to keep an eye on the place, if only to alleviate to monotony of his current life.
Apple Skies and Guard** turned to the front door as it closed, the colt that was there having disappeared.
**While she readily gave him her name, he refused to the same, saying that he preferred to remain nameless with anypony he would work with only once or twice. As a result, she capitulated and capitalized.
She said, "It looks like that little guy finally left. I'm guessing he left to tell his friends about the new school and teacher."
"I wonder if those words will be of great joy or grave warning," Guard deadpanned.
Apple Skies giggled. "I certainly hope it's the former. Now, about my question?"
"As with all direct employees of the crown granted housing with employment,..."
Author's Note
Originally, this chapter was supposed to be shorter with only the troubles of winter and Thorax finding shelter, but then I found the backstory I made for the abandoned house and its future a little too interesting to leave alone. At least it lets me skip large swathes of time in which Thorax just does his usual routine.
Sombra's disciplinary actions within his military are a remix of the recruitment practices of the Red and White Armies during the Russian Civil War. Minus the mind control, of course.

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           17: When Words Are Both True and Kind           
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17: When Words Are Both True and Kind
Soon after Thorax returned to using the icy ravine for shelter, classes within the previously abandoned building had begun. A stroke of luck led to one of the windows giving the perfect view of the black board that the pegasus teacher wrote on, and the lack of soundproofing let him listen almost as if he were in the room himself.
Honestly, he was enjoying himself far more than he had ever since the city reappeared, his little pony tail swinging back and forth. Back at the hive, school was the best time of the day, as few bothered him fearing punishment over disruptive behavior. Sure, he got punished too, as there was zero tolerance of interruptions during class time, but few changelings were willing to bite their wing just to spite him. Although, from what little he could tell from his short time observing, the ponies preferred to reprimand the aggressor, which made the idea of staying with them even more appealing.
Either way, listening in on the lessons taught him far more than what ponies thought about things, as he could also learn that from listening on various conversations elsewhere. Right now, he was learning about the very basis of the Ponish script, what made their writing make sense, what the teacher called an alphabet. While he had noticed that some of the symbols of the few words he could read were the same, he hadn't thought much of it until now. This was by design, though, and so long as you knew the correct combinations of characters, you could write any word from them. Even if you didn't, the letters gave a clue to sounding out the word to try and pin it down. How amazing it was that the ponies could and would teach their hatchlings this skill he never really learned!
Suddenly, the teacher looked straight at him, and Thorax froze, hoping she wouldn't see him. Those hopes vanished when she opened her mouth and said, "You could join us inside for the lesson, you know."
The disguised changeling bolted as fast as the little colt legs could take him.
There was no denying it, that mysterious little colt was the same one Apple Skies saw the day she arrived. Same colors, same size, same oddly intent look for a pony his age.
It seemed he wanted to learn but was afraid to get caught in the act. Well, that won't do. Learning is for everypony, after all.
She was able to tell which direction he ran off in, towards the backyard where she was planning on setting up a flight camp once she got some pegasus foals enrolled in it. Thanks to how the buildings and fencing were structured, the path he took was the only way in for a ground-bound pony, except for going through her schoolhouse.
After encouraging her students to quietly practice amongst themselves (figuring that if they were to start goofing off, it shouldn't be too loud) and excusing herself from the classroom, she went out the backdoor. As she expected, the colt was in one of the far corners of the yard, jumping and turning towards her at the sound of her arrival.
"You can calm down, you're not in trouble or anything," she said as she slowly walked to him, careful to keep a decent distance from him so that he doesn't feel cornered. "So, what's your name?"
The colt remained silent, panic still evident in his eyes.
The mare slowly lowered herself to the ground, feeling the grass brush against her belly fur. "I'm Apple Skies, the teacher here, but you've probably figured that out by now. You can join the lesson inside where it's warmer."
That and the warm smile she was giving him seemed to have finally calmed him down. "Okay," he said at a volume that she strained to properly hear. "I-I'm Insect Wing."
Apple Skies couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at yet another odd crystal pony name, but forced it back down. Looking judgmental about names is not part of being a good teacher. "It's nice to meet you, Insect Wing. Let's go inside, there's a class waiting for the two of us."
She got up and turned back to the house, and the colt followed her. Just before she got to the door, though, she was interrupted by him asking, "What's that say?"
He was pointing at the little sign she made and put under the old portrait's new place on the back outside wall. "You can't read it?" After she got a shake of the head from him, she continued, " Don't worry, we're working on that right now in class. Anyway, it says, 'In memory of this forgotten soldier and his family. He may have fought for Sombra, but they didn't have a choice.'"
The two ponies looked silently at the memorial for a moment before returning to a class who had managed to fold their worksheets into paper hats.
It was several months later, and Thorax was wandering around the city in his Insect Wing persona after finishing the latest school day. He learned quite a few words in his time at the school and had learned to read and write a good fraction of those he knew already. For example, he could now read the two-part sign hanging on the front: the crystal slab on top had 'Central City Elementary' on it in gold stenciling, while the second half was a pair of wooden planks haphazardly tied to the part above it with rope. The words '& Apple Skies's Junior Flight Camp' were written on the lower half in curly script with red marker.
But yes, he was greatly enjoying his time learning with the local foals. That was another word he had learned, and was doing his best to identify with it. After all, his classmates already found him odd and avoided interacting with him, so no need to add fuel to the fire. That suited him fine, though, as not needing to come up with information on the spot should somepony ask him something would help keep the fun going for a while.
It did leave him with nothing to do on the days when school was off. The concept itself was almost strange, as the schools in the changeling hive ran every day. He certainly enjoyed the class more than the free time he got, since most of that was spent sleeping somewhere out of the way or getting bullied by classmates, another new word he learned. Isn't it great to learn a way to express something after searching for it for years? Thankfully the latter didn't happen here, so his enjoyment of learning new things went untainted.
It might start to get boring again soon, what with the first snow coming in and Miss Apple Skies mentioning that winter break was coming. If it was anything like summer break, things would get boring again. However, this time, he could head to the public library and spend his time reading. He did try that in the summer, but found a book with a few letters he didn't recognize and so many words he didn't recognize the spelling of, though they did familiar. After the break, he asked the teacher about it, and then learned that the old books were written in Middle Ponish, which had a few characters which were since dropped and ponies spelt things differently. At least now he knew to stick to the recent imports from Equestria, which he can read.
Head held high and humming a tune he overheard from one of the Equestrian students, he aimlessly wandered through the streets. Once he lost any potential followers, he would find a secluded spot and swap forms to something else, even if it was just a color change. Then, he would head on hom- to the ravine most school days. Yes, another wonderful thing about the school was that Miss Skies just oozed affection and care for her students, and he could easily fill himself up from it. He might even be developing a layer of fat, which was practically unheard of among changelings.
He wasn't sure how long all this would last, as winter would probably make things tricky, but life was good.
Author's Note
Thorax is terrible with making up a name on the spot. Also, the only sneaky that changelings are good at is blending into a crowd, there's a little too much Kool-Aid passed around in the hive for most of them to manage much else in infiltration.

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                      18: Raging Snow                      
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18: Raging Snow
A shrill cry rang out, sweeping across the tundra in its entirety. Outside of being audible to every living thing with ears in the Frozen Wastes (and far more than just that for those near the source), it had little physical effect on the surroundings.
There were two exceptions to that, though. The first was that an ancient, extremely powerful defensive artefact absorbed much of the magical power behind it, shattering in the process. As the day-to-day function of this crystal was to ensure that the area it warded was hospitable to the local denizens, having this happen during the harsh winter of the area was bad enough.
What made the whole matter worse was that the magical bonds chaining the mostly forgotten ancient evil had weakened. There was yet not enough anger and strife to truly awaken them, yet they went from a deep, forced slumber to dreaming of the world above. And as the collective dreams slowly strengthened, their natural influence began seeping into the world from which they were banished from.
The winter of hatred was slowly returning.
Thorax shuddered in his Insect Wing form as he both heard the cry of a newborn foal and an intense wave of negative emotion pass over him. It was raw and undirected, not filtered into something like fear or anger or the like. Whatever caused it must've been very powerful and fairly undeveloped emotionally, or maybe just barely conscious.
He shook his head to try and get rid of the cloying negativity, which was mostly successful. For some reason, some of it still seemed to cling on him, but he put it behind him. He needed to keep an eye out for any ponderous pink ponies pronking about, as he did see the little dragon named Spike near that Equestrian unicorn's house that he had since forgotten the name of. While he didn't know much about that dragon, as the locals tended to tell stories about him that got more outlandish every month, the changeling was aware that he had some connection to Pinkie Pie, and-
A shudder went down his spine when he thought of the strange pony's name, and he lost his train of thought when he realized it wasn't stopping. He looked around in confusion as an unusually chill wind penetrated the crowds in the streets. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him, but that couldn't be right. It had to be impossible.
To his horror, it was true. The bright fire of love that appeared like a beacon in the center of the city had vanished. Not only that, but the shell of warmth surrounding the city had vanished. At least the disappearance of the Heart's influence explained why things just didn't seem quite as nice, as it gave the entire city a weak, but positive aura. It was so thin that it took more energy to feed off it than it would give, but he could still sense it. And now, it was gone.
He looked around at the various ponies passing by him, but they all were unconcerned. While he was expecting them not to really notice the slight shift in the emotional background of the city, they had to notice the cold weather streaming into the city, right?
However, there wasn't any real reaction from them, they just kept walking about and talking excitedly about some sort of crystalling. While the celebration that he knew little about in honor of the royal couple's newborn was a bit of a big deal, the barrier protecting the city vanishing during the harshest season of the year probably was a more urgent problem. It's not like the Heart would get taken down for a polishing or something.
...okay, it would explain the vanishing barrier, but what about its own signature? Unless it was teleported away to some polisher well outside the city...
Another, even colder breeze pushed Thorax out of that train of thought, and he decided that the best thing to do was to head for the castle at the center. It should be the part of the Empire that's furthest away from those amazingly angry looking storm clouds that were coming in and might give him an idea on what happened to the Crystal Heart.
While the crowd was moving in that direction anyway, it was painfully slow, as if they were heading there, but whatever they wanted to get to was hours away. Whether or not that was actually the case, he had a hard time getting around all those legs that were constantly moving around, but the occasional detour into the alleyways helped make him good time, considering the circumstances.
Eventually he managed to get ahead of the bulk and easily trot around the many crystal ponies dotting the streets. There was another crowd at the outer rim of the marketplace as there were a few enterprising ponies looking to make a quick bit. While most of the sellers he could recognize by sight, one pair he didn't was a couple of unicorn stallions with yellow coats and red and white manes who looked identical to each other with the exception of one having a mustache. According to the sign, they were selling 'Genuine Crystalling Shards'. As he was walking past the stall, he did notice what looked like a very small line of text underneath the big letters. They were so small, he might've needed to fly up to it in order to read it.
Still, that wasn't the problem he was worried about, so he moved on towards the small crowd in front of the castle. He panicked a little upon seeing Fluttershy as well as the rainbow maned pegasus and the earth pony that wore a hat, but a quick scan of the area told him that the closest pony with anything like that pink pony's emotional signature was in the castle itself a good way up, so he should be safe from that creepy forced cheer and weird randomness.
The wind was definitely beginning to pick up, but over it he could easily hear that rainbow pegasus shout, "Come on, it's freezing out here!"
One of the crystal ponies replied, "Uh, this is the Crystal Empire. We've seen snow before."
Thorax was about to ask, "Inside the city?" but the argument was ended by the prince announcing an evacuation. With a dramatic pause (partially filled by ponies asking about the Crystalling), he also revealed that the Crystal Heart had been shattered.
The changeling found this utterly shocking. Sure, he kept his distance in the last year, but he was very much aware of how it protected and the ponies that lived in the city. Without it, this place would be too difficult to survive in, even without this unusually strong storm. He wasn't just worried about needing to go to a new and unknown place to stay and hide in, but also that the ponies that he had started to get to know (and many, many more that he hadn't) would lose their homes and need to find new ones. There was also the big problem of-
He was once again pulled back to reality, this time by now the sensation of somepony pushing him on his rump. He heard Shining Armor say behind him, "Come on, little guy, we have to leave now before the train tracks freeze."
Sure enough, the rest of the crowd had already started moving towards the station. Not wanting to stand out too much, the disguised changeling ran forward and kept a brisk trot to keep up once he caught up. The short legs of a colt made the transfigured muscles work to keep the pace, but the equally low weight was a plus in making movement easy.
The pace didn't last. Once the prince meandered through the crowd to the front, he kept his high speed going, prompting the crowd to match. None of them complained, as the sight of the royal sisters of Canterlot fighting a losing battle against the weather provoked a distinct sense of urgency.
Naturally, Thorax fell behind, the little legs only able to put on so much speed. None of the other foals evacuating had this issue, as they had some relative with them to carry them to the station. After all, he kept his interactions as Insect Wing to a minimum outside of school, so the only adult with any reasonable amount of knowing him was Apple Skies. That particular pegasus caught a train leaving the Empire about a week ago, probably to visit family.
His gait slowly wavered as he began to wonder whether or not leaving the tundra was a good idea. Sure, the weather was insanely unforgiving, but the same could be said of Queen Chrysalis's wrath, and up here he was far from her reach. After all, Mayfly and Damselfly were here over a year ago, and since then he had seen not a single changeling. The hive ought to know he was here, and policy was that anyling gone from the hive for over a year and not on a long-term mission was either dead or treasonous, and the occasional scream from the deepest parts of the dungeon reminded everyling that getting caught was a fate worse than death. The uncaring wastes were looking better and better by the minute, even in this storm.
The decision wasn't made for him. As he stood there shivering at the memories of the screaming damned, a guard leading another evacuation group managed to grab him by the scruff of his neck and plop him onto an armored back without losing speed. For a sheet of bouncing metal constantly dusted by snowflakes, Thorax's new spot was surprisingly warm.
As the effort of holding on occupied most of his attention, he discovered, to his mild surprise, that the earlier-than-expected stop wasn't just his imagination. They were quite the distance away from the train station, and the group in front had stopped too soon as well.
It didn't take long for the crowd in front to move again, this time splitting down the middle to let some Equestrians through first. While the royal sisters were the most striking, there was also Spike, the pony that Thorax eventually recalled to be named Sunburst, and a mare that looked like someling tried to merge together the forms of Pinkie and Fluttershy's unicorn friends together in a transformation.
Incidentally, the last of these was yelling, "Make way, we've got a wizard who knows how to save the day!"
The changeling couldn't help but smile a bit at the news. Maybe he didn't need to choose between barely scraping by or having horrible, horrible things happen to him.
Any further musings would have to wait until the guard that was giving the poor, lost foal a ride reached the castle again.
The disguised changeling was wandering the streets again. He left the crowd surrounding the castle as soon as he could do so without getting noticed, as he doubted he would be able to follow the procedures of the festivities. Sure, it was even colder out in the alleyways, but he was used to it by now, and if he needed to, he could change into something warmer or take shelter in one of the nearby buildings.
Of course, he kept an eye on the city center with his emotional sense, and Sunburst did not disappoint. He smiled at sensing the familiar (if almost painfully bright) sight of the Heart again. It faded once he noticed something else that was forming that he was less familiar with, but still recognized: an expanding shell of energy, yet another large enough to cover the whole city.
Turning away, he ran at full speed, but only managed to pass by a couple buildings before it hit him. It shoved him forward a short distance, dispelled his transformation, left a little love behind as a treat, and made his exoskeleton feel all tingly as it raced off into the distance in front of him.
He lay there dazed for a while, just staring at the city shield being reestablished while wondering about what just happened, and how.
With the ancient artefact restored in full power, a pulse of its energy swept the lands of the continent. The dreams of the ancient spirits of hate stilled, and they returned to a peaceful slumber. It was nowhere near as deep as it was before, and should something go wrong, they would return in full, picking the grapes of wrath from the tangled vines of exclusion as their bounty.
Author's Note
Act 5 is here, and we're hitting the end soon.
The sheer power of the storms in The Crystalling doesn't match anything in earlier episodes involving the Crystal Empire, so I figured a one-two punch of it being near the height of winter and the Windigos having an influence on it would give the appropriate amount of raw strength to attrition away at the power of the two sisters.
Also, I only now realized that Starlight looks like an average between Twilight and Rarity in terms of color palette and styles. It's been years since I first watched. How did I not notice this until putting myself into the mind of someone who doesn't know them by name, just appearance?

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                      19: Cabin Fever                      
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19: Cabin Fever
The very unusual bird soared through the cold but clear skies. It was one of the rare days in winter where there was no snow storm nor the threat thereof, and so it was safe (barring the usual issues of extreme cold) to be outside the Empire's protective shield.
Unsurprisingly, the bird was a form that Thorax crafted for occasions like this. Extremely fluffy feathers combined with hefty fat made keeping warm easy, and the sky-blue coloration meant that anyling would have a tough time spotting him from below. Sure, the weight of all this meant that he needed to use some magic to keep aloft, but that didn't make it different from changeling or pegasus flight anyway.
As for why he was out there, the reason was simple: he could only spend so much time in the city before he needed to get out for a while. Normally, this wasn't a problem: he regularly made trips to and from the ravine he sometimes called home during the spring and fall, and summer made the tundra almost pleasant temperature-wise. Winter was the problem, as he had to stay in the city. After all, if he was stuck inside the ravine due to a storm, and it lasted long enough, he would either starve or freeze trying to get back.
So, the rare days where it was safe to finally leave the shield again were spent out in the wilds, he'd spend some time doing what he wanted where nopony was around. Gliding about, sneaking up on animals to watch them, practicing his transformations, or just sitting and thinking somewhere quiet were most of what he did out there, and that day was no different.
Suddenly, he sensed movement in the edges of his vision and he looked down at the featureless expanse of white below. Nothing popped out at him, but he was high up, and many of the animals that braved the surface at this time of year were camouflaged. Deciding to get a closer look, he adjusted his stance and circled with a downward tilt, keeping a watchful eye at the ground below.
It took much of the way down for him to finally realize that the animal looked like a snowy fox. He hadn't seen one since... well, since those tunnels collapsed, and it immediately excited him. He forced himself to calm down a bit though, as this one might not have been one of the ones he knew in that first month. Still, he unconsciously sped up his descent, wanting to get there sooner.
The further he went, the more details he could see, and the more convinced he was that the animal silently walking on the ground was a fox. Then, one of its ears twitched and its head turned to look at him. While for the most part, the facial features were like any old fox, there was a prominent star-shaped mark over one eye.
In his surprise, Thorax forgot the impending need of a landing and crashed into the ground, his feathers standing straight and leg muscles spasming from the shock of hitting the ground face first. With some effort, he pulled his head from the ground and shook the snow off his head as the fox stared at the weird bird in front of it. At least this time, he didn't make a crater.
After making a strangled squawking sound, he transformed into his base form and asked, "Spot?"
The fox didn't respond for a moment, then took an exploratory sniff. After more sniffing paired with visibly increasing excitement, Spot shook her tail, let out a yip, and gave him a nuzzle. Thorax gave her a light hug in response.
After a while, Spot wiggled her way out of it and Thorax was able to get a good look at her. What was once a little fox kit only a few months old was now a vixen that was both a bit taller and wider than her mother was. The extra weight could have been for any number of reasons, so he didn't dwell on it.
"Did the rest of your family make it out okay, too?"
He got a head tilt in response. Either she didn't know, remember, or understand.
"Um, how are you doing?" he tried, hoping that would get a response.
And one he got, as the vixen perked up and bounced in place for a bit, before turning away and walking for a bit. When she stopped and looked back at him, Thorax got the idea and followed her.
Occasionally, she would stop, prick her ears, and pounce into the snow for prey. Every time she came back up with a new catch, the changeling would praise her technique, and Spot just ate it all up.
The fox's destination ended up being an entrance to some snow tunnels. Thorax warily crept inside, just in case sudden movements with his weight might destabilize it. From what he saw of them, the tunnels weren't nearly as long and intricate as the ones he stumbled upon almost two years ago.
It wasn't long before the two stopped, five sets of curious eyes appearing from the entryway of a hollow. After Spot let them know it was alright, five fox cubs even smaller than Spot was when Thorax met her walked out. They stuck close to the adult fox, but he was fine with it, he was a stranger, after all.
After watching them play with one of the hunt's smaller catches for some time, occasionally joining in for a bit, he looked at Spot and said, "It's wonderful to know that you're doing well, but I should get going again," and started to do just that.
Spot quietly walked with him on the way out. Neither said anything as they traversed the tunnel system. Once they returned to the surface, he gave her another hug as goodbye, then took off with his mostly-hole-free wings.
During his flight back, he realized how full he felt. He couldn't have been in there for longer than a couple hours, yet he could easily live off his reserves for several more days. Normally this would take hours of feeding from hundreds of ponies for the same result, and yet...
He flew high in the sky in his base form, lost in thought. The longer this went on, the more he became convinced that the best way forward was to have a two-way connection with someone, where he not only genuinely cared for someone, but they also liked him for who he truly was.
He chuckled to himself. Not only was friendship looking more and more like the answer to his woes (and maybe even those of his old hive), but it also had to be something he wanted long before he even knew what the word for it was.
Feeling uplifted, he transformed back into the sky-blue bird of his own making, having forgotten for the moment his own fears of what might happen if he revealed himself to a pony.
Author's Note
This bit felt like it would be better if placed before the finale, so here it is. Sorry about this taking so long, but RL is starting to get draining lately, so it might be a while before I can well and truly finish this.

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                   20: Things Fall Apart                   
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20: Things Fall Apart
The tundra is treacherous, that is for certain. Excepting small animals, it was rarely by the teeth of a predator that a creature died. Instead, it was the climate. Not just the terrible snowstorms, augmented by a magic so diffuse that only spirits could truly sense it, but also the short growing season. There was only so much time that the plants could use to grow in the sun before smothered by layers of snow for many months. Since the animals rely on plants for food, early or late snows could seriously impact the populations within the tundra for years to come.
Above all, however, the tundra was unpredictable. Unlike the tamed and curated environment found in the settled parts of Equestria and the less run-down parts of the griffon's lands, the weather was arbitrary to the extreme, caring for little but its own whims. Even without the weak undercurrent of anger resisting the efforts of weather management, there simply weren't enough flying creatures to successfully take control of it, and for now, the arable land gained would simply not be able sustain them. As a result, the land did not care for those living on it, outside of the saccharine confines of the Crystal City.
This left little room for learning from mistakes or getting second chances. Sometimes, a minor mistake could never be recovered from, other times, and usually lethal decision could be made with only minimal consequences, rarely with only positive results.
Thorax had made an error: he misjudged the weather. Even in a land as wild as the Badlands, this was never a problem, as the sandstorms were easy to shelter from, and those never lasted longer than a day. Not so with the tundra.
It was mid-spring. By now, the snow had mostly melted away, leaving large patches of bare ground and scraggly greens. Most of the snow left was in the icy areas, where the chilling magic was just an imperceptible amount stronger. In past years, this was a sign that the storms of winter were now over, and it was safe to go out travelling again.
Not this time, though. After a few days of clear weather, a blizzard swept in overnight. It was as harsh as the usual storm of mid-winter, which could easily leave a pony or changeling with frostbite... if not worse. Not only that, but it was unusually long-lasting as well. The winds kept blowing and the snow kept falling...
...and falling...
...and falling....
Thorax slowly woke up from his slumber. Despite having slept a lot lately, he still felt exhausted. Despite the tiredness having long sept into his bones like an old friend, he didn't yawn. He just didn't have the energy for it anymore.
He'd been sleeping more and more during his confinement within his sheltering ravine. The storm was just too dangerous to let him leave, and by his best guesses, it had been a week now. It was hard to tell, as he spent less and less time awake irrespective of wherever the sun was at the moment. Still, whenever he woke up, he would drag himself to the nearest, easiest entrance to this set of tunnels and would check to see if it was finally safe. Normally, it was bad enough to make his horn feel numb from cold after a few seconds. To his dull surprise, he could see the setting sun on the horizon, as clear as the soon-ending day. He looked around, further confirming that the storm had finally vanished.
Well, if he waited any longer, he would probably starve. Mustering what little energy he had left, he stepped out into the open and started trudging towards the Empire. Even if he had the energy to fly, his wings had been reduced to tatters over the last week.
It took hours to finally get there, but he finally made it to the bubble of warmth surrounding the city. After passing through, he wasn't sure which he preferred, as the cold helped to numb the sharp hunger in his stomach as well as the various aches and pains... well, everywhere.
By now it was deep into the night, and nopony was on the streets. This was just fine for him, as he couldn't transform anymore, not without knocking himself out in the process, he had that little energy remaining. While he couldn't find anypony to feed off of, whatever was left of his consciousness was terrified he might overfeed to the point of seriously hurting somepony if he did. His target was instead the Crystal Heart, as desperate times called for desperate measures.
The streets blended together as he walked on. His vision swam away and his steps were no longer being heard by his own ears as his subconscious deemed those bits unnecessary to the current task. He could feel the Heart's flame, and that was all that was needed. Luckily, it was a straight shot to it, so that wasn't wrong.
Eventually, he made it to the Heart and opened his jaws to feed and a barely visible stream of energy seeped out of the artefact.
The chronometer ticked away... metaphorically speaking, as it did not make a sound. Unlike almost any other part of the complex web of spells, it was always active to help monitor the passage of time. While it had to be recalibrated in light of recent events thanks to the acts of the Betrayer, it has otherwise kept extremely good time while the solar cycle remained consistent. The other always-active spell was the shield, and the former helped to regulate the flow of magic from the reserves to the barrier.
The only other active function was what was long ago called the sleeping observer. It was there to wake up the more active and draining spells at times when it was deemed important, which usually involved unusual signatures nearby or sudden changes in energy. At this moment, both occurred, though not simultaneously.
First, a strange creature arrived, though it was not a stranger. The being had been here a few times, and the artefact's functions could easily recognize. More unusual was that, outside of two far more negative individuals, this one was the only one it could note of. There was no other mention of its species, though that should not come as a surprise. Years of emergency power usage due to the Betrayer's actions had corroded much of the information stored within the storage matrices, and little was preserved of anything before those acts occurred.
As always when a strange or new individual approached, intentions were scanned. Unlike the last couple of times the individual arrived, the negatives far outweighed the positives. No matter, the Heart charged up a minor shield to kinetically deal with the issue...
...then toned it back down as more results came in. The positive intentions were in fact more numerous than the previous times, just very subdued somehow. The negative intention was overwhelmingly large and was obviously a hunger of some sort, but unlike the refined and ambitious hunger of the Betrayer, this was far more primal. The analysis concluded based on current and past evidence that it seemed to be a genuine need for sustenance, and not fulfilling it would have serious consequences to an individual that displayed no other bad elements. In fact, this may have been the same negativity that triggered the defense mechanism in the past.
As a result, when a sudden large drain in the energy stores occurred, all the Heart did was clamp down on it to regulate the flow rate. After all, that energy was needed for its primary purpose, and it was not taking any action that would likely threaten it.
Exactly five seconds of full flow, enough was drained to start up the shield or maintain it for two days. The (then) advanced module specializing in probability calculations decided that it was enough and cut off the flow. The artefact continued to monitor the emotional state of the strange individual, noting how the ravenous darkness continued to decrease in importance and both positive intentions as well as general wellbeing enlarged.
After nine and a half seconds of this, the emotional center dropped a distance and muted itself in a process near identical to that the artefact's most common charges go through a few hours before the chronometer's day counter increments.
After thirty seconds passed with no further events of interest, the Heart returned to standby.
Guard* patrolled through the lower halls, fuming on the inside at the pointlessness of part of his route. Sure, some numb-skull tourist, homeless sod, or thieving runt might make off with something valuable from the lower floors without these patrols, but why did he need to march past the Crystal Heart every morning patrol? It's not like anypony would be dumb enough to try making off with it in tow, and if something was wrong with the Heart, there were so many signs of it easily seen be looking out a window. It would simply be more efficient to just avoid that part entirely as it was unnecessary ground.
*Not his real name. Hardly anypony knows his name as he rarely even gives the time of day to anyone but his superiors.
And he'd complained about it in the barracks several times (the other guards stopped listening after the third time) and requested this change through official channels multiple times. And yet, he got no response beyond a denial the first time. Apparently being a lowly guard made his opinion invalid even when he was presenting the objectively best option. For it to be worth less than that of an officer made sense: after all, if any of the guards in the barracks (himself excluded, of course) were to be suddenly given the reins of the entire city's guard, chaos would ensue.
All this just furthered his resolve to rise the ranks so that he could finally impose his vision of how the guard really should be. New weapons and armor, rationalized patrol patterns, having the bureaucrats handle civilian issues unrelated to crime... the list went on for a while. It was obvious he would get there eventually, and any delays had to be some sort of sabotage, as he was truly the image of the quintessential guard**.
**The other ponies that agree with that statement usually have really low opinions on the Guard in general.
He headed down the final flight of stairs in his patrol path to the Crystal Heart, still reveling in his plans for local law enforcement domination. In fact, he was so caught up in his own head that he didn't notice the obvious pile of chitin in his way until he literally tripped over it. To be fair, the poor lighting from it being a few minutes before sunrise also had a hoof in this.
"Ugh," he groaned from the floor. He pushed himself back up, muttering all the while, "What, or who, did I trip over?"
Once he stood up, he rubbed his jaw a bit and tried to make out the tripping hazard. "I hope it's some random bum, so I can..." he trailed off upon realizing that not only was it someone, but it also looked very much like a changeling.
He rubbed his eyes just in case. Still there. He shoved it a little with his hoof. He was met with some resistance and the feel of an exoskeleton, so it was definitely real.
Then it started to stir. Once the eyes started blinking open, the guard's fight-or-flight response kicked in. He shrieked and ran back into castle and up the flight of stairs, yelling all the while like a broken record, "Sound the alarm, sound the alarm, there's a changeling in the Crystal Empire!"
Whatever just woke Thorax up left his ears ringing. He got his bearings, realizing that he was much closer to the Crystal Heart than he ever was before.
He didn't have much time to think on it, as his hearing returned enough so that he could faintly hear, "There's a changeling in the Crystal Empire!"
He tried to ponder this in a still woozy state. Was that just in his head? No, he heard it again, even more clearly as the ringing in his ears receded. Did the Queen send a changeling that got caught? The possibility lingered in his mind until he looked down at his front legs laying in front of him, completely undisguised.
Oh.
...
Oh no.
He had to leave, now. He vaguely sensed alarm slowly increasing in the castle above him, and it was only a matter of time before whoever found him came back with reinforcements. He was already one of the worst changelings in his former hive at fighting, and any more disadvantages was just tearing at the wound.
He had no time to lose and his energy stores, while way fuller than at any point in the last couple of days, could only go for so long, so Thorax raced off without bothering to transform. Regardless of if he did or didn't, the city would go on high alert anyway.
Once he made it back to his sheltering ravine, he laid himself onto the cold floor and curled up into a ball. What was he supposed to do now, when that freak storm just ruined everything?
A train's brakes shrieked as it came to a stop at the Crystal Empire's train station. This wasn't unusual at all, as the only reliable method of getting there (outside risking long-distance flight in a wild weather zone) was via railroad.
What was unusual was three of the passengers aboard the train, though all three would rather that everypony think of them as normal. One was a unicorn who could mix, merge, and rewrite spells as if they were simple text, another was the latest in the line of alicorn princesses, and the last was a little dragon in a trench coat that was surprisingly effective at hiding him from the local fans.
At first, all that greeted them was an eerily quiet city.
Author's Note
This was written ages ago in little bits and pieces, and it was only now that I found the time to edit it. The fact that I use different devices to write and edit only compounds these issues, which is why parts of the epilogue are already written.
This is the finale. After this, the episode The Times They Are A Changeling occurs, though I won't make any effort to recreate it here.
The epilogue should close up any of the remaining story threads, just like last chapter did with the foxes.

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                      20a: Loose Ends                      
//-------------------------------------------------------//
20a: Loose Ends
A train's engine whistled, signalling that the engine was fired up and ready to leave. On the platform it was soon to leave behind, the conductor held a last call to come aboard, doing a double take when he saw the undisguised changeling standing around as if it were no big deal.
It's been a few days since one of the most impactful days in Thorax's life*. He would never have believed it a week ago, but here he was, black chitin warming in the sun without any of the ponies nearby pani- er, attacking him. The first day had quite a few guards and tourists running for cover from him, and occasionally a member of the latter still ran off screaming when he walked outside the castle. At first, he was surprised that many of the locals didn't react with much more than idle curiosity, but then he learned that all they knew of changelings had basically amounted to hearsay, which wasn't helpful in identifying him as one. By the time they realized it, he had come across as harmless long enough for the crystal pony to be easily coaxed out of hiding.
*The other contenders for the top spot definitely win out in the physical sense of the term.
Anyway, he was waving goodbye to his first friend, Spike. The little dragon lived in Ponyville, as did Twilight and Starlight, so they couldn't stay forever. Spike did say that they could stay in touch as pen pals, which he agreed was a good idea. He just had to ask Sunburst what that meant.
Speaking of Sunburst, the unicorn as well as the prince and princess were also there, waving goodbye just like him on the platform. Outside of them, everypony on the platform was staring at him with varying degrees of disbelief and fear. Even the royal couple kept glancing at him, though they kept their expressions to a smile, which made it feel more awkward than anything else.
Sunburst, on the other hoof, avoided looking directly at the changeling. Thorax didn't notice this until now, as the two were busy with their own friends, but the trip to the train station made it rather apparent.
After the train left the station to head south to Equestria proper, the group made their way back to the castle. Outside of a quiet conversation between the prince and princess that Thorax couldn't really understand, it was a silent trip, at first.
To his surprise, Sunburst spoke up all of a sudden. "So, uh... Thorax?"
"Yeah?"
"Sorry about not standing up for you a few days ago. I, uh..."
"It's fine. I know it took a lot out of Spike to do that, and while I don't know you all that well, you do seem almost as timid as I am."
The unicorn grimaced. "I would like to think that I have a bit more confidence than before, but you're right about that. I did forget about you entirely until Spike said your name, and by that point he was singing, and everypony knows you shouldn't interrupt a song unless you plan to join in, and he was doing amazingly on his own."
Thorax blinked, then decided to just steam past that he did not, in fact, know that particular point of musical etiquette. "Well, I didn't think much about you either after a couple of weeks. Of course that was reset when you saved the day when the Heart was shattered, but I was a bit busy hiding to do all that much extra."
He chuckled sheepishly. "You were there for that?"
"Hiding as a colt in the crowds as it was happening."
"...why a colt specifically? Wouldn't it be easier to get around as a stallion?"
The changeling went on to explain the differences with how adults treat peers and children, and the two followed tangent after tangent within their conversation. By the time they reached the castle, the two had largely forgotten where it began.
Still, the strange sense of finality it brought caused the winding thread to end. A few seconds of silence later, and Sunburst asked, "Do you want to be friends?"
While genuinely surprised by this, Thorax hardly showed it. "Yes, of course. But... didn't you say you weren't good at it?"
The unicorn winced at the memory. "Well, yes. But when Starlight tried to convince me to give her another chance at being friends, what she really did was convince me to give myself and friendship in general another chance." He paused, then remarked, "Also, saving the day helped that."
The changeling commented, "Honestly, my time here did the same for me."
His new friend snorted in amusement. "It's nice to know somepony else went through the same struggles, isn't it?"
A nod with a smile of fulfillment was the response.
Author's Note
I realized I accidentally gave Thorax and Sunburst parallel character arcs in the last few lines of this epilogue. That, or I may have realized it before and forgotten it since. I do write this chapter by chapter, after all, and had to take a long break due to IRL issues. Anyway, I decided that focusing on that would make a fitting finish to this bit.
While I have an idea for maybe doing an epilogue with a couple of the named OC's, for now, I'll mark this as complete. The whimsical, creative part of my mind wants to look at other things, so this is it at the moment.