Spike lit his horn; having studied with Twilight for almost all his life, he had less of a problem with knowing what to do and more of a problem having no experience in actually doing it.

"Like this," Spike said for what felt like the hundredth time as he used a basic levitation spell to put a gem into the wagon before putting it back in the wall with magic and watching as some of his kids tried to copy the spell, they managed to pull it from the wall again, but they seemed to be fighting over who would get credit for doing it right first and where trying to pull it to their hand instead of the wagon,

Spike had mixed feelings, wanting to turn back into himself but not entirely sure if his children would recognize him; he figured he should at least try to find a way to get them into Thorax's care before trying to find a way to revert himself just in case they renounced him as their matriarch for no longer being a Changeling. Spike pulled himself together and watched as one of his kids claimed the gem, having been the first to realize the gem was within reach, and she just needed to grab it before the others thought of doing it.

"Well, points were points are due," Spike conceded, "You win the tug of war; that said, how about you all try using that spell to get your gems?" Now exactly being an expert in the field of parenting and having had no real time to mentally prepare for being one, Spike patted the winner on the head, who squealed in delight before tossing her gem into the wagon and running after the others who were all trying to earn their praise. Try as hard as he could; Spike ended up having to concede all of his children looked the same, with no small marks or even differences in horn shapes. Spike had picked a few colored gems and had them all pick one before getting them to change the colors of the membrane they were using as clothes so he could at least tell them apart.

The one who had won their little game had picked a Topaz to base her colors on. And since Spike was far from a whiz with names, he'd decided that was how he'd pick out their names; Topaz joined up with two of her sisters, Ruby and Emerald, leaving the remaining trio of Saphire, Amythest, and Opal to form their team.

Three of them spread out and began hunting for gems while the other three scouted behind them to make sure they hadn't missed anything. The hunting party was subject to teasing if they had, in fact, missed anything.

Not exactly in a hurry, Spike walked down one of the paths a little ways and then waited for his children's gem hunt to take them a fair distance from him before moving up to their current location and repeating.

As they walked, Spike attempted to copy a spell he had previously seen Rarity use, not entirely sure how to do it since Rarity had been born with the innate ability to do the spell instead of learning it, having even listed it as what had allowed her to get her cutie mark.

The Gem tracking spell wasn't world-shattering, as it wouldn't work if the gems were too deep in the earth, and Rarity had mentioned that the first use of the spell tended to drag you to the gem without properly pinning the placement of it.

With the wagon only half full, what with these closer tunnels having been stripped of a lot of gems by the Diamond Dogs that once called them home, the wagon wasn't filling up all too fast, and it was only being filled with small gems for the most part, save for the occasional large Topaz that the Diamond Dogs seemed not to care much for.

Spike tried to spell and only achieved a few magical sparks; not one to give up easily, and now having several children in need of him to eat to motivate him, he continued trying to get the spell to function; he and his children had probably been wondering the cave for well past an hour before the spell finally did something.

Rarity had warned that something had been done to toss Spike into the nearest wall horn first. Taking this as an opportunity to see if he could, Spike attempted to take his original body shape; he ended up a little more monstrous than he had meant to but no longer having a horn let him easily pull away, using the more animalistic versions of his hand he easily dug through the wall and found a hidden vain of gems that would easily fill the wagon, he was about to call out to his children, but they had converged on him as soon as he had slammed into the wall, apparently thinking something had hit him they clung to the opposite wall, fangs bared as they searched for what had hit him.

"It was me," Spike informed them curtly as he lit the spell and was jerked towards the gems, "it was just a little stronger than I thought it would be," Spike's children all crawled across the ceiling and began forming a line to transfer the gems to the wagon, Topaz and Opal both took point on either side of Spike, he assumed acting as his guard since they now had a sizable enough amount of loot to consider it being bad to lose.

"So," Spike leaned down to be on their level as he spoke, "If something did try to make off with our gems, what would you two do?" neither seemed to have thought that far ahead and mumbled under their breaths, "Well I'm pretty strong, but not if I have to keep all of you and the gems safe, so if something bad does try to attack us, you two make sure your sisters and my gems get home safely if I'm not back soon send out a search party, I could be hurt, or I could just be lost since a fight might throw my directions off and I could lose the way home,"

Topaz and Opal gave a hearty salute, and Spike felt a little less worried, having gotten the feeling his children would have killed themselves for the sake of a fight they probably couldn't win.

"Now then, let's get these gems home. I'm hungry and thirsty, and I'm sure you all are too,"

With only a few minutes remaining on their agreed-upon re-grouping and no signs of Spike, Starlight, and Fluttershy had returned to the meet-up spot early, waiting for Ocellus and Smolder, who had been called and responded they wanted to check on an odd pattern they had found on the ground to see if Spike might have caused it.

Starlight was now confident what they had found wasn't Spike; having gone to the third entrance to inspect the area, she had found some prints, some very Spike-shaped prints with little wagon tracks running along with them.

"We were kind of in a panic," Fluttershy rationalized, "Otherwise, we might have thought to inspect all three entrances before rushing down two of them to try and find Spike quickly.

"Well, if we hadn't done that, we'd be a few hours ahead of where we are now," Starlight's tone was irritable, clearly upset she hadn't thought to check the entrances first, "We might have already found him if we'd bothered to check first, ended this entire debacle and be laughing about it over tea,"

Starlight looked down. Unlike the other two entrances, this one was an entrance in the ceiling of the cave. Fluttershy waited for Ocelous and Smolder to return so she could tell them what they had found, so Starlight short-ranged teleported to the floor of the cave; as soon as she entered the cave, several creatures in the depth of its system sensed something entered their mother's domain and quickly set to work making sure it wouldn't be able to attempt to enter the partially developed hive without being noticed.

None the wiser of this, Starlight began looking around the cavernous area. A small underground stream trickled across the floor of the cave, and thanks to it and a spell for light, she could see where Spike had accidentally stepped in it before continuing down one of the paths; his tracks didn't last very long; a scorch mark on the ground indicating he had dried off his foot with some dragon fire, but it at least told her what path he had started and probably stayed on.

With Spike having burnt his trail, Starlight had no further leads to his starting path and waited for the others to join her in the cave system.

"We must have found an old checkpoint of some kind," Smolder said with a yawn as she flew down into the cave, "Probably for Diamond Dogs, back before they fled their natural territory because ponies wanted it,"

"That happened before I lived here," Starlight noted, "And Fluttershy has tried getting them to come home; it turns out the undiscovered west is great for hiding because no one could find them to even make the offer, so it's probably for the best they moved, now no one can steal their homes,"

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," Smolder yawned as Ocellus and Fluttershy flew in after Starlight. Fluttershy instantly noticed a change in demeanor from Ocellus, who touched down and then suddenly flattened her ears.

"What's wrong?" Fluttershy asked, getting the other two's attention.

"There are Changelings down here," Ocellus noted at once as she lifted one ear; after a moment, she pointed towards Starlight, "They're down that way,"

"How can you tell that?" Smolder demanded as she sniffed the air, "All I smell is...Spike's breath?" Smolder looked for the source and found the scorch mark, "Oh yeah, that'll do it,"

"Changeling hives give off a magical sound queue," Ocellus replied nervously, "inaudible to most creatures, even the changelings from the hive, but it acts as a queue to Changelings from another hive that they're trespassing," After processing that information, only one question rang true.

"Other hives?" Smolder demanded, "You mean there is more than just one?"

"Well, Chrysalis wiped out all the other queens years ago," Ocellus noted nervously, "So there should been only the one, but I guess there was at least one other Queen class Changeling other than Chrysalis herself who lived, could be they pretended to be a diamond dog and only recently realized they had the caves to themselves and set out expanding their hive,"

"Taking a guess, these guys aren't the sharing love type?" Ocelluses face told her she doubted it; Starlight got to her feet and had them all gather up before using a spell to hide their presence. Ocellus helped double down on it just in case they had the ability to nullify none changeling magic, and the group moved into the cave; the safety of it was unknown, but they had to at least attempt to extract Spike before calling both Twilight and Thorax to try and broker a peace between this yet undiscovered hive.

They did their best to remain quiet; all firmly pushed against the wall as they moved slowly but surely down the cave. Ocellus, being able to sense the magical vibrations the hive material let out, could direct them towards it; Starlight had a bet that if Spike was still down here, he'd probably gotten snatched up by the hive as a food source.

"So you're hive doesn't have a Queen no more, yeah?" Smolder asked, "Or is Thorax the Queen now?"

"Use to be only Chrysalis could have new Changeling babies, but after Thorax showed us how to share love, we as a race evolved beyond the need for a Queen and can now procreate on our own, that said we are all siblings, so we've had to share our love outside our hive to keep new Changelings being born.

"So this Queen might not entirely be willing to embrace change if she loses her value," Starlight noted.

"Look, I'll be real," Ocellus took a deep breath, "She could look exactly like Chrysalis, but she might look nothing like Chrysalis; I can't guarantee how she'll act; she might be super old and spitful. She could have been hidden away as an egg, and we're gonna run up on Spike helping a young mother with half a dozen babies," Ocellus shrugged, "I just know about my hive and a bunch of old stories passed around by word of mouth, and I'm trying to use that to fumble through this encounter, I can't promise it won't be dangerous, but I can't promise it will be dangerous, just...just be prepared for literally anything I guess, our goal is to find Spike and get him out before we really push on with investigating Ponyville's new neighbors,"

The group journeyed deeper and deeper into the caves, following Ocelluse's directions until they stopped near a small divot in the cave wall upon Smolder's request. Her reasonings were explained upon confirming her suspicions.

"The stink of Spike's breath ends here," She noted in a worried tone.

"You can track Spike by his breath?" Ocellus asked suspiciously, "Last I checked, you could only do that with me because you were intimate with the taste of my breath?"

"Oh, what? I can't have a past?" Smolder demanded with a huff, "It was one night years ago before I dated Gallus and way before you and I became a thing,"

"One night, and you can still remember the taste of his mouth hu?" Ocellus muttered suspiciously.

"Well yeah, that boy has a weird veggie and gem-based diet, and it makes his breath smell like old cabbage mixed with over-ripe rubies,"

"How do you ripen a gemstone?" Fluttershy asked curiously, being waved off by Smolder.

"Ponies wouldn't understand," Smolder took a deep breath as Ocellus continued giving her a sharp look, "Look, I'm just saying I don't smell his breath at all past this point, so he either wasn't breathing or breathing to low to leave a good scent behind, so this is either where he was knocked on his ass or he just stood there and decided it was a sweet place to die,"

"You don't think the changelings..." Starlight's concerns were waved away immediately.

"Can't drain the love from a corpse," Ocellus reassured Starlight.

"And while Spike is soft for a dragon, he's not nearly that soft; nothing that could fit in this tunnel without leaving a clear impression behind could kill a dragon, so it's safe to say this is where they got the jump on him, so he's probably in their hive, and not as a willing guest,"

"Then we've no time to waste," Starlight decided, "Fluttershy, grab my hand; Ocellus, you get Smolders; get ready to teleport back to the entrance and then back to the school; we don't want our rescue team to get swarmed by a hive while trying to find us,"

"You don't wanna send Fluttershy back?" Smolder asked, "No offense, of course, but wouldn't it be...the wisest option here?"

"If the Changeling Queen isn't completely hostile, Fluttershy is the best option to try and talk her into giving Spike back in exchange for an attempt at peace between the hive and Equestria; we might even be able to convince her to join with Thorax,"

"Alright, I guess that's a fair reason," Smolder conceded, "I'm mostly here in case you need me to dig Spike out of a cave-in or punch a very hostile Changeling,"

Ocellus continued directing them toward the hive before having them stop dead and telling them all to breathe softly and stay quiet.

Starlight heard a sound, not skittering, not talking; it sounded like the pitiful squeak of a wheel in need of being oiled. A dim light filled the cave as a familiar face walked around a corner behind them. Starlight held her breath as the Queen Changling walked fairly close to the group, dragging behind her the little wagon that had most likely been Spikes, full of gems; not too far behind her, six very small Changelings followed around after her, creating a serious problem for the group as they where checking the wall's fiercely, Starlight pondered if they had noticed Ocellus just as she had noticed them.

The Queen stopped as she waited for her children to catch up; they grew closer and closer until they suddenly all flocked to the opposing wall. Starlight and the others used the distraction to backtrack down the wall to avoid being detected; they watched one as the Changelings pulled out their prize, several gemstones that they added to the cart before going back to scanning the walls, apparently not for intruders, but for hidden Gem deposits.

The group waited until they were a few feet away before speaking.

"Alright," Smolder broke the silence, "I may not be an expert on Changelings...but they normally don't care about Gem, yeah?"

"She didn't quite look right," Ocellus noted; the Queen, who had looked exactly like Chrysalis to the rest, had apparently not looked quite the same to Ocellus, "Maybe it's just been too long since I've seen her, but she didn't have any holes in her, none of them did, she'd have to be very well feed for that, Spike might not be the only thing down here, either that or she's found a way around that problem,"

The mystery of what was happening in these caves only grew. They continued moving closer to the Hive, Ocellus telling them they were close, only to find a dead end in the direction the Queen had gone, the faint tracks left by the wagon even going directly into the wall.

"Dam," Ocellus swore, "It's a hive door; you might have dealt with 'em when you invaded Chrysalises old hive. Only a Changeling can open it, but I can't guarantee they won't be guarding the other side; they'll swarm us the second they see it open, Changeling or not," Ocellus bit her lip, and the group all looked to Starlight with a simple question: do they risk it or not.

"Teleport Smolder and Fluttershy to the entrance and then come back," Starlight decided, "If it's just us, we might be able to get Spike out," Ocellus nodded her head and took both Smolder and Fluttershy's hand before teleporting away, Starlight pressed firmly against the wall, just in case some of the changelings suddenly exited the hive.

Spike hadn't been expecting to find a door upon returning home, much less to find his six remaining daughters had put work in; the entire floor of their new hive was covered in the odd webbing, so much so that it extended outside the entrance and had been used to block off both sides, the thick walls of it apparently only opening when one of them approached it with the intent of using it as a door.

The yet unnamed group of six seemed to be in deep deliberation around the water source; she heard them having a conversation; it was odd every time she heard them talk, realizing they were sapient creatures she had spat out and were already having their wants and feelings, even if they where only at the state of wanting Mama Spike to pay attention to them specifically over the other children.

The children she had been out with had already split up into two cliques, where one victory was the other two's victory, with Opal and Topaz seemingly heading the two rival groups, as they were only a day old. Spike was confident their groups would shift and change about rapidly. Leaving his scavenger party, Spike got on his knees and began panhandling the water slowly to get a non-muddy taste.

The ones who had been the first savaging group seemed to, at the moment, be acting as one big group of six. However, the fact that they had no colors to help Spike pick them out meant he had no idea which child was considered leader as they talked; whatever they had been discussing before his return had been tossed out upon watching him drink.

"Mother hates the taste," One of them complained.

"Has to use hands," Another agreed.

"It's Beneath mother," One declared. Spike found them not liking that he was slowly filtering the water with his hands to be a sweet gesture; he sat next to the gem pile and began eating as the scavenger group began feeding off him, going two at a time, one on his neck, one biting into the arm not shoveling gems down his open maw, neither hurting him like it probably should have.

As he ate and fed his children, Spike watched the small group trying to find a way to use the webbs to stop the dirt flavor, only for the web to either be ripped apart by the current or be too thick and start damming back the water. Having apparently reached an impasse, they went back to trying to talk it out.

"We need new water," one complained.

"Then we will find new water," one decided confidently.

"How?" Several asked with interest, the one who had been confident deflated at the question.

"We could ask mother?" They pitched.

"Mother is too noble; they'll tell us it's fine and keep wasting their precious time with bad water," Spike felt bad at the pedestal he had somehow ended up on, his children already feeling something like cupping his hands to get water was an act too far beneath him and was now their problem to work around so he need not bother doing it.

"If I'd known it would bother them so much, I'd have moved us to the entrance," Spike had ended up choosing to go deeper out of a fear of running into a search party for himself and getting called out as the monster that had captured the real Spike in a bid to take his place or something, "No, no I wouldn't have," Spike corrected, "Maybe I can sneak into Ponyville long enough to get one of those pictures that have a filter built into the lid? No, all stores are equipped with those stupid magic sensors, so they'd call me out as a changeling in disguise within seconds, and while that may not be all that bad now, my face would cause nothing less than violence,"

Spike went back to eating, planning to tell his children he was fine with panhandling the mud out of his water with his hands before noticing one had started drinking the water and then turned and started kissing one of her sisters.

"I stopped paying attention for about ten seconds. What is happening?" Spike stopped eating; Topaz, Opal, and their teams had already finished eating and started working on the walls. Spike now had to deal with explaining why Incest was bad, as his six remaining children seemed to be devolving into it; as he walked up to him, he noticed one would drink, kiss one, and then go back to drinking as all of them seemed to be exchanging the kiss in a line, ending with one who looked oddly determined.

Spike chose to at least see if they had a reason before telling them off, and his patience paid off fairly quickly.

"My social stomaches, Full," the one at the end of the line said mid-kiss as water began pouring out between the final two's mouths. Spike's concerns about incest dyed down, but he still had no idea what his children were doing or what a social stomach was as he watched them craft a bowl using the webbing; the little bowl turned into a cauldron, and the one who he figured had been at the end stuck her head in it, she kept her head ducked inside before pulling it out with a prideful look, the others looked inside and began congratulating one another before Spike looked inside, Water filled the bottom, crystal clear and also slightly disgusting. Spike looked up and found his six children practically dancing with how hard they were shaking; the gleams in their eyes killed his will to tell them how gross he found this.

"Hm, good job solving my water problem," Spike was swarmed by them as they all began claiming it was their idea and how they should get to be held during sleep that night. Having not planned to give out rewards, Spike told them to line up by the gem pile so he could feed them and name them, and then they could discuss who slept where.

As they began lining up, Spike used his hand to scoop out the water at the bottom since they hadn't filled it up very much and sipped it. To his relief, it did not taste like spit, just water. Spike let out a relieved sigh before going back to the pile to start eating and pick out some gems for names.

Starlight was starting to sweat when Ocellus finally returned, "What took you so long?" Starlight demanded; Ocellus just sighed.

"Fluttershy insisted I drink some tea before coming back to help keep me energized in case your magic doesn't work inside the hive, and I have to teleport us both out along with Spike," Ocellus and Starlight held hands, and Ocellus opened the door, after a moment of nothing the two entered slowly, Ocellus took care to shut the door behind them before they ventured down the small hall, the sound of buzzing could be heard by the large entrance that was between the entrance and another one further down the hall, Ocellus and Starlight peaked in.

Ocellus took count and noted the pitifully small size of the hive, and having a proper moment to see them when not scuttling along the ceiling and walls of a cave, she took note of how pitifully small the changelings of the hive were themselves. Ocellus had been born small, and when she was old enough to begin work in the hive, she had remained small; even then, she was bigger than the ones in this hive. She vaguely recalled some very old and tiny changelings, telling her they were the ones who laid the groundwork for the hive.

"Starlight," Ocellus spoke with telepathy, something that only worked a short distance and usually only one way if the other person didn't also have the spell; Starlight, having been the one to teach Oellus, had it as well.

"You see him?" Starlight asked, having been trying to catch sight of Spike, walking about or stuck to the ceiling in a cacoon.

"No, but these Changelings are their mother's first generation, and judging by the size and shape of this hive, I don't think it existed yesterday,"

"Meaning?" Starlight failed to see what this had to do with getting Spike, and Ocellus was happy to tell her why it had everything to do with that.

"Meaning Spike might have been the one to wake the Queen up from hibernation, and if she was a queen without a hive, I doubt she'd risk trying to feed off a fire-breathing Dragon; she might have dragged him with her with the intent to do so but abandoned him somewhere in the cave system upon realizing he'd be to much trouble,"

"So Spike probably isn't in here," Starlight realized, "Still, the Queen's our best bet, at least in figuring out where he might have to been ditched, if we come back with just a dozen or so Changelings we should be able to get a surrender out of her and-" The sound of crunching drew Starlight's attention. Her train of thought died when she saw what was making the noise; Ocellus followed her gaze when Starlight stopped talking, and they both watched in stunned silence as they watched the Queen Changeling crunch down on Gem stones as though they were cookies.

As the Queen ate, two of her brood bit into her skin, and she kept eating without complaint; Starlight wanted to ask Ocellus what exactly was happening with that but received the opposite of answers.

"How the hell is she doing that?" Ocellus seemed sincerely baffled at the situation they were watching, "Changelings can't do that."

"Maybe she just used her powers to change her digestive system so-"

"We can change our bodies, sure, but we can't just eat gems like a dragon and then be satisfied like a dragon; it would fill our bellies, but it would burn more energy, physical and magical, than we could gain from it, and mess up our stomachs when the transformation eventual became too hard to maintain, even with that many gems she shouldn't be able to do that, much less while having other changing suck out her nutrients!"

Despite Ocellus deeming it impossible, the Queen Changeling continued to do so to such an effortless degree that she kept eating even when her children were done eating, holding up a few gems as she ate and speaking to them; she was too far away to properly hear, but they watched one of the Changelings change the color of her organic clothing to match the same shade of orange as the gem the Queen was holding and then skip away for a moment before taking to the air and joining the others in covering the walls.

"No signs of Spike," Ocellus declared after getting over the impossibility of what was happening before her. Ocellus magically scanned the partially built hive and found nothing indicating Spike had ever been within its confines, "Not now or ever, she never took him this far at least,"

"Let's go," Starlight took one last look at the Changeling and took note she seemed to be enjoying the gems before the two teleported out with a flash that sent the hive into a panic.

Smolder was waiting for them; Fluttershy had gone ahead to tell Sunburst to send in the reports of a rouge Changeling hive near Ponyville and call in both Twilight and Thorax for support on the matter.

"Bad news?" Smolder was slightly nervous about what their response might be.

"Spike never made it to the hive," Starlight informed her, "The hive itself is made up of one Queen and several Changelings that might as well be babies; far as we can tell, the Queen decided Spike was more trouble than he was worth and ditched him, deciding to use his gems as a food source over him.

Smolder was slack-jawed as she looked between them before pointing to Ocellus.

"No, I can't eat gems," Ocellus snapped back, "That Queen must be a different kind of Changeling, a subterranean type or something, I dunno. I'm not a scholar of Changeling history. Who knows what other hives were like? Maybe we only eat love because Chrysalis likes eating it or something and birthed us in such a way that we could only eat it so she could get more of it or something!" Ocellus shrugged at the idea, "I'm going home and taking a bath. Are you coming?"

"Come get us when Twilight gets here," Smolder requested of Starlight before being teleported away with Ocellus.

"Alright, Guess I'll pool the data and then go back on the hunt for Spike," Starlight sighed as she teleported herself back to her office to start making a map, her navigation spell having been stuck to all four members of the search, she hoped she would have a fair bit of it mapped out before Twilight arrived in a panic.

Author's Note

Trophallaxis is what the six were doing with the water, just in case anyone was curious about it. If you wanna know what that means, then I recommend watching AntsCanada or just looking it up