MLP x ALIENS: Feuding Hives

The beaming light of the sun shone all across the wide, welcoming land of Equestria. It was a beautiful, bright morning like any other. A flock of birds flew through the sky, over the thick, endless canopy of the Everfree forest. Miles and miles of unending treetops blanketed the landscape, only to soon give way to rolling foothills and enormous mountains of Equestria’s Badlands. All was silent in the air now, but only momentarily.

From the tallest mountain on the horizon, there began a loud, buzzing drone, and a steady stream of hundreds of little dots, that began to all fly off in different directions. This mountain was more than just a mountain, but rather, it was the pinnical of uncivilized, pre-civil engineering. A primitive structure like no other, both in purpose and in design: the hive kingdom of Queen Chrysalis, and her clan of Changelings.

The Hive was a sprawling supercity built into what used to be a mountain, a few miles South of the Equestrian Badlands, with dozens of massive, perfectly circular indents and holes carved directly into the rock face. It had taken around three years to complete, and now, it was home to Equestria’s oldest, most organized, most numerous, and most aggressive changeling colony. Two changelings pulled off from the massive swarm, then pulled northwest, toward the unknown.

The pair of changeling scouts flew gracefully through the air. Despite how rapidly their wings buzzed, neither of them had even broken a sweat. Attacus and Andrena, a pair of changelings, brother and sister, were renowned throughout their sector of the hive. There were even talks that these two would end up being head scouts someday, perhaps even royal guards.

“Keep up if you can, Attie,” Andrena called out playfully, making a rapid dive toward the forest below.

"Dammit, Andrena." The deep-blue eyes of the changeling furled inward with playful frustration as he rolled over and followed his sister in her dive. The air whizzed past his his face as he dropped rapidly, before extending his wings outward and slowly pulling into an angle parallel to the ground, buzzing his wings to keep his height.

Attacus may not have been nearly as good of a flyer as his sister, but what he lacked in flight skill, he made up for with his 20/20 vision. He scanned the horizon for anything other than the endlessly stretching trees.

"Anything yet, Attie?" His sister called back to him.

"Not yet," Responded Attacus with a shout. "Just trees, trees, and more fuckin' trees."

"Booooring!" Andrena shouted, turning to face her brother whilst flying backwards. "There's gotta be something out here other than trees!"

"If there is, I'm not seeing it."

Despite how fast the pair were screaming across the sky, time seemed to drag on ever-so-slowly. After about the first hours or so, scouting would get boring. The air seemed to have a still quietness to it, once one would get used to the loud, rhythmic thumping of changeling wings, and the howling of the wind.

Attacus looked up at his sister, who was cycling through different forms. First, a bird, then a fish with wings, then a hippogriff, and then finally back to her normal self. Attacus, despite being vastly different in personality from his sister, always had a certain appreciation for her. She was much, much different from the majority of the changelings in the hive. Whereas most changelings were always somewhat bitter, jumpy, and nervous, Andrena always had a sort of happy-go-lucky and approachable personality. Her friendliness, however, came at the cost of getting chewed out by her superiors and the royal guard. Even Queen Chrysalis had gotten onto her about it a few times, saying that her personality was "Too Friendly", and would get her badly hurt or even killed one day. Andrena, of course, never heeded these warnings. Attacus secretly wished he could be as carefree as his sister.

Attacus' thoughts were interrupted by a sudden, sharp gust of wind from the left, throwing him off-center briefly. He tumbled through the air for a few seconds, before regaining control. In those brief moments, however, Attacus spotted something off in the far distance, near where the forest ended and the mountains began. At first, Attacus believed it to be exactly that, a mountain. However, there was something distinct about it. Its shape looked much too deliberate to be a mountain. Attacus called out to his sister.

"Hey Andrena!"

The changeling dipped her wings, then swung up into a cobra maneuver, before buzzing her wings to hover in place, before turning to answer her brother.

"What's up?"

"Look over there," Attacus beckoned. "See it? Just past those mountains..."

Andrena turned her head, then smiled ear-to-ear.

"Right on," She said as she changed direction and dashed toward the massive structure in the distance.

"Damn it, Andrena," Attacus called out. "Wait for me!"

The two changelings zipped through the air, the cold wind biting at their exoskeletons. The closer they got to the structure, the more nervous Attacus became. By now, he could tell the structure had been put there, as opposed to being natural. However, it left him with more questions than answers. It didn't look as if it had been built by any civilized race he'd encountered, and more worryingly, it didn't look as if it had been built where it currently was, almost like...
Attacus' thoughts were once again interrupted, this time by his sister taking a steep dive. He followed suit, punching through the trees and coming to a hard landing on a large bundle of roots. He stood up, rubbing his head. By his guess, he had landed about a few dozen yards away from the mysterious structure. He could hear Andrena somewhere off to his right.

"Hey, Attie! I think I found a way inside!"

Attacus stood up, hovering through the dense foliage toward the source of his sister's voice. Upon emerging through a particularly thick bush, he spotted his sister, staring at a massive entrance to the structure. It looked like a long, phallic tube, with a large opening easily big enough to fit a bugbear, by his guess.
“Careful, Andrena,” Attacus called.

The eager little changeling slowed her pace, taking a moment to stare into the darkened chasm. Neither of the changelings had never seen anything quite like it before. Attacus' unease had intensified by now. He wanted to get out of here. Judging by the shadows on the ground, they had already used up about three quarters of their allowed scouting time.

“What do you think is in there, Attacus,” His sister inquired eagerly, trotting in place.

Attacus paused, his wings buzzing briefly as he thought of a reply to his sister.

“Don’t know…But it’s really dark…I don’t think there’s anything good in there…”

Andrena turned to face her brother, pouting with disappointment.

“C’mon, don’t be such a downer. I’m going in!”

Attacus' wings shot up and his eyes widened. “No wait, don’t--!“

His words fell on deaf ears as the changeling bounded gracefully past him, then buzzed her wings, disappearing into the darkened chasm. Attacus pranced nervously, before hesitantly following her inside.

Attacus' eyes struggled for a bit to adjust to the darkness, and he ended up bumping into the solid, bumpy, and oddly moist walls. After what felt like hours, his eyes began to adjust to the darkness, glowing to light his way along with his wings.

Once he saw the walls of the corridor he found himself in, he really wish they hadn't.

The walls were lined with stomach-churning patterns, like ribs. In the back of his mind, Attacus thought it resembled what he thought a skinned changeling hide would look like. His eyes finally landed on a familiar sight: his sister.

"Look at the walls," Andrena shouted, her wings twitching with excitement. She bounded gracefully from one wall to the next, admiring the eerie architecture. "It's like this place was, like, alive or something!”

Attacus turned away, the walls making his innards churn with unease. It was unsettling, to say the least.

"Yeah...Alive...Sure hope there's nothing in here that's…alive…this place gives me the creeps...Let's get out of here before something weird happens...It's getting late, Queen Chrysalis--"

"Chrissy this, Chrissy that," His sister interjected. "C'mon, Attie, you’ve been getting your tail in a twist about Chrissy all week! Let’s keep going, maybe there's something cooler deeper in here!"

Attacus gulped audibly. "D-Deeper?"

"Yeah, deeper! Now c'mon, let's keep looking," Andrena stated gleefully. "There's gotta be something in here. I mean, it's not every day you find something like this..." With that, she bounded through the empty halls, humming to herself. Attacus cringed with anxiety. As much as he admired how cheerful his sister was, he couldn't help but feel a sense of unease in this strange place, and an overwhelming dread of what lay ahead...