The Twin Queens

Chapters

Chapter 1: Stranger
Chapter 2: Friend?
Chapter 3: Homeless
Chapter 4: Nephila

Chapter 1: Stranger

I awoke with my lungs burning.

I was surrounded by pitch-black darkness, making it impossible to see anything. I tried to move my body, but it felt sluggish and barely responsive.

My lungs approached their limit, and I instinctively tried to breathe. Instead of getting some much-needed air, I inhaled a bunch of liquid. My insides burned as if they were on fire, and the fire rapidly grew in intensity and pain. I started to thrash about violently, my mind becoming flooded with feral panic.

No! Stop! Panic meant death! I desperately tried to reassert control over my own mind. I managed to put an end to my useless flailing, but I knew I only had seconds left before I lost consciousness due to suffocation. I needed to swim upward, immediately!

My thrashing and adrenaline seemed to have warmed up my body, since I had no trouble thrusting my legs to propel myself upward. However, I only traveled for a couple of inches before my head bumped into something.

The panic threatened to overwhelm me again as I realized I was trapped beneath some kind of object, and I just barely managed to force it back under control. I brought my arms forward to try to push the object out of my way, but I was surprised when I made contact with it. It was very soft and squishy.

There was no time to try to figure out what the thing was. The material felt quite weak, so I made the snap decision to try to break through it. I pulled my arm back to wind up for a punch, and I hit the object with all my might.

My arm pierced right through! As I pulled back for another go, I could see the faintest glimmer of light beyond the little hole I had made. My heart swelled with hope and renewed determination at the sight, and I took to repeatedly punching my way through the soft object with fury.

After a few more punches, the hole let in enough silvery light to be clearly visible. But my relief quickly turned to alarm as the light made it possible for me to notice that the edges of my vision had already faded to darkness. The darkness quickly spread toward the center of my field of view. I knew that meant I was on the verge of blacking out.

I didn’t know if the hole I made was big enough to fit through, but I had no choice. I used my legs to thrust myself up and into the hole in an attempt to force myself through it.

The edges around the hole brushed against my sides, but I easily pushed them apart and burst through the opening. I was utterly bewildered when I surfaced within the interior of some kind of wooden building instead of in the middle of the ocean, but I had no opportunity to spare any attention for what I saw.

My body immediately began to cough and gasp for air violently, simultaneously trying to clear my lungs of fluid while desperately trying to take in oxygen. I also felt my body shiver as it lost the protection of the warm liquid and was exposed to the chilly ambient air. I grabbed the top of the soft object for more stability as I continued to choke, and before I knew what was happening, I felt the sensation of tipping over and falling.

I hit the wooden floor hard, and I felt the liquid I had just been submerged in splash all over my back before quickly spreading out on the floor around me.

When I saw my arms laid out on the floor in front of me, I was hit with a jolt of shock even through my harsh coughs. Instead of the fleshy, off-beige, and slightly hairy arms I was used to, my arms were now pitch-black with several holes in them. And instead of ending in my hands, these arms ended in stubs of nothing.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. What was happening?

I decided to focus on surviving first and worry about that later. It was still very difficult to breathe, so I focused on trying to get all the fluid out of my lungs. I spent several exhausting minutes there on the ground just coughing, hacking, and choking, spitting a thick, viscous fluid out of my mouth a little bit at a time. After what felt like an eternity, I was finally able to take in a deep breath of fresh air.

My cough slowly began to die down as I started breathing normally. I felt myself grow relaxed after making it through that whole ordeal—probably from all the adrenaline finally leaving my body. I remained sprawled on the ground, simply breathing and resting.

When I was relatively calm, I figured it was time to face whatever the hell had happened to me. Ignoring it wouldn’t make it untrue. I dared to look and examine myself.

The pitch-black arms with holes in them were still there. They were covered in a thick layer of slimy goop that was starting to dry out and flake. I experimented with trying to move one of the limbs. I managed to do so naturally, as if I had used the limb all my life.

Next, I tried to bend the joints to see how they worked. The joints definitely felt different compared to my proper arm, but they bent easily and provided my new arm with a full range of motion in all directions.

I turned my arm around to look at the end of it. Instead of ending in nothing like I thought, the arm ended with some kind of structure similar to a hoof. Although it wasn’t any kind of hoof I had seen on any animals I was familiar with. There was a hard structure along the top and the sides which surrounded some recessed soft black flesh in the middle and bottom areas of the hoof. It looked very strange.

Shaking my head and moving on, I moved my hoof to poke against my other limb. Surprisingly, I could actually feel sensations through the hard part of the hoof. How did that work?

I decided not to worry about it.

The surface of my other limb felt hard and smooth to the touch, not at all like the soft and bouncy feeling of the skin that I was used to. I didn’t really know much about biology, but the substance seemed similar to insect chitin. The drying slime on top gave it a nasty feel and appearance though. I would need to find a way to clean it off.

Seeing these features jogged some long-buried memories. There was a TV show I had greatly enjoyed watching back when I was a teenager and in my early twenties. I had stopped paying attention to it after the show ended, and I had slowly forgotten about it as I focused on my career. But I was quite the intense fan back then, and those memories were quickly brought to the forefront.

I pushed my hoof against the floor to roll myself over onto my back. From this perspective, I could get a better look at the rest of my body and the… egg I just came out of. I shuddered slightly at the thought, but that confirmed it. I was a changeling from Friendship is Magic.

I laid there for a while, desperately trying to make sense of things. Why? How could this be possible? How could this be real? Was this real? Those thoughts and similar ones spun pointlessly in my head, all of which I could come up with no answer for.

My mind slowly fell silent as I recalled my last memories before I had woken up. In the cockpit of my airliner, my captain and I desperately fought against the control column in an attempt to save the aircraft. But it was no use. Our plane suddenly entered a steep 75° dive while we were at cruising altitude, and the sink rate was too high for us to have any time to properly go through checklists or do any thorough troubleshooting. The last thing I remembered was watching the aircraft’s nose slam into the surface of the ocean through the windshield as the GPWS blared.

We hit the water at a very high speed. I was certain there could’ve been no survivors.

Did this mean reincarnation was real? Why did I get reincarnated, out of all those people on the plane? I started to feel a sense of crushing guilt at my inability to save the lives of those hundreds of people who had put their trust in me as their pilot.

I laid my head back on the floor and closed my eyes as I tried to push all the self-loathing and guilt out of my mind. There would be time for blame and mourning later. I was currently in an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous situation. I had to pull myself together until I knew I was safe.

One thing I noticed about my new body that I couldn’t ignore was the painful pit where my stomach should be, as if I were constantly getting muscle cramps in that area. Was this what changeling hunger was like? I could put it out of mind for the time being, but something told me the pain would only get worse with time. I would need to find a source of love sooner rather than later.

For the moment, I figured I should finally get to examining my surroundings. I opened my eyes and stared up at the ceiling. Despite the darkness in the room—I hadn’t seen any windows—I could see the detail in the wood of the ceiling very clearly.

It had obviously seen better days. The wood was stained with splotches of mould, and some sections were rotting away with decay. It was bad enough that I was a little concerned about the ceiling coming down on me.

I rolled myself onto my abdomen and placed my hooves flat against the floor. A little shakily, I slowly extended my legs and pushed myself up until I stood for the first time. My hind legs felt very weird with their backwards knee joints, but standing up felt easier than I thought it would. My four-legged stance also felt a lot more stable than the two-legged one I was used to.

I continued my examination of the room, but there wasn’t all that much to see. The wooden walls were in the same state as the ceiling, all rotting and mouldy. I confirmed that there were no windows, but one wall had a beat-up wooden door within it that seemed about to collapse from a strong wind. There was no light coming through the gaps between the door and the frame, so perhaps it was nighttime.

I couldn’t see anything that looked like a light switch, and there were no light fixtures mounted on the ceiling or the walls. It seemed like I was stuck in the darkness for now.

I looked down at one of my forehooves as I carefully lifted it and then placed it down further away to the side. I didn’t feel like I was struggling to hold my balance while my foreleg was lifted, which was good. I cautiously continued the motions with the rest of my legs, slowly turning myself around to face the other side of the room.

This side of the room had a whole bunch of stuff in it. Most of it seemed to be broken and otherwise ruined wooden furniture such as desks, chairs, dressers, torn drapes, and various other things. They were all piled on top of each other in one corner of the room. The tower of junk almost reached the ceiling.

Was this place some kind of abandoned storeroom, then? I had expected to be in a changeling hive. Was I not? Why would a changeling put my egg here?

Either way, it didn’t look like I would find anything useful around here. Might as well go try that door.

As I was about to start turning myself back around, I thought I saw something move in the corner of my eye.

I froze. I stared at the spot within the junk pile where I thought I saw it, searching for any further movement. But it was even darker in the depths of the junk pile than it was out here, so it was hard to make anything out other than vague shapes and silhouettes.

My fight-or-flight instincts were primed and ready to jolt me into action as I continued to stare, although I had no confidence in my ability to do either of those things in my new body.

There! I saw it move again! I tensed as I waited for it to come leaping out at me.

But several moments later, nothing happened. What was it doing? Better yet, what was it?

Another movement. Still nothing. Was it just sitting there and wiggling?

Could I still talk with this body? One way to find out.

"Hello?" I asked, my voice hoarse and raspy as if I hadn’t used it for years. But then again, it was technically my first time ever speaking, so that made sense. I could also hear that distinctive changeling two-tone quality to it.

I gave a slight cough to clear my throat before trying again.

"Anyone there?"

No response.

A few moments later, there was another movement.

I was tempted to just turn around and leave, but a thought stopped me. What if it was one of the intelligent creatures of this world, like a pony or a changeling, that was trapped in there, couldn’t talk, and needed help?

I knew it was stupid. It was much more likely to be some dangerous animal. But I didn’t want any more blood on my hands. I couldn’t handle that. I decided that if I could help somebody, then I would.

I shakily lifted my foreleg—half out of fear and half out of unfamiliarity with my body—and began slowly making my way towards the wiggling thing in the junk pile. I kept my eyes trained on that spot the entire time. Thankfully, walking seemed pretty easy, and I took to it naturally. The stability of my four-legged stance helped me get used to it quickly.

The thing made a few more wiggling movements as I approached, but nothing more than that. When I got to the base of the junk pile, things were set to get a lot more tricky, as I would have to climb on top of the busted tables and navigate my legs around the various things lying around. I also lost sight of the wiggling thing, which was obscured by all the junk above and in front of me. I really hoped it wouldn’t suddenly jump out and get the drop on me.

I struggled to come up with a path forward as I stared at the big table in front of me. I didn’t have a clue how I would get on top of it until I remembered from the show that ponies could apparently grab things with their hooves.

I decided to give that a try.

I pushed myself onto my hind legs so I was standing upright and placed my forehooves flat onto the surface of the table. It was very difficult to keep balanced while standing on my hind legs like that, but I used the table to stabilize myself. I was just barely tall enough for the tips of my hooves to reach the top of the table. I then willed my hooves to grab on by thinking about it really hard. After that, I experimentally tried to tug at the table. I wasn’t strong enough to move the table, but I also didn’t go falling backwards. I had successfully held onto it, but I had no clue how that actually worked.

Satisfied with my grip on the table’s surface, I tried to pull myself up with my forelegs, but that was way more difficult than I had thought it would be. Imagine if a person never worked out and then they suddenly decided they wanted to do pull-ups—that was basically what I experienced. My foreleg muscles were very weak, and I grit my teeth and grunted with torturous effort as I slowly pulled myself up.

When I got to the point where my chest was above the table’s lip, I desperately tried to swing one of my hind legs over and onto the surface as I panted heavily. That was also more difficult than I thought it’d be because of the backwards knee joint, but I somehow managed it after several failed attempts.

I then used the leverage I had to roll my body up and onto the surface.

I lay there on my back, panting and feeling the burn in my forelegs as I rested. I hadn’t expected that to be such an ordeal, but I guess it made sense since my new body had never done any exercise before. I briefly wondered if it was worth it to continue, but that was an easy question to answer. If someone was in trouble up there, then it was.

I had a sudden curiosity overcome me—did changelings sweat? I didn’t feel sweaty. I brought one of my throbbing forehooves to feel my forehead for any dampness, but I didn’t feel anything except dried slime. Was the slime absorbing my sweat? If so, it would be wet again, wouldn’t it?

How did changelings regulate body temperature if they didn’t sweat?

Whatever. Not the time to be thinking about any of that.

As I was moving my forehoof away from my head, it softly bumped against my horn. I winced. The horn felt very sensitive, and even that small bump was enough to be a little painful. I would need to be extra careful not to injure it on anything in this junk jungle.

Honestly, I’d almost forgotten I had a horn. The prospect of eventually getting to do magic filled me with a type of childish excitement I hadn’t felt in years. But I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind as I rolled onto my hooves again.

I surveyed my path forward. Luckily, it didn’t look like I had to do another vertical climb like that again, which I was very glad for. The various pieces of broken furniture formed a kind of precarious staircase leading to the nook that the wiggling thing was located in. I should’ve been able to make it up there with some careful footwork and balancing.

Granted, I still wasn’t too confident in my ability to control fine movements in my body, but I didn’t think I could do another pull-up. At least the obstacles ahead seemed possible to overcome.

I also still couldn’t see the wiggling thing from my new angle. All I could do was continue to hope that it stayed where it was and didn’t come at me.

I started slowly working my way up the pile, placing my hooves carefully and only moving forward once I was sure I was balanced properly. I took my time to make sure I was safe and did everything I could to avoid a fall. An injury was the last thing I needed right now.

There were a few close calls where my shaky legs almost slipped, but a few minutes later I finally made it to the flat surface of a large table inside of what I could only describe as a small cave made out of broken chairs. This should’ve been the spot where I saw the wiggling thing.

I looked around and quickly spotted what could only be the darkened shape of a changeling egg hidden behind some chair legs. It seemed to be quite well hidden, but the movement I saw must have drawn my attention to it from afar.

The egg was taller and wider than I was. I could have easily fit inside it myself, which made sense, since I hatched from an egg just like it not even half an hour ago.

But this one was not broken open like mine was. It was still intact.

The egg had to be the wiggling thing. I watched it for a few moments, looking for movement to confirm my guess.

Yet no movement came.

Why? Was I wrong?

I craned my neck to look around for anything else that could’ve been moving.

There was nothing. No, the egg was the only living thing around. It was the only logical thing that could’ve moved.

I watched it some more. But still nothing.

Was it some sort of defence mechanism after sensing my presence?

I hesitantly took steps forward until I was within touching distance.

The egg was not covered with a hard shell. It was made of some kind of dark green goo that seemed firm but malleable. I knew from my own experience that the material could be broken through with some force.

A chilling thought hit me. When I woke up, I felt like I was drowning, and I had to struggle to punch a hole through the material. Was that what the wiggling I saw was? The occupant struggling to get through? Except… they failed? And now the egg wasn’t moving because they drowned?

I leaned in close, trying to see through the outer material and into the egg. But I couldn’t see anything. The egg was too opaque, and with the almost pitch-black darkness in the room, it was impossible to make anything out inside the egg other than blackness. Maybe if I had a powerful torch I’d be able to see through it, but I obviously did not.

I swallowed a lump in my throat. If the occupant failed to break through, I should try to help them. But then again, what if I was completely wrong? What if the egg wasn’t trying to hatch, and I broke the egg prematurely? Then I would be directly killing them.

And… I remembered hearing from somewhere that people shouldn’t try to help animals hatch from eggs. Something about animals needing to be strong enough to do it themselves and natural selection.

Except… this was an intelligent being, not an animal. Did they deserve to die just because they weren’t strong enough to break an egg? That didn’t sound right to me.

So what should I do? I squeezed my eyes shut. If the egg was not trying to hatch and I broke it, I’d be murdering somebody. But if they were trying to hatch, I’d be saving them. It all came down to whether or not they were trying to hatch. Which was correct?

I didn’t know, but I had to choose immediately. If they were drowning, they didn’t have any time to waste. If they were drowning, maybe… it was already too late to save them, since they stopped moving.

No, I couldn’t think like that. Life or death. Choose.

Why would the egg be wiggling if they weren’t trying to hatch? They were trying to hatch.

I snapped my eyes open and grabbed the opposite side of the egg with one of my forelegs. I made sure to hold it firm with my hoof’s gripping power so that it couldn’t move. I then pushed myself up onto my hind legs and used my grip on the egg to balance myself as I pulled my other foreleg back for a punch.

I hoped I wouldn’t hurt the occupant of the egg with my punches, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. All I could try was to penetrate as shallowly as possible.

I punched with about two-thirds of my strength, holding back some to try to control the penetration depth, but my hoof bounced off. I didn’t remember the details of my own hatching super clearly due to all the panic, but it felt like the egg’s material was a little harder from the outside than it was from inside my egg.

I pulled my foreleg back again and decided to go for broke. I gave my next punch as much strength as I could muster.

My hoof broke through the surface! I felt the warm slime of the egg’s innards with my hoof, but I knew that there was no cause for celebration yet. I pulled my hoof out of the egg with a squelch, and slime started running down the face of it from the hole. I lined my foreleg up again to widen the hole with more punches.

A few punches later, a good amount of the slime in the egg had made a big mess on the floor, and I could clearly see a big black mass floating in the slime that remained in the egg.

It wasn’t moving.

I wasted no time. I dove into the hole head first, reaching for the changeling with both of my forelegs. After curling my legs around their body, I used my hind legs to pull myself back out of the hole and take them with me.

I hurriedly lowered the changeling onto the slimy ground when we were clear of the egg. I put my ear up to their snout to listen for breathing and watched their chest for any rising and falling, but there was nothing.

Shit.

I pulled back. I observed their features while, in the back of my mind, I was busy thinking of what to do. The changeling looked sort of like a small version of Queen Chrysalis from the show, with a teal mane and soft abdominal section. A young queen changeling, then?

CPR. I was trained to do basic CPR, but I had never actually performed it on a real person before. Plus, I had no idea how to perform CPR on a person who had drowned. The airway had to be clear to perform proper CPR, but her lungs were filled with fluid. I didn’t know how to clear them. And her biology was completely different from a human’s. Would it even do anything useful?

Whatever. I knew it was over by that point, but I had to try something, or I’d hate myself even more. I got into position beside her and placed both my forehooves on her upper chest.

I started chest compressions, pushing down hard and counting them in my head.

One, two, three, four … thirty.

I stopped and quickly moved over to her head, sliding one forehoof underneath the back of her neck to tilt her head back. I used the other forehoof to open her mouth, after which I tried to pinch her nose closed. It was hard to pinch anything with a hoof, so I probably wasn’t successful, but screw it. I placed my lips to hers, trying to ensure a good seal, and then I breathed a deep exhale into her mouth. I turned my head to the side, took a deep inhale, and then gave her another rescue breath.

I quickly moved back to the chest compressions. One, two, three…

I wasn’t feeling or hearing any ribs break. I was told during my training that if you’re not breaking ribs, you’re not doing compressions hard enough. But I was pressing as hard as I could, and I didn’t know if changelings had ribs anyway. They probably didn’t, so I guessed I was doing it properly.

… thirty.

Two more rescue breaths, and then back to another cycle of compressions.

I was already starting to get tired. CPR was well known to be exhausting, but I’d already decided that I wouldn’t stop until I literally dropped, even though I knew it was hopeless.

I continued doing cycles, and I’d lost count of how many I’d done at some point. I was quickly getting weaker from fatigue, which made my compressions less effective as time went on. That certainly didn’t help anything.

In the middle of my latest set of compressions, the changeling suddenly started coughing violently. I was so shocked I stumbled backwards and fell on my ass, unsure of what was happening.

My eyes widened as I realized, but there was no time to process things. I scrambled back to my hooves and rushed back to her side before using my forelegs to swiftly roll her over onto her side and hold her there. If she stayed on her back she would choke on the fluid in her lungs as she tried to spit it out. On her side, the fluid could drain to the floor.

The feeling of intense fear hit me like a ton of bricks, causing me to recoil. I didn’t know what was happening, but I suddenly felt utter panic, terror, and hysteria. My body shook violently as I turned my head back and forth in a frenzy, looking desperately for any threats.

I didn’t see anything, but I wanted to sprint out of there immediately regardless. I looked down at the coughing changeling as I thought of abandoning her and running, but I kicked myself when I was reminded of her condition. Miraculously, she came back to life. I had to make sure she survived now.

I shifted to stand protectively over her, one hind leg on either side of her body while my forelegs still held her on her side. I continued to swivel my head around, scanning for threats.

As I slowly got used to the surge of fear, my clarity of thought began to return. Why was I so afraid? I didn’t remember anything dangerous that could have triggered such a reaction. If anything, I should’ve been relieved and joyful.

I glanced at the little queen with a questioning look.

It had been such a long while, I definitely didn’t remember all the lore of Friendship is Magic. But… I thought there was something about changelings being able to sense emotions. No… I didn’t think that was ever mentioned in the show. Or was it? Maybe? Was it a fan theory? I wasn’t sure, but it made sense, since I knew they fed on love. I was certain I remembered that fact correctly.

Either way, there were many reasons for her to be terrified out of her mind at the moment. Was I feeling her fear?

After adding to the puddle of slime on the floor with the stuff from her lungs, her coughing had finally died down. She slowly turned her head to face me. She stared up at me with beautiful eyes of brilliant jade with slit pupils in the middle. I felt the fear intensify sharply.

Wait. Was she afraid of me?

Huh?

Chapter 2: Friend?

I stared into the little queen’s gorgeous green eyes for several moments, frozen in shock.

I didn’t understand. Why would she be afraid of me?

I blinked as I realized I was still holding onto her with my forehooves. If she was scared of me, that probably made her even more afraid. I let her go and put my forehooves down to either side of her.

She made no movements of her own even after I released her, though. She simply stared up at me, fear constantly flowing from her like an open faucet.

I took a moment to evaluate the situation for clues on why she might be afraid of me, which led me to realize that my current position probably didn’t make me look friendly. I was straddling her, my legs planted wide on either side of her body. I wanted to protect her from any threats, but instead she must’ve felt as if I were boxing her in and leering down at her.

I decided to back away and give her space, but I needed to do so without any sudden movements that could startle her.

I slowly picked up my foreleg in preparation to walk backwards, but her eyes jumped to it as it lifted, along with a sharp spike of fear. She seemed to curl herself up, and I froze.

Did she think I was going to strike her? Why?

"I’m not going to hurt you," I said, trying to speak in a calming tone.

Her gaze snapped to my face again at the sound of my voice. The fear didn’t recede.

"Can you understand me?" I asked, slowly and deliberately. "Can you talk?"

She simply stared.

Right… she was literally just born. Why would she understand language?

I wracked my brain for a few moments, trying to think of something that would help. The sharing of emotions had to be a two-way street, right? I was currently feeling her fear as if it were my own, although after being exposed to it for a while I had a decent grasp on keeping it from affecting me. It helped a lot to recognize that the fear didn’t actually come from me.

The question was: could I make her feel something? If I could send her feelings of calm and safety, maybe that would show her that she had no reason to fear me.

But her fear was so overpowering. How could I make her feel my good feelings through such intensity?

I had no idea what I was doing, but maybe the answer would come from this magical connection we shared with each other. Because it couldn’t be anything other than magic, right? I tried to visualize the place where all the fear was entering my mind from. Taking the analogy of a faucet from earlier, the magical connection would be the pipe feeding that faucet. Could I send my own emotions back up the pipe?

Even though I was excited about getting to do magic, when faced with a situation actually involving it, for some reason I felt incredibly silly thinking about how it might work. Just this morning I would’ve sworn that magic wasn’t real and anyone who believed in it was crazy. But here I was.

I concentrated on trying to feel my way up the metaphorical pipe, hoping to get direct access to the emotions in the little changeling’s mind. Maybe if I planted the calming feelings directly at the source, she’d be able to notice them.

Whatever I was doing seemed to be working, and my connection with her seemed to grow stronger. As a side effect, that also meant the fear I was feeling from her grew in potency the closer we became. I had to use a lot of my willpower to force myself not to react to that fear, and I started repeatedly reminding myself that those feelings were not mine.

After an arduous process where my method was to basically just grasp at straws and see what would happen, it seemed like I finally reached the source of the connection—the queen’s mind. The panic and terror swirled around in this place like a maelstrom, and I had to suppress my body’s desire to tremble.

I prepared to implant as many feelings of friendliness and safety as I could muster directly into the storm of violent negativity. It was quite difficult to summon those calm feelings due to her continuous outpouring of fear, but I had to try my best regardless.

Before I enacted my plan, however, I noticed something else within the queen. I could only describe it as a different section, of sorts, that contained some kind of energy which drew me towards it. I couldn’t resist experimentally poking that energy.

A jolt of pure bliss, warmth, and happiness shot through my body, and I felt newly energized as if I had downed a shot of the strongest espresso imaginable.

At the same time, the queen let out a sharp gasp in the physical world. I refocused my attention to her in time to see tears start to pool up in the corners of her eyes and then run down her cheeks. Intense feelings of despair, hopelessness, and resignation flooded into my mind. The emotions were so bad I felt like I wanted to break down and start crying then and there.

I fought through the feelings in order to think clearly. Was the energy I absorbed from her love energy? Did I just invade a small child’s mind and steal her food right out of her body?

The thought of what I had done made me feel sick. I was not willing to accept the excuse that I had no idea what I was doing. I needed to fix things.

I found her pool of love energy again, but this time I made sure not to connect with it directly. If I was correct, I should’ve also had one just like it inside myself. I directed some attention to looking within, and since I already knew what to look for, I found it easily.

What I found troubled me. If I were to approximate the amount of love energy in my own—love reservoir? I guess that was an okay thing to call it. The energy in my love reservoir was about the volume of a filled bathroom sink. But the energy in the little queen’s reservoir would’ve been hard-pressed to make a small puddle in the middle of a street.

Why did she have so little? She must’ve been in so much pain from her hunger. I didn’t know what happened when a changeling ran out of love completely, but I could give a pretty good guess. Was that the reason why she wasn’t strong enough to break out of her egg?

I attached my love reservoir to our magic emotional connection and tried to somehow force my love into the pipe. After a few failed attempts, I managed to get my magic to do what I wanted it to do and my love started to get pumped away.

My instincts immediately began to scream at me. I needed to stop and get away, or I’d die! I was killing myself! The process was unpleasant and actually painful. I felt like my life energy was being sucked out of me and disappearing forever. The dull pit of pain in my stomach—which I had easily ignored up until now—was brought to the forefront of my mind as the pain quickly became intense. It felt as if my insides were being subjected to a blender.

I almost gave in to what my body was telling me and stopped, but I grit my teeth and furiously stamped those instincts down. I was simply providing for a helpless child, and pain wouldn’t stop me.

When about two-thirds of my love reservoir was gone, I stopped the transfer. I breathed a sigh of relief as my body stopped screaming. The intensity of the pain in my stomach subsided, but it settled down to a much more painful level than it was previously, to the point where it was somewhat difficult to ignore.

I double-checked the queen’s love reservoir to make sure she successfully got the love. Luckily, nothing went wrong, and she had everything I gave her. I hoped that would last her for a decent while.

I pulled my will away from her mind, having had enough of invading it.

I turned my attention back to the physical world to find the queen staring at me with wide eyes and a slightly open jaw. I could see her little fangs poking out from just behind her lips.

At least she wasn’t crying anymore, which was great. Nor did she seem to be terrified of me any longer. The emotions she was emitting currently consisted of surprise and lots and lots of confusion. She was extremely confused.

So was I, to be honest. I had just fed her. What was there to be confused about?

Whatever. She was no longer trembling as if I was about to murder her, so that was progress. I was happy with that.

I figured it was finally time to give her some space. Her eyes tracked my foreleg again as I lifted it to walk, but I was glad that there was no outpouring of fear this time. I quickly took several steps backwards to give her room to get up, but I remained nearby in case she needed help.

She didn’t seem to be in a hurry to move, though.

I recognized that she couldn’t understand me, but I knew from my experience raising my kids back home that it was important to talk to babies so they could imitate their parents’ language and learn it. Did changelings learn language in the same way? She was obviously way more intelligent at this stage than any human baby, so I wasn’t sure.

In any case, I felt like I wanted to talk to her.

"Are you feeling okay?" I asked. I used a soft tone of voice so as not to startle her.

She responded by closing her jaw and blinking.

"Does your chest hurt?" I used my forehoof to point at my own upper chest area. I was concerned that the CPR I performed on her would have left her with a lingering injury.

She briefly looked down at her chest, and then back up at me. She still felt very confused, and continued to lie there without moving.

Well… this was awkward.

At a loss for what to do, I looked around at our surroundings. After spotting a pile of discarded curtains nearby, I had an uncertain idea. I wanted to use the curtains as a towel to wipe all that slime off of her, but I wasn’t sure she would appreciate being touched by me.

Although she seemed to have gotten over her fear for whatever reason. Maybe it’d be fine? If I felt her get scared again, I could just back off.

Might as well try.

"Be right back," I said.

I started making my way to the curtain pile, and I felt her gaze follow me the entire time. She was watching me like a hawk.

But if that was what she needed to do to feel safe, I didn’t mind it.

When I arrived at the pile, I wasn’t entirely sure how I should pick the stuff up to bring it back. Bunching it all up in my forelegs and then walking back on my hind legs was probably not possible with my shaky balance.

In the show, ponies were often depicted as picking things up with their mouths. My human sensibilities found that idea disgusting. But would that be my only option here? I had no clue how to work my magic to do telekinesis.

I craned my neck to look at my back. Sure enough, I had two thin and membranous insect wings back there, laying flat against my carapace. As someone who had gotten into aviation due to my love of flight and the sky, the prospect of one day being able to fly using my own body unaided by any machines brought me an indescribable amount of joy. It was something I had dreamed of doing ever since I was a young boy.

But I didn’t know how to use those wings at the moment, so I wouldn’t be able to hold the curtains in my forelegs as I hovered off the ground. Unfortunately, my dream would have to wait a little while longer.

It seemed like I’d have to give in and use my mouth to drag the curtains back. Yuck.

I leaned down to bite into the fabric, making sure to use my teeth as much as possible and definitely avoiding touching it with my tongue. I then began to make my way back to where the queen was, dragging the train of curtain behind me over the furniture.

I felt her confusion grow stronger as I returned to her. Her lips were pressed into a line and her eyebrows were scrunched together as she watched me. She was clearly baffled by what I was doing, which I thought was pretty amusing.

I stopped before I reached the puddle of slime on the floor—I didn’t want to get the curtain dirty if I was going to use it to wipe the queen off—and then I spat the fabric out.

"I’m back," I said.

She still hadn’t moved at all from her spot lying on the floor in the slime.

I put on what I hoped was a friendly and gentle smile and beckoned her with a foreleg.

"Come here," I said. "I’ll help you get cleaned up."

She just blinked and continued staring. Did she not get it?

I tried to project feelings of care towards her while I beckoned her some more.

I felt a trickle of anxiousness, uncertainty, and a little bit of fear get mixed into the stream of confusion coming from her. Luckily it was nowhere near the amount of fear she felt previously, but it was there all the same. Was she starting to understand what I wanted her to do?

I thought it’d be important not to rush her and let her decide to approach me on her own time. Kind of like meeting a new pet cat. Wait patiently while they decided to come over to you and let them sniff you before you touched them.

I projected as many feelings of warmth and safety as I could while I waited for her. I had no idea if she was even receiving my emotions or if they were effective at calming her down, but I kept at it in case they did help.

"Come on," I said softly. "I want to help you. I won’t hurt you."

The queen’s anxiety swelled, but eventually she rolled over onto her belly. Naturally, she kept her eyes focused on me while she moved, and her movements were slow and cautious.

She got her hooves under her and hesitantly stood up.

"Good job," I told her with a big smile on my face, feeling genuinely proud of her. "Now walk this way."

I beckoned her towards me.

Each time she took a reluctant step in my direction, her anxiety would grow a little more. But at least she wasn’t running away, which I was pleased with. I simply stood there and waited for her patiently.

She stopped a few steps away from me before straightening her legs and back. She fixed me with a firm glare, looking right into my eyes. Was she trying to appear tough and unafraid? I still felt the anxiety roiling within her, but I had to admit she did a really good job of not showing it on the outside. I found the whole thing to be absolutely adorable.

"You made it," I told her, feeling happy for her. "It must’ve taken a lot of courage not to run away. Thanks for trusting me. Although I still don’t know why you’re so afraid of me."

She didn’t respond, but I didn’t expect her to.

"You’re covered in slime from your egg right now," I said. I looked down at myself before chuckling. "And I’m a mess too. Do you mind if I touch you to wipe it off? I promise I won’t hurt you."

She tilted her head to the side and scrunched her muzzle. What did that mean?

"Slime," she said slowly, trying to sound the word out.

My eyes widened. She spoke!

"Yes, slime," I said excitedly. "Do you know what slime is?"

"Slime," she repeated.

Oh, was she just repeating me after hearing me say the word?

I pointed with my foreleg to the puddle behind her. "Slime."

She seemed hesitant to take her eyes off me to look at where I was pointing, but I waited patiently. Eventually she turned her head to take a quick peek before snapping her eyes back to me.

"That is slime," I said.

She didn’t say anything back. I hoped she understood enough to learn something.

Deciding to move on, I lowered myself to sit down on my haunches. It was my first time sitting like this, and the position felt quite weird, but I needed to have my forelegs free to do anything useful. I reached down and grabbed one end of the curtain with a forehoof.

The queen had positioned herself out of my reach, so I needed to get closer to her before I could clean her up. But I figured it probably wasn’t a good idea to walk at her myself, so I decided to coax her to come to me again.

I beckoned her with my free foreleg, but she seemed unwilling to move any closer.

I held up the curtain for her. "It’s just fabric. See? Nothing to be scared of. Come."

She still didn’t budge, and she was looking at me strangely.

"Please?" I said. I tried to send her my thoughts of wishing she would come closer. But I was pretty sure our connection could only share emotions, not thoughts, so I doubted she got anything.

She bit her bottom lip with her little fangs, and her anxiety skyrocketed to heights just under to when she first woke up. Oh no, was I scaring her away?

Shakily, she picked up her foreleg and stepped closer. Then she stepped closer again. I was surprised she wasn’t backing away. When she entered the range where I could touch her if I extended my forelegs, she began to tremble slightly, but she still stepped closer as she held my gaze. Her fear had gone high up there.

She stopped right in front of me, basically muzzle to muzzle, standing tall and looking down into my eyes, yet shaking. I could feel the warm breath from her nose tickle the tip of my snout when she exhaled.

I couldn’t help but think that her reactions seemed like some kind of emotional trauma with getting close to people, but she was born not even a half hour ago. What kind of trauma could she have had? She definitely couldn’t have been remembering the CPR, as she was technically dead while I was doing it.

I had zero training in psychology, so I was stumped. All I knew was from my experience as a parent. If my kids were terrified of something to the point of shaking, they likely wanted comfort and hugs. But I was the source of fear for her, so I wasn’t sure that was a good idea.

I needed some way to show her I wasn’t a threat while also not doing anything she would be alarmed by.

What if I tried nuzzling her? Ponies liked nuzzles, right?

I cautiously brought my muzzle closer to the crook of her neck, making sure to move deliberately so she could see what I was doing. The storm of fear within her grew, but she stood stock still.

I gently pressed the tip of my nose against her chitin, causing her to give a soft gasp at the contact. The drying slime was cool to the touch and slightly tacky. I was sure her chitin would’ve felt a million times more pleasant without the slime in the way.

Regardless, I slowly began to rub my nose up and down in the crook of her neck in what I hoped were soothing motions. I had never nuzzled someone before, so I had no idea if what I was doing was correct.

Thankfully, after a few moments, I felt the queen’s anxiety begin to decline rapidly, and her body stopped trembling.

"Shh," I whispered, deciding to add some soft words while I nuzzled her. "It’s okay. You’re safe. I’ll protect you."

Eventually her fear and anxiety dropped to almost nothing, and I pulled back to look at her face. Her gaze locked on to mine and her eyes flicked to and fro, seeming to be searching for something.

"Feel better?" I asked.

She blinked, and a moment later she responded.

"Feel?" she said.

I chuckled. "Yes. Feel."

She made a humming sound. I didn’t know what that meant, but I wanted to get on with wiping her down, so I showed her the curtain in my forehoof again.

"I’ll use this to wipe away the slime on your body," I explained. "Just back away if you’re uncomfortable and want me to stop, okay?"

"Slime," she said.

I nodded. "You remembered slime. Very good."

"Feel slime," she said.

I couldn’t help but grin. She reminded me of my kids learning to talk. Of course, her rate of development was insane, but it was still extremely endearing.

I once again moved deliberately as I brought my forehoof wrapped in cloth up to her cheek. I’d start with her face, and then work down from there. I felt a tiny bump in anxiety as my forehoof touched her, but it was pretty minuscule this time.

Was she finally beginning to trust me? That would make me very relieved. I hated seeing her afraid of me.

I was sure to be gentle as I dragged the fabric over her chitin, making sure not to rub too hard or press with too much force. I especially took extra care around her eyes, nostrils, and mouth, ensuring that none of the gunk got into any of those sensitive places. With every wipe, I moved the fabric over to a new clean spot. Otherwise I would just be smearing the stuff around, not cleaning it.

When I got to her horn, I made sure to just barely touch it. I knew how sensitive her horn was, and I didn’t want to hurt her. It was difficult to clean the slime off it while only being able to apply the slightest hints of pressure, but I managed with some effort.

The queen seemed to approve of my care with her horn a lot, because by the time I was done with it her anxiety and fear had disappeared completely. Some of the confusion had returned, but what I was mostly feeling from her at the moment was something approaching appreciation.

I wasn’t sure what caused this sudden 180 from absolute terror to feeling positive about me, but I was happy to see it nonetheless.

After I finished her face and horn, I started working my way down her neck, then her front chest area, and then her forelegs. I picked up one foreleg at a time with my free forehoof for easier access to the holes in her legs. It was tricky getting the fabric to wipe within the holes, but I did the best I could even if I ended up missing some spots in the end. I also made sure to properly wipe behind her knee joints.

I then turned her forehoof over to clean underneath it, making sure to get the slime out of the soft fleshy frogs in the middle.

When the forelegs were done, I moved to her mane. Thankfully it wasn’t super long, only coming down to about chin height, but there was also no way I could give it a proper cleaning using only the curtain.

I gently ran the fabric over the hair, careful to avoid any painful pulls against her scalp. That seemed to get rid of the slime on the surface, but many of the hairs were still tangled and glued together. I couldn’t do anything about that until I found a bath and a comb, so I decided to leave it be for now.

I had to stretch up uncomfortably to reach her ears. She didn’t help me out by leaning down or anything. She just continued to stand still. But once I managed to reach them, they were easy to wipe down.

Seeing as I was done everything I could reach from her front, I stood up and made to walk to her side. But as I did, she rotated with me in order to keep facing me.

I kicked myself for overlooking this scenario. I probably should’ve figured she wouldn’t be comfortable with me being behind her where she was most vulnerable.

I stepped closer and softly pressed the tip of my nose against her’s before giving it a gentle rub. She didn’t react negatively at all this time, which I felt was a good sign of progress.

"You’re safe, remember?" I asked quietly. "I promised I would protect you. You have nothing to worry about."

I felt the steady breaths from her nostrils roll across the chitin on my face. She seemed calm, and I couldn’t feel any anxiety from her. I brought up my forehoof and started pressing with a soft pressure on her shoulder, trying to coax her to turn her side to me.

She seemed to realize what I wanted her to do, because I felt a small rise of uncertainty and worry as her big eyes stared searchingly into mine. I gave her another sympathetic nose rub to help assuage her.

Eventually she gave in to my coaxing and warily turned to the side. I was certain she wouldn’t have done something like that just a little while earlier, so I was glad she was choosing to trust me. She definitely felt a little anxious, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as before.

I didn’t want to make this any harder on her than it needed to be, so I decided to hurry up and spend as little time at her sides as possible. She was craning her neck back to watch me, but that didn’t seem to be much of a comfort to her.

I started with her delicate insect wings, taking extra care not to bend or pinch the membrane as I wiped the slime off their top surfaces. Then I used my free forehoof to ever so softly lift the wings up so I could get at their bottom surfaces, and then the carapace on the back underneath the wings.

The queen seemed more uncomfortable than ever with me touching her wings, so I finished up as fast as I could. After that, it was fairly straightforward to wipe down the sides of her barrel, her thorax, and then her abdomen.

I moved to her hind legs, using the same process I did with her forelegs to clean out the holes, and then guiding her to extend one leg at a time so I could clean the undersides of her hooves and frogs.

Finally, I did her tail, which I gave the same treatment as her mane. It was left in a similar state, still tangled and somewhat gooey, but there was still nothing I could do about it without some proper cleaning supplies.

Relieved that I managed to finish with no further incidents, I made my way to stand in front of her again.

"All done," I said. "This is the best I can do for now. Do you feel better without all that slime on you?"

I was surprised when she took her eyes off me to examine herself. I hadn’t expected her trust to have progressed that far yet, but I was happy to see that it did.

She felt around on her chitin with a forehoof, and then she raised her wings and flapped them rapidly like a bee or a fly.

I was jealous of her ability to control her wings like that. I doubted I could do the same myself. I’d have to find some way to ask her to show me how to do it.

Apparently pleased with her inspection, she looked back at me with a small smile on her lips. I couldn’t help but smile back, and I was suddenly hit with a cocktail of strong emotions I was hardly prepared for. All of them were positive. It was hard to pick individual feelings out of the medley, but I thought I felt some hints of happiness, relief, appreciation, and satisfaction. There were probably more emotions involved, but they were all mixed together and I was brand new at the whole emotion-sensing thing, so I couldn’t distinguish them.

The queen raised her foreleg and pointed it at me.

"Slime," she said.

I looked down at my chest, then chuckled.

"You’re right," I said. "I’m still slimy."

The slime on my chitin had long since dried out, covering me with a thin layer of crust lined with cracks. It seemed to peel off easily when I touched a forehoof to it.

Noting that the curtains still had some unsoiled spots left, I used them to quickly and roughly rub the stuff off my body. I spared no care to gentleness except for when I did my horn and wings. As a result, what had taken me many minutes to do for the queen had taken me barely a minute to do for myself. My job was also probably a lot sloppier than what I had done for her, but whatever.

I lamented when my own teal mane and tail were also left in gooey states after I ran the fabric over them. I thought it was quite gross to leave them like they were, but I knew I had no choice at the moment, so I would have to ignore the icky feelings until I could take care of them properly.

Now that we were both relatively clean—for a given definition of ‘clean’—and the queen seemed to have gotten over her inexplicable fear of me, I wondered what I should do next. I had come rushing up here on nothing but a whim of stupidity, after all, and I certainly did not expect any of the events that had just occurred.

I decided on one thing for certain. I absolutely did not want to go off on my own and abandon the queen to her own devices. Despite our rocky start, I found her quite charming and adorable, and taking care of her reminded me of taking care of my own children when they were babies and toddlers.

No, I would be sticking together with her.

Maybe it was shallow and indicative of some kind of coping mechanism or savior complex, but I didn’t care. As soon as I was sure of my decision, I felt filled with purpose. When I woke up here, I lost my whole world. I was dead, and I had nothing. But now I could at least take care of this weak and scared little child. Make sure she grew up fed and healthy.

That thought brought me to the topic of parents. Where were my parents? Her parents? Why were our eggs placed in a rotting storage room, and not in a changeling hive? Were we abandoned? Why?

I shook my head. It was important not to jump to conclusions just yet. Maybe our parents would show up soon to check on us. There could’ve been a good reason why they weren’t able to bring our eggs to a hive.

I looked at the queen across from me, who by this point had sat down on her haunches while she watched me stare off into space. I couldn’t help but feel a sudden sadness as I looked at her. She blinked her eyes rapidly, perhaps in response to feeling my emotions.

Regardless of these hypothetical parents’ intentions, they were downright negligent. She would have died in her egg if I wasn’t there to save her, and I was only able to do so because I reincarnated. If I was just a normal changeling without any memories of a past life, she would have had no one to help her. I strongly felt like that situation could have been avoided if we were in a proper hatching place like a hive, or if at least our parents stayed with our eggs to watch over us. The fact that they weren’t here meant that they didn’t care.

If these parents did show up, I would give them a piece of my mind.

But for the moment, it was probably better to stay put and wait for them even if they were incredibly irresponsible. I felt that it would be more beneficial in the long run to be part of a large group like a changeling society compared to running off on our own, and our parents would provide us with a way into that society.

Still, I didn’t know how long the wait for our parents to show up would be, and I didn’t want to keep referring to the queen as ‘her’ and ‘the queen’ all the time.

I imagined it was quite insulting to steal the right to name a child from their parents. I knew I would be very upset for sure if some random stranger had named my children before I could do so. But I was there for my children’s births, and our parents weren’t there for ours. In fact, I was there for the queen’s birth too. I even saved her life.

So I wanted to name her.

What were good changeling names? I recalled all the ones I could remember from Friendship is Magic: ‘Chrysalis,’ ‘Thorax,’ and ‘Pharynx.’ They all had a buggy theme.

I didn’t know anything about bug biology, so all I could go off of was the sound of them. I definitely didn’t want to reuse a name either. What sounded buggy and unique?

I spent some time thinking about it. While I was staring off into space, I saw the queen tilt her head at me and lean forward curiously. She was probably wondering what the hell I was doing just sitting there for such a long time.

I shot her a quick smile. "Don’t worry. I’ll give you attention soon. I just need to finish thinking about something important."

While I was at it, I decided I should probably think of a name for myself as well. I thought about reusing my old name, but I realized that I had to face reality. The old me was dead. I was no longer the human being I once was. No longer that person. And I would never be going back home. If I used my old name, every time someone addressed me by that name it would be a painful reminder of what I’d lost. My family, my friends, and my job that I loved. I would simply be torturing myself. There was no reason to do such a thing.

So I had to move on and pick a new name for the new me. I was a changeling now, so I also needed a changeling name.

After wracking my brain for more than a few minutes, I came up with two names that I was satisfied with. Both of them sounded buggy, unique, and fitting for each of us. Or at least I thought so.

I turned my attention to the queen, who was currently lying on her stomach with her chin resting on her forehooves and staring off into space herself. She was obviously bored out of her mind, and I gave a silent apology.

"Hey," I whispered, keeping my voice low so as not to startle her.

Her eyes snapped to me, and she immediately sat up, as if eager to go and do something.

I gave her a smile and pointed a forehoof to my chest.

"Thysbe."

She tilted her head.

"Thysbe," I repeated. "Say it with me. Thysbe."

She hesitated, feeling uncertain. I nodded at her to encourage her.

"T-" she stuttered. She seemed to have trouble with pronouncing it and moved her mouth silently for a moment.

"Thybe," she finally said.

I chuckled. I probably should’ve picked an easier name.

"I guess that’s close enough," I said. "We can work on it."

I didn’t really mind if she butchered it though. It was amusing.

I softly planted a forehoof onto her chest and held her gaze.

"Nephila."

Chapter 3: Homeless

Our parents never showed up.

It had been several days since Nephila and I hatched from our eggs, and we hadn’t seen a single person enter our storage room.

It wasn’t like we missed each other either. I made sure to stay put and never even went outside. Nephila just followed me around like a puppy and never went anywhere on her own, so it was easy to get her to stay inside the room too.

Meaning if anyone cared to come get us, we would’ve been waiting for them. But nobody came.

Those thoughts and other vague feelings of frustration and indignation at the situation I was in floated around in my half-awake mind as I blinked my eyes open. It was quite difficult to tell the time in our room due to the lack of windows, but I could tell it was morning because of the bright light leaking through the crack at the bottom of the old wooden door.

I felt a slight shift against my chest, and then a warm breath rolled over the chitin in the crook of my neck. I gently rubbed my chin against the top of Nephila’s head to nuzzle her.

When it was time to go to sleep on the night of our hatching, Nephila became anxious again. I prepared some basic bedding for both of us by folding up some clean curtains to use as pillows and blankets, but she kind of panicked when I placed her bedding beside mine and showed her what it was for. After that, she insisted on dragging her sheets to the other end of the room and sleeping as far away from me as possible.

I figured that the anxiety was a lingering symptom of her fear of me. She must have felt especially vulnerable at the prospect of sleeping near me. So I decided I’d leave her be and let her do what she needed to do to feel safe.

On the second night, I abided by her preferences and prepared our beddings on the opposite sides of the room from each other. As I was settling down, however, I was surprised to see her walk over to my side. I was shocked when, without any warning, she got under my sheets beside me and grabbed me with her legs to cuddle up to me.

I tried to coax her into using her own bedding if she wanted to sleep nearby, or at least to give me some personal space. But she wasn’t having it, and she quickly fell asleep while latched on to me.

From that second night onward, Nephila refused to fall asleep unless she was sharing the bed with me and snuggling me, despite my attempts to convince her otherwise. She was very stubborn. So by this point, I had given up on fighting it.

I nuzzled the top of her head again.

"Nephy, it’s morning," I said softly.

"Mmmh," she hummed sleepily.

I was amazed to learn that Nephila didn’t really have the lack of discipline commonly found in children. She wouldn’t make excuses to try to sleep in longer than she should and wouldn’t avoid doing things she didn’t want to do. I knew I wouldn’t have to tell her to wake up again, so I simply lay there and continued to slowly nuzzle her while I waited for her brain to boot up.

A few moments later, she pulled her face back to look into my eyes.

"Hi Thybe," Nephila said, giving off a feeling of simple happiness. "Good sleep?"

I couldn’t resist smiling at how cute she was.

Of course, I hadn’t wasted the days waiting for our parents by doing nothing. I was teaching Nephila how to speak and read and write. Her rate of progress was still utterly mind-blowing to me. In just a few days, she’d reached approximately the ability of a two- to three-year-old human toddler.

"Good enough," I replied. "How about you, Nephy?"

Nephila yawned. I scrunched my muzzle as I got a view of her wide open mouth and her morning breath.

"Good," she said when she was done.

"That’s good. We have a lot to do today."

The hunger pains in my stomach were getting bad. It seemed that changelings could go for many days without eating or drinking as long as they had enough love energy stored in their bodies, but my love was running out. I wasn’t too worried about Nephila yet because I gave her the larger share of the love I originally had, but I was sure she was feeling some hunger pain too.

By now it was obvious to me that we really had been abandoned by our parents. I had been holding on to a slim hope that wasn’t the case, but the hope was all but gone by this point. Waiting any longer for someone who would never show up would only lead to us slowly starving to death in this room. I decided it was time to take responsibility and go outside to find some way to get more love.

And probably some water, too. I was starting to feel thirsty after days of not drinking anything. I definitely would’ve died of dehydration if I let myself go so long without a drink as a human, so I was glad to see how resilient changeling biology was.

Theoretically, it should’ve been easy to get what we needed. If I recalled correctly, the changeling kingdom was friendly with Equestria at the end of the show. All Nephila and I would need to do was ask a random pony guard for help, and they’d probably get in contact with the changeling kingdom for us and send us over to be raised as orphans or whatever.

Even if our foster parents were bad, I could still take care of us myself. The most important thing was being provided with food until I managed to get on my feet.

I noticed Nephila had gotten to her hooves while I was thinking. She reached down to grab my foreleg with her own and started pulling me.

"Come! Push-ups!" she said excitedly.

I chuckled as I turned over to get my hooves under me. "Alright, hold your horses."

I taught her the importance of doing exercise to keep in shape, and I suggested a routine of doing push-ups in the mornings to build upper body strength. Nephila took the concept and somehow turned it into a competition, where we each did push-ups at the same time and the one who dropped first lost. She became obsessed with trying to beat me, but she never managed to so far.

Nephila tilted her head as I got up.

"Horses?" she asked.

"Uh…" I thought about how to describe horses in this world. "Horses are like big… animal… people."

"Big animal people?" Nephila repeated, her emotions flowing with confusion.

"Yup," I said, nodding confidently.

Nephila stared at me for a few moments, and then she stuck her tongue out and blew a raspberry at me.

I never should’ve shown her how to do a raspberry.

She grabbed my forehoof again and started pulling me away from our sleeping spot. "Push-ups!"

"Yes, yes," I said, letting myself be pulled along. "We’ll do push-ups."

Nephila stopped a few steps away from our bedding before letting my hoof go and turning to face me. She spread her legs apart and bent her front knees slightly.

"Ready?" she asked eagerly.

I copied her position, facing her head-on.

"Ready," I said. "Oh, and make sure you count out loud. Practice your numbers."

Nephila scrunched her muzzle in displeasure, but nodded anyway.

She bent her front legs to lower herself to the ground, and I followed her. Then she pushed herself back up, and I came up with her.

"One," she said, and I nodded.

Our little game continued like that for a short while. I was proud to see that she didn’t make any mistakes with her counting, and both of us were steadily improving with the amount of push-ups we could do before collapsing. When we began we could barely do five, but we had gradually progressed into the low twenties.

The gap between us was also closing. Before, I usually won by six or seven push-ups, but this morning I only won by three. Maybe Nephila would finally beat me someday very soon. I was looking forward to it.

Afterwards, we both rested on our stomachs while our forelegs burned, panting away as we cooled down and waited to regain our energy.

"Good job, Nephy," I told her between breaths. "I’m proud of you."

I scooted closer to nuzzle against Nephila’s warm cheek. She closed her eyes and hummed at the touch. I felt her take joy in the praise I gave her through our emotional link.

I wanted to get a move on with finding a nearby pony guard to get help from, but I supposed that if the guards were to take us in for questioning, and then maybe keep us in their guard facilities for a few days while they searched for our parents, and then finally sent us off to the changeling kingdom, it’d be a while before Nephila would get the opportunity to practice some of her skills again.

So I wanted her to practice her weakest skill for at least an hour before we headed out.

"Nephy," I said.

She hummed in response.

"Use your words, Nephy," I admonished.

I felt air blow against the side of my face as Nephila huffed.

But she relented. "Yes, Thybe?"

"Let’s practice your spelling for a while," I said.

She let her head suddenly drop to rest on her forelegs.

"Nephila?" I asked, a little concerned as I looked at her.

"Annoying," she murmured.

Despite searching the storeroom relatively thoroughly, I never managed to find anything that could’ve been useful for writing. No paper, pens, quills, ink, chalk, or what have you. I knew it was important to teach Nephila how to write, though, so I didn’t want to give up on it.

At first, I thought it would be fine if I taught Nephila the alphabet and then had her repeat the correct order of letters for a word back to me using her voice. But I quickly realized that wouldn’t be good enough. She needed to learn the shape of the letters and how to form them, not just memorize a sequence of sounds.

I ended up improvising with a bad but workable solution. Even though we had no writing supplies, what we had in abundance was busted furniture. I went around the room collecting various wooden legs that had broken off of tables and chairs. I then taught Nephila how to write by using the legs like wooden blocks or Lego pieces, arranging them together on the floor to form letters and words.

It was extremely clunky and slow to work with, so I didn’t blame Nephila for being annoyed with having to use the blocks. But it was better than nothing.

I leaned down and rubbed the top of Nephila’s mane with my nose.

"I know," I said. "But it’s important to learn."

She seemed to get over her annoyance rather quickly, as she suddenly got up from her prone position while I was still nuzzling her head, knocking my chin back. She turned and began walking to where we kept the stack of furniture legs without waiting for me.

I swiftly got to my hooves to follow her, and ran for a few steps to catch up to her.

"Nephila," I chided as we walked.

"Yes?" she replied.

"What you just did was rude," I said.

Nephila tilted her head to the side as she looked at me.

"You hit my chin with your head when you got up. Would you like it if I hit you in your chin?"

She blinked.

"No," she replied.

"Then don’t hit other people," I told her. "I know it was an accident, but you have to be careful and pay attention to where other people are. Okay?"

Nephila pressed her lips into a line and was silent for a moment, but then she nodded. "Okay."

Even though Nephila was ridiculously mature for her age, I’d observed over these past few days that sometimes she still had an innocent carelessness common in some children. The kind where kids would accidentally hurt other people because they didn’t understand the consequences of their actions. I was hoping that by pointing it out to her when it happened, she would quickly learn to be more attentive.

We arrived at the stack of wooden legs, and I helped Nephila to quickly unstack them and spread them on the floor for easy access.

"Alright Nephila," I said when we were done. "Write ‘cat.’"

Nephila squinted her eyes in thought as she looked down at the wooden legs for a few moments. Then she began to move the legs around with her forehooves to form the shapes of the letters.

I watched her for a bit at the beginning to make sure she understood the word I gave her, and when I was satisfied, I stepped away to let her do her thing without any interruption.

I had adopted the routine of practicing my own skills while Nephila was busy practicing hers. I knew changelings could shape-shift, and the thought of doing something like that was fascinating to me, a human who had only experienced one type of body my entire life. I fantasized about what it would be like to take the forms of various species, from griffons to seaponies to dragons. I wondered if it would be possible to even take the form of my old human self.

But I hadn’t seen Nephila shape-shift even once since we hatched, and I had no idea where to even begin with trying to do it myself. It was as if a random person with no experience in aviation at all was sat down in the cockpit of an A320 and told to start the plane and take off with no instruction. They would be utterly clueless, which was how I felt with anything involving magic.

I still had no idea how my emotional link with Nephila worked, or if there was even a way for me to turn it off.

So I figured I would wait for Nephila to figure out how to shape-shift on her own, and then ask her to teach me. I felt like my human preconceptions about magic were hindering my attempts to learn it. As a natural-born changeling, Nephila wouldn’t have any of those mental blockers and should’ve been able to learn shape-shifting instinctively. At least, I hoped so.

With that logic, I had put learning shape-shifting on the back burner.

Instead, I dove into the next changeling skill with great enthusiasm: learning flight. Nephila had demonstrated her buzzing wings a couple of times at my request. Although she didn’t provide any guidance, I observed her movements carefully as I strove to emulate them.

I moved the muscles at the base of my wings in order to raise them up. It was a strange feeling, since I was moving limbs that had no equivalents on the human body. My instincts were telling me that these limbs did not exist, so it was very difficult to get them to do anything. But after days of practice, I felt like I was slowly getting the hang of the basics.

With my wings raised, I closed my eyes and concentrated on vibrating the membranes quickly like Nephila had shown me. I vibrated them far too slowly and had a false start, but I quickly corrected and got them moving rapidly a couple of seconds later.

I felt a brief satisfaction at having reached this stage relatively easily. It had taken me entire days to get my wings buzzing this fast when I first started out, but I was finally starting to get decent at it.

If I visualized my wings as a light aircraft’s piston engine, buzzing them as I was would be the engine’s ‘idling’ state. The engine was running and the propeller was spinning, but it was throttled all the way back and not doing any useful work yet.

I took a deep breath to prepare myself for the hard part, and then mentally pushed the throttle forward. As I poured more energy into my wings’ muscle groups, the volume of the buzzing increased as the wings moved faster, and I felt my hooves come away from the ground as I slowly hovered upwards.

My body accidentally tilted to the right, since it was difficult to keep my wings flapping together in perfect balance. As a consequence, I began flying in that direction. I wanted to panic at the uncontrolled movement, but I knew that panicking would likely lead to me tilting at an even greater angle and end with me crashing into the floor, so I suppressed my emotions and focused on correcting the mistake.

I managed to right myself by buzzing my right wing faster than my left, generating more lift on that side. I sighed in relief as I finally stopped moving sideways and hovered steadily in place.

The controls of my natural flight were more similar to that of a helicopter than to a fixed-wing aircraft. Tilting my body in a certain direction made me accelerate in that direction, similar to how a helicopter pilot tilted the rotor blades in one direction to move in that direction. Of course, there were some major differences from piloting a helicopter. For example, my wings could flap at different rates to manipulate the airflow and the amount of lift generated on each side independently, which was not possible on a helicopter.

Also, I had fatigue to contend with. Flapping my wings so fast and hard was exhausting work. I figured my flight time would increase as my wing muscles grew stronger from exercise, but at the moment I was limited to flying for only a few minutes before I got too tired.

All this meant that I didn’t dare go any higher than a few feet off the ground until I could fly for much longer and with much more stability.

Still, I was flying in my own natural body without the use of any machines! Just the act of hovering in place a little bit off the ground filled me with such joy and excitement and anticipation of what I would be able to do in the sky in the future. I would stay floating there forever if I could.

"Thybe!" I heard Nephila’s voice call, bringing me out of my thoughts.

"Coming!" I called back.

But before I set myself down, I had an idea. I wanted to fly to her instead of walking. Perhaps a bit reckless, since I barely had control over the basics, but the worst that could happen would be getting a few bruises from crashing into the furniture or the ground. And it would be good practice.

I carefully moved my wings to tilt myself forwards ever so slightly. I didn’t want to go zooming off wildly, so I kept my pitch angle very shallow. I began to move forward at a nice and sedate pace, and I concentrated on keeping my speed steady without becoming unbalanced or allowing any unwanted turns.

I beamed at Nephila when I reached her, feeling very proud of myself for my accomplishment. This was the first time I’d actually travelled anywhere while hovering. Nephila stared up at me, blinking. I could sense her mild confusion.

"Hi Nephy," I said excitedly. "I flew here."

Nephila tilted her head cutely.

"Okay," she said.

I continued to grin at her.

I felt her push her confusion out of her mind as she pointed her forehoof to the floor at her side. I brought my attention to the furniture legs.

"I finished," Nephila said.

On the floor beside her, the wooden legs did indeed spell out ‘cat’ in crude blocky letters. Particularly noteworthy was the fact she remembered that the letter ‘c’ was used instead of the letter ‘k’. She had made that mistake a few times before, but I was glad to see that she recalled my corrections.

I carefully hovered closer with my wings, and I used one of my forehooves to softly rub the top of Nephila’s head. I made sure to send her my feelings of praise for her success through our emotional link.

"You got it right. Good job," I said.

Nephila gave me a slight smile in return.

I remained with her as I had her do a few more short words. I had to stop flying halfway through because I finally reached my limit, which was disappointing, but I didn’t let that distract me from the lesson. Nephila made a couple of minor mistakes that I pointed out and which she readily corrected, but otherwise I felt like she was doing great at spelling simple words.

I wanted to move her on to slightly more complex words, but I held off. I would resume my lessons with her after we were settled down again in the changeling kingdom or wherever the ponies decided to house us. Plus, getting access to pens and paper would make the whole process infinitely less annoying, which I thought was worth waiting for.

"Alright Nephila," I said after we had finished my lesson and cleaned up the furniture legs. "We’re going to leave this place now, so go and grab anything you want to keep."

Of course, we didn’t exactly have any personal possessions. I didn’t have anything I wanted to bring with me, and I expected the same was true for Nephila. Still, I made sure to inform her just in case.

"Leave here?" Nephila asked, frowning. Her emotions became worried. "You sure? Safe here."

I understood how it must have felt scary to leave the room for Nephila, especially since it was all she knew. But there was nothing for us here anymore.

"There’s no love here, Nephy," I told her. "We need to leave to get more love, or we’ll starve. Understand?"

Nephila furrowed her brow and stared down at the ground. A moment later, she looked into my eyes again.

"Get love, then come back," she said. "Safe here."

"Hey." I stepped closer to her to cup her cheek with my forehoof. "You won’t be alone. I’ll be at your side, okay? There’s no reason to be afraid. We can find somewhere better to live that’ll also be safe. Alright?"

Nephila’s emotions were rather agitated. I understood how she felt, but we couldn’t continue living in a half-rotted storeroom like a couple of vagrants forever. We needed to move on and take the next steps in our lives.

"Trust me. We’ll be safe," I said. I slowly stroked her cheek with my hoof.

She dropped her eyes to the floor again and pressed her lips together.

"Mmh. Don’t know. Safe here," Nephila muttered in a low voice.

I was surprised at the amount of resistance Nephila was showing. Usually, she went along with whatever I said and did whatever I asked of her. I was actually a little afraid of her becoming a doormat, and I had planned to give her lessons on how to be more assertive in the future. It was somewhat relieving to finally see her stand up for herself, but I was left wishing she would’ve picked something more trivial to argue about.

I tried my best to project feelings of confidence and safety at her through our link. If I could make her understand that I had a plan and I knew what I was doing, and that I’d take care of her, I was certain she’d go along with me.

Nephila looked into my eyes again, frowning.

"Don’t know what to do," she murmured. "Dumb… Thysbe."

I blinked. That was the first time she had ever pronounced my name properly. I was so surprised I completely ignored the part where she called me dumb.

Nephila lifted her forehoof and grabbed my own, which had still been resting on her cheek. She pulled it away from her face and held it in front of her, and then she placed the bottom of her hoof on mine so our frogs were touching.

I was entirely baffled by what she was doing. Nephila wasn’t usually one to initiate any contact, preferring to stay still while she received my affections instead. But I let her do as she wanted and didn’t move. She seemed to stare at our hooves clasped together with a vacant gaze.

After a few moments, I felt a sudden mirth mixed with disbelief in her emotions, and she chuckled out loud. I had no idea what she found funny, but she met my eyes with her own once again.

"I guess… I follow." Nephila gave a lopsided smile, but her emotions were filled with anxieties.

I frowned. Was she seriously considering not following me?

"I’ll keep you safe," I reiterated, hoping to reassure her.

She simply hummed.

I nudged the wooden door open with my muzzle.

The bright sunlight shone into my eyes painfully. I had been living in near-total darkness since I hatched, and my eyes had adjusted to that environment. I felt tears well up and run down my cheeks as I scrunched my stinging eyes shut, waiting for them to adjust to their first exposure to such intense light.

The pain slowly waned, and I was able to blink my eyes open for longer and longer periods of time. After a couple of minutes, I was able to keep them open continuously, and I rubbed the remaining tears away with the tip of my hoof. The sun hung high in the clear blue sky, and I averted my eyes from looking anywhere near it.

I turned to look behind me. Nephila was there, also rubbing at her eyes with her forehooves.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Yes." She nodded.

I nodded in return, and then turned my attention to the outside.

On the first night before we went to sleep, I had cracked the door open to take a quick peek at our surroundings to make sure we weren’t in any immediate danger from the exterior environment. Satisfied at our relative safety, I then closed the door and never came out again.

Which was to say that the view before me wasn’t entirely new, but it was different seeing it in the night compared to the day.

Our storage shed was nestled in a small and yellowing grassy patch beside a brick wall. The wall was actually part of a large building. I looked up and counted six stories. There were small windows placed at regular intervals within the brick, sort of similar in style to old New York tenement buildings.

The building didn’t look new, but it also didn’t look like it was in disrepair. If anything, it looked well-maintained for its age.

The wall of the building spread far to our left, but to the right, it ended quickly. A cobblestone alleyway cut through the grass and between the tenement building closest to us and the next one, which seemed to be an identical copy with a similar grass yard, sans storage shed.

I took a few steps out of the doorway to get a better view around me. As I suspected, we were surrounded by these multi-story residential buildings on all sides, and we seemed to be located in some kind of shared courtyard. If the state of the lawn and our shed was any indication, it was a courtyard that saw almost zero traffic or maintenance.

The environment had me believe that we were located in a big city—or at least very close to one, in its suburbs. I wasn’t sure if it was a pony city, but I was sure I’d find out as soon as I got a glimpse of the locals.

I turned to Nephila.

"Alright, stay close to me," I instructed.

She nodded.

I started walking down the nearby alleyway that led out of the courtyard, with Nephila’s hooves steadily clopping against the cobblestone right behind me. There were the typical trash cans set along the walls one would expect to find in an alley, but there were no spillages or messes anywhere. I was impressed by the cleanliness.

On the way, I spotted a small mirror lying on top of the trash in one of the bins. I turned towards the bin with the mirror and quickly made my way to it before picking it up with a hoof. I heard Nephila’s hoofsteps pause in hesitation behind me for a moment before she came to join me.

I looked at my own face for the first time.

When I first hatched, I thought I was in the body of just a regular changeling drone. It didn’t take me long to notice things that contradicted that assumption, however. The fact that I had a mane was a big clue, as was the fact that my abdomen was made out of some soft material instead of chitin. I also noticed that my body’s general shape was very similar to Nephila’s.

So seeing my green slitted eyes and small fangs in the mirror wasn’t a surprise to me. It was more like a final confirmation of something I already knew. I was a young changeling queen, just like Nephila.

I had also checked other parts of my body over these past few days—it would’ve been difficult not to notice—and I could confirm that I was indeed female. I didn’t know how to feel about that. I hadn’t given it any serious thought, and I had no intention of starting now.

Nephila was leaning over my shoulder to get a view of the mirror, so I moved to hold it up in front of her to allow her to get a good look at herself.

"What do you think?" I asked. "Very cute, right?"

Nephila tore her gaze away from her reflection to stare at me with a flat look. She remained silent, but I felt a splash of exasperation in her emotions.

I smiled at her in return.

"Well, whatever," I said, throwing the mirror back into the trash bin. "Let’s continue on."

I began walking down the alley again, and this time Nephila stuck to my side instead of following behind. I had to admit I felt much more companionable with her walking beside me. I’d have to encourage her to do so more often.

It took us no time at all to reach the end of the alley, and I gazed out onto the main street. My heart swelled with relief when I saw the many ponies walking to and fro, pulling carts and going about their day. These people would be friendly and helpful. I’d just have to ask a random passerby for directions to a guard station, and then we’d be alright.

I took a step towards the open street, but I felt a tug on my hind leg that brought me to a halt. I craned my head back to see Nephila holding onto the top of one of my legs with a forehoof. I met her eyes questioningly.

"Stop," she said.

I blinked, confused.

"Stop walking there?" I asked, pointing to the street.

Nephila nodded.

"Why?" I asked.

"Danger," Nephila said.

I took another look around the area, searching for anything that could be dangerous. But I couldn’t find anything.

"Danger where?" I asked, glancing back to Nephila.

She pointed a hoof at a nearby group of ponies.

I sighed, glad that she was concerned about something that wasn’t an issue. She had me worried for a moment.

"Don’t worry," I said. "Ponies are friendly. They’re not dangerous. Watch."

I made to walk out onto the street again, but Nephila gave my leg a more forceful tug. She hadn’t let go.

"Stop," she said firmly.

I turned to her, trying to think of a way to calm her down.

"Hey, relax," I said. "Ponies are nice. They’ll help us. Just take a deep breath, okay?"

I brought my forehoof up to pat Nephila on the head, but she slapped my hoof away with her foreleg. I was frozen with shock.

"No, listen!" she practically growled with a stomp of her hoof. Her emotions were a surge of frustration and anger. "Danger!"

I certainly hadn’t expected that kind of behavior from the meek little Nephila. Was she acting like this because her changeling instincts were telling her to avoid exposing herself? Those instincts would probably be correct at any other time, but changelings and ponies were no longer enemies. She didn’t know that, and trying to explain the political situation—and why I knew such things—to her would take way too long. It would be easier for her to see that she had nothing to fear if I just walked up to some ponies and talked to them normally.

"Look, just hide here around the corner and watch me," I told her. "Everything will be fine. You’ll see."

Nephila bent her front legs to crouch down, and then she hissed at me. Actually hissed! I stared at her wide-eyed.

Then she lunged at me. I was too stupefied to do anything, and she crashed into my chest with a tackle. Luckily I managed to keep my balance and remain upright thanks to my stable four-legged stance, and her attempts to grapple me to the ground were largely ineffective.

"Dumb Thysbe!" Nephila snarled with her forelegs hooked around my neck. "Listen to me!"

I could hardly believe what she was doing, but I recovered from my shock enough to use my forehooves to push her off of me. She fell onto her side on the cobblestones with a grunt. I winced and felt bad, but really, it was her own fault. I would have to give her a stern talking-to later about not throwing tantrums when people didn’t do what she wanted.

For the moment, it’d be best if I made haste towards the ponies before she could try to stop me again. I would force her to see that her ridiculous overreaction was wrong.

I turned around and quickly walked out of the alleyway. When I was out in the open, I knew there was nothing Nephila could do to stop me anymore. I heard her give a shout of frustration from behind me, but I ignored her.

I spotted a couple of ponies—a mare and a stallion—walking side-by-side down the street close by. I speed-walked to catch up and came up alongside them. They seemed too absorbed in their hushed conversation to notice me, so I decided to grab their attention.

"Hello there," I said cheerily. "Sorry to bother you, but I’m lost. Can you tell me how to get to the nearest guard station?"

The mare’s eyes widened when she looked over at me, and she screamed in fright. I stumbled back at the reaction. The mare started yelling something in an alien language I had never heard before, and both she and the stallion with her took off galloping while continuing to shout.

The screams spread through the crowd on the street like a wave, and before I knew it, all the ponies were stampeding away from me as fast as they could gallop in both directions. I stared after them with my jaw slightly agape.

When there were no more ponies in sight, I swallowed thickly. Did I just make an enormous mistake?

I spun on my hooves and galloped back to the alley entrance. I found Nephila cowering behind a dumpster. She shot me a death glare when I came into view. Her emotions were a storm of terror and fury, and she was physically shaking.

"Uh…" I started, but then I snapped my mouth closed. I had no idea what to say to her.

"I’m sorry," I tried shakily after a moment of gathering my thoughts, still very much in shock. "I should have taken you seriously and listened to you."

Nephila clenched her jaw and bared her teeth. Her fury did not subside.

"I know you’re very upset," I tried to reason. "But I think we should get away from here. The fleeing ponies probably called the guards."

I heard the faint sounds of metal hitting cobblestone in the distance. I took a peek around the corner to see a pair of guards in their shining golden armor galloping down the street in our direction.

"Yeah," I said hastily. "We need to leave. Like, now."

I leapt to Nephila’s side and began to push her back towards the courtyard with my nose. "Come on, run!"

Thankfully she seemed to get it, as she quickly began to run at my side of her own volition.

I heard alien shouts at the alley’s entrance as we set foot in the courtyard. Then the metal hoofsteps started galloping down the alleyway.

"Shit!’ I exclaimed under my breath. I was hoping the guards would pass the alley by. How did they know where we were?

I frantically looked around for a place to run. My eyes passed over our old shed, but that was a no-go for a hiding spot. It was too obvious, and I had no doubt the guards would look there first.

I spotted another alleyway leading out of the courtyard on the side opposite from us. I pointed it out to Nephila.

"Run there!" I cried.

Nephila and I sprinted across the open ground, breathing heavily. Just as we ducked into the new alley, I heard the guards’ hoofsteps enter the courtyard. They didn’t even stop to investigate the shed—they just kept galloping after us. And they were gaining ground.

This second alley had a T-junction about halfway down its length. Hoping to increase the chances the guards would lose us, I pointed it out to Nephila and then sprinted into the side alley. We ran down the alley’s short length and then came to another turn, which we took without hesitation.

I gasped when we came to a dead end, and we both skidded to a halt. There was nothing back here except for one dumpster and a metal door leading into one of the residential buildings. I bolted for the door and lifted myself onto my hind hooves in order to try the handle, but it was locked.

I fell back down to all fours and looked around desperately. I wanted to say flying away was an option, but the alley was surrounded on all sides by the tall buildings. Even if I could somehow pull off flying so high, I would be super slow. And I hadn’t even seen Nephila fly once, so I doubted she could do it either. That wasn’t a realistic strategy.

I could still hear the guards’ hoofsteps coming for us. There was no way we could backtrack without running into them. I eyed the dumpster. With only moments to make a decision, I suddenly came up with an extremely stupid idea.

I rushed back to Nephila, who was standing in the middle of the alley and looking lost. She was still filled with terror, but it seemed she had forgotten most of her anger during the chase.

I tapped her shoulder and started pushing her towards the dumpster.

"Get in the dumpster, Nephy," I insisted with a low voice, hoping the guards wouldn’t be able to hear me.

I gestured until she understood, and she hooked her forehooves on the rim to pull herself up. I helped her out by pushing on her butt with my own hooves until she made it over and fell into the pile of trash.

She quickly peeked out over the rim to look down at me. I took a deep breath.

"This is my fault," I whispered. "You were right, and I should have listened. You don’t deserve whatever those guys have planned for us, so I’ll let them take me. I’m pretty sure they think there’s only one of us, so you’ll be safe once they have what they want. Just keep hiding until you hear that they’re gone."

With that, I forcibly pushed her head down into the trash to make sure she was hidden. Then I turned and took a few steps towards where the dead end met the side alley. I kept to the corner, staying just out of sight as I waited for what I knew was inevitable.

I tried to take deep breaths as my heart hammered in my ears, but it didn’t do much to calm me. The guards’ hoofsteps steadily drew closer—they must have figured that they had us cornered, so they had stopped galloping and were now approaching at a comfortable walk.

My fear made thinking almost impossible, but one question refused to leave my mind: why did these ponies still hate changelings? It didn’t make any sense.

I heard the clop of hooves against cobblestone behind me. I turned my head back in surprise to see that Nephila had jumped down from the dumpster with an orange basketball held in her forehooves.

My eyes widened in panic. The guards would be here in seconds, there was no time!

"Nephila!" I hissed, almost hysterical. "Get back in the dumpster! Right now!"

Nephila shot me a frown and a scathing glare, but I didn’t feel any true anger behind it.

I flinched back in shock when, all of a sudden, Nephila was engulfed in green flame. When it passed, there stood a young unicorn filly with a creamy coat and a simple pink mane and tail with no cutie marks on her flanks.

I gaped at her. When did she learn how to shape-shift?

Nephila threw the basketball into the alley.

Then, to my immense horror, she ran out into the open after it.

Chapter 4: Nephila

Other queens were the enemy.

That was what my instincts were screaming at me when I woke up that day, lying broken and vulnerable on the slime-covered floor. The other queen was leering down at me as she stood over my weak body, with her forehooves holding me down to prevent my escape and her posture proud and dominant. She was no doubt ecstatic at having chanced upon such easy prey.

I knew she would kill me momentarily, and I also knew there was nothing I could do about it. Fighting her would only delay the inevitable and cause me more suffering. With any luck, she would kill me quickly.

When I saw her raise her foreleg, I knew it was coming. I tried to curl up in a pointless attempt to protect myself, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I couldn’t help but wonder how she would do it. Would she snap my neck with a kick, or maybe pummel my barrel until it came apart?

The answer was way worse than anything I had come up with. After attempting to communicate with me in a way I did not understand—I assumed she was trying to brag—she did something more heinous than I could have ever imagined. She invaded my mind and ripped out some of the precious love within me.

I knew right then that this queen wasn’t just an opponent in the game of survival. She was worse. She wouldn’t kill me quickly. She would take pleasure in torturing me to death and savour my despair as she slowly sucked me dry. She would kill me for fun, not just because it was advantageous to her. She was evil.

I sank into despair. I gave up on pretending to be anything resembling strong or tough. I showed her how weak I truly was, breaking down into tears and silently pleading for her to take mercy on me.

What the queen did next would define my entire relationship with her.

But that was how things were with Thysbe. I often felt like I could barely keep up with her. Every single thing she did went against what I knew on an instinctual level to be correct. Every day was filled with more surprises than I could wrap my head around when she was with me.

It took me a while to learn not to listen to those instincts. My instincts told me never to allow another queen to get close to a vulnerable part of my body, like my wings or my soft abdomen. But every time I let Thysbe touch those parts of me, she’d shown nothing but gentle care. I didn’t know what to believe. Were my instincts wrong?

On that first night, after Thysbe communicated that I should go to sleep, I was convinced that the whole thing was somehow still a trap. She was just waiting for me to fall asleep—and then, for sure, she would get me. Because other queens were the enemy, so why wouldn’t she take the opportunity to get rid of another queen in easy reach?

I spent the whole night lying awake, my adrenaline pumping as I waited. I was always so sure she would come in the next moment. But when that next moment came, there was never any sign of her, and then I’d convince myself that she’d actually come in the next moment instead. Before I knew it, it was morning, and I was forced to face the reality that she hadn’t come at all.

I got up to go check on her. Since she didn’t come to kill me, I was certain that she had left in the middle of the night. After all, there was no way two queens could occupy the same territory. I was expecting to find her gone by the time I got to her side of the room.

Instead, I found her standing near her bedding and doing some stretches as if she didn’t have a care in the world. When she spotted my approach, she greeted me with a smile and a wave. I felt her happiness at my presence.

I was utterly shocked. I had no clue what was happening, or how I should have been reacting.

Even more unbelievable was the fact that she spent the rest of the day teaching me useful skills. I went through those lessons in a daze.

By the second night, my instincts had switched to telling me that Thysbe was weak. If she was unwilling to get rid of a threat to her territory and future hive, then she was a soft and naive fool who deserved to be tricked and backstabbed. I had my doubts—she seemed plenty strong to me. So I decided to conduct a test to see whether or not my instincts were correct.

When it was time to go to sleep, instead of sensibly sleeping as far away from each other as possible, I decided to barge in and rudely intrude on her sleeping spot. I was expecting to be angrily shouted at and commanded to go back to my own spot. Perhaps I would be sporting some injuries as well. Surely no queen was stupid enough to allow another queen so close while she was sleeping, right?

Instead, Thysbe put up only a token amount of resistance. She never actually tried to seriously get rid of me. I was in disbelief. On a whim of madness, I decided to up the ante and go all out. I wrapped my legs around her and pressed our bodies together. My fangs were poised just above her neck. With a simple bite to puncture the chitin right in front of me, I could end her easily.

What was Thysbe’s response to my threat? She nuzzled the top of my head.

That single action froze me solid. I was suddenly filled with uncertainty. What was I doing?

I decided to pretend to fall asleep and wait to see what Thysbe would do. After all, even though she was extremely vulnerable to me at that moment, I was also extremely vulnerable to her. If she was ever going to attack me in my sleep, this would be her chance.

Rather than take her chance, Thysbe fell asleep for real. As if I wasn’t right there, ready to bite her throat open whenever I felt like it. After I nudged her and tested her to make sure she wasn’t faking it, and I realized she really had just fallen asleep, I felt like my mind broke.

Was I misunderstanding Thysbe’s strength? Was she so strong—so confident in her abilities—that she could fall asleep right next to a rival changeling queen and be assured of her own safety? That no matter what I did, she would easily stop me?

Or was Thysbe actually insane? A changeling queen with zero self-preservation instinct. I struggled to comprehend such a thing.

I figured I would worry about such questions later, and decided I would get some real sleep too. Maybe her insanity was rubbing off on me, but I was too tired to care about how vulnerable I was. If I ended up not waking up from my sleep, then well… she tricked me good. I’d deserve it.

In the morning, I did wake up, and Thysbe acted like nothing at all had happened. Like I hadn’t threatened her life. She even continued teaching me those useful skills. I once again went through the lessons in a daze.

Strangely enough, we continued to sleep in that vulnerable position from then on. Thysbe was way better than me at a lot of things. She was smarter, stronger, she always knew what to do, and I felt like she was much more mature than me. For some reason I didn’t understand, she deigned to share her valuable knowledge with me without expectations of anything in return. I was sure that if she wanted to, she could beat me in a fight with little effort, even now that I was uninjured and at my best.

So sleeping in that position, with my fangs at her neck and with the power to end her at any time I wanted, made me feel safe. Like I was her equal. Sure, she was giving me that power by allowing me to sleep there, but still—once I was in that position, I had that power. No one else. I didn’t understand what kind of incomprehensible mind game she was playing by putting herself into that situation, but I felt strangely thankful towards her nonetheless.

Maybe… I was even beginning to trust her? My instincts rebelled at that thought. She was a rival changeling queen. The last thing I ever should’ve done was trust her. But my instincts had always been wrong before.

So maybe it was okay to trust her after all. I didn’t know. But I was sure I’d figure it out sooner or later.

I ran into the open after the ball.

The guard pony spotted me immediately. I felt his unease spike at my sudden movement, but that quickly evaporated when he saw only a little filly playing around with a toy.

Of course, that wouldn’t be enough to turn him away. I would have to play the game.

This would be my first time playing for real, but I understood what I needed to do intuitively. I was a queen, after all.

I pretended to notice the guard for the first time and perked my ears excitedly as I looked at him.

"Hey, mister!" I called to him eagerly. I bounced the ball between my forelegs as I galloped up to him and greeted him with a large grin. "Wanna practice basketball with me? I’m gonna be the best in my school!"

I made sure to position myself in his way so he couldn’t walk any further without shoving me aside. If he made it around the corner, he would no doubt find Thysbe.

I didn’t expect him to be willing to forcibly remove me from his path, and sure enough, he stopped in his tracks and looked down at me. I felt his surprise at my presence, and his fluster at being badgered so strongly.

"Where are your parents, little one?" he asked, his voice calm but slightly concerned.

I stopped bouncing the ball for a moment to point my forehoof up at the apartment building behind me. I made sure to point to the one that had the back door leading into this alley.

"Don’t worry," I reassured him. "They know where I am. I practice out here all the time."

I resumed my dribble and gave the guard a confident smirk.

"So wanna play? I bet I can beat you. I have a hoop set up around the corner we can use."

Naturally, saying such a thing was dangerous. Not only did I not have a hoop—the lack of which would make my entire story of practicing basketball out here instantly suspicious—but having the guard follow me around the corner was exactly the opposite of what I wanted to happen.

But he obviously had no interest in playing. He was in the middle of a chase. So I considered it a bluff with an acceptably low enough risk to make.

The guard gave me an amused smile.

"Not today, squirt. Maybe some other time," he said.

His face became serious again.

"Actually, you should finish your practicing for today and head inside," he said. "A monster showed up out of the blue on the next street over and scared everypony into a stampede. My partner and I chased it this way, but we lost sight of it. Have you seen it?"

I gasped, my eyes widening. "A monster? Cool! What does it look like? I wanna see you beat it up! Oh! Can I help you catch it?"

I felt the guard’s fluster at my enthusiastic reaction. He had expected me to react with fear at the news, not with excitement. But keeping him off balance was the goal.

At the same time, a large part of me wondered what I was doing. The ‘monster’ was hiding around the corner right behind me. It would be so easy to point her out to the guard, and then the ponies would get rid of a rival queen for me with no effort on my part. Why was I protecting her?

Especially since the entire situation was her doing, and she had greatly endangered my life by refusing to listen to me. Her actions were utterly baffling. She seriously thought she could just walk up to ponies undisguised, and they wouldn’t react the way they did? Where did she even get such an idea?

Thysbe’s behavior today confirmed to me that she actually was insane. She didn’t care about her own life at all, and she was completely unpredictable. She was a danger to be around. Continuing to stay near her would only expose me to more risks in the future. The smart thing to do would be to let the guard have her.

So why did I feel an inexplicable sickness in my gut at the thought of actually doing it?

Was it because she was willing to protect me without even a moment’s hesitation? When we became trapped within the dead end, her first instinct was to get me to a hiding spot while she volunteered to act as bait. I would have expected any other queen to use her rival as bait while she herself got to safety, not the other way around. But it seemed that thought never even occurred to Thysbe.

Seriously. She was willing to protect another queen’s life at the cost of her own. Something was incredibly wrong with her.

And now her wrongness had apparently spread to me too.

I was brought out of my thoughts by the guard waving his forehoof in denial.

"No, you’re way too young to help," he said. "Be a good little filly and leave this to the professionals in the Royal Guard, okay?"

"Aww," I whined, staring up at the guard, my big eyes filled with disappointment.

He turned his head to look behind him nervously.

"Look," he said. "I gotta get going. If you didn’t see the monster come this way, then it must have gone the other way. My partner’s probably already caught it, so I gotta go help him out."

"So you really won’t play with me?" I asked, letting my ears droop.

He shot me an encouraging smile and ruffled the top of my mane with his metal-clad hoof. I felt greatly offended—how dare he touch me?! Thysbe’s mane pats were a million times gentler and more pleasant than this loser’s. I wanted to smack his hoof away, but I forced myself to bear it.

"Hey, chin up," he said. "I’m sure you’ll be an awesome basketball player. Just keep at it."

When the torture finally ended, I nodded.

"I will," I said. "Thanks."

"Now promise me you’ll go inside for the rest of the day," the guard said as he firmly looked into my eyes. "I don’t want to see an innocent filly such as yourself get hurt."

I nodded again. "Okay. I promise."

"Great. I’ll see you around, then."

With that, the guard turned and began trotting back the way he came. I stood there watching as he went down the alley.

Before he turned the corner, he looked back one more time.

"Stay safe!" he shouted.

I smiled and waved a foreleg, and then he disappeared out of sight.

After waiting a couple of moments to make sure he was gone, I spun around and cantered the few steps back around the corner to the alley’s dead end.

As soon as I came around the bend, I was jumped by Thysbe. I briefly considered that she was attacking me, but that seemed very unlikely after everything she’d done. She wrapped her forelegs around the back of my neck and rubbed her cheek against mine.

"Nephila!" she cried in her strange language. "I’m so glad you’re safe! I thought I was going to lose you when you ran out there."

It was still quite difficult for me to understand her. Although she had been teaching me her language, it was slow going, and I didn’t have a very large vocabulary yet. It always took some thinking power for me to figure out the meaning of what she was trying to communicate.

I squirmed as I tried to get some space from Thysbe’s overbearing physical affections, but she wasn’t having it and kept squeezing me. I sighed softly as I stopped resisting and accepted it.

"No. I am okay," I responded in Thysbe’s language, trying to communicate that there was nothing to worry about in my broken fluency.

Thysbe often expressed worry or concern for me. At first I had thought that this was part of some laughable scheme to get me to let my guard down around her. After all, what queen would be stupid enough to fall for such transparent and blatant lies?

But as she kept saying such things—and more importantly, not just saying so, but actually acting on those words by showing me her concern and care in little ways—I began to believe she was honestly being genuine.

When I made that realization, I found the concept absurd. A queen genuinely caring about a rival queen’s well-being? I couldn’t understand it, but I had given up on trying to make sense of Thysbe’s insanity by that point.

Thysbe finally pulled back to look me in the eyes.

"I had no idea the ponies wouldn’t speak English," she said. "You can speak their language? And you seemed pretty fluent too, from what I could tell."

That was a lot of words. Uh… was English the name of Thysbe’s language?

"I can speak," I said.

Thysbe frowned and bit her lip.

"I didn’t see you learning how to speak the ponies’ language while we were in the storage room," she mused. "How did you learn it?"

I tilted my head, confused. I wasn’t sure what she was asking me.

"I can speak," I repeated, hoping that somehow she would understand.

Thysbe let out a chuckle. "Yes, I saw. But how? You hatched a few days ago."

I blinked, trying to figure out how to express myself properly. But I didn’t have the words I needed, so I gave up and shrugged.

"Just can," I said instead.

Changelings needed to infiltrate pony society to survive. New queens were especially vulnerable when they first hatched, with no hive around to support them or drones to teach them anything. If young queens didn’t know anything about how to infiltrate pony society and gather love when they hatched, there was no question that they would all die.

So I’ve had all the basic knowledge I needed about pony society since I woke up on the first day. That included fluency in the Equestrian language. I had never seen a basketball before, but I knew what it was for and the correct way to use it. I had never been to a school, but I knew what the purpose of it was and that young fillies were expected to be attending.

The thing that bothered me was that Thysbe was acting confused about all this. My eyes widened slightly as I realized the implications. Did she not know?

I leaned in towards Thysbe’s face.

"Can you not?" I asked.

Thysbe didn’t hesitate in shaking her head. "I can’t," she said.

I shrunk back as if struck. I had thought all queens would have that knowledge from birth. It was literally ingrained in our biology—genetic memory. It should have been impossible for Thysbe to not be able to speak Equestrian. And for her to admit it so readily…

My instincts were telling me that I should feel revolted at her presence. Thysbe was worthless. Less than useless. She was a dead queen walking. Without the ability to speak Equestrian, Thysbe wouldn’t be able to replace a pony’s loved ones and steal their love. Of course, everypony could speak and understand when they were spoken to, and if she couldn’t, then that would be a dead giveaway that something was wrong in her disguise. She would always be found out immediately.

"Are you okay?" Thysbe asked, looking concerned. Her emotions felt slightly worried for me after I suddenly flinched back.

I was caught off guard. Did Thysbe seriously not realize the significance of what she just admitted to? She should’ve been more worried about herself at a time like this.

"Yes," I said, in what was more or less an automatic reply to get her to drop it. If I didn’t answer, she’d just keep annoying me until I did.

Thysbe gave a large sigh and brought up her forehoof to scratch at the back of her head.

"Well," she started. "I’m sorry for wasting your time by teaching you English. I thought I was teaching you how to speak from scratch, not teaching you a useless language. I guess I’m probably the only person in this world who speaks it, so it won’t do you any good to learn it. I should’ve been learning the ponies’ language from you instead. So… sorry."

I paused. "From scratch?" I asked.

"Err…," Thysbe replied. "From nothing."

She thought she was teaching me to speak from nothing? If she truly believed that I couldn’t talk at all, then why would she do something like that? Why would she expend as much effort on it as she did? A queen who couldn’t speak was defective, and the only thing that awaited her was death. Why would she try to save such a queen?

And what did she mean that she was the only one in this world who spoke English? How could there be a language that only a single creature knew?

Ugh, there were too many questions. Things were getting too confusing. I should have known better than to question Thysbe’s nonsense by now. I pushed all the pointless thoughts out of my head and turned my focus to the important bit she had said at the end of her apology.

"You want to learn um… pony language?" I asked, lacking the word for 'Equestrian’ in English.

"Yes." Thysbe quickly nodded. "I’d really appreciate it if you’d teach me, Nephy."

"I have idea," I said.

An incredibly reckless idea. To a queen, knowledge was power, and oftentimes made the difference between her hive’s starvation and prosperity. Knowledge of the locations of the most abundant feeding grounds, how to integrate within those feeding grounds, and how to stay hidden from the prey were all jealously guarded secrets. A queen would never share any of her knowledge with a rival queen. That included knowledge of any local languages required for successful integration.

If I were to teach Thysbe Equestrian, I would be giving another queen the key to invading the feeding ground I currently had access to. I’d be rolling out the red carpet and saying ‘come take my food from me.’ Doing something like that would be spitting in the face of everything my instincts told me not to do.

But… Thysbe had started teaching me English with no questions asked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to teach another queen a language. And she didn’t demand anything in return after the fact. Even now, she wasn’t demanding that I teach her Equestrian to return the favor. There was no aggression in her emotions. She was simply asking.

So… I was left feeling unsure as to what the right thing to do was. Thysbe’s tendency to give me things unprompted, and for free, always made me so confused.

Hence, my idea. To make things make sense, we would trade. She would continue to teach me English, and I would teach her Equestrian. A simple exchange of equal value. Easy.

And it was not at all an excuse to stay with Thysbe despite her worthlessness. Definitely not.

"What’s your idea?" Thysbe asked.

"You continue teaching English, and I teach pony language," I proposed.

Thysbe tilted her head, feeling mildly confused and surprised.

"You want to keep learning a useless language?" she asked.

"Yes." I nodded. "Trade."

That was all the explanation I could offer her.

She shrugged. "Sure. Works for me."

"Good," I said. I was glad that she accepted my offer so readily. It would have been annoying to try to illustrate to her why I wanted to trade with my limited English vocabulary.

Thysbe took a moment to look around the corner into the alley.

"But before any of that, I think we should get out of here before any of the guards come back," she said.

I nodded. That was good thinking. And while we were at it, I needed to secure a source of love for myself. The amount Thysbe had given me had lasted so far—I still had no idea why she had done that—but it was starting to run low. It would be smart to start looking for a pony to replace as soon as possible in case any complications came up.

If Thysbe had no knowledge about pony society, she probably had no idea how to go about replacing a pony. So I figured it’d be best if I had her follow my lead this time.

It was a little amusing. Usually, she gave off a strong impression that she knew what she was doing, and I was always following her instructions. But on this topic, she would be clueless.

I lifted a forehoof to point at myself, still in my pony filly form.

"Change, then follow," I commanded.

I began to walk off, but Thysbe interrupted me.

"Change?" she asked. "You want me to shape-shift? I don’t know how to do that."

As soon as I got her meaning, I froze in my tracks. But I must have misunderstood her.

"Huh?" I asked, hoping she would clear up my mistake.

She pointed at me with a forehoof. "I don’t know how to change into a pony."

I stood still for a moment, and then I suddenly burst into laughter. A changeling queen who couldn’t change! Hilarious!

I thought her lack of ability to speak Equestrian crippled her enough, but this took the cake. Thysbe was truly broken.

I felt a flood of embarrassment come from Thysbe’s emotions as I laughed.

"Hey," she complained. "It’s not nice to laugh at someone when they can’t do something."

She frowned at me as I struggled to get myself under control. Eventually, I managed to push my hilarity down and stop laughing. I wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes with the back of my hoof, and then faced Thysbe with a grin.

A changeling queen who couldn’t change. What was even the point of that? There was no hope at all for her. She was unable to get any more love, period. The love she had now was all the love she would ever have, and once that ran out, she was dead. To make matters worse, she had even given most of the love she’d had to me, like she didn’t care at all about the gravity of her situation.

I didn’t even have to do anything to get rid of her as a rival queen. All I’d need to do was sit back and wait for nature to take its course.

But… I was again forced to ask myself if that was what I really wanted. The logical answer was yes, absolutely. And yet I felt a pit of dread in my stomach at the thought of seeing Thysbe die like that. I didn’t understand why I was feeling such sympathy for her and why I was allowing myself to give in to such weak thoughts. I recognized that I was already unreasonably attached to Thysbe, and it was frustrating.

"I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you laugh," Thysbe pointed out. "Even though you were laughing at me, which was mean, it was a pretty laugh."

Thysbe lifted a forehoof and gently stroked the top of my mane back and forth. I could immediately tell the difference between her caress and the guard’s from earlier. Thysbe’s emotions always overflowed with fondness for me whenever she did stuff like this, which was the most surprising thing about it. It was impossible for me not to see that she genuinely felt that way, and wasn’t just faking it.

Her touching was very annoying at first—and sometimes it still was when she went overboard—but I had grown to enjoy it. I stood still and let my mind empty as she patted my head.

Wait. Was she rewarding me for making fun of how worthless she was?

"I’d like to hear you laugh again later," Thysbe said. "But next time not at someone else. Let’s laugh together at some harmless fun, okay?"

"Okay," I said dumbly. What nonsense was Thysbe spouting?

She finally pulled her forehoof away from my mane.

"So do you think you can show me how to change?" Thysbe asked.

I blinked owlishly. Show her how to change? What? Changelings could change. There was nothing to show.

The sheer ridiculousness of what she was asking made me want to laugh again, but I bit my lip to keep it down. She’d probably get annoyed if I made fun of her again.

"It’s fine if I’m not good at it," Thysbe continued. "I just need to be a pony so we can get away from here, right? If you help me do it just once, that’ll be good enough."

I really had no idea how to show her how to change. It just came naturally to me, as easy as breathing. I didn’t know any of the theory behind it or anything. I vacantly stared at the cobblestone ground as I tried to think of some idea that would help.

"Nephy?" Thysbe asked.

I looked up to gaze into her slitted green eyes, watching expectantly.

"Wait," I said. "Thinking."

Unbidden, I remembered those eyes staring down at me as she held me against the floor on the first night. She had done something horrific on that night. Maybe… could that work?

I felt sick at the thought. My instincts told me that invading another queen’s mind was the highest form of taboo. Something not to be done to even one’s worst enemies. A queen’s powers were meant to be used on prey, not on other changelings. I did not know what the consequences would be if a queen ignored this taboo and used her mind control to freely wage war on other hives, but I knew nothing good would come of it. Would all the other queens band together to punish the rogue outlaw?

Regardless, there was a possibility I might be able to help Thysbe change if I invaded her mind. But I was very reluctant. Every part of me was yelling at me to not even dare try. If another queen ever found out, I had no doubt she’d come after me with even more hostility than was typical for a mere rival in the game of survival.

Except. Thysbe wasn’t my worst enemy, was she? Actually, what was she, even? A rival queen, right? I felt like I was kidding myself by continuing to call her my rival. Rivals didn’t do what we were doing. But other queens were supposed to be rivals, so it was difficult for me to break away from that mindset with her.

Was she my… friend? I scrunched my muzzle in distaste at that. Ponies were all crazy about friendship, and we were certainly no ponies. Friends were lame. We were not friends.

Was she my ally? Maybe. But ally didn’t feel strong enough. Allies used each other when their goals conveniently aligned and then backstabbed each other later. Perhaps I was just being stupidly gullible, but I couldn’t see Thysbe ever doing that. For whatever inexplicable reason, I thought her feelings felt too genuine for her to be a mere ally.

Whatever. Thysbe was not my enemy, and I wouldn’t be using my mind invasion to harm her. So maybe it would be an acceptable use? Yup. I tried to convince myself of that.

Would she even accept that excuse, though? I couldn’t imagine any queen would willingly allow her mind to be invaded. But Thysbe was weird, so I might as well ask her.

"Idea," I said.

"Oh?" Thysbe asked, a smile coming to her lips. "You figured out how to teach me? Great. Let’s hear it."

The only problem was that I had no idea how to describe what I wanted to do in English.

"Um…" I used my forehoof to point to my forehead, and then I pointed to Thysbe’s forehead. "Join minds… and change."

I was pretty sure I sounded like a total idiot.

Thysbe furrowed her brows in thought. "Er… I think I get it. You want to use our magical connection to show me how to change in my mind, right?"

Sure, whatever she said. I nodded.

"That’s a smart idea," Thysbe said. "I actually wouldn’t have thought of that myself. Nice job."

She smiled at me, and I felt her appreciation towards me. I was unsure if she should really be so appreciative of a queen who just suggested invading her mind, but whatever.

"Alright, go ahead," Thysbe said. "I’m ready."

And of course, she agreed with no consideration whatsoever. I should not have been surprised.

Well, there was nothing left to do except give it a try. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and activated my mental magic to target Thysbe’s mind. I plunged into her psyche extremely easily. She had no defences up at all.

I shuddered involuntarily as I realized how much power I had over her at the moment. I could easily make Thysbe a mindless, drooling slave who would obey my every command. I could order her to end herself, or to gallop into the streets filled with ponies again and let herself be captured. I could also just knock her out and put her into a sleep she would never wake from.

I even felt the love within her, stored in a little pool that powered her life essence. Like a siren’s call, that small amount of love drew me towards it. I eyed it hungrily. It would be so easy to rip it all from her and leave her an empty husk.

I mentally slapped myself. Yes, it would be so easy. But I didn’t want to do that to Thysbe.

Why not? I wasn’t sure. I just didn’t feel like it.

I forced myself to remember what I was doing here in the first place. I needed to make Thysbe change into a young pony.

Using my magic to change Thysbe wouldn’t work. A changeling’s transformation magic would only work on themselves. So what I needed to do was quite logical. Since Thysbe was too incompetent to use her own magic to change herself, I needed to use Thysbe’s magic for her.

At least, that was the idea I came up with. I had no clue if it would work in reality.

Ever so cautiously, I connected my mental will to the magical flow in Thysbe’s body. I needed to be careful, because a changeling’s magic was powered by their stored love supply. If I let my instincts get the better of me, I could still easily take all of her love for myself by draining it through her magic. So I had to resist what my body naturally wanted to do to prevent that from happening.

After spending a few moments to stabilize myself, I felt like I was ready to use Thysbe’s magic for her without sucking her dry.

"Okay," I said out loud. "Think of a pony."

It was important for Thysbe to picture the pony she wanted to change into in her mind. I couldn’t do that for her.

I waited for her to tell me she was ready.

"Got it," she said.

I pushed my will into Thysbe’s magic and triggered the change.

A surge of green flame wrapped around Thysbe’s body, and I excitedly pulled back out of her mind. It worked!

Before me stood a young pegasus filly with light gray fur. She had a two-tone mane and tail, with the stripes of color alternating lengthwise. The colors were a bright yellow—almost like gold—and a navy blue. Her eyes were a light pink, similar to my own form’s mane and tail. I stretched my neck to glimpse at her flank and saw that she had also given herself a cutie mark. It was a simple stylized light blue pegasus wing.

"Very detailed," I muttered. It was much more elaborate than my basic form with its simple cream coat and pink mane with no cutie mark. I was actually kind of impressed. Considering the fact that Thysbe was unable to change herself, I was expecting her to come up with an absolutely terrible pony form. But instead, she came up with something quite good.

"Thanks," Thysbe said as she curiously examined her new form and experimentally ruffled her feathery wings. Then she smiled at me happily.

"And thank you for helping me shape-shift," she continued, and I felt her gratitude flow at me. "I really do owe you one."

Unsure of how to respond, I simply nodded.

"Now we should really get out of here," Thysbe said. "You wanted me to follow you earlier. Do you know somewhere safe to go?"

I did not. I had spent just as much time in that storage room as Thysbe had, and I never went out to explore the city. Did she forget?

But I knew what we needed to do. We needed to find love as soon as possible. That meant we needed to find a young filly or colt to replace and then milk their parents as much as possible.

I beckoned to Thysbe with a forehoof. "Follow."

We spent most of the day sitting around in a park within the city.

Thysbe was confused, and she tried to ask me several times why I had led us to the park and then did nothing but sit on a bench to watch ponies for hours.

I didn’t know how to explain to her what we needed to do. Parks were a great place to find young ponies playing, but we couldn’t just go after the first filly or colt we saw. Ponies were generally very good at keeping an eye on their young, and trying to grab one while their parents were nearby was unacceptably risky.

So our only option was to sit and wait until we happened to come across a young pony who was isolated from its parents. I kept watch for just such an occasion.

I had also briefly considered taking the place of an adult pony, but that was more risky for a couple of reasons. Firstly, an adult pony had a higher chance of successfully resisting an attempt to subdue them. I was confident in my ability to knock any pony out with a single hit of my stun spell, but there was always a chance things could go wrong. If that happened with an adult, they would be much more capable of fighting back than a young pony would be.

Secondly, both Thysbe and I were obviously very young queens. Our bodies were currently similar in size to young ponies, and thus we were more suited to take their forms. It was certainly possible to take the form of an adult pony, but it would drain much more love over time to maintain such a form due to the difference in size. The increased maintenance cost would mean that we would need a greater return to make it worth it, making the bet inherently more risky.

Plus, a parent’s love for their child was usually greater than everything except the most potent of romantic relationships, and those were difficult to find on short notice. I estimated Thysbe had only a couple of days at most before she was completely out of love, so we didn’t exactly have the time to conduct thorough scouting missions and investigations of the most promising local relationships.

All that was why I decided we would play it as safe as possible and aim for a young pony.

Thysbe complained a couple of times about us wasting time and that we should be doing something useful, but I tried to explain to her that this was the way to gather love. It didn’t seem like she was convinced, but she followed my lead and let me do my thing anyway.

It was frustrating how useless she was, though. As she sat on the bench beside me, I watched the ponies in the park for any good targets, but Thysbe didn’t help me out at all. She was clearly bored out of her mind, and when she wasn’t persistently annoying me by trying to have a conversation with me—which usually didn’t last more than a few sentences because I kept brushing her off, as I was trying to pay attention to my surroundings—she just stared blankly out into space.

I guessed it felt good to finally be superior to her at some task, but I would’ve appreciated it more if she actually pulled her weight. Did she expect me to share the love I gathered with her after I did all the work while she did nothing? If she was expecting such charity, she was in for a rude awakening.

"Ughh," Thysbe groaned.

I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. She was sprawled out on her side of the bench, slouched against the backrest and had her head tilted all the way back as she stared straight up at the evening sky.

I rolled my eyes at the sight, ashamed of even being near her.

"Nephyyy," Thysbe whined, dragging out the last part of my nickname. "I’m sooo bored. Can we please leave?"

"No," I deadpanned.

Thysbe hit her head against the backrest in response. I tried my best to ignore her.

"I think you like parks more than my dog does," Thysbe complained. "But at least my dog actually ran around and played fetch. How can you be satisfied by just sitting on this bench?"

What? "You have a dog?" I asked.

Thysbe groaned again. "Not anymore."

Anymore? I never asked Thysbe’s age, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t more than a couple of days older than me.

"Whatever. Be quiet," I said. I tried to concentrate on watching for any isolated young ponies.

"That’s rude," Thysbe muttered.

"Don’t care. Quiet," I snapped.

Thysbe huffed, but thankfully she did fall silent after that.

For all of five minutes.

"How much longer do you want to sit here?" she asked.

I grit my teeth. "Told you. Until we find a pony."

Thysbe lifted a forehoof to weakly point at a random mare nearest to us. "There’s a pony."

"No!" I snapped. I had to restrain myself from full-on yelling at her. "Told you! Not that type of pony!"

Thysbe let her foreleg drop limply. Again, she fell silent.

I let out a long sigh, trying to push my frustration and irritability out of my mind. Doing something as dangerous as capturing a pony while distracted by anger was just asking for disaster, so I reminded myself that I couldn’t let it get to me.

After I calmed down, I noticed that Thysbe’s latest silence had lasted much longer than usual, to the point where I was beginning to feel an irresistible curiosity as to why she hadn’t yet annoyed me again.

I turned my head to look at her. She was lying on the bench on her back with her hind hooves facing towards me. Her eyes were closed, and her body was motionless except for the slow rising and falling of her chest as she breathed softly. Her lips were slightly parted and there was a tiny bit of drool at one corner of her mouth.

I tapped her belly with a forehoof. There was no response. She had fallen asleep.

I pursed my lips as my frustration threatened to return to me, but I suppressed it. No, this was fine. Thysbe sleeping was better than Thysbe bothering me.

As I turned my attention back to my surroundings, I knew one thing for certain. There was no way I would be sharing my prey with her.

Speaking of prey. Finally, after all the hours of waiting and watching, I managed to spot something promising. A young earth pony colt entered the far side of the park opposite from where my bench was, and as far as I could tell he didn’t have any other ponies with him. He had a light gray coat—similar to Thysbe’s current pony form—a dark blue mane, and no cutie mark that I could see. He was also wearing a pair of small saddlebags.

He didn’t interact with any of the other ponies in the park, and instead quietly made his way to the shade of a large tree in an area of the park with few ponies in it. When he got to the tree, he nestled up beside it while sitting on his haunches. He then opened up his saddlebags and pulled out a book from one, and what looked like a wrapped sandwich from another. He placed his book on the grass and began to read it while taking slow bites from his sandwich.

I felt an excitement build within me. He might be the one. The first prey I ever got to hunt.

But I couldn’t get ahead of myself, and I forced myself to back off from my excitement. There was still a possibility another pony could show up to join him. I would have to remain vigilant for that.

I continued to watch him silently as I stayed sitting right where I was. A public park was no place to make any moves, after all. It was also important to keep my distance and make sure he didn’t know I existed. I needed to remain just another regular face in the crowd right up until it was time to strike.

The colt read his book under the tree for at least an hour. In that time, the sun had begun to set, and the sky became full of pale oranges and dull purples. Luckily, no ponies had come to join him, and the park was quickly growing empty as all the other ponies headed home for the night.

My anticipation grew as time wore on. It looked like this might actually happen!

Finally, the colt ended his reading and put his book back into his saddlebag.

I tapped Thysbe’s belly with my forehoof urgently. "Thysbe! Wake up!"

After a bunch of prodding, Thysbe’s eyes blinked open groggily.

"Ugh," she groaned as she rubbed her eyes with a forehoof. "I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I feel like crap."

"Whatever. No time," I said hurriedly. The colt was standing up and stretching his legs after sitting for so long. "Gotta go."

Thysbe blinked at me, clearly still half asleep. "We’re finally getting out of here?"

I hopped off the bench as the colt began his leisurely walk out of the park. I kept one eye on my target as I grabbed Thysbe’s free forehoof and began pulling her.

"Hurry, hurry!" I urged.

"Jeez, Nephy." Thysbe chuckled obliviously as she slid off the bench with my help. "Where’s the fire?"

"Just hurry and follow, okay?" I started trotting after the colt. "Follow!"

I looked back to see that Thysbe had listened to my instructions and was trotting right behind me. Great. I would’ve been so mad at her if she had made me lose my prey because she wanted to ask too many questions.

When I caught up to the colt enough to be sure I wouldn’t lose him, I slowed down to a normal walk. We were at least five or six pony lengths behind him as we reached the cobblestone street. He hadn’t noticed our approach, so now all we had to do was act like regular ponies on a regular walk who just happened to be going in the same direction as him.

Thysbe came up beside me and shot me a questioning look. "Are we done hurrying?"

"Yes," I said. I wasn’t worried about the colt overhearing our conversation. It was normal for ponies to talk while walking. If anything, it would reinforce our presentation as nothing out of the ordinary to pay any attention to.

Plus, we were speaking English, not Equestrian. Even if he did overhear us, he wouldn’t be able to understand what we were saying.

"Okay…" Thysbe drawled. "But we didn’t go anywhere."

I rolled my eyes at her stubborn obliviousness. "Just keep following."

Thysbe shrugged. "Alright. But I think we should really focus on finding a place to sleep. I don’t think it’s safe to go back to the shed, but I’d like to get at least some kind of roof over my head."

"Yes," I agreed. Definitely something to consider, especially if we wanted to keep the colt’s cocoon hidden, but hardly the highest priority at the moment. "But later."

"Later when?" Thysbe asked. "It’s already night."

"Soon," I replied.

Thysbe hummed skeptically in response, but otherwise didn’t say anything further.

We continued walking in silence, the stillness of the night only broken up by the steady clopping of our hooves on the cobblestone. The colt never looked behind himself once, and never made any indication that he had noticed us following him. His lack of awareness was greater than I could have expected.

We occasionally passed another pony or two on the street, presumably on their way to their own homes. But the intervals between encountering those other ponies got longer and longer as we made our way out of the city’s more central areas. I knew, at some point, there would be no others around save for the colt and the two of us.

That would be our time to strike.

"So where are we going?" Thysbe asked after some time had passed.

"Almost there," I said. The sun had set completely by this point, and the sky was a dark black. The only major sources of light nearby were the amber streetlights and the occasional lit-up window casting its light onto the street.

We were coming up to an empty narrow street surrounded on both sides by tall buildings. It seemed like a perfectly secluded place.

As we entered the street and began making our way down it, I swivelled my head to check the area one last time. Not a single pony was around. It was clear.

I took a moment to steady my aim before I made any moves. Satisfied that I wouldn’t miss, I decisively pushed my magic into my horn, causing it to glow a pale green. Then I swiftly released a bolt from my stun spell. The bright green projectile lit up the area as it flew through the air at great speed before impacting the back of the colt’s head.

He didn’t even know what hit him, and he fell face-first onto the cobblestones as if his strings were cut.

I felt a surge of shock and disbelief from Thysbe at my side. No doubt she was surprised at how perfectly I pulled that off. I turned to her with a large grin.

Instead of praising me with a ‘good job’ like she usually did, Thysbe was staring at the collapsed colt with wide eyes and her jaw dropped open. Even I felt as if she was overreacting. Was she really that impressed?

"W-what the fuck did you just do?!" Thysbe shouted.

Without waiting for me to respond, she sprinted the short distance to the colt’s side and looked down at his prone form. I felt an immense amount of panic and fear start to flow from her, and I frowned as I watched her. I didn’t understand what she was freaking out about.

"Oh fuck, oh fuck, he better not be dead," Thysbe babbled to herself, but I didn’t know the words she was using.

Thysbe lowered her head with her ear pointing towards the colt’s face and stood still. My curiosity as to what she was doing spurred me to approach her to get a better look.

Thysbe exhaled sharply and stood up. "Alright, he’s still breathing."

I felt her fear recede considerably, but her panic and distress were still on the verge of hysteria.

It was hardly befitting of a queen to lose control of her emotions like Thysbe was doing in a stressful situation, especially since Thysbe had always seemed so collected before. My opinion of her couldn’t help but decrease.

Thysbe reached out with both of her forehooves and delicately rolled the colt over so he lay on his side.

"Crap, he’s bleeding," she muttered. I didn’t know what ‘bleeding’ was in English, but Thysbe felt more distressed after seeing the trail of blood coming from the colt’s nose. He must’ve hit himself on a cobblestone when he fell, but that was nothing to worry about. It wasn’t a serious injury, and wouldn’t impact his ability to produce love for us.

On the subject of producing love, we needed to get a move on before a random pony happened to walk down the street and spot us. We had to get the colt to a hidden place, safely store him in a cocoon, and then look through his memories to find out where his parents lived in order to take his place. And we had to do all that quickly, before his parents caught on that he was missing.

I looked around quickly to make sure the area was still clear. Satisfied, I reached out with my forelegs to lift the colt onto my back, but before I could even touch him I heard Thysbe gasp. Then she slapped my hooves away from him.

"Don’t touch him!" she shouted. "What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

I looked up at Thysbe’s face. Her teeth were clenched, her brows narrowed, and her eyes stared at me with a fierce intensity. Now that I had caught her attention, all of her fear and panic had transformed into terrible fury.

This was the first time I had ever seen Thysbe angry, and it was all directed straight at me. I couldn’t help but shrink back.

Thysbe stepped forward. "Why the hell would you attack an innocent kid out of the blue?!"

I stepped back as Thysbe stepped forward again. Her irrational anger at me was causing me to feel panicked and afraid of her. More than anything, I desperately wanted her to stop shouting. Any ponies nearby would no doubt be attracted to the loud noise.

I knew I had to say something. I gathered my courage.

"Be quiet!" I told her firmly.

"Fuck no!" Thysbe continued shouting, and took another step towards me. I stepped back again.

"You’re going to explain to me right now why you thought it was acceptable to blast a random kid with your magic!" Thysbe demanded.

My fear of her irrational rage started to transform into anger in turn. What was her problem? I was the only one trying to do something to make sure we didn’t starve, and instead of being thankful when I’m successful in capturing prey, she flies off the handle about it? Buck her.

I pointed to my forehead.

"Use your head, stupid Thysbe," I snarled. "I’m getting love!"

That actually seemed to give her pause. Her angry expression was replaced with confusion. But that only lasted a few moments before her eyes widened and feelings of horror and disgust were added to her emotions alongside her anger.

"I think I get it, but I want to be sure," Thysbe said shakily. "Explain what you mean by that."

"What don’t you get?!" I shouted, fed up with Thysbe’s random mood swings and cluelessness. "Take pony, get love!"

"Absolutely not," Thysbe growled. "We are not doing that."

What? What the buck was she saying? I’d already done all the hard work of subduing the prey. There was no way I’d just walk away from it now.

"Yes we are," I countered, staring right back into Thysbe’s eyes.

"Hell. No." Thysbe punctuated both words by stomping her forehoof against the street.

"I caught the pony!" I argued. "So he is mine! You can’t tell me what to do!"

"I don’t give a shit," Thysbe spat. She stepped forward again, but this time I refused to give ground, so her muzzle ended up nose-to-nose with mine.

"You’re not touching that kid," Thysbe stated firmly.

I should have seen this coming from the beginning, but I guess I wanted to live in a fantasy world so badly that I kept deluding myself. Of course, Thysbe was just pretending to cooperate with me until now, and of course, she would betray me the first instant she had something to gain from me.

Why wouldn’t she? She was a changeling queen. That was what we did. I knew queens could only ever be enemies, but I foolishly convinced myself that Thysbe was different. But now that she had the opportunity to take something real from me, she didn’t hesitate to exploit my naiveté to try to steal my prey, just like any other queen would have done. She wasn’t different at all.

Honestly, I shouldn’t have been angry at her for this. This was completely expected behavior. I should’ve been angry at myself for believing anything but the obvious to be true. My own stupidity almost made me laugh.

I didn’t forget that Thysbe was physically stronger than me, and earlier I had believed that meant I had no hope of beating her. But my assessment had changed since then. I’d since learned that Thysbe had no idea how to use magic, and no idea how to do the most basic things with her body like taking on a disguise. She was a broken queen.

As long as I kept my distance and attacked her from long range, she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I felt reasonably confident I could beat her.

So if she was expecting me to be cowed by her strength, back down, and let her take my prey all for herself, she was sorely mistaken. And if she wanted a fight so badly, I’d gladly give her one.

We’d have a good old fight in the game of survival. Winner took all, loser died.

I gave no warning as I suddenly flashed with green fire, shedding my pony disguise in order to make full use of my powerful and nimble changeling body.

I knew the unexpected flash would momentarily blind Thysbe. I planned to take the opportunity to follow up with a headbutt attack to keep her stunned while I created distance between us.

I smashed my forehead into Thysbe’s face, which sent her reeling back, but she had already reacted before I had even started moving for the headbutt. Her forelegs wrapped around the back of my neck and kept my face pinned against her own. I struggled to free myself, but her hold was strong.

Evidently, she had intended to grab me the moment I made a move, and so had already started reaching for me the moment I began changing my form. My decision to headbutt her had actually helped her out with that, as I brought my body much closer to her to attack her. I had thought my actions would be too fast for her to react to, so I didn’t pay any attention to her hooves, and because of my carelessness she now had a grip on me.

I could feel Thysbe’s footing become unstable after my attack, and since she was using her forehooves to hold onto me, that left only her hind hooves to touch the ground. With the added weight of my body struggling against her, Thysbe lost her balance. I could see her try to compensate by flaring her pegasus wings out of the corner of my eyes, but she obviously had no clue what she was doing with them because she just flapped them wildly.

We both fell onto the hard cobblestone street on our sides, facing each other. I didn’t feel much pain thanks to the protection of my chitin shell, but Thysbe was still in her soft pony form, so I knew that the fall would feel a lot worse for her. I took that opportunity to intensify my struggle against her, thrusting my forehooves into her chest and trying to kick her stomach with my hind legs.

"Ow, fuck!" Thysbe gasped.

I was obviously causing her pain, but Thysbe was desperate to hold on to me and strengthened her grip even further, so I couldn’t twist free. The only strategy I could think of was to keep hitting her until she couldn’t take the pain anymore and decided to release me.

"What the fuck’s wrong with you?!" Thysbe grunted out as she tried to roll on top of me to pin me down. I did everything I could to resist her, and I somehow managed to keep her at bay with my flailing limbs.

"Stop fighting me and calm down, Nephila!" Thysbe shouted.

I responded by sinking my fangs into the tip of her muzzle. I felt my teeth plunge through her soft skin.

Thysbe screamed and pulled her head away from me as she recoiled in pain, but she still didn’t let me out of her grip.

I knew I couldn’t win a close-quarters match with her. It was only a matter of time until she overpowered me. I had to end it right at this moment, while Thysbe was still in shock.

My horn glowed green as I charged it with power. I wouldn’t be using the stun spell I had used on the colt. The spell I was preparing was designed to burn a creature’s flesh until there was nothing left. It would be a powerful stream of emerald fire.

Thysbe managed to recover from her daze before I could finish casting the spell, but there was still little she could do to stop it. She didn’t know how to cast a shield spell. So I redoubled my efforts in getting it ready as fast as I could.

Thysbe took one look at my glowing horn and her eyes widened. She let my body go with one of her forehooves, and I felt smug satisfaction at my imminent victory. Now that her hold on me was so weak, even if I missed with my attack spell, I’d be able to escape her grip easily and try my magic again.

I was so assured of my win and so focused on casting my spell, I forgot to pay attention to what Thysbe was doing again. She thrust her free forehoof towards me, and before I could react, the hoof crashed hard into the base of my horn.

An intense, unbearable agony instantly speared into my brain, as if an iron spike had just been hammered into it with a sledgehammer. I probably shrieked from the pain, but I honestly couldn’t tell what was happening around me anymore. All that existed was suffering and anguish.

Naturally, there was no way I could’ve kept hold of the spell I was in the middle of casting. I let it flicker out without resistance, as if it were merely an afterthought.

I felt a light-headed dizziness mix with the agony, and then I felt nothing.