All things considered

The soon-to-be-punished pony looked at his punisher with a worried face, but at all cost refused to speak to his adversary. Going down a hallway, down some steep stairs behind a never used cellar door and down more stairs, Blueblood began: “Why do you give me that look? I don’t enjoy this as much as you do you know.. oh alright, it is.. it’s very amusing to say the least. The first thing we do is making sure you don’t escape from your jail before your time is due.”  Dreamweaver looked in confusion and hatred at the arrogant brat. “That’s right.. mister I have weaver in my name so I have to control the fabric of reality!.” Blueblood mocked with considerable sarcasm and a tint of jealousy. They reached a dark cave-like open room with little blood-red glowing crystals, on the opposite wall of where they entered were large carved in jail cells with unrusted but still spiderwebbed dark steel bars. In front of them were three unicorns.

“Let’s get rid of your magic, shall we?” the three unicorns shot their magic at dreamweavers horn, while one of the guards put a ruby in the beam of power. The gem started sucking up the magic that was drawn from the immobile alicorn. Small cracks started to appear in the ruby whereafter the ruby incinerated. One unicorn murmured something to the guard, the guard placed a daimond from the unicorns saddlebag in the place where the ruby had been. The magic started to flow into the daimond and after about 3 minutes all three casters ceased their power surge. As the weakened prisoner fell to the ground, he was dragged into one of the cells, with Blueblood’s evil laughter in the background. Everypony moderatly happy with their work left the room except for one guard holding,  what was called by the unicorns the extraction-diamond in his hooves. He admired it as he sat at a little stone table, engulfed by its beauty. The guard put the diamond inside the jail safe and sat in the stone guard’s office chair. Dreamweaver felt cold in the darkness of that depressing prison cell, the mushy ground, the walls littered with spiderwebs and the icy steel ceiling that only held a single red glowing crystal. He felt his weakness... no longer brimming with energy, that powerless horn. Half his life was in that horn his body was blessed with, the only thing he had left now where his wings. his eyes shot open at the realisation, his wings could be his way out if he used his brain. In his free time he appeared to be a pegasus guard, and thus Shining Armor had insisted that the alicorn took a guard’s training. One of the requirements for a pegasus where to be able to cut anything metal with only your wings. Blueblood probably forgot about wingslicing because he as a noble never took such training, and advising thus proving you’re smarter than Blueblood meant losing your job. The alicorn inspected the steel bars more closely, but then he thought about the noise. It would be far too loud of a clank, but there was another way to use his wings. The prisoner bit down on a loose feather, yanked it out of his wing, fiddled with the intricate lock and gave up after a little while. “Oh ponyfeathers”

Dreamweaver looked up from the lock, he had heard something. The guard stood up from his stone chair and walked curiously up into the darkness that was the stairs. “Who is there.. wait.. no!” “thud”

A helmet rolled down the stairs and landed at the bottem, the detainee saw a bright green flame flare up and vanish again. The guard stepped down the stairs picking up his helmet and putting it back on his head, his eyes shining green. “Hello little sweet talker of mine.” The guard walked towards the table with the safe.  “That voice sounded like Starswhipe, but it was coming from the guard, Starswhipe wasn’t secretly male.. was she.. he?”  the semi-confused jailed shadowy figure pressed his face up against the bars to get a better look. “Starswhipe? Is that you.. w-wait! You’re a dude?!”  he started scrubbing his mouth and spitting on the ground after finishing the question with a look of disgust. The guard instead rolled his eyes, annoyed and became engulfed within the re-appeared green fire. Weaver could only watch in unpleasancy. The flames resided back to the ground again and instead of the big seemingly angry male guard, now stood an even bigger black alicorn with holes within her legs, torn bug-wings instead of feathers, long dark green hair. A jagged-shaped horn glowed with green magic as the cell door was developed with the aura and pulled out completely, opening the way to the now totally-confused jailbreaker. It sneered in a hushed tone at him: “I am not a dude and don’t wash your mouth you ungrateful little insect, It wasn’t that bad!” after walking out of his cage the two dark shadows stood opposite of one another calmly awaiting each other’s reactions “Soooo.. what.. are you?”  “I’m a girl you blind idiot.” the dark red creature stuck his tongue out at the dark green creature “You’re an idiot.” He said in a childish tone. She was taken aback from that. “Well.. now that you know my secret identity yo..” she was abruptly cut off by dreamweaver. “what secret identity?” the perplexed mare wonderingly stared at her companion motioning to herself. He looked her over. “I don’t know you other than that you were my personal guard.” She stammered: “Where you not at the wedding?”  The young colt shrugged it off. “If you mean the royal wedding of Cadence and Shining Armor then no, I was in the Everfree Forest investigating disappearances near Everfree Castle.” She watched with a deep look of understanding until she reached out a hoof with a warm smile on her face. “I guess we can forget the past. I’m Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings.” He looked at her with a smug on his face. “Hopefully not everything.” She blushed heavily at that. Behind her dreamweaver heard something dribble down, when he passed the suspicious queen he saw some kind of green sludge drip from the ceiling. “How did you turn into that guard exactly?” Chrysalis looked a little bit nervous. “there is no time to discuss that, we have to go immediately.” Weaver knew that if that was true they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to talk this long already, but the idea of leaving this place seemed pretty appealing. The changeling queen blocked the path up the stairs with her front leg. “Aren’t you forgetting something my dear?” After thinking for a little bit he ran to the safe with the diamond and sliced it in two pieces with his wings, taking the diamond with him. The thought of being called “dear” felt strange, frankly, going with a strange mare who used to be a familiar mare was even stranger.

They went up the stairs together anyway, at the back of his mind dreamweaver felt uncertainty about his new ally. “What would Starswi.. Chrysalis want with a powerless alicorn?” He looked at the energy pulsing diamond in his mouth thoughtfully, playing along would probably be smarter for now. When they made it to the top of the stairs Chrysalis changed back to Starswhipe, winking at Weaver when they approached two strangely green-eyed guards stationed at the cellar door. Starswhipe carelessly walked past the guards as if she wasn’t even there and motioned her “Dear” to follow her. As the guards turned to look at her company he had already launched himself forward at them, smacking one guards head against the wall with his wing. Right when he wanted to attack the other one the room filled with the now familiar green light fading out as quick as it came. The sight before his eyes after he had turned around proved even peculiar than Starswhipe’s other form. There on the ground laid an knocked-out alicorn-like creature but, it had holes, bug wings and a jagged horn as well. This certainly didn’t look like the guard the jailbreaker had just dispatched. A loud sigh could be heard from the female guard afoot of the next staircase. “Are you kidding me? A little trust would be nice…” the remaining guard started laughing and patted the brawler on his back while he blushed at his embarrassment. “Well.. what did you expect me to do?” She merely rolled her eyes at that. After some wake-up slaps from Star, the four ponies went up the stairs where they met up with yet another group of guards with green eyes. They trotted up to the massive spruce door, stopping for Star to peek through the narrow crack between the door and it’s hinges. Still sitting at the table were Celestia, Luna, Shining Armor and Blueblood. She turned around to the dark-red alicorn and kissed him on the cheek, to his surprise the green flames started to vortex around him. He saw his body morph to that of a simple hornless and wingless guard, he still felt them but could not see them. Then it dawned on him. “Change-lings”

As they vanished she flung the doors open and shouted “Dreamweaver has escaped!”  The eyes of all the alicorns and unicorns at the table turned to the size of dinner plates at the news.

Blueblood shot out of his seat nearly screaming in anger. “How could he have escaped?! You incompetent fools,he couldn’t even use magic.” Without warning Celestia casted a spell creating a wave of magic flowing through the entire room like a tsunami over a city, which made the alicorn in disguise close his eyes from the intensity of the light. When he opened them he saw Chrysalis stand in front of him in her original form yet again. Looking at his own body he noticed he could see his horn and wing again. “Chrysalis?!” Celestia, Luna and Shining exclaimed in unison. Blueblood pointed at the confused pony behind the Changeling queen. “Look, that abominalble filth is working together with that wretched creature. We must catch them!” dreamweaver spoke up confused. “Who do you mean with filth?” Celestia cared not for the answer. “Brother, why is Chrysalis in your presence?” the queen spoke with a comically sneering voice. “Ever heard of kidnapping and ransoming?” behind Luna a door flew open and twelve Changelings ran in followed by a dozen more royal guards. The room flared with magic and all Changelings plus their captive were gone. Celestia, Luna and Shining armor exchanged glances of desperation, Blueblood unimpressively huffed and said what nopony wanted to hear. “Well… we can’t bargain with them at the risk of Equestria, nor can we save him because we don’t know his location. I’m sure he can figure out how to escape the Changelings.” A guard whispered in his ear. “They were in possession of the diamond” Blueblood slammed his hoof on the table in frustration launching a few scrolls through the room. Luna tried to keep the the mood up and asked “Who did you mean with filth?”

The colt’s vision was pitch dark but there was a soft echo seemingly distant. “wake up” his vision came back to him and what he saw confused him greatly. He layed flat on a bed made of sticky green slime, looking at the ceiling he could only think of an ant hole. Every surface was covered with dark-green sludge. Atop of him layed a changeling snoozing with it’s muzzel buried in his neck. As soon as the pony serving as a bed tried to move the changeling the changeling looked up, looked him over and crawled of of him. “you’re awake, I was told to keep watch over you.” It spoke in a cheery female voice as it handed him an apple. “I’m Fangs by the way, you have to get out of bed if you want to talk to our queen. She’s waiting in the hatch chamber.” As he got up he whiping off the slime on his limbs and looking at the changeling. She looked like the others except for her hair and a bow in her hair, her hair looked very similair to Chrysalis hair style. “Fangs, why is it so slimy in here?” all he got for an answer was a simple “I don’t know, it’s normal.” The distrustfull pony layed the apple down without even taking a single bit, he walked out the only exit that appeared to be in the room. Once out he was greeted by a large number of tunnels presumably leading to different parts of the sludgy cave.

After walking for what seemd like hours  and passing numerous changelings the confused traveller walked into a large room filled with slime dripping cocoons hanging from the ceiling, he flew up to one to have a closer look. The cocoons where filled with ponies. Dreamweaver would have thrown up from the sight had he not been distracted by a noice further back in the room. There was a cocoon that had fallen from the ceiling with a big gash in it. As he saw the slime flow out something in the cocoon started to move, what came out frightened the alicorn.

It wasn’t a pony that craweled out of the cocoon, it was a Changeling.