As they approached the city’s gate, they could see that the twins were already waiting for them, together with a third … creature. That was the best description Lux could came up with. It was vaguely pony shaped, yet was covered from head to hoof in a black, chitinous carapace. Even more interestingly however, was that it possessed both a horn and wings. To top it all off, his legs were riddled with holes, giving it an unnatural look.

Pale blue eyes gleamed in their sockets, as the creature tracked the path of the two newcomers, as they drew nearer to the waiting group. It remained silent, until they were only a couple steps away, then it let out a deep buzzing noise, causing the other two to look up from where they were fussing with their equipment. They interrupted their conversation and Blaze waved them over.

“Hey, there you are,” she greeted. Her eyes wandered over to Lux and a mischievous smile crossed her lips as she studied his new appearance. “Nice outfit,” she added, causing him to blush.

“Is everything ready?” Dawn asked, ignoring the banter between the two. Storm simple nodded, shortly followed by a thumps up from Blaze and a determined look from Lux. Satisfied with their response, Dawn smiled and turned to the creature waiting beside them . “You can start.”

The creature made a vague buzzing noise, then it walked in front of the twins, and after taking a good look at each of them, lit up its horn. As it did so, Lux noticed that the twins were grimacing, yet before he could ask why, a blinding bright light appeared, as the creature cast its spell. It was so bright, Lux had to avert his eyes for a moment. Once the light was gone and he could see clearly again, he turned to the twins and gasped in surprise. Right in front of him stood the twins, yet they didn’t. Where just a second ago stood a pegasus and an earth pony, there were now two unicorns standing in front of him.

“Impressed?” Dawn smirked, as she watched Lux approach the two, his eyes wide in disbelief.

“They are unicorns,” Lux said as he began to circle the two, searching for any clues that gave away the fact that these two weren’t in fact natural born unicorns. “And it isn’t just an illusion either” he added after casting a quick spell. “They are actual unicorns.”

“Not quite” Dawn said and shook her head. “They do look like unicorns, but they aren’t. The spell is purely cosmetic. It does change the shape of their bodies, but not their abilities. Snow is still a pegasus and Blaze is still an earth pony. They can't cast any spells or anything like that, but now they have those neat little things on their heads.”

“It’s still impressive, regardless” Lux said. He could feel his inner scholar trying to break through and it took him a lot of willpower not to start to flood them with a ton of questions right there on the spot, yet he couldn’t hold back the most obvious one. “How are you doing this?”

“It’s thanks to these guys” Dawn said and pointed towards the black creature that was still silently watching them from nearby. “We call them changelings. We discovered his species a few years back. Thanks to their magic and our knowledge in pony anatomy, we managed to create this spell. In recent years, it has been crucial in keeping us hidden.”

“But our research is top notch and we can’t do anything like this,” Lux retorted a bit more forcefully than he may have intended. He wasn’t fully on board with everything the unicorn kingdom did, but the notion that his country’s research was lacking still stung his pride a little.

“Well would you want to?”

That one little question was all it took to diffuse Lux anger immediately. He wrecked his brain trying to find an answer to the question, but as hard as he tried he couldn’t find anything. It was simply impossible to imagine anyone of his fellow countrymen to actively try to become “the enemy”.

“Additional to the magic of Cocoon’s species,” Dawn continued unfaced, “the spell requires an extensive anatomical knowledge of ALL of the three tribe and the only time the tribes feel the need to study each other, it’s as test subjects - if at all.”

Leaving Lux to think about her words, Dawn turned to the changeling. “Thank you Cocoon,” she said, causing the creature to let out a happy chirp. It then spread its wings and took off. Dawn looked after him for a moment, then she turned back to the remaining group.

“Alright guys” she said loudly, earning her everyone's attention. “Time for us to take off as well. Let’s move.”

And so they did.

Author's Note

so, it's been over a year since i posted the last chapter to this. wonder if there are still people out there who remember this from the last time i posted. considering these were meant to get me into a regular writing habit, i failed miserably.
well, not to worry. for my resolutions this year, i decided to finally give this one another try. i would like to go for a daily update schedule, but with my new working schedule and the fact i'm taking up my martial arts classes back up as well, i'll probably end up posting bi-daily (if at all ). well let's just see how long i'll last this time. My inner perfectionist is already screaming at me, commanding me to tear down the whole thing for how badly it's written, and yet, if i don't continue, i will never get better...

gosh, i hate myself sometimes.