Surrogate
By Silvertie
01 - Bleeding Heart
All stories start somewhere, and this is a story that has it’s origin in the reflected light of another.
Once upon a time in the land of Equestria, there was an alicorn princess of love, and she had eyes for one and only one other pony: the Captain of the Royal Guard. And it was like a dream come true, for her love was requited.
So it was inevitable that one day, the two would eventually make plans and become wedded, even in the light of a threat to Canterlot that demanded the Captain’s personal attention. A story of true love?
No. The problem was, she wasn’t the real princess -- the real princess of love was trapped in a crystal cavern beneath the castle, and as the Captain’s sister so eloquently put it, the one holding the wedding ring was nothing but a fake, a changeling.
And so began the Canterlot Changeling Invasion of ‘03. The Changeling Queen Chrysalis’ forces landed in fireballs of green magic, and within the span of mere minutes, the entire city was under Chrysalis’ chitinous hoof.
There was one thing that could provide a serious obstacle to success, however -- the Elements of Harmony. Chrysalis had done her homework, and not only placed two whole battalions of changelings between the Element Bearers and the Elements themselves, in the palace vault, but assigned exactly two of her better changelings to make sure nopony got in or out of the vault, no matter what.
Of course, with two battalions to do their job for them, they didn’t have much of a job, and so fell to talking about past conquests. A discussion that didn’t even stop when the Elements set foot in the Vault Chamber, and were promptly restrained and dragged off to the Queen.
“I put my record at six,” boasted one, with a yellow-tinted crest.
“Six?!” gasped the other, with a more normal sea-green crest. “That’s impossible. You’re lying to me, Skalrath.”
“If it’s impossible, Fray,” Skalrath grinned, “Then how did I do it? How else did I harvest six mares’ worth of love in one day?”
“I dunno, you... oh, soft chitin. I admit defeat,” sighed Fray. “You’re better than me at tugging ladies’ heartstrings. What’s your secret? Go on. Tell me.”
“The trick is,” Skalrath said, leaning in close and keeping his voice low, “Lots of alcohol. Some drugs. And a stereotypically handsome face. Hay, if they’ve been eyeballing a stallion in the bar, just use them.”
“Ah!” Fray grinned, pointing a holed hoof at Skalrath. “That’s how you bloody did it. Six one-night stands!”
Skalrath smiled, and held up two hooves. “Hey, it works. It’s not exactly sustainable, but I get to work one night a week and do what I want for the rest.”
“Clever...” Fray shook his head. “But I still scored higher in long-term infiltration. Your disguises have no depth to them, there’s no way you could stick to one disguise for more than a day or two, tops.”
“I don’t care,” Skalrath said, shaking his head. “You’ll never catch me playing happy families, it’s not my thing.”
“What if the Queen tells you to?”
“She’ll never tell me to do it,” Skalrath shook his head. “She knows full well I’m far more efficient if I’m just left to do my own thing. She’d send you, or Silicate to do a long-term job.”
Fray grumbled. Skalrath was right. When he brought in double the quota that anyling else could, in the same amount of time, the Queen was rather partial to giving him free reign, as long as he kept that love flowing.
There was a rumble, and the changelings looked at each other.
“Did you feel that?” Fray asked, anxious.
“I think it came from outside,” Skalrath muttered, beating his wings and taking off, following the other changelings who were leaving the chamber to see what the commotion was. Fray followed, and gasped as the pair were witness to a most peculiar sight.
“Queen’s sheddings,” Fray said bluntly, staring at the radiant glow shining out of the castle balcony from which Chrysalis was running the invasion. “What is going on up there?”
There was a subsonic boom that they felt in their cores, and a feeling of dread that suddenly shot through their minds, care of the hivemind link. Beams of light shot out of the windows of Canterlot Castle, and the changelings watched a small black shape fly through the air, faint screams trailing after it.
“Was that the Queen?”
Then, like a phantasmal wall, a bubble of light grew outwards from the castle, exploding outwards, ignoring walls. It was big, it was pink, and even from here, Fray and Skalrath could feel the power behind it.
“Oh, by the birthing saaaaaaac-”
They watched as ponies passed through unaffected, as park benches phased through the wall like it was just a light show. As changelings closer than them slammed into the surface of the bubble with crackles of energy, and were picked up, carried outwards and upwards. In no time at all, it was Fray and Skalrath’s turn, and they felt the burn of power behind the dome as they were joined by the rest of the changeling army like insects in a bug catcher’s net. Or leafy crap in a pool skimmer.
And then, there was nothing. Skalrath felt the wind in his crest, and the sun on his chitin. He looked behind him, and behind a swarm of airborne changelings, he saw Canterlot, already a shrinking shape on the horizon.
He looked down and around - most of the changelings were completely stunned. Fray and Skalrath were better off, at least able to wiggle their legs, and that was probably down to their greater personal reserves of love.
Unfortunately, that didn’t allow their wings to work, and like every other changeling, they started to fall out of the sky, spreading out to scatter across the Equestrian landscape.
“Skal!” Fray shouted, struggling to swim towards Skalrath.
“Relax, Fray!” Skalrath reassured, smiling. “It’ll all be okay! I’ll meet you back at the hive!”
Fray nodded grimly, and turned his attention to the ground, balling himself up, and with a flare of green magic, encasing himself in hard resin like they had done when they first landed in Canterlot. Skalrath dismissed the idea. He was Skalrath, one of the Queen’s best. A little crash-landing wasn’t going to hurt him.
He looked down at the ground that rushed ever-closer, and eyeballed his new landing site; it was a rather pleasant front garden, actually, in the middle of some suburbia, and on the horizon, he could see the Everfree forest. If memory served, it was the town of Whitetail. Not far at all from the hive, really.
He got closer, and considered the tree that may or may not wind up occupying his landing place. Perhaps... perhaps he could tuck and roll, just this on-
======
Skalrath groaned as he uncurled, chitin clicking as dents popped back out and joints in his carapace were forced back into working shape. He was upside down, with his back to the tree and his neck supporting his entire body at the end of a rather deep furrow of dirt. Some green leaves were still drifting through the air.
Not out for long, then. He rolled over, and flexed his shoulders and neck, grunting. The price of his pride, the result of not going into a drop-chrysalis for the landing like everyling else undoubtedly did.
His ear twitched, and he detected a disturbance in the air -- the wailing of something young. A baby. Not his problem.
He began to move, and paused. What if it became his problem? A crying baby might bring his crash-landing to the attention of an adult pony, and the last thing he needed was to get seen... best to investigate and silence. He turned towards the house, and looked at it.
As a building, it had a very natural feel to it; all rounded corners, domed roof and circular windows. It looked much like you’d expect a hill-house to look, only instead of grass, the roof was thatch. The garden reflected that, showing a great deal of care and variety that was only a little neglected. A white stone path wound through the luscious green grass and flowerbeds to a sturdy green door in a pale yellow wall, which Skal gently pushed -- with a snick, the door swung open gently, gradually, with a creak. Typical pony house, unlocked.
Skalrath stepped inside, and closed the door behind him quickly and quietly, a flare of green flame disguising him as a random stallion of tan and blue. The crying was definitely coming from nearby, just around the corner, volume increasing with every step forward that Skal took. The smell of pony food grew more intense, and he poked his head around the corner, looking into what he predicted would be the kitchen and dining area.
He wasn’t wrong. A red and white checkered tablecloth sat over a round dinner table, two chairs and a high chair parked next to it. The kitchen area consisted of a sink, a bench and a well-used oven, on top of which a pot of porridge bubbled and glooped away, smoke slowly creeping into the air from the mix. The crying belonged to a foal in the high chair, strapped in with a small table in front of him. He banged red hooves on the table and bawled as he did so, a tuft of violet hair on his head bobbing back and forth as he cried for his parents.
And boy, was he crying. Skal sniffed the air, and wrinkled his nose. The smell of smoke was in the air, too. Where was this kid’s parents? He stepped into the room, not worrying about the foal as he made his way to the stove and turned it off, moving the pot off the element, and giving it a quick stir to try and stop the burning. He wasn’t any great shakes at cooking, but he could usually muddle his way through a kitchen just enough for a mare to sidle up and “help”. All part of his charm.
Satisfied that he wasn’t going to leave a house to burn down of a stove fire, he turned to leave, and froze dead in his tracks as he looked at the floor now in front of him. On the ground, in such a way that she’d been obscured from Skal’s initial view, lay a red unicorn mare, long violet mane long, straggly and splayed everywhere. An apron was tied around her body, indicating she’d been the one cooking the porridge, and it was starting to soak up part of a pool of blood that had formed around the mare’s head. Above her head, the dinner table’s tablecloth had a splash of red on the edge of it, and next to Skalrath’s hooves, a banana peel sat, exterior downwards.
“You are bucking kidding me,” Skalrath muttered, walking over quickly to the body and carefully rolling it over. The mare’s head lolled, and her eyes were locked open, staring into space. Her mouth seemed frozen mid-speech, and despite the fact that she was still fairly warm, a quick pulse check told Skal what he didn’t want to know.
The mare, looking like she was barely into her twenties, was dead. No wonder the kid was crying. Skalrath got up, and sighed. Well, that solved that problem. Nopony was going to bust him now. All he had to do was-
Knock Knock Knock
Skal froze. Who was- why? He looked around. There was a long, rectangular window in the kitchen area, giving a decent enough view. It would also prove an easy way for a concerned pony to look through the window, and while they wouldn’t see the dead mother, they would see a strange stallion standing in the middle of the kitchen next to a crying baby, which would be trouble.
Skalrath took a deep breath, and looked at the mare on the ground, taking in her physical details. Eyeballing a disguise was a skill he’d honed over the years, usually combining it with a decades-old DNA disguise to give him a corporeal stallion disguise that he could tailor to the desires of the target mare. Sure, the disguise always felt the same, but he’d been careful to never accidentally catch the same mare twice, so it didn’t really matter.
Today, though, it was a straight eyeball disguise -- Skalrath hadn’t sucked and stored the DNA of a female for years, and he didn’t have time to grab a copy of her genes now.
With a crackle of green flame, the transformation was complete, and in the kitchen stood a perfect body double of the mare lying on the ground in a pool of her own blood.
“Rose Fountain, you okay in there?” a muffled, female voice called out, followed by more thumping on the door. “I heard a loud noise outside, do you need help?”
Skalrath swallowed. He needed to respond, but he’d never heard the mare talk, so there was no way he could get the voice right! He opened his mouth, and looked at the mare on the ground.
“Ah, no,” he said in a voice that was a vague approximation of what he figured the recently-deceased Rose Fountain sounded like. “I’m fine, just got my hooves full,” he reassured, in a voice that was a bit on the gravelly side. Perhaps Rose was one of those mares?
“Are you sure?” the voice called out. “Your voice is a bit messed up!”
Apparently not. Skal tried again. “I’m sure I’m fine, just got a bit of something in my throat!” Skal coughed loudly, and took the opportunity to change the pitch of his voice, reducing the gravel greatly and giving himself a voice that didn’t sound like he’d been screaming for six days straight.. “There, I think I got it!”
There was a tense pause, and Skal wondered if he’d pushed it a bit.
“Alright,” the voice shouted back, conceding defeat. “Remember, I’m just across the fence if you need help, I won’t hold it against you if you ask for help. Celestia knows being a single mother’s hard enough, let alone at your age.”
Skal choked a little, and nodded on reflex, despite the neighbor remaining unseen. “I’ll remember that. Thanks for the offer!”
The neighbor paused, as if framing up something they wanted to say, but ultimately deciding against it. “Take care, Rose.”
Skal waited for a few moments, and when there was no further conversation, he dared to breathe again. That was far too close for comfort. The colt, who’d fallen silent at Skal’s attempt at imitation of his mother, began to cry again, and Skal’s mind was drawn to the factoid the neighbor had unwittingly provided him with.
“Oh, Chitinous Throne,” he muttered. “The kid’s got nopony left.”
Skal walked over to the free seat, and pulled it out with a squeak, sitting down heavily and resting his head on a hoof. The foal’s crying intensified as he made grabby motions for his “mother”, and Skalrath grudgingly obliged the foal, holding out his hoof. The foal grabbed the limb, and with enthusiasm, began to gum Skalrath’s disguised hoof. The changeling watched the child masticate away, and his brow deepened as he tried to make the call.
The smart move here was to just get out as soon as possible. Make like a banana and split for home, before word of the invasion got around and the town got put on high alert.
Skalrath felt a tug on his hoof, and his mind was drawn to the other side of the coin. Dead mother, absent father. The kid would die, most likely. There was that neighbor, but... no. There was no guarantee that the neighbor would even get curious before it was too late for the kid.
But, why was he even entertaining this idea? He wasn’t family material, he’d said as much to Fray. His forte was one-night stands, not being a single parent. This was asking for trouble in all the wrong ways!
It would be a kindness, then, to do to this kid what he’d done to so many other things that stood in his way. He freed his hoof, and used his magic to pick the kid up in a green, telekinetic haze. The colt gurgled happily as he was made airborne, and didn’t show the slightest bit of fear as Skalrath formed a grip on his neck, perfectly positioned to wring an unsuspecting child’s neck...
And yet, no matter how much he resolved to just twist, Skalrath couldn’t do it. The kid just looked at him, and he felt a wave of unconditional affection wash over him, and he felt guilty for even considering killing the colt.
Perhaps he could just set the kid free. Ponies this young could fend for themselves, right? Skalrath looked at the colt, who dribbled and gurgled in satisfaction as somepony who looked like his mother held him, and...
Well, love was love, right? He could always take the week off, take a holiday and pretend he got caught up somewhere, or something...
“Say hi to your new mum, kiddo,” Rose Fountain said resignedly.