Holy lazy author, Batman, it's an update!
Well, um, if anyone's still reading this, I finally got around to writing an eleventh chapter to this...I'm sorry for disappearing. Again. I was tangled up in a bunch of other projects, but I finally got some time to work on TPS. Everybody who reviewed and faved while I was dormant-thanks so much! It really means a lot.
There are changeling guts in this one. I thought about basing their design on bug organs, like those of a stag beetle (which, in my opinion, are the insects that changelings most closely resemble). But stag beetles don't feed on love, so I abandoned that idea and just incorporated my own wacky, alien design. Tell me if it's too stupid.
Oh, yeah, one more thing. I know I use a whole lot of horse terms in an effort to be accurate-and most of you probably don't breed or race horses. I know I don't. So you don't, offhand, know what parts I'm referring to. This is the picture I use to guide me through equine anatomy: wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/Points_of_a_ /500px-Points_of_a_
I think it's accurate. At least, I hope it is. Whatever. This author's note is too long; let's get to the story.
"No!" Twilight shouted at the top of her lungs, her eyelids swollen and stinging with dryness as tears of helpless fury and horror streamed down her face. "No, no, no!" She slammed her forehooves against the bars of her iron cage with each word, making a cacophonous ringing noise to go with her raw, desperate voice. Her horn sparked and flashed, as her emotions tried to pour themselves out as excess magic, but the iron prevented any real magical outburst.
Celestia, looming over a struggling, howling Chelicera, lowered her chosen scalpel slightly and rolled her eyes. Her wings shivered as she turned to glare at Twilight.
"Is it really necessary to make such a racket, my faithful student?" she asked, her voice just a little exasperated. Twilight felt a lump rising in her throat as she realized that Celestia's voice still sounded exactly the same as it always had. It would have been out of place in the shining halls of the palace above them, asking one of the ceremonial guards to go for more tea.
"I'm-not-your-student!" she yelled savagely, punctuating each word by smashing her hooves against the bars again. It sent shocks of buzzing pain up through her cannons. "You're not C-Celestia!" A ragged sob made her voice shake. "I don't want anything to do with you! I'm not your student! You're a bucking monster!"
"Twilight!" Celestia snapped, fully turning towards her. "Language! I really would have thought your vocabulary would be more advanced than that." Glancing at Chelicera, she raised a hoof that was unshod except for crusted gore. She ran the edge almost affectionately along her jawline, and the changeling shuddered violently, blood bubbling out of her mouth. "You could learn something from this First-Hatched, battered as she is. She isn't insulting me with profanity; she just screams." She smiled fondly down at Chelicera.
"Because you made her bite her own tongue off!" She couldn't help but remember the hideous snapping sound of the smaller mare's jaws closing on her own tongue, and the wet thud of the severed portion hitting the floor. Her stomach roiled and twisted with sudden nausea. "Haven't you done enough to her?! She can't even talk anymore! Just let her go-please!"
"Oh, Twilight...surely you understand the scientific importance of vivisecting this specific changeling." She walked a slow, graceful circle around Chelicera, her hooves tapping menacingly on the stone floor as she stroked the changeling's pale-gray crest with a tentacle of blood-colored magic. "We don't know what their..." The tentacle flickered down to the iridescent gray bands wrapped around her middle. Chelicera shuddered. "...insides look like, with these intelligent First-Hatched. We don't know what makes them tick. With ponies, you have a heart, lung, intestines-but changelings are so very different." She smiled surreptitiously at Twilight, who couldn't stop herself from shaking. "Oh, Twilight...don't tell me you've become...attached to this creature."
"She's my friend," Twilight said, her voice barely a whisper. She had exhausted herself, banging on the cage and yelling; the muscles of her forelegs and withers ached. She was so tired, so afraid, and she didn't quite know what to do anymore. I promised her she'd see her Hive again.
"Really? Your friend?" Celestia raised a skeptical eyebrow as she returned to her original position and picked up her scalpel again. Chelicera growled defiantly. "Twilight, I would really expect you to have more common sense than that...really. Just look at her. The fangs, the eyes-I would bet you all the tea in the Qilin Nation that she literally doesn't have a heart. To a changeling, you, a pony, a creature who is not Hive nor Queen nor even one of their species, are just a food source." She placed the tip of the scalpel against the very top of Chelicera's bands, where they met the chitin of her chest. She froze. "Believe me, I'm doing you a favor."
With a light flick of her magic, Celestia sent the tip popping through the thing, flexible material of the bands. The changeling choked, blood from her severed tongue dripping from the corners of her open mouth. She couldn't actually spit a mouthful of it at Celestia, as her head was pulled back so most of her flexible crest was smashed flat against the wood of the rack she was chained to, and Twilight's heart squeezed in fear as she realized she might not be able to breathe. But that might not matter soon, if Celestia pushed the scalpel any deeper.
"I'd have you take notes," the dark princess said conversationally, "but you probably wouldn't be able to hold a quill in your magic right now, and your hooves look a little sore." She smiled sympathetically, and something inside Twilight warmed, some small part that couldn't help but react to a positive gesture from even this twisted version of her teacher. "And it's so difficult to hold a quill in your mouth...the barbs get all matted." She rolled her wither in an approximation of a shrug, the spiny flower of insectine wings sprouting between them shivering with the movement. "I suppose you'll just have to pay very close attention." With a smile that plunged that warm part of Twilight into a bucket of ice water, she added, "And you will be tested on this."
"No!" Twilight screamed, her throat aching and raw as Celestia pulled the scalpel down in a perfectly straight line across the rounded plain of Chelicera's stomach. "No..."
The changeling let out a gurgling howl, her torso bucking against the ancient, bloodstained wood of the rack. As tightly as she was held, it was really more like twitching. The bands split apart behind the blade of the scalpel, bright green blood oozing out as well as large amounts of the emerald goop that she had wrapped Twilight's muzzle in to silence her. Even as her stomach did somersaults and a retch shook her body while tears stung her burning eyes, some scientific part of her brain found that goop fascinating. Were the organs packed in it to protect them while changing, or was there some other reason for its presence?
Celestia clicked her tongue, scooping up the oozing green jelly with her magic and depositing it in a rusted bowl on a nearby table. Chelicera quivered as each load was drawn out of her, letting out a tiny shriek every time the red magic delved inside her. Twilight could sympathize; she knew what it felt like to be violated like that. The incision across her stomach was proof enough of that.
"Changeling honey," Celestia said disapprovingly. "Such a mess."
Twilight gripped the bars of her cage with her forehooves, biting her lower lip so hard she drew blood up through her purple coat. With the goo cleaned out of Chelicera's abdomen, she could see throbbing, pulsing organs, all in shades of green. Twilight was familiar enough with equine anatomy to know where all the organs would be, if she were a pony; where her stomach should be was a tangle of verdant netting, the strands woven together in a complex pattern with little flickers of soft pinkish-purple light jumping between them. A few of the strands went down to connect to a bundle of green bulbs, glowing from within with that same pink light. Dark green fronds curled up from the spaces between them, beads of light clinging to them. A claw-like cage of green chitin was barely visible, nestled down below the black plates of her lower belly; membranes of transparent jade tissue connected the "fingers," shrouding a twitching green bladder of some sort. Everything else was higher up or lower down, where she couldn't see.
"These make up the equivalent of the stomach," Celestia said conversationally, waving the blade of the scalpel to encompass the netting, the bulbs, and the fronds. "There is no liver, intestines, pancreas, or kidneys-this is entirely it. Changelings subsist on love and a little moisture, so their digestive system is incredibly simple. Unlike ponies, they don't even have a waste-removal system. Isn't that interesting?" She smiled at Twilight, her white muzzle just barely visible through the glittering, rot-colored cloud of her mane.
Twilight raised her hooves and scrubbed at her tear-stained face, squeezing her dry, staining eyes shut and not caring that she was getting dirt and blood all over her muzzle and coat. Gritting her teeth, she yelled, "Chelicera-focus on my voice. You'll be okay...focus on my voice. I'm so sorry. Don't let the pain take you over."
Chelicera trilled in response, unable to talk, her voice strained and near hysterical with agony. The most vulnerable part of her body had been sliced wide open, her organs exposed to the air and the matter cushioning them removed. Twilight leaned against the bars, eyes still closed and withers shaking. She stretched a foreleg through the bars, reaching for Chelicera even though she knew they were way too far away to touch. She whispered, "I'm still here, I'm right here." Offering the only comfort she could.
A sudden scream from the changeling made her eyes fly open. Celestia had taken one side of the three bands that had made up the skin of her belly and was slowly peeling them apart. The tissue tore with a wet sound, lime-green blood and some sort of viscous gray fluid leaking out from between the thin bands. Twilight screamed back, horrified and sickened, and Celestia paused.
"I'm glad I have your attention back," she commented, her tone disapproving. "I'm very disappointed in you, Twilight. Here I am, doing my best to appeal to your scientific nature instead of using the old rituals I prefer, and you can't even focus."
Instead of answering, she looked to Chelicera, who lay limply against the rack, clearly exhausted from struggle and agony. Her muzzle, cheeks, throat, and the wood beneath her head was spattered with green, and gray tears ran from her eyes, leaving thick trails on her forehead because her head was drawn cruelly back by the chain that looped under her largest fangs. Twilight forced herself to look, forced herself to feel, so she could describe every second of this nightmare to the Canterlot authorities later.
"Please don't hurt her anymore." Her voice came out as a quiet whimper. Chelicera wasn't a pony, but she had helped her, had provided very real equine comfort in this place. She couldn't bear to see her in so much pain. "Please, Princess...please. I'll do whatever you want if you just leave her alone."
"Oh?" Celestia asked skeptically, one corner of her muzzle quirking up in a smile. "Offering yourself to me, Twilight? That's certainly new." Letting her magic fade completely from Chelicera's abdomen, she turned fully towards Twilight, who resisted the urge to shrink back into the depths of her cage. "All right. I'll make you a deal, my little pony."
Twilight laid her ears back against her head in a gesture of submission, and listened.
"I'll stop hurting her. I'll leave her alone...if..." One of her wings curled down like a finger to playfully tickle one of Chelicera's desiccated coronets. The changeling didn't react; Twilight didn't think she had much feeling in the hole-filled, lower parts of her legs. "You agree to come out of your cage and try your hoof at working on our captive changeling."
Twilight stared at her in abject horror. She wanted her to torture Chelicera, take her apart with knives and magic like she was doing. Maybe she could be gentler than Celestia, not cause her so much pain, but-no. No! She couldn't believe she was even considering it for so much as a second. She was Twilight Sparkle: unicorn, scholar, Element of Harmony. It was in the very nature of her species to promote and protect life with their magic, prevent suffering. The only weapon she could wield without getting sick was her own magic, and knowledge; she remembered when her brother had brought his sword home to practice and she hadn't even been able to bring herself to touch it. And-she was the central Element, the leader, the focal point, the prism through which the power of all the others was focused. It was her duty to protect innocents and destroy things like whatever was wearing Celestia's face in front of her.
The realization ignited courage in her heart, banishing all her fear and fatigue. Twilight shook her filthy mane back from her face, sat up tall with her horn glimmering and forehooves planted firmly in front of her, and sweetly said, "Go to Tartarus. You twisted, corrupted, evil whorse of a monster."
There was a rattling, wheezing, gurgle of a sound, rhythmic and almost lilting despite itself, and Twilight realized it was coming from Chelicera. It took her another second to figure out she was laughing. It must have hurt terribly, with her stomach laid open like it was, but she laughed anyway.
Celestia looked from her to Twilight, and, for just a moment, something absolutely terrifying crossed her face. And then it was gone, and she simply sighed.
"Well, all right, then," she said, sounding disappointed but not surprised. "If you aren't willing to learn hooves-on, at least allow me to show you something that I find simply fascinating."
A ring of red magic wrapped around the base of Chelicera's horn, and the spike of ebony chitin lit up in a sudden, savage pulse of green light that Twilight guessed wasn't voluntary. Chelicera hissed, sending a fine green spray into the air. Then, with no warning at all, a pebble of red magic appeared in her mouth, pressing down hard on the ragged stump that was the remains of her tongue.
She howled, and the effect on Twilight was like a buck to the gut. She couldn't stop a sudden, massive wave of sorrow and concern and sympathy and, yes, even love from cresting out of her heart. As her feelings went more haywire than a flock of drunken pegasi trying to control a hurricane, the green magic around Chelicera's horn flared suddenly brighter. The flickers of pinkish-purple light in the exposed netting organ seemed to explode into a supernova, obscuring the grass-colored tissue as marbles of warm light leaped from one strand to another, running down them to rapidly swell the bulbs they were attached to. Until the bundle of them was so large it bulged up out of the changeling mare's abdominal cavity. The fronds trembled under the weight of many, many droplets of light.
"That," Celestia said, in the voice of a teacher lecturing a favorite pupil, "is your love for her." She nodded to the light. "It becomes a visible, tangible thing, once in the digestive tract of a changeling...aren't they an interesting race, Twilight?" She idly prodded the bulbs with the tip of the green-slicked scalpel. "I'm simply putting a little magical pressure on the nerve that runs from her horn to her brain-it's quite similar to the one found in unicorns. The pressure causes a reflexive casting of the feeding spell, which all changelings hatch knowing. In effect, I'm forcing her to feed."
"That's disgusting," Twilight whispered, making eye contact with Chelicera. The changeling's ghostly amber eyes were half-closed, the chitin plates of her barrel rising and falling in shallow, ragged pants. She looked as though she were shutting down, drawing away into the deepest parts of herself in order to survive.
Twilight didn't know how resilient changelings were, what they could heal from. But she hoped desperately that Chelicera would live, that the bands of her stomach would knit themselves back together so she could escape and go back to her Hive and tell her Queen what was happening here. She imagined changelings and royal guards flooding this Tartarean place, tearing apart the torture instruments, cornering and capturing Celestia. She imagined herself standing beside Chelicera, two survivors bound by their experience, seeing their nightmare come to an end.
She knew it would never actually happen, but it was intensely comforting to think about.