75 – Changeling Times
She had finally succeeded.
She was really rocking now!
Dead silence, in more ways than one, answered her.
She was so lonely. Soo, soo, very lonely.
Ever since that horrid day almost a year and a half ago.
Queen-mother had sent them all to that Canterlot place, with the promise that they would go hungry no more. All they had to do was crush the resistance of the ponies and everything would be alright. It should have been easy. She would handle the three Princesses, they would handle the ponies. And with the Princesses out of the battle, the ponies would have been easy to handle — the lings, after-all, had out-numbered the pony soldiers by at least a hundred to one.
They had known that not all would survive, but the losses would have been acceptable. She, herself, would have gladly died to ensure the hive prospered as Queen-mother had promised. And she knew her brood-sisters would all have remembered her, and the others who perished. Every new generation of nymphs would have been told her name, Drone Infiltrator Cadet 370,456LE, or Elly 56, by her brood-sisters.
She, figuratively at least, shook her head. Now was not the time to brood on what happened, on what could have possibly created that great wall of pink that had thrown them from the city, killing over half the hive, thousands, in a few moments. The sheer number of them had paralysed her in agony.
She had, miraculously, survived while her sisters had died. She knew she couldn't be the only ling to have lived, though. Her older sisters had been all much stronger and sturdier than she. She had seen them thrown by the thousands out of the city, in all directions.
But by the time she had recovered the hive-link was quiet, except for the agony of the dying — all other thoughts buried under the pain.
And now, it was quiet.
Dead quiet.
As dead as a rock, quiet.
It had never before been quiet. It was as if Queen Mother had severed her link, cut her losses to the few who had survived near her. But that was impossible. Queen Mother would never do anything like that. She would never abandon her children like that.
Elly could only conclude she was the only survivor this side of Canterlot.
Hence, her current position.
As a rock.
Under the walkway that led to a portal.
A portal to a whole new world. One that was not dominated by ponies whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to hunt her down to kill her.
She had heard the rumours in the Playpark where she hid as a pony-sized rock. She hadn't really moved from that spot in weeks. No real need to move — why take a chance on being caught?
"What do you think they're building?" she had heard one mare ask another as they lounged on the sunny-side of her rock during the late summer.
"I don't know, but the Guard is everywhere there!" her beau had answered. "And working all night, too, Applejack told me."
"Whatever it is, I've heard the Element Bearers are going there nearly every day, and even spending the nights!"
The first mare had snorted. "And not just them! I overheard Pipsqueak complaining to his parents that the Cutie Mark Crusaders had disappeared completely!"
There was a long pause, then the second mare had said, "Huh. I thought it had been real quiet in town recently." Elly could imagine the second one frowning as she felt the emotional suspicion and surprise, "I haven't heard any of the Flower Sisters screaming in panic in at least a week."
They had both laughed, relieved, before they had snuggled a bit closer and gave Elly another boost to her love reserves as they kissed.
"Well," said the first one, "I'll take my peace and quiet where I can get it!"
That had set Elly off after dark to seek out the pub in town where the gossip was thickest. And found it crowded with out-of-town ponies, all Guards. She had almost fled back to the park immediately. Instead, she had transformed into a bat and snuck in the back door to hide in the rafters.
And learned of the portal.
A portal to another world.
One that wouldn't have ponies searching for lings everywhere.
For the next two weeks she had snuck around after dark acquiring as much love as she could, even taking a chance and substituting for two different exhausted new-mothers. The mares got a really good night's sleep, their husbands got some rare attention from their wives, and the babies slept peacefully with just a touch of her venom. Everyone came out ahead.
And she spent the hours between late dinner and the pub closing time listening to the guards.
The hive didn't need money, everyone worked, everyone benefited. Some had harder jobs and were given more days off to rest as compensation. Others worked at lighter jobs and had fewer rest days. It all evened out and everyone was, well, not happy, but at least content and knew that as the hive prospered, so did they.
The ponies, however, used things called bits and life could be very unfair, Elly had seen in Ponyville. Some ponies had little work but much in the way of rest days and objects they could buy, while others worked very hard for very little in return. She couldn't really understand how that worked. In the hive, you always got what you needed based on how hard you worked — either physically or mentally. But then, she was just a cadet. With experience, she had been told, would come knowledge and understanding of the ponies.
And the aliens used bits, too. Except they weren't bits. You had to trade either bits or gems for the aliens' money. That was easy to fix, for Elly. A simple trip to the most expensive looking home in the village. A little nip, a quiet suggestion, and she had a hundred bits under her wing a few minutes later. And Mr. Rich had a wonderful dream as a reward, via suggestion, of course. No need to waste love on either side. Or leave evidence someone might notice.
The gems had been more difficult. She almost had a nervous breakdown sneaking into that odd building that looked like a carousel. Sure, she knew that the Element Bearer was on the other side of the portal for the night and the house completely vacant, but that still didn't calm her nerves any. She swiped almost two dozen gems from a bucket beside the unicorn's sewing machine. A second bucket had far fewer of the enchantable gems, so she could only take three before the pile looked suspiciously lower.
Fortunately, by stuffing the gems and bits, wrapped in scrap cloth, into the holes in her legs she could carry them unencumbered. It was decidedly not comfortable, and left lumps in her legs if she transformed to a pony, but at least it was doable. As long as she didn't have to fight, she was okay.
Sneaking past the Portal checkpoints was a nightmare. She arrived just before dawn, that time when it was always darkest — when the faint light of the coming dawn spoiled the Guards night-vision and made the shadows deeper. The mad dash, with frequent pauses to see if she had been noticed, across Sweet Apple Acres as rather large possum took all night. Especially while balancing the bits and gems on her back. Even wrapped in cloth secured with construction goo, they were awkward to hold.
She caught her breath as she waited for a wagon to come by with more construction materials. Darting between the wheels was simple, as was grabbing the wooden wheel and riding it up until she could jump off and grab the bottom of the cart.
She almost panicked when she heard the Guard casting the ling-finding spell on the entire wagon. Fortunately, the guards had been more interested in the possibility of a ling hiding under the materials than one easily visible underneath the bed of the cart. Nopony noticed the slight green glow under the cart as she frantically fought the spell.
She barely managed to keep hold of the cart and stop the transformation before it got too far along, and returned to her possum form. Fortunately, she didn't lose any of her bits or gems. Having a pile of coins or gems suddenly clink to the ground and appear under the wagon would have been a dead giveaway of something wrong.
And it would have been her, dead, as a consequence.
It hadn't been a clean save, though. Possums usually don't have butterfly-like wings. Fortunately, they were the same dull-brown colour as the rest of her body, and matched the wood colour closely. She didn't breathe until the wagon was well past the check-in station.
Once they reached their work area, she forced herself to wait until the workers were distracted before dropping to the ground and running into the grass. Once there, she burrowed into the ground as quickly as possible and stayed there until nightfall.
Although the area was well-lit for the workers, it provided enough shadows for her to make her way to the administration building unseen, which took all night. Slipping into the building was fairly simple. Her inadvertent addition of wings to her form made it remarkably easy to fly up to the eaves and sneak into the attic through an air vent.
She spent the next two weeks in their training and class rooms — hiding between the ceiling and the floor above, or in attic at the top. It was a bit of a surprise to see that the learning was going both ways, with some classrooms having pony teachers and others having the humans doing the teaching. Not to mention the magic she saw being taught both ways.
The attic was quite the nice place to stow her gems and coins while she explored and learned.
Their discussions on the uses for telephones, radios, and televisions were changing Equestria were terrifying. Any ling sighted in Equestria would have every pony in the town alerted in a few minutes, and then the surrounding towns, too. And this floo network they mentioned — reinforcements for a besieged post were merely minutes away instead of the days or weeks they usually took.
Assuming there were any other survivors.
In any event, half of the lings' tactics would become useless with those devices distributed.
She took advantage of her possum wings, late at night, to dart over to the building the humans were using as their sleeping quarters — and quite lush ones at that, she thought
That she could feed off the humans was a tremendous relief — even if it was than what she could get from ponies. Plus, it appeared that humans were just as restless as the ponies in that regard. She had caught three couples, so far, among the "official" staff. Among the ones that were learning about the ponies, their history, and their "achievements," she had caught double that number.
She carefully studied those humans. The attic, though small, did provide her with enough room to experiment, so she at least knew how to crawl and became somewhat used to the idea of fingers, toes, and clothes. It was a lot like her training with the Minotaur form, but better balanced.
She even ventured down and bit one of the sleeping humans to see what would happen. The answer was . . . not much. With him being asleep she couldn't tell if he would respond to her commands or not. On the other hoof . . . hand, that he didn't have any obvious physical reaction to her venom was also a relief.
The classes on how magic seemed to work in the world on the other side of the portal, and she made sure to study their books at night in the attic. She managed to steal one of the books they were using as a textbook with the most useful spells a guard might need — things such as the shrinking and enlarging spells, the undetectable expansion charm, the sticking charm, and a dozen others oriented towards battle and safety. It even included a variation on the ling-revealing spell that they called an animagus-reversing spell.
That was the big advantage the ponies had over the lings. Their unicorns were much better and more versatile at casting spells, their pegasi were by far faster flyers, and the earth-ponies were simply stronger in every way. The lings succeeded by avoiding open battles, using surprise sneak attacks at close quarters, and always making sure they out-numbered their victims. Not to mention hiding that they even existed. Or rather, had existed.
The spells were difficult to cast, for her, but they did work, mostly, she was happy to see — just not as well as they did for the ponies. That they could also use those things called wands that she could buy and use for magic in the other world was fascinating. If it was true, she would be on an even level with the unicorns!
Once she knew as much as any of the guards, and her reserves were once more completely full, she decided to move on.
She made her way slowly, over several days, to the second wall. It took a nerve-wracking night to climb up one side and down the other. Sticking to the shadows in the corners was difficult, but she managed.
Now for the hospital and then the portal.
۸-_-۸
One advantage to the way the ponies kept everything here so well-lit was that the owls and other predators kept their distance from the noise and activity. Of course, the noise and activity also tended to keep the small rodents she was imitating in their burrows, and reduced the predators' interest in searching the area!
The hospital on the other side didn't take more than a few days for her to scope out. And discover how fragile these humans were! They weren't nearly as durable as even the ponies, never mind how tough a changeling was! Things that wouldn't even scratch a pony left long bleeding cuts! Simple falls that she or a pony would shake off could very easily kill a human! She could only shake her head in wonder.
That the ponies were healing so many humans was . . . strange. Didn't the humans have their own hospitals? Or was it that the spells the ponies had worked better here than there? Or were the ponies using the humans as test subjects? It seemed that that might be the case as she saw them re-growing entire limbs on the humans, something she didn't think the ponies knew how to do.
Doing that was something that required very large love reserves for a changeling — a rare grace from their Queen-mother only for the most important of her advisors and commanders. Most drones made due, or, if they used more resources than they could justify, their love reserves were added to the hive's love pool.
Then there was the fact that the ponies only approached the patients when they were asleep.
Why were the ponies hiding their presence from certain non-magical humans and not other non-magicals? It made no sense to her.
On the other hand, the stories the ponies told in the training building of why the magical humans hid from the non-magical did make sense. It was almost like how the lings hid from the ponies. Only the witches and wizards didn't have to change form — and they didn't need love.
She studied her book whenever she wasn't spying on the ponies and humans. Satisfied that she had learned all she could from the . . . people . . . in the hospital, she started planning on how to get through the portal.
Her first thought was to hide in a pocket as the humans moved their patients back through the portal. But then what would the portal do to her? If she was in a pocket, and changed to whatever she would be on the other side — hopefully a human — everyone would immediately see her suddenly appear out of seemingly nowhere! Not. A. Good. Thing.
Watching as Princess Twilight and whichever of the Bearers she had with her trot on by every other day or so didn't make things easier. Just being that close to the ones who had destroyed the lings made her quake in fear of discovery.
During the late night, when the guards were most tired and it was hardest to see, she made the dash from the hospital to the Portal walkway, dragging her bag of possessions with her. Not daring to move during the day after that, she had slept and waited for the next night. Over eight hours in the dead of the night, she carefully moved through the raked gravel under the walkway to the portal tree. She had planned to try for the portal the next evening, but seeing Princess Luna, Prince Blueblood, Princess Twilight, the Element bearers, and an escort squad of palace guards trot up the walkway that morning put a halt to those plans! Especially considering how excited Luna was and worried the rest were. Something big was in the offering.
She transformed into a rock and decided to wait. She had enough reserves to last quite a long time if she didn't do anything. She didn't want to try to run the portal when there was so much happening on the other side involving powerful unicorns and alicorns! She decided she should have made a jar to keep the excess love in. That would have come in handy, now.
Luna and her guard passing overhead shortly before noon had been nerve-wracking. From her emotional blast of smug happiness and satisfaction as she came through the portal, whatever had happened had been successful. From the magic sphere she was toting, and the worried state of the guards, they had brought back something very dangerous. From what Elly could hear, Luna had somehow captured a basilisk and planned to take it to tartarus. After showing it off and bragging to her sister. And threatening a few nobles with petrification.
That the humans had needed her help was actually a relief. If they didn't have an equivalent to either Luna or Celestia, and Twilight had felt the need to call in one of those two, maybe she had a real chance. Plus, if the humans couldn't handle a small snake like a basilisk — it couldn't be very large based on the size of the capture sphere — then these humans shouldn't pose any kind of a threat to her kind whatsoever. Unless she was careless. And she planned to be very, very careful.
She decided to wait a bit longer, a few days, before braving the portal. She spent what time she dared studying the spells in her book. She couldn't practice them, of course, but she memorized everything there was to know about them.
That Twilight and the other Element Bearers came out and did not return the next day gave her a bit of hope, but Twilight went through later that day. Elly resolved to wait until Twilight didn't go through. Fortunately, she overheard one of the Guards mentioning that Twilight would be going to Canterlot to meet with several Magic Specialists and would be gone all weekend.
She decided that she would make her move late Saturday night. Which left her with many hours to waste. She had slept as much as she could and now that her decision was made, she couldn't sleep any more. Instead, her mind drifted back to that horrible day
Every minute of that day was firmly embedded in her mind. Her brood-sisters had been the last of the nymphs to mature. There were no eggs or nymphs to tend after them. No ling would be left behind. Everything had gone into preparation for the attack. Once their training had been completed, the hive had waited for Queen Mother's signal.
When it came, they emptied the hive's love pool, the upper ranks sharing it all, then left. She took to the air behind her more experienced brethren, as befitted her rank of cadet. Flying was tiring, but she had persevered, as they all did. They could rest once the battle was over. Their only stops had been to pick up the scattered infiltrators along the way, and the upper ranks getting a small boost of love from them that they had collected and stored.
The sight of the city, hanging off the side of the mountain with a pinkish dome over it, was stunning. The upper ranks split and she followed the command to take the lead with the rest of the cadets. Their goal was to break through the shield and allow the more experienced drones to fight the ponies.
Hundreds died crashing repeatedly into the magical shield; exhausting themselves as they used their magic to blast at the shield. And then they were through. She had been backing up for another charge when the shield just collapsed. The higher ranks, hanging back for just this moment, shot by her in a giant wave as magic blasts from the unicorns on the walls began to drop lings on every side of her. She dropped to the parapet not too far in front of her. Soldiers and other infiltrator drones had already swept across it, chasing off or capturing the ponies who had stood there. The lings outnumbered the pony soldiers in their golden armour hundreds to one.
She eyed one of the soldiers lying on the walkway, legs tied securely together with goo all the way up to his body. He glared at her balefully, a thin rope of gloop around his muzzle preventing the defiant screams he held from being heard as anything except growls. Elly looked at him hungrily, but orders were to not feed until the city was secure. And then only in moderation. Her stomach growled, unhappy at passing a meal. But then again, she had never fed directly, before. She had always been given a cup from the feeding pond where the accumulated love gloop was stored. Plus, what she was feeling from the guard was anything but pleasant.
She flew down to the street and checked each door she passed. Those with an x-shaped goo-blob beside the broken-in doors had already been searched. She landed beside the first unmarked door-frame. The door had already been broken in and she could hear hissing and screaming inside. She hurried in only to meet a squad leader coming out. "It's clear, go to the next," she was ordered.
Elly just flew past the broken-in doors until she reached a squad of lings that had just kicked the door in. She quickly followed them. The six lings followed the terrified emotions to the basement where three unicorns immediately attacked them with flying cutlery — she knew it was cutlery because her instructors had shown her and the other cadets pictures — and magic blasts.
It didn't take long to disable the two adults and stick them to the floor with goo, and put more goo over their horns to prevent them from using magic. The smaller filly was quickly restrained and placed where the three could see each other — there was no need to cause unnecessary emotional distress. Doing that just reduced the amount of love the ponies produced for no good reason. And survival meant maximizing the love output of their food sources. The three were arranged so that they couldn't help each other and possibly escape, but could easily see the others were unharmed.
This had continued for several houses. Elly had picked up over the ling-net that a big battle with the Element Bearers had cost then nearly a hundred lings before the ponies reached the palace. It appeared that the Bearers were merciless and relentless.
But the feelings of triumph coming from Queen-mother were wonderful, and Elly thought they were close to the end. They had won and only needed to hunt down and restrain the remaining ponies.
Then it had all gone wrong. A giant wall of pink suddenly burst from the palace, sweeping up the lings and throwing them violently into the air at speeds that made controlled flight impossible. Elly was simply carried along like a dust mote in a tornado.
Those inside buildings or picked up too low to clear the walls, vanished off the net in a giant wave of paralyzing pain.
The pink shield dissipated after a short while, but left her still tumbling through the air. After a few minutes of struggling, she had managed to turn herself to see where she was going. She could barely see, the air in her face made her eyes water terribly. Blurs to either side must have been her surviving hive-mates, by the terrified emotions they were pumping out. She didn't dare put her wings into the airstream, they would be ripped off. Instead, she held them straight out from her back and used the tips of them as rudders. Others were doing the same as the knowledge spread through the hive-net.
A forest had been getting terrifyingly closer and closer as she sank lower and lower to the ground. Hitting it at this speed would shatter her chitin and kill her. All around her she felt the sudden blasts of pain and then the winking out of her sisters.
Seeing approaching disaster, she thrust one wing forcefully into the wind blowing past her. She clipped the top of one especially tall tree instead of careening directly into it. That had bounced her a bit higher and decreased her speed at the cost of a broken leg.
She could see a village in the distance rapidly getting closer. She tried to steer, to go higher, so she could lose more speed and perhaps begin to fly to no avail. She hit another tree, cracked part of her thorax and broke another leg. She went into a spin, barely managing to close her wings tightly to her body.
She hit the ground and bounced — several times. She tumbled and cracked even more of her chitin and one of her other legs. She finally rolled to a stop against a tree in a large pasture, the distant village now close. She could feel several of her hive-mates abruptly stop emoting and she briefly grieved them. Then the pain hit her.
She didn't have any reserves to speak of, but she used a little of what she did have to at least reduce the pain. Then she tried to figure out where she was and if she was safe. She heard pony voices not far away. She couldn't tell what they said, but they were curious about what all those strange things in the sky were.
Immediately, her infiltrator instructor's voice seemed to fill her head. "You must never be seen as a changeling!"
It almost took her last reserves, but she changed. She felt the gentle flicker of heat as her body changed to that of a rock. The she passed out.
Later, she woke. She didn't know how much later. She wasn't even sure it was the same day.
She realized that any attempt to impersonate a pony would fail spectacularly — she had no way to explain her broken body and legs — never mind that she didn't have the reserves to pull it off. And her condition pretty much prevented her from trying to run or crawl as her changeling self to somewhere safer. Her only choice was to remain hidden in plain sight.
۸-ꞈ-۸