Captain Titus was not having a good day.
Morning nourishment, paltry. Disguise training, utter sham. Reconnaissance, two patrols lost, one physically missing, one at half strength due to infighting. And now what? He was navigating a course through the ever shifting walls of the hive, attempting to home in on an intense feeling of distress that was being projected onto him from one of his drones, and he needed to find it soon before he himself started getting anxious. Left unchecked, a strong enough emotion would spread through an entire squadron - in some cases upward of a hundred Changelings - like wildfire. If one drone was sufficiently nervous, the feeling would spread and cause trouble everywhere.
Normally such emotions were regulated by the Queen, through the tried and true method of smacking the offending drone upside the head. Earlier in the day, however, for whatever reason, she had been very upset and locked herself in the throne room demanding privacy. This included disconnecting herself from the emotional hive-mind, which she normally did whenever she needed to vent anger.
To the drones, this would be reason enough to be nervous; with the Queen's presence missing from the hive-mind it felt like a huge gaping hole in their heads. It wasn't unknown for unprepared drones to suffer extreme trauma from her sudden absence. To Titus, and the rest of his fellow captains, the effect was lessened somewhat as they needed to be capable of commanding their respective drones even if the Queen was incapacitated, but... the feeling was still there, an empty void at the back of his mind.
In the wake of the failed Invasion Titus had found, completely by accident, that it was possible to retreat into that void. He didn't, though. The silence back there was deafening.
Wait... he recognised these tunnels. This was the approach to the throne room, but... none of his drones were supposed to be in this area. All of his drones were supposed to be either in training or guarding the kingdom's perimeter. So what was one doing all the way over here?
When the drone nervously hopping back and forth outside the throne room saw his armor, the distress dissipated to be replaced with a flooding sense of relief. Its captain was there to take charge of the situation. Everything was now under contro-
Before Titus could inquire about either the problem or why the drone was so far out of its way in the first place, there was a terrific screeching noise from behind the throne room doors, forcing him to cover his ears.
"What was that?!" he demanded of the drone, who was struggling to recover its standing position. He had his suspicions, though, and for once he hoped he was wrong.
"It's the Queen, sir," came the reply. "She's... singing, sir."
To ponies, this would be nothing significant, as it also would be to most Changelings. To Titus, however, who was all too familiar with the Queen's euphoric response to starvation, it was incredibly alarming. When the Queen was content, all was well. When the Queen was happy, it meant she was hungry. From the sounds of the caterwauling he could now hear coming from within, the Queen was very happy, which meant that if she didn't get something to eat soon she was very likely to go on a rampage.
Even more worrying was the prospect of what would happen if the Queen rejoined the hive-mind whilst still in this mood. Changelings had no concept of happiness - only the Queen was able to properly understand it - and no ifs, ands or buts about it, that emotion would spread. It was a scary thought.
There was really no other option but to act now. Alone, Titus could do nothing, so he sent out an immediate distress signal for all other available captains to drop what they were doing and assist. Unless they were working on an order direct from the Queen, this took immediate priority. The throne room was sealed, and they'd have to break the doors down. Drones just wouldn't cut it here.
And as for this particular drone... "As fast as you can, the stores," Titus instructed. "For all our sakes-" he was interrupted by another screech "-find her something to eat!"
The hive was huge but it didn't take too much time to cross it, so it wasn't long before Captain Iaberus arrived. Well... 'arrived' was a strong term for the undignified crash that announced his presence, not in the least bit aided by his current lack of depth perception. He'd received a slight injury in the Invasion, and for reasons known only to himself insisted that he wear an eyepatch until he recovered. Titus didn't approve. The Queen, however, declared it a 'vast improvement' (the insult sailing straight over his head) and so it was sticking, regardless of the havoc it caused its wearer and any other Changelings he happened to run over.
Titus peeled him off the wall. "Congratulations."
Iaberus offered a pained groan. "What do I win?"
Titus considered this for a moment. "You get to be the one who goes in there first."
"Goes in where?"
Both of them regarded the throne room doors for a moment, followed by regarding the wail from within. The junior captain may not have been the sharpest pencil in the box, but he was definitely aware of the implications. He probably would have made a move to leg it there and then had Titus not put him in a headlock.
"But, but!" Changeling facial expressions were limited, but it was fairly obvious he was trying to do what ponies referred to as 'puppy-dog eyes', something that was entirely wasted due to his unwillingness to shapeshift for the occasion. "You wouldn't send an old, injured friend in there alone, would you?"
Sigh. "I'm older than you are," Titus counted off, "the Invasion was months ago, you're fine, and yes, I would."
"I was grievously injured!"
"A pony prodded you with a baseball bat."
"In the eye!"
"Which one?"
"This one!" Iaberus said, very obviously indicating the eye that wasn't covered by the eyepatch.
Understanding Iaberus was impossible at the best of times. Changelings healed extraordinarily quickly - as long as the head and body were mostly intact, all other limbs could be regrown in a week at most. Iaberus' eye had been restored mere hours after the mass exodus from Canterlot, but by then he'd already found the eyepatch, and was unable to comprehend why his eye was suddenly working again. "He's thicker than gourmet custard," Captain Incelidus had said, without explaining exactly what gourmet custard was.
"C'mon, Titus!" Iaberus whined, glancing at the doors. "If I interrupt the Queen while she's... singing, she'll bite my head off!"
"Good, then maybe you won't be so annoying." Titus tried to keep level, he really did, but Iaberus always managed to wind him up. "And she won't bite your head off. If you're lucky, she'll only eat one of your legs." He noted a fresh impact dent in his fellow captain's helmet, and released him from the headlock, springing back a few feet. "That is, if Captain Viune doesn't eat them first."
"CAPTAIN IABERUS!"
Speaking of whom...
Titus didn't flinch as said captain shot out of a tunnel to his left and slammed straight into Iaberus, sending the two of them tumbling. Suitable metals were hard to procure in the area surrounding the kingdom, and so their armorer tended to get very tetchy whenever any Changeling, officer or drone, had needlessly damaged the armor she made. If armor was damaged in battle, she knew her work had done its job, and quite contendedly hammered out a replacement. If armor was damaged in an unpreventable accident, you got a warning, and maybe a punch in the face if she felt like it. If you couldn't give her a reasonable excuse, though...
He watched passively as Viune braced herself with a hoof on Iaberus's neck, surrounded his head in a magic aura and wrenched his armor off. Infighting between Changelings, especially between the captains, was commonplace; Lead Captain Dethyn had once said something about it being 'built into their dee-enn-ay' or some other scientific drivel. All Titus cared about was the fact that it happened and drones knew there was a harsh punishment for it, a fact he sometimes wished he could beat into the other captains.
The Queen, meanwhile, found their arguments incredibly entertaining.
"Captain Viune," he acknowledged.
"Titus," she responded, spitting onto the helmet and buffing it out.
"You didn't... say I wasn't your friend!" gasped Iaberus, pulling himself up again.
"Don't push your luck."
If it were possible to use Iaberus as an anvil, Titus was sure that Viune would be doing just that. He was no physiology expert, but even he noticed that it was the three female captains who got angry the fastest, and tended to be the more violent of the nine. The Lead Captain probably had an explanation for that as well, not that Titus cared.
"So what do you want now, Titus?" Viune asked, throwing the newly-repaired helmet back at the junior captain, who caught it with his face. "This better be good."
Titus gestured to the doors. The Queen is-" a particularly piercing scream from behind them interrupted him "-happy."
"Great." Viune's scowl deepened. "Great going, Titus."
"Yeah, because I did this." Titus didn't get along with Viune. To be fair he didn't get along with any of the captains, but their armorer was definitely up there. Somewhere. With a hammer. "I sent a drone to get her some food. As long as Captain Incelidus hasn't eaten everything we should be fine."
Captain Incelidus's appetite was infamous, and it was the second of two reasons as to why he probably wouldn't be coming anywhere near the Queen; the first being the disgrace of failing in his task to capture the Elements of Harmony during the Invasion, and even now it was still a sore subject. Incelidus was bright, there was no denying that, and he could talk his way out of a lot of sticky situations, but then again he was usually the one who put himself into those situations in the first place.
The theory of the plan had been sound enough: he would lead his drones to secure the Elements while the other captains focused on the city and the castle. Incelidus's execution of said plan had involved charging straight at the six ponies the Queen had specifically told him not to underestimate. The result was a foregone conclusion. His entire force had been all but obliterated, and the Elements might have been used against them if Captain Rhio hadn't had the forethought to pack half of his force into the vault where they were held.
Either way, the last time Titus had seen Incelidus he'd been very vocal in his plans to stay away from the throne room.
Captain Zhoele wasn't likely to turn up either, but then again it was entirely impossible to expect her at any point. She just turned up whenever she wanted to, which was usually the exact moment her presence wasn't wanted, and tended to end any situation by shouting and causing a lot of property damage. Where Viune would sooner rip your wings off than look at you, Zhoele would pummel you into the ground, knock you out, then rip your wings off, then suspend you upside down over a chasm for a couple of hours. It was probably all that time she spent around the Changeling larvae. Not that Titus would ever say that to her face - he was pretty sure she hated him the most and needed little further provocation to leave him twitching in a dead end.
Armorer, scary. Nurse, terrifying.
He saw another movement out of the corner of his eye, and stiffened. "Lead Captain on deck!"
Moments later he ducked under the pebble that the newcomer had thrown at him. "Shut up, Titus," said Lead Captain Dethyn. He wasn't the only new arrival; he had two more of the junior captains in tow, the tiny Mimix and the ugh Mykerion. "What's going on? Where are the guards I left here?"
As Titus begrudgingly explained the situation, there was another arrival, namely that of a reinforced crate from the storage pens, carried by two drones who beat a hasty retreat the moment they set it down. Inside the crate would be one of the cat creatures the Changelings had discovered after their impromptu ejection from Canterlot. None knew what they were actually called, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was that they were unconditionally loving creatures, and essentially never went 'off'. No matter what was done to them, they just kept on loving - and providing huge quantities of nourishment - until they expired.
Only the Queen was allowed to feed from them, of course. If there was no Queen, there were no Changelings.
While he didn't care much for his superior's blase attitude towards most serious situations, this time Titus was secretly glad for the Lead Captain's presence. Dethyn was the Queen's personal advisor; the majority of the hive's big plans were formulated by the two of them working in tandem, and his drones were most capable and best trained. It could even be called trust, if Changelings were capable of such a bond.
That said, Titus was even gladder that he'd been the one to come up with this idea in particular, as most of the time he and Dethyn didn't see eye to eye, and he preferred his own plans over anything that his superior put together.
"Good call on the food." Dethyn looked at the crate. "Who's carrying it in there?"
"Iaberus volunteered."
"I didn't!"
"Excellent." He turned his attention to the idiot. "Now, Iaberus, it is imperative that you work as quickly as possible. If you give her the chance to open up, we're all doomed, and I don't fancy that Zhoele's going to be particularly concerned about us." While the majority of the captains were all vulnerable to the Queen's mood swings, Zhoele wasn't. It was another odd quirk of hers that never became useful, seeing as she was never around when it was needed, and was more likely to laugh at them than try and help. "I assume the doors are still barred from the inside. Titus, Rhio, we're going to try and knock it loose."
Titus paused. "But Captain Rhio isn't-" he glanced to the right, and resisted the urge to facehoof when he caught a glimpse of the bulk of the mentioned captain standing amongst them. "How long have you been standing there?" Rhio didn't respond, not that he was expected to. "How long's he been standing there?"
Rhio fell among the more tolerable of Titus's fellow captains, but the way he just materialized wherever he wasn't expected to be got incredibly annoying after the first few times. The whole stoic silence thing didn't help. He was capable of speaking - he'd once commented on a plan and scared the secretions out of everybody - but apparently just chose not to for 99% of the time. It had its perks, though. Somebody who didn't speak never said anything to get on anybody's nerves.
It really had been a foregone conclusion that he'd been paired up with Iaberus during the Invasion. After all, the best way to avoid idiotic comebacks was not to say anything in the first place. And, naturally, Rhio had abandoned him immediately - not that Iaberus ever noticed.
The throne room doors were fairly thick. They weren't original, of course. Like many things scattered around the hive, they had been stolen. This particular pair had come from the castle that had been their temporary base not too long ago. Given that they'd withstood the Queen smashing them in anger, falling debris, and a magically enhanced beam of destruction, it was known that they could withstand much, and the idea had been that any intruders to the hive would have to try and break them down to get to the Queen.
Evidently they'd forgotten that Changelings might need to get in too. They might need to rethink the door strategy.
"This isn't working." Dethyn stepped back and examined the result, which was a big fat zero. And now, if anything, the high-pitched screeches from inside were becoming more frequent. "Anybody got any suggestions?" Iaberus opened his mouth. "Anybody apart from Iaberus?"
"I think-" started Captain Mykerion, and Titus immediately tuned him out. Nope. Not even a situation as bad as this could get him to listen to the fountain of analytical nonsense that the new guy normally vomited up. Dethyn he could bear, mostly because he was Titus's superior, but not Mykerion. He'd only been made captain a couple of months before the Invasion, and had wasted no time at all in annoying most of the others with 'improvements' they could make to their fighting stances. Then he just didn't stop. He just kept going, and going, and going, until he made the mistake of accepting a thank-you hug from Mimix.
Having both of his forelegs stuffed into his mouth definitely shut him up.
That didn't stop him from opening the floodgate when prompted, unfortunately. Titus watched as his mouth moved a mile a minute; he could see the intense displeasure on Viune's face deepening, and though not a single muscle of Rhio's twitched, somehow he could tell that the big lug was contemplating a face punch. Over on the junior side of things, everything was going in through one of Iaberus's ears and out the other uninterrupted, and Mimix's short attention span had expired long ago.
Why was Mimix even here anyway? It wasn't like she'd be able to do anything useful, not from down there, except trip everyone up. She claimed her small stature was advantageous. Titus had asked how. Mimix had giggled madly and given him a hug. Things quickly spiralled out of control from there, but at least it answered the question. You couldn't hit what moved too fast and could go places you wouldn't fit. Still didn't explain why she was here now.
Mykerion was still talking. Titus wasn't even sure he'd paused for breath. For the Queen's sake, this was urgent! They didn't have the time to be standing around discussing it! Oh, sure, but of course Lead Captain Dethyn has time to listen to a pointless analysis first. Pointless analyses make everything better. Why not follow up with a committee meeting, too? And after that, a-
The force of the clout on his nose sent him reeling. "I said," said Dethyn, and I'll speak slower so Titus can understand, 'That's a good idea - let's give it a shot'. Were you listening at all?"
"No."
With a sigh, Dethyn put a hoof to his head. "Words cannot express how much I want to punch you again, Titus."
Titus scowled. "Feeling's mutual, sir."
Without warning one of the lead captain's hind hooves shot out and hit Titus square in the gut, winding him. "The doors aren't working out," he continued, ignoring his subordinate's pained breathing. "We're going to carve through them."
"Two feet from the floor and one from the right hoof wall at an angle of twenty three degrees," Mykerion added, before Titus had a chance to regain his breath and re-mute him. "It'll make it easier for us to get the hinges out later."
"Yes, thank you, Mykerion."
Mykerion snapped to attention. "It's pronounced mee-kerry-oan, sir."
"Thank you, Mykerion," Dethyn repeated, without changing his pronunciation. "Viune, Mimix, you heard him."
Male Changeling spit was slightly acidic. Female Changeling spit, on the other hoof, was acidic enough to eat through solid rock in a matter of moments, which was why expansions to the hive were always created by a group of female drones, followed closely by Captain Zhoele to break up the inevitable fight that happened when they were finished. Wood was... well, it was gone, fairly rapidly. It wasn't long before part of the throne room was visible through a hole just big enough for the crate to fit through.
All eyes turned to Iaberus.
He pouted. "Don't wanna."
"Don't be such a pupa."
"But it's dangerous!"
"Of course it's dangerous. That's why we're sending you."
"You're not inspiring a lot of confidence, sir!"
Screech, added the Queen, still just as unintelligible as she'd been behind thick wooden doors.
"Shut up and get on with it!"
"But I could be killed!"
"IF YOU DON'T GO IN THERE RIGHT NOW, I'LL KILL YOU MYSELF, YOU BUCKETHEADED BRAT!" There was a certain limit to what Viune would tolerate. It was a very low line. At that moment, she was giving off a very strong signal that anybody not wanting to be mauled should get to the minimum safe distance of Very Far Away, and Titus was having to fight the urge to flee. Whatever way this turned out, somebody was giong to leave the situation without some of the limbs they'd entered it with.
Thankfully, Iaberus did seem to recognize that further protest was a very bad idea, and all but leapt to the hole. "I'm going! I'm going!" He paused on the threshold. "What is it you want me to do again?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Titus caught a movement; Rhio had pinned Viune to the floor before she could do anything stupid.
Dethyn spoke with a very measured tone, one you developed after having to deal with morons for a long time. "Go in. Assess. Out. Yes?"
For a brief moment, it seemed that the idiot was going to prolong the argument further, but to the relief of all, all it took was another nervous glance at the livid Viune to bolster his confidence, and he disappeared through the gap.
After another few seconds, they heard his voice. "My Queen? Are you... oh-kay that's, that's not good. That's not good at-" Screech. Thunk. Wail. More hideous singing.
The remaining captains shared a glance. This was taking far too long. It was a miracle the Queen hadn't yet unleashed her hunger-fuelled happiness on the hive, and the longer they delayed - the longer Iaberus delayed - the longer the miracle would have to stretch. His annoying presence in the hive-mind assured them all that he wasn't dead, so what was he doing in there that would take so long just to report the situation? It didn't make-
With a gasp, he reappeared, falling back through the hole, alive but not entirely intact.
"So she did eat one of your legs," Titus commented dryly. "I told you so. You know this is your fault for taking too long, right?"
Iaberus barely even glanced at the pinched point where his front right leg had been ripped off. "It's worse than that. She found her swords."
All of the captains unanimously took a step away from the doors.
The story behind the Queen's swords had been explained once to Titus, though it had been by Dethyn, so he'd only been half-listening. From what he remembered, she had stolen them from a pony princess, and started swinging them about whenever she got bored. A while back, she had ordered Incelidus to hide them because they kept distracting her; apparently he hadn't done a very good job at that, either.
So the Queen was happy, she was singing, and she was whirling swords around the throne room. Things had gone from bad straight through worse to utterly terrifying. Much as they'd like to, sending Iaberus back in alone was no longer a good idea. In fact, there probably weren't any good ideas left at all.
Titus glanced at Dethyn. "Charge?"
"Charge," confirmed the lead captain with a sigh.
In probably the slowest charge in Changeling history, all seven captains present queued up behind the crate and pushed it through the newly-formed tunnel.
The situation inside was exactly as they feared. In the middle of the room was the Queen, her song apparently in the closing stages, somewhat toned down but still as earsplitting, three swords spinning around her. To one side, two drones, clearly the missing guards, writhing around on the floor clutching their heads in agony. To their immediate left, the fourth sword, impaled in the door and speared directly through one of the holes in Iaberus's missing leg.
It was still twitching. There was hope for him yet.
"(How do you open this thing?)" Titus whispered. Of course it wouldn't be easy to get into, otherwise Incelidus would've gotten in and cleaned out their entire stock.
"(Rhio, work the locks. We don't have much time,)" Dethyn offered in way of a response. "(Quickly, before-)"
There was suddenly silence in the background. The Queen's song was over. They all peered around the crate.
"AaaaaAh, my subjects," Queen Chrysalis trilled, pausing her motions and craning her neck around. The unnaturally wide grin on her face felt like the final nail in the coffin - she was far beyond hungry. "I'm so happy to see youU."
Taking a snap decision, Dethyn jumped out from the safety of the crate and launched immediately into stalling tactics. "My Queen, we have brought you-"
"Oh, shuuUush," the Queen said, rotating the rest of her body. "You're spoiling thE moment." She waved a leg at the two contorting drones. "We were juUuust having a little siingalong, weren't we, boOys?" They didn't reply; Titus imagined they were too shellchocked by the rogue emotion they'd just been force-fed. "Iiiii had a great idea for a hiIiiiive anTHem."
"My Queen, you hate national anthems."
"I love the anthEms!" The Queen made a flourishing gesture, or tried to, and one of the swords sailed through the spot wehre Dethyn's head had just been.
"Queen, you are delerious." Titus had to give Dethyn that, he had guts. None of the others would dare say something like that, even if it was true. "We have brought you food, that you may feed."
"OhhHh, silly, silly Dethyn." By now the Queen was full on beaming, which gave all of her words the underlying message of 'RUN AWAY'. Even Viune, whose default range of expressions went from annoyed to annoyed, was starting to twitch uncontrollably. "WhateveeEr gave you the ideaA that I was hungry? Anypony would thiiIink you weren't happy to seeEEEE me!"
"You don't approve of-"
"Don't approve of what?"
It took a moment for the fact that Dethyn had just made a huge mistake to settle in, but the moment it did, Iaberus and Mykerion vanished in terror, and Titus's own gut heaved in protest of staying. Dethyn settled for some choice curse words. "I didn't mean-"
"Why eEver would I disapprove of being haaaAppy?" The Queen mulled it over. "Iiii can't imagine whyYy."
"(Rhio you'd better have that crate open.)" He didn't.
"HmmMm."
"(Captain Rhio I swear to the Queen-)"
"A-hA!" The remaining two swords in the Queen's grip clattered to the floor. "Hold oooOn. I've got a GREAT IDEA."
"No, wait-"
Titus had just about enough time to vow to strangle Dethyn before the Queen reconnected herself to the hive-mind and the full force of her starved happiness flooded over the five remaining captains and started drowning them. First, he felt sick, then contented, then sick again, then somehow both at the same time. It was terrying, and yet that terror was being... he didn't even know how to describe it. It was filling his head with disgustingly bright and, dare he think it, cheerful colors, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't form any negative thoughts about them. It was...
Even turning his head felt like it was moving against a tide, and he could see the effects the happiness was having on the others. Mimix had found a beat and was singing (though about what was anyone's guess. Titus couldn't hear her); Viune had pulled Dethyn into some kind of slow waltz (though it was slightly relieving to see that her face was contorted in desperation, and she was taking every opportunity to try and injure her partner)...
Rhio was... smiling. Way to let loose there, big guy.
Having the crate be so complicated to open was a stupid idea. Why couldn't they just have an Incelidus Alarm or something that stopped him from getting in? Rhio had gotten it most of the way open before he'd been interrupted, but he'd been too slow. If someone could just get to it.
The idea hit him just as the faintest of beats started rattling around his head. This happiness was all coming over the hive-mind; if he could block it out for long enough, he might gain enough freedom to finish the job. That would mean disconnecting himself, and...
When the Invasion had failed, every Changeling within a mile's radius of Canterlot had been catapulted southwards, into the banquet that was the village of the cat-things. It wasn't a smooth ride, though for some the landing had been worse. Titus in particular had bounced through two windows and ended up impaled on a weathervane. In the momentary onset of panic that followed, he'd pulled out one of the glass shards from his back, started waving it around, sliced through... something... and in that instant, the background 'noise' of his drones complaining over the hive-mind had vanished.
He'd then woken up an hour later having apparently, according to Dethyn, suffered 'extreme mental trauma', though Titus suspected that was smartflank-speak for 'fell unconscious'.
With the last of his sane thoughts, Titus snatched up one of the swords from the floor, twirled it around above his head - why, he had no idea - and brought it down.
"You are, by far, the stupidest captain I have ever promoted."
"Apart from Iaberus," Dethyn pointed out.
"Iaberus doesn't count," said the Queen. "He broke the scale."
"I hate both of you," Titus muttered under his breath.
He hadn't gotten the remainder of the story until several hours after the event; he'd spent three of them unconscious, followed by three and a half seconds of fighting Dethyn, one minute of being pummelled into the ground by Zhoele, then another two hours of being suspended by his tail above a two-mile-deep chasm after having had both wings ripped off. He felt like he'd learned something from the experience. Namely, make sure that the one Changeling who despised infighting isn't right behind him when strangling his superior.
After the 'ordeal' was over, and the nurse had lifted him down and given him a final punch in the face for luck, Dethyn had dragged him back to the throne room for a debriefing. Apparently, its purpose seemed to be for the Queen to insult him.
"(This means she's vaguely pleased with your actions,)" Dethyn had whispered to him.
The trauma thing had come up again, and even with the Queen explaining it everything was still too complicated. It was unnecessary to say much more than the fact that it had worked. 'You got the Queen her food, everything was fixed, you fell asleep' was infinitely preferable to some blathering description about how disconnecting himself from the hive-mind had been so traumatic that he was blocking the memory of it. He'd have tuned it out, but unlike with Mykerion, the Queen could tell when he was diong it and upsetting her again was in nobody's best interests.
So he was forced to listen to the tale, about how the Queen had been particularly angry about something that the ponies had done, and that she had been too distracted to notice her growing hunger until it caught her off guard and prevented her from summoning help. It was amusing - and this earned him a death glare from Dethyn - to have confirmed the identities of her two previous guards, who had been threatened into retrieving her swords, and when they returned had been immediately overwhelmed by the Queen's 'gratitude'.
Only when the cat creature from the box climbed her neck and gave her a kiss was she able to regain her faculties, sucking the creature's love dry while at the same time overwriting the happiness she'd released with a surge of disgust. She hated them. Everybody did, after a while. But they were so nourishing - and that was worth the numerous Hearts and Hooves Day cards and chocolates they seemingly pulled from nowhere. Besides, it was always fun to then force-feed said chocolates to Incelidus and make him sick.
"But," she said, "if you ever do that again, if the silence doesn't kill you I will."
Par for the course then, really.
"And if you ever touch my swords again I will run you through." Both captains ducked as one of them swept over their heads on its way to join the others by the throne. If Titus still had wings - though he could feel the nubs of them twitching as they were already starting to grow back - he'd definitely have lost them now. "Magic or otherwise. Got it?"
"Yes, my Queen."
The Queen snorted. "And I'll believe that was sincere when Celestia surrenders Equestria. Lead Captain Dethyn, dismissed. I wish to speak to Captain Titus privately."
Dethyn saluted. "Understood, my Queen. Shall I summon Captain Zhoele again?"
Titus and the Queen gave each other sideways glances.
"By all means," the Queen said eventually, her mouth curling upwards into a smirk. "But it would be a shame if it had to come to that, right, Captain Titus? You're not going to do anything else stupid, are you?"
"No, my Queen," Titus grumbled.
"Then no, Lead Captain. Leave."
Dethyn threw another salute, turned, and buzzed out through the hole in the door, leaving Titus alone with Her Malevolence. This was, he had to admit, unnerving. One-to-one talks from the Queen were typically punishments, and while he might not be treated like most of the drones were by having what little food there was withheld from him, he might still end up with lookout duty (cold), expansion (sticky), or worst of all, a posting in the hatchery (all of the above plus larvae and Zhoele). Faced with that last option, he'd really rather take the-
With a soft shing, the Queen drew one of the swords again.
He'd not rather take the sword.
The blade twisted around in the air under the influence of the Queen's magic. "I stole this from the royalty of the Crystal Empire when I was young don't you dare stop listening. I have owned it longer than your tiny mind can comprehend. Our race would not exist without it." She sucked in a breath, and glared at Titus. "Cutting yourself from the hive-mind was reckless. Doing so with my sword was unacceptable." Titus tried not to flinch as the tip of the sword stopped less than an inch from his face. "Since this was obviously not drilled into your head hard enough when you were a grub, it seems I have to teach you this now."
A pony would be sweating. Not being one, Titus wasn't, but he was trying not to let his posture betray his nervousness all the same. At this point if he so much as blinked - again something Changelings didn't do but he was feeling an increasing need to - he was going to get skewered.
The Queen sighed and withdrew. "Sadly at the moment I lack both the enthusiasm to punish you and the pity to let you go. So let's make this interesting."
"Interesting how, my Queen?"
The Queen bent down to his level to look him in the eyes. "There are four of them. You are going to take one out on every patrol you do. If I request it back and you have lost it, or have allowed it to dull, or broken it beyond repair, you will be doing nothing but hatchery for the rest of your miserable life."
Titus scowled. "Understood, my Queen."
"Oh, and Mykerion gets your drones."
"Understood, my Queen."
"Iaberus will need to take your regular duties..."
"I hate you."
"I hate you...?"
"I hate you, my Queen."
"Much better." The Queen smiled that wide grin of hers, which just as quickly faded away when Titus tried to take the sword that she was holding. "Ah-ah-ah-ah! Who said you get this one?" The blade whipped back towards the throne, quickly replaced by another. "This is the one you get."
Yeah... Titus saw a problem with this. "My Queen, this is already broken."
He looked up and immediately felt the pressure of the Queen's gaze burrowing into his head. "And if you can handle that one, maybe you can look at the others again. Now get out of my sight, and send me Captain Mykerion."
Trying not to let his relief show, Titus snatched the broken sword and slunk out of the throne room as quickly as he dared. A sword. What good was a sword to a Changeling? It was useless! Dead weight! If he had to take it out every time he... augh. At least it was better than the threatened hatchery duty. Marginally.
Behind him, there was a loud snap and the creaking of wood as the hinges on the right-hoof door gave way and the huge portal crashed to the ground. Yep.
Just another day in the Changeling hive.