Iridia ran down one of the halls in the Chrome Hive as fast as her hooves would carry her. All the while, a strange synthetic laughter followed her. Clearly the Green Princess was panicked. After a few moments, she ran into her chamber and, with the power of her horn, everything but a table and chair was pushed up against the entrance. She scrambled to the desk and started to write.
Mother,
I hope this letter reaches you, or finds you. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few minutes.
There was a loud slam against the door, hard enough to shake the mass that was blocking it. The laughing turned more into a dull whine. “LET ME IN IRIDIA. I WON’T HURT YOU. I JUST WANT TO LEARN FROM YOU.” Pif’s voice was sounding more psychotic than before.
Iridia pushed the things back against the door and resumed writing.
Every changeling Princess gets the urge; we both know this. It strikes when they are growing up and they begin to take on the traits of their hive. I went OCD for a while before you helped me train to get over the urge. All hives have this problem, and all Princesses are trained by their Queens. But Pif has no training! She is becoming overwhelmed by her urges. She needs to know all secrets, all things!”
Iridia looked back to the door and there was a large crack now in it. A large, green eye looked through the crack with a dilated green iris.
“Come on, Big Sis – let me in.” Pif backed up from the door and lit up her horn, blasting apart the door and the stuff holding it shut. The Princess walked in with a grin as Iridia backed up against the far side of the wall.
“Oh… Moms and Dads are going to be so mad at me for breaking the door, but it’s okay. It will all be okay just as soon as you let me know more about you, Iridia. I NEED TO KNOW!”
She walked over to the Green Princess as she was curling up into a ball, and pushed her horn up against hers. Iridia’s eyes went white as she was forced into the Princess’s mini network.
“Pif! You don’t know what you’re doing! You have to stop this!” she screamed out as she looked at the mindscape.
It was a library, but its style was so different, so confusing. It was less of a unified library and more of a mismatch of Equestrian,Crystal Empire,Griffonian, Chrome Hive, and Blue Hive architecture, but she noticed that a green section was starting to form. Pif appeared in front of her with a grin, her eyes a bright white and her horn glowing just as intensely. All the while, the drones in her mini-network were racing around, placing books on shelves, then moving to other empty shelves, forming more books.
“Give it to me Iridia! Give me EVERYTYHING!”
The Chrome Princess started to forcefully extract the information from the Iridia as shelves upon shelves of books started to fill the empty spaces. The intense drain on her mind caused Iridia to scream out in pain, her body in both the mindscape and in the real world started to convulse from the extraction.
Pif shuddered in delight as she felt the knowledge build up in her network, temporarily filling the hole in her existence. Her horn slowly died down. “So much knowledge... so much history… hundreds… thousands… TENS OF THOUSANDS!” Pif broke the connection and severed Iridia from the network.
The Green ’ling screamed out in pain from being severed so carelessly, and when her vision came back, she saw Pif licking her lips. That was, of course, before she tried to use her horn and blinding pain shot through her entire body, forcing her to flop onto the ground, too weak and too much in pain to move.
“Mmm... thank you, Big Sis. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a meeting to get to!”
She happily trotted out of thewrecked room, her need sated for the moment.