“That piece of metal there—” Tailslide said, finally setting down his tray. “It’s a spell? One that works even when you don’t have a horn?”
Nothing could bring Amie down just now—Wes was alive. She would figure out the rest in time. “Magic, no. It’s a machine. How it works doesn’t matter. If someone else has a machine like it, they can send messages back and forth. My brother is in town.”
She beamed, her eyes still focused on the screen. The message was already delivered. Wes was probably typing a reply right then.
“I could almost believe you were a pony,” he muttered. “You act like a guardsmare… but you talk like a filly. It would be easier to trust you if you did not wear her face.” His expression became distant, and he finally sat back, no longer stuffing himself. “That weapon was… instant death. If changelings wielded nightmare-magic like that during the invasion, I don’t know if we would’ve won.”
If Tailslide was trying to speedrun her out of a good mood, it was working. “Not magic either.” She glanced nervously down at the saddlebags. Her own shotgun pressed into the fabric there, its oblong shape visible even while the bag was fully closed.
“I would look like someone different if I could, Tailslide. But I don’t know how. I didn’t try to copy your leader. I just didn’t want to leave her out for the wolves. Didn’t feel right.”
He was staring at her. She didn’t have to guess at how he felt. There was plenty of underlying suspicion, but equal parts curiosity. Even a trickle of gratitude around the edges felt more satisfying than all the food piled between them. “You’re a changeling that isn’t a changeling. You changed into Gale, but you don’t know how to change. How many other contradictions do you have?”
She shrugged. “Give me more time in your world, I’ll get a few. Or better yet, get us home. No one on that mountain wants to be a bug, and they don’t want to invade your country. We want to go back to ours.”
A new message appeared at the bottom, short and sweet. “They gave me a job, I can’t let them down. I’ll look for you at lunchtime.”
Amie rolled her eyes, but tapped back a simple okay before turning off the phone. That was exactly what she expected from Wes—never realizing or even caring how much danger he was in. But if the locals don’t think he’s a changeling, maybe he isn’t in danger. They’re taking good care of Tailslide and me.
Tailslide couldn’t see what she was looking at, of course. He yawned, rising from the table. “And what… world is that? Are you from the Badlands, like the queen who invaded? A loveless, desolate place.”
She stood too—not so much because she had anywhere to go, but more because of Tailslide. She had to be there to catch him if he did anything stupid. But he didn’t seem intent on anything but the bed. “I guess there are some edgy teenagers who might talk about it that way. We’ve got our problems, but I think all of us would rather go back. Does Equestria have some kinda magic that could send us home?”
Tailslide climbed up into bed. He moved all the way to one side, leaving the other open for her. She just stared, face growing hotter. Good thing he couldn’t sense her emotions. “I’m the wrong pony to ask. You need a unicorn—somepony with years of magical experience. Maybe the Royal Library would have something on that. Maybe—” He yawned. “Maybe you could ask the princesses, except you… just invaded. They’d blast you all the way to Tartarus.”
She shuddered. Amie might not know what those words meant exactly, but she could read the implication. “So Equestria thinks changelings are… not just a species, but a single government? It’s not possible for some to be good and others bad?”
He shifted in bed, staring up at her. “After the invasion, there were no living changelings captured. But we know how you work—you need love to survive. You’re parasites, who can only take the magic from other creatures, since you don’t produce any of your own.”
He stretched, adjusting the thick blankets. “I only know what they tell us, guarding you. About Queen Chrysalis, and her evil changelings. They came to Equestria for food because there isn’t enough to survive on in the Badlands where they come from. When they can’t get love to feed on, they eat only meat, which barely sustains them.”
Maybe Amie should feel insulted by all that. Tailslide spoke about her as though she were a member of some evil race, guilty of crimes she’d never even heard of. But while the history might not line up, his physical description of her kind made so much sense.
She hadn’t needed to eat for a month, while the others were suffering. They could only eat meat—was it the flesh that sustained them at all, or some way to harvest the energy of life, the same way she must have been doing to her brother?
But Wes didn’t seem unhealthy. If I was a parasite, shouldn’t I be weakening the host? Equestria had been invaded by this species—it wasn’t surprising that they might get some details wrong. Propaganda in wartime did not care about the facts, all that mattered was keeping the population engaged and willing to fight. He thinks we only feed on love. But I’ve felt full around other things. Gratitude, joy, admiration, appreciation.
Whenever Wes felt positive things for Amie, her hunger faded and strength took its place. His gratitude at her willingness to sacrifice herself for him—that still sustained her, days later. I might not find any answers from ponies. I need to find one of these evil changelings if I want to know the truth.
“Does it feel like I only take from you?” she whispered. “Am I a parasite too?”
He blinked up at her, blearily. “Can we talk in the morning? You must be one of Luna’s chosen, staying up so late.” He patted the bed beside himself with a hoof again. “Tomorrow, I’ll tell you anything. Anything that… doesn’t put Equestria in danger.”
He did expect her to get into bed with him. Her wings spread dramatically to both sides, ears flattening again. She had relationships start over less—but not while living on borrowed time, deep behind enemy lines.
Except—she knew what attraction felt like, along with the accompanying hunger for affection. He thought she was attractive, maybe—but there was nothing else underneath. This wasn’t some strange pony way of seducing her, he really just expected her to want to sleep together.
Amie shook her head. “You go ahead. I don’t need as much as you. I’ll—” But she didn’t tell him what she would do. He was already asleep.
She could’ve slipped out into the streets of Motherlode and tried to find her brother after that—but he would be sleeping too. Amie trimmed the lights for her companion, but he didn’t seem to care. He slept so deeply she couldn’t even sense emotions in his dreams.
Amie didn’t know how Rick’s satellite worked, exactly. But there was a printed page of instructions, and she could follow that. Point it towards camp, with a clear line of sight. Connect it to the battery backup, then plug it into a tangled mess of soldered cables and jumpers until the one that went into her phone.
After a few painful seconds waiting for it all to configure, the intranet homepage appeared.
She tapped the link for camp news first, preparing for the worst. What would they say about her and her brother?
“Camp authorities are on the lookout for ‘Amie and Wes Blythe’,” said the latest update. “They are believed armed and dangerous, and may have taken hostages or worse. If they make any contact with you, do not attempt to engage. Report your sighting to Director Albrecht as soon as possible.”
Sure, don’t mention that the ones you sent to capture us tried to kill us. Had they found the body of the one who had fallen off a cliff? There was no obituary—maybe the wolves had found him first.
Of course any contact with her kids might put them in danger. How much did Albrecht know? He might be watching their little message board, for any signs she was communicating with them. Doing so might get them interrogated, or shift suspicion of disloyalty onto them.
On the other hand, he might not know at all. Amie typed the address for their little hunting message board, and found it was awash in rapid messages. Skimming them, she saw her followers were extremely upset. A few wondered if Amie had been planning to betray Stella Lacus all along. Most were critical comments, disbelieving the official story. They had seen her run away from camp, terrified for Wes’s safety.
Amie switched from her usual identity to anonymous mode. She had a feeling Rick would be able to see through that disguise. Who knew what kind of technical information was attached to every message? Hopefully Albrecht would not.
“The species we have become is called ‘Changelings’,” she typed. “Our primary food source is positive emotions, not meat. We can alter our appearance to imitate others. We can also manipulate objects using our horns, with dexterity equal or greater than having hands.
Our mountain has been deposited in a country called ‘Equestria.’ Its population are horse-like mammals that identify themselves as ‘ponies.’ They know we are here, and have armed patrols around the perimeter, watching to see if we try to escape.
Some guys sent to capture me were killed by these guards. They come in at least three varieties—one that can fly called ‘pegasi’ and one with a horn like ours, letting them use telekinesis, ‘unicorns.’ A third variety appears to have no powers, and lacks horns or wings. I don’t know what they’re called.
The ponies believe all changelings are part of a hostile empire that recently invaded their capital, causing much bloodshed and deep fear. They will behave with extreme hostility if they encounter us. We should learn to master our powers before trying to leave Stella Lacus or interact with them.”
It took forever to type all that out with a stylus—but Amie had all night, and her companion was just sleeping. There was no fear that her kids might be sleeping, since they didn’t need it either.
The reply took nearly twenty seconds to fully transmit. Once it appeared in the feed, the scrawl of other messages stopped. A few emoji reactions of confusion or skepticism appeared beneath it.
Finally, one text reply appeared, signed by Marcus. “Are you sure about all this?” it asked.
“Positive,” she replied. “I will show you what the locals look like. Once I didn’t look like a changeling, they were friendly and open with me.” She backed away from the camera, then took an awkward selfie. It took almost two whole painstaking minutes for the image to finally post, even with most of it cropped away.
The reaction was another flurry of reaction emoji, dozens of them this time. Half her kids were watching now, judging by their replies. All glued to their phones.
“You know who else will read this,” someone else with the anonymous tag said. “He’s still looking for you, even after losing Garcia and the others.”
“I know. But I have to share this information I’ve learned, we don’t have any other way to get it. I will send anything else I can. One of the locals thinks there might be a way to send us home, but that I might have to go far away from here searching for information. I will go hunting for it.”
She couldn’t keep up with the flurry of replies after that—some doubting, some begging for more information, a few suggesting that the horse was way cuter than a bug.
She did receive a single private message after that, directly from Rick.
It included a long text file, along with a brief note. “Follow these instructions to send secret messages. Wes will know how to follow them.”
Right. Talk about feeling incredibly stupid—even if most of that message was information she wanted everyone in camp to know, there might be a safer way to distribute it. But there was no taking any of it back now.
She didn’t reply, just saved the file of instructions and packed everything away. She still had a few hours left before sunrise—after a brief nap, maybe she would have time to figure out how her powers worked.