The heavy metal door shut behind me before I even realized where I was.
The other occupant in the room lifted her head. An eye, slitted like my own, stared back at me from behind metal bars. Chrysalis, Princess of the Fifth Hive, rose from her bed as I paced the room. There were no other cells in this specialized holding area. No guards stood within the chamber. Just me and her.
“I hope you didn’t come down here just to exercise,” Chrysalis mumbled, stretching as she tracked my movement.
‘No, I didn’t,’ I thought. ‘Why did I come down here? Why, in my anger, did I turn to the one I hate the most? Used to. Used to hate and fear. Now that spot belongs to Tarsus and Tarsus alone. Damn him!’
“Spit it out!” Chrysalis hissed. “You are loath to come here, especially alone. Tell me, so I can go back to sleep. I can’t rest with the sound of you trotting back and forth like a show pony!”
The phrase shook me from my thoughts.
“That’s a phrase here?” I asked her incredulously.
She stared at me.
“... The ponies wish to bring back the traitor from his exile,” I revealed.
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“The traitor,” I repeated. “Tarsus.”
“Oh, that one. Here I was, thinking you were talking about yourself. You exiled him?”
“Mmm,” I grunted.
“You should have killed him.”
“Tried to, but my own moral checks and balances prevented me.”
Chrysalis sneered, “You mean you lost the courage?”
I snorted, “No, I mean Thorax stopped me. If I had my way, that bastard would be dead.”
“Why do I need to know all of this?” Chrysalis asked, moving towards the side of her well-furnished cell.
The fact that it contained three times the furniture it did when she arrived set off minor alarms in the back of my head. However, she was content to reside in the cell. The reason being–
“After all, it is your job to work with the prey,” Chrysalis cackled while flopping down into her new favorite chair.
The reason being that Chrysalis was happy to sit out the troubles the Fifth Hive faced, taking a reclusive vacation from the world.
I shook my head angrily and rubbed at my right shoulder, where my right foreleg met my torso. My hoof glided over the thin lines where the chitin never rehealed properly. A scar written in the armor I wore at all times, my new flesh.
“Not enough,” I muttered. “The ponies angle themselves well. If I let them, they will back me into a corner and defang me.” Instinctively, I reached up to touch my actual fangs. “The truth is that what Celestia plans for the future and what I plan for the future are not compatible.”
“It’s too late to back out now,” Chrysalis said.
“Too late,” I agreed. “And your plan sucked, anyways. We never would have held Equestria for any meaningful length of time. Not when they outnumbered us two hundred to one. Plus, it was evil. No, we have to push right back to Celestia’s scheming.”
“Again,” Chrysalis interrupted, “I still fail to see how this is my problem.”
I walked up to the bars of her cell, “Pharynx is up in Nisir now. Thorax is… he leans too heavily towards the ponies in his opinions. We never would have gotten this far without that fact, but the levels they go to forgive others… I will never be capable of that. None of us, save for Thorax, will be capable. I need… I need you, Chrysalis. I need you to get your shit together, to–”
“As I said many times before,” Chrysalis said, “I am perfectly willing to let bygones be bygones. Say, you could open the cell right now, and I won’t retaliate in any way. So long as you keep the love flowing, I won’t try to usurp you, work against you, or fight you in any way. If I did, then I would have to be the one conquering or working with the ponies. You’re doing the worst part of rulership for me: getting food.”
“You slaughtered my changelings!”
She shrugged, “You slaughtered mine. Though apparently not enough of them. So what if the ponies want to retrieve Tarsus? Just make sure they don’t.”
‘... She really threw him under the bus, didn’t she? No reward for those loyal to you, Chrysalis? Spineless monster…’
I clicked my tongue in annoyance, “Tch. They won’t be convinced by anything I say.”
Chrysalis smiled. It was not the kind of smile I liked, no. It was the kind I recognized. It was her smile for when she was about to say something equally cruel and clever.
“Did I say ask them to stay their hoof? No, I said to make sure they don’t retrieve Tarsus. Kill him.”
The door behind me ground open as the rest of the First Fang piled in.
“There you are!” Thorax yelled. “We were looking for you!”
Coxa, who was limp on Lacewing’s back, said, “Lotta runnin’... Lotta… urf…”
“I swear to Panar, if you vomit on me again,” Lacewing whispered to her lover, “I will personally file away your horn!”
Chrysalis sighed deeply, “Great, now the whole circus is here.”
Thorax glanced behind me towards Chrysalis, “Why did you come here, Phasma? Why did you come to her?! The ponies are worried sick about you. They have the right idea that you stormed off to do something stupid!”
“... I can’t let them find Tarsus,” I admitted. “I will not let those bastards get away with what they did to me, with what they did to everyone who looked up to me! My life wasn’t enough!”
‘A Dothraki horde on an open field… This could backfire easily, but I have to assassinate Tarsus before the ponies can get to him!’
“Phas–”
“Lacewing!” I hissed.
Lacewing looked away from Coxa and our eyes met. I gave her a single nod. She returned it, knowing what my order was.
Thorax pushed in between us, “Woah, woah, woah! No! No! There'll be no nodding! No unspoken orders! No, you are not killing anyone!"
“It was a mistake to let him live,” I told Thorax. “I should have never let him out of my sight. I should have finished what he started. I didn’t decide the stakes of this war. I never do, no. The only actual fight that I was in full control of, the first Invasion of Canterlot, there were no deaths!”
“That’s not true,” Thorax hissed. He pushed on my chest, “You killed Eucharis at the same time that the Praetorians started killing the Lodge members! You both independently chose the stakes of this war, you and Chrysalis! Celestia was right!”
I glared down at the shorter Prince, “They made their choices!”
“I don’t believe that!” Thorax seethed. “And I don’t think you believe that, either! Changelings might not be able to sense each other’s emotions, but you wear your heart on your sleeve! Even a grub could see that you hate what you did! But you did it! You murdered Eucharis!”
I growled and almost raised a hoof to strike him. Realizing what I was about to do, I stomped it into the ground instead.
“He stood against me! He was going to side with Chrysalis! I tried to stop what happened before it happened! I didn’t want anyone to die!”
Thorax studied me, “It’s not your fault that all those lings died, but you killed Eucharis when you didn’t have to. You killed him when you could have captured him with a single spell. You’re no Saint.”
I flinched, unable to look him in the eyes.
“Oooooh! I am so glad you decided to have your first lover’s quarrel down here!” Chrysalis laughed and clapped her hooves. “This is the most entertaining thing I’ve seen in months!”
Thorax offered a hoof to me, “Stop this, Phas. Stop this bloodshed and hate. You’re never going to be able to move on if you don’t learn to forgive. You’ve made mistakes. We all have. I shouldn’t have been talked into letting you mutilate Tarsus– that was my mistake. I should have held my ground. I didn’t and now all this is happening because of it. We all have our share of the blame, but we all have to work together to make things right. Give Tarsus a real trial, one without us sitting as judges. Show the Hive how things will be done. Be the King they need.”
The hot anger left me. What once fueled me into coming to Chrysalis to vent and ask for advice now left me cold and sore. I panted heavily as I recovered. Yet the coldness reminded me of a memory: how cold I felt when I was murdered.
“The traitor will be dead before sunrise,” I whispered.
Thorax faltered. Then, with wide eyes, he spun around.
“Lacewing?!”
She was gone. During our argument, she had slipped away with Coxa still on her back. It would take her only a few minutes to reach a communication device to give the order to the observation team across the sea in Griffonia.
“Maybe once he’s dead, I can move on,” I said quietly.
Thorax didn’t listen to me. He was already halfway out the door when Chrysalis whistled.
“Promise me you will visit more often, son,” she cooed. “Don’t make me beg! To think, you have been depriving me of all this entertainment!”
As hard as he galloped or flew, I knew that I had delayed Thorax long enough to be unable to find and follow Lacewing. Even with Coxa weighing her down, there were three different communication devices in the Palace alone. She could have gone to any one of them. Thorax would have to guess which one and hope that he could cut her off. A one-in-three chance of stopping the order.
But I knew she kept a personal one to keep track of all the operations involving spying on Division-P activity, Daring Do, and Tarsus. Thorax would be unable to stop my command from going out.
Celestia and Cadance stared daggers at me as we sat on opposite sides of the dining room table. She had just raised the sun and not a single one of us had gotten any sleep yet. Now, she paced the room behind Cadance as we argued.
“How long was it until you rescinded that order?” Celestia asked me.
“An hour,” I told her truthfully.
“Long enough for it to be carried out,” Cadance said.
“Exactly,” I nodded.
Celestia ran a hoof through her billowing mane, “At this rate, I’ll add a cocaine addiction to my alcohol dependency before the year is out…”
“There’s going to have to be consequences for this,” Cadance told Celestia. “I mean more than just the direct consequences of his actions.”
“Oh, really?” I asked rhetorically. “Just what did you have in mind, Cadance?”
“Well, I don’t know. Celestia’s got more experience when it comes to this.” Cadance admitted. “Celestia, what do you suggest?”
Celestia sat down in front of me, “What is there to suggest? He isn’t some errant knight running off on his own. Our options of what to do about this are limited almost entirely to fixing it and making sure it never happens again. Do you have nothing to say for yourself?”
I thought about what to say. I was caught between making a reference to King Robert Baratheon and how he tried to assassinate a threat across the sea or making a reference to Lieutenant Aldo Raine saying he’ll be chewed out rather than executed.
At my silence, Celestia deflated, “Phasma? Is there something I did wrong? Any of us? You promised you would try to be better, so did we fail to uphold our end of the bargain?”
“There’s nothing we did wrong,” Cadance said.
Celestia lifted her tiara off her head, “It sure feels like I’m failing over and over again. Luna, Daybreaker, my personal guards, Phasma… I am surrounded by those I can help, yet I constantly fail.”
Cadance shook Celestia’s shoulder, “Auntie. None of those were your fault. Maybe Luna, but you’ve beaten yourself up for a thousand years– and she attacked you initially. Whatever happened, both of you are walking away better ponies and ready to make amends for that. As for Daybreaker… you just wanted to protect your ponies. The Nightmare that possessed you was to blame for its own actions. Your guards…. That was Chrysalis. Nopony else.. You did everything you could during the second invasion. Finally, as for Phasma…”
Cadance looked at me with undisguised pity.
“He was sent to Equestria already broken. It’s not your fault, Auntie. It’s not even his fault– it’ll take us years to untangle that mess. The best we can do right now is to limit the damage.”
I wanted to tell Candance that her judgment meant close to nothing to me. I wanted to tell her that the only accusations and insults that I kept rolling around in my head belonged to Thorax alone.
'Saint…'
I held my tongue.
Celestia rubbed her face tiredly, “... Phasma, you will spend the rest of the day with Cadance. She’ll be going over boundaries.”
“Boundaries?” I questioned.
“Yes, boundaries. I can’t tolerate any sort of execution in Equestria’s borders. You and I both know that while you are independent of Equestria, you still have to listen to what we say– within reason. Those were the terms of our agreement, the terms of the Canterlot Confederation. Are you going to tell me you’d tolerate what you’ve done if our roles were reversed? What if Cadance killed a changeling and then started killing her own ponies? You wouldn’t trust her, would you?”
Making a concentrated effort to not grind my teeth, I answered, “... No.”
‘I’m sure I could get very creative when it came to resisting, but the tree that never bends in the wind is the one that snaps during the storm. As far as demands go, banning executions and murder is pretty low-bar. Especially since I intended on getting rid of them anyways. Executing people, especially without a trial… What am I, Chrysalis? No, I’m better than her. I know I am. I have to be. There are too many people counting on me. Too many lives that can be changed forever with a mere wave of my hoof.’
“It’s a fair concession,” I admitted. “More than fair.”
Celestia sighed, “... I don’t even know what to do about this. All of this. This is all tangled up and inside out. We’ll just have to hope that your mistake can be fixed before it’s too late. For now, all we can do is get some sleep and wait to find out what happens. Tomorrow, you will not be going to Ponyville with Luna. You’ll be here with Cadance. Think about… Tartarus, just try to understand the scope of what you did. It’s not like I can give you any real punishment.”
“Does this mean I will be taking over observing the changeling’s disguising affairs?” Cadance asked.
“Yes,” Celestia said.
“No,” I said immediately.
Cadance leveled her stare at me, “You don’t have a choice in this.”
“Really?”
“No, you don’t. This is for your own good, Phasma.”
I grunted, “It was the entire First Fang that agreed to the punishment. And further, I do have a choice.”
“Even Thorax?” Cadance asked.
“Yes, albeit reluctantly,” I admitted. “I suppose he thought the same as Luna; that this punishment could be reversed after some time. At any rate, I will not be divulging security information to Cadance.”
“And why not?” The pink alicorn pressed.
“There’s no way in hell that Cadance can be trusted with knowing all of my activities. Nuh-uh. The last thing I need is someone like you having operational security to deny any covert infiltration. Luna at least has some real understanding of when rules need to be bent.”
Celestia pressed a hoof to her face and sighed, “Luna will still handle that aspect of our alliance; she will be in charge of overall changeling activities. You personally will be under Cadance’s guidance when it comes to… you. Can we agree on that?”
I shrugged, “Fine…”
“Good. Circling back to the boundaries issue,” Celestia continued, “there will be no more of this mutilation affair. If you want to punish somepony rather than reform them, fine, but there'll be no more corporal punishments! Prison sentences, community service, choose whatever works, but no physical torment.”
“... Agreed,” I relented. “No executions. No mutilations. Just… prison sentences or banishment. Fits into how I want the Hive to be run, anyways.”
“Then why did you do this?” Cadance asked.
I slammed my hooves down and yelled, “Because I’m tired of people killing me– or getting close to– and getting away with it!”
Cadance and Celestia recoiled at the sudden display of anger.
Celestia recovered first, “All the more reason why you should excuse yourself from such trials. Do you really think this cycle of violence will end? If you want real justice, then let it be delivered without bias and hatred.”
‘Wouldn’t have been a cycle if Thorax had let me end the fucker.’ I closed my eyes and took a slow, deep breath, ‘Alright, just… calm down. Celestia is right. If only because violence begets violence. I had Tarsus right where I wanted him: in chains. I let my emotions control my response. Mostly because that was the correct response, but… whatever. I shouldn’t have pressured Thorax as much as I did. I’m glad I actually did listen to him to the extent that I did, but it could have been a lot less messy. This whole situation could end up like Eucharis if shit hits the fan. Hell, I almost hit Thorax…’
I felt my ears press back against my head in shame, “Yeah, yeah… They’ll rot in jail for the rest of their lives, but at least they’ll still have their lives. The First Fang shouldn’t have been the judges for Tarsus. The rest of the loyalists will have fair trials and… I suppose Tarsus will have to be retried. If he survives.”
Celestia nodded, “Thank you for understanding. Personally, I find tossing the most irredeemable threats into a cell and throwing away the key to be… hmm. Admittedly, it’s perhaps not the best solution, but it’s an effective one.”
As Cadance and Celestia began talking about the various threats that have been permanently sidelined through the usage of life sentences, I couldn’t help but think about Luna and how she was doing. Caught in the middle of everything, the whole situation had to be weighing on her heavily.
‘I swear to Panar, if I catch her moping about like this is all her fault or some other horseshit, I’m going to kick her ass into the next decade. And give her a hug so strong that it’ll break some ribs.’
In my attempts to track down Luna since last night, I ran into Coxa and Lacewing. While Luna and I slept in the same bed, we often woke up at different times, leading to different morning schedules. I had found her already asleep, and when I woke, she was already gone.
Two of my three closest friends were on their way through the Palace when they waved me down.
“There you are,” Lacewing said as she gave me a quick hug. “I couldn’t find you after I went and… gave the order.”
“The Princesses wanted to talk,” I said plainly.
Coxa, sporting a perpetual scowl, grimaced, “Don’t talk so loudly. Damn it all, Lace, why did you let me drink that much?”
“I told you, you ran off after I cut off your drinking. Blame yourself.”
“Damn myself, that guy’s a selfish asshole,” Coxa whispered.
“The ponies aren’t happy about the whole Tarsus thing,” I said, quieter for Coxa’s benefit.
“Psh,” Lacewing rolled her eyes, “as if that wasn’t obvious. They ruined your hatchday party to make a point.”
“They were pretty upset with me after I said I would try to be better,” I continued.
“Be better?” Coxa quoted. “What do you mean by that?”
“No mutilating my own citizens, for starters,” I mumbled.
Lace scoffed, “Tarsus wasn’t a citizen of the Fifth Hive.’
“No, he was a prisoner. How we treated him reflects on our entire Hive.”
Lace glared, “That backstabbers receive punishment? What’s so wrong about that?”
I sighed, “This is going to be a long conversation. Let’s head to Coxa’s office, I’ve got some business with him that we’ll handle after this conversation.” As we began walking, I continued, “The problem is the fact that Tarsus’s punishment flies in the face of what the Fifth Hive will be. We blind Tarsus and then go and promise that the rights of every drone will be protected? That they are free from fear of the Crown executing them?” I shook my head, “Celestia is right. Should’a given the backstabbing prick a real trial and wash our hooves of the whole thing.”
Lace wasn’t happy, “Still, they have no right to say that you are to blame when all of us voted on the trial.”
“That hardly matters when I was the one who promised to do better,” I said. “I have no doubt that while they are upset with you two and Thorax, you three never made any promises. Now that I think about it, they’ll probably want to have a few words with Thorax.”
“They can talk to him all they want,” Coxa argued, “the fact stands that he pulled our verdict all the way from execution.”
“Like I said, a few words,” I smirked. “Compared to the dozens they’ve already given me, I’m sure that that conversation will amount to, ‘You did okay, do better.’ At any rate, Coxa and I will be writing up the first draft of the Fifth Hive’s constitution this afternoon.”
“We are?” Coxa repeated, seemingly always behind on our conversation. “Wait, weren’t you supposed to visit Ponyville with Luna today?”
“Cadance is supposed to talk about boundaries with me. I’d put air quotes around the word boundaries, but we’re currently walking and I have yet to figure out how you guys occasionally walk on only your hind legs. So that meeting will take an hour at most, leaving me with a free afternoon.”
“Why not get it out of the way and go with Luna?” Lace pointed out.
“I have yet to actually speak with Luna since last night,” I sighed. “I don’t know if she’d approve of me ignoring Celestia’s… reprimand.”
Lace grunted, “So not only did the ponies ruin your party, but they also are forbidding you from spending the holiday with your marefriend?”
“When you put it like that…” I trailed off. “... Look, Lace. I’m not happy about it. They have a point, but they are morally upright enough to put a hold on everything to immediately right that wrong. I… respect that.”
“Fuck that,” Lace hissed. “You can tell Applejack to her face that you respect her decision to ruin last night. Write your damn constitution with Coxa, I’ll find Luna and tell her that you’re still going with her to Ponyville.”
“... Thanks,” I whispered. “Also, have you heard back from the agents in Griffonia yet?”
Ent and Giardia loaded the crossbow without a word passing between them. It was a slow and laborious process: too fast would make noise and would alert the other griffons, but too slow wouldn’t even get the job done.
Behind their little hill, the target was huddled around a dying campfire with four other griffons. One of the griffons was asleep. The other three were awake, sharing a quiet conversation with the target.
Ent glared at Giardia and shook his head once.
‘The mission has changed too much. I don’t like this,’ he said without words.
Giardia thrust the loaded crossbow into the griff’s claws.
‘Neither do I, but an order is an order,’ was her reply.
Slowly, they crawled on their bellies to the top of the hill. The way had been cleared of twigs and leaves earlier, exposing the light green grass that grew up in these Griffonian highlands. From their vantage point, the pair had a perfect view of the target. With the fire between them and their target, the assassins had confirmed his identity.
Tarsus the Traitor was disguised as a faded-blue griffon, as blind as a bat. He had successfully garnered sympathy from those without it. Then again, his generous host was anything other than a regular griffon. Ent silently wondered if he was even a griffon anymore.
One of the two griffons sitting at the fire, the one with his back towards the two assassins, sat on a log and towered over the rest. The orange and amber glow of the fire illuminated the massive griffon’s silhouette. White fur faded to light blue feathers at the wingtips, a smattering of golden feathers gave the griffon a halo that was enhanced by the yellow glare of the fire, and the griffon’s armor glinted from between layers of his cloak. This massive griffon wore no armor of iron or steel. Instead, gold and gems peaked out from between the dirty brown overcoat.
Even the massive griffon’s boisterous laughter commanded attention.
He was the source of Ent and Giardia’s fear and frustration. His presence threatened the whole operation. After all, it was one thing to murder a blind griffon with no family in Griffonia.
It was another matter entirely to assassinate an associate of King Cyne Frostwing himself.
How the Traitor got involved with the King was unknown. As far as they could tell, this was their first interaction– yet the two got along together like pigs rolling in shit. Now, King Cyne Frostwing was here, a distance away from any army that swore loyalty to him, shooting the shit with a disguised changeling and only two loyal griffons for protection.
‘Better not miss,’ Ent gulped as he steadied his grip on the wood and iron weapon.
The weapon swayed in his claws. He felt its heavy, unfamiliar weight pull downwards, even as he tried to compensate for the one hundred hooves between him and the target. A drop of green slime slowly dripped from the bolt tip at the end.
Giardia gave him a claw signal. Ent nodded and adjusted his aim to his spotter’s reading on the wind speed. They both froze for a moment as small flashes of color dotted the air around the campfire. Orange, gold, blue, purple… The colors faded away, marked by nothing more than the griffons pointing up in the air.
Ent closed one eye.
‘Panar guide my aim.’
With a twitching claw, he squeezed the trigger. With a thuck, the bolt shot forth from the crossbow. The projectile whistled quietly as it cut through the air. Within a moment, it struck a griffon at the campfire. Immediately, Giardia and Ent squirmed backwards, no longer caring about the sound they were making. The griffons were yelling now.
It was time to leave.
But before the changelings had turned away, they had both seen the poisoned bolt hit the wrong griffon.
Ent cursed his lack of expertise with the weapon and the foolishness of ordering that the shot be taken ‘no matter the consequences.’ Forced to adapt to the appearance of the bloody King of Griffonia, the pair had switched to Plan B: fire a poison-tipped shot and then get the fuck out of dodge.
'Damn Lacewing! That juvenile idiot! If this operation had been led by Intelligencer Ocelli, none of this would have happened!'
What should have been a simple matter of walking up, slitting a throat, and then leaving was now a completely botched operation. The shot had missed and hit the griffon between Tarsus and King Frostwing.
‘At least it wasn’t King Frostwing himself who got hit. The last thing we need is another war. Then again, it may be too early to say that…’
Either way, neither Ent nor Giardia were looking forward to the debriefing and inevitable ensuing shitstorm that would drown entire villages in its path. For a few minutes, as they frantically dodged through the underbrush of the forest, Ent contemplated suicide.
The duty of an Infiltrator was to complete their objective. No matter what, that job had to get done. While he was given carte blanche to kill the Traitor and expose himself in the process, he definitely wasn’t given permission to fail the mission and start a war with the Griffons.
He paused. Giardia stopped alongside him.
“Keep moving!” She hissed.
“... I really fucked up,” Ent muttered.
“Then thank Panar that we answer to him and not her!” Giardia said quietly as she glanced behind them. “We both won’t be headed for the vats! But these griffs sure as hell won’t be as merciful, so get your ass in gear!”
‘Even if Saint Phasmatodea was merciful, he definitely wasn’t going to be happy.’
The quiet woosh of an aerodynamic figure cutting through the air behind him was the only warning Ent got before both of his hindlegs were shattered against the ground beneath him.