“I don’t want to hear it,” said Dorylus. He sighed and shook his head in mock disappointment.
“No, really! I have a very good and very convincing explanation for all of this. You see-”
“Prince Blueblood,” he interrupted, holding up his hoof. “I thought we had a gentlecolts’ agreement; you cooperate with my experiment and I won’t have to resort to the more traditional methods of livestock control.”
“A gentlecolts’ agreement is made between two gentlecolts,” I said, with a defiant shrug; being interrupted like that certainly got my gander up. “As with ladies, no gentlecolt would ever describe himself as one, so I shall recuse myself here, but you certainly are no-”
“Shut. Up.”
His words, and the venom in which they were thoroughly drenched, silenced my babbling; one got the impression that he had wanted to say that to me for a desperately long time. In truth, I was positively shaking, though I hoped that if he saw me shivering in the darkness that he would put it down to the chill of the desert night than fear. I had some idea of what the Changelings did to ponies who disobeyed them, and indeed I had heard many grim and grisly stories of grotesque tortures of body, mind, and soul inflicted upon those rare ponies of Virion Hive who had dared to resist their enslavement. Still, save for the aforementioned metal bucket, I could find nothing in here that could foretell what sort of trials I was to be put through, but it was all staring me straight in the face, and it would be worse in a way that I couldn’t have imagined at the time.
“I take no pleasure in this,” he said, and I believed that; it was an admission of failure on his part, that his precious little camp and whatever ideology he was trying to promote amongst the Hives was not the magic panacea for the Changelings’ little food problem after all.
Dorylus lifted his hoof to signal to a drone, unseen by me, when he abruptly looked up and to the side as something else grabbed his attention. I then heard Square Basher’s voice, distant and muffled at first but growing louder by the second, faintly out of breath as though she had been running, imploring him in an increasingly frantic tone to stop. She then swept into view at the trapdoor above me, next to the Commandant.
“It ain’t fair, sir!” said Square Basher, and it was the first time that I’d heard her address Dorylus as ‘sir’, or even acknowledge him at all. “The escape tunnel was my idea, not the Commissar’s. I did all the digging, and he only did a little bit at the end. Get him out and put me in there!”
I was rather shocked, and I imagine Dorylus was too; it was daft beyond all measure, and I simply could not grasp why she, of all ponies, would do such a brave but incredibly stupid thing like admit it was her fault and offer herself up for punishment in my stead, but still, it was all very touching and I hoped the Commandant was in a reasonable mood. Alas, he was not. He merely regarded Square Basher, who was almost tall enough to look him in the eye without much straining, with a peculiar look of curiosity, which bordered on amusement, and then shook his head with a thin smile.
“He is the Commissar,” said Dorylus. “He is the pony in charge, and he should know better. An officer takes responsibility for the actions of the ponies under his command, especially when they operate without his orders, and as a result it is he who will be punished as severely as my experiment here will allow. If he was truly as innocent as you say then he would have put a stop to your escape attempt in the first place. Instead he not only allowed you to continue but actively took part in the attempt.”
“It still ain’t fair,” Square Basher repeated, apparently hoping that her typical bull-headedness, that had served so very well elsewhere with officers and enlisted ponies alike, would prevail here against what Dorylus thought passed for reason.
The Purestrain snorted and shook his head in unconcealed irritation. “Fine,” he hissed. “No ice cream for you and the other ponies for a week, if that will satisfy your desire to be punished, but as for Lord Commissar Prince Blueblood here, his rank and title warrants a more severe punishment.”
The way out of this predicament was right there, blaring angrily at me and demanding to be made heard, but so was Square Basher, and I couldn’t very well admit my deception with her within earshot. All that I had to tell him was that I knew about the planned escape tunnel and had discreetly sabotaged it to ensure our capture; damnation, I was actually helping him in his daft little experiment and thanks to the Company Sergeant Major valiantly protesting my ‘innocence’, I couldn’t bloody say it! I cursed her naive and backward beliefs on military honour, but all that I could do was stand there, despite the overwhelming urge to scream at Dorylus, and try to look all heroic and noble. One would have thought that he would have been able to work it out himself, that it was all terribly convenient for what appeared to be an earnest escape attempt to be foiled by a very simple measuring error, and one that resulted in the tunnel terminating in the barracks, no less, but I could only wonder that he was in fact looking forward to this.
“Go on, Square Basher,” he said, calm and implacable as ice spreading over glass. “Don't make this harder on your ponies t—”
"That's Sergeant Major Square Basher," I cut in, immediately earning a withering look from Dorylus as if someone had just spilled his wine right as he was about to sip. Even so, I managed to meet him without flinching, as my deeply indoctrinated adherence to decorum wasn't so easily shaken.
There was a sharp pause, broken by a sharper snort from Square Basher. I caught her eye then, and what I saw was that damned sense of gratitude, even awe, as if she'd distilled its essence from her whole troop just to be placed on my undeserving head. “I won’t forget this,” she said to Dorylus, though I couldn't help but feel it coming back to me. “The Commissar is one of us.”
She turned and walked away, disappearing from my view; a fat lot of good her solidarity was about to do me, thought I, as I stared up at a bemused Dorylus. Perhaps it would have been better to have taken my chances out in the wild with the Blackhorn patrols and the partisans, but if I hadn’t been trapped in this cell, then… well, I’ll get to that.
“Look, if you’ll just let me damn well explain,” I said, petulantly stomping a hoof like a foal.
Changelings don’t have eyebrows, but the brow ridge above Dorylus’ right eye formed an admirable approximation of that gesture. “Go on,” he said.
I could only pray that Square Basher was out of earshot, or that I could make her believe that I was lying to save my own skin. “I found out about the escape tunnel only when it was halfway through construction, but I couldn’t tell you because I would lose the trust of my soldiers. You must understand, as a fellow leader, how important it is to keep one’s ponies on side, so I changed the map so that we would get caught, and now we have! No harm done.”
“My expectations were higher, sir.” That last word was spat out as though it was rancid cheese. “Even if I believed that ridiculous story of yours, you must still be punished as an example to the others. We can’t have them threatening the success of Camp Joy with repeat escape attempts. I’m sure you must understand, as a fellow leader.”
Then, he looked to one of the drones standing around, who watched the proceedings with only a vague interest. “You,” he said, “take the Prince’s watch, then lock him in there. Hay and water rations only.”
The drone saluted Equestrian-style with his hoof against his forehead. [As opposed to the Changeling style of salute, which was a short, sharp buzzing of wings] He trotted down the steps, and I obligingly held out my left hoof with the small timepiece strapped around it. It was a rather attractive little thing that I’d bought for myself while on a thoroughly unexciting trip to Hayvetia and had somehow survived a week on Hill 70, so I made certain to instruct the drone that I wanted it back after this, whatever it was, was over and done with.
“How long is he to stay there, sir?” the drone asked as he relieved me of my watch. He trotted back up the steps, leaving me alone in the darkness, standing on the single square of pale moonlight on the floor.
“Oh.” Dorylus shrugged. “Until I think he’s learned his lesson.”
The door slammed shut with a sound that put me in mind of a heavy coffin lid being closed, and as the already scant amount of light was extinguished and I was plunged into a most opaque and impenetrable blackness the analogy felt all too apt. There was the mechanical sound of a large key turning a heavy lock. So, I reasoned, I was to be kept down here by way of punishment for my part in this escape attempt, and hopefully not for terribly long. Still, it could have gone a damned sight worse -- at least I wasn’t being flogged.
I sat on the floor, but presently the cold, hard stone made my flanks ache, so I resorted to standing. There were no chairs, and no bed either for that matter, so that at least implied to me that they did not expect me to sleep here, and therefore I would be out of here in no time, or so I thought. Still, I was already getting pretty bored, and it must have only been a few minutes by my guess, so I decided to pace around the room for a bit. My eyes had accustomed to the pitch blackness somewhat and there was nothing here, aside from the empty bucket, so there was little chance of me bumping into anything, and after a few paces in a clockwise circle around the perimeter, I found that it was about ten and a half paces long and five and a quarter paces wide, give or take a few depending on how long my strides were. Going in the opposite direction brought a brief moment of novelty and interest, but it had just as quickly faded when it brought the same conclusion as before.
After a vague amount of time had passed of this, I gave up and threw myself upon the hard, cold floor, where the sensation of pain provided at least a modest diversion from the boredom. Something jabbed into my ribs when I landed on my front, and I realised that Slab was still sitting happily in my jacket’s inner breast pocket. Hissing with pain and annoyance, I removed him from my pocket and propped him up against the wall.
“Well,” I said, “this is a fine state of affairs we’ve gotten ourselves into.”
Slab stared stonily back at me.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that; we’re both in this mess together.”
It might have been rather premature for me to start losing my mind and talk to inanimate blocks of stone, but one must remember that it was exceedingly rare for me to ever be truly alone; privacy and solitude were non-existent in the Royal Guard, even for officers, but even at home in Canterlot or whatever part of Equestria I happened to be staying in, I was always surrounded by servants who, even if I rarely acknowledged them unless I wanted something or they happened to be in my way during one of my blacker moods, were still a constant and reassuring presence that I now sorely missed. Even, however, if I was staying in my apartment in downtown Canterlot and Drape Cut had the evening off and was doing only Luna knows what, I could still nip out to a bar, club, brothel, or all three, as and when I pleased.
Now I was well and truly isolated from everypony, even though I knew that they were merely a single shut door away, and the thought spiralled, taking on other anxieties and neurotic thoughts that had previously set up shop in the darkest recesses of my own psyche. I got up, ascended the stairs with renewed energy, and tried the handle; it was locked, of course, so I threw my shoulder against it. The door remained firmly shut and I bounced off it, stumbling down a few steps. There was a dull, throbbing ache where I had collided with it.
“Oi, stop that!” I heard a voice call out from behind the door, presumably the bored sentry placed to watch over me. It was something to break up the empty tedium, so I tried again, feeling strangely exhilarated at causing some sort of reaction.
This time, the door opened, and I was relieved to see something beyond those four walls; it was still dark outside, though to me it looked as though the sky was just starting to lighten somewhat. The guard, another drone who looked much like any other with a sour expression on his face, pointed the butt of his musket square at my chest and gave me a forceful shove. I fell backwards, skidded down the short flight of steps, and fell in a heap on the floor at its base.
“Cut it out, or you’ll be in there for even longer,” he hissed, then slammed the door shut again, and I heard again the sound of the key grating in the heavy lock.
Well, so much for that. Though antagonising the guard was to be my only source of stimulation, it was hardly conducive to me getting out of here any time soon. There was nothing to do then, except lie down on the unforgiving stone floor, though it was cold and hard, and consider just how damned unfair this whole situation was. I had been hoisted by my own petard enough times for my behaviour in the past, the events of that Grand Galloping Gala with Rarity quite possibly the most public of them, though sleeping with Earthshaker’s ‘wife’ garnered the most severe punishment, but it seemed as though trying to do the right thing, as far as I could see it, had very much the same result, though this time my feelings of having been unjustly slighted were more than justified. Whatever I did would result in something horrible happening to me, and that counted for not doing anything at all, too. So, I concluded, as I laid there on the ground and counted the bricks in the opposite wall, I was simply fated by whatever divine or diabolical spirits that watched over the course of my life to have it completely screwed over at any given opportunity, and typically just when I think things are finally going my way.
Except, however, I wasn’t entirely alone here; I was trapped with myself, and that proved to be the worst possible pony with whom I could have been incarcerated, with the possible exception of Mr Stripes’ demented daughter, perhaps. With no other source of distraction, save for pacing around the room and counting my steps again, I could only lie there and listen to the little, nagging voice in my head that told me that, by all rights and if the universe truly had a sense of justice about it, I really ought to have been dead by now, run through by a Changeling bayonet on Hill 70, and Frostbite alive in my place, and Red Coat too, for that matter, and however many others more deserving of life I had seen fall in this horrendous conflict. The voice, my own, told me that I was a drunk, useless parasite, which, looking back on it now, was mostly echoing what those hack, populist tabloids wrote of me during those odd spells where there was nothing else more edifying to report on, but, as I was trapped in that dark cell, it sounded more honest coming from within my own head.
Time passed. I understood why they had taken my watch; the long wait might have been marginally more tolerable if I could measure how long it took, but now I had no way to measure the passage of time except to watch the light through the cracks in the door herald each day. About three times a day I was fed the promised diet of hay and water, which became something that I looked forward to immensely as the only source of stimulation I would receive. Yet it never felt like enough, both in terms of nourishment and in taste, but it was something to look forward to.
I must have slept in that time, for I had dreams; strange ones that I barely remember now, but always of blood and dust and beasts, but that my weakening grasp on sanity, already withered by years of war, could have formed these images while awake and lucid had occurred to me. So when light suddenly flooded into the room, blinding my eyes with its brilliance, from a rectangular hole that had formed in the wall opposite the door, I was all but certain that I was either dreaming or hallucinating.
A tall, broad figure was silhouetted in the square of light, and its long dark shadow was cast upon the cold floor. It stood there on the precipice, apparently looking around the room, before its gaze settled upon the pathetic form of Yours Truly, lying on his side against the opposite wall, next to the steps that led up to the door out. I lifted my head, squinting into the bright light until my eyes adjusted to its brilliance, and I saw that it was merely that of a candle that had been placed on the floor behind the figure.
“Sir?” whispered Square Basher, but after such a long period of silence, the voice of another pony other than my own or from within my own head was almost deafening. She walked into my cell with slow, cautious steps, as though entering the cage of a wild animal that might suddenly lash out and attack without warning.
“Square Basher?” I tried to stand up and maintain what little of my dignity I still had after an interminable amount of time in this cellar. “Are you real?”
She stopped abruptly, apparently taken aback by my question. “Yes, sir,” she said after some thought.
“Sorry, it’s been rather tricky working out what is and what isn’t real, down here.” In truth, I could have run up and hugged her, so desperate was I for equine contact, but even despite all that I had been through these past hours, days, or however long I had been here, that would have been unseemly. Instead, I merely stood there dumbly, most likely looking rather terrible. “What are you doing here? What if you get caught? It’s much too risky.”
My words seemed to have come out as a rapid babble, in contrast to the usual sort of practised, refined speech that many long hours of elocution lessons had forced upon me. My expressed concern, however, was not on her well-being, after all, it should have been her stuck in here and I’m certain she would have weathered the misery better than I anyway, but were she caught in here with me, that would likely spell even more pain for me too.
“Cannon Fodder showed me the secret passages,” she explained, “and he’s out there keeping an eye out for any guards. That bug with the Daring Do fetish bribed the other guards with some Power Ponies comics.”
“Can they be trusted?”
“Well, sir.” She sighed and shook her head. “You can never trust them, but there’s something… something funny about this lot that I just can’t put my hoof on, sir, not that it’s my place to say, of course, and well, frankly, I think it’s worth the risk.” An awkward smile formed on her lips. “If you don’t mind me saying, you look dreadful, sir.”
“I feel it too,” I said, which was probably the closest to emotional honesty anypony was ever going to get out of me. “How long have I been down here?”
“Two days, sir,” she said with a grave nod. “We told Dorylus we wanted you out, but he said no, so we took matters into our own hooves, sir.”
I could hardly believe it; only two days here and I already felt as though I was losing what little remained of my mind. “But you heard the Commandant; I’m the officer here, and the responsibility is mine. I don’t want you and the others risking themselves on my account.”
Square Basher moved closer, and I saw that she had a pair of loaded saddle bags strapped to her back. She sat down next to me, quite close, such that, if the mood took her, she might rest her head on my shoulder, and started unpacking the bags.
“I ain’t not never disobeyed an order from an officer, sir,” she said, as she produced books, scraps of paper, candles, matches, cakes, and, most oddly, a cricket ball from the saddle bags. All well and good, but the final item was what truly lifted my spirits: a bottle of brandy. “Not ever. But this time I have to break a twenty year streak. A good sergeant looks after her officer, and for now you’re my officer.”
So that explained it, thought I, as she continued to empty the goodies from her saddle bags; with Captains Red Coat and Frostbite both gone, I was to be her surrogate officer, and given her recent track record, that didn’t fill me with much hope. I suppose such thoughts were rather insensitive, looking back now, but at the time I was hardly in the right state of mind to feel fair about her predicament. Nevertheless, I knew that she had taken both Red Coat’s and Frostbite’s deaths rather hard, as a personal as well as professional failing on her part, and would then latch onto Yours Truly as a result of her apparent maternal need to look after young officers. She would have to have realised that this latest misery I was being put through was largely her fault, and that she was trying, in her own small way, to make up for it. As always, she would never say as much, but it was abundantly clear to me.
“I wanted to get you a few things,” she continued, arranging them out in front of me as though I was a foal and it was my birthday, “and the other ponies helped out, too.”
Most of it was stolen, of course, as she explained that Switchblade’s pre-war side-job in breaking-and-entering for the purposes of common burglary proved to be rather useful in procuring cakes from the kitchens and the books from the library, but it was the thought that counted. I was actually rather touched by this little gesture; it was quite inconceivable for me to consider that ponies might like me enough to get me gifts, or at least steal them, when I can usually afford to buy whatever I wanted (when not incarcerated, that is). Of course, it wasn’t the real me that they liked, but merely the idea of me that they had formed in their heads, and even then I could only imagine that Square Basher had done this to alleviate her sense of guilt.
Still, she stayed with me for a while, and we chatted aimlessly about nothing while taking alternate swigs from the rather agreeable bottle of brandy. “Switchblade lifted it from Dorylus’ own drinks cabinet,” she explained as she hoofed it back to me.
I took another sip, though after wiping the rim with my quite grubby sleeve. “Knowing that does make it taste rather better, don’t you think?”
Square Basher chuckled politely. We had lit a few of the candles, which mercifully provided some measure of dim light to see by, but hopefully not enough to alert the clearly inattentive and presumably deaf guard standing around outside.
A lull had formed in the conversation, so I fell back on that usual standby of small talk with the lower orders: “What will you do after the war?”
She looked at me as if I’d just asked her to present a dissertation on advanced magical theory. “After the war?” I nodded, and she shrugged. “I don’t know, sir. I haven’t thought about it much. I guess I’ll stay with the Army, when it turns back to the Royal Guard, and carry on as before.”
“Nopony waiting for you back home?” I asked, somewhat drunkenly. “No thought of life outside of the military?”
“The Royal Guard’s my husband,” she said, and then pointed to her cutie mark. With her flanks bare for perhaps the first time since I’d met her, I could see that her cutie mark was a single marching hoof clad in armour that was both functional and unadorned by decoration. “My special talent is keeping ponies in line, sir, so the Royal Guard’s an obvious choice; it doesn’t have much application outside of that, except maybe, I dunno, being a bouncer, but that doesn’t appeal to me. This job is what I’m best at; I’m good at it, and it’s good to me.”
I doubted that last bit very much, but I kept quiet on that account. It might have been the rather fragile state that I was in after two whole days stuck in this hateful little place, but I felt rather sorry for her; I suppose I needn’t have, though she might have had a life filled with rigid military structure, she seemed to have truly thrived in it. Perhaps it was more the case that I simply could not understand it, but there was little that I understood of the lower orders anyway, and vice versa. If pressed, I might say that she had found a level of order, familiarity, and control that I, with my very different upbringing, background, and social class, chafed under and resented to the core.
“What about you, sir?” she asked.
“Go back to being a prince and enjoy the peace and quiet,” I said, in another rare case of unfiltered honesty.
“Just like that, sir?” She let the question linger with its unspoken follow-up: even after something like Virion Hive?
“A prince doesn’t have much of a choice,” I answered flippantly. “Go home and try to carry on as though none of this ever happened.”
I was rather struck by how informal Square Basher was with me at that moment, but then again, given the circumstances, so was I; her innate awkwardness around her social betters still persisted somewhat, but she seemed to have relaxed a little around my presence. The flickering golden glow of the candles seemed to accentuate her strong, tall, and broad frame quite nicely, and there was certainly a strange appeal to her muscular, unrefined physique that I had not considered before, I thought.
Bear in mind that it had been quite a long time since I had last been with a mare, by my standards, and by ‘mare’ I mean a real one and not one of the Changelings in Dorylus’ perverse pleasure manor. Furthermore, with the two of us being rather tipsy and emotionally compromised, and, in spite of everything else, Yours Truly remaining Canterlot’s most eligible bachelor, what followed was inevitable. Though a mutual expression of spontaneous lust - one minute we were swigging from the bottle and the next we were clumsily going at it on the floor like inebriated rabbits - it remained an awkward albeit pleasurable affair; we were still, after all, in a small, hard, cold cell with an unpleasant odour and the threat of discovery over our heads, but I think that, if anything, added a frisson of danger and seediness that only served to contribute to the excitement, rather like stealing away with the host’s wife to the servants’ quarters at a society party. Square Basher proved to be an inexperienced but enthusiastic partner, and though she would neither confirm nor deny the accusation, I would have assumed based on her unexpectedly submissive performance, that this mare more than a decade my senior had never known the intimate touch of another before.
We carried on, with the two of us rutting away uninterrupted until we both lay in each other’s hooves gasping, exhausted, and sated, and it was a damned miracle that the drone standing guard behind the door didn’t pop his head in to find out what all the noise we were making was about. Perhaps he knew and didn’t care; I had a nascent and unproven theory that the drones’ opinions of Commandant Dorylus were about on par with ours. Then again, the average drone continued to possess some level of naivety about ponies that was almost endearing, and this one might have assumed that I was up to some bizarre solo equine activity that he didn’t deem worth interrupting.
Nevertheless, I felt content for perhaps the first time in a desperately long while, and not merely due to having my own carnal desires indulged. For a brief moment, as I held her body to mine, I could at least lose myself in the quaint fantasy of having a pony who truly cared about me. Anything beyond a brief liaison would never have lasted, of course; the gulf in social class was already a yawning chasm, but as Square Basher had said, her true love was the Royal Guard, and though not a jealous partner, it was a demanding one.
The moment could not last forever; for after a period of undefined time she pulled herself out of my embrace with some measure of reluctance, and stood up. Her mane was unkempt and her coat matted with dust and sweat.
“Well, sir,” she said falteringly, blushing deep red with embarrassment. “That was, uh… nice?”
I was lying on the floor still, gazing up at her, and chuckled. “Only ‘nice’?”
Her cheeks turned an even deeper shade of crimson. “I didn’t mean that, sir, it’s just that, well…”
She trailed off, so I finished the thought for her: “I know, we must never speak of this to anypony. Speaking of which, I’m sure you’re needed to keep them in line while I’m stuck in here. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
“Yes, sir.” She saluted with her usual parade ground efficiency. “We’ll be waiting for you when you get out, and then we’ll give it another shot. Escaping, that is, sir.”
With that, she left through the secret passage from which she had come, shutting the door behind her with a final thud that seemed to hammer home how alone I was again. So, there it was, I’d do my time here, hopefully with time off for good behaviour assuming the gifts I had been given weren’t discovered, and then repeat this whole silly process once more. I suppose if I could get somewhat used to military life in the Commissariat, I might even become accustomed to this insane cycle until finally liberated from either the camp or from life, whichever came first.
Still, the books and treats helped to alleviate my sour mood, and the memory of my moment of indiscretion with Square Basher provided some relief during moments of particular loneliness, but aside from that, the following period of time of indeterminate length proceeded much in the same way as that before it. What I feared most, however, between trying to read a Daring Do story I had already read before by fading candlelight and bouncing the cricket ball against the wall and failing to catch it again, was getting used to the solitude, where I would then have to get used to being in ‘normal’ society again.
I found, however, that I could overhear the conversations between the guards at the cellar door if I sat close and pressed my ear against its wooden surface. Much of it was banal, but as it was something new in a cell that lacked anything of the sort, I found myself getting quite engrossed in the pointless, empty gossip they exchanged when swapping shifts -- a drone named Arista was worried about being transferred to the frontline infantry, and was trying to sabotage that by volunteering for work in the kitchens instead, where she made a very nice key lime pie for the prisoners with the scant ingredients they could get; another one whose name escapes me was wondering where his ‘friend’ Thorax had disappeared to, and that particular name would not become important to me for a great while; and so on. It was remarkably reassuring, however, to hear that the hated enemy, hell-bent on the destruction of Equestria and all that we hold dear, was also capable of being so very, very dull.
This time, however, it was interesting, which was deeply concerning.
“I saw her!” one exclaimed.
“What’re you on about now?” said the other, annoyed.
“The Queen! She’s visiting the Commandant right now in the dining room, having a meeting with a load of other Purestrains, and she looked right at me in the corridor. She seemed to give me a little nod to tell me that I’m serving the Hives well here.”
“Or ‘look at that hideous freak, how did someling as ugly as him make it to adulthood without being mistaken for an infant bugbear and killed?’.”
“Screw you. I got to see her and you didn’t.”
I stepped back from the door, feeling an unexpected wave of dizziness at the news that Queen Chrysalis was here, of all places. My first thought was that she was here to see me, and that filled me with a sense of dread that I hadn’t felt since I marched up that damned hill; of course she would want to see Princess Celestia’s favourite nephew and satisfy her enormous but fragile ego by gloating over me, and, to be terribly honest, I was not exactly in the mood for it. If this was all part of a choreographed visit for the purposes of propaganda, and no doubt an opportunity for Dorylus to show off his model camp, then I would pettily try to ruin it by simply not being in my cell when she inevitably came to visit.
That she wasn’t here to see me specifically, and instead had more pressing matters to attend to with Dorylus, hadn’t occurred to me at that moment, but why else would she have come all this way into the middle of nowhere if not to? I found the secret door through which Square Basher had visited me with only a few minutes of fumbling around the stones in the wall, until I found the hidden catch that unlocked it and pushed it open. A sensation of trepidation filled me as I looked into the dark, empty corridor, not for the thought of being caught down here, but merely out of leaving the cell that had been my home for the past week or so; it was a great risk, of course, but all this time of isolation had destroyed what little sense of goodwill that I had for Dorylus, and I was quite willing to suffer more misery merely to spite him.
I crept into the corridor, moving one hoof slowly at a time to move as silently as I possibly could. The tunnel was narrow and low, so I had to squeeze awkwardly through it, and there was no light so I had to feel my way along. I ascended a flight of steps and came to yet another corridor, with a junction that branched ahead and then right; my special talent seemed to pull me to the right, so I followed dutifully.
Though my initial intention had been merely to hide, that Queen Chrysalis herself was here and meeting with Dorylus certainly implied that there was something of great importance being discussed -- well, not so much ‘implied’ as being screamed from the top of Mount Everhoof for all to hear. Far be it from me to want to willingly put myself anywhere near that violent, tyrannical brute, but curiosity had gotten the better of me; besides, thought I, if and when Market Garden’s forces valiantly liberate this place and I’m invariably asked what did I do to serve Princesses and Country here, I could say that I uncovered some invaluable titbit of intelligence that will help us win this war.
With that in mind, I carried on, past those steps leading up into other rooms and straining occasionally to hear the muffled voices in conversation behind them. Soon, after much squeezing through these narrow and low passages, I came to the steps and the door that my mental map of the manor told me led to the dining room. I slowly crept up those steps, and, after a moment of pause where I listened to the faint conversation filtered through a plank of wood, gently pushed it open just enough to peer through the narrow slit between the door and the wall.
“...devoted a considerable amount of valuable resources to your pet projects, Dorylus. Your ambition is admirable, but I demand results.”
There she was: Queen Chrysalis, sitting at one end of the long dining table with her back to me. Her size and silhouette were unmistakable; she towered over the Purestrains who sat at the opposite end, all of whom had taken the seats furthest from her as possible. The light from the many candles on the chandelier reflected off her black polished chitin, and highlighted even from my perspective in the corner and low to the ground her sharp, aquiline face, seemingly fixed in an arrogant and condescending sneer. I felt a sudden chill crawl down my back, and the memory of her standing before me at Fort E-5150 flashed vividly in my mind. Standing next to her, not sitting, was a drone, bearing a notepad and pencil, jotting down what I took to be the minutes of the meeting, and who put me in mind of Celestia’s own personal assistant.
Dorylus sat at the head of the table, directly opposite the Queen, still clad in his incongruous velvet smoking jacket and garish paisley cravat, and nervously fiddled his hooves together. To his right sat Hive Marshal Chela, who certainly looked as though she would much rather be anywhere else than here, judging by her bored expression, but was doing her best to hide it. Opposite her was another Purestrain whom I had never seen before; he was rather shorter and slimmer than most of his ilk, almost resembling an ordinary drone to my eyes, with an almost weasel-like demeanour that was only emphasised by the peculiar set of spectacles perched on the bridge of his short, blunt nose. He wore a plain, grey uniform that was adorned only by an insignia patch sewn onto his upper sleeve -- a jagged black Changeling’s horn.
They appeared not to have seen me or noticed that a portion of the wall was slightly askew, so, despite the very obvious risk, I lowered myself down to my belly, as if that might make me less visible, to listen. I still had my old fountain pen in my pocket and some scraps of paper, so I started doing my best to record everything I’d heard.
[Only fragments of official documentation of this meeting survived the war. Prince Blueblood’s description here, only now unearthed and available to approved individuals, is based on the brief notes he made at the time and the gaps filled in by his remarkable memory, and is now the most authoritative description of the meeting. This is corroborated by the few surviving minutes taken by Queen Chrysalis’ personal assistant and secretary, Asopinae, and by the few Changelings who stood guard in the room.]
“Of course, my Queen,” said Dorylus, with a hint of anxiety inflecting his voice. “But please remember that these are hardened Royal Guard veterans and an Equestrian prince; the common ponies will be more receptive to these ideas.”
“You have so far uncovered no useful information, besides the locations of Prince Blueblood’s top three burlesque houses in Prance.” The Changeling with the glasses laughed with a thin, reedy voice. “Your theories would have our proud species reduced to that of servants, carers, if you will, for a weak, decadent one.”
“They are decadent, yes,” answered Dorylus. “But no longer weak. The longer this war goes on, the stronger they will become. My plan will keep them in a state of decadence and dependency, so that the Hives may never go hungry again.”
“But have you considered what will happen to us?”
“I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.”
“Without the ever-present threats of slave uprisings our drones will have nothing to struggle for; they too will become as weak and decadent as the ponies, until we are all conquered by a stronger, more virile, more aggressive species. I have seen the drones you have recruited for this camp -- aberrants and dissidents all, who ought to have had a spell in a correction camp to become productive servants of the Hives. You will merely encourage more of them to be non-conformists.”
“This is the perfect place for those aberrant drones to still serve our Queen in their own way, instead of having their potential wasted in your camps.”
A slam of a heavy hoof on the dining table and a splintering of wood silenced the inane drivel from the two Purestrains. The weaselly one with glasses almost jumped out of his chitin. “Enough!” snarled Chrysalis. “We waste time with this stupid bickering. Dorylus, proceed with enlightening Chela and Ommatidium with the details of Operation: Sunburn.”
[Ommatidium was the head of the Blackhorns and a leading member of Chrysalis’ high command. By the time of the attack on Canterlot he had gained control of the entire internal security apparatus of the Hives, including what passed for conventional police and militia units as well as the Queen’s Attendants, who maintained ideological purity within the armed forces, making him one of the most powerful Purestrains in the Hives and the chief architect of the system of repression of native ponies in the occupied Badlands.]
“Thank you, my Queen.” Dorylus rose to his hooves, cleared his throat, and was about to read from a sheaf of papers when Chrysalis interrupted him.
“I can’t take you seriously when you’re dressed like that,” she said.
“Oh, right.”
There was an awkward moment where Dorylus disrobed and handed his smoking jacket and cravat to a waiting servant, while that Ommatidium fellow, whom I had taken an instant and almost instinctive dislike of in excess of the normal sense of revulsion that I feel in the presence of his kind, made that hideous laugh again. From where I was hiding, I had no idea that he was perhaps one of the most hated of Changelings in the Hives besides Chrysalis herself, but I sometimes find that my gut reaction is often the right one; his insane ramblings about weakness that echoed Odonata’s half-hearted screeds certainly did not improve my perception of him.
Now suitably attired to deliver the correct information, which is to say in the nude, Dorylus could finally begin:
“The overwhelming bulk of Equestria’s military force and attention is engaged with invading the Heartlands, which our brave war-swarms are valiantly resisting to the last drop of ichor. They hope to bring a swift end to this war, but their single-minded fixation grants us a unique opportunity to end this war faster than they anticipate and in our favour. The defence commanded by Hive Marshal Chela and the sacrifice of her drones has bought us time to plan and execute Operation: Sunburn.
“My Queen, your forces last month invaded and occupied the enemy’s colonial trading city of Marelacca in the east, which they believe is to be used as a staging post for an invasion into the jewel in the crown of their empire, Coltcutta. They are wrong only in the target and the scope of our invasion. With the airships generously donated by our ally, which our infiltrators assure us the enemy remains ignorant of, we are now in possession of a staging post to strike at key, undefended targets on the east coast of Equestria itself: Trottingham, Manehattan, and Fillydelphia.”
My breath caught in my throat, and I could hardly believe what I was hearing. News from outside the manor had been strictly controlled, and I had no idea that Marelacca had fallen to the enemy, but even if I had I could not have guessed that it was merely part of their audacious plan.
“And how certain are you that they are undefended?” asked Chela, and even from where I sat I could see from her face that she already disapproved. That, at least, gave me some small measure of hope.
“Our intelligence indicates that those cities are defended only by reserve units depleted of ponies and weapons for the front and by local police forces. Infiltrator cells in each target city and Canterlot itself will conduct sabotage of key communication facilities and assassinations of key ponies to ensure maximum chaos and confusion as we invade. The enemy will offer only minimal resistance to our war-swarms.”
Chela shrugged in response, but otherwise said nothing, so Dorylus carried on.
“Upon conquering those three key cities we will have taken a third of Equestria’s heavy industry dedicated to war production as well as the population that supports it, who will in turn be put to use feeding our swarms. More importantly, we will have secured a beachhead from which to strike further inland, taking Baltimare within two days and Canterlot within the week before they have a chance to move any divisions to counter our invasion.”
[Dorylus’ estimate is too low here: the industrialised cities of Manehattan, Trottingham, and Fillydelphia together contributed just under half of the total war materiel production in Equestria at the time, though there had been continued rapid expansion further afield in cities such as Stalliongrad and Detrot. He also appears to have forgotten about the Equestrian rail system, which would have allowed rapid redeployment of divisions from the south, which has led some historians to argue that this was only intended as a diversion for Chela’s counter-offensive. However, despite this oversight, this testimony from Prince Blueblood proves that Operation: Sunburn was a real attempt to win the war swiftly.]
I heard Chrysalis growl, like an aggressive beast that had been poked with a stick a few too many times. “I want Canterlot wiped off the map and its ponies enslaved; no trace of the city is to remain on the face of that mountain, and anypony who even mentions its existence is to have their tongue removed. Ponyville, too.”
Even Dorylus seemed to be taken aback by the sheer, concentrated venom in his Queen’s voice, so he meekly nodded his head; I guessed that she was still rather sore about that embarrassing failure with my cousin’s wedding. “O-of course, my Queen,” he stammered out. “With their eastern seaboard conquered and Canterlot… uh, destroyed, we can expect the immediate capitulation of Equestria; they will beg us to come to the negotiating table, and we will be at liberty to demand whatever terms we deem necessary. Operation: Sunburn will win us this war!”
I could only listen in sheer horror at all of this, unable to breath, and scarcely keeping up with scribbling down the notes. Odonata had warned us of this, in her usual cryptic way, that as the war situation continues to develop against the Changelings that Chrysalis will be forced to turn to increasingly outlandish and desperate plots in order to win it, and I had just witnessed this first hoof. Nothing that I could have imagined would come close to the sheer audacity and daring of this plan, which was nothing short of the surprise invasion of almost the entire east coast of our fair realm, or the parts that mattered at least, and assuming that Dorylus’ assessment of our defences was correct, and given the amount of their spies in seemingly every nook and cranny of our society, I couldn’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t be. They might actually be able to pull it off.
Ommatidium laughed that horrid, inane laughter of his, and I wondered how Changelings could stand to be in his presence without slapping him; being the leader of a ruthless secret police force must have helped with that. “My, it is wonderfully ambitious, isn’t it?” he said, grinning. The smile rapidly fell from his face as he turned to Chela, who sat opposite him, “Do you not approve, Hive Marshal?”
A short, tense silence fell, as thick as jelly, as Chela seemed to be carefully considering her next words. She looked to Ommatidium, then Chrysalis, then back at the irritating little tyrant sitting before her. “You’re right, it is ambitious,” she said coolly. “If we consider, perhaps, that this Operation: Sunburn proceeds exactly as planned - the enemy is taken completely by surprise, our forces land unopposed on the target cities, they march inland to take Baltimare and Canterlot, and we somehow keep them all supplied from hundreds of miles away - then what?”
“The ponies capitulate, obviously,” said Dorylus, sneering.
“Will they?” asked Chela. She looked around, apparently for support, but found none and, as I had seen before when somepony realises that they are the last sane one around, decided to proceed anyway. “Equestria is big, my Queen. Suppose that we take the east coast and raze Canterlot to the ground, suppose we capture their princesses and the Elements of Harmony, can we assume even for a minute that the remaining portions of Equestria - Los Alicornios, Vanhoover, the Crystal Empire, Prance, and so on - will just give up? The entire bulk of the Equestrian Army is still driving straight into our Heartlands, and-”
Chrysalis interrupted her: “Why haven’t you stopped them? That is your job, after all.”
“My Queen, the Equestrians possess every advantage in numbers, materiel, firepower, and magic,” snapped Chela, her voice rising and her tone growing short. “The only attribute they lack is initiative; with each advance, Market Garden just stops and waits until she’s ready.”
“I believe it is you who lacks initiative,” said Chrysalis. I could hear her hoof tapping on the damaged table. “Or have lost it when I appointed you Hive Marshal and put you to defending our Hives from this invasion. You halted Market Garden’s advance on Mandarina Hive last week, but did not follow it up with a counter-attack as I had specifically ordered; two years ago you would have chased her all the way back to the border!”
“Two years ago the enemy were not as numerous or as organised as they are now, while my forces are all but spent in Hardscrabble’s meal grinder. My war-swarms are exhausted, understrength, and are running through drones and equipment faster than they can be replaced. The enemy is slowly wearing us down at their leisure, while we are already at our limit just holding them back. Now I find that drones have been taken for this extremely risky operation, when they could have been better used for forcing the sort of breakthrough you demand of me on the only front that truly matters.”
“Excuses, excuses,” Chrysalis sneered, with her voice positively dripping venom all over the table between them. “That’s all you ever bring me now. You used to bring me victories, but now it’s excuse after excuse after excuse.”
“Surely,” began Ommatidium, apparently out of a need to be seen to be joining in, “Chela, as your swarms take casualties, only the weakest drones die, leaving the strongest fighters to thrive, thus actually improving the combat effectiveness of your forces?”
I couldn’t clearly see Chrysalis’ face from where I lay on the floor, but Chela’s was a perfect picture of somepony who had just listened to the most stupid and idiotic thing they have ever heard and will likely ever hear, and could not even begin to form an adequate response to it. All she could do was frown, gape in amazement, and shake her head at such exquisite ignorance of the most basic facts of war and indeed reality itself. Everyone at the table wisely chose to ignore Ommatidium, who merely sat there chuckling to himself as if at some private joke.
“I merely present you with the facts, my Queen,” said Chela, when she had recovered. “It is up to you to interpret those facts and guide us, as you have always done.”
“Don’t you patronise me!” Chrysalis shouted. The drones on guard shuddered at her voice, and even Chela looked suitably admonished. “You only present me with your facts to fit whatever your agenda is. Tell me, Chela, what do you think is the proper interpretation of your facts?”
I could see that Chela was tense, with her hooves nervously fiddling with something, perhaps a pencil, on the table; she looked far from the confident military genius I had dined with. “We are thoroughly outmatched in the field, and the best we can hope for is to delay the Equestrian advance. Ponies have little stomach for war, not in the long-term, and the longer we can drag it out the more unpopular it will be at home, until they are ready to come to a negotiated settlement with us. I have prepared a plan for a defensive line the likes of which has never been seen in all of history; if we retreat, taking enough livestock to sustain us and leaving nothing to the enemy, we can hold out until they are prepared to negotiate.”
[Chela’s plans for a defensive line, which she had first planned on calling the Dynastinae Line after a legendary Changeling hero, would eventually become the formidable Chrysalis Line later in the war, which in the final weeks of the war held the Equestrian advance in a stalemate until it was eventually broken by the Yakyakistani Expeditionary Force.]
“No!” Chrysalis’ voice challenged even Luna’s Royal Canterlot Voice in volume. “Every inch of our land must be defended to the last drop of ichor. I don’t want to hear the word ‘retreat’ from you ever again, Chela.”
“My Queen, please, my swarms are stretched thin defending against three Equestrian armies. If we ret… fall back to prepared positions, then they will bleed themselves white trying to break them, and then they will be amenable to peace negotiations.”
“And have you forgotten,” interjected Ommatidium, “that Princess, no, Warmistress Celestia has stated there can be no negotiated peace with the Hives while Chrysalis is Queen?” He flashed a hideous grin. “Unless, that is precisely what you want.”
“My Queen, no!” exclaimed Chela. “Chrysalis is the Hive and the Hive is Chrysalis! I mean only that even the Princesses must be receptive to the will of their subjects. Celestia will not offer unreasonable terms.”
Like any good host, Dorylus had by now realised that the tone of the evening had taken a drastic turn for the worse and stepped in to try and remedy the situation before one of them ordered the execution of the other. He produced a manila envelope, practically bulging with documents, and tossed it onto the table before him where it landed with the same sense of finality as a judge’s gavel.
“My Queen has already given her assent to Operation: Sunburn,” he said quite loudly, “this meeting was only a formality to bring Chela and Ommatidium up to speed, and to ensure their compliance with all necessary orders to ensure its success. Preparation for Sunburn is already at an advanced stage; we have the airships in the Marelacca docks, the war-swarms are mustered there too, and we are only waiting for our infiltrator teams to prepare for their campaign of sabotage.”
“Very good, Dorylus,” said Chrysalis, and the Commandant preened with pride. “You see, Chela, where you only come to me with problems and excuses, others have been hard at work devising the plans that will win us this war. You are incapable of thinking about the bigger picture; when the Equestrians see their beloved Canterlot in ruins they will scream for surrender!”
I watched Chela carefully; her lips were tight and her eyes narrow, and I could see the tension in her tall, thin body. “Of course, my Queen,” she said finally. “My apologies; I had only been thinking of my own battles.”
“Then I suggest you confine your opinions to the battlefield where they belong. Chela, there will be no negotiated peace with Equestria, only conquest, only total victory. Is that understood?”
“Yes, my Queen,” mumbled Chela half-heartedly.
“Good. As for now, we are all in agreement; Operation: Sunburn will go ahead as planned, and I will go to Marelacca to personally oversee the arrangements.”
The drone by Chrysalis' side, who had hitherto been silently taking notes, spoke: “My Queen, forgive me, but the city of Marelacca has only been under our occupation for three weeks. Compliance is low and the population is resisting your rule.”
[Asopinae was Chrysalis’ personal assistant and secretary, but had by this point used her position overseeing the Queen’s schedule and controlling access to her to acquire a considerable amount of political clout. Though it might seem strange that a mere secretary would speak out of turn, it demonstrates Chrysalis’ trust in her, and her reputation.]
“Oh come now!” Ommatidium laughed again, and I wished I could stab him with my pen and make him stop that sickeningly giddy noise. “Surely it is not as bad as all that. My Blackhorns are already in the city, ready to enforce the Queen’s will; resistance is to be expected, but as before, we will stamp it out with our tried and true methods.”
“Your methods result in a lot of dead livestock,” said Dorylus. “Dead livestock is useless to the Hives.”
“Can we have one meeting that doesn’t devolve into your petty bickering with one another?” snapped Chrysalis. She stood up, pushing the heavy chair back behind her with a loud scrape of wood on wood. “My decision is final; an operation of this magnitude and importance cannot be left to individual Purestrains to ruin with their incompetence. I will be there to ensure that nothing is left to chance. Make the necessary arrangements for me to depart at dawn tomorrow, but now I must return to the Palace.”
The others likewise rose to their hooves with their heads bowed. Dorylus asked if Chrysalis would like to see me directly, at which I felt a sharp pang of fear and readied myself to hide further inside the tunnels, but the Queen merely spat, “Why would I want to see that useless, disgusting wretch?” and stormed out. Though relieved, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit insulted at that, though I suppose I have been called far worse by far better ponies in my time.
I waited until Chrysalis had left, followed by Ommatidium on her heels like a faithful puppy and Dorylus. However, Chela lingered for a moment, then stepped around the table straight towards where I was hiding. In spite of the obvious danger, I remained rooted to the spot, hoping that the oppressive darkness I was bathed in was sufficient to keep myself invisible; any sign of movement might have alerted her and any other drone still in the room that something was lurking behind this peculiar gap in the wall.
Chela approached, stopped just short of it, and peered through the gap straight at me. We made eye contact, and I realised that I was holding my breath. She flashed an enigmatic smile, then placed her hoof on the hidden door, and closed it shut, plunging me into absolute darkness. My heart hammered in my chest, and my extremities seemed to tingle and turn numb; yet no drones were throwing open the doors to wrench me out for interrogation, so after a moment of waiting, where my heartbeat slowed to a level just at the upper limit of ‘normal’ and I felt as though I could move, I picked myself up off the ground and made my way back to my cell, trembling throughout.
It was incredible and insane, this plan, and I was the only pony who knew about it. Even if it was, as Chela had pointed out, utterly suicidal, this sneak attack would still result in a great deal of misery for a lot of ponies in the intervening time. I had to get the news out somehow, and that meant only one thing: I had to escape Camp Joy.