//------------------------------// // Royal Distraction // Story: Common Ground // by LunasCaptain //------------------------------// "I was attacked in your city!" the griffon king shrieked. "There will be retribution, mark my words, Cadenza! War! Do you hear me? I declare war on your pathetic enclave!" Twilight shared a look with Cadance. They were in the palace's small, cozy infirmary, standing at the foot of the bed that held a hysterical royal. He had been brought in last night, and had proceeded to declare war on everything that moved once he woke up. "Sir--" Twilight began. "Do not 'sir' me, young ponyess!" the king squawked. "I am His Royal Majesty, Lord Galen Gideon Grayfeathers! And you shall address me as such!" Twilight rolled her eyes. "Well, Your Royal Majesty Lord Galen Gideon Grayfeathers, I--" "'I'?!" Galen laughed hysterically. "Oh, you ponies are so self-centered! What about me? I was attacked!" "Och, would ya just shoot up, ya great bampot!" yelled somepony in the next bed over, hidden from them by a curtain. "We've had naw rest from ya a' night! Yer nae the only one in here, ya ken!" Galen puffed out his chest and narrowed his eyes, opening his beak to scream a response. "What attacked you?" Cadance interjected quickly, before he could speak. "Oh, one of your roguish guards, I'm sure," Galen sniffed, shooting a filthy look at whoever was on the other side of the curtain. "I, Lord Galen Gideon Grayfeathers, king of the griffons, do hereby declare war on Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and her brutish guards!" "Celestia's booking barrel, I said shoot up! Naw one cares! Do us a' a favor an' git it through yer thick skull awready!" That set off an increasingly-foul shouting match. Cadance sighed deeply. Twilight couldn't help but feel bad for her. The bags under her eyes spoke of how little sleep she had gotten last night, her wings twitched almost imperceptibly as a testament to how much stress she was under, and her hair, still wet from her morning bath, was done up in a towel. It seemed she no longer cared what effect her appearance had on those around her. "Lord Grayfeathers," Twilight tried again, raising her voice to be heard over the insults, "are you really sure that you want to declare war?" "It is the only response for something this horrible!" he exclaimed. "But you're right in the middle of the country you're trying to declare war on. Couldn't we just take you hostage and use you against your troops?" The king brooded silently for a long time, during which Cadance and Twilight exchanged another glance and the pony on the other side of the curtain muttered her thanks for the quiet under her breath. Finally, the feathered monarch spoke. "For one of your kind, you're quite wise, young ponyess," he sniffed, folding his forelegs across his chest. "I shall wait to declare war until I return to my own country." "Good choice." Twilight offered Galen an indulgent smile, then left with an exasperated Cadance in tow and the accented pony shouting, "Wait! Wait! Just hoo long is 'e gonna be in here with me?!" Once in the hall, she turned to the princess and asked, "Is he--" "Crazy? You have no idea," Cadance replied. "He doesn't even have any power. The griffons live in self-governed prides and do whatever they want, but His Royal Majesty Lord Galen Gideon Grayfeathers in there still thinks he's in charge. He's declared war on my country seven hundred and forty-two times since he 'came into power'--" she used her flight feathers to put air quotes around the statement "--and as far as he knows, he's won every single time." "...wow." Twilight thought about dealing with somepony like that on as regular a basis as Cadance did. "Do you think he was really attacked?" "He may be pompous, delusional, and desperate for attention, but Grayfeathers wouldn't knock himself out," she responded. "Besides, Commander Frost Damage--the mare in the bed next to his--was attacked by it, too." "So what do you think it was?" "What I'm more concerned about is why nopony told me that he had been brought in." Cadance stopped suddenly, a funny look on her face. "Cadance?" Twilight cautiously put a hoof on her shoulder, but jumped back when the princess grimaced and hissed. "Ugh, that Changeling! It just keeps pacing--" She was confused for a moment, then remembered that Cadance had placed a tracking spell on the so-called ambassador. "Should I go talk to it?" Twilight offered. "No--" Cadance shook her head, then grimaced again. "Yes! Just get it out of that room, I--I can't take it anymore..." Twilight hurried off. She bit her lip as she went, brow creased in worry. It was horrible to see Cadance, her best friend before she even knew what friendship was, this way. If yelling at the Changeling would help her, she'd definitely do it. Besides, it still had her saddlebags. Knock-knock-knock. Twilight lowered her hoof and waited a moment. There were soft shuffling sounds on the other side of the door, like hoofsteps on carpet, but nopony answered. She sighed in deep exasperation and raised her hoof again, meaning to knock for what would either be the fifth or sixth time (she hadn't really been paying attention). But the door opened before she could. "What do you want?" Blue eyes, a ragged mane and tail with random braids mixed in. The only change from this morning seemed to be that the white coat had darkened a shade. Arguably, the mare was cute by pony standards. Maybe even beautiful, in a strange, awkward sort of way. But Twilight felt nothing but revulsion. "My saddlebags," she said, matching the clipped, hostile tone of the Changeling. "You still have them." "They're in the bathroom." Apparently losing interest in the conversation, the Changeling mare turned and trotted off into her tiny suite. Twilight gave her--it--a wide berth, passing through the bedroom. She saw the the heavy silken covers of the canopied bed had been pulled into something resembling a fabric tornado. Charming. And there were her saddlebags, right inside the bathroom door. She discretely rifled through them, just to make sure nothing was missing, then levitated them onto her back. Before she could turn around, somepony asked, "Is that all you came for?" Twilight jumped about a foot in the air and stifled a small scream. She whirled around and came muzzle to muzzle with the Changeling. She couldn't stop herself from backing away. "N-no, actually," she said. Celestia, this thing's face was completely unreadable. "The princess sent me to tell you to stop pacing." It raised an eyebrow. The movement looked calculated to Twilight. "What does she say I should do instead?" it asked. "I don't know. Stay still." She pushed past the white mare and made a beeline for the door. With an agile movement, it leapt in front of her. Twilight backed up again, feeling real fear for the first time. "I'm at least as intelligent as you are," it said, taking one step forward for every one she took back. "As much as you may hate to admit it. That means that I must either entertain myself, or go insane. The princess forbade me from leaving my room and didn't provide me with any diversions. So, I pace." "Maybe you could take a walk in the gardens." Twilight maneuvered past it. It didn't block her this time, but it still followed right behind her. "Are you giving me permission to leave my room?" "Uh, yeah. Sure." Suddenly, she realized what an unattended Changeling wandering around the grounds would do to Cadance's psyche and spun around. "But I'm coming with you." "Be my guest." There was some sort of challenge in the Changeling's blue eyes. Without even thinking, Twilight rose to it and led the way out of the room. "Is the queen the only Changeling with a name?" "No." "So do you all have names?" "No." "Who has a name?" "I do. So does my sibling." "What are your names?" "Carapace and Gossamer." Twilight scribbled notes in the small book floating in a magenta cloud in front of her. They had been out here, stumbling around in the gardens, for almost an hour, and she had managed to fill exactly a page and a half. Getting any information out of the Changeling--presumably known as Carapace-- was like getting shod. But she was learning more than anypony had ever learned about Changelings before. And that was enough to keep her at it. "Are you done?" Carapace stopped and sniffed suspiciously as a bunch of crystalline red flowers. They were some of the few plants in the gardens, which were filled mostly with beds of rough crystal (like the pale green, grasslike stuff behind Twilight) and transparent statues. "No, of course not. Are you a mare or a stallion in your real form?" "It's not the same for us as it is for you," the Changeling replied. It sat down and poked at the red flowers. "I am a mare right now." Twilight wrote that down. "You said something about a sibling. Do you have families?" "No," Carapace said. For some reason, it seemed to be completely enamored by the flowers. "Then everypony is the child of the queen?" "No." Twilight sighed deeply and lowered her notebook. "Sooo..." "These are very brightly colored," Carapace said, sniffing at the flowers again. She brightened considerably. "So you can see colors?" "I..." Suddenly, the Changeling's expression shifted from bored to confused. It pointed at something just out of Twilight's field of vision. "What in the name of the Queen is that?" Her first thought was that it was actually trying the oldest trick in the book to distract her. But then a crunching noise came from behind, like something was wading through the beds of delicate crystal. She turned. Monster. That was the first word that came to mind, despite the creature's equine shape. The legs were whole, and it was darker than a Changeling, and logic told her that she was looking at a...pony? Or at least something like it. But there was something very wrong. Twilight backed slowly away, and the thing followed her.