"I was like you," Anomaly explained, not turning around to see if they were managing to keep up. "I could think for myself, but Chrysalis didn't know about me. It was...unfulfilling. Until--"
"You found the caverns underneath the hive mothers, didn't you?" Elytra interrupted. He was in the form of a pale grey unicorn stallion with a blue mane and a dragonfly cutie mark. The Queen only knew what that was supposed to mean.
"Yes. I did." Anomaly led them swiftly down yet another corridor. "I thought you were dead, but once I saw the hoofprints in the dust, I could guess what had actually happened. I came after you."
Carapace glanced at Elytra. She was disguised as a unicorn mare, beige, with a straight black mane and a cutie mark made up of several stars drawn together in a constellation. "You left hoofprints down there? Where the Queen could have seen them?"
"It was a difficult time for me," he said stiffly. "I wasn't thinking. I didn't cover my tracks."
"And I'm glad you didn't," Anomaly interjected. "I never would have found you otherwise."
Several maids stopped in their tracks and gave the trio a curious glance. Maybe a stallion in opaque crystal armor followed by a pair of nervous unicorns was a strange sight even in the Crystal City.
"I thought you were the one-eyed pegasus mare, at first," he continued. "But I knew that she wasn't a Changeling when the bite had such a profound affect on her."
"You're venomous," Elytra agreed. "We're not--" he waved a hoof, encompassing both himself and Carapace "--so why are you?"
"It's a long story," Anomaly replied. He glanced at Carapace, the first time he had looked back since they left the dungeon. "You settled as a female. Do you realize what that means?"
"Yes," Elytra answered.
"No," Carapace replied.
"You didn't tell her?" He turned to the other stallion.
"We've been a little busy," he said dryly.
"Understandable, but--"
"Where are you leading us?" he interrupted in a low voice. "I don't know if you've noticed, but you're a bit conspicuous, and--"
"Neither of us has been able to feed for about twenty-four hours, and the iron didn't help," Carapace supplied.
Anomaly said nothing, just kept up his breakneck pace. She turned her attention to Elytra.
"Now is as good a time as any to explain everything," she murmured. "What did you find in those caverns? Why is Twilight important?" Thinking of the last time she had seen the purple unicorn, Carapace had to wrestle down a vague tremor of what might have been worry. "Why is it significant that I feel more comfortable as a mare than as a stallion?"
He case an uncomfortable glance around. "I would rather tell you in private."
"No, I want to know now," she demanded in a tone of voice much more petulant than she would have normally used with another Changeling. "I'm--I'm so sick of this not knowing where I stand or even what I am. Everypony around me hates or fears me, and it hurts. You know that. I came here under orders from my Queen believing you were dead and that I was a Changeling, incapable of having feelings toward prey." She shot Elytra a glare, and her pony eyes flickered, her disguise having trouble holding up under a sudden flood of an alien emotion. "But apparently you're alive. I've turned my back on the Queen and I don't even know why it made me so angry when Cadenza compared me to her. There are so many things you're not telling me. And...and..."
She paused for breath, glancing at Anomaly. But he didn't appear to have heard her.
"And what?" Elytra asked, his voice unexpectedly gentle.
"I'm changing," she muttered under her breath. "I have to sleep, all the time, like a pony. I have...opinions. I think about things I never did before. And there's something--"
She thumped a hoof to her chest, as if she would be able feel the stunted emotions stirring there. But all she felt was the familiar thrumming of her hearts.
"I know," Elytra murmured. "Believe me, I know."
"You don't," Carapace growled, dropping her hoof. She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the thin layer of magic covering them disappear completely. "I hate it."
He was silent for a long time, as they just tried to keep up with Anomaly on whatever convoluted path he was following. But then he spoke.
"What about Twilight?"
Carapace snapped back, her tone caustic. "What about Twilight?"
"She told me that you'd saved her life."
"I did."
"Why?"
"Food source," she mumbled. "She was mine. I was feeding off of her and I didn't want to lose it."
"That's it?"
She chose not to answer, but wished she had a pair of fangs to bare. Everything inside her was mixed up and broken, healing into something she didn't recognize. It was too complicated to sort out right now. She wanted to sleep.
But that wasn't going to happen. Carapace was jerked out of her thoughts suddenly by somepony crying, "There they are!" She spun around to see Twilight, battered and hard-eyed, with Cadenza, Luna, Celestia, and a mixed regiment of royal guards behind her. They were all coming straight for them at a gallop.
If Carapace had believed in a deity, she probably would have assumed that it hated her.
As it was, she turned around and bolted, not checking to see if Elytra or Anomaly was beside her. All that mattered was getting away and staying free. Her cannons began to burn with the constant shock of running, but she didn't stop.
Corridors, closets, massive dining rooms, chambers of tapestries and carvings. The palace was a million times bigger than she had ever expected, and there were two million places she wasn't familiar with. Every single one of them was teeming with Amore guards. Being lost was the least of her problems.
Carapace managed to avoid them for maybe half an hour, running and dodging and unconsciously shedding her pony disguise one piece at a time. But when she scrambled into a small, out-of-the-way room to avoid a flock of pegasi, she heard a slight noise of surprise behind her.
She froze, her hooves slipping off of the doorknob, and slowly turned around. A brown unicorn stood between a simple cot with a crystal chest at its foot and the wall, his armor thrown on haphazardly and his blue eyes bleary with sleep. His helmet hovered in a cloud of cyan magic. He blinked at her.
She reacted before he did, dropping her chest to the ground and launching herself at his legs. There must have been more force behind the blow than she realized, because he collapsed on top of her, in a tangle of legs, horns, and armor. Carapace automatically hissed at the contact.
The Amore guard disentangled himself from her and scrambled away, staring at her fangs. She bared them, glad to have them back, and snarled. The sound was cut short when a band of gleaming unicorn magic wrapped around her throat.
Her hooves flew up, and she scrabbled at it, gagging. The chitin, scraped rough from running, met nothing but the tough plates of her throat. There was no force pushing out--only in. She fell to the ground, keening silently in frustration and pain. Her vision was beginning to throb green around the edges when she forced herself back onto all fours and leaped at the stallion for the second time.
A wall of magic pushed her back. The pressure on her throat eased for a moment, but just a moment. It was back in full force soon. Carapace began to panic, jerking on the floor, kicking out blindly with her hindlegs and trying desperately to undo the binding with her forehooves. Terror and excitement, not her own, bubbled in her stomach, and she felt a little bitter knowing that that would be her last meal.
The door flew open, and she flinched involuntarily. She tasted fury and concern. Pale and a little off, but... unmistakable.
One moment, he was in the doorway, and the next, he was standing directly in front of the Amore guard. Carapace's vision was beginning to fade. Elytra may have been smaller than the guard, but he was also much stronger. The back of the pony's skull smacked against the wall with terrifying force as Carapace's hindhooves drummed out a frantic, staccato rhythm on the floor.
And then she was breathing, actual air going in and out of her lungs, and Elytra was hauling her to her hooves. Only his eyes, mane, and belly were still equine.
"Outside. Go," he said, shoving her. "If we can get into the gardens, have access to the sky, we'll be fine."
"Anomaly--"
"Waiting for us. Stop coughing and go, Carapace."
It took only a few moments to run to a door that led outside. Elytra shoved it open, then nudged her out, into the spectacular effect created by the light of the dying sun refracting through the crystals.
She dropped to her haunches and pressed a hoof to her throat, feeling there the plates had been cracked and chafed. Elytra sat next to her, catching his breath, and Anomaly approaching them from behind a large crystal.
But all three froze when a reverberating, insectine voice rang out.
"There you are," the Queen said. "I was beginning to think I'd never find you."