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// Wheat 
// Story: Welcome to Cubeland 
// by Zaleros 
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	While peace with the Players would be nice, the first thing we needed to know was how to get their attention without putting the trio at danger. I mean, what if this goes bad? Without the trio there the worst would be Com gets killed and respawns, maybe I die too and we see what happens to me but I don’t want to think about that. If we brought them too then they might die and lose themselves from the respawn. I don’t think I could live with that. For now I decided that Com should teach me a few things about living here, like farming and breeding animals. 
He looked at me and chuckled lightly, “You haven’t learned how to farm yet?”
I looked at him and plainly stated, “Nope, kind of just been eating fish and a few pieces of meat. I did get to eat some bread after my house was attacked though.”
“Well, I guess now is as good a time as ever to learn. I know you don’t have any experience in farming but luckily it’s not that bad. All you need are some seeds and a hoe.”
He showed me how to make a hoe and till the ground. After that it was as simple as planting the seeds in tilled ground where enough light would reach it and give it time. No wonder he laughed at me, this was too easy and I never thought of planting the seeds the same way I planted those trees... well, actually I had but I didn’t know you needed a hoe. I really didn’t have any experience with this stuff.
Since apparently those seeds were the only thing I had and could actually plant and get anything from, we moved onto breeding animals.
“Alright Craft, this one is pretty simple too. All you need is to breed is a pair of animals that are the same kind and the right food related item. Most of the animals are vegetarians so you have to use wheat,” Com explained while I made sure I had wheat on me. I used some to make more bread but I made sure to have some spare wheat when we finished farming for the time being.
“So I’m guessing that everything takes wheat?” I asked since he made me keep some.
“Nope, I said most were vegetarians. If you want to breed wolves you need-“
“You can breed wolves?” I interrupted him. Seriously, if I could breed wolves, everything else was moot. An army of wolves, who wouldn’t want that?
“Um, yeah, you can. Anyway, to breed wolves you need meat of some kind. We’ve never tried fish though, just regular meat from cows and pigs.” He looked over to where the cave was and added hesitantly, “You can use zombie flesh too.”
I’ll admit that miffed me a bit that they would do that but since they never thought of the monsters as much more than mindless creatures I can’t say I was all that surprised.
“Have you ever used zombie flesh to breed wolves?” I asked him with no tone of judgment...I hoped.
“No, I wasn’t supposed to deal with wolves. The only ones allowed to have them were the guards and the leader.”
We spent the next few hours luring and trapping the various creatures that called the grasslands their homes. I even got to design pens to keep them in too, that was pretty fun. The idea of breeding these animals seemed really awkward though having met and had pleasant conversations with cows during my time in Equestria. They didn’t mind having friendly conversations but the bulls were a little...possessive. If they even thought you were looking at their mates they would turn an otherwise nice day into a game of dodgebull. Not a good way to spend the day, trust me.
When I bred them though I could only think of one word to describe the babies. Adorable.
That night I made another bed for Com so he could crash at my house for now since he didn’t exactly have anywhere else to go. We just laid there in our respective beds and I was thinking of home. I wondered how the hive was doing since some of us were blasted through different portals. I know she was one of them. My best friend...my most respected ally...my...my...
I sighed. I wasn’t even sure what she was to me at this point. I knew her since even before the Academy. We even grew up near the same section of the hive.
“Garnet Fury.”
“What was that Craft?” Com asked having overheard me.
“It’s nothing Com,” I lied. Thinking about my home got me curious though, “Hey Com, what was your world like?” That caught him off-guard.
“Huh? My world? Um, well it was a nice world I guess. It had grassy areas like this one and plenty of water.”
“Wow Com, sounds fascinating,” I said sarcastically, inciting a small laugh, “Seriously though, what was it like where you were from?”
“Well, I lived in a village where most of the homes were made of stone. Some were wood, but that was usually when stone wasn’t affordable to the family living there. I grew up with my family in a stone house and my brother would often scare me when I wasn’t looking. I was always fascinated by the animals that lived around the village though. If it weren’t for the barriers I’m sure I would’ve never made it past my tenth birthday,” he gave a somewhat forced laugh with that.
“What kind of creatures were there?” I asked with serious curiosity.
“Well, we had things called abadas. They were like unicorns but they had two horns that were crooked and their tails looked like a boar’s tail. We had unicorns too, pure as the clearest skies. They were always white but whenever you saw one you couldn’t help but feel like someone was blessing you with its presence. We did have our share of nasty beasts too. 
“Kalthites were one of the nastiest ones. They were the only ones that lived near our village capable of breaking the barriers. Our barriers were only supposed to allow people and whatever living thing they happened to be touching at the time to pass through but kalthites had this ability to pass themselves off as dead long enough to fool our barriers sometimes. The big problem with that was that kalthite meat was a rare meat that our strongest hunters had trouble getting since most of the time the only way you could truly guarantee it was dead was to cut their heads off, which would also speed up the decaying of their bodies.”
I gave him a look of awe that also said ‘I have no idea what that thing is but it sounds awesome.’ The way he spoke though made me have to check something.
“The way you talk about it makes it seem like your world doesn’t exist anymore.”
He sighed, “It doesn’t.”
What? “What do you mean ‘it doesn’t’?” I had an idea but that was just horrible.
“There’s a reason we’re here Craft. My people had been able to use portals before in order to quickly travel to other villages. We had to, otherwise the only ones who’d be able to leave our individual villages would’ve been the caravans and soldiers passing through as well as the hunters.
“We began experimenting with these portals, trying to figure out ways to create pocket dimensions where we could store perishable things like meat and snow for when we needed it later. Unfortunately we succeeded in a way we didn’t know was possible. We made a portal to another world. This world seemed beautiful, the creatures were docile and the land was rich with minerals and foods we never saw before. As we experimented more and more we found even richer worlds, but every right has a wrong and one day we found a dark world, full of evil. We tried to shut the portal and destroy it but these things were powerful.” I heard his voice cracking.
“Craft, these things forced open our portals and began to ravage our world from the only places we had considered safe. The only place that was safe was the capital city where they hadn’t permitted portals to other worlds for this exact reason.” He looked at me and spoke softly, “My parents didn’t make it. My dad tried to get his hands on a portable barrier stone during all the chaos so we could escape to the capital city but right as we were getting ready to leave he was stabbed by one of their cruel blades. I remember his voice as he told my mom, brother, and myself to run. It was full of anger, sadness, and a pain that went beyond his physical injuries. I don’t know exactly how long we ran but when we arrived we were ushered to the palace where the remaining mages, including my mom, managed to make one last portal with the intent for us all to escape, and we did.”
“Can’t you go back? Can’t you make a portal and go back to take your world from those things?” I asked, on the verge of tears myself. We changelings have suffered isolation from the rest of the world, but I don’t think any race anywhere in my world had to go through something like that before. I don’t even think the pony princesses had to deal with that, and nopony has any idea how long they’ve been around, not even Chrysalis.
“No Craft, we can’t. When we left, none of the mages followed since the only way to ensure that we were safe was to close the portal themselves so the things couldn’t get a trace on where we were. Hell, even WE didn’t know where we were going to be honest. At that point though anything was better than what had become of our own world.”
I was broken by his story; the only thing that I could even say right now was “I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok Craft, there’s nothing you need to be sorry for. What passed has passed and nothing can change it. Come to think of it though, that might be what gave me the idea of you being able to get back.
“Enough of this sad talk though. What about your world Craft? What kind of creatures does your world have?” his voice told me he was still shaken up about what happened to his world but wanted to move on so he didn’t have to keep remembering the pain.
“Well, a lot of the creatures in my world I have no idea about to be honest,” I chuckled lightly, “There are more than I could hope to remember but I know of a few that are little more than animals, like the manticore. It has the face and body of a lion with a scorpion’s tail and draconic wings, although I don’t think they can fly. Then there’s the cockatrice, it has the head of a chicken but that’s just a front, it also has a very long snakelike body and is capable of staring anything that looks into its eyes into stone.”
“Those sound pretty bad.”
“They can be, especially if you can’t give them a reason to leave you alone. There was something I heard from a...another member of my hive that somepony managed to outstare a cockatrice before. Whoever it was actually managed to make the cockatrice cower and broke the stone spell its eyes cast on themselves and a friend of theirs, but I don’t know if I believe it. He wasn’t one of the brightest members of the hive.”
“Do you think anyone could do it though?”
“Honestly I’m not sure but I don’t think I’d want to test it though.” I shuddered at the thought of coming face to face with a cockatrice on my own.
For a little longer we stayed up and talked about things like foods from our worlds, the pain slowly disappearing from Com’s voice as he remembered the times he had with his family before they had to flee. The guilt I had from having killed his brother was starting to eat me up and I had to say something or else I was sure I’d go mad.
“Com, I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok Craft, it’s like I said it isn’t your fault.”
“No, this one is. I killed your brother. Why don’t you hate me?”
There was a short silence followed by a sigh, “I don’t know Craft. I know I should; he was my brother and I know you killed him. Normally we would just respawn, but when the others respawned he wasn’t with them. I don’t know what you did that prevented him from coming back with them but he didn’t and it was your fault, but I don’t hate you. I guess I’ve just come to some level of acceptance that I would lose him too at some point and this is it. He’s just...gone.”
His voice didn’t even carry a real tone to it as he spoke, instead it sounded like it was something he had come to terms with a long time ago. It was as though the loss of his brother was something he had expected to happen since the loss of his world.
“Your leader said that none of the scouts came back. The way you talked about it makes it sound like only your brother didn’t make it.”
“That’s strange, I saw them respawn,” he said with a surprised tone, followed by a thoughtful one, “I wonder why he would say that when he sent them to the barracks.”
There was another short silence, funny how those things happen, and there was one last thing I wanted to know if he knew, “Hey Com?”
“Hmm?”
“How did your leader know my name?”
He sat up and looked at me, “What, didn’t you say it while you were talking to him?”
“No, I only said I was a changeling. I never mentioned my name.”
“Maybe the other scouts overheard your name being said before they respawned.”
“That’s what I was thinking too but when I think back to that night nothing comes up in my head about my name. The two that made it back never heard my name; Skeleton actually avoided using my name when he came to my house that night.”
“...Craft I think I know why he knew,” he said with a tone of realization.
“What, was he spying on me or something?” I asked jokingly.
“Actually yeah, that was what I was thinking. I think just maybe that my brother and his scout friends actually might’ve been sent because of you.”
“But how is that possible? I had only been there for a short time when they showed up. How would he have even had an idea that I was even there?”
Com thought about it, “I don’t know. Maybe it was a fluke. What if he wasn’t after you at all?”
That one got me, I honestly had nothing.
The rest of the night was silent and in the morning I went outside to check on my wheat plants as well as my animals. I saw a few patches of wheat that were almost done growing last night were missing or in an earlier stage of growth than they should’ve been. Weird.
Walking back to the house I saw something off in the distance, something that saw me too and hid from me behind a few trees. I ran after it and managed to catch a glimpse of what appeared to be an arm before he disappeared from sight the way only this world could manage. The short look I had, however, was enough and I knew how they knew my name now. Between the scouts, the lack of anything in that swampy area nearby, and the fact that the leader didn’t tell the village about their respawn, there was only one reason that made sense.
Com was right. They weren’t trying to track me, but they found me. They might’ve even been nearby when I came to this world, but why? Why would they come around here? That scouting party said they were going to use my house for mining, but the trio said their cave was the only one for a long distance. If they were making it a mining house then they were going mining. If they were going mining then the trio’s cave would be their most likely chosen place to mine. And if they were sent to mine that cave then that meant they were sent to find where the...
And then I made four and it hit me.
“The trio!” I yelled, realization having set in. They wanted to find and kill the trio.