//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2: Imprisoned 
// Story: The Darkest Day In Changeling History: The Beast Of Salem 
// by Harbinger Of Mist 
//------------------------------//

	Samuyl felt like his head was in a vice. His vision was black; his hearing was immensely muffled. Through the black he could see a faint flash of green. Soon afterward, he could make out some words being spoken by an unknown voice "...have more energy for us to feed off of later." His senses started to recover. He noticed blurred out gray patterns and started to feel to solid rock floor he was laying on. He soon started to feel his legs again. He struggled to get his front hooves up to his face. The two peach-coloured blotches that filled his sight from the sides and pressed against his forehead told him this wasn't a dream.

Samuyl groans as he buries his head into hooves. After keeping his eyes closed for another moment, he reopened them and was greeted with more clarity. Iron bars were immediately in front of him, with eerie blue torches providing much needed light. What really caught his attention were the three figures on the other side of the bars: A tall, imposing black and green alicorn-like figure stood in between two similar creatures half its size. "Oh look. This one may want some answers." The tall figure leaned down to stare at Samuyl. "Enjoying your stay so far?"

"Wh... What?" Samuyl, however somewhat recovered, was still out of breath and could not speak properly. "W-where... am I?" He struggles to speak between sentences. "Where are...--?"

"Your parents? Or at least I hope they're your parents. Otherwise, you won't have as much to extract." The apparently female figure lifted him up with her magic and turned him around so he could fall back down to cold rock below and see his parents in no better shape. The sight of seeing them unconscious shot him back to his hooves. He was instantly met with a light feeling in his head and a tremble in his legs. It was best that he kept laying down, but he chose not to.

"M-mom?! Dad?!" He breathes out with strain.

"That's all I need. Thank you, Sammy." The figure hissed.

Samuyl gasped and turned back to face her. "How do you... know my name?!" He pressed his face between the bars. "Who are you?!!"

Staring back at each other, the figure glows her horn green and disorients Samuyl. He could feel his new energy being slowly drained; his anger and fear fading away. He drops back to the ground and is greeted with answers. "First off, your parents talk in their sleep. Second, I am Chrysalis, queen of the Changelings. Have you heard of us?" Samuyl was once again too weak to talk. "Well, we are a race of insectoid pony creatures that specialize on the consumption of the emotions of others. Just as well, we can disguise ourselves as other ponies; comes in very handy for ambushes and luring victims near our territory."

Samuyl became increasingly concerned, or rather as much his current state would allow. They've been imprisoned by some sort of race of parasites! What were they going to do? How could he and his parents get out? He wanted to ask what they had planned for them, but all he could do was wheeze and cough.

"Don't strain yourself. I don't want you to die TOO soon..." Chrysalis walked away with her last foreboding words, leaving Sam and his parents under the watch of her two guards. 

These guards did not talk themselves, but they did lean in towards Sam and stare at him with their opaque blue eyes and hissed and him baring their fangs. Sam jumps back with a sudden surge of energy which caused him to land on top of his father.

Trotman groaned and stirred himself awake after his son planted his spine into his side. They could both hear the guards chuckling in a most unsettling matter. "What?! What are those?!" He shouted as he regained his sight and shoved his son to the side. On all fours and with his senses working properly, he gazed into their dead-looking faces. "Ch-Changelings?! No! This can't be!"

Amelia also started to wake up. She gave her automatic response of "go back to sleep Trotman. The sun's not even up yet." She quickly notices that her bed was hard as stone. "Wait... What is this?" She swerves her hoof around and runs it through a tiny puddle of water, causing her to shriek.

"Honey, get close to me!" He grabs his wife's hooves and clasps her in an embrace. He struggles to contain her screams when she sees the guards.

"AAAAAAHHHH!!" Her cry filled the entire narrow corridor that housed their dungeon cell. "What are those grotesque-looking bugs?!"

"Lady! shut up!" A voice came from beyond one of side walls. It was another prisoner was in a cell next to them. He had a great sense of exhaustion and weakness in his tone. "All we can do is sleep and wait for death to come! Don't make it so hard for us!"

"What do you mean?!" Trotman answered back to the stallion beyond the wall. He started to worry even more when the guards  chuckle and turn away to take their usual positions at the sides of the dungeon. The stallions words were not lies.

"I've been here for 4 days." The stallion continued. "All they do is feed me dried berries and water and drain any emotion I show until I'm about to pass out. They're trying to keep me alive so they can feast on the sadness I hold for my sister. She just died this morning."

Amelia quickly caught on to the situation, as well as the fact that she was not dreaming. She gasped, "oh no! What's going to happen to us?!" She was most concerned about what the Changelings had planned. They seem horrible, but she could at least let the fear of the mystery to rest.

"You won't last long... if you're lucky." The stallion's answer shot fear throughout the family. "Trust me. The less time you spend suffering and clinging to life, the better. These things are genderless, heartless bastards! They don't care about how you feel; only that they can feed upon it." They could hear the stallion's voice cracking and short of breath. He was using what could be his last morsel of energy to cry. "I just want my torment to end... At least afterwards, I can finally see Melody again!"

One of the guards senses his sadness. It opens the gate to his cell and drags him out by its hoof. It holds the blue unicorn up by his throat in front of Samuyl and his parents. The other guard then sinks its glowing fangs into his neck and begins to consume the last shreds of emotion-driven energy he had left. He choked and convulsed as all the colour from his fur, mane, tail and eyes faded away. With his final breaths, the stallion gives some morbid parting words. "Welcome to Salem." The guards release their grip and the stallion's limp corpse falls to the ground. The feeding Changeling's horn glowed briefly to indicate the stolen energy.

Sam and his parents watched in horror throughout the display. They soon began to feel hopeless for themselves when the guard left to dispose of the body. "That was horrific!" Trotman exclaimed in great fear. "Is that what's going to happen to us?!"

Sam still laid flat on the ground with his mouth agape, staring outside the cell at the guard's smug smile. He answered, "yes dad... I'm pretty sure we share the same fate as him." He still wasn't able to speak without losing his breath.

"Oh... my..." Amelia was starting to hyperventilate. She hadn't witnessed such a terrible scene throughout her life. And knowing that the exact same thing could happen to her, Trotman, and Samuyl, only made her uncontainable. "Let us out!... This has to be a dream!... What kind of monsters are you?!" She was crying and screaming bloody murder, but made the mistake of staring the guard closely in the eyes. The Changeling took advantage of this: It immediately used the same spell as the queen's to drain her energy. Amelia had a cesspool of fear to feast away on.

Trotman watched in great worry as his wife's body went stiff. Her eyes became involuntarily fixated on the Changelings glowing horn. "What's happening?!" He shouts.

"Don't... interrupt it." Sam struggled out. "It'll only... make the guard angry..."

Amelia's body twitched as her energy was sapped away. She soon felt limp and fell to the ground when the guard ceased its spell. She was no longer angry or afraid; only weak. She figured it was best to let her heavy eyes close and slip into a slumber. She soon stopped moving altogether and was barely breathing.

"Amelia..." Trotman looked up at the guard, but promptly averted his eyes. He didn't want his sadness to be taken away in a matter that seemed painful and would leave him numb and helpless.

"Just get it over with, dad..."

"What?"

"Don't let your emotions build... It'll only make the experience worse... when they finally DO get their sights on you."

Trotman reluctantly followed his son's advice and stared at the Changeling guard. It smiled and chuckled as if to concur with Sam's wisdom. It didn't matter how frequently or how much it absorbs each time, it all adds up to the same amount at the end of the day. It charged up its spell and held Trotman static in its sight. His vision was blurry and spiraling in the periphery. In addition, he was being given a pounding headache throughout the ordeal. Once it was finished, his headache disappeared, but was replaced with an overwhelming sense of vertigo. Dizzy and disoriented, he fell on his side and did the same as his wife.

Samuyl observed his sleeping parents. Too weak to show much concern for their condition, he turned his head and laid down flat. He decided to try to spend some time sleeping alongside them. No matter what he could dream about, it couldn't possibly be as bad a nightmare as this.