//------------------------------//
// Chapter 6: Matter 
// Story: You Seek Knowledge? 
// by Astral Star and Company 
//------------------------------//

Sterilising the cellar room was simple, if a little messy. My new subject, the fanged insectoid pony was shackled against the wall by all four of his holed hooves. A curious trait those hooves, what purpose could such a fragile design possibly serve?

The floor was a clean, white tiled surface, and the walls of stainless steel. The rest of the room was bare as I made my analysis on the contents. Sadly, nothing more than historical artefacts of sentimental value.

My recently vacated body lay in a heap in the corner closest to the door. Annie has become quite troublesome lately, but I still require her existence if my plans are to have full effect. Some minor inconveniences now would surely be worth this entire world’s worth of knowledge. 

Rubbing my two front tentacles together, I generate a simple electrical charge, arching between my limbs like a purple tennis ball on fast forward. With a sufficient charge ready, I hover over to my subject, and place both tentacles on his exo-skeletal chest.

“Clear,” I say to no one in particular

The charge arches up and down his body, stimulating every nerve in his system. He awakes with a stuttered shout, then deep lungful’s of air. It takes him a disappointing amount of time to register my presence, but fortunately his reaction remained consistent. Trembling body, wide eyes, marred speech, all the signs point to fear as his emotion of choice.

“What do you want?” he stuttered

Ah, straight to the point.

“Everything you know,” I respond plainly “Everything you are and everything you believe,”

“Well I’m not talking! I’d rather die than tell you anything!”

He does his best to sound rebellious, but his jagged speech betrays his intentions.

“I did not ask you to speak,”

With a quick lash of my right tendril, a searing blue energy collects over its tip. The energy lengthens and focuses like a laser, until it augments my arm’s length by 50%.

“Now then, let’s see what you’re made of,”

Without any ceremony, I plunge my makeshift energy blade a good 5 cm into his chest, just below the collar bone. The air was quickly filled with the sound of gargled screaming and the stench of cooking flesh and blood. Readying another energy blade in my left tentacle, I ram it down into his other collarbone, prompting a new wave of pained screeching.

Working with purpose, I pull both blades diagonally down his body, meeting in the exact centre of his chest. Pausing to receive the sounds of agony, I realise that he was actually crying. The poor fool thinks he’ll die here, but I won’t let that happen. Not yet.

Resuming motion, with both blades together, I draw them straight down his midsection, cutting an equally sided Y into his chest and stomach. My subject lost all sense of morality as he cursed and screamed in whatever primitive language these monsters spoke.

“I acknowledge your pain,”

Admiring my own handiwork, I can already see his inner organs peeking out of his burnt muscle. For once, my subject had a question I was dying to answer.

“Why am I not dead?” he spoke shakily, in between pain racked gasps

“To date, none have survived preliminary testing,” I replied “Your species lacks any kind of self-documentation. The ponies themselves are collectively unaware of your existence. For those reasons, obtaining information on your species from second and third hand sources are impossible. However, this leaves me with the option of firsthand investigation,”

I paused

“It would do me know good to analyse your inner function while you yourself are not functional. I am currently feeding you a supply of life force to keep you alive while I conduct my tests,”

“Why can’t you at least block out the pain?” he gasped, pleading with his blank, cyan eyes

I give him a hearty chuckle

“Pain is a function of your body, subject. It would benefit me to know which parts of the body illicit the most pain,”

“Why?”

“An old motto of mine. ‘Kill to Learn, Learn to Kill,”

The summoners may have been a collective bunch of hormone driven adolescent idiots, but some at least have a good taste for writing and artwork. I saw no purpose to these ‘Jokes’, ‘Taunts’, ‘Laughs’ or even ‘Dances’. What kind of deranged being would program another to laugh or dance on command? I won’t even go into the way they treat each other. I’ve received more respect from the piles of ash that were formerly my opponents. 

I swiftly dug two tentacles into the two flaps of flesh I created, and hoisted them apart, eliciting a pained gasp from the subject.

“Exoskeletal, and Endoskeletal? Quite peculiar,”

With this structural set up, it’s a wonder this creature could even get off the ground. While this structure made it much more durable than the average pony, it suffered with limited flexibility and a higher energy required energy intake. Speaking of energy intake…

With my third tentacle, I prepare a blade like before, but instead of going for a cut, I rammed it straight into his left eye. The sizzling of burning flesh, boiling blood, breaking bone and intense screaming were signs of horrific bodily damage. I probe my appendage across his brain, penetrating its chamber with little effort. As I made contact, I flood of sensation rippled outward, flowing through my arm and into my mind.

Information of all types floated across my consciousness before settling into a shelf in my metaphoric library. These creatures, were quite strange in more ways than one. They called themselves Changelings, this world’s masters of deception and disguise. A poor comparison to that of my void brethren however. They obtained sustenance through the impersonation of a pony in order to steal the love felt by said pony’s partner.

I can’t say I’ve ever likened such an emotion to energy, let alone an energy that can be consumed as food. Despite the ridiculousness of the notion, it all made sense in regards to his anatomy. The internal structure is remarkably similar to a pony’s, but retrofitted to use and gather emotional energy as a food. If evolution was a lazy yet imaginative mechanic, this would be the result.

Looking further, I began to detect his magic. It was just as strange as he was, a flame of raw neon green energy, completely untamed like a beast in chains. The nature of his magic was aggressive, much more so than pony magic. The changeling’s arsenal included hypnosis, lasers, barriers and a myriad of mental modifiers. These Changelings seemed little more than born soldiers or spies.  

Chuckling with satisfaction, I withdrew my tendril from his head. The changeling went limp in his restraints, breathing deep, strained breaths. Blood ceased its trickle as he had little left to bleed. Little did he know, that his heart stopped several minutes ago. He looked up at me, regarding me with a single, sad, cyan eye, glazed over white with death.

“Kill me,” he rasped, a futile plea for mercy

“Not yet. Your life is required for the next procedure. Your life will continue until I am done,”

I was about to initiate partial deconstruction, before a small group of changelings burst through my reinforced steel door.

“There he is!” a female yelled, characterised by her shrill pitch “Get him!”

The first to charge was a bulky male, well-muscled compared to my current subject. He closed the gap quickly, crooked horn aimed forward to impale my body. Acting quickly, I flung a tentacle forward, my magic flowing along it and through the air. A crooked purple tear was sliced open like a fresh wound, travelling along the ground and into his path. The changeling’s eyes widened in horror before falling screaming into the endless abyss that was the void.

A second male advanced, firing green energy bolts as he went. Propping up a shield with my own magic, his attacks dissipated harmlessly. The void rift began to glow brighter and brighter, filling the room with an eerie white light. In a fraction of a second, it snapped shut with the force of a mound of dynamite. The explosion ripped through him, reducing him to a smear of blood and flesh on the opposite wall. I was well protected by my shield, but my enemies ploughed through the steal wall, and into the hallway outside.
Seeing the utter annihilation of her comrades, the female leader and the three remaining changelings made a run for it. Tearing open a rift in time-space in the wall, I dove into the star-riddled portal. The other side opened up in the ground just before the changeling’s goal of escape. I surfaced in front of them, the portal below me snapping shut with a gust of powerful wind.

A minor female stepped forward, intent on protecting her allies. 

Noble, but foolish.

Gathering a ball of purple energy in my eye, I released it in her direction. She raises a green shield accordingly as the bolt hits its mark. Unlike the normal bolt, this one broke into two separate ones, striking two of her companions behind her. Reeling to see her comrades flung down the hall, I took advantage the distraction. I shot another bolt, sending her tumbling body to join them.

The leader used my preoccupation to her advantage, loosing an intense stream of energy into my back. Rounding on her, fury on my mind, I opened a tear in the wall behind her, then flung a cloud of unstable molecules at her hooves. The cloud collapses with a loud boom, the force throwing her tumbling into the portal. Before her entire body vanished, I closed the portal early. Slicing her clean in two like a guillotine.

Her lower body vanished into who-knows-where while her top half lay screaming and flailing before me in a pool of her own blood.

“So much for a leadership,” I mutter distastefully, ending her life with a flash of magenta light. How fitting that the leader be the first of this bunch to go.

With her out of the way, I turn to her comrades, only now recovering from our previous skirmish. Without a pause, I brought my power down upon them.

I flung a concentrated stream of beta-particles at the closest changeling. The radioactive particles melted through his chest in a state of accelerated decay. The male didn’t even have the air to scream as he was dissolved effectively from the inside. With my longest tendril I gathered its tip into a blade, impaling the final female against the wall, eliciting a pained scream. In an act of chivalry, the remaining male put all his energy into freeing his friend, wildly shooting bolts in my direction.

I dismissed the bolts with a shield, freezing his advance with a shower of magenta light. He slowed to a stop a metre in front of me, frozen mid scream as I began to reconfigure his atomic structure. Essentially, I began swapping the polarity of each and every atom in his body. The atom nucleus became negative, while the orbiting electrons became positive. His entire form dissolved into dense cloud of anti-matter, my power the only thing keeping it from destroying the whole building.

The female I pinned to the wall kicked and squirmed, grimacing in pain all the while. I turn to her, a malignant glint in my eye that she obviously caught, renewing her efforts of freedom. Using telekinesis, I pry her mouth open despite resistance. The cloud of anti-matter swirled menacingly above, ready for my command. The changeling, now crying with the prospect of death, increased her struggle in an attempt to remain firm

With devilish prospect, I poured the anti-matter through her mouth and into her body. Releasing my magical hold, and my physical one, the effects were instantaneous. The changeling lay gasping on the ground, racked with incomprehensible pain. Her blank eyes rolled wildly as her entire body shook. Without my magic, the anti-matter had free reign inside her body. The matter and her own body collided with each other. The result was the total annihilation of both atoms, as well as an unforetold amount of energy.

The matter ate away at her insides, leaving only energy. Using ambient life force from the death of her comrades, I kept her alive for the entirety of the process. Soon the outward signs appeared. A buzzing cloud of white energy quickly replaced her body, inside and out. A defeated expression lay on her face before even that was consumes too.

Now that the process was complete, I greedily absorbed all the energy for myself. I felt my wound, however minor, heal themselves. My magical reserves have been brought back to maximum level, and I have acquired a new powerful, one that characterised the Changeling race. In a rush of sickly green fire, my body changed.

I stood tall, a thin deep purple stallion with both a horn and wings. Armour of bones, decorated with magenta atones clung to my chest, hooves and bead, the last of which forming a crown. My eyes give off a bright magenta sheen, with no irises, only a buzzing mass of magical energy. I revelled in the rush of sensations these bodies brought. After a few minutes, I relinquished the form, donning my original shape. The power would prove useful in the future.

Floating back to my makeshift laboratory, I see my subject, still restrained and completely drained of blood. Annie stood crying by the large puddle of red liquid, eyeing it with disgust, but also a primeval hunger.

“Your services are no longer required,” I stated, turning to the purple mare.

I swear I heard a sigh of relief from the empty Changeling.

“Annie,” I said firmly

I now had her undivided attention. Her name was now a hypnotic trigger for my control. As I gestured, my subject looked up fearfully between myself and the hungry mare beside me.

“Feed,”

In a blur of purple, Annie pounced onto her latest meal, tearing at his inner organs with her hidden fangs. The changeling screamed his pain to the ceiling above as his abdominal cavity was devoured.

“You said you’d kill me!” he gasped

I gave him my most penetrating, malignant glare with my single eye.

“I lied,”