Upon the Wings of Freedom: The Badlands
"White sagebrush isn't as common as regular green sagebrush, but there's functionally no difference between the two beside the way they look. Ponies and changelings of old used to use it for medicinal purposes, but nowadays modern medicine has superseded it. As a last resort, if you cannot find any source of water, you can chew on it to alleviate thirst, but I do not recommend it."
Red used his single wing to remove a knife from his satchel, walking over to a cactus. "Your better bet if you cannot find water is to go for the fruit of a cactus. Since I'm around, I know where to find the small pools of water in the badlands, but in case I am incapacitated it is best to learn this. See the fruit of the cactus, this red part? You'll have to handle it carefully because of the spines, though since you're a unicorn, Trixie, you can use magic to hold it without getting stung. Watch, you have to skin the spines." Awkwardly, Red grabbed a fruit with his front hooves, holding it gently so as to not push the spines past the hard keratin of his outer hoof and into the soft inside. Slowly, he sliced the fruit open, pulling out a yellow-white inside.
"You can also take several of these and boil them in water to remove the spins and skin, but since you're looking for water in the first place, that defeats the purpose. You can also skin the actual cactus itself for water, but it tends to be more difficult. Oh! I've never seen any barrel fruit cactus in the badlands, they have yellow fruit that looks a little like a small pineapple, but if you do find one, don't touch it. The water they have is usually poisonous, and even the spores are capable of causing infection."
It didn't take long for Red to start displaying why the bartender had recommended him as a guide. Soon after they crossed the line where the weather ponies stopped being responsible for weather, the land turned from rolling blankets of greenery into a drier, arid brown. The make-up of the flora quickly shifted, from bluegrass and cherry trees into sagebrush, cacti, ferns and shrubby grasses, whatever could survive in the badlands. The one-winged pegasus had immediately started explaining the terrain to them, and what to watch out for.
To say the badlands were full of rolling hills was an understatement. The hills towered over the terrain, with cliff faces dropping several hundred feet at a near ninety degree angle from the side of the hills into multiple valleys below.
"Way back in the day, before we warmed the planet up, there were glaciers in the badlands," Red had said when asked about the geography. "The glaciers were so massive they moved under their own mass. Not very quickly, mind you, but over the course of many years they moved through here and carved out large valleys. When the world warmed up, the glaciers melted, creating river beds in the valleys and a few small lakes. Then the water mostly evaporated too, leaving the badlands the way it is today. Uncontrolled precipitation comes off the eastern seaboard and gives the badlands a little bit of water. What falls on top of the hills, or coulees is the more technical name, but nobody local uses them, drains down into the valleys." He made a pointing motion with his lone wing at the many small lines that existed in the hill crags, where it was evident water had streamed down in rivulets, slowly gouging out lines. A few small shrubs were growing on the cliff faces, using the position to extract water dripping down and guard against the intense sun and high winds on top of the coulees.
Iceheart was quick to make an assessment of the natural advantage of the badlands. "It would be difficult to pursue anypony who fled into the badlands," She said. The rolling hills and the deep valleys made for an easy hideaway. It would require hundreds of ponies to find a single refuge.
Red snorted. "They'd have to both survive the heat and the changelings, who deem any fugitive free rein to do with as they wish. Do not get me wrong, many have tried. Only a few escape. I would not be surprised to one day stumble across a pile of bones. There is a section of the badlands called the Horseshoe Canyon, so-named because the only thing that was found of one pony once was his horseshoes."
Trixie wrinkled her nose at that anecdote. It didn't bear thinking much about. There was a reason why they had hired a guide, and Red at least seemed competent enough that they wouldn't be suffering a similar fate.
So it was that Red continued to take them deeper into the badlands, going through valleys and riverbeds, occasionally making it onto the top of the hills, where years of the badland's weather had trimmed off the hilltops, leaving them mostly flat. When the four were walking hillside, however, they were fully exposed to the elements. The morning sun beat down on them, and the gusts hit them with warm air, doing little to repel heat exhaustion.
After a few hours, Red at last brought them down into a low canyon, where the temperature dropped significantly, and the cliffs provided natural shade. With a little bit of walking, he led them straight to a pond, snugged away into a nook underneath an outcrop. "This is the Pupilla Canyon, named after a changeling queen who brought water into this part of the badlands many hundreds of years ago. Most of it has dried up, but there are still underground reservoirs that bubble up and feed small ponds here and there. There isn't really a pony equivalent name, but ponies have never settled here anyways, so the changeling names will have to do if anyone ever tries to draw a map."
The four sat down, each taking a sip from their canteen. Dry lips and tongues welcomed the water greatly, and Trixie had to pace herself, lest she choke attempting to drink her own water too quickly. The water had stayed cool, a welcome balm against the warm air of the badlands.
"So, where are the changelings, then?" Noire asked Red, curious. Neither her nor Trixie knew the hive's exact location, outside of it merely being in the badlands.
"There's no way they would ever tell me," Red stated. "Obviously they aren't living above ground, or they would have been found a long time ago. They may be living underground, but I think it's more likely they've created a network of caves within the hills here. It would be easier to move around that way, and a lot of the hills were made from layers of sediment deposited even before the age of the glaciers from ancient river beds. They would be a lot easier to tunnel through than digging deeper into the bedrock."
"You sound close to the changelings," Noire commented. There was a brief spike of fear from the red pegasus that she could feel, but it quickly evaporated. While Red had not been reticient to escort the three mares into the hilly wastes where the changelings resided, he seemed to have little affection for the pony race as a whole. Was he perhaps a misequinist?
Red shrugged, and he said, "They have their own culture, one that would no doubt be bizarre to ponies, but in a way that makes them easier to talk to and occasionally work with. They deserve the flak they get for their invasion a few years ago, but other than that, they've been a fairly problem-free neighbor, one who it's possible for ponies to live with."
Noire just about felt suffocated by the sudden intense feeling of longing emanating from Red as he looked over at the stub on the left side of his body. Even when he looked back up it was still there, lingering in his bright red eyes.
Ah, now Noire could see why he felt such affinity for the changelings. If he was one, then Red could simply transform away his wing injury.
"It feels more like we've been going up and down rather than actually moving," Trixie whined. She was used to rough journeys over rugged terrain, but the sheer amount of steep elevations the four ponies had to go up and down constantly had left her winded. Compared to the former military or guardsponies Iceheart and Noire, and Red, who seemed to live and breath the badlands' geography, Trixie was the weakest link. The unicorn wasn't used to being the one who had to call for a break.
Red grunted. "You are doing significantly better than most who come out here. Let's get over this next hill, and we will take a break. There is not much to actually see in the badlands, but over the hill is one of the few things it's worth stopping for to take a look."
Trixie stopped to take in a few breaths, wiped aside a slick trail of sweat from the damp fur of her forehead, then continued on grudgingly following Red up the hill.
"Having a hard time, Trix?" Noire asked as she flapped beside her, looking amused.
"Someday, someday I'll figure out how to self-levitate, I swear," Trixie said. "Then I'll be laughing."
Noire chuckled. "I'll keep the skies open and clear the day you do."
The two kept bantering at one another, but kept their low. Noire had restricted her flight through most of the badlands. Part of it was hesitation at exposing herself when they were flying over top of the hills. The other part of it was the concentrated feelings of loss Red felt and Noire and Trixie could both detect whenever Noire took to the air. By that same logic, Trixie did not talk about the subject of self-levitation when within earshot of the one-winged pegasus, a subject that she was figuring out in bits and pieces.
The four ponies, three mares and a lone stallion, finally cleared the steep pathway leading from their current valley up into the canyon. Once Trixie stopped to gather her breath, she looked over in the direction Red was facing. "Oh, wow," was all the words she could muster.
"Those are the hoodoos. You may have heard of 'voodoo' magic practiced by some of the shamans in Neigh Orleans. It's sometimes referred to as 'hoodoo' magic instead. One day, supposedly, a changeling thought it looked rather like a hoodoo magician he had once seen that stood upright when casting and wore a large, rounded hat, and the name stuck. That's as good a name to me as any. I suppose if a pony were to name it, she'd probably come up with something cliche like a mushroom spire or something like that, then expect to get a place in history books for naming them."
Off in the distance, away from the river valleys and hills there stood a large number of rock pillars reaching towards the heavens. Time had hacked away at them oddly, savaging many of them by breaking them off partway down, leaving jagged tops. Other pillars, however, were smoothed out by time's more gentle currents, but were topped by large caprocks significantly wider than the stone spires they adorned.
"How does that even happen?" Iceheart asked. It had been cold, always cold in the Crystal Empire, so to see the results of a different ecosystem were fascinating.
"Wind currents come off the eastern sea, and wear away at the hoodoos over time. When there was actually water in the badlands, it first built up the sediment layers that make up the hoodoos, and later it wore away at the softer sections. Wind and water both disproportionately affect the lower layers of rock, leaving that odd mushroom-like top. Not very many come out this far, given the changelings, but I have had a couple of daredevils who try to scale these. Don't, by the way. It's not very fun to treat someone for a fall this far away from Dodge Junction."
"That wasn't our plan for today. I'm pretty sure that wasn't our plan for ever, for that matter," said Trixie.
"Good," Red said. "Falls are bad mojo in my life."
Trixie raised her eyebrows. There was just a little too much anger in those words. Normally, she would attempt to be tactful, but then, Red had practically invited her to ask. "Your wing, was it?"
"Not quite," Red said, and all three mares turned to face him, listening intently. "Close enough, though. Once, when I was younger, more foolish than I am now, I attempted to break up a tornado that was zooming in on my hometown. I succeeded in neutralising it, but it clipped my wing. I fell onto my wing, and it was mangled beyond repair, so they removed it before it could become gangrenous."
That was it? Trixie thought.
"That was a clinical description," Iceheart remarked. "Then again, you have probably described the events many times over the years, so I do not blame you. I am more curious, however, about how you eventually ended up in Dodge Junction."
Red grinned. Underneath the surface was a clumpy mix of happiness and depression, and Trixie had to fight the urge to recoil at it. It had been a long time since she had opened herself to feeling the emotions of others as much as she had in the last few weeks. Even then, she had usually opened herself up when in front of a crowd, where she could feed on the excitement of the ponies watching her show. Being subject to the more run-of-the-mill moods of ponies such as Iceheart and Red were a learning lesson for her. Trixie thought she had been empathetic before, but she was only now beginning to learn just how naive she had been.
"There's not too much to tell about that. I left home because I couldn't tolerate it anymore. Some ponies practically smothered me with affection, and others crossed the street to stay away from me. All of them looked at me as if I were a cripple, even though I can still work. I took odd jobs here and there, mostly on farms, until I eventually came down to Dodge Junction." Red shrugged, turning his head around to look at either side of him before looking back at the hoodoos. "It's still not quite home, but at least ponies here, be they actual ponies or changelings, are still mostly concerned with what you can do, as opposed to who or what you are."
"Anyways!" Red suddenly said, "Do you see that one hoodoo in the distance? Not the white one, but the one standing next to the white one."
The deflection was obvious, but Trixie obliged Red, following his hoof. The spire he pointed at was an odd one. Instead of going straight up, it jutted out at an angle. Furthermore, it had two bends in the formation before ending in the caprock. There were even a few holes going through the hoodoo. "Wait a minute, that looks like-"
"Like a horn, yes. The changelings call that Metamorph's Horn, after an old tyrant queen they deposed. I don't know whether they found it funny to do so or meant it seriously, naming that rock after her that is, but they only named it after she was killed."
Trixie vaguely knew the name of Queen Metamorph. Her father had never told her very much about Changeling lore, but the tale of Queen Metamorph was one of the few things he had regaled her with. Queen Metamorph had been a terrible queen intent on attacking another hive elsewhere, but at the last minute she had been betrayed by her guards and assassinated, thus cutting her rule short several hundred years ago. While Wooden Chisel had considered himself to be a stateless subject more than anything else, he was at least happy enough with Princess Celestia's rule to pay his taxes every year and send Trixie off to a school named after the Solar Princess.
Trixie could only hope that Queen Chrysalis would be better than some of the other Changeling Queens of the past. Suddenly, she felt as if she might be walking into a trap of her own making.
She scrunched her nose. That was unlikely. Red had apparently returned from the hive twice before, so it wasn't as if the changelings snatched any ponies that came into their grasp and prevented them from leaving. Trixie would just have to keep her head high and control her emotions so well that the Queen could not even feel Trixie's fear.
"Anyways, there's not too much more to walk, maybe another half an hour to go. It's all downhill from here, too, so no more climbing up."
"Thank goodness," Trixie said at that last statement. All four of her limbs burned. Stopping to take a look at the hoodoos had only made the aching sensation in her body more acute.
True to Red's words, the four ponies slowly started dropping down into another dry river valley. However, something was distinctly different about the riverbed here. Instead of the narrow cuts and winding curves of the lowlands in the rest of the badlands, the valley here was far wider, with the distance between cliffs spanning several hundred hoof-lengths. Evidence of past water flow through the valley was limited. It hardly seemed likely that water or glaciers alone could have created this area. There was an extensive amount of greenery, however, with a high density of shrubs and brush, and even a few trees.
Trixie looked it over. She wondered. When she had gotten rid of the Windigo ice in the North, she hadn't so much destroyed it as she had erased it by convincing the world that the ice simply was not there, though converting such a novel concept into a magical spell had been the culmination of years of practice and months of thought-exercises. Similarly, she had been able to cajole objects to change shape and mass before. Would she perhaps be able to apply the same idea to creating something, such as water in the valley? It would bear thinking about, but conjuring something through the specialised use of illusions was likely to be even more difficult than erasing something. The block of ice had only been the size of a few houses put together, too. She would need something larger than that to make a truly drastic difference here.
"This is Mirage's Gorge. Unlike most other areas in the badlands, this area was deliberately dug out and enlarged in the past through the extensive use of magic to create an outdoor gathering place and even to grow grass crops in wetter years. Sometimes even before Equestria was created as a nation-state, Queen Mirage resolved a war between multiple changeling hives, holding several meetings in the gorge here. Because of that, changelings hold the Gorge to be a holy ground. No fighting may take here, ever, even against other races. They will go to extreme ends to keep this a sanctuary, and that is why we will stay here until the changelings see that we are here."
Iceheart said, "Interesting. Would they not have precautions against the possibility of ponies or other races using this fact against them?"
Red shrugged. "It is highly unlikely they could be cajoled into mounting an army or going through here anyways. Even assuming they don't have underground caverns to bypass the Gorge when moving around, this is the largest, most open low area around. They would never attempt a fight here. The narrow valleys and the high hills are a natural advantage for the changelings if they ever had to fight defensively. They know the terrain better than I do. Now, who has the flares?"
"I do," Noire said, opening up her saddlebag and removing a tightly wound pack of flare sticks. "I assume this is how you will be getting their attention?"
"Yes," Red affirmed.
"But wouldn't that be anathema, then, to set off flares in a place of sanctuary?"
"Not really. I don't know why, either. It is just one of those cultural things that I have yet to decipher, although I have not really thought to straight-up ask, either," Red said as he grabbed the flares out of Noire's wing with his own wing, before putting them down on the ground. Using hooves and his single wing to set up the flares, he backed away. "Noire, Iceheart, Trixie, fifty hoof-steps should be sufficient. Trixie, if you know a spell to reduce volume, that would be helpful. Otherwise, everypony should cover their ears."
"I know one," said Trixie. "Do you want me to light the flares as well with magic? I've used a few of them in the past."
"That would be very helpful," Red agreed.
The four moved across the field, past a couple of trees and finally stopped right next to a tiny puddle, perhaps two hoof-lengths in diameter. Turning around, Trixie cast the sound-dampening spell, setting it to fully silence any noise coming into their immediate perimeter. Opening her mouth, she yelled at Red to get his attention. Red, in turn, nodded for her to start at seeing how effective her spell was.
Trixie's next spell was to light up the fuse for the flares. Holding her hoof up, she watched in the distance as the fuse burned down, and then swung her hoof down just as the flares lit up.
Without the loud crack-boom sound, the flares were not very impressive. They lacked the visual flair that Trixie loved in her fireworks, merely kicking up a lot of dust and smoke. She could feel the slight change in air pressure as the air vibrated around her, but at the distance they were from the flares, it was only slightly noticeable.
Satisfied that the flares had gone off as planned, she dropped her sound-muffling spell. "How was that?" Trixie asked.
"Good, good," Red said. "The changelings will be here sooner than later."
"You know, I'm curious about something," Noire said. She stopped speaking, looking unsure about what she had been about to say, only to go ahead and say it, "Weren't you worried that we might have been changelings ourselves?"
"Not really. Maybe if you were changelings from another hive who were on their way to start a war or something, but I doubt it. Well, I will admit that Mirage's Gorge makes me feel safe. It would have to be a truly rogue changeling or changeling hive to pick a fight here, even with me, a pony. It's possible but not likely the hive will decide to keep me this time, either. From what I've figured, they like to have a few open points of communication with Dodge Junction, ones that both sides, well, they don't really trust me, but they don't have any reason for mistrust either. Although," Red raised a single red eyebrow. The motion was difficult to tell as the colour of his eyebrow blended into the rest of his red coat, but it could be detected with the telltale stretching of his eyelid and eye muscles. "You aren't changelings, are you?"
"No, we are not. I am curious, honestly, as to whether a changeling would be capable of duplicating the effect of the Crystal Heart on her coat when she transforms into a pony or, for that matter, if she could undergo the crystalling the same way we Crystal ponies do," said Iceheart.
"They probably won't tell you. Like I told you before, they're paranoid. If you knew either way, you could potentially use that information to narrow down changelings hiding out as ponies up north. Speaking of which, you lived in the north. We have time to waste before the changelings arrive. I would like to hear about your homeland. I hope to be able to travel again some day, and I would love to visit the Crystal Empire." Red sighed wistfully.
Trixie froze. She knew that sigh, and that complicated swirl of emotions. She had made the same sigh day in and day out for two years. It was the sigh of a pony who was stuck in one place for too long and wished to move on. It was more than that, though. Every pony wanted to be able to move, yearned to explore, but few had such an intense desire as Red did in that last statement of his. His dreams of freedom equalled the intensity of his longing for his lost left wing. No, more than that. No doubt his two desires were closely related to one another. While it was still possible to move around Equestria and beyond on four hooves, with only one wing Red no doubt keenly felt the loss of all the places he would never be able to go. That he had apparently been in Dodge Junction for some time due to whatever circumstance only frustrated him even more.
Red was possessed of wanderlust, and had no way to exorcise the spirit within. Staying in Dodge Junction, he had fought by coming out into the badlands as a tour guide, the better that he could at least go somewhere, do something. No wonder he seemed accepting of the changeling race. As natural empaths, they could sense the natural frustration that had built up in his one-winged frame, with no way to vent it.
For him, to soar through the sky would be to fly upon the wings of freedom, wouldn't it? Trixie thought, then winced. That didn't come out quiet as poetic as she thought it would.
"Well, it is difficult to know really where to start. Obviously, it is cold in the north. The Crystal Heart provides a protective dome that goes to the outskirts of the city proper. Under the dome the city is climate-controlled, and kept at a moderate temperature. Our architecture was based on our ability to grow crystals, a magic I am told Equestria never was able to get the hang of, so after a thousand years the buildings look even more unique compared to the rest of the country."
"I heard they got that dictator guy, Somebra or something, good? Like, vapourised him?"
"Sombra, not Somebra. Most Crystal ponies do not like using his true name, and prefer calling him by his other epithet, the Witch King. But yes, he was defeated by our new Princess mi Amore Cadenza and a glorious dragon warrior, Spike the Saviour, presumably killed."
"Wait a minute, you don't think he was killed?" Noire suddenly asked, surprised at Iceheart's last few words.
Iceheart glowered at being interrupted, but took it in stride. "I said presumably killed. Sombra was a practitioner of dark magic and brought us into a thousand year stasis. I would not have put it past him to find a way to defy death. It is, I believe a more modern saying would be to hope for the best and prepare for the worst."
"Wise words to live by," Red said, nodding his head.
Iceheart continued, taking brief pauses to find words to say. "Outside of the city proper are the frozen wastes of the north. For many tens of thousands of hoof-lengths to the north, the terrain is mostly the ice flats, with ice and snow year-round. For a few weeks every year the air is warm, even as the ground continues to stay cold under your hooves. Even having lived up there for my entire life, it is still an odd sensation. The Windigos disappeared sometimes during our stasis, but they left behind fossilised remains that are magically capable of inducing cold fronts and snowstorms within a small localised area. To the far north and northeast of the Empire, approaching the end of the world, are the Everhoof and Crystalappleachian mountain ranges. While it is not my thing, I know a few ponies who have gone to scale the mountains. I would not recommend skiing there, however. It is simply too cold to do such a thing."
"I see, that sounds pretty, uh, cool. I am well-trained in survival, so I should not have too many issues with the cold. Well, what joints remain of my left wing ache sometimes in the cold, so that might be a problem. Oh, I see they've arrived."
Trixie, Iceheart and Noire all followed Red's gaze to see several black shapes hovering across the Gorge. As the black shapes honed in on them, they became the distinct appearance of the changelings, infamously immortalised in the papers following the failed invasion of Canterlot. A quick count put them at a dozen strong.
Trixie winced at the sharp feeling of envy from Red, as he no doubt wished he could be in the air as well.
One changeling took point, landing down several hoof-lengths away from the group of four ponies with an excited buzz. Iceheart had to briefly look away, though she was unsurprised that she was the only one to do so. Trixie and Noire both called changelings their deceased fathers, and Red had met them many times. She had only talked to a few in passing, more than a thousand years ago.
"If it isn't Red Wing," said the lead changeling. "One, two, three ponies you've brought with you today. What is their purpose here today?"
"Red Wing?" Iceheart turned back to face Red, not certain if she had misheard what the changeling had said or not.
"My full name, I typically go by Red," he said, brushing her question aside with a wave of his hoof. "Atlas, this is Iceheart, a pony from the Crystal Empire that returned from a magical spell a few years ago. She befriended a changeling from this hive back then. The changeling is most likely dead by now, but Iceheart would like to at least see the hive she hailed from."
The changeling, Atlas, clicked his mandibles together for a few seconds, sounding agitated. "And the other two?"
"They're here accompanying Iceheart, this is Trixie, and this is Noire. Moral support maybe, though they've been travelling with her for awhile."
Atlas whinnied. It sounded just like a pony's whinny, but coming from a changeling, it was just odd. "That is what they may claim, but what I feel from them now is deceit."
"What?!"
Red whirled around, and the feelings of anger and betrayal were evident to Trixie and Noire. "You lied to me?!" He asked. His muzzle was twitching with rage.
Trixie sought to get ahead of the situation and defray any tempers and paranoia that might surge. "Our fathers were changelings," Trixie blurted out quickly. "Noire and mine, anyway. They met and married mares, and we were their children. Her father and my father both came from here."
The mood instantly turned around, as Red's anger turned to confusion, and the tightly-controlled emotions of the changelings uncoiled into an excited mood, with many of them buzzing at one another.
"Were changelings?" Atlas asked. "What happened to them?"
"Ponies and changelings can have children?" Red asked, but his question went unanswered.
Trixie winced at the reminder of her father's death. Thankfully, Noire took up the slack for her. "Both of them were killed. Trixie's father was caught by an army patrol and was accidentally killed before he could prove he hadn't stolen another pony's identity. My own father died in a freak fall that also dispelled his disguise."
The mood of all present went somber at Noire's words. Only Iceheart and Red had some semblance of something else, Iceheart because she had already heard her companions' stories, Red because he was still apparently befuddled by the possibility of changelings and ponies having foals together. The changelings themselves as one felt remorse. Even if the two changelings had left the hive, they had still been a part of the hive once, and their deaths were something to grieve over.
"I don't sense any more deceit, and they are feeling intense sadness," Atlas suddenly announced. "Very well. Red Wing, have you told them about the procedure?"
"The, huh, what? Oh, the procedure?! Yes, yes, I did. Well, I don't know if it works differently on half-ponies, and Iceheart, her coat has magic from the Crystal Heart infused in it, I don't know if that does something either."
Atlas chattered for a brief moment, before he answered Red, "They aren't 'half-pony', it doesn't work that way, they're fully-pony. Lore about the Crystal Heart has been passed down over the years, and sleeping magic should not interfere with the crystalling effect. Ponies, Iceheart, Trixie, Noire." The changeling turned to face the three mares. He was no longer scowling as he had before, and instead looked interested. "We will use magic on you to knock you out and put you into a state of deep sleep, and take you to the hive while you are asleep. If you refuse, we will escort you away from the Gorge back to the area of Metamorph's Horn. While you are in the hive, you will be expected to give up some of your emotional energy as the price for entering. Trixie and Noire, you had changeling fathers, so you should understand how that works. Iceheart, we will give you advice on how to tell when you are becoming fatigued. When you are feeling drained, you must tell us so that we will back off. Is that understood?"
All three traded looks. They hadn't come this far just for nothing.
Atlas turned to face the last member of the quartet that had journeyed from Dodge Junction. "Red Wing, if what I am feeling now is any indicator, I assume you are also coming?"
Red nodded, and said, "Yes, that is correct."
"Very well. If you have any anti-magic training, do not attempt to resist this spell." Atlas turned to move away back into the host of changelings behind him, even as four other changelings moved out in front, each of them with a horn glowing.
It was difficult for Trixie to let down her natural defenses against magic, first trained at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns and then trained on the road as she dodged predators and hecklers. However, she had made it this far, and she did not want to be let down by a mishaps with her-
"Ah, so the unicorn awakes."
Trixie awoke slowly. To say she was groggy was an understatement. Grog was a funny word, and now it was as if grog was a physical substance, condensed into a fluid and weighing her head down to the floor. Still, even through the thick layer of grog that held her down, Trixie was still able to notice a few things. First, she was laying down on something rather soft, unlikely for the badlands. Second, wherever she was now was humid, even less likely.
That could only mean one thing, and it was that conclusion that inspired Trixie to finally pull herself up into a sitting position, resting most of her weight on her haunches. With one front hoof, she managed to wipe out the crust from her eyes, shaking off the lethargy that still pervaded her very being.
"Atlas told me about your stories while you were out. Red Wing, I can confirm that they are, in fact, each the child of a changeling."
"So then-"
"No, I apologise, but it is impossible for a pony to father a foal with a changeling. It is only the other way around that is possible, a changeling male with a pony female. I am treading the line already with how much information I am willing to give out, even to you, but there are certain magical and biological impossibilities for you as a stallion. If only you were a mare."
There was silence for several seconds, which Trixie used to open her eyes, adjusting to the dimmer lighting of the cavern she knew herself to be in.
"If you ever desire to live here, you are more than welcome. The emotions you give us would more than outweigh any burdens you may bring, including your mark, and one of the other mares may be willing."
"No, but thank you again for the offer. You know how I feel about it. I would love to, praise the world I would love to, but I still cannot help but think I would ultimately find myself dissatisfied."
The male voice was distinctly Red, or perhaps Trixie should call him Red Wing. Well, he preferred to go by Red, so that would be Trixie's go-to name for him for now. His voice, deeper than the normal pony with a slightly scratchy quality to it, was easy to pick out. It lacked the same verbal tics nearly all changelings in their natural state had, too.
Trixie had a good idea of who the female was, but there was just something off about the changeling Queen's voice. It was as if the Queen had two voices, simultaneously overlaid but out-of-sync with one another, creating an odd ringing effect in Trixie's ears, but there was still something even beyond that which Trixie could not put a hoof on.
"Ah, yes. Wanderlust, ennui, restlessness. A handful of changelings suffer from it as well, and leave the hive to go live out in the broader world. I suspect that is why the fathers of these two mares left."
Finally, Trixie's eyesight settled. Her vision no longer blurring, Trixie looked around the room, zooming over Iceheart, Red and Noire, all awake and standing, along with several changelings, before finally settling on the Queen.
Queen Chrysalis of the Badlands Hive sat upon a modest throne carved from rock. She towered over regular changelings both in body and in horn, standing on par with Princess Celestia. Her stature was exaggerated even more due to her sitting position on the throne, up on a pedestal. Unlike other changelings, she also had a teal mane resembling a pony's own hair. Finally, her green eyes were distinct from the blue eyes of others.
"So you're all awake now. That's good." Queen Chrysalis didn't so much buzz as she practically purred, and she asked, "So tell me, who were your fathers, and how did you come to decide to return to the hive they hailed from?"
Trixie blanked out. Here she was, finally face-to-face with the Changeling Queen her father had lived under before he left. She had a limb-length scroll's worth of questions to ask, and yet the only thing she could think of was, Why does her voice sound so much like mine?
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Good joke with the voice. Perhaps you could go as far as making Queen Chrysalis Trixie aunt because of their similar voice. That would be a barrels of laughs to read about. XD
I guess Red is a little blue now, aww... anyway, good chapter. The exploration of the Badlands felt like an actual guided tour and gave me a feeling of authenticity to the whole thing.
I loved the hiking trip in this chapter! Very well described! Also, I totally wouldn't have caught the voice joke, so thanks for explaining it in the notes.
My favorite changeling
That is some really crappy defence huh