Chapter 13
(Disclaimer: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is copyright to Hasbro. This is a non profit work of fanfiction, so please don't sue.)
The valley of Ghosts, thirty leagues south by southeast of Los Pegasus, San Palomino desert. Twenty years ago.
* * * * *
The laughter of young males rang out in a cave, high in the uppermost reaches of the tall volcanic mountain. The 'private garden' was a large cavern, pleasantly warm, humid, and filled with glowing lights from various giant fungal structures. Humungous squat mushrooms, their caps wider than a king sized bed, tall stalks of hardened lichen stalks, topped with widespread, drooping glowing lichen tendrils that looked like some kind of subterranean tree dotted the cavern's expansive interior in a breathtaking array of colored, glowing lights. Feeding this environment were gently babbling streams that came from great patina encrusted bronze pipes, fed from a underground river.
There were several other caves like this, but they were all strictly managed, as that was where the bulk of the hive's crops were grown. But this one? This one was intended for the private use of the hive's royal family. And now, one of it's members was having a grand time with his newly discovered cousins.
The games went from bouncing high into the air on the giant mushrooms, their wings clamped tight against their dorsal shells, To tossing a oversized spore around like a leather ball, to that most classic of childhood games: tag.
“Tag, you're it!” Protonus laughed as he slapped out at Maxillus' tail with his forehoof just grazing it enough to have the other colt feel it, then he immediately wheeled around and went haring off in the opposite direction.
“Hey! No fair! My tail's longer than yours!” Maxillus shouted after the purple prince.
The trio went careening around the garden, ducking under fronds, dashing around the trunks of the great mushrooms, and bobbing and weaving through thickets of the lichen-trees, laughing and raising a happy ruckus. Tagging, tag backs (Even though they were clearly against the rules) and even a couple full body tackles ensued, getting the formerly gleaming carapaces of the three princes quite dirty.
Until little Maxillus ended up nearly crashing into a pair of brown, hole filled legs.
Digging his hooves into the ground hard enough to leave furrows, he came to a halt, but that only left Protonus to come crashing into him from behind, causing the two of them to tumble over each other and leaving them at the hooves of the one Maxillus had attempted to avoid.
Dazed, the two of them looked up into the frowning face of a mature female noble changeling.
This one was very unlike the others.
Her carapaced hide was uneven, covered in small bumpy protrusions. It was colored a mottled, somewhat stripy mix of brown so dark it was nearly black, and deep mahogany. Her mane and tail were a dirty, mottled brown with streaks of firey red orange scattered through it. Her eyes had a frightful coloration, black sclera, with irises so red they nearly glowed. And her horn... it was twisted, gnarly, and folded over itself in weird ways. If one was to ask a carnivore what they thought it looked like, the answer would have been 'a strip of burnt bacon.'
Beyond all this, though, this queen had one other rather distinguishing feature that immediately drew attention.
She was fat.
Changelings didn’t normally get fat. Changeling queens less so. Their lives were so stressful and busy they burned off anything they ate.
This queen was different. She had a physique one more associated with a cow, than an equine. Her torso was easily twice as wide as that of any of the other queens that Protonus had met earlier that morning. And her face was different too. Whereas all the other females had slender, narrow faces, hers was thick, the cheeks puffed out slightly, and almost soft looking, if not for the texture of her hide.
“Hmph. And here I thought my guards were just spreading rumors.” she said, her voice dripping with scorn as she looked down at the two colts. “Princes gallivanting around the empress' garden like they owned the place, and not attending their queens like they're supposed to.”
“B-b-but the empress said we could-” Lampyris stuttered, the two younger princes frozen like deer in headlights at her scowling visage.
“And lying as well! Your queens shall hear of this.” She said, her misshapen horn lighting up with green magic and grabbing all three of them in her neon aura before she lifted them off the ground and turned around, walking off with them following behind her in the air, much as they were trying now to desperately escape.
“He's not lying! The empress said we could play in the garden!” Protonus cried, before the fat queen turned her head around and spat a glob of gel at his muzzle, precisely splattering over his mouth and sealing it shut, while leaving his nostrils open.
“I don't want to hear it. Now let's find someone to take care of you brats while I speak with your parents.” She growled as she stalked off into the hive proper.
* * * * *
Canterlot, present day...
* * * * *
Mint Breeze, or Minty as she was known to her family and friends, was a unicorn citizen of Canterlot. Not one of the prominent citizens, no, those were the lords, ladies, and other royals. No, she was one of those ponies that lived and worked in the city and kept the whole glitzy, glamorous, regal place running. Like most ponies in her position, she liked routine. Get up in the morning with the rising of Celestia's sun, go to work, have lunch on schedule, go back to work when lunch is over, leave at quitting time. Go have a little fun with your friends under Luna's moon, and get in bed at a decent hour so you could wake up refreshed the next day, and do it all over again.
Another thing ponies like her liked, was having other dependable souls in their lives. Ponies who they could count on to be where they said they were going to be, when they said they were going to be there. Like a strong, caring, notoriously on time pegasus guard stallion.
So it came as a bit of a shock when she found herself sitting, alone, at the table that she and her coltfriend had reserved for their dinner date a week ago, an hour and a half past when he was supposed to arrive.
“Madam, would you like to order...?” The waiter was saying for the third time.
“No... I'm sorry, I was supposed to meet someone here, but they're really late...” she fidgeted, trailing off.
The waiter rolled his eyes briefly while she wasn't looking. “I'm certain your companion merely got held up, miss, but you've been here a while...”
“I know... I know...” she sighed, then stood, pushing the chair she'd been sitting in aside before she started walking towards the door.. “Look, if a pegasus, shows up, guard colors with a gray heater shield cutie mark, tell him I went to his house to see if he was there. And if I'm not there when he gets there, I went home, alright?”
“As you wish, madam.”
* * * * *
For the second time in his life, Agent Protonus was confused and alarmed beyond measure at the actions of his own kind. The first time had been when one whole hive had broken millennia of secrecy laws and traditions to wage full scale war. This time, it was the fact that a peace delegation had been sent to the city he'd been placed in to keep an eye on, and he hadn't been informed beforehand.
As the disguised changeling headed to his home and safe house after a long, confusing, and exhausting day of work, myriad thoughts swirled in his head. All of them focused on his cousin, who even now was in the palace, undisguised, telling the ponies gods knew what.
These thoughts also kept him from remembering the fact that he'd arranged a date with Minty that evening, over a week ago.
He arrived at his private residence in the lower quarter, unlocked the door, entered, and locked it again, then went around the house and painstakingly closed and locked all the other doors and windows, then went into the storage room in the back, and moved aside a bookshelf, to reveal a hidden sliding door. Without stopping to do more than close the door most of the way behind him, the changeling transformed back into his natural form, and trotted down the stairs to the brand new basement, where the only contents were a wooden stand with a crystal ball set upon it.
Channeling energy through his twisted horn, Protonus triggered the communication spell set in the crystal ball, causing it to glow green.
A few moments later, the face of his mother, Queen Elytria, appeared in the crystal.
“Oh! Greetings agent. What have you to report?” she asked, almost conversationally.
“Funny, I was hoping I’d have a report from you, mother.” Protonus said, his tone reflecting his shock and anger.
“What's this tone about?” the green maned queen asked, raising an eyeridge, her voice growing slightly dangerous. Caring as she was, she didn't care for insubordination, even from her offspring.
“Oh, I was just thinking it would have been nice to be warned before the council sent an envoy to speak with the pony princesses.”
There was silence for the span of eight seconds.
“What?”
Protonus sighed.
* * * * *
Far to the north of Equestria, hidden deep in the unicorn range, was a valley between the mountains. Long ago, this valley would have been easily seen from overhead by Pegasi. Somewhere around twenty five hundred years ago, however, a powerful working of magic by a large group of individuals had grown a layer of ice over the valley, that when completed, looked to be a massive glacier, making it appear as no more than another mass of ice in a land full of the stuff.
Below this shield of ice, was a palace sculpted out of yet more ice, and a populace that was inured to the cold, as well as forcing themselves to adapt to it. However, the adaptation had taken centuries, and the reason they originally settled here remained: A geothermal cavern below the foundation of the palace, which necessitated the occupants to enchant the ice they used to build their cities, as not to have it all melt and collapse upon them.
These caves were rarely visited, though the hotsprings they fed were frequented often by the locals for relaxation.
The palace itself was a sight to behold, gleaming blue-green like a giant carved piece of jade, the castle of glacial ice was the home to a creature of great influence and power, though the ponies, the dominant race upon the continent, had no idea she existed.
Nepodea, Queen of the northern wastes hive, High queen of the council of queens (A position that had come to be known as the Empress) was a creature of deep, dark midnight blue, her mane and tail -both so long they dragged on the ground- were nearly pure white but had a faint tinting of pale blue around the edges if one looked at them long enough. Her eyes also were a white with a pale blue tinting at the outermost edges of the iris, while her dorsal plate was a true blue with a speckling of white at the edges. Her wings were butterfly shaped, and had a shimmering, iridescent cyan-blue color covering most of them, though the typical holes pockmarked the edges of the grand wings. Her horn was a long straight thing from her head to where a 'tip' should have been, where it branched off into several 'spikes' that curled around in a ringlike shape, artfully twisting and curving around till the very nearly met directly behind her head, like a dark halo.
Taking tea in a salon on the southern face of her palace, Nepodea was disturbed from her relaxation by a knock at the door. she growled and rolled her eyes. Never a moment's rest for a queen. Her magnificent horn was enveloped in tongues of magic fire, like slowly rolling blue flames where most others of her species had green. The giant wheel of ice covering the chamber door rolled into its pocket in the wall. "Come." she said with the slightest air of displeasure before taking a sip of her tea.
One of her guards entered, deep blue in body like her, his eyes were like blue-green glacial ice peering out from his helmet, which mimicked the general dorsal plate color of the drones of this hive, true blue with royal purple speckling at the edges. His tail was a slightly lighter shade of blue than his torso, and the very end of the tail, instead of being filled with holes, instead faded to white where the fleshy strands split into dried points, looking like nothing more than icicles at a glance. "Your majesty, Queen Elytria of the Mosslight marsh hive desires to speak with you most urgently on the communication crystal."
Nepodea snorted softly, "Hmm, fine. Please tell her that I shall be with her shortly. I have been waiting for this tea all day and it will grow cold quickly in this climate. I am not wasting it."
"As you say Empress." he said, bowing before retreating from the chamber.
Elytria was left waiting nearly ten minutes before Nepodea finally arrived at the communication crystal in the throne room of her palace, the green maned queen of a hive far to the south and east of her frozen domain gazed out at her with displeasure at having been kept waiting. "I apologize. You needed to see me?" Nepodea asked.
Elytria fought the urge to growl at her empress. "Quite, i have a question, Empress, when was the last time the council had a conference call?"
Nepodea blinked at that, then thought, "Not since before we all graced each others presence in the flesh last month, I believe. Is there new business?"
Elytria snorted. "Right, so you're telling me there haven't been any major decisions made without my presence, then?" the green maned queen asked.
"I can sense the hostility in your voice, Elytria." Nepodea said, "Are you fearful that something unsavory has happened without your knowledge?"
"Oh, I know something happened, Empress." Elytria said.
Nepodea drank the last drop of her very rare -that far north anyway- milkweed tea, "Tell me what troubles you then, and why it warrants the other queens being included."
Elytria scowled, a rare thing for her. for once she'd hoped the emperss could be a little more concerned. "I was just informed that one of our number sent an envoy, entirely unmasked, to the very gates of Canterlot. I had hoped this was a council decision, but now, apparently, it seems one of us ignored the council's directive."
Nepodea's naturally dropping ears stood erect, "What?" She finally seemed to have caught her attention, "Are you certain?"
"Oh yes. They've got him staying in the north-east tower guest suite of the royal palace, and took him on a short tour of the city today. Apparently it was all over the front of the Canterlot chronicle."
"I am...truly without words." She suddenly groaned, "Paradoxa doesn't know about this, does she?"
"You're the first I've called about this, so I don't know... but honestly, I'm certain Diaphene does."
"Has there been any hostility shown towards this soldier? I am...gauging which queens should be notified about this little upset." Nepodea pondered.
"Well, not per-se, though they did take him to a hospital today... oh, and it wasn't a soldier. it was a prince."
Nepodea put her face in her hole filled hoof. "Oh good." she said sarcastically. Then she lifted her head in sudden realization, "Wait, from whose hive does he come?"
"Diaphene's. You know, Arista's little nymph? the female who gave you her old job?"
"The little queen? Yes...yes, I think we shall be leaving Paradoxa out of this unless needs be. Even I can only take but so much of her flapping her jowls the little one's position." Nepodea sighed, "especially now that she'd have a point."
"Much as I wish we could leave her out of this, empress... my cousin has... has committed an offense. she's broken a decision made by the council, and the council must decide what to do about this."
"Sadly, I must agree." Nepodea sighed, "And it was such a peaceful day too. Contact the others. I shall retire to my salon with my viewing crystal so this can at least be done in privacy instead of a large, echoing throne room." Nepodea's tone of voice was not a happy one. This was definitely not something she had planned on, nor was truly prepared to deal with.
“As you command, Empress.” Elytria said, bowing her head. The crystal blanking out.
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Welcome back, and glad to see you are updating again.
Time to wipe out the chernglerngs nows?
I am SOOOOOOOOOOO lucky I didn't unfavorite this in my cleaning house the other day!
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Also, this chapter needs some editing, bro.
This is a very interesting story. I love how this is going, what with changelings doing stuff the other changelings don't want to be done.
The chapter reads like it has ADD. Too many scene transitions, and every scene is short.
Interesting... the ponies may yet be caught in the middle of a Changeling civil war. Being caught in the middle of somepony else's civil war is never a good place to be as the history of Iraq proves.
This story is utterly fantastic. It has it's quirks but all in all it's phenomenal. You actually got me to like Blueblood. The scene transitions are smooth and none of the characters seem OOC. I especially like how Luna is the cold, calculating balance to Celestia's benevolence. This is a masterpiece, and it's a shame that it doesn't have more views. I think it's the tags you used, as well as a lack of the changeling character tag. Still, please keep on doing this.
Been a while, though its nice to see that you came back to us with another chapter, and intent to make more, looking forward to seeing how this will work out now.
3735987 lol
Excellent development of the Changeling culture! The disclosure that ponies can be become changelings is a clear indication that they are related species. In my own headcanon - reflected in my story Renaissance Pony, Celestia admits to Starswirl that there are four pony tribes, each of which reflect a portion of their Alicorn heritage. The fourth tribe are of course the changelings.
I wish that I could write as well as you.
3747504
You should've seen my first stabs at fanfiction, in the megaman and zelda universes. i was HORRIBLE. the only way to get good at writing, or any kind of artistic endeavor, is to do it. keep dreaming, keep trying, have multiple projects going at once, or have one at a time, it doesn't matter, just keep doing it and you will improve.
Nice update. I always enjoy another author's ideas on how changeling society ticks.
I like the way this stroy is moving
hummmm
Um, do you want me to correct the previous chapters for grammar errors? The story on its whole is good and quite interesting, but whenever I see you end afterwards-attributed dialogue with a period instead of a comma, or use "it's" instead of "its", it feels like a mosquito landed in my ear or something.
Seriously. Please. I will make all the corrections you need, no work on your part. I won't change the story or anything, just the punctuation marks. It'll make it better overall, and you won't have people correcting your use of "it's" in the comments.
...did that sound bad? I'm sorry; I kind of fail at social interaction. I tend to see "problems that need fixing", or "something that looks interesting", instead of "people".
4088425 I am rather in the market for a proofreader on this story, but i'm still not 100% sure on how that works on this site.
4088900 I don't really know either; what I was mostly thinking was just sending you a Mediafire link to a file of each chapter, with the errors corrected.
I am absolutely loving this story!
4088900
Alternatively, Google Docs is pretty good for collaboration: you can set a document that only you can edit, but others can annotate. Very useful for editing (rather than simple error correction).
With the revelations that changelings can "change" others. I'm starting to suspect that the spell Chrysalis used on Shining was more than a mind control spell. Perhaps the spell was actually meant to change him into a changeling. The intent might of been to simply control him but Chrysalis did seem (sort of) impressed with Shining. She might of thought he would make a good drone or even a noble. Or maybe Shining started to turn from Chrysalis feeding off him to much. Both could also explain the remaining magic in his head and some of his changes in attitude.
I loved this read, but I noticed an annoying trend. The early chapters were flawless, practically no errors that stuck out to me. But as I got to the later chapters, I started seeing more and more errors. That last chapter...yeesh, that bad boy needs a good once over.
No offense, it just poked my buttons when the writing quality seemed to be dropping as I progressed through the fic.
5174616
Anything in particular that stood out to you?
5175078
Should be a comma after rumors, not a period. This error occurs more than once.
Commas often take the place of the word and. Whenever you use them together you should be thinking about it.
This is a mess. "northern wastes hive"? Either reword that, because it sounds funny when you read it aloud, or capitalize it. "Northern Wastes Hive." Then there's "High queen." Both words make up the title so both should be capitalized: "High Queen." And finally, that letter "A" right inside the parenthesis should be lowercase.
"i" needs to be capitalized.
Capitalize "for" and "emperss" is wrong.
I noticed throughout there were extra spaces between words, which is distracting. Then there is the sudden disclaimer at the top of the 13th chapter and non of the others. All I can say about that is...huh? Disclaimers go in the description, only in the first chapter, or at the top of EVERY chapter.
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Just a random comment, but: I think you might be better off tagging this with the Changelings tag than the OC tag, seeing as I tried finding this story via searching for shining armor and changelings and couldn't find it.
over a year since the last chapter? :( worried the author gave up, and I had really enjoyed reading this fic
this is a great story, I hope that it will continue soon
more plz?!
More please
I really do hope you will return to work on this story, it has been excellent so far
Holy s***! I haven’t seen this fic in over 4 years. I really liked the story so far.
Ink I just want to say if you see this I love this sorry I applaud it its so good and I can't get enough I hope you come back to it I want to see what happens next Its just so amazing and I'm so immersed I love this story so much I'm giving you a follow and this story will be added to my favorites you earned it be safe and hope your alright
10328076
I just found it yesterday and finished it just now I agree this story is amazing I hope we could see more
Another great story gone
Oh Hiatus.
“Hiatus”
-2014
Its now 2022 and im pretty sure this is dead.