123- Unbroken
“Long live the Hive Eternal!”
Everything had happened so fast.
One moment she was standing around with several squads from the Ninth Legion, ‘Will of Panar,’ and the next she was being shoved towards an open doorway behind her. Panic had followed the booming voice. Panic that Lace was swept up in like a tree branch in a tidal wave.
Changelings were yelling– no, screaming.
It took her shocked mind entire seconds to realize that spells were being fired in Canterlot Castle’s foyer. In those seconds, four changelings fell to the floor and did not move anymore. Gasping, Lace spun on her hooves, and ran. Several changelings had run with her, pushing her along. But at each branching path, Lacewing found herself more alone as they split off.
The changeling in front of her was suddenly bisected by a transparent blade that narrowly missed Lacewing. She threw herself to the floor before scrambling back up and taking a side hallway, not even looking to see who or what had killed the changeling she had been more or less following up till now.
She fled through corridors. She dived through open doorways. She cut across side rooms. Eventually, Lacewing stopped in a dusty storage room, all alone, though not before opening the door on the other side.
The room was filled with furniture, all covered in white cloth to protect them from dust. Lace buzzed up above the storage room, and found a suitable hiding spot. In the middle of one cluster of furniture was a desk that, when the covering was lifted, revealed a space large enough for her to hide in. She quickly stuffed herself underneath the desk.
When the tarp fell, she was plunged into darkness. Accompanied only by her frantic panting and beating heart, Lace tried to calm herself. She was afraid that whoever attacked the foyer was after her, that they had seen her flee, and were hunting her down. There was no way of knowing what was going on, only that the changelings had been ambushed.
The first calm thought that didn’t race through Lace’s mind like a dragonfly was the realization that everything happened too suddenly.
‘It had been an ambush…. That meant it was planned.’
Lace caught her breath, steadied her heart, and waited.
Seconds ticked by.
Minutes crawled on.
It became quickly apparent that no one had noticed her flight. If they had, then whoever had attacked the Ninth would be on her tail like moss.
Minutes piled on minutes.
The room occasionally shook. Whatever titanic duel that had been going on either resumed, or… something else had happened.
‘Who is Chrysalis fighting? Who is winning? What’s going on?’
Lace wanted to leave her hiding spot and find out. She wanted to put on a brave face and stand next to her friends as they fought for their own lives and futures. However, only one thing kept her frozen on the cold floor.
Lace was not a fighter. She could fight, just as any changeling in the Swarm could, but she was not a fighter. The fights that mattered, where demi-gods let their rage and power clash? Lace might as well be a breeze that shuffles some leaves in comparison.
An entire hour passed by, as slow as a glacier.
The first hint Lace got that she wasn’t alone was when seven sets of hooves burst into the room, fanning out and covering angles. Tasting their subdued anger, she knew at once that they were ponies, and not lings. If they had been lings, she would have been proud of their combat effectiveness. As it stood, she was rather unpleasantly surprised at their skill.
‘I thought we were supposed to be the experts at close quarters combat. This is rather unfortunate…’
“E.U.P.! Whoever's in here, make yourself known!”
Lace held her breath.
“Corporal?” She heard one voice ask.
“One return.”
“Right. I’ll make this easy. If you’re a pony, you can come out. The changelings have lost, and Canterlot is being secured.”
‘Lies!’
“If you’re a changeling… surrender, and you won’t get more hurt.”
‘These ponies are so laughable! I’d kick their asses if it didn’t mean my own ass would be kicked in return!’
Lace tasted the emotions in the air. The ponies were confident. They were also angry. No doubt the swift defeat of their entire nation had filled this rag-tag group of ponies with determination.
‘Raging against the sunset: distant and a useless effort. Damn, I wish I had my sketchpad with me, that’d make a good image I’d bet.’
There was no one coming to Lace’s aid, meaning she would have to get out of this one on her own. Her best bet would be retracing her steps. Any other way had the potential of running into a dead end, whereas the foyer might still contain changelings that at least wouldn’t kill Lace in retribution…
Hopefully.
‘I need to get out of this room, though. What would Phasma do?’
Whatever signal the ponies had given to each other was nonverbal, but the sudden taste of hatred had steeled their resolve and signaled their intent. Lace heard the quiet shuffle of hooves on the floor as the ponies began to spread out.
‘He would say… use a distraction. Probably.’
A sudden attack that stunned them was her only chance of getting out. Lace braced herself and readied her spells. The timing would have to be quick.
With a grunt of effort, Lacewing made her move.
The top half of the desk exploded upwards in a glowing green light as its remains and the large tarp were hurled upwards violently. At the same moment, Lace darted forward, weaving in between the tight space between the furniture, making for the exit.
“Now!”
Lace emerged from the cluster of furniture, barreling right into a yellow unicorn Royal Guard. The unicorn’s ice blue spell beam arced suddenly and without guidance from his horn as he was barreled over. His stunning ray went wide, scorching the ceiling as two other spells hit the glowing green ball that had begun to slow down in the air above the room.
Lace shut her eyes as she rolled to her hooves, already casting her next spell as the first dissipated from the attacks. She heard a gasp as someone started to call out in alarm before her flashbang spell briefly illuminated the figure of a pony through her own eyelids.
Then, Lace made for the exit, scampering on all fours as the ponies collected themselves behind her. A brown earth pony had been stationed at the door she had entered through to block it, but the pony was shaking the stars from her vision as Lace galloped past.
‘Where is everyling?!’
Lace frantically retraced her steps, trying to go through her hasty retreat in reverse. Unfortunately, she quickly lost track of where she was, and suddenly found herself in a greenhouse. The glass windowed walls and ceilings were all fractured in some way, and many of the racks of plant trays or plant pots had been knocked over. The duel between the demi-gods and demi-godesses has shaken the greenhouse horribly, causing half of its contents to spill or break in some way.
The indoor garden had no other exit, so Lace turned to flee back to the nearest corridor intersection.
There were emotions coming from the hallway.
‘Ponies are coming!’
None of the shattered windows had holes large enough for her to crawl through, so she would have to hide again.
‘Hide! Hide hide hide!’
Lace looked around for a new spot.
‘Bags of dirt, plant tray, pile of empty pots, overturned ferns, one sickly looking Lifepup plant…. What do I do?! Oh! Ponies don’t know much about illusions, right?’
Lace quickly scrambled to the stacked pile of empty plant pots. She pulled herself up and into the largest one of them, which was set aside from the rest. Her hooves scraped against the fired clay pottery as she pulled herself into the pot. Then, getting comfortable, she casted an illusion spell to appear as a bushy plant, with long broad leaves that hung over the pot.
Half a minute later, three ponies entered the room: two unicorns and an earth pony. With much less cover, Lace’s odds of going undetected relied entirely on them not noticing the illusion spell that was casted.
Then, ten more ponies arrived right behind the first three. Lace felt the blood drain from her face as she used up her mana pool to keep the illusion up.
Four posted themselves at the door, while the rest spread out throughout the greenhouse. Lace’s breath quickened as several walked slowly past her hiding spot, eyeing up her corner of the room. One, a blue pegasus, lingered on her plant disguise for a few seconds before moving on.
“Nothing,” A pony called out from the far side of the room.
“It’s in here,” A unicorn near the center reassured. “We know it is.”
‘Where is everyone? How are these ponies here operating with impunity?! Shouldn’t the castle be clear by now?!’
Lace hadn’t seen a single changeling since she ran from the ambush. All she had run into were ponies so far.
‘Was it the ponies who ambushed us? That would explain a lot… if so, where did this counterattack come from? And why hasn’t either side of the Fourth Hive come to stamp it out? Are we too busy with our own infighting to deal with this? Damn it, where are my friends?!’
One unicorn, with black fur and an ash grey mane, stopped right in front of Lacewing. The pony had some sort of cloak and hood in addition to his standard issued armor, giving more of a mage look than anyone present in the room.
‘Please. Move on. Please….’
Lacewing gulped as the pony turned to face her. His emerald green eyes passed over her plant disguise from top to bottom. He stopped and fixed his gaze at the base of the plant pot, making Lace look over the pot’s edge to see for herself just what was so interesting.
The pot was all marked up from her climb.
All Lace could do was grimace and hiss before the unicorn’s horn flashed green. Lace was thrown backwards through the air, the wind completely knocked out of her. Her disguise spell had been obliterated the moment the push spell had hit her, so all the ponies had looked up in surprise as a changeling flew above their heads.
Lace smashed into and through an already cracked glass pane at the far side of the room. She felt her own carapace crack from the blow, and felt seval long pieces cut straight into her back and whithers. The blow had knocked her head against the glass before it broke, too, giving her a pounding headache and sent her vision spinning.
She hit the ground outside and rolled several times. Or maybe she didn’t roll at all, it was impossible for her to tell. Eventually, her sight settled long enough for her to tell that she was on her back, looking up at a night sky that was already tainted with the ambers and oranges of an early dawn, which raked holes in the cloud cover that had filled the air following Canterlot’s burning.
Her horn burned.
Lacewing was tired, scared, and frustrated. But she knew that if she stayed on the ground, she was going to feel a whole lot worse soon enough.
Her back and neck ached.
‘I have to get up! The ponies will be on me in just a moment!’ She yelled to herself.
Lace blinked once, and realized that she wasn’t breathing. With a long, startled gasp, she filled her chest with air. The immediate pain signaled that some part of her chest was probably also broken.
Her head was spinning.
‘Get up!’
Another gasp of air, this one more drawn out, filling her lungs to the brim with air. It tasted terribly of ash.
Her eyes stung.
Lacewing tried to move. She really did, but her legs wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t even roll over onto her belly in the first place, let alone rise to all fours.
One of her muddled senses resolved itself into satisfaction.
‘... Huh?’
Several faces– pony, of course– appeared above her, staring down at her.
‘... Oh. Shit.’
A pony chuckled, “Nice find, Winter! How did you even…?”
“It didn’t cover its trail. Now hurry up with that inhibitor,” a unicorn replied. It was the very same one that had found her.
“No,” Lace mumbled, starting to squirm.
‘I have to get back to my friends! The First Fang are counting on me! Something’s wrong! They were supposed to be at the foyer!’
Lace tried to summon the energy to cast another spell, but the effort only made her horn burn more intensely. Her spell had been broken mid-casting, meaning she needed time to recover. Time she had run out of the moment that unicorn had looked her way.
As if to twist the dagger, the unicorn frowned before hitting her with another one of his green-colored spells. A small dart flew from his horn to her chest, sending Lace into convulsions as she felt her body seize up in pain.
She tried to scream in pain, but only gurgled and groaned as she twitched on the ground.
‘No! I need… my friends! My friends! Please! Something has gone wrong, I have to warn Phasma! My friends! My… friends!’
Lacewing’s eyelids slowly closed against her will–
– Only to shoot back open.
“Wha…?” Lacewing mumbled in confusion.
The sky had changed from grey with streaks of yellow to solid grey. Not even the same shade of grey, too. It was dark, like a storm cloud. The ponies had vanished, too.
With a groan of pain, Lace slowly shifted her head to look around. She was no longer laying in whatever courtyard she had been flung into after smashing through that window. In fact, she wasn’t outside at all.
She was in a prison cell. Four square walls. Once ceiling. One floor. The far wall had a large iron door fixed into the middle of it, with several slots on different levels.
Lace couldn’t sense any emotions, so at least there were no ponies nearby. However, she couldn’t feel her mana pool either. Slowly, and with more groaning, she lifted a hoof to rub her horn. The action was slow and stiff, like she was one of those porcelain dolls that Tarsus had described once.
Her hoof met cold metal at the base of her horn.
‘An… inhibitor? That’s what they–’
“Son of a…!” Lacewing hissed, lurching upwards.
That proved to be a mistake as she immediately collapsed to the ground before she could even stand. Her back felt like someone had taken a sharpened rake and dragged it down its length, which given what she went through, wasn’t entirely inaccurate.
Still, the emotion that made her lurch to her hooves put extra awareness into her.
The ponies had captured her. She was imprisoned by them.
“No, no, no, no! Shit! By Chrysalis’s holey hooves, this is bad! I’ve been foalnapped!” She gasped, struggling to stand again, slowly this time.
‘I have to warn the First Fang that the ponies are managing to fight back! If they intervene in the uprising, we could lose everything! I have to find someone– anyone!’
She tried to remove the metal ring that felt so cold against her chitin, but it wouldn’t budge.
She shuffled across the room, her movement stiff and restricted. Her back screamed in protest at the action, but she pressed forward until she reached the door. Once more, her efforts went unrewarded when she couldn’t find any way of opening the solid metal door.
Lace closed her eyes and hissed, both out of frustration and from the pain she was in. Then, she looked over her shoulder as she lifted her elytra and checked the condition of her wings. The fragile structures had survived for the most part, with only some holes from where her elytra had been punctured by the glass.
‘At least I can fly. I just need to… get out. Somehow.’
But there was no way out. Her room was a solid box, save for the door. She tried once again to mess with it, trying to find some way to get out. Lace was in the middle of trying to push back a horizontal slot when the metal piece flew to the side, opening the hatch.
A pony unicorn stared at her from outside the door, her horn alight with a red glow. The sudden brightness made her cringe and blink away the dots in her sight.
The slot closed back up before Lace could do anything. Before she could even hiss in frustration at losing what might have been her one chance at freedom, several loud clunks and thunks came from the far side of the door.
The door suddenly swung outwards, making Lace shield her face from the sudden injection of light into her cell.
“Face the back wall.”
Lace lowered her foreleg and squinted at the pony. It was wearing non-standard Guard armor; instead of the uniform gold plating that all Royal Guards had, she wore a more muddier brown coloring, and it lacked many of the decorations that the Royal Guard armor had. The pony, now revealed to be a white unicorn with turquoise mane and red eyes, glared at Lacewing.
“Now,” the pony growled.
With a lurch, Lace staggered forward, intending to barrel into and through the pony. The pony grunted and simply froze Lace where she was with telekinesis, holding her in place. Lace felt like a hundred changelings had been piled on top of her, and with a choked groan, she collapsed onto the floor, her back in searing pain.
‘I have to get out!’
Hoping that only her physical magic had been cut off, Lace funneled what little energy she had left into the Thread of Change, hoping to transform into a manticore. It was her last chance at escaping; using the last of her energy was dangerous, but she needed to get out.
But when she channeled the energy into the non-physical Thread, the ring at the base of her horn heated up considerably, nearly burning her chitin. Lace gasped in pain and shock as she felt the energy vanish like water draining into a hole. The nullifier on her horn had somehow stopped her transformation, robbing her of her one chance at escape.
Lace tried to stifle her sob as she collapsed, laying her head on the stone ground.
The weight was lifted from her back, but her heart still felt so heavy that it might be ripped downwards from her chest. She had one chance to escape, and she blew it trying to use magic before getting the nullifier removed.
‘N–no… I… I had one chance! I… I can’t have failed! My friends need me, and I need them!’
Lace sat on the ground for several minutes, desperately reaching around for the energy she had lost. The pony had ordered her to do something, but Lace was too deep within her own mind to listen to the vermin talk.
‘Damn them! Damn them and their plans for me, I can’t stay here!’
Eventually, Lace felt herself be picked up. She hung limply in the air, like a kitten being picked up by the scruff of its neck. She lifted her head to glare daggers at the pony which was marehandling her. The unicorn was now joined by two of its comrades, each a unicorn as well, and wearing the mud-colored light armor.
She was deposited onto a wheeled gurney they had brought with them. She watched as they fixed straps to her hooves, tying her down onto the bed, like some kind of deranged hospital patient.
Lace weakly struggled, but gave up after only making the ponies tighten the straps more.
They wheeled her down a long hallway, filled with doors to prison cells much like her own. Lace didn’t know if any were occupied, if the ponies had snagged any other changeling. She didn’t even know where she was.
‘Some part of the castle dungeon that wasn’t cleared out, clearly. I can’t believe that the Legions had missed this many ponies!’
She tried to think of ways out. She fantasized about ripping out the straps that held her down, and tearing off the ring around her horn that stole her strength. She smiled when she thought about bucking the ponies around who occasionally sent glares or curious stares her way.
But she lay on the bare gurney, unmoving.
They crossed an intersection. Then another. Then a third. The iron doors were replaced with simple wooden ones. Just as Lace was beginning to get disorientated in this underground maze, they stopped before a particular wooden door, which they pushed open and wheeled her through.
It was an interrogation room. The utterly utilitarian space had a table, with two chairs on either side. The wall on the left was some kind of mirror that ran from halfway up the wall all the way up to the ceiling, and stretched from wall to wall. There was a single light, hanging down above the table.
‘Or maybe its an operating room. Guess I’ll find out soon enough.’
The ponies moved Lace to the far side of the table, pushing the chair out of the way and lowering the gurney so that Lace was level with the table. Then, the unicorn which had first opened the door, the white mare, sat down across from Lace as her companions exited the room and closed the door behind them.
Lace’s mouth and throat were bone dry when she realized she couldn’t sense any emotions. The inhibitor somehow blocked every sense of magic, including changeling empathy.
‘Lucky bastards.’
“What are you?” The mare asked, breaking the silence.
After thinking about it, Lace decided that she should answer. The effort was slow and difficult, thanks in no small part to her sudden parched mouth.
“... Let me go, and you will be treated well,” Lace muttered.
The pony snorted silently, “What are you?”
‘Do I tell them that I am important, and they are making a fatal mistake in holding me? Or do I hold that from them, in case they don’t know?’
Lace decided to go with a non-answer, “... Hungry.”
She was hungry. She was also tired, in pain, confused, disorientated, and cut off from both her mana and the Hivemind–
Lace froze when she realized that last one. She had no empathy. She had no magic. She had no Hivemind. She couldn’t feel the Weave at all.
‘Can inhibitors really do all of that, or am I hurt in some way…? Oh Panar, please let it be the first thing. W–without the Weave...’
Lace tried to lift a hoof to rub the ring once more, forgetting that it was bound to the gurney.
“You will receive a meal after you tell us who you are,” the pony said, interrupting Lace’s panic attack.
“Where are they?” Lace wondered out loud.
“Where are who?”
“My friends,” she grunted. “I need to–” Lace cut herself off with a cough.
The pony repeated once again, “What are you? What is your species called?”
‘I need to buy time. Yeah, that’s what I need to do! My friends will come and save me, I know they will! They’d never leave me behind! I just need to stall for as long as possible, and Phasma or Oestridae or Coxa will come bursting through these doors, and everything will be as right as rain once again!’
“... We…. are… changelings,” she managed to say.
“Changelings?” The pony repeated. Lace nodded. “Why have you attacked Equestria?”
“... W–water,” Lace stuttered.
“For water?”
“I need…. water.”
The pony leaned back in her chair, her eyes darting over Lace’s body. Lace suddenly felt a bit self-conscious, wishing she wasn’t up at the table level like some kind of plant specimen to be studied.
‘That’s exactly what I am, aren’t I? Some specimen that they are studying? Damn it all, where are the Legions?!’
The door behind the pony opened, and a second entered with a glass and pitcher of water. The pony set them both on the table before leaving and shutting the door again.
‘So they are listening to our conversation, then? Ha! These guys are idiots!’
Lace stared at the glass of water, which lay a hooves length from her muzzle.
The pony didn’t move an inch, “Why did your kind invade Equestria?”
‘What is this bullshit?!’
“Water,” she grunted, scowling at the pony.
‘You can’t just put water in front of me and not give it to me! That’s gotta be illegal or something!’
The mare kept her stare up for a solid minute before sighing and picking up the glass and pressing it against Lace’s muzzle, tipping it forward so that Lace could drink. And drink she did.
‘I’d be embarrassed about this, but at the end of the day, it'll be me feeding off of them.’
When the glass was emptied, Lace sighed in relief as the pony pulled the glass back and placed it next to the full jug.
“I’ll ask again, why did your kind invade Equestria?”
‘Might as well drip feed them some answers.’
Lace sneered, “Hunger.”
“You invaded because you were hungry?”
“Are hungry.”
“Is there some kind of drought where you come from?”
“No.”
“Then why couldn’t you feed yourselves? Why did you invade Equestria? Did you run out of seeds or something?”
Lace chuckled, “Nnheheh…. We don’t eat plants.”
“What do you eat?”
Lace licked her lips and grinned, “Ponies.”
The pony stared at her fangs, her face hiding any emotion.
‘If I’m stuck here, I might as well have some fun with these idiots.’
The ponies had continued to ask Lacewing questions, which she either answered, ignored, or gave non-answers to, depending on the question. Lace was willing to say some general things about changelings, but withheld any information about her specific identity, or anything important about the invasion.
Eventually, they wheeled her back to her room, and locked her in.
She was left alone in the relative darkness for what seemed like hours before a slot near the bottom of her door was opened, and a tray was pushed through. The tray held equestrian food, which did little for Lace’s ever-so-slowly growing hunger.
Then, she tried to get some sleep. She was in it for the long-haul, clearly. Wherever she was, it would take a while for the changelings to find her. She also had to figure out a way of learning what was going on outside her captive cell. The ponies spoke about the invasion, but they revealed nothing.
If she wanted answers, she would have to bait them out. That meant sacrificing valuable information she held. An unwilling trade. Still, it was the only way forward she saw. If she gave up hope, or did nothing to improve her own understanding, then she would be as good as dead. While her friends would save her, it was up to her to survive until then. If the ponies thought she was valueless, they would likely kill her. It’s what the changelings would do.
So the hours became days.
She was questioned repeatedly. She answered less and less questions as time ground on. Her frustration grew. Her hunger, like a void, slowly swallowed her other emotions and feelings. That empty pit in her stomach expanded hour after hour. She was surrounded by ponies for the first time in her life, and she couldn’t even taste a single one of their emotions.
She chuckled weakly in the darkness of her cell at that fact. It was a hilarious fate. Then, her stomach growled, and she stopped laughing.
The ponies noticed her growing lethargy, eventually. She had been there a week, maybe a week and a half by that point.
“Is there something wrong with you?” Her captor asked.
Lace sighed. Once again, they had strapped her to the gurney. It seems that despite her time there, they weren’t comfortable with letting her walk freely.
“I’m hungry.”
“Have you not been eating the food we give you?” The pony asked.
Lace studied the pony. If she didn’t know any better, she would have said that the pony was almost concerned for Lace’s health. It certainly looked the part.
“Changelings don’t eat plants.”
“Then what have you been doing with the food we give you?”
“.... Eating it.”
“But you said you can’t?”
“... Hides the pain.”
“Eating hides pain? What pain?”
“Hunger,” Lace grunted.
“You eat food because it hides the effect of hunger without actually fixing it?”
“... Yes.”
“How can we feed you, then?”
‘You can start by taking off this Panar-damned ring!’
Lace wanted to shout at the stupid pony, but she was willing to play the long game. The First Fang would save her, she knew they would. That meant surviving the short-term.
“Emotions,” she grunted.
“Emotions?”
“Love.”
“Love?” The pony repeated again, getting on Lace’s nerve.
“Your love,” Lace snarled. “It’s delicious. So hungry….”
“How do you eat our… love?”
“Take off this ring….” Lace said, as calmly as she could.
“We will not remove the inhibitor. How do you feed off love?”
“... So hungry…”
“We can help you if you just tell us what we want to know.”
‘I can’t be saved if I die here.’
“Thread of Emotion.”
“What?”
“Thread of… Emotion. Focus on the emotions, and pull the Thread.”
“What are you saying?”
“How to feed,” Lace sighed. “Pull the Thread.”
“You pull a thread? Is this thread…. Physical?”
“No.”
The pony nodded, “Some magical concept, then?”
“Suppose so….” Lace said.
“And using this, you feed off a pony’s… love? Love for what?”
“Anything. Friends. Family. Happiness…” Lace giggled weakly, “Sex.”
The mare rolled her eyes, “Does this hurt or kill the pony?”
“Hurts, if taken. The best infiltrators know how to make them give it willingly…”
“Infiltrators?” The pony asked, sitting up straight. “What infiltrators?”
‘Ugh. Oops.’
“Hungry,” Lace said, changing the subject.
“These infiltrators, how long have they been in Equestria? How many are there?”
“Hungry.”
“How can they be spotted? How do they spot each other? Who do they report to? Who do they hurt?”
“Hungry.”
“Whose in charge of them? Who trains them? How can we spot them?”
“Hungry,” Lace repeated again.
The pony sighed and sat back in her chair.
That was the questioning for that day. Lace answered no more questions, and the pony gave up asking more. She was returned to her cell, where she counted the minutes. There were a couple hundred of them before she was taken to the interrogation room again.
Questions were asked. Hunger was stated. Questions were ignored.
Minutes became hours which became days.
Lace must have spent at least two weeks, sitting in a dark cell or strapped to a table. Her only companion, save for the idiot ponies, was hunger. Slowly growing. Slowly painful. Slowly dying.
Hunger.
She was quickly losing track of time. It was on some uneventful day– or night, it was impossible to tell– that they took her to a new room.
They went on the usual path to the interrogation room. Only this time, they went to a room several doors down. This one was empty, save for the massive mirror that Lace was sure was some sort of magical looking-glass they used to spy on the interrogation.
They wheeled her into the room, faced her towards the door, and left her alone. It wasn’t the first time she was alone in the room, sometimes they would step out for a moment to talk with their superiors, or whatever Lace guessed they were doing. Maybe taking a piss.
This time, the pony that entered wasn’t a Royal Guard. No, not at all. Royal Guards don’t wear orange prison jumpsuits, nor do they shuffle around in chains.
The prisoner, some dull green earth pony, froze in fear when it was pushed into Lace’s room. Cut off though she was from her empathy senses, the fear the pony felt was plain to see across its face.
“That’s onna them, ain’t it?” The stallion mumbled to the guards behind him.
In response, the Royal Guard pushed the prisoner forward, and grabbed some part of the chain that was wrapped around a fetlock and locked the chain to a bolt in the ground, which Lace nearly missed entirely when she was wheeled in.
“Whoa hey, what’re ya doin?” The prisoner asked, growing more scared.
Then, the most unexpected thing happened. The Royal Guard removed Lace’s inhibitor ring.
The Guard quickly left the room, locking the door behind him. Lace gasped as a flood of senses bowled her over. Empathy and magic filled her every sense. But not the Weave. She couldn’t feel the Hive’s, Phasma’s, or even Chrysalis’s presence anywhere nearby.
She grunted as her mind sorted through the emotions.
‘Fear. The pony in front of me. Curiosity. Ponies on the other side of the wall behind the mirror. Ah, so that’s what that is. Not some magical clairvoyance thingy, just a one way mirror. Heh.’
“Alright guys, very funny, now let me outta here!” The pony howled, tugging on his chain. “Hey, c’mon! Guys!”
‘Fear.’
Delicious fear.
It, along with whatever else Lace could taste, would do.
Lace took a nice, long, deep breath, and pulled on the Thread of Emotion.
Lace’s unwilling companion left her, and she was glad to see it go. Her hunger was sated, and no doubt the pony’s curiosity was rewarded. They had watched her feed on their companion. She didn’t care if they learned something important from this, she just wanted the pain to go away.
The pony survived, of course. To drain a victim of all of their emotions was entirely possible, but it was a difficult thing to do when you weren’t a royal. Besides, she doubted they would treat her nicely if she killed a pony right in front of them.
‘Or maybe that doesn’t matter…’
These ponies were different. She learned pretty quickly that they were a far cry from the ponies described in all those lessons growing up in her hatch. The ponies her Broodmothers described wouldn’t stand idly by as their own was in pain. These ponies made sure the victim was in a position to be hurt.
‘I oughta learn about them, just as they are learning about me.’
They replaced the inhibitor when they came in to drag the groaning stallion out. Lace didn’t struggle or protest, even when her senses were suddenly cut off once again. The hunger was gone– or at least, the pain of it was. She wanted more, of course, but she knew when to stop feeding. That was one of the most important lessons from the Infiltrator class: to know when to stop. To know when to cut your losses, and move on. To know when you’ve had enough, and to temper your own hunger.
The hunger would slowly return to her, yes, but now she had a way of feeding. The ponies would let her feed once again, she knew it. As long as she continued to drip feed them information, they would keep her alive. They would not break her spirit.
Days passed, once again only marked by the occasion of being questioned. Lace found that she began to look forward to these conversations. Credit where credit was due, these ponies knew how to keep her talking. Perhaps they weren’t so idiotic after all.
They were still interested in the invasion. Particularly, in Queen Chrysalis and Prince Phasmatodea. They asked questions about both, which Lace answered as she got her own answers.
The Queen was still alive.
They referred to Phasma in the past tense.
‘Idiots.’
It seemed like the Queen might have won the schism, but Lace knew Phasma wouldn’t go down easily. Whatever was happening outside her walls, she knew the Lodges and the First Fang would never stop fighting. So while she slowly pulled answers from her captors, and fed them answers of her own in return, she got a better and better picture of just what had happened during The Promised Day.
Then everything changed.
At the end of one particularly boring conversation, she was wheeled not to her cell, but to a different wing entirely. This wing had open cells; metal bars kept the occupants of the cells away from the Royal Guards, who strode through the hall without care.
The changelings in the cells all hissed and snarled at the ponies as they passed, and stared at Lacewing with curiosity and shock.
All of them had inhibitor rings on. Whatever method the ponies had for making them and putting them on, they had also made sure to lock them tightly somehow. Lace couldn’t even begin to guess how they worked, as enchantment wasn’t a particularly known field in the Fourth Hive.
They stopped at an empty cell, and wheeled her into it, dumping her onto the ground unceremoniously. Then, they left.
The changelings across the hall, pressed up against the bars, began asking questions. Lace asked questions of her own.
For whatever reason, Lace had been kept separate from the rest of the changelings. As it turned out, she had talked a lot about changelings, more than anyling else. But in return, she was the first to feed, if her own internal clock and calendar was anything to trust. Most importantly, she learned the stories of the changelings imprisoned here.
She was in the dungeons of Canterlot Castle.
The invasion had failed.
Queen Chrysalis had apparently killed Phasma.
Lies. Lies. Lies.
Lace didn’t believe it. Not any of it, not at first. But they all shared their stories, and talked. Some were loyalists. Some were Lodgers. All of them had their stories to share. Changelings had died, both in the sudden civil war, and to the advent of the new alicorn. Daybreaker, she was called, and she did break the day. The Promised Day had been a bloodbath, and did nothing but bring suffering to the changeling species. The Hive Eternal had been badly wounded.
But they were all still alive, and so the Hive Eternal was as well. No ling knew if anyone else outside in particular was alive, but from the stories they gathered from the prisoners that were brought in one by one and added to their number, the Legions were in full retreat.
The invasion had indeed failed.
Phasma was nowhere to be seen. Same with Coxa, Oestridae, Tarsus, or any of the other leaders of the Lodges. It was assumed that the East and West Swarms had either pulled out without resistance, or were annihilated entirely.
‘Phasma…’
He wasn’t dead. Lace didn’t believe that. Only Chrysalis had emerged from their duel, and one changeling claimed to have witnessed Phasma burn up entirely, but Lace never believed that. Her friends would come to save her.
She knew they would.
But being introduced to the other changelings wasn’t the only change in her new life. They had stories, stories of being completely uncooperative. Stories of being made to be cooperative. Eventually, it wouldn’t matter if Lace believed those stories or not, because she would be telling them herself.
Before that all started, she was fed. All the changelings were fed love. It was scraps spread amongst the large crowd of them in the dungeon, but it was food. Several changelings revealed that they were being forced to extract love from ponies, so that they all could survive. Lace figured out that she more or less started that particular procedure by accident.
Scraps to make the hunger less. Not go away, no, but it hid the pain. That was enough. The changelings had been accustomed to starvation-rations in the Fourth Hive, especially when disaster struck. Hunger became a haunting spectre in the dungeons, present on everyling’s shoulders and minds.
Then the ponies asked questions that Lace knew she couldn’t answer at all. They got those answers, regardless.
It started out small.
They demanded to know how to detect Infiltrators. They knew about Lace’s importance. Either they had listened in to the conversations between her and the other changelings in the cells, or had figured it out from the answers she had given them over time. In the end, it didn’t matter how they figured it out, only that they did. The ponies knew that Lacewing was important. They knew she held a lot of answers, even more than the common drones around her. And she had a history of being cooperative.
They weren’t happy when she refused to tell them anything about detecting changelings.
Not that she really knew in the first place. She could figure out ways, but it seemed like they wanted a mystical method of instantly finding all changelings within Equestria. Nothing like that existed, but she didn’t say that. She instead told them where to shove it.
Their patience wore thin. Hours of questioning dragged on. They started to withhold food. Then, they hurt her.
Slowly and slightly, at first. But Lace was strong, and she believed in her friends, wherever they may be. Phasma. Oestridae. Coxa. Tarsus. Thorax. All of them. They would come to save them all. They would beat these ponies, and free the changelings.
She just had to survive.
Survive.
Survive.
‘Survive!’
Lace cried in pain and went limp. The chains holding her rattled as she went limp, and the pony sighed.
“What spell detects changelings?” She asked for the hundredth time.
“Survive,” Lace repeated, gritting her teeth.
“Again,” the pony nodded to her companion. That damned unicorn, the white one with the turquoise mane that had been her personal interrogator, once again lit her horn in red magic. Lace’s muscles seized up as the electricity ripped through her chitin, burning her inside out once again. Once she was nice.
‘Survive!’
She was returned to her cell, which had gained two other occupants over the days she was there. The changelings rushed to her limp body when the ponies locked the cell door behind them.
“Lace, you okay?” One of them asked.
“Nnngh,” Lace answered.
“You’re going to be okay, Lace,” the changeling answered.
His name was Leaf Cutter, and he had been all the way in Cincinneighti when he had been captured. The Legions had evacuated Equestria by now. The changelings in Canterlot wouldn’t be saved.
‘They are going to save us. We will survive,’ Lace asserted to herself.
“Just don’t move,” Leaf Cutter said, checking her over.
It wasn’t like anyone else was in a much better shape, anyways. The ponies hadn’t captured anyone without a fight, so many arrived with injuries. Some didn’t survive. The added hunger was a burden some of the injured just couldn’t handle. The ponies had started doing more than just demanding information, as Lace could now testify.
What’s more, there were whispers of tests. The ponies were testing their spells and enchantments on the changelings, seeing if they could detect, deter, or hurt them in any way.
Lace had seen some of the tests herself. They had managed to get their hooves on Adamantium somehow, and though many of the tests were benign, not all of them were. Scorched chitin, splintered carapace, and zapped bugs were occasional outcomes.
Outcomes that the ponies had been wanting.
This all kept up for days.
‘Survive!’
Weeks.
‘Survive!’
Months.
“We will survive this,” Lacewing said through gritted teeth.
Leaf Cutter didn’t respond.
He hadn’t returned since they took him two weeks ago. He wasn't the only one to die. Several changelings had died during group testing. Sometimes they were forced to watch as their comrades choked to death, or bled out. Usually the ponies gave the changelings basic medical aid. Usually it worked. Not always.
“We will survive this,” Lacewing repeated.
Her own chitin, fractured since they had first captured her, broken and rehealed several times, was covered in dried blood or thin cracks in her shell.
She was broken physically. This was irrefutable.
But she would survive.
They fitted them all with collars, replacing the inhibitor rings. They were told what would happen if they disobeyed. If they tried to run. If they tried to fight.
‘I will endure.’
They demanded information about Phasma. She told them little, though many sessions ended with her bleeding and sobbing, and the ponies with the answers they wanted. Every hour she resisted was an hour wasted. Every hour wasted added up to days lost. The ponies would be stalled as long as possible.
‘I will survive.’
Her friends were coming. Nothing else was acceptable. She never gave up on them, and she knew that they would not give up on her.
Even if they had to go through every single pony in Equestria to save her, the First Fang would. These ponies, this Division-P as it became known as, were just obstacles in their way.
‘We will survive. We always have. We always will. The Hive Eternal has never fallen. It never will.’
Lace was laying with her back against the cold stone wall behind her, letting the cold instill numbness into her broken elytra. They had cut off a portion of one of her wings to study it earlier that day, and the bleeding had only just stopped. But she felt more alive than she ever had in the past few months. For the first time since she woke up, she didn't feel alone. There was someone with her. He was not sitting next to her in her cell, yet he was still next to her. He was distant, yet close enough to embrace Lacewing in a tight hug.
She was feeling Phasma's Weave again.
"Yes, it is me who you sense. Prince Phasmatodea of the Fourth Hive lives yet, and I have come tonight for all of you. Keep silent, and this shall be the last night you will be bound in irons. In the name of the Hive Eternal, I order your silence. By Panar, I swear that you all shall be free tomorrow, whatever else comes of it. As it is woven, so it shall be.”
The longest minutes of her life were the easiest to wait out, for Lacewing knew she was right all along.
She felt the wall shake. A little bit of dust fell from the ceiling, and several Division-P guards rushed past her cell, yelling.
And Lacewing smiled.
The First Fang had come to save her.
“I am unbroken.”
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Nice.
btw I am the only one who pre-read this so any errors are on mesa.
Warcrimes for all.
Kill'em
I love that ending to the chapter
Lacewing the unbroken, huh...
Yeah. That sounds nice.
And Celestia's probably beating herself up in the background...
Well, we have starvation, torture, unauthorized surgery... anything else? Seems like plenty of warcrimes happened in the cells. See how the ponies react to these facts.
Very nice thanks for the chapter love it as always
11017917
It also says it was posted on the 18th of october but its the 17th for me XD for chapter 123 - Unbroken
looks like Lacewing just got herself a tital. also with mind contol and dream walking being things in equestia it is likely that her memorys can be used as evidence for a trial of Division-P and if anyone from them disagrees then they will just have volentered their comrads for their memorys to be looked over aswell.
...
Damn. I got no words...
*Grabs shotgun for evil pones*
But this will do nicely.
That's pretty fuckin metal, ngl
Oh my god!! That was so depressing to read, but also inspiring at the same time. She survived, she pressed on even when there was little to no hope! Genuinely got chills when I read Phasma’s message through the weave. You just gave that a whole new meaning! WOOOOOOO
Also:
black*
Double “who, who”
Double “physically”
🧡
Long Live Lacewing the Unbroken!
"I will stand unbroken. for no matter how the wind howls, it cannot move the mountain."
wow it's been a year. this story is just amazing.
this is a grate chapter of Lace telling her story.
i have a good idea of what i would do with him cut his horn off and put a fire ruby in the stump so it never heals, and just a tiny bit of magic will set the ruby heating.
11017962
"Do not prove your weakness with death,
Only hatred moves mountains"
~ Vulcan Hyziliac
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You live in the US?
11017916
Lack of medical care and psychological torture as well, seeing fellow prisoners die from untreated wounds isn't exactly pleasant.
Aaah the blissful few hours ago when a friend and I discussed what we expected of this chapter and he joked we'd get a auschwitz parallel, and I a unit 731 one.
Well I was god darned right apparently
Very cool chapter, Lace really is the definition of Hope Dies Last and for that I might draw something if I'm still in the mood once I've slept on this chapter
It’s over already
This chapter I mean
Double physically
Black
Unbroken, eh? Got to ask, any inspiration from what happened to Louis Zamperini at all?
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Why yes yes I do
Hug the bug.
Poor Lace. The way the ponies treated these prisoners was awful, and the perpetrators should be punished severely for their misdeeds.
Although I like the fact that the ponies who did these things were few and far between. These ponies were the cruelest of the cruel and I must admit it would only have gotten worse for the Changelings if they weren’t broken out. If these were more rational times for the ponies and if Daybreaker was never in power this sort of thing would never had happened. The conditions the Changelings were in was horrid and unfortunately many people even today go through the same thing. Luckily for the Changelings these actions have ended with Daybreaker and after hearing this testimony Celestia will need to be a good deal harsher in punishing these wrongdoers. To do anything less is an insult to Lace and her fellow victims.
Hehe it said the title of the chapter
Oh. This is a double punch to the gut for Celestia. Not only is Phas proven right, but she just learned that experimentation and torture was approved on her own ponies, as well.
11017916
You forgot weapon testing on them as well
Finally! Here it is! An Equestrian Concentration Camp! And I have to say I'm not at all disappointed.
Particularly loved the slow escalation of brutality from 'modern prison', to 'cold war dictatorship', to the beginnings of a 'Unit 731' type of deal. All the talk of ww2 had me slightly worried we were going to see nazi levels of evil, which would be absurd giving what we know of pony society (besides being something extremely hard to handle respectfully), so I appreciate that that wasn't the case. It also made for great tension: you had me practically shaking by the end, fearing how far Division P was going to go.
And I do think you stopped them at a good point. Say what you will about Division P, but humans are a hundred times crueler (in comparison, they were remarkably professional). I'm not sure even I, with how expressive about wanting an Equestrian Concentration Camp I've been, would have been comfortable with a description of, say, Pinochet-type torture.
Nothing more to say really, other than great chapter.
11018056
I agree with you. Ponies don’t have the same sort of nature as Humans do. So it takes the most extreme of individuals to even get this far. But could they have gone farther? Thankfully this is a question that can’t be answered.
11018052
That’s a good point. Other Ponies (maybe not as innocent as others) have gotten hurt by the actions of Division P. Celestia needs to see this. If she chooses to remain blind to these crimes against creaturanity (what would be this world’s version of the word ‘humanity’ anyways? Creaturekind?) it will only prove to Phasma that the current leadership is either really drunk (which she is) or that Celestia doesn’t care about making amends. But I have faith that things will pull through. As far as we’ve seen when she is herself Celestia is a just and compassionate leader. I will be really surprised if she isn’t deeply affected by the actions of her darker self and those who served under her.
I have been reading this story from the day it first released, I have re-read it time and again up to this point and I must say I love it and I can't wait for more.
Keep up the good work, this is an amazing story
Dear Kkslider. this story is amazing. easily in my top ten stories that I've ever read. please. when the time comes that this story is to be marked as complete. you should edit the story, weed out any remaining errors be they grammatical or otherwise, AND PUBLISH THIS STORY. I will be more than willing to throw $300 for a physical version of this story.
11017916
Let's not forget: Experimentation (medical or otherwise) on prisoners of war, resulting in injury and multiple deaths. Sounds to me like Division P had an "Angel of Death" or two of their very own on the payroll.
We can also infer that Lacewing's known VIP status likely spared her from the nastiest/riskiest of Division P's experiments. I can only imagine the kinds of horrors that will get added to the list once the testimonies of all the prisoners are gathered and analyzed as a whole. Needless to say, a proper investigation of Division P's actions is sure to take months; and i imagine a number of their offices currently feature burnt trashcans full of ash.
11017961
I would be upset if she has not earned that name
gotta say for me at least, this was the most satisfying chapter yet. that ending was perfect
Celestia... Would you like to comment?
In all honesty, Phasma might be disappointed that division P is not all evil as he would expect. Not to excuse the things that were done but things like this tend to snowball out of control fast and hard. Ponies suffer from herd-mentality and what once was unthinkable becomes the norm. Even humans suffer from herd-mentality. Plasma probably won't be able to point where it all went wrong.
11018164
I suspect that Lace is actually more important to them, they knew she was stalling them, but they didn’t want to dispose of her yer, less knowledgeable changelings though? I have little doubt that they received the kind of treatment Mengele dished out. They tortured her alright, they experimented on POWs her included and they avoided the more gruesome experiments on her so they could continue to extract intelligence, as Chrysalis was still under siege and later Phasma known to roam the lands. These things made her extremely valuable and I have little doubt they managed to figure out she’s on the little list of friends that Phasma has, which multiplied her worth dozen times over.
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11018143
Glad you all enjoyed the chapter. I basically hammered it out over the weekend, so I'm relieved and surprised to hear that everyone loved it.
11017907
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11018139
Titles for everyone!
11018005
11018056
It may be hard to believe, but it kinda turned out accidentally to be like the Japanese Internment Camps. The ponies had a goal, and those were the methods they used to achieve them. I'm glad that the parallels can be made, though. The ponies definitely are capable of committing evil, but the level that the Nazis operated under was just not possible here. Not only are they less inclined to be evil (thanks to growing up under Celestia, most of all), but there is a distinct lack of necessary motivations for that to happen.
The biggest reason for the Holocaust was the Stab In The Back myth, which obviously can't happen if there was no war lost.
11017982
The ponies are just joking to each other, with Lacewing pumping iron in the background like when Uncle Iroh was getting fucking buff while in prison in The Last Airbender.
11018097
I'm happy to hear my fic is good enough to reread, It's been a blast to write, and often times I get this worry that somehow I've been writing a poor story overall, despite the chapters being well received.
11018119
I have had people ask me to do a printed version of the story. While it is tempting, I am not really sold on the feasibility of it, considering that it's technically illegal. We'll see. I appreciate the kind words, and I'm proud that it's considered one of your favorites!
The fact that Lace never broke and never gave up in stalling them for as long as possible uplifts and warms my soul.
Praise be the Hive fucking eternal.
11018179
I'm going to play Devil's Advocate (Celestia's argument)
if it is not directly shown or stated within the chapter then it is wrong for us to make assumptions
Well based on the crimes Lace describes and if you assume a reliable testimony, that would warrant execution for war crimes.
Torture, denial of medical treatment, medical/magical experimentation on unwilling test subjects. Nuremberg isn't a defence.
11018192
As I understand it you can get this printed. The amount that you can charge has to be equal to or less than the publishing cost (zero net profit)
Goldfur (another great writer) said that was how they were able to publish the Pathverse and Markverse
...though I might be misquoting them
11018209
The problem is that the printing company makes a profit off of printing it, so printing it at cost doesn't matter in the end.
Oh...
There is a lot of stuff the ponies will be trialed for for what they did to changelings
Experimentation, etc
Even for things they did to ponies.
The guards that fed pony prisoners to changelings?
They are getting their asses on trial, just like others
It was even easy to avoid that.
They could have paid ponies to be willingly drained and similar, at least
But yeah after this I don't see how Celestia would have any ground to stand on.
Phasma may be had been calmed down with a hope that things weren't this bad, but it turned out that things were that bad or even worse
He should be on the offensive and not back down even when Luna pleads him
The only thing that defines how evil can ponies go, is the author's decision. I had seen plenty of stories with ponies as evil as Hitler himself.
Anyway, cutting off parts of the body for study from living person and live weapon testing, plus frequent torture on electric chair is already quite enough.
Plus they certainly did have a contingency with killing everyone.
It's that enough to be executed for? For torturers, yes. For guards, doctors, logistic personnel, management? Probably not.
But, frankly, as a war crimes, the only one who decides whether they will be punished is Celestia.
Wait, that's not the right line...
The ponies who will end up squeezing through the trial because of political,noble,money connections should be assassinated by changelings
Happy accidents and all that
11018266
Now I noticed that XD
The author had to watch RWBY while or before writing XD
Well, this is Nazi death camps, Equestria version. If they try to repurpose the Nazi pones into the space program Phasma better lose his fkn mind xD. No Operation Paperclip this time.
#HugTheBug #CelestiaIsGonnaNeedSomeBurnCream #LaceUnbroken
Took me a moment to remember this was a flashback but nice chapter.