The morning that came this day was beset by a bright sun shining over a clear sky. The temperature was as warm as the day before, and was only going to change for the better once summer came rearing its lazy head around. The garden was finished and quiet, having not yet sprouted anything, but surely destined to very soon.
Habeas had gone to Ponyville an hour before to pick up some more plant food for the garden, just in case something bad had the small chance to happen to it throughout the year. So to compensate for not really having to do anything that morning, Persica helped her daughter with some of her homework from school.
Peach Blossom did well answering the problems by herself for the most part, and only seemed to truly ask for help on deciphering the answers to the bonus questions on the ends to each of her papers. As she decided to try and figure out the last one for herself - a complicated math problem - Persica used the time to walk out to the porch and get some fresh air. She looked out over the yard with her good eye and smiled as the warm breeze passed through her mane.
Her life and mind felt so peaceful, she could swear she was merely suffering through the greatest dream of all time, and was bound to wake up and have the illusion crumble away any minute now. But that never came. It never came, and she was glad for it.
She continued looking over the property, past the garden and to the orchard. She was seconds from turning about and walking back inside, when she suddenly detected a dark shape from the corner of her eye, a far ways off at the base of the forest's treeline. And it was that dark shape that made her freeze in place. She recognized what it was quite quickly, and squinted to make out any further features on it, before her eyes widened in surprise, fear, and then despair.
It was a changeling alright. The curved horn on its forehead, unlike Habeas', was smooth and fine. And what made Persica's mouth drop then was what she saw in one of its eyes. One eye, one damnable eye on this changeling, the left one, was as red as a rose petal.
Then the creature started jumping about to and fro at the base of the treeline with a grin of playfulness on its face, as though purposefully attempting to get her attention like a child to a parent. The same bout of movement she remembered seeing all those years ago. The same maneuver that started the series of brief events that ruined Persica's life.
Persica had know idea how to react to this nightmare made manifest, and her body trembled with a thousand emotions that struggled for dominance over her brain. Her face was limp and pale like a dead fish, and her stomach curled in a way that made her simply want to retch, which she never did. It didn't take long for Peach Blossom to eventually turn her head in her mother's direction and spot the strange mannerisms she was showing.
"Mom?" Peach Blossom asked from the table she was at, seeing that her mother wasn't doing anything else except exhibiting this odd, and rather demented form of behavior. "Mom? What is it?"
Persica didn't appear to even register her daughter's words. She continued staring out at the being at the edge of her property, her teeth gritting together until her gums started to bleed. It wasn't until a few more seconds crawled slowly by that she finally worked up the stable mentality to respond.
"Blossom... Blossom, stay inside. Go to your room." Persica's tone was monotonous, but there was unmistakable grimness there as well. Peach Blossom knew something was terribly wrong, and this feeling was only solidified by what came next. "Lock your door, and do. Not. Come out. No matter what. Do as I say right now."
"I... I... yes, Mom," Peach Blossom obeyed, hurriedly leaving the table and chair and scrambling up the stairs to her room. Persica looked back out to the treeline and glared.
The creature was still there at the edge of the property, prancing about like a spring stoat entrancing a rabbit for the slaughter. Persica took one last look at it and vanished inside her house for only a few seconds. When she reappeared, she had her spear clutched tightly in one of her hooves.
The changeling with the red eye let off a toothy sneer that Persica could see from where she stood. The second Persica began making her way in its direction with long, heavy steps in her stride, the creature vanished into the woodland standing behind her as though she were a shadow fading away. Unheeded, the mare marched forth with a blank face of hatred and wrath curled over her face, uncaring of anything else except mindlessly pursuing.
She entered the woods and followed the hoof-shaped tracks in the ground for several dozen meters. The tracks eventually came to a stop in between a pair of old oaks, but still she went on, scanning around the environment with cold desperation and light sweat raining down from her face. She went deeper and deeper in, unaware of the dark shape effectively hiding in the thick foliage of the trees above.
Knowing exactly what form she could use to catch Persica off guard, Apini, sitting on a thick branch, transformed into the shape of the stallion she still vividly remembered defeating many years beforehoof. Then, as Persica just started walking below her, the changeling wearing the form of Chantilly Cream silently pounced downward onto her with a grin.
Habeas returned to the farmstead soon enough. He placed the bags of plant food he carried in the cart behind him by the barn, and then parked the cart nearby it. After performing that, he made his way to the house and pushed the door open a little.
"Persica, I'm home!" he sang out with a smile. When he fully entered the house and heard only his echo, he realized nobody responded. Looking around, he saw no one either.
"Persica?" he spoke again, scratching his chin. He went into the kitchen and living room, but still there was no one. "Peach Blossom, are you there? Hello? Anypony?"
With that, he tightened his handkerchief around his neck and decided to exit the house again, hoping that they were somewhere outside. After a brief check around the garden he went to go search around the orchard. But no matter where he looked and no matter how many peach trees he poked his head around by the time he got to its end, he saw no hide nor hair of them.
He pondered what had potentially happened to the two as he stood there. Only when his webbed ears suddenly picked up the rustling sound of brush being trampled and pushed over did he turn his head to the forest bordering the property, and a brown-furred shaped instantly came into his sights. His jaw dropped and his heart nearly stopped when he saw that it was Persica lurching weakly forward from the treeline, a hoof to her chest and red blood leaking past it, as well as stained over some other patches of her fur.
"P-Persica?" he stammered. Breaking out of his daze, he rushed forward, through the grassy ground separating them as fast as he could run, and to Persica's side. The moment he reached her, Persica collapsed with a breathless and blank sigh, and Habeas only just caught her in his outstretched hooves. Terror coursing through his entire being, he held her close and looked into her spinning, hurting eyes.
"What happened?!" he spoke to her in a high-pitched squeak, holding one of his hooves over the one she had covering her wound.
She looked at him with an utterly bewildered expression, then shifted her view to behind him. Her face twisted into a fearful visage, her mouth opened, and her lips fluttered frantically, trying to form words. "Be... behind-"
Her sentence was thrown off when Habeas experienced a burst of agonizing pain suddenly tear through his upper left leg, straight into the base of his thigh. He gasped in surprise and shot his head downward to it, seeing the silver shape of a spear tip completely impaled within it; piercing through the back and exiting through the front.
"Wha-?!" he sputtered, shouting out loudly from the wretched feeling. When he turned his view to who held the weapon, he saw a female changeling, bearing one bright red eye, looking into his own eyes from less than three feet away with a sadistic leer on her face.
"Hello, traitor," the changeling greeted through grimaced fangs. With a sharp and unforgiving pull, she tugged the spear's tip out of his thigh, making sure to twist it around for added excruciating torment first. Recoiling from it with a cry, Habeas staggered forward from the pain with Persica still drooped over his shoulder. He looked behind himself and saw the creature standing in place, cleaning the changeling blood from where the weapon had penetrated his flesh and shooting a taunting look toward him. Knowing that she was merely toying with an easy kill, and wanting more than anything to escape the attacker, he limped forward to the only place he could see that offered only a sliver of protection for Persica and himself.
The barn.
He quickly limped and hopped to it as fast as he could, and by the time he flung open its entrance he was out of breath. Bringing her in with the assistance of his fluttering wings to speed the process further, he went further into the barn until he was able to set her down on a bed of hay in the back. When that had been shakily accomplished, he looked her over, staring at the horrible injury she received and wincing in horror.
"You're... you're going to be okay!" he said exasperatedly, trying as much as he could to convince himself that this was the truth as he tried to convince her, even though it was blatant to both of them that this was not the case. "It's not... that bad..."
"It is... it's deep," Persica wheezed as a small red stream of blood started to form at the edge of her lip, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to endure the agony that felt like a bonfire burning within her lungs. "Sh-she jumped me... I r-ran into the woods after her... she jumped me... took my spear... I'm such an idiot..."
"Shh... shh..." Habeas hushed quietly, ignoring his own wound to the best of his abilities as he looked to hers. He placed both of his hooves gently over it, but failed to stop the bleeding. "Don't talk. Just breath."
Persica could not heed this command. "She's the s-same one. The same changeling who t-took Ch-Chantilly... it's her... she turned into h-him when she jumped me. I didn't know, I... I c-couldn't... I couldn't..."
"Yes, I will admit that. I am the one who caused the downfall of your dear husband," the voice of the invading changeling, nearly emotionless and cold like ice, piped in with more worse an effect than even when Habeas had been struck in his leg, causing both him and Persica to look her way. She stood at the barn entrance; Persica's spear in her hole-filled hooves, and a frown upon her face.
"You..." Habeas growled, his brow lowering in unbridled anger. "You came for me, didn't you?" He looked to Persica, then back to the other changeling. "That's why you're here. You want to kill me, right? Is is because Chrysalis wants me dead?"
"That is correct," came Apini's response. She paced forward a few more feet until she stood in the middle of the barn, less than six feet away from her prey, and under where the plow hung above. She held the spear forward, ready to use it if one of them mustered the strength to attack.
"Then why her?" Habeas asked next, motioning to Persica. "I'm the one you want. Why did you harm her?"
Apini turned her head away for a second, briefly thinking of what to say. "I guess you could say I've been... monitoring you two for quite some time. I've seen enough to know that you truly do love this mare... you love her enough to forget your duties to the hive. Enough to forsake them completely." The words came out of her mouth like rancid venom dripping from an adder's crooked fangs. "I have known nothing but hardship from our hive, 'Habeas Brittle'. But still I serve Chrysalis to the best of my abilities."
"Why?" Habeas asked as he still held onto Persica's shivering form, her ragged breathing betrayed the damage that had been done by her wounds. "Why on earth do you?"
"Because I'm something you are not," the changeling with the red eye hissed. "I am loyal. I have been given ample rewards for the services I performed in Chrysalis' name. But for a traitor such as yourself, you don't deserve anything for this crime. You don't deserve to take what you had for granted, and expect to be given something greater than what you got beforehoof. You took your faith and gave it to a mere, miserable mare. And not only that, but a specific pony that has hunted our kind in the past."
Persica could hear this, and she glared with all the strength that remained within her. "You d-don't know... anything," she grunted.
Habeas too looked very much enraged as he did hurt. "She's no different than you or I," he growled. "We met as foes several months back. I was gravely injured, but she took care of me and we became friends. Time passed, and now our relationship is... something more. Something better."
"Something wretched and abominable," Apini corrected, her red eye flashing brightly. "Your 'love' is blind lust. It is more a vain illusion than you'll think it ever is. But no matter. It will end whatever there was of this twisted lie when I finish draining every last drop of love and affection she ever had for anything from her... aching heart."
"You... you wouldn't!" Habeas sputtered in terror, holding Persica tighter in his grasp defensively, as it was all he could do without directly letting her go.
"And another thing. As I said before, I recognize this mare. I devoured all the love from her equally-despicable husband years ago on orders from our beloved queen, and let him go after her himself," Apini continued on. She looked directly at Persica, and her sneer intensified. "You know, Persica, I thought I'd let him finish the job for me, but when you pulled through and I found that you had a sweet little child in tow, I decided to spare your worthless hide from my own power. I see now that mercy was a mistake. One that will soon be corrected."
"Heartless... bitch..." Persica spat, coughing up a small wad of crimson from her lips to the ground in front of their tormentor.
Apini simply could not help but smile cruelly, her grip on the spear slacking just a small bit. "Those words will soon fit you quite well, worm. For however longer you live after to embody them, anyway."
Habeas couldn't take it anymore. Hearing the threat, the dark promise that this changeling gave, was the last thing he could take. "No!" he screamed, quickly and carefully letting go of Persica and flinging his ailing form forward at the changeling that threatened him and the pony he loved. As he sailed through the air on his fluttering wings, his chipped horn lit up in a green light as he prepared a spell, and his front hoof smacked away the spear to the floor while it wasn't aimed at him. His body hit Apini square in her chest, but she endured the blow fully.
Apini grunted and reeled her head back in response to this assault. Her own horn glowed as well, with a particular malevolence behind it, and she slammed it forward against his head with all of her power. A sickening crackle went out from the force used, and Habeas let out a piercing cry as he felt his horn splinter and peel away until it shattered; chitinous bits scattering everywhere about the barn's floor and leaving naught but a smoldering stump in its place.
He was tossed back by a sharp kick from Apini's upper hooves, and impacted against the barn's walls several feet away, crumpling to the ground. Now without him to antagonize her foul progress, Apini returned her attention to Persica and opened her maw. Persica winced back and groaned in burning pain as she felt her love abandon her. It formed into a stream of pink energy that was pulled out from her chest and floated towards Apini's waiting mouth, becoming swallowed whole.
Habeas could do nothing about it. He tried to summon up his power to do something, anything to stop this incident from happening as it was, but realized too late that his horn was gone. Destroyed utterly. He tried to get to his wounded legs, but stumbled and fell back down; too weak, injured and helpless to do anything. Tears were falling from his face and clouding his vision at the unfairness of it all, but through his soaked and blurred eyes he caught the sight of a short figure of some kind appear at the barn's entrance, several meters behind the feeding changeling.
Before Habeas knew it, the sound of something like a rope snapping suddenly went out, followed by the squealing and screeching of the roof-bound pulleys they were connected to. Apini was caught unawares by this ear-grating sound, and she lifted her up head to where it originated from in turn, just in time to see a large, dark, metallic shape rapidly descend upon her.
Crunch.