In the bleak landscape of collapsed buildings and shattered roadways, ponies were smiling and cheering. The cloudless sky was the perfect backdrop for the earth pony on the makeshift stage, which sported a white banner that read “Hear Guiding Light read from the Holy Book of Celestiaism. Let him give you hope!”
Striding up and down the stage with pride and confidence, Guiding Light held his audience in absolute thrall. White flowing robes matched his bone-white fur perfectly. His long blond mane swayed in the breeze as he preached to the surrounding crowd.
“For the past five years we have all suffered from the loss of the world’s magic and our beloved Princesses, my dear ponies. We have all lost loved ones to starvation, floods and cities collapsing into chasms born from terrifying earthquakes. Many of the pegasi here have lost loved ones when Clouds-dale crashed into a valley,” he said somberly.
A smile crept up as he puffed out his chest. “We have lost far more than we have gained, but now it’s a glorious day, friends and neighbors! Pegasi are flying again! Earth ponies are making crops grow once more! Unicorns can finally use their horns after what feels like decades of waiting! The blessed magic has come back to the world, just as I said it eventually would! Praise Celestia!”
“Praise Celestia!” cheered the crowd. Earth ponies began to sob with joy. Books were held aloft with unicorn magic. Pegasi shot up into the sky like bottle rockets.
Guiding Light held up a thick, elderly book that was bound with edge-frayed brown cloth. “For it is written in Larson 6:31, ‘Have faith in the one that commands the sun, for she never falters.’”
He opened the book, flipped through the dog-eared, bookmarked pages and stopped at one section. “Let’s not forget the sacred Princess of the cool and quiet night, Luna! She has also returned to set the moon on its course once again! Praise Luna!”
“Praise Luna!” A few ponies whirled their hooves in the hair, braying and whooping.
“For it is written in The Book Of Polsky, chapter fifty-two, verse three, ‘Who could better insure the peaceful slumber of the children, and therefore of their families, than Luna, benevolent ruler of the night?”
“Praise Luna!”
Behind the enthusiastic, mesmerized crowd, two people studied the earth pony that traveled the Equestria wasteland, known only as Guiding Light to his followers. The pegasus was dark brown with a short cropped black mane. She stood on four metal crowbar-shaped forelegs that replaced the lower half of her otherwise organic legs.
Her companion was housed deep within an enormous mechanical pony head. The head was three times the size of an ordinary pony and was painted pink. Under the head, three multi-jointed robotic arms wielded a light blue cannon, a huge red boxing glove and a two-pronged claw. Under the arms a jet engine quietly held aloft the head a few inches from the ground.
Since the pilot of the robotic head was Pinkie Pie, who also designed the head, a large metal grill under the steel-plated muzzle was made to look like a giant smile. Two plate-sized eye cameras moved around on short, jointed stalks as they studied Guiding Light.
“Well, Pinks? Are you filming all of this?” asked the pegasus.
“Oh, I’m getting his best side, Springy. I have about ten minutes of video footage now.”
“Is he what we suspected he’d be?”
“Yep!”
Spring Step grinned, rubbing her front hooves together. “Then we’ve got him. Let’s let Guiding Light finish up his god and pony show. We’ll have a heart to heart with him soon enough.”
“Just remember this, friends,” implored Guiding Light. “Never give up hope, for the future is the only thing any of us have to look forward to. We have all prayed in the darkest hours of our lives for the world to be made whole again. Your unwavering faith has now been rewarded! Give your love to Celestia!”
“Hail Celestia!”
Guiding Light stood on his rear legs and held his front hooves up to the sky. “Give your love to Luna!”
His awestruck audience raised their hooves and cheered. “Hail Luna!”
He landed on all fours, smiling with satisfaction. “Yes, your love is all that the Princesses need. None of us have actually seen them return, but rest assured they will make their presence known soon. I must head on down the road, for there are other ponies that have to know where their love should be sent as well. Thank you all for coming, my friends! Farewell!”
He leapt off the stage and trotted happily into a nearby tent. As he packed away his robes and other belongings into a suitcase, he noticed that the sunlight from the open tent flap had been obscured.
Turning towards the intrusion, he said, “I’m sorry, friend, but I can’t stay . . .” but was stunned silent at the sight of Pinksworth smiling at him as Spring Step walked into the tent.
Holding a hoof up to his face, he looked at the pegasi’s metal legs with concern. “Oh, my! It seems that you have lost more than many other ponies. How may I help you, my child?”
“I don’t want your pity, mister,” replied Spring Step. “Just a few minutes of your time. Both Pinks-worth and I came from New Canterlot because we’ve heard rumors of a travelling priest in the wastelands.”
Taken aback, he said, “Well, bless my soul! I’m flattered! I had no idea I was this famous.”
“Well, we have rescued a few ponies who wore shirts that said ‘Celestia and Luna are not dead, they are merely unemployed’. That was your slogan for years, right?”
Guiding Light breathed a resigned sigh. “I would have printed more of those if a bandit gang didn’t burn my printing press facility to ash. I guess some ponies don’t want to hear the message of hope.”
Pinksworth pushed her large body through the tent entrance and asked, “Gee, mister, why didn’t you come to New Canterlot? You could have set up a Celestiaist church with no problem at all.”
With a carefully constructed politician’s smile, he answered, “The idea had occurred to me. How-ever, my services are needed in the wastelands.”
The pegasus rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Hmm. Yeah, that and there aren’t any security cameras out here. Our city has more remote eyes than Las Pegasus, another city you never seem to visit.”
His smile slowly slid down. “Are you implying that I’m a thief? I have never asked for a single bit from any of my followers. What other priest can claim the same thing?”
Spring Step shrugged and nodded. “Huh. Well, that’s a fair point. It’s weird that you don’t have any food or water lying around, however. Most caravans have at least a few water jugs for long hauls.”
“I eat light. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .” he was stopped in midstride by Spring Step’s outstretched foreleg.
“Put on the brakes, buddy. We have something to show you. Pinkie? That tent wall behind me should be big enough for your projector. Could you show him what you saw at his sermon?”
“Will do! I’ll just block the doorway so we don’t get disturbed.” A small slot slid open between her eye-stalks, revealing a camera lens. Light flickered from it as the replay of Guiding Light’s performance played on the tent’s fabric.
The camera shot swooped over the audience. On the stage, white robes glided around.
He swallowed. “L-look, I don’t understand the point of this.”
Spring Step stood next to him and draped a hoof in a friendly, but strong, hold on his shoulders. “Just keep watching, sir. All will be revealed.”
The camera panned up the robes as Guiding Light stood on his rear legs. When he landed on all fours, it wasn’t an earth pony that smiled at his audience.
The black chitin gleamed in the searing daylight. The easy smile sported two upper fangs . The black legs had large holes in them.
“No wonder you never asked for bits. Changelings don’t need money.”
He shook his head. “This must be some kind of special effect that this robot is showing me!”
“Uh, a couple of things, mister?” interjected Pinksworth. “One, I’m not a robot. I’m actually a pony inside a mobile suit. Two, my camera eyes can’t be fooled by disguise spells. That’s why you stay away from cities. Closed circuit security cameras.”
Guiding Light groaned and sat down. In a ball of green fire, he revealed his true self. He blinked his blue compound eyes at Spring Step. “So now what? Are you going to finish me off? You might as well, since I might be the last one of my kind in Equestria.”
Spring Step patted his back, being careful to not hit the blue gossamer wings. “If we wanted to do that, you wouldn’t have heard us coming. We just want to talk, so relax.”
Pinksworth shut off the movie and faced Guiding Light. “I’m impressed that you made it this long without starving to death. Don’t changelings feed off of magic?”
He nodded. “Love is the best source of food for my kind, but only magic can make even the smallest amount of love a banquet for changelings. In the old days, before the event you ponies called ‘The Unraveling’, my queen and all my brethren could slip on our disguises, march into a city and fill up on life-giving love in an hour.”
Spring Step said, “You can’t possibly be the only changeling left alive. How did you live all these years?”
“After the magic left the world, Queen Chrysalis died in a week, even with rationing of our food. Before she perished, she told me to find other changeling hives in the northern mountains. Unfortun-ately, they had already left their caves before I arrived. I wandered after that, starving and delirious.”
He shuddered at the harsh, grinding memories. “One night I hid in a cave to wait out a massive snowstorm. I sensed some magic deep within the cave. Something glowed under a snow drift. It was a large glass jar that was sealed with tape. Floating in the jar was something I never thought I’d see. It was a cutie mark that looked like a megaphone.”
“Oh, yeah!” chirped Pinksworth. “That sounds like something Spike told me one time. There was this loony unicorn named Starlight Glimmer that his friends fought one time. She had run this village where all the ponies had given up their cutie marks and had them put in jars. It sounds like you found her secret stash.”
Looking over the changeling’s body, Spring Step said, “I don’t see that cutie mark on you.”
He looked away from the pegasus. “Well, there’s a reason for that. I didn’t slap that mark on me, I . . .uh . . . ate it.”
Guiding Light suddenly had Pinkworth’s eyes filling his field of vision. “What?” she yelped. “How could you do that? That’s like . . . well, like eating a pony! Yuck!”
“Look, I was starving, all right? That cutie mark fairly glowed with magic, which I needed to survive. Oddly enough, when I woke up the next morning, I not only felt better than I had since the world went bad, I discovered I could convince anypony of almost anything. I guess the cutie mark’s former owner was a motivational speaker.”
Spring Step nodded. “Or a priest.”
“Which is what you ponies needed in the wasteland. One of the weirdest things I discovered out here is that your kind were hoping for Celestia and Luna to return even though it was clear that they both lied about being the only ones who could make the sun and moon rise and fall. They kept bowing and praying to statues of your Princesses. Equestria’s magic may have been lost, but the love given to those stupid statues was edible enough for me.”
Guiding Light smiled to himself. “That realization turned everything around. I found a copy of the Holy Book Of Celestiaism, memorized all the stuff you people think is the truth and used my new oration talent to have that religious love aimed at me instead of stone idols. I’ve been fat with love ever since. ”
Pinksworth asked, “You never had faith that our princesses would return? You didn’t believe what you were preaching?”
Blowing a short razzing sound with his long forked tongue, he laughed. “No! My queen was the only authority in my life that I could ever take seriously. You ponies deserve the lies you believe. But my kind didn’t deserve the lies you were told.”
Rubbing the back of her head, Spring Step said, “Okay, I’m confused. What exactly are you getting at?”
“Yeah!” chirped Pinksworth. “My priest taught my family that changelings were dangerous and couldn’t be trusted.”
Rolling his eyes, he asked, “Oh, really? I know it says in the Book of Whitley, verse five ‘Yes, those vile mimicking creatures will take your shape and then take your soul. Let there be none to show them mercy. This is the unyielding will of Celestia and Luna.’ Did your priest ever tell you that we changelings were around long before the Princesses ever showed up?”
Pinksworth replied, “He might have mentioned that.”
“Did he also inform you that Equestria’s hatred of changelings came not from the Princesses, but from Starswirl the Bearded?” Smirking at the sight of Spring Step’s bewilderment, he continued. “Your version of history and my queen’s version of history are really different. Dozens of queens over the last two thousand years have told their subjects about how Starswirl was repulsed by our insect-like bodies. He didn’t even bother to talk to us. The bigot then told the Princesses that we were evil and had to be shunned or even hunted in every corner of Equestria.”
Spring Step said, “That sounds a bit far-fetched. The Celestia I met at a gala ten years ago didn’t seem to have a hateful bone in her body.”
“That’s the problem with having just two rulers for millennia; you only have their undisputed word to compare reality to. When a lie gets told long enough, it becomes the truth. Your kind and loving rulers considered us to be monsters for so long, we started to believe the same lies.”
Pinksworth replied, “Does your kind deserve those lies? Don’t you think it’s time for a change?”
Rubbing his temples, he sighed. “Look, why are you two here? Did you want to talk because I’m a priest or a changeling?”
Shrugging, Spring Step replied, “Maybe both. When the Unravelling hit, it killed most of our Celestiaist priests. Most of Equestria’s libraries are either destroyed or the books were used for bonfires. We need someone as well versed in Equestrian religion as you to help us.”
“You want me to run a church?”
Pinksworth replied, “Nope! We want you to come back with us to New Canterlot so you can hopefully raise the Princesses right.”
He blinked and shook his head in bewilderment. “What do you mean, raise them? Did they come back as babies?”
Waving her cannon in a circle, Pinksworth said, “Er, more like wraiths that go ‘merp’ a lot. They kinda got their brains smeared over a thousand miles of the world’s core for the past five years. They can’t remember a thing from their old lives.”
“We figure that you could teach them the rules and lessons laid out for them two thousand years ago by Starswirl. Only this version could be . . . what’s a good term? A new testament version? One that doesn’t treat changelings like dirt?”
After reeling in his hanging jaw, he asked, “Are you saying that Celestia and Luna could be raised by a changeling? Am I going to have to look like a pony the whole time?”
Rubbing her chin, Spring Step suggested, “Well, when the Princesses are smart enough to not make idiots of themselves in public, they can simply announce to the public that a peace treaty was signed with the changelings. Then you can show everypony your true self.”
“What are the chances of that plan actually working?”
“It’s worth a shot. Equestria needs it’s Princesses and you could stand to do better than wander the wasteland feeding off of scraps of love that aren’t even meant for you.”
Pawing at the floor, he frowned. “I . . . I don’t know.”
Pinksworth put her glove on his shoulder. “You know, Springy and I helped a zebra who was very lonely from a life of self-imposed exile. He was miserable until we showed him a better way to live. Now he’s happily reunited with his brother.”
“There’s something else you should consider,” said Spring Step.” You can’t be too sure that all of your species are gone. Once word gets out that changelings are no longer hated and feared by Celestia and Luna, their devout followers will follow the Princess’s lead, just like before. Maybe then you’ll meet more of your kind in the future.”
Patting her glove, Pinksworth added, “It’s like what you said on stage; ‘Never give up hope, for the future is the only thing any of us have to look forward to.”
Guiding Light rubbed his chin, thinking. Then he smiled.
* * *
During the last few months that Guiding Light had spent in the Canterlot Intelligence Agency, the Princesses had shown rapid growth in their mental and physical development. They had stopped making odd random noises and had fully formed bodies that were almost completely solid with coalesced magic.
They were waiting for him in a classroom built for only two students. Celestia was counting the stars in Luna’s translucent night sky hair when he walked into the room. No longer needing to wear his priest robes, he instead wore his earth pony disguise, complete with his megaphone cutie mark.
“Hello, Mister Guiding Light!” they greeted.
“I’m sorry,” he replied, cupping a hoof over one ear, “What are you supposed to call me?”
Rolling their eyes, they said, “Hello, Master Guiding Light!”
He smiled at their subservience. No changeling had ever been this close to what would eventually be the rulers of Equestria.
Guilding Light opened his copy of the New Book of Celestiaism, flicked his hooves along the pages until he reached a section that he recently composed in his study. “All right, ladies. I’m going to teach you a few lessons from the Book of Chrysalis. Verse one states, ‘The changeling is a friend to one and all.”
The Princesses opened their copies of his book, found his place in the lessons and repeated, “The changeling is a friend to one and all.”.
“Very good, students,” he said. “Very good.”
Just as soon as you weird fillies get these particular lessons drilled into your fuzzy heads, then I’ll show you what I really look like, he thought to himself with a giddy anticipation that he had not felt for years.
When you see my true self, I’ll tell you my true name.
Thorax.