//------------------------------// // CH. 18 Preperations // Story: The Last Changeling Queen // by Atuhor Name //------------------------------// Preparations Neither of them got much sleep after that intrusion. Whatever Twilight had last night, it hadn't been a nightmare as it didn't leave a nightmare behind. The changeling that checked them out went so far as to ask if Twilight had even dreamed last night. “And how would we trap it?” Naudia demanded. “You have better enchantments than the royal dungeon they locked me up in?” “Maybe, I don’t know which wing they locked you up in.” Twilight shot back, “Besides they were relying more on your magic inhibitor to keep you locked up more than anything.” “Ok so say we do get it trapped, then what?” “Well what do you mean, we’ve got it trapped then.” “What I mean is we have no idea what it is, how it works or anything, there are plenty of creatures in the badlands you can’t lock up with magic because they’ll just eat all the mana you pour into the wards faster than three changelings can pour it in.” “I don’t get the impression that it would do that.” Twilight conceded. “It sounds like it would just be armed in some way. I dunno massively powerful scrolls or some kind of null magic bomb, something that would give it that cocky attitude.” “I don’t even know how we would find such a creature in the first place, it just seems to come and go wherever it pleases.” It wasn't a comforting thought but they eventually conceded that there was nothing they could do about a demonic entity nobody else could see, that could appear at will. All that could be done was to do their best to put it out of their minds and focus on the task ahead. The task ahead being a distraction. They had to meet up with Luna one more time before leaving, something about preparing them for the journey. As it turned out it wasn't so much a preparation for the journey so much as it was a slew of fail-safes in case they got caught. Twilight had so many random recall, shielding, mind shielding, and ward breaking spells, wards, and tiny scrolls on her that she could feel her hair stand on end. “And this one is a timed auto-activation in case you know you're going to be incapacitated somehow.” Luna said as she slipped the last scroll into a crack in Twilight's armor. Naudia made no attempt to hide her amusement at Twilight's significantly fluffier magic charged coat. She had received a similar treatment already, but having no coat couldn't feel the effect like Twilight could. “Don't think you're getting off so easily. You have to swallow this.” Luna held up a small orb of hardened changeling goop. “You're not supposed to eat them like that.” Naudia wrinkled her nose at it. “I won’t get any of the love that way.” “Yes I know, now swallow it.” Luna said and attempted to jam it into Naudia's mouth. “Not until you tell me what its for.” Luna sighed. “It's a last fail-safe, something in case you become cocooned, you break it open and it should have enough love in there for you to escape. You are both equally important and it is crucial that you both come back. But if you absolutely must choose you must be the one to come back Naudia, you are in the most danger.” “But I can't leave Twilight behind. I can't.” Naudia looked offended at even the thought. “That's not fair Luna, you can't just ask one of us to leave the other behind.” Twilight said, she had a distasteful look on her face. “We can figure out how to recover you Twilight, but nobody has ever found a solution for corrupted changelings other than a merciful death. And I didn't say to leave you behind, I said if all else fails you are in less danger than Naudia of not coming back.” Luna started pacing agitatedly, “Put yourself in my horseshoes for a moment. Having to tell somepony that the first pony to willingly give them food, the first pony to stand by them in adversity even when all her friends gave up, somepony she sacrificed the future of her entire race for. To tell anybody to leave that pony behind is a terrible thing to have to do, coming to a logical conclusion about it is no comfort to me. But I will always pick being cruel over having to put one of you down.” Luna glared at Naudia as if daring her to even try to say no after that. “All right I'll take it.” Naudia finally said. ---------------- Luna had filled Naudia up to the brim with love before they left and it showed. She wasn't Pinkie levels of hyper but you could see how jittery she was simply from the way her head shot around to look at small movements. Of course her mouth wasn't idle and that betrayed more of the nervousness she was actually feeling. “Do you think birds ever get grossed out feeding their babies? Come to think of it will you get grossed out when you have to feed changeling babies? How do worms feed their babies? What do small snakes eat?” And so on, training her thoughts through tangent after tangent barely taking a breath between sentences. It was to the point where Twilight almost considered trying to magically plug her ears and wait for Naudia to run off her energy on her own. Until she actually thought about what energy she was going to be running off. “Naudia calm down, you don't want to burn off all that energy before we have to fight corrupted changelings do you?” That shut up Naudia so quickly Twilight almost felt like apologizing before she entirely knew what was wrong. Naudia got to apologizing first though. “Sorry I was just excited, I've never had this much love to just throw around before.” There wasn't really anywhere else for the conversation to go so silence sat like a wall between them punctured from the outside by regular rumblings of the stone caves around them. Whatever has happening in the city above, it was big. “So what do you want to do when all this is over?” “Alright, you ready? Cause this one is gonna sound dumb. I want to visit a museum.” “I could have sworn you had something almost exactly like that back at the hive.” “Well yeah but it's all changeling stuff, none of them have any interest in fossils or natural history or anything about other cultures beyond what is needed to blend in.” Naudia moved into a mocking tone of voice “ 'Why should we care about evolution, we were created not evolved.' And that's the end of that.” “I've been meaning to ask you about that. When you say changelings are created, what do you mean?” Twilight had half a mind to try and write down the next thing Naudia said. “That's an easy one. We don't mean we believe in some sort of higher power. Actually changelings were created by ponies pre-unification. I'll make sure to tell you the whole story sometime later but changelings had been intended to be used as replacements for soldiers for the earth ponies.” “That's horrible!” Twilight spoke up. “That's pre-unification Equestria for you, despite what your Hearth’s Warming Eve plays tell you it was not a pleasant place.” Naudia said matter of factly. “Course pretty much everybody who knew about us was killed when the earth-pony Fort Barding was sacked, anypony who still knew after that kept their mouths shut post-unification.” “Hearing that you can almost understand why the windigos were so powerful.” There was nothing much to say after that. The caves around them seemed closer after that story, the darkness a little more dark as if it could still be hiding windigo eyes. Twilight took some time to look around these caves and reflect on how things had changed for her in the last few months. The cave's crystalline walls reminded her of another changeling queen's laughter. Of course they were fighting Nightmare Moon today, not Chrysalis. Is it always going to be like this? Twilight thought. Barely beating out Nightmare Moon time and time again, only for her to return indomitable. She was however shook out of such gloomy thoughts by a cold wind and a dim red light ahead of her. ---------------- Canterlot was in a state of slow chaos. The growth of nightmares and corrupted changelings was making itself apparent as it pushed itself up through the ground. Oftentimes the unpleasant looking spires seemed to have grown from underneath and overturned an entire house, earth pony reinforced foundation and all. They seemed to reach up towards the moon as if they were alive and periodically they would pulse and grow, gorged on negative emotions and nightmares. That was not all that lurked in the city. In the streets patrolled corrupted changelings scanning for any life that could be subdued and sucked dry. In the air it was no better as nightmares roosted and swooped down from the spires oftentimes grabbing a struggling pony who had not made it underground. They never dropped anypony, even if somehow it looked like a pony managed to slap themselves loose, an even larger nightmare would swoop down and make sure they continued along their journey uninterrupted. There weren't terribly many ponies captured like this but it was easy to see where they were going. All of them were making a beeline for the palace. Twilight shuddered as she failed to imagine the unspeakable horrors inflicted upon those ponies. None of this was helped by the eclipsed blood red moon casting its unpleasant rays down from its fixed spot in the sky. As they came up out of the hole they realized that it was actually made by an uprooted house and it brought them uncomfortably close to one of the living tendrils growing in the cities. The only blessing was that this one seemed to have cracked and broken and thus was abandoned. Another house had actually been crushed underneath the malformed lump that had broken off the end of the stalk. Twilight turned as she heard Naudia give a hollow laugh beside her looking questioningly up at the changeling queen. “You know what my dream was as a kid?” To which Twilight shook her head. “I always dreamed of organizing and taming the corrupted changelings. It was always so that normal changelings didn't have to fight anymore.” Naudia's voice was hollow, her face twisted almost as if in pain from the irony. “Never thought it would look like this.” Twilight came up and nuzzled at her one more time before they walked off into the city.