Grief is the Price We Pay

by Scyphi


Sabotage

            They didn’t talk much after they left the troop-training chamber and proceeded to quietly head on for the throne room, a perturbed and lost-in-thought Thorax leading the way. Most of that time was spent mulling over what they had found meant and the full ramifications that could follow. As they did, the journey proceeded on largely as it had before, tense and wary, ever on the lookout for trouble, but while other changelings could be heard nearby, they encountered none and miraculously their presence within the hive continued to go unnoticed.

            After several minutes of this silent walking though, Ember finally spoke up, breaking the silence. “So, now we have strong evidence that Chrysalis’s delusions of grandeur are far bigger than we were first assuming, surprise, surprise,” she recapped aloud before placing her claws on her hips. “So what are we going to do about it?”

            “One crisis at a time here, Ember,” Starlight replied back. “Let’s just focus on getting back Princess Celestia and the others. We’re on our way to the throne room now, so it won’t be much longer.”

            “Yes, but what about after that?” Ember stressed. “Do you really think just because we steal back the pony princesses she’s stolen, that’s going to stop that army she’s building back there?”

            “Probably not,” Spike admitted. “I mean, if she’s gone to all the trouble of getting this far with it…”

            “Yes, but it’ll still set her back, buying us time,” Starlight reminded. “She’s won’t be able to carry out those invasion plans right away if we pull this off.”

            “That’s easy for you to say, but now we can be certain Equestria isn’t the only country on the menu,” Ember reminded back. “I have to think about the safety of my own territory too, you know!”

            “You think I don’t know that?” Starlight snapped in a harsh whisper, shooting a look back at the dragon lord. “But we’re in no position to do anything about it right now! We should focus on pulling off the plan we’ve already got first, and then once we’ve got some additional help, then think about what we’re going to do to stop Chrysalis’s invasion plans, so one crisis at a time, please!”

            Ember rolled her eyes, but she relented and dropped the subject. “Whatever,” she grumbled.

            Another moment of silence fell as Thorax proceeded to led them up a flight of stairs that seemed to unevenly stop and begin again for no clear reason other than it could.

            “Are we even sure destroying the queen’s throne is really going to restore our magic?” Trixie asked hesitantly as they climbed up the steps. “I mean, our plan pretty much does hinge on that.”

            “If Thorax is right about how it works, then yes, it should,” Starlight replied with a tone of patience, but it was very forced. Clearly, what patience she had to give was running out.

            “That’s not very reassuring,” Spike couldn’t help but note aloud, wincing a little.

            “And it’s just that I’ve been thinking about how this throne-thingy would have to work so to be able to steal magic continuously for who knows how many years,” Trixie added, continuing on. “And it can’t possibly hold onto all that magic forever. It’d be like bottling up all of the Celestial Sea into one soda bottle. It’s just physically impossible. That magic must get used up somehow in order to make room for more, and if it gets all used up, then how do we know it’ll even still be there to come back to?”

            “I should remind you that a pony’s magic isn’t like a battery that can just be thrown away and never recovered, Trixie,” Starlight replied. “It’s more like when you cut your mane. It grows back, right? So even if the magic we had before we approached the hive is gone, our horns will be able to harness new magic to replace it, but only once the throne preventing that is gone. You of all ponies should know that, Trixie.”

            This seemed to satisfy Trixie, but now that the subject had come up, the others started thinking about it too. “I’m obviously no expert, but wouldn’t that still imply there’s like, I don’t know, magic in the air to draw upon?” Ember reasoned. “How do you know this throne doesn’t steal and consume that too? For all you know, very little magic might go back into the air or whatever after we destroy it.”

            Spike had been thinking about what he knew about magic. “Yeah, I don’t know about that too, Starlight,” he added in agreement, rubbing his chin in thought. “I mean, if I remember some of Princess Celestia’s lessons that she gave Twilight back in the day correctly, isn’t there that Starscraper’s Theory of Maximum Thaumic Access which suggests…”

            “Look!” Starlight snapped, coming to a halt and whirling onto the others, bringing them to a stop as well as they stepped onto a small landing. Thorax, either not noticing or not caring, proceeded on up the next flight of stairs without them. “I know our plan is nowhere close to watertight, but it’s the best we’ve got, and I don’t hear all of you coming up with any better ones! And as I am only just keeping it together right now, it would be wonderful if you three could actually try and help for a change instead of trying and be the voices of doom all the time, okay?

            Cowed, the others pulled back then hung their heads a little in shame. “Sorry,” Spike said, defeated.

            “How can we help?” Trixie asked next in a similar tone.

            “Well, don’t ask me!” Starlight griped as they started to follow Thorax up the next series of steps, the changeling having already arrived at the top and working at regaining his bearings. “If I actually had any ideas, I’d be asking you to work on that instead of asking for you to think of your own ways to help! I don’t know why I have to be the one leading the way on all of this, anyhow! I thought this was a group effort, after all.” She sighed, calming down a little. “Look, I’m sorry, it’s just…what with us being in the heart of the changeling hive, in danger of getting caught at any second, with the fate of all of Equestria resting on my hooves and the worry that other countries are probably in danger too…it’s getting a little overwhelming.”

            “Well, I don’t know, you’ve got us this far,” Ember pointed out.

            “Thorax has gotten us this far,” Starlight corrected. “That’s precisely why I chose to find him and Spike in the first place, because I knew without his help…” she hung her head, “…we didn’t stand a chance.” She glanced back at Spike, ashamed. “What’s worse is that I probably wouldn’t have even needed to do that if I had just done what Spike told us to do in the first place and trusted him, instead of trying to drive him away.” She hung her head. “I’m such an idiot, really.”

            “Oh, no you aren’t,” Trixie assured, coming to comfort her friend. “It was your quick thinking that got you and me safely out of Ponyville, and it was your ideas that got us pointed in this direction. Thorax may have been the guide and source of information, but you really have been the one who’s often taken that information and formed a working plan out of it, working out the bumps where you can, and not us. So you’ve got this.”

            Starlight snorted skeptically. “Trixie, I couldn’t even handle giving advice at the Sunset Festival in my village, why should I think I’d be any better handling all of this?

            “Are you still beating yourself up over that?” Trixie asked.

            “Wait, that’s why you left that festival thing early?” Spike asked, surprised.

            Starlight rolled her eyes as they arrived at the top of the stairs with Thorax. “Look, I get what you’re all trying to do, and I’m flattered in the show of support in my abilities, but trust me, you’re better off not putting all of your faith in me like that.” She nodded her head at Thorax. “If anything, you should be putting it in Thorax. He at least knows where we’re going.”

            Thorax, overhearing, looked at her abruptly and winced. “I wish you hadn’t just said that,” he admitted.

            The others looked at him in alarm. “Oh, don’t say it…” Ember grumbled.

            Thorax wince grew. “…I think we’re lost.”

            “What?” Starlight declared and moved to stand beside Thorax. “You said you knew how to get there!”
            “I did,” Thorax said, then flung out a hoof at the expansive room the ledge they stood upon opened up into, overlooking another sizeable junction of tunnels leading off to other places in the hive. “But then I found this place.”

            The others regarded the room blankly. “Okay, you seriously need to stop assuming we’d just understand what you’re talking about straightaway when you do that, because you should know all of these rooms look alike to us,” Ember commented aloud. She glanced at the others. “I mean, it’s not just me, is it?”

            “It’s not,” Trixie assured.

            “But that’s just it, I don’t either, because this room shouldn’t even be here,” Thorax elaborated, motioning again to the room. “Before I left the hive, all that should be here was a simple tunnel that kept heading up to the queen’s sanctum, a straight shot heading there. But since then, they’ve ripped it all out and built this thing!” He motioned to it helplessly a third time, clearly not knowing what to make of it. “I don’t know where any of these tunnels might lead, and we can’t just guess because we don’t have time to get it wrong!” He shook his head. “I don’t even know why they changed it at all…they wouldn’t make this sort of change unless there was some sort of accident and they had to rebuild things, but…” he turned to face the others again and sighed.  “Look, the simple fact is…I don’t know what leads where, and without knowing that…I just can’t reliably navigate us from here.”

            A heavy silence fell as the group all looked at one another, at a loss for what to do. Eventually though, everyone’s gaze gravitated towards Starlight, waiting for her to decide the next move. Noticing this, she stomped her hoof in frustration.

            “Why do you all keep looking at me for things like this?” she griped, but then forced out a sigh and started pacing, trying to think. “Okay, okay, let’s not panic, we’re not completely sunk just yet…” she looked at their changeling guide, “…Thorax, is there possibly another route we could take to the throne room?”

            Thorax considered it uncertainly for a second. “I suppose there’s a back route we could take…but I almost never used it because it was a back route so I don’t know it as well, and not only will it drag out the journey much longer which I don’t know if we’ve got that kind of time for, that’s all assuming that route hasn’t changed in some way too. For all I know, the whole hive is going to be laid out differently from this point on.”

            “Why would they make such extensive changes to the hive like this then if they weren’t in the habit of doing so in the first place?” Spike asked aloud.

            “I don’t know…I assume it was done to make room for all the changes Chrysalis had to do so to house all the new troops she’s been having trained and all of that.” Thorax shrugged. “I’m not a structor, I don’t know the exact reasons why they might rebuild parts of the hive in this configuration.”

            “Well, that doesn’t help us any,” Ember grumbled, planting the end of her staff on the floor and dropping down to sit beside it. “So I guess until we figure out something, we’re not going anywhere.”

            “Great,” Trixie groaned, plopping her rump onto the floor as well while Starlight continued to pace in thought and Thorax racked his brain for something of use. She glanced at Ember. “I don’t suppose you’ve still got those peanut butter and crackers, do you?”

            Ember looked down at her arms and realized she wasn’t carrying either anymore. “I think I ate it all back as we were approaching the hive,” she admitted.

            “What?” Trixie whined.

            “Hey, you said you didn’t want them anymore, and it turns out they were kind of tasty, so since I was never one to waste food…”

            “I thought you dragons ate gems, not crackers and peanut butter!”

            “I can eat a lot of things besides gems, you know!”

            “Hey, fighting isn’t going to get us anywhere you two,” Spike interjected, moving between the two and sternly motioning for them to stop. “Besides, I helped Ember finish off the peanut butter and crackers, so I can take some of the blame too, but basically Trixie, you’re just going to have to make do without them.”

            Trixie sighed and turned to start to sift through her saddlebags. “Well, I’m sure I can come up with something else to nibble on while we wait for our doom,” she muttered.

            “Oh, do think positive,” Ember grumbled.

            Starlight glanced at Thorax. “That reminds me, how long until that next mealtime and activity picks up in the hive again?” she asked.

            Thorax thought for a second. “Maybe another half hour, give or take,” he admitted. “And even then, activity isn’t going to pick up all at once, so that might buy us an additional fifteen or so minutes before these tunnels are all going to be swarming with changelings.”

            “So we’ve got some time until this place becomes…well…a hive of activity, I guess,” Spike conceded.

            Thorax nodded. “Still, a hive full of very hungry changelings probably isn’t going to be the place we’d want to be,” he pointed out.

            “Ravenous appetites, huh?” Trixie guessed, not relishing the idea.

            “Yes, and even after a mealtime we’re typically not sated. We can never get enough love, so that basically leaves a changeling always hungry,” Thorax replied with a nod.

            “You aren’t,” Spike pointed out, looking at his friend.

            “Well, I’m the exception to the rule of course,” Thorax conceded. “Unlike my fellow changelings, I’ve had access to a more constant supply of positive emotion for the past several moons.”

            “So how often do you get hungry?” Ember asked, leaning back and joining in on the conversation, seeing she had nothing else to do at the moment.

            Thorax opened his mouth to reply, but then paused and had to stop and think about it a bit further. He seemed suddenly surprised. “Actually…I guess I haven’t really been truly hungry for some time now…huh, I guess after I met Spike and made a friend or two, I sort of just forgot to be hungry after a while and haven’t needed to feed, or at least nowhere near as aggressively as other changelings typically do.”

            Spike blinked, also a little surprised. “You know, now that I think about it, I haven’t seen you outwardly feed, where you do that whole tongue flicking thing, in quite some time. I had just thought you’d figured out a more subtle way of doing it, but if you haven’t needed to feed like that lately, I guess you wouldn’t need to resort to that altogether.”

            “Yeah, running almost continuously on a full tummy has its benefits,” Thorax remarked with a small grin.

            Starlight, who had been listening to all of this, suddenly stopped pacing. After a brief pause, she glanced back at Thorax. “Thorax, this lack of need to feed…was this right about when your wings changed?” she asked, curious.

            Thorax looked back at his wings that were supposedly “sparklier” than they were before the last time Starlight had met him. He still wasn’t sure if that was actually the case, though. “I guess so…but you know, I’ve also molted between then and now too, so it could also easily just be a case of my wings still looking…shall we say…fresh?”

            “Molted?” Trixie asked, who hadn’t realized the changeling did such a thing.

            “It’s pretty intense, lemme tell you,” Spike quipped, remembering when Thorax did this.

            “Is there a point to all of this?” Ember asked.

            “Well…maybe,” Starlight admitted, glancing at the dragoness then back at Thorax. “I guess I am just kind of thinking out loud, but it’s just…for ponies, the state of their physiology can change in various ways depending on their diet…you are what you eat and all…so I’m just wondering if changes in your physiology has something to do with the fact that you’ve been living off a different, healthier, diet than other changelings would,” Starlight explained.

            “I guess I have been doing that,” Thorax admitted. “As we saw in the harvesting room, the changelings here at the hive have had to scrimp and save for meals lately whereas I haven’t had to…I could actually afford to have my fill and still have some leftover, practically every day.” He winced to himself as he said it though, not exactly taking pride in the fact that he had been getting well-fed when his fellow changelings clearly were not.

            “Then I wonder what the rest of the hive would behave like if it could be given that as well…as well as just what the full extent of such changes could be, if I’m right…” Starlight pondered aloud.

            “As interesting as all this eating and not eating is, don’t we sort of have bigger problems to be focusing on at the moment?” Ember asked aloud, cutting the discussion short, “Like figuring out where to go next? Or are we just going to sit here and wait for the changelings to come and catch us?”

            “It’s not going to come to that,” Starlight promised, resuming her pacing.

            “Oh, don’t say things like that, you’re going to jinx us Starlight,” Trixie pleaded. “I mean, I just know one of us is going to say something like that just in time for some changeling to suddenly drop out of the sky and attack us.”

            Then, as if the universe was listening and decided to taunt her, a changeling suddenly did drop out from somewhere above them, landing directly behind Trixie and hissing aggressively at her, tensing up to attack. Trixie’s shriek of terror as she whipped around to face the enemy changeling while also scampering backwards away from it was nearly earsplitting, echoing loudly off the large chamber as the others all whipped around to face the sudden attacker in alarm. Starlight, being the closest, acted first, throwing herself onto the changeling and trying to tackle him from the side right as he started to move forward, charging into the center of their group. He hissed in aggravation when Starlight’s tackle threw him off kilter, and he worked to try and throw her off and pin her in his hooves, mouth open and fangs exposed, ready to bite.

            “Don’t let him bite you!” Thorax warned as he lit his horn with a stunning spell, trying to line up a shot while Ember and Spike looked for an opening so to join in on the fray. Trixie, frozen in terror, could only stand back and watch.

            Starlight quickly grabbed the changeling’s muzzle with her hooves, trying to keep his maw away from her flesh as they moved about, grappling. The changeling still seemed aware of Thorax was trying to line up a shot though, because he suddenly shoved himself and Starlight to one side in time for Thorax to fire his spell twice, both shots narrowly missing the intended target. Before Thorax could fire off another though, the changeling grabbed Starlight and reoriented her so she was held in front of him, then vaulting past the others that were now converging upon him to try and contain him, he surged forward and slammed Starlight into Thorax, using her as a makeshift battering ram. All three went down in a heap, but with the attacking changeling on the top and ready to deal damage to both Thorax and Starlight under him, rearing up to do so.

            But before he could, Spike vaulted himself onto the changeling’s back and wrapped his arms around the changeling’s chitinous neck, trying to choke him. The changeling reacted by starting to use his magic to try and pry Spike off but Starlight, thinking quickly as she pulled herself off of Thorax, grabbed a water bottle that had fallen from her saddlebags and hurled it at the changeling’s horn. It struck it with enough force that the horn immediately went numb and the changeling lost control of his magic, unable to form enough of an aura to grab anything, let alone a moving body the size of Spike.

            Beginning to gag slightly from the little dragon wrapped around his throat and clutching at it with his forehooves, the changeling started bucking out of desperation, trying to throw the little dragon off, the actions forcing the others to keep their distance or risk getting struck. Though Spike bounced on his back like a rag doll and it prevented him from keeping his grip too tight on the changeling’s neck (allowing the changeling to still draw enough breath to stay conscious), he held on, so finally the changeling buzzed his wings and took to the air just high enough to fly over to a tall outcropping of the resinous material making up the hive and slam his back against it, pinning Spike to it. Spike still held on, but it caused his grip to loosen just enough to allow the changeling to bodily swing him around so he was hanging from the changeling’s front instead of his back, enabling the changeling to drag him off his neck with his hooves.

            He had just succeeded and was shoving Spike bodily to one side despite Spike’s claws managing to leave deep scratches in his chitin and turned in time for Ember to suddenly come upon him and whack him hard with the head of her scepter. She hit him hard enough that the attacking changeling literally flew backwards and slammed into the outcropping of resin again with the force of a runaway carriage, accompanied with an echoing bang. Immediately knocked out, the changeling sank into a heap on the floor, while the outcropping of resin, cracked and weakened from the impact, nosily crumbled for a moment before tipping backwards and over the ledge they stood upon, crashing and bouncing off things as it tumbled down onto the lowest point of the chamber with a noise rivaling Trixie’s earlier screech in volume.

            Ember hissed to herself, wincing and tensing up as the boulder-sized clump of resin finally came to rest about two stories below them. “Oops,” she muttered, realizing she had exerted more force in her attack than she meant to.

            While the others collected themselves from the sudden scuffle, thankfully all not much worse for wear save for some light scratches, Thorax hurried to the side of the fallen changeling, looking him over. Unlike Julius before him though, this changeling had faired far better from Ember’s assault, though he was out cold and had struck the outcropping with such force that it left a long hairline crack in his chitin almost neatly down the center of his back. Thorax worried the fallen changeling might have received a concussion from the impact too, but knew there was little to be done about that now.

            He turned to the others, urgently motioning for them to regroup quickly. “We need to get moving,” he hissed, “get as far from here before someone else—”

            “Shh!” Ember suddenly hushed, alert as she listened to their surroundings.

            The five of them all fell silent, listening intensely in the silence that was settling again upon the chamber. It didn’t stay that way for long as only seconds later, a distinct buzz could be heard in the distance, steadily getting louder and nearer to their location.

            “What’s that?” Trixie asked in tense alarm as she listened to the noise.

            Thorax paled, struck with sudden fear. “A changeling patrol,” he breathed in alarm. “We’ve alerted a changeling patrol!”

            “Well, between the noises of that big rock falling and Trixie’s shriek…” Spike began to recap hurriedly.

            “He scared the crap out of me!” Trixie declared in her defense. “I mean he—!”

            Starlight stuffed a hoof into Trixie’s mouth, silencing her and looked urgently to Thorax as the hum of changeling wings grew steadily louder. “Thorax, what do we do?” she pressed.

            Thorax took a second of tensely staring in the direction of the sound, beginning to hyperventilate as the relatively cool composure he had managed to maintain up until now shattered. “Run!”

            He then turned and immediately galloped into the nearest tunnel entrance, scooping up Spike and tossing him onto his back in the process. The others immediately galloped after him, following him as they blindly raced away in the direction opposite from the sound of the oncoming patrol.

            “Where are we going?” Ember demanded as the lithe dragoness’s long strides easily kept pace with the others.

            “Away!” Thorax simply responded, revealing that he had no set destination they were going, he was simply trying to shake the pursuing patrol off their trail.

            But the longer they ran, the longer they kept hearing the buzz of the oncoming patrol, which only seemed to cause Thorax to panic more, fearing capture.

            “We’re not shaking them!” Starlight observed in alarm.

            “They must have singled out our trail and are following it!” Thorax declared back, only trying to run fast and urge the others to run faster too.

            “Is it because we’re all about to lose our heads in fear?” Spike exclaimed, shooting a panicked look back down the tunnel they were running down. “Are we going to have to calm ourselves down or—”

            “I don’t know if it’ll matter, they’re too close and they already know what to look for, enough to give them a path to point them in and follow!” Thorax interrupted. “And it might not just be our emotions that they’re sensing and following, either, it could anything from sound to scent of sweat to--!”

            “Then we’re sunk!” Ember concluded with finality, cutting Thorax short.

            “NO!” Thorax bellowed with sudden and fierce determination. “I will not let them lay a hoof on any of you!

            So they kept running, turning into new tunnels at random as they came upon them, but no matter the evasion they attempted, it seemed it was only delaying the inevitable as the clear sound of the approaching patrol still echoed out all too closely behind them, and it was only getting closer and louder still. Worse still, the exertion of the non-stop sprinting was starting to catch up with most of them and they were all starting to get winded.

            “You know…” Trixie puffed as she started to tire and lag behind a pace or two. “…this is all…more cardio…than Trixie…is used to…for one day!”

            Ember gave Trixie a push forward from behind, keeping her moving, but she was getting worried herself. “She’s right, we can’t keep running forever!” she pointed out to the others. She gripped her scepter tightly, ready to wield it like a weapon again. “I say we stand our ground and fight back!”

            “We can’t, we’re already outnumbered!” Thorax interjected. “That patrol has been pulling in more changelings to add to their numbers as they go! I can already make out fifteen distinct wingbeats and it’s only been growing!”

            “Then we should’ve stood our ground and fought them off when we first heard them coming instead of running!” Ember objected back.

            “There were still as many as five changelings to deal with then, and you already know just how much it takes for all of us to take on just one!” Thorax barked. He shot a look back at Ember. “Not to discredit your combat skills, Dragon Lord Ember, but do you think you could take on that many targets at once?”

            Ember frowned and didn’t reply, but her lack of response was reply enough to the question.

            “She’s still right though, we can’t keep running forever, and it sounds like they are gradually gaining on us!” Starlight reminded, her lungs burning from the exertion of the constant running. “There must be something we can do to evade them, or they’re just going to catch up and snag us!”

            “I am drawing a total blank, though!” Spike replied as he bounced where he sat on Thorax’s back, holding onto the changeling’s neck. “Unless we can think of some way to instantly put some serious distance between us and them real quick, I don’t think we’re going to evade them if we haven’t already at this point!”

            “Oh, if only I had access to my magic!” Starlight bemoaned as she tried to light her horn regardless. Her horn merely sat numbly on her forehead though. “Then I could just teleport us somewhere, anywhere, other than here!”

            “Thorax has magic, couldn’t he teleport us somewhere?” Ember asked.

            “I don’t know how to teleport!” Thorax retorted. “It’s a pony sort of spell, anyway!”

            “Then what’s the changeling equivalent?” Starlight asked.

            “A fire portal, but I never was able to learn how to successfully do that either!”

            Trixie, meanwhile, squeezed her eyes shut with her ears folded back as the constant sound of the pursuing patrol’s buzzing wings assaulted them. “Augh, I can’t think with the sound of those changelings chasing us!” she declared. “Oh, I wish I could put some music so to try and drown it out, clear my head…I mean, I have the record player in my bags, but—”

            “Wait, wait, hold on!” Spike interrupted, his head snapping around to look at Trixie galloping beside him and Thorax. “You have a record player with you? Right here, right now?”

            “Yeah, a portable one, in my saddlebags,” Trixie replied as she looked back at Spike. “I always have it on hoof, in case I ever get stopped and asked to put on a show but while I’m not actually at my cart, so…”

            Spike hurried waved her claws to cut her short, not needing to know the extra details. “Will it play a seventy-eight rpm record?” he asked urgently.

            “Of course!” Trixie replied, unable to keep a smug grin from appearing on her face despite their current situation.

            “Where are you going with this, Spike?” Thorax asked as Spike quickly reached into one of the saddlebags Thorax carried on his back.

            “Thorax, you remember my favorite record of hard rock music?” Spike asked as he hurriedly rooted through the saddlebag.

            Thorax snorted, not relishing the memory. “How could I forget that horrid thing? Every time you played it while I was still in the room, it always made my head—” he abruptly ground to a halt and whipped his head back at Spike, eyes wide with excitement. “You didn’t!

            “I did,” Spike replied with a grin as he pulled out of the saddlebag the very record in question, still neatly tucked into its accompanying sleeve.

            “Move, move!” Ember ordered from behind as she shoved the changeling to get him moving again, and once more they were all galloping on down the tunnel.

            Thorax, however, was suddenly giddy with excitement. “I can’t believe you actually brought that thing with us all the way from Vanhoover!” he declared at Spike.

            “You kidding me? This is my all-time favorite record, and I already lost my original copy in Ponyville when we got chased out of the Crystal Empire—like I was really going to leave it behind for Twilight to capture again after that!” Spike declared as he kept the record held up over his head. “It wouldn’t fit in my backpack, so I stuck it in your saddlebags, and lucky for us, I never got around to taking it back out in all that’s happened since!”

            “I don’t understand though, what’s so important about that record?” Starlight asked, panting as she strained to keep galloping at full-tilt with the others.

            “It’s the hard rock music on it!” Thorax explained eagerly, shifting his gaze onto the unicorn as she galloped slightly ahead of him. “We discovered that the sound frequencies of the instruments used in it combined have a negative effect on me, greatly disorienting me to the point that I couldn’t walk straight to save my life while within hearing range of that racket—”

            “—and you think it’ll have the same effect on the changelings chasing us!” Starlight finished, eyes brightening excitedly as she caught on.

            “I don’t think anything, I’m telling you that’s what will happen!” Thorax replied back, nodding eagerly.

            Starlight looked to the back of their group. “Ember, if they were all disoriented like Thorax says, do you think you could fight them?”

            The dragoness mulled upon the matter for a second. “It depends,” she replied and looked to Thorax. “About how many are there in the patrol now?”

            Thorax listened to the wingbeats echoing out from their pursuers behind them. “I count about seventeen—no, eighteen now!”

            Ember’s brow furrowed. “…maybe if I could take them on one at a time?” she suggested.

            “Thorax, is there a tunnel we could lead them down narrow enough that it’d force them to go through it in single-file?” Starlight asked the changeling.

            “Uh,” Thorax began as he quickly scanned the many tunnel entrances they were speeding past, trying to pick out any fitting that description. “Yes, this one here!” He led the way as they darted into the fairly lengthy tunnel stretching out for about a hundred feet before bottlenecking gradually then suddenly terminating altogether into a small chamber that was empty save for a small table placed in the center and a small pile of loose and broken resin stacked to the left. Thorax realized as they approached the chamber that it had an entrance but no exit. “It leads to a dead end, though!”

            “That’s even better, they’ll think they have us cornered and come racing right in!” Starlight declared as they galloped into the room and fanned out to take positions. “Trixie, get that record player set up, and Spike, get your record ready to start playing, then everyone find places to hide! Ember, figure out where you’re going to want to be for this!”

            Twirling her scepter so to limber herself up for the combat awaiting her, Ember quickly surveyed the room doing so, but eventually concluded that the best place for her to be would be right in the center, in line with the room’s one and only entrance and exit, where she could see the oncoming patrol approach once they rounded the corner and entered the lengthy tunnel leading to the room. She saw she could hide behind the table that sat in the center of the room so to stay out of view while they approached, but then realized she’d still have to come out and into the open so to be ready to fight well before the patrol actually entered the room and realized that could be a problem. “Thorax, how many are there now?” she asked.

            “Twenty-two,” Thorax replied after a moment’s pause to listen and count.

            Ember nodded and frowned. “You know, disoriented or not, they’re still going to see me coming from a mile away like this,” she warned as she took position.

            Starlight immediately had a solution though and looked to Trixie, who had finished setting up her record player on the stack of rubble and was moving aside to let Spike take over. “Trixie, how many of those smoke bombs you use in performances do you have on hoof?” she asked, pointing a hoof at the showmare.

            Trixie, catching on to what Starlight was thinking, grinned slyly. “How many do you need?” she replied.

            Starlight returned the grin. “All of them.”

            “You got it, girl!” Trixie replied as she darted across the room to take position to one side of the entrance, reaching into her saddlebags to fish out the smoke bombs she carried within. “Just give me a shout when you want them!”
            “There is one other problem,” Thorax noted aloud as he and Starlight ducked down behind some of the rubble to hide. The patrol still hadn’t come into view at the other end of the tunnel, showing that they were further back than they thought, but the buzz of their wings was so loud now that it could only be seconds before they did. “This music will still affect me detrimentally just as much as it’ll affect the patrol.”

            Trixie, overhearing, reached into her saddlebags again. “Here, I’ve got a pair of earmuffs you can wear, that should at least help!” She tossed the fuzzy earmuffs across the chamber to Thorax who caught them and immediately put them over his ears.

            “What don’t you have in those saddlebags?” Ember asked Trixie as she ducked behind the room’s one table.

            “A good traveling showmare is always ready to perform in any environment,” Trixie responded smugly.

            “They’re almost here,” Starlight observed, spying the flicker of shadows at the far end of the tunnel announcing the patrol’s imminent arrival and looked to her side where Spike was working with the record player. “Spike, are you ready with that record?”

            “Just about!” Spike said as he cranked the player’s volume up as high as it would go, having already set the record spinning. All that was left was to place the needle onto the record for it to play. “Now, you should know that this first song on the record is more rap rock than it is hard rock, but it has affected Thorax just as badly as the other songs on the record, so it should still have the same effect on the other changelings. If not, it’ll be easy to skip the record ahead to the next song.”

            “Just be sure there’s ample time for it to affect the changelings heading towards us,” Starlight advised and turned to Thorax crouched down on her other side. “Thorax, have you braced yourself for this?”

            “What?” Thorax asked, unable to hear her clearly under the earmuffs.

            “That’d be a yes,” Starlight remarked with a smirk.

            “Here they come!” Ember called as she saw the first changelings in the patrol rounding the corner and flew into the tunnel leading towards them.

            And once the first few had entered the tunnel, the rest rapidly followed until all twenty-some changelings filled the far end of the tunnel, blotting it out as a single mass, the swarm wasting no time in heading right for the chamber at the other end they knew their prey was hiding in. The sight was intimidating and for a second as Starlight stared at it, she felt a chill go down her back. But her resolve came back quickly and she turned to Spike, nodding her head.

            Spike nodded back, the player’s needle in his claws. “Let’s make some noise,” he quipped, before setting it down on the spinning record.

            The music began playing instantly, blaring out into the chamber and echoing out as the song’s opening guitar riffs filled the space. Everyone winced a little, taken aback at the volume, while Thorax slapped his hooves over the earmuffs on his ears, face scrunched up as he tried to shield himself from the noise. After the initial second of the track though, Trixie suddenly perked up.

            “Wait a minute!” she declared, having to raise her voice in order to be heard. “I think I’ve heard this song before!” She turned her head back at Spike, starting to grin. “That’s a good choice!”

            “Isn’t it, though?” Spike asked with a smug smirk on his face as he ducked down behind the rubble beside Starlight.

            Trixie merely laughed and turned back to watch the oncoming swarm while the song finished its opening intro and its harsh lyrics began:

“I can’t stand it, I know you planned it!

But I’m gonna set it straight, this Watergate,

I can’t stand rocking when I’m in here,

Because your crystal ball ain’t so crystal clear…”

            “It’s working!” Ember suddenly shouted from her spot behind the table where she was watching the oncoming swarm.

            And sure enough, from still as much as only a fourth of the way down the tunnel, the patrol’s neat and tight flying it had originally come into view with had already begun to degrade, the changelings rapidly beginning to bob and wobble in their flights. A couple on the edges started to bump into the sides of the tunnel, slow to realize that the tunnel was gradually tapering into a narrow bottleneck at the other end where their targets hid. Nonetheless, the patrol pressed on, determined to succeed and flying closer to the source of their growing disorientation.

            Meanwhile, however, Starlight was listening to the song’s lyrics and was frowning at some of the language she was hearing. “Did Twilight ever know you listen to music like this, Spike?” she loudly asked the dragon beside her.

            “What’s that, Starlight?” Spike shouted back at her as he bobbed his head in time with the song’s beat. “I can’t hear you!”

            “I said, does Twilight know you listen to this music?” Starlight repeated, shouting louder so to be heard over the deafening music.

            “Still can’t hear you, Starlight, the music’s too loud!” Spike shouted back, even though Starlight was quite certain he’d heard every word of the question.

“…‘Cause what you see you might not get,

And we can bet, so don’t you get souped yet!

You’re scheming on a thing that’s a mirage,

I’m trying to tell you now it’s sabotage!”

            The quality of the song aside, there was no denying it was working, as the closer the swarm got to the chamber, the worse their navigation became. Soon there were changelings continuously bumping into each other, with one collision causing other changelings behind them to run into them as well. Two other changelings suddenly veered downwards out of control and tumbled to the ground while a third flew too high and bumped into the ceiling, also veering out of control. One changeling even smacked head on into a low hanging stalagmite as if he couldn’t see it and tumbled to the ground, out cold.

            Gradually, the changelings were still getting lined up enough to head through the narrowing tunnel one at a time like they should, though more because they were all getting forced into the center as the tapering walls of the tunnel pushed them all into single-file. As Starlight watched though, she couldn’t help but notice that an entrance to a side tunnel some feet before their chamber opened up just long enough for two changelings to shakily branch off from the patrol and vanish into it. She wondered what they were up to, but had to focus on the oncoming patrol as they started to reach the chamber they were hiding in.

            “Trixie, now!” Starlight commanded, pointed a hoof across the room at where Trixie hid by the door.

            Trixie immediately threw her hooves down at the floor in front of the room’s only entrance and with an almighty bang that nearly drowned out the music for a second, a great billowing cloud of grey smoke filled the entrance, blotting out one’s view from either side of it. Apparently unconcerned by the smoke though, perhaps seeing it as only the distraction it was, the pursing changelings flew right on into it without slowing, confident they would have the intruders right where they wanted them, only to emerge on the other side of the cloud of smoke to see, too late to in any way avoid her, Ember standing on the table in the center of the room, ready for them.

            The second the first changeling reached her, Ember immediately swatted it out of the air with one stroke of her scepter, sending the already disoriented changeling veering across the room to slam into a wall, and from there the dragoness only turned into a flurry of movement. As every changeling emerged from the cloud of smoke in single-file as hoped, Ember knocked it clean out of the air with every stroke of her scepter she was whipping skillfully back and forth. A couple of changelings still managed to slip past her, but disoriented as they were already by the music—made worse by the fact they were now at the apex of it—most of them only kept flying straight until they slammed into the room’s rear wall, unable to slow in time to prevent the crash. Those very few that didn’t tried to loop around for another pass at Ember, only to be struck down regardless by the dragoness as she swung her scepter while scarcely looking at them, operating more on instinct than sight.

            One changeling Ember swatted aside careened behind the barrier of rubble Thorax, Spike, and Starlight were hiding behind, but although the very wobbly changeling attempted to pick himself and face them like nothing happened, all it took was one good left hook from Starlight and the changeling flopped onto his back, immediately neutralized. Indeed, their plan was going so successfully that for a second as Ember fought with the oncoming swarm, changelings were flying everywhere as they were bounced aimlessly around the room trying, and spectacularly failing, to combat her.

            Spike, at one point, got so caught up in the heat of the moment that he forgot where he was and started to loudly sing along with the song still playing during all of this—“Listen all of y’all, it’s a sabotage, WHOO!”—before Starlight quickly silenced him by stuffing her hoof into his mouth.

            But then as quickly as it had all begun, before the smoke from Trixie’s smokebombs had finished dissipating, Ember made one final stroke of her scepter that sent the last changeling in the patrol skidding across the floor of the chamber in a heap, and except for the record player continuing to blare out hard rock music and the occasional moans of the few changelings still conscious but unable to pick themselves up and do anything, silence fell in the chamber again. Quickly, the group all left their hiding places and hurried to the center to regroup.

            “That’s it, that’s all of them!” Trixie shouted over the music with a relieved grin on her face as they all met up. “I think we did it!”

            “Don’t celebrate just yet!” Starlight shouted back to her and turned to Thorax. “Thorax, there were two changelings that broke off from the main group and flew down a side tunnel! Where do you think they’re going?”

            “What?” Thorax shouted back, barely able to heard Starlight as he still wore the earmuffs and had his hooves clamped over top of them, this only being just barely enough to shield himself from the loud music playing on Spike’s record.

            “I said there were two changelings who broke off from the rest of the group and flew down a side tunnel­—”

            “Oh! OH! With intruders in the hive, the standard procedure is to go and ensure the protection of the queen, of course!” Thorax said brightening.

            “So if we follow them down that same tunnel, it’ll lead us to the throne room?” Starlight asked to confirm.

            “It should, yes!”

            “Then let’s go!” Ember said, starting for the exit.

            “What about the record player?” Spike asked, motioning back at the still playing device.

            “Leave it!” Starlight replied as she followed Ember for the exit, Thorax hurrying after them, eager to get away from the loud music. “So long as it keeps playing, it’ll keep all of these changelings out of commission,” she motioned with one sweeping hoof at the neutralized changelings scattered about the room, “and it’ll prevent any other changelings from coming in here to investigate without falling prey to it themselves! Plus, it’ll help serve as a distraction, keeping the changelings looking in the wrong spot for us!”

            “Darn!” Trixie declared as she reluctantly followed the others out of the room. “I liked that record player!”

            “I liked that record!” Spike complained as well, not wanting to leave behind his favorite record, but begrudgingly obeying too.

            They all then filed out of the room, Ember standing at the entrance to let the others through first then, with one final and casual swing of her scepter so to knock out a changeling that had started to try and pick himself up again, she turned and sauntered off after them.