Anticipating the huge explosion and subsequent eardrum-shattering shockwave, Rose cast a shield bubble spell around herself and Crimson. He walked right into the spell and rubbed his head to get rid of a new tingling sensation. Backing up, he raised a questioning eyebrow at his companion.
Then the shockwave hit - and went around the translucent pink bubble. The shield bowed from the pressure but held. Ricocheting off the walls, the sound and blast threatened to destroy the protective spell, failing to follow through in the end.
Rose let the shield dissipate. Crimson gestured toward the hive armory with his gun. She nodded and they continued on their journey.
“How bad do you think everyone else is?” Crimson asked.
“I doubt they’ll be able to hear us, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Rose replied, smiling. “My shield took quite a beating.”
Crimson held up his hoof and leaned around a corner. After a moment, he waved Rose to follow him. With huge stone columns and cavernous hallways, Queen Echo’s palace was more impressive than the castles of many other monarchs. Torches ablaze with green fire lit the halls as best they could, but only succeeded so much. As a result, the palace had a dungeon-esque feel.
Another corner. Still no guards. Checking their six, Crimson and Rose creeped through the corridors. It was eerily quiet; the only things they heard were their own hoofsteps and hushed breathing.
Gunshots rang out. The two looked at each other.
“Mirage,” they said simultaneously.
Knowing that their time may run out soon, they bolted for the armory. Twists and turns still revealed an empty palace.
Crimson suddenly stopped and turned to enter a bedroom, its double doors ajar. He hefted his repeater. There was nopony in the room. A few quick sweeps showed that clearly enough. Judging by the size of the room and its decorations, this was most likely the young Changeling Princess’ quarters.
Rose lifted the covers on the queen-sized bed. A single red pennant was hidden under them. She lifted it with her magic and saw the room as it had been months ago. A Changeling filly hopped out of bed to answer a knock on her door. Within moments, several masked ponies had knocked her unconscious and left. During the brief tussle, the pennant Rose held was sent flying and fell where she’d picked it up.
“That’s a Dom flag,” Crimson whispered. Rose put the pennant down and stared at it. The Pegasus was right; a gold Dominion arch-and-cross was stitched on the cloth. With a concerning sigh, Rose stuffed it into her saddlebag.
They continued through the palace. Finally, a guard showed up, his hoof rubbing his tortured ear. Crimson raised his gun, aimed, and fired. Rose flinched as the Changeling guard slumped into a growing pool of blood. The way Crimson had dispatched the enemy, so quick, cold, and merciless, frightened her.
The armory revealed itself among the gloom. Crimson clutched the wall as he slinked along it. Opening his saddlebag, he took inventory of his equipment: seven “boom-spheres,” a few ammo packs, two rolls of adhesive, some food. Not what he wanted.
But maybe what he needed.
He stuck five of the boom-spheres to the armory with the adhesive. Then he backed away, pulling Rose with him. Knowing that the bombs used contact detonators, he’d set them upside down, with just enough adhesive to hang them for a few minutes.
The boom-spheres fell. Their explosions, however small, blew the bottom out from under the shockwave-weakened wall and collapsed much of the building. A spark from rock sliding on rock set a barrel of Griffonstone beer on fire. In burned with a blue flame, licking other barrels before a guard kicked it away.
A dozen Changelings scrambled out of the ruins. Unlike last time, Crimson didn’t shoot them. Instead, he grabbed the Dom pennant and tossed it near the scene before leading Rose back into the palace shadows.
----------------------------
Queen Echo’s legs collapsed as sound bounced off the walls and turned them to jelly. Her ears burst, causing little streams of green blood to run down her head. Once she recovered, her healing spell fixed her destroyed eardrums and she could reorient herself.
Standing up, Echo realized that there were only two places that could’ve been targeted: the pillar near the center of the hive, and the palace. She raced to a balcony overlooking the hive, completely forgetting about her injured, disoriented guards.
Several towers were gone. A gaping hole let early-morning sunlight filter down on the central marketplace through a huge cloud of dust. The magical night-sky ceiling had been completely disrupted beyond repair. In the center of the hive, the pillar of liquid fire trembled, as there was now no roof to hold it securely in place.
Echo gasped and took an involuntary step back. That pillar was the hive’s main store of emotional energy. It alone stored a hundred years of compounding emotions from millions of ponies. Not every hive had one, but past experience had taught Echo that a large reserve of food was necessary. If its magical bonds failed, the highly volatile emotional energy could explode. When that happened, half the Whispering Mountains would go down with it. The destructive force could alter the entire world’s climate pattern, destroy Equestria’s seasons, and send the entire planet spiraling into what Echo referred to as nuclear winter. Very few would survive the next several thousand years as Equus slowly recovered, according to her scientists.
Naturally, Echo was concerned for the well-being of her own, but this fear came with an additional slap: if Blossom was alive, she wouldn’t have subjects to rule. She wouldn’t have a family. She wouldn’t have a hive. If anything, the Whispering Hive would be doomed.