//------------------------------//
// CHAPTER 4 (AKA: The art of speaking) 
// Story: A thing or two about changelings and their habits saga 
// by Young discord 
//------------------------------//

The dead night slumbered across Equestria like a darkened slug oozing its dreams over to its diurnal victims, falling helplessly into the sea of the impossible and nonreal... one being however, was fighting off the sandy wind of sleep for he had other things that just couldn't wait.
The changeling in question was none other than Stanley himself, a changeling, who escaped from a malicious world only to find himself in another sort-of-but-not-quite-like-home home.
The almost hospital was keeping him prisoner (Stanley was heavily debating whether that statement was literal or figurative at the moment) and the almost bed was actually quite pleasant and almost comfy (it was a hospital after all so a comfortable bed would have been out of place)
Stan's mental gears began to spin and whirr, Cynthia and Banka had to be found (albeit for two very different reasons) but to achieve that, certain other tasks had to be completed and they had to be completed in a certain order.
The thing about life, as Stanley realized during his stay at the island, is that doing things in life is much like getting Ponea furniture.
Getting Ponea furniture isn't as simple as just buying it and taking it home oh no, you see, the thing about Ponea furniture is that it is cheap but at the same time it is cheap because the customer needs to put it together.
As a result, in order to get a piece of Ponea furniture in your home you would have to go to the store, purchase the furniture, take it back home, open up all the boxes, read the instructions, assemble the furniture, realize that this piece doesn't fit why doesn't it fit there, you look at the manual, everything seems fine, you look at the furniture, you can't figure out what's wrong, you get frustrated, you decide to disassemble the furniture then you reassemble the furniture, you notice that you missed some tiny almost unnoticeable step, you realize that you didn't need to disassemble the whole thing to fix this, you get angry because you wasted 20 minutes that you could have spent with your girlfriend Sharon instead, you finish assembling the furniture in rage, you put the furniture in its place but not without being a bit too rough and breaking a small piece of it so its just a little bit damaged and then and only then, you have got a piece of Ponea furniture in your home.
Life was much like that and Stanley knew it.
In order to find Cynthia and Banka he would have to first be able to speak again, figure out where he is, ask the pendant if it knows anything about what happened, get some cash to travel if he needs to and then he can start searching for the missing ones.
Stan attempted to speak, his vocal chords are fine so he could make sounds without a problem, however molding them into words and phrases was a Sisyphusian task.
Despite his current condition, he had no excuse to keep putting it off, Stanley didn't care, the pain, the crunching... he could handle all that given just how much he went through in the last month or so.
Ever since Stanley woke up in the Hospital, not once had he talked to the voice.
A part of Stanley felt bad about disregarding the voice's advice before everything went blank and he felt that the voice might not want to talk to him again and right now, that terrified Stanley.
Unfortunately, Stanley didn't have much of a say in the matter as the voice was the only source of help for him at the moment and a bleak one at that.
Stanley put on the pendant.
The room was silent apart from an occasional snore or rustle from the other patients in the room.
It was time to learn to speak all over again.
it felt degrading, as if the Changeling had taken a million steps back to his infancy.
Stan tensed his jaw muscles to test the pain which came rushing in at once as if ordered by a nearby sadist.
It was going to hurt... immensely.
Sometimes it is better to do something fast, especially if one knows it is going to hurt, for example, when one needs to wax themselves, they do it fast so that there is as little pain as possible.
Unfortunately for Stanley, this wasn't waxing as he was going to find out very soon.
The changeling mustered the courage and decided to start with opening as wide as he can to see the extent of how much he can open.
A stupid thing to do no doubt.
The changeling began slow and his mouth opened up minutely, enough to give out a partially muffled vowel.
Stan had to open it more if he wanted to be treated as something more than a sucky ventriloquist but the more he tensed his jaw muscles the more they pressed against whatever was hurting and soon his focus on opening the jaw more and holding back the pain was at an equilibrium, making him unable to prevail.
No budge, this wasn't going to work, the muscles are the problem, if only he had some sort of way of moving his way without muscles.
Stanley began to think, how could he move his jaw without... well moving it? its not like he can use his hooves to move it...
Stanley grunted in rage, at this rate he will get nowhere.
It is a well-known fact that the harder one tries to think of something or remember something the harder it is to remember or come up with said thing... we  start to think of solutions and we begin to categorize, file things away in boxes... and unfortunately in life, you need to think outside the box... that's where letting things go come into play.
I cannot begin to count the amount of times when I had to solve something and couldn't, ending the situation in a fury and frustration only to force myself to pause things, relax a little and let my mind wander... only to have a solution pop into my head not 2 minutes later.
Stan was angry, he was frustrated but most of all, all of this has exhausted him, he just wanted to take a break... its not as if he can think of anything else to do right now so the best thing he could do was rest.
Stan lay down on his bed, eyes wide open, far too awake to let his mind pass away into sleep.
Stan looked around the room he was in... the place seemed clean enough but it seemed so... backwards, this couldn't be his home, their healthcare was much more advanced.
Normally Stanley wasn't much into healthcare and such however back at home he had a buddy who happened to be a doctor and he would often tell him about all of the behind-the-scenes happening in the medical field.
Just A while back, his friend was overjoyed about a new series of prosthetics being released that were so advanced that they essentially became a perfect replacement of a lost limb or body part... something about a magically sensitive material letting the user move the limb with magic with pinpoint precision? as if that mattered, its not like Stanley had a fake jaw he could move with his magic.
...or did he?
Sure he didn't have a prosthetic designed to be moved by magic but that doesn't mean he can't use magic to move his jaw.
It was going to be risky, doing something that requires as much precision as controlling a jaw is going to be dangerous to a changeling with hypermagica.
Stanley focused, he had to be extra gentle.
The changeling's horn began to wrap itself with a gentle hazy slither of magic that travelled into his horn and down to his jaw, leaving a light greenish tint in its path.
It was time to give it a go
Stan focused
gentle
geeentle...
Stan's jaw began to open agape
it was working
it was working!
Stan was overjoyed, something was finally going his way, he finally felt like he had a chance to figure out what is going on!
As Stanley was about to give out a scream of joy, his horn preceded him with a powerful joyful surge that smashed his jaw shut with a deafening chitter of teeth, his face numb with pain, his brain rattling sloppily in his head, his eyes rolling to the back of his head and his head falling back to the pillow as the rest of his body ragdolled.





According to the Bible (and some of its fans), everything starts with darkness... now whether the Bible is right not not is up to debate however the only thing on Stan's mind right now was the primordial darkness surrounding him, the ancestral void of light permeated through him to the point where he couldn't even see his body, or in fact, feel it.
it was as if The changeling himself existed as an entity, not a physical body.
Where am I Thought the changeling.
Not a sound was out but a thought, the silence was deathly however Stanley knew what he had said, its as if the words were spoken in a soundless tone, they were just... made into existence without any physical being, a familiar feeling for Stan, one identical to when he "hears" the pendant talk to him.
A faint grunt came into the void
It wasn't Stan
What was that?
This time, a moan began to needle its way into the void and grew into a hellish shriek of a being in searing pain, expanding in the darkness making Stanley feel somewhat cramped
What the-
But the changeling didn't have time to be confused as another shriek crammed itself into the tight compact darkness, knit closer together than the finest silks in all of Equestria.
It was just the beginning as Stanley was about to find out.
A torrent of shrieks screams and wails forced themselves into the already humble darkness, more and more cramped, squeezing Stan's existence into a tinier and tinier space, swishing and moving, bumping around like a gas particle in the world's most unhealthy and gross cigarette
Each shriek filled Stan's head, one voice was plenty but a thousand...
Stan's head felt like a supernova of nerves, the pain long overtaken his sanity as he became yet another screech among the sea of agony.
And then, as soon as it had all started, it stopped once Stanley opened his eyes, drenched in sweat breathing heavily as if he had just ran a marathon... on needles
His heart racing faster than he ever imagined were possible, trying to break free from his chest like a scared necromorph
He needed to calm down, whatever that was, it was not a dream, it couldn't have been, his head was still pulsing from the pain in the dream, much like a balloon that was stretched beyond its limits and then deflated to the point of uselessness, likewise his head felt thinned out and wrinkled from all those voices crammed inside not moments ago.
Stan feared what the dream might have been about, he knew it but he refused to acknowledge it.
The changeling lay motionless, too terror-stricken to close his eyes in case that thing came back, Stan doubted if his mind could take anymore strain than it already has.
It seemed like time was being maliciously malleable extending itself into endlessness like a tragic toffee of malice and anticipation.
Eventually, even toffee has its limits and Stanley had to face his fear and suspicions.
The voices he experienced in the dream felt in the same way as he had always experienced the voice from the pendant... perhaps the pendant was trying to communicate with him? and who were all those voices? are there others like the pendant? perhaps it was time to finally ask the pendant what the hell it is in the first place, Stanley has gotten so used to the voice being a helpful watchful tone over him and so much chaos ensued from the moment they had first encountered that he hardly had the time to ever think about the real questions, ones he was supposed to ask on day 1.
Stanley took the pendant from the nearby desk and gave it a close look.
The gold item was as smooth and flawless as usual, perhaps its magic kept it clean and pristine.
How could such a tiny thing hold a voice? thought Stanley, his head still ringing from the dream.
Perhaps it was magic, but again, how could so much magic be stored in such a tiny thing, surely it would break or crack under the magical surge, especially when he uses his magic on it, if he could crack diamonds with his blasts like it was nothing then zapping such a tiny thing would surely melt it instantly or vaporize it... and yet, it never has.
It was time to get some answers, he didn't care how or why, he already figured out how to move his jaw and it will probably take him the rest of the night to formulate a single damn sentence but he is going to get to the bottom of this.
Stan carefully put on the pendant.
Silence
Stanley decided to give the thing a zap
As soon as his magic blast touched the pendant, as if by a switch, the torrent of voices returned, all at once like a truck to Stanley's head, who instantly threw the pendant off his neck and onto the ground as if the pendant itself were made of hot magma.
The pendant, was useless.
Stanley could only rely on himself.