It’s been twenty years since I fought the kelpie queen and since then, the kelpie birth rate has continued to rise.
That’s not the main issue though. The parents… well most of them accept that euthanasia is necessary. I’ve given the public some more information about why the kelpies need to be killed, just enough to stoke some rumors that lead the parents to give their children up.
Moreover, my army has been able to keep the few kelpies that have been born under control. They continue to ambush and raid the outermost settlements in Aquestria, but I am pretty sure they are slowly being killed off.
Something has arisen on the edges of the empire, though, and it worries me.
I was carrying out an inspection of our coastal settlements when I felt a very powerful spell being performed. Normal seaponies wouldn’t have noticed this, and deep ponies do not frequent the shallows often.
I investigated it and noticed several changeling queens fuelling the spell. I wasn’t sure of what it was at the time, but as I observed, I realized it was some kind of search spell.
What made this incident even stranger was how so many queens were gathered at the spot. Normally I have only seen changeling queens operating alone. Any more than one and usually there is some kind of battle going on.
The queens continued casting the spell in shifts. One moving in and out to replace the tired ones as time went on. I could not let this continue going on. The spell would affect the local seaponies if I let this continue.
So I showed myself. I wove an illusion around myself to appear as a massive sea pony empress, several floors high. I demanded to know why they were casting spells in my ocean.
The three leaders of the changeling queens stepped forward and from their sheer size, and the amount of wounds that marked their carapace, I could tell they were the eldest and thus, probably the most powerful queens I had ever seen.
They introduced themselves Queen Zagara of the Evergreen Hive, Queen Theraphosia of the Doomhorn, and Queen Borte of The Horde. They informed me they were tracking a sea monster and its kin, which had killed their sister, Queen Araneae on this very shore.
Of course, this piqued my curiosity. After all, it’s not particularly easy for a sea monster to kill a land creature, even one on the shore.
So they described the attackers. I was confused, because they seemed like a cross between seaponies and land ponies. With rudimentary hooves, but that had extended webbing off the side, but they also had tails.
My greater concern was the fact that they seem to have a natural armor, much like the kelpies. But that was impossible, or so I had thought.
Anyway, their tale of a monster that came from the sea, but could walk on land put me on alert and I agreed to work with them. We established an outpost in a secret bay so the changelings could meet us and trade information. The changelings would hunt whomever these monsters were on land, whilst I would hunt the monsters in the sea.
Hopefully this arrangement works out.