“Psst!”
Snoring.
“Psst!”
More snoring.
“Psst!”
Still snoring.
“Why don’t you wake up?”
“Ugh….”
Tracker rolled about, then, with another “Ugh…”, got up on his rugged hay bed and opened his eyes, blinking them free from drowsiness.
In front of him a changeling in the darkness.
Tracker coughed, pinched his nose. “What is that?!”
The changeling lifted a hoof. “Oh. That’s me. Sorry!”
He coughed some more, keeping a hoof tight on his nose. “D-Do you always smell like th-that?”
She shook her head; he could see her glossy white teeth. In a pepper voice: “No!”
Tracker rubbed his head, feeling the pulse on his side. “I...c-can you help me? I d-don’t remember what h-happened. Last night, we were going to eat dinner and...I fainted...I think. I just fell and went out….”
She nodded, grinning wide open with an adorable nod. “Yeah! That was me!”
Tracker recoiled, shuffled to the back of the bed. Tried to discern her dark figure. “Wait, what?!”
“Yeah!” The changeling jumped for joy, flapping her wings for a second. “I was the one who got your love! I could taste the love you have for your parents—ah, you must’ve had fond memories with them when you were a tiny little foal!”
Tracker slapped his two forehooves on his head, trying to hold on to reason and sanity. “That’s what being...that’s what b-being….”
She nodded, oblivious to that heroic attempt of staying sane. “Yes! That’s what being changeling food is like!” Then, she gasped, inhaling a huge gulp. “Oh, excuse me! I almost forgot!” Extended a holey leg at him. “My name’s Urtica! I’m the newly-appointed Hive Librarian!”
Tracker tilted his head a bit. “You guys have...books?”
She retracted her hoof; ears languished. “Mostly yours, but they’re really good!”
“Right…I still don’t feel right about...having love taken away from...you….” He shuddered, burring.
Urtica looked up. “Whoops! Forgot to turn on the lights.”
She hovered away.
Tracker could barely see her, making out only her shape in the bleak darkness. “What time is it?”
“It’s four in the morning!”
Cling!
Tracker was assaulted with the sudden light.
After his eyes recovered, he could see his bedroom more clearly. By the peeling walls which presented the gray concrete beneath the shiny paint, a few shelves burst with books and papers and quills and inkwells and candles and torches and matches and lots of other flammable stuff; even on the floor, scroll and sheets of paper were strewn about.
“If you’re wondering,” Urtica said, hovering over the mess, “this is my special room! I just roll some dice and, well, you got the number and you’re here!”
Tracker rubbed his eyes, looking at her dumbfounded with unbelief. “Is this a...dream? It must be a dream, right?”
Urtica shook her head again. “It isn’t a dream! But, if you want to really know—“ and pulled out a bucket of water from under the other bed.
“No, wait, that's enough!”
She splashed the bucket on to him, dousing the pony and his hay bed.
Tracker shivered, feeling the intense chill on him, along with his soggy mane covering an eye.
“Well, you did ask if you were dreaming!” Urtica said, still cheery. “Now, get up! It’s time for breakfast!”
Tracker shook his head. “It’s not the breakfast I’m thinking of, is it?”
Urtica rubbed her chin, pondering upon the question. “It depends. Breakfast is the first meal of the day for the both of us...unless you count midnight snacks, which may or may not be the first meal of the day if they come before the sun rises—but, it is four o’ clock right now and—“
Tracker let out a loud sigh.
Urtica took the signal and stopped. “We’re both hungry, aren’t we? Can’t think well on empty stomachs!” Tapped her own and licked her lips. “Today’s a Wednesday, so you’ll be getting chili stew with lettuces and potatoes.”
Tracker pulled out a slight smile. “Better than n-nothing….” Drifted off, looking somewhere else. “What will you be having?”
“Ponies, silly!”
Tracker groaned and plopped back lying down on his bed.
Tracker looked at his blue hooves as he sat by the long wooden table and heard the many words echoing out of changelings’ mouths.
He sat in a grand hall chiefly made of marble and limestone. It had gained the distinction of not being in total ruins, though that was a bit much to say—the holes in the walls were numerous, more than half the stained glass windows were partially missing, and nobody had bothered to remove any of the fallen ceiling debris which blocked up a third of the hall and, therefore, a third of the table, meaning that on one end of the table, two changelings were drinking their water beside fallen concrete.
Buzzes went about as the changelings at the table went on with their feast, and now would be a good time to describe what a changeling breakfast might be like in conquered towns: Changelings had two parts to their meal, the first part being the food on the table, which was a combination of whatever the cook would think up which, this Wednesday, meant a basket of grapes and carrots plus a spicy stew topped with lettuces and potatoes, with a huge chocolate cake as the dessert—it was so tall that a changeling waiter had to fly around and slice the individual cake slices for each of the changelings, and they were so many that some had to stand up while eating.
Well, what was the second part? The second part was the ponies tied to their chairs, tied supremely down to the floor with up to five ropes so as to not be able to move from their spot at all. Oftentimes, a changeling would turn away from the physical food on the table to open his mouth and feed on the emotional food he could get from his assigned pony—and “assigned” was sort of a strict term, since changelings could change seats and, therefore, change the ponies they would have their servings of love from.
Though, in Urtica’s defense, she staunchly remained in her seat, with a tied Tracker watching helplessly as all the changelings around him fed on that scrumptious table food. He looked to his left and to his right and saw rows of ponies with their faces down, distraught and never a smile on them.
Urtica held out a plate of lettuces and potatoes dripping wet from the spicy stew. She hoofed it to him. “You want some? Be careful! It’s hot.”
“How hot?” Tracker asked, his voice sickly. “Like chili sauce hot?”
“Chili sauce hot.”
Tracker nodded and took the plate. With his bare and dirty hooves, he hobbled together a hoofful and ate some, the stew dripping from his hoof.
Urtica smiled. “A healthy pony is a lovely pony!”
Tracker gulped. Then, faltering a bit and eyeing the food on the table, he asked, “I-If you f-feed on l-love, then why do you eat normal food?”
“You mean this stuff?” Urtica asked, holding up her bowl of soup. “It helps...a little. Like candy. Our taste buds still haven’t adjusted to it so it’s not as tasty as love, but most of us are just fine with it. It’s something different, and, anyway, you ponies can’t have too much food!”
Tracker groaned again, this time with a ting of bitterness.
“Oh, uh, also...” Urtica kept looking at him with that blank expression, “I got to eat.”
“What do you mean—“
She opened her mouth and consumed the love out of him in that pink stream coming out of his torso.
Tracker struggled, trying to stand up but failing as a leg bent and he almost fell over.
She stopped and smiled. "Mm-mm!" Urtica looked up, seeing the parts of the ceiling that had not fallen. “You know that, uh, sour taste we get?”
Tracker said nothing, breathing slower.
“I feel that you miss your friends,” Urtica said. She inched closer to him while still being seated on the long bench. “I don’t really know their names, but...I could really sense it.”
Tracker looked at her, eyes fluttering. “Y-You do?”
Urtica nodded, still smiling. She looked here and there, nervous and fidgeted around with her hooves. “So, uh, how’s the stew?”
Near the withered Canterlot Castle lay a new building which differed much from the broken ones around it. For one, it was not broken at all; in fact, it was nearing completion as changelings hauled wagons of ever-shifting rocks and placed them on the walls, about to complete it. Second, its style was vastly different; instead of being made up of uniform lines and curves, this one had an unstable and haphazard style to it, the holes on its structure closing and opening at random intervals.
Inside, Star Tracker and Urtica stood in that mysterious place, seeing the bookshelves by the walls with meager scrolls and books coupled with other bookshelves stuffed with the same. It was dark although not too dark to see anything at all, and, sitting by the walls, were changeling eggs nursed and protected by armored guards. They could hear the street chatter from the outside—Tracker could overhear a conversation between two changelings about an impersonation show coming up later tonight and how one of them was to be a judge in the competition.
“This is the first ever changeling library in the history of the world!” Urtica proclaimed, nudging Tracker on the shoulder. “I don’t know if we need much culture, honestly, but...just think of it! When we have enough of you and your kind—and others, too!—we’re going to have a lot of free time. Yeah, her Majesty wants us to do more work all the time and I understand her point, but what happens when they’re all done for the day?” She raised her hooves in delight. “We can do other things!”
“Like reading books?” Tracker asked.
“Well, for me and my broodmates, yes!” Urtica said, nodding rapidly. “We can write about whatever we want!”
Slowly, Tracker asked, “What do they want to write?”
“About how great Queen Chrysalis is!” Urtica answered, not letting go of that perennial smile though the fangs intimidated the pony.
“And how does that work?”
A guard flew to him and struck Tracker with a punch, shouting, “Do not disrespect her Majesty!”
Reeling from the blow, Tracker staggered and almost, again, fell over.
“You’ve got to have a higher opinion of her,” Urtica said with a tint of panic, helping him up as he held on to the rock wall for balance. “You’re ours; she might as well be your queen now.”
Tracker pointed to himself, bewildered. “But, I’m a pony! What am I gonna do, wear a mask or a costume? I’m no actor!”
“You don’t have to be!” Urtica replied. “You could be my assistant or my secretary! Do some things like take my letters or something...whatever a secretary does in a library!”
Tracker let out a sigh and sat down on the rough floor.
The guards watched him from both near and far.
Urtica helped him up again. “Don’t you worry, Star Tracker! Be glad you didn’t go down fighting!”
Tracker raised a brow, groaning as he got up with unsteady legs. “Why?”
“Because if they found you fighting, we’d have to give you something harsher than what you have now!” Urtica answered. “You’d be working in a dungeon or something like that, but I know they don’t have dungeons in Canterlot. More like dungeons in a cave….”
“What’s the difference?” Tracker said in a bout of sorrow, throwing his hooves up in the air. “That’s like saying it’s better to be drowned than to be burned.”
Urtica made a naive smile. “Well, it is true.”
Tracker let out a big, long moan, his mouth wide open and the guards collectively groaning in return—over there, a changeling sharpened his spear and eyed the invasive visitor.
“Don’t be so sad!” Urtica said, rubbing his chin. “It’s better to serve us!”
“What’s so good about that?” Tracker asked, voice heavy, eyes welling up with tears. “We’re going to be doing the same thing forever, all while we’re tortured for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! What’s good about that?”
“Well, you were part of the resistance...or, one resistance. So many resistances these days!” She got out a dry hankerchief, dabbed her face with it, glanced at the wall and expected a map to be there. “Do you have something similar to central command? It’d be really hard to get them to all work together!”
Tracker sighed at that.
“What could they do there but worry about hiding? We’re the winning side! We’re the ones with more soldiers, more food, more water, more land and territory, more weapons, more wealth...more everything! If you just obey and submit to us, you’d be up in the ranks!”
“Up in the ranks of slavery?” Tracker asked back. “What would that be like?”
“Ordering your fellow ponies to obey us or face the consequences!”
Tracker groaned and covered his face, deep in thought.
“Our queen knows that good slaves must be rewarded,” Urtica said. “A slave would not have any positive feelings towards their masters if all they get is smacks and shame. Just as we drones are rewarded, you slaves also get rewarded! Think about it! You’d get more minimal morsels a day! Won’t you get excited you won’t go stark hungry every seven hours?”
Tracker dropped to the floor again, looking downcast as he stared at the shelves before him.
“Are you thinking about your friends?” Urtica asked, changing up her voice and sounding concerned, tilting her head a bit. “That’s OK! After about six months of infraction-free servitude—though we’re still deliberating on that so it may be subject to change—you can get in close contact with the friends you have here anytime you want!” Then, looked up at the ceiling once more. “As long as it’s not past ten P.M., that is.”
Tracker only pouted. “Are you trying to make me happy, Urtica? Because you’re not.”
A guard stepped out of his post and faced Urtica. “Miss Librarian, give me the permission to strike this foul beast! He should be content with the many mercies we’ve already given this pony chow!”
Urtica held up a hoof. “Please desist, Vespul.”
The guard muttered a few inaudible words and returned to his guarding stance.
Urtica smiled and brought Tracker back up on his hooves.
Then, the holes on the front wall changed, some closing and some opening, giving another lighting landscape to read books in.
“It’s only been twenty minutes since breakfast,” Urtica said. “If you want, you could go read some books. I don’t mind if you read the pony stuff, but please do read our works! We’ve worked very hard on them!”
Tracker sighed and got up.
He looked down the short corridor.
Scrawled on the sign hanging above was, “Changeling Books”.
The bookshelves were nearly empty, with only one shelf a fourth full. There were no labels to call it fiction or non-fiction, nor was there anything to tell what genre they held. Only books were there.
Tracker trotted to the shelves and pulled down a book.
It was a smelly new book, devoid of any fresh scent. The cover looked half-baked as if it had been hastily prepared. On it was printed the title: On Love.
“I know what that is!” Urtica exclaimed, gliding to his side and patting on the cover. “This is our first romance novel! Granted, we’ve never done any books before, but I’m so glad Blue Alarm volunteered to be the first one to write it! It just fits our theme well, doesn’t it?”
Tracker let out a sly giggle, his smile only a rude smirk. “’Blue Alarm’? That sounds like a pony name.”
“When you have hundreds of grubs being born every week, you start to run out of names pretty fast,” Urtica replied. “Chrysalis allowed him to keep his name a decade and a half ago, but she’s now thinking about easing up our naming conventions. There’s only so many changeling names to go around before it’s all...well, gone and we have to borrow.”
“What about Ga—“
“And we also have to think about how smart Chrysalis is!” Urtica went on. “She has the names recorded, but she only looks at it thrice a year!”
Tracker nodded. He held the book to her, gesturing towards the book with his eyes. “So, what’s it about?”
Urtica smiled. “It’s about a changeling who meets a mare and they fall in love but Chrysalis doesn’t like it so she kills him and makes the mare mad but she kills her, too.”
Tracker blinked dumbly. “Uh, thanks for spoiling the whole story.”
“Whoops!” Urtica covered her mouth, blushed with embarrassment. “But almost every changeling here knows that, so I thought you’d know it, too!”
“But I’m not a—“
Bells ringing.
Changelings outside spreading their wings and taking off.
Cries, shouts. Rumblings, the ground shaking a little—a guard was thrown off balance and fell to the floor.
Smash!
Bells flooding Canterlot with their ringing.
“We’re being attacked!” Vespula yelled and flew out of the library.
Urtica gasped and tied Tracker to the bookshelf with an emergency rope which was lying on one of the bottom shelves.
“What’s going on?!” Tracker yelled, struggling to get out of custody again. “Who’s attac—“
And Urtica drained a quick breath of love from him, the pink stream appearing and disappearing in moments. “Sorry, but gotta stay sharp!”
Tracker, feeling weaker, buckled down again.
Then, a stream of fire blasted the street, scorching it.
Urtica stopped right there, her eyes glowing in the reflection. She saw the creatures that landed outside. “Dragons?!”
“Dragons?!” Tracker repeated, a smile coming back to his face.
“But, how?!” Urtica shouted, trembling but resisting to take a step back. “The walls are doubly fortified and we got fire resistant armor!”
Swooping down to the library came a young orange dragon riding on a pink hippogriff and they landed inside.
“Watch out, Silverstream!” the dragon cried out. “Here comes the fire!”
Urtica growled and flew at the duo, screaming a battle cry at them.
And she was sent away burning, her fins and her wings on fire, flying out of the library.
The dragon hopped off her hippogriff.
Silverstream flew and cut the rope with her claws, freeing Tracker who had the tip of his mane singed.
“You better come with us!” the dragon said, pulling him up “We’re your rescuers!”
Tracker gulped. “Wh-What?”
“You don’t want to be rescued?” the dragon asked, crossing her arms.
Tracker immediately went on the hippogriff with the dragon.
Silverstream turned around. “Smolder, what’s our exit plan?”
“Get out!” Smolder yelled.
The hippogriff opened her wings.
A troupe of guards gralloped to block the entrance.
With Silverstream charging forwards, Smolder burned the guards with her fire breath and they blasted out of there, flying to the sky.
“We’re not out yet!” Smolder said, then, looking behind her—“Look out! More at your back!”
Silverstream flew faster, flapping her wings harder and at breakneck speed.
All the while, Tracker was holding very dearly to the hippogriff’s neck which was the only thing that kept him from falling. Feeling the rush, the wind, and looked down—the city below with the streets in furious fighting as changelings and dragons engaged in combat with fire and beams.
“Is this your first time flying?” Smolder asked coolly as they sailed through the sky.
His polite and courteous reply was “Aaaggghhh!”
"Ugh."
Smolder turned around and shot out fireballs from her mouth at the pursuing changelings. Some got hit and fell, some dodged and kept up the chase.
“Hold on to your seats!” Silverstream warned. “I’m gonna try a trick!”
Smolder laughed and slapped Tracker on the back who almost responded with another polite and courteous scream. The dragon then faced Silverstream, trying to get her attention. “You’re gonna loop-de-loop around?”
Silverstream turned her head round and nodded.
Tracker gulped and squeezed her neck.
She choked, her wings failed; all were sent falling through the sky.
“Aaaggghhh!”
“Could you let go of her throat?!” Smolder shouted, hanging on to her tail.
“I don’t wanna die!”
“Let me help you!”
And Smolder picked him up with one arm.
Silverstream inhaled deeply, and, after fixing her wings mid-fall, she barely escaped crashing on the sidewalk and flew through Canterlot’s closing moat gate and shot out, letting the final pursuers get smashed by a then fully closed gate.
“Yeah!” Smolder shouted, dropping Tracker on to the hippogriff’s back. “We’re out! We’re out!”
Silverstream turned back to her again. “High five?”
“High five!”
The two of them high fived each other in the sky.
Tracker tightened her grip on Silverstream’s head and looked back.
There, vanquished Canterlot stood, with changelings and dragons battling at a distance, growing smaller by the second in his view. Changelings could be seen running and flying around in flames, dragons could be seen falling and fainting by the green beams the changelings shot out from their horns.
Tracker was close to jumping out of the hippogriff out of fear. “I don’t know what to say! I was expecting pegasi to come here or something like that, but...dragons and hippogriffs?!”
“Don’t think much about it,” Smolder said, raising both her shoulders. “We’re the raiding party!”
Tracker dropped his jaw.
“Yeah, we do it once a month,” Smolder replied, ignoring the pony’s surprise as they flew, Silverstream's wings flapping with the wind. “Good thing this one was a success! Now, on to the Dragon Lands!”
“What?!”