Over the wide open fields and the solitary rocky river, the sun in its sharp orange sky finally set upon the day, lowering behind the mountains to plunge everything into a cool darkness. From the other side, the moon appeared, returning with its mellow glow and its myriad of accompanying stars.
Everything became colder and Ocellus, who had watched it all from beside the parked rowboat by the Gorm, looked to her left and saw the endless fields across the water, these sporting four more trees than her side. “Where is she?”
Standing behind the nearest tree and with their backs to the trunk, Tempest and Coat slowed their breathing to a silent halt.
“Why are we hiding?” Coat asked, shivering and hugging herself in the cold. “If the legend is true, then it doesn’t matter how we attack them, right?”
Tempest cradled the Sphere, her horn now inactive. “I’m taking all necessary precautions. I know how tricksters can set me up for failure. As long as I’m holding it, we’re safe.”
“You can’t just put it down?”
Tempest slapped her on the face. “Can you stop asking questions? You sound like you have nothing but questions!”
“That’s because I’ve been through a weird week,” she said through the pain, massaging her affected cheek. “What next? Maybe when I wake up, you’re a changeling and you’ll take me to your boyfriend so we can become best friends.”
Tempest rolled her eyes. “This is not the time to make jokes.”
“I could, uh...lighten up the mood, like somepony told me before all this?”
“You buried two bodies and you want to lighten up the mood?” Tempest grinned, wagging her head at her. “You’re a bizarre pony. Then again, all of you ponies are bizarre to me.”
Coat looked away, seeing the grass sway under another gust of wind. Then, she turned back to Tempest. “So, what’s the hold-up?”
Tempst moaned. Without looking at her: “We’re going to wait for that changeling over there to turn around; she looks like the local leader. We slip up to her and knock her out. Whole squad will think she’s searching for her missing pony buddy. Then, we get to the rest of them.” She paused, focused on her. “Do as I say and don’t question it.”
Coat nodded her head blankly.
“We’ll start with you staying right behind this very tree while I watch out for her,” Tempest finished. “Got it?”
Coat nodded again, still blankly.
Tempest poked her head out of the trunk.
Ocellus was looking their way.
“Hah!” Ocellus shouted, spreading her wings and flying away from the river. “Every—“
Bzow!
She fell limp, her legs and ears marked with burns.
“What?!” Coat shouted, shocked and holding her head, turning it about. “I thought you’re gonna sneak up on—“
“She saw us,” Tempest said, coming out of the tree. “Had no choice.”
Tempest placed the sphere inside her saddle bag and sallied out, approaching the river.
Fresh Coat fell to the ground. “Hey! Wait for me!”
“What’re we having?” a changeling asked Empis as he and their peers sat around their second bonfire, now in the middle of a somewhat thick copse of trees—not enough to be a forest, but it felt like one.
Empis was the odd one out, standing by a little campfire by the big bonfire; beside him was Cheerilee, legs tied to a wooden branch hammered to the ground. He was busy cooking ants, caterpillars, worms, and one huge beetle inside a pot of boiling water.
“Crust?” the cook called out. “You got the coconuts?”
Crust, sitting on his log, took out two coconuts. “I brought straws and—ooh! I also found this while I was out foraging!”
He brought out an empty beehive. His friends admired it with “Ooh!’s” and “Aah!’s”
Empis did a double take. “Woah. How’d you get the bees out?”
“I burned them!”
Empis blinked. “O...K….”
“What?” Crust held his hooves out like one falsely accused. “Coconut and honey for us, leftovers for the cheery pony to drink. A healthy pony is a lovely pony, am I right?”
“Too much sweets and she won’t be healthy,” Empis remarked, stirring the pot with a stick.
“Sugar to keep her awake!” the coconut changeling talked back, pointing at her.
“It’s almost dinner,” Empis said, exasperated at Crust. “After this, she’ll go straight to bed and we move on with her. I heard everyone else is going to reach us...about four hours from now.”
“Why so late?” asked Pycno, another changeling by the bonfire.
Empis sighed. “They’re busy with...something. I don’t know.”
“Speaking of being late,” Crust went on, “where’s Ocellus? Isn’t she supposed to be here by now?”
“Probably looking for Wildwood,” Empis said, taking a look at the pot. More bubbles popped as an appetizing aroma wafted out of it.
As for Cheerilee, her views of what was appetizing were apparently different from those of her captors since she covered her mouth and was close to throwing up, cheeks bulging.
“I’m not surprised if she comes back empty-hoofed,” Empis continued. “She could’ve bailed on us.”
“And left for another changeling party?” Pycno asked.
“Doesn’t make sense to me,” Crust answered for Empis, flying nearer to the bonfire to warm himself up. “She’s going to cause confusion between our groups, might start a little fight between us on accident.”
“Unless that’s part of her plan,” Pycno suggested.
The thought of it made every changeling stand up, alert and ready, wings open and taking defensive stances.
“Won’t you calm down?!” Empis yelled from his spot by the cooking pot.
Everyone blinked at him.
“Sit down!”
And everyone sat down.
Empis thrust his hoof to the air. Kicked Cheerilee in the face, bruising it purple—well, more purple than it could already be.
“We are not having this argument again!” Empis screamed, facing his changeling co-workers. “Ocellus and I would never let a pony do our thing without serious thought! We’re ninety-nine percent sure she’s on our side, and even if she tries to turn our back on us, we’ll capture her on sight and send her to the prisons northside!”
He took a breather, putting a leg on a log.
The other changelings looked around, blaming each other not with words but with glances and glowers.
Cheerilee, seemingly missing from this heated talk, took the time to rub her hurting nose.
“We are not going to make any plans against Wildwood Flower,” Empis railed. “Do you understand?!”
His new subordinates murmured their “Yes’s”, some with a fearful shake.
“Good. Dinner in five minutes.”
The changelings then erupted into a free-for-all conversation as they took up their wooden bowls or, at worst, their stolen clothes to hold the food with. Empis himself went around and distributed the food, picking out and dropping equal servings for each of his comrades. For the huge beetle, he placed it on one of the flatter logs and sliced it open with a knife.
Crust, meanwhile, put his dinner down on the ground and cut the coconuts into halves without too much spillover. He took the beehive and brought out enough honeycombs for everyone to enjoy.
Everyone except Cheerilee who was left with a slice of a slice of honeycomb, a little cup’s worth of refreshing coconut water, and a bowl of crunchy boiled ants.
“What’s the matter with you?!” Empis shouted when he noticed her untouched food, busy carving out huge servings of beetle. “Eat!”
Cheerilee turned her face away. “Uh, wh-why, thank you—“
“Eat the honey and the ants!” Empis ordered.
The mare looked at the bowl of ants, their tiny bodies already burned and boiled.
She gulped twice in a row. Sweat was rolling down her face and her hooves. “I-I’ve never eaten ants before!”
“Then, congratulations!” Empis said, stopping his knifework. “Everyone has firsts, and you’ll have yours with those ants.”
“But...they’re ants.”
“Try something new!” was Empis’s last resort. He then returned to carving the beetle into hefty portions.
Cheerilee looked back to her bowl of ants.
She shuddered and raised her forehooves to her face. Dirty hooves, bruised hooves, scarred and hurting hooves.
She could feel her heart burn. She could feel her eyes well up.
From behind the trees, Tempest and Coat watched disaster unfold as Cheerilee cried loudly to the sky, ruining the whole dinner and prompting more than half the changelings present to console her, at least according to their idea of consoling since what they were telling her was that she was “going to be treated well as a slave”, that she would “have lots of fun times with your friends when you get to the cells in Canterlot”, and that she might even “be the pony dishing out those fried ants to us!”
In spite of these efforts at consoling this poor mare, she only cried more, souring the general mood of what would have been a great celebratory dinner.
“She’s pitiful,” Tempest commented under her breath. “If only she would fight back. She’s an Earth pony! Strong, athletic—why is she letting those ropes tie her down?”
“Because she is weakened—“
“I did not ask for your opinion!” Tempest snapped at her aggravating partner.
Coat sighed, muttering, “And you’ll go down dying….”
“What was that?”
The capped mare shrank away. “Uh, n-nothing!”
“I heard you were saying something.” Tempest raised her head, letting her grumpy face loom over Coat’s hat.
“Um...n-nothing?”
Tempest stomped a hoof right before hers, menacing her with a full display of her shiny teeth. “Do you dare try to get the Sphere away from me?”
“I-I wasn’t, I-I-I….”
Tempest kicked her on the chest and threw her down, leaped out of her hiding spot, and glowed her horn.
The changelings looked at the unicorn.
They charged at her, flying and running.
Leaving Cheerilee behind.
Tempest threw them down with punts of her head; now it was kicks and punches, and then a changeling grabbing her leg and her tail at the same time with tugging pain—kicked with a hind leg and flung him out, only for a changeling to bite at her tall mane. Dragged around, she fell to the ground.
The Sphere slipped out of her grip.
She shot a beam from her horn at a nearby changeling and he fell, his body falling to the Sphere and pushing it back to her grip. Several more changelings were done in by the heaviness of the artifact, being knocked on the head by it.
Tempest jumped back on to her four hooves and spaced them out, holding on to the ground as she fired beam after beam at each attacking changeling, yet more came and those fallen just stood up again.
“Don’t drop it!” cried out Fresh Coat from past the trees.
Tempest opened her mouth wide in surprise. “What?”
Then, orange hooves took hold of the Sphere.
Both mares were fighting over the relic as the changelings targeted Tempest, all trying to get it for themselves.
And then Coat pushed in and shoved her head under Tempest’s, covering the Sphere with it.
Coat pulled it out and kicked Tempest back down to the ground.
Pain surging through her sides, she looked at that other pony, that mare standing beside plenty of other changelings, all of them weakly reflecting the bright bonfire.
Fresh Coat glowed. It was now a changeling who had the Sphere of Fortitude.
Tempest gasped. Her hooves scampered backwards, hurling herself away from the changelings.
Only to be battered by half a coconut thrown her way.
She stumbled, slowed down, and a hoof caught her tail and another hoof and still another hoof until she was dragged all the way back to their grasp.
Tempest did not scream, Tempest did not cry, Tempest did not stay silent. Drowned out by countless changelings swarming her and beating her up, she struggled, wrestled, fought back despite her restricted hooves and horn, until—
Delilah was holding the sleeping grub on her hoof, both of them resting before the bonfire. A smile appeared on his face as she caressed his small head. Who could resist that cute fanged smile on a little grub?
“Ahem.”
There, standing before her, was a long-faced Ocellus.
Delilah looked over her shoulder, seeing the changelings chaining both Cheerilee and Tempest up together, the former’s wailing overpowering the lattere's mere silence.
“Where have you been?” Ocellus asked, expressionless. “And why are you here?”
The other changeling pressed her lips together, took some seconds to ready an answer. “I was racking up ponies to share and bring back to the hive. I encountered a pony sleeping in a bar out here and took her up. It worked until now.”
“Well, you got us what our pony agent could not do,” Ocellus replied, “so we must do something for you even though you are not part of our troop.”
“Thank you.”
Delilah returned to tending the grub’s needs, rubbing it softly as he yawned.
“About that….” Ocellus sat down beside her on the log. “The grub has been corrupted by the ponies. You must take extra care in teaching him who he is. Do you follow what I’m saying?”
Delilah nodded.
Ocellus got up. “We can accommodate you until your troop catches up. I’ll send a scout to his leader immediately.”
“His name is Hymeno,” she answered. “He works directly under Pharynx.”
“Alright.” Ocellus opened her wings and flew away, flying towards the rest of the changelings who were currently taking love from their two prisoners.
As for Delilah, she occupied herself with the grub, looking after him and muttering sweet words and phrases to him.
Before long, she dozed off, the grub sleeping on the log and Delilah herself sleeping on the grassy ground, unmindful of the freezing night.