Spectra followed her mother through the cavernous belly of the hive. The central chamber where she had spent the first months of her life was teeming with worker-drones digging away at the walls, carving new tunnels into the solid stone. Their methods were a stark contrast with what Spectra had seen on the surface.
Slime dribbled from the jaws of worker-drones, acidic, based on their scent, that they plastered along the cavern to eat away at the stone until it was weak enough to break down. Noxious fumes from dissolving limestone were soaked up by lanterns of blue glowing mushrooms. The small fungi seemed to thrive on what would kill most living creatures.
But while the fungal lights were more than enough for Spectra's eyes, the ponies stumbled and fell the entire journey. Even Lunti, who had been in the hive before, was completely lost in the dark, and had to cling to Spectra's side for guidance.
"The Chrysalis before me built the pen from her own private stock of ponies before I killed her," explained the Queen as they ascended a passageway. Though it went up, it also burrowed deeper into the core of the mountain that sat above the hive. Not even fungal patches reached the walls of the tunnel.
"Before then, we fed our drones from our personal stores," she continued. "It was easier when the hive was manageable, but impossible once my succession promoted the hive's growth."
"I've never seen anything coming down this way," Spectra said, noticing the clean edges of the passage. No stalactites or stalagmites got in the way. It was certainly a drone-carved tunnel. "How do you keep the ponies alive?"
"It's not like any other cavern in the hive," the Queen answered. "Besides, you've been away for months, and when you returned, you barely stayed before you went on your hunt for your sister. You haven't seen half of the hive I've built for our kind, daughter."
Spectra stared ahead at that thought. Was she saying that literally? Spectra thought she had seen most of the hive before she left for her hunt. Every crack and cranny, she scoured them for rats and lizards to feed her growing body. How could there be so much more?
There were six guard-drones standing by the entrance to the Pen. They made Spectra uneasy, the drones. All living things had magic in them and it was that magic that was affected by emotions. But the guard-drones had almost no scent at all. Their mindlessness wasn't the same as a hunter-drone's duty, that Spectra could smell. The aura radiating from the six guard-drones was featurelessly flat, as plain as the taste and scent of water.
But they reacted instantly to the Queen's presence. Four stepped aside to widen the path while the two guard-drones by the entrance began levitating the stone door sideways. The heavy iron gate, stolen from ponies from the far north Spectra guessed from the designs, turned inward screechingly.
The short tunnel that led straight ahead was vastly different from anything else in the hive. I was wet, not with acid, but with cool water. Moss and glowing fungi grew in great abundance as the tunnel widened to a yellow and orange-lighted cavern. The entrance to the Pen was high up in the cavern walls, leading down with a path cut from the earth's stone.
The light was dim compared to the sun, but it was no doubt sufficient for the ponies to see. From the entrance, Spectra could easily see the top of the cavern and the source of the light, a fast-rotating crystal the size of a hunter-drone's egg sac. It radiated orange and yellow like a sunset, bathing the underground ecosystem with warmth.
She looked down to the cavern floor, where some two hundred ponies must have been living. The Pen, she realized, was over four times the size of the hive's main chamber, twice the size of the cave at the mouth of the hive. Two wide but shallow streams cut across the floor, the source of the cavern's cooling. Combined with the crystal's warmth, an enchantment no doubt made by ponies from the far north, the Pen maintained a temperate climate compared to the rest of the hive.
The floor began to show itself as another marvel of life. Lichens, glowing and plain, carpeted the cavern's floor. Small bushes of berries cropped up from patches of moist dirt, while four ponies tended to a single mango tree in the centre of the cavern.
There were tents scatters wherever plants did not grow, some made from the bones of long-dead ponies, others made from materials stolen from the surface, like iron, wood, and wool. The ponies that lived in them saw the Changelings arriving. Many ran for the tents or some rock to hide behind, but most of them greeted the Queen with their heads bowed low.
"This is worse than I ever imagined," gasped the orange-clad chanter.
"Better than a dark cave," Lunti remarked, still gazing up at the sun-crystal.
"They're farming us like crops."
The Queen chuckled. "Yes, we are. It's one of the perks of being Equestria's top predator."
The ponies that bowed grovelled and whimpered, and when the Queen finally waved her hoof to let them stand, they gaze up to her and began croaking.
It was a disgusting sound, raspy cutting of the throat interwoven with clicks and clacks from their tongues and teeth. Their wide eyes stared while a young stallion, wrapped in a thin garment of moss and fungi, stood up to walk among his kind. The rest retreated, clicking their tongues in a rhythm.
"What did you do to them?" hissed Orange, but Spectra's captain shoved his hoof in her mouth before she could interrupt.
The Queen ignored her and continue to look over the young stallion. She levitated him up to her eye level and opened her jaw so far, Spectra could hear the pop of the chitin plates of her exoskeleton as they stretched out of place. As easily and quickly as taking a breath, the Queen drew on the pony's magic.
Spectra could smell the rush of adrenaline through the pony's veins as his body realized it was dying. But he slumped down, going completely limp within the Queen's levitation grip. Most the ponies who had greeted them clicked their tongues in unison, raising their heads up in smiles. Only two mares, one young and one old, sat silently in the back of the herd.
"Leave as many of your prey here, Spectra," the Queen said, dropping the dead pony at her hooves. "And Zorne, you're relieved of your duties to my daughter. Feed your pack and then be in my chambers in an hour."
"Of course, your highness," he bowed, and then looked to Spectra. "I wish you the best of luck, princess." He hissed to his pack, and they dispersed themselves throughout the cavern, hovering above the ponies and looking at them like the way a Riverfork merchant looks at produce. The few who ran from the Queen ran from them too, but the others didn't even seem to notice, simply returning to their daily lives.
"Are these all the ponies that feed the hive?" Spectra said.
"Not at all," the Queen replied. "Most drones don't even come here. They usually feed during their hunts on the surface. All these ponies here are simply reserves for young drones and packs that need to recover between hunts."
"Some of these ponies," Spectra mumbled, "they don't seem right. What's wrong with them?"
"Majesta really is better than you," her mother chuckled. "She figured it out right away. Most of the ponies here, they were born in the hive. Some of them have never seen the sun for generations."
The chanters from Marblestop broke out into a struggle against Spectra's drones, pushing and pulling to shake themselves free.
"The Spirits won't stand for this!" one of them screamed. "Every town and village its protectors. You're all evil, and divine punishment will come for you, monsters!"
The Queen sighed. "If you have questions ask me tomorrow. I'll be teaching you the next step to leading the hive, a lesson both and Majesta have to learn now that you've shown that you're better than the other two."
"Lesson? What lesson?" Spectra asked.
"Tomorrow, my daughter, and only then." She opened her wings and flew up the side of the cave, turning out through the way they had come.
Spectra's captain, still dragging the orange-robed chanter, walked up next to her. "Princess, how many should we leave?"
Spectra looked at the ponies they had pulled from Marblestop. Most were hard to manage, children or elderly. The able-bodied, the chanters, were pathetically subdued in painful, levitated joint locks by her hunter-drones. She realized why the Pen was necessary. Even this small group outnumbered her pack nearly two to one.
If the majority weren't panicked younglings or senile old ponies, controlling them without killing them would have been impossible. Spectra couldn't manage all of them yet; it would have simply been too much effort to subdue all of them every time she went into her larder to feed.
"All of them," she said, looking at Orange. "Except her. Lunti can introduce her to the other stallion we have kept in my pantry."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Spectra and her captain passed the silent guard-drone standing by the entrance to her own cavern. He held the door open as they entered, and closed it behind them, leaving it unlocked in case they needed to leave quickly.
"Chevron, I'm home," Spectra called out.
Her captain dragged the struggling orange-robed pony over to a few ropes wrapped around a rock.
"No, it's fine, captain," she said. "Go back to the pen and eat your fill. She won't cause any trouble for me, she's too smart for that."
"Are you certain?" he asked to confirm her command.
"Yes. Now go."
Her captain nodded and threw Orange onto a matted layer of glowing mushrooms growing on the cavern floor. He eyed her as he knocked on the door and walked out, still staring back as the guard-drone closed it up again.
Immediately, the orange one galloped at Spectra. Before she could reach her, however, she was lifted up into the air and tossed back down into a patch of glowing fungi.
"Come on, is this how you want to meet your new roommate?" Spectra looked around. "Lunti, do you see Chevron?"
"I can't really see anything in here," she replied, sitting down with her back to the wall.
"Of course." Even with glowing fungi covering the cavern floor, her pantry cavern paled in quality compared to the Pen. It was a new cavern, of course, so its amenities were expected to be low, but at least it helped restrained the orange mare.
She fumbled in the darkness, reaching her hooves out to feel what she couldn't see clearly. But, for the moment, Spectra didn't care. She walked over the far back side of the cavern where she had spotted a curled up, dishevelled mess. Chevron, a wealthy council member from Riverfork who had the village's policies under his control, had thinned incredibly. His mane and beard were long and uncombed, filled with small insects and scraps of fungi.
"That can't be him," Lunti said as she crawled over to see for herself. "Chevron?"
"Good thing you stopped seducing him back in Riverfork, eh?" Spectra mocked Lunti. On her first hunt, she had found Lunti's letter to Chevron, refusing to continue whatever secret relationship they kept. "Hardly an impressive specimen now, isn't he?"
Lunti didn't say anything.
Spectra knelt down and shook him around. He had only been in here since Spectra left to kill Halfwing, just more than a week ago, but he had already begun to change. Lunti couldn't see it, but his mouth had cuts and sores all over it from eating the wrong mushrooms that grew in the cave. Spectra never had to eat them herself, so she couldn't know which ones they were. He must have eaten them out of desperation when the hive didn't treat him well.
Technically, he was still alive, so the drones did their job, but caring was not something Changelings excelled at, so Spectra really couldn't complain about the result.
"Wake up, you old bastard." She lifted him up with her forelegs and slammed his shoulderblade into a rough protrusion of stone on the cavern's wall.
"Argh!" The pain jolted Chevron awake, screaming. His pupils darted around, trying to figure out what had happened. "You're back? Oh, gods, you're finally back!" There the grown stallion started to weep, collapsing himself onto Spectra.
She stepped away and let Chevron fall back to the ground. "What's the matter with you?"
"I don't want-" he mumbled, "I don't want to live like this. Please, there's nothing in here!"
Spectra reached down and forced open his jaw as he screamed. His tongue had numerous small cuts on its surface that she didn't see before, wide scrapes that were probably caused by licking the moisture from the walls of the cavern.
"Should've guessed the worker-drones wouldn't take good care of you," she replied. "Though this is even beyond my imagination."
Chevron didn't hear her, simply laying himself out on the ground and weeping. Spectra sighed, and then pulled him up to meet her face. She wrapped her mouth around him, draining his magic the same way the Queen had, only stopping when she felt she was tapping into Chevron's core life magic. She let go and watched his body hit the ground, the shock of the drain leaving him unconscious.
"Did you..."
"No," Spectra turned to Lunti. "I'm not letting any of you go so easily. But, he should stay asleep for a while now. Hopefully, that'll end his suffering until I have my pack bring some surface goods in here."
Spectra moved closer to Lunti. "But you don't have to worry, I won't leave you in that weak of a state," she grinned. "The orange would probably kill you if I did."
"You're still going to feed on me?" Lunti squealed and stumbled back. "But you just had Chevron's magic."
Spectra smacked her lips. "And he tasted like cheap, under-ripened cheese. I'm not satisfied yet."
Lunti quivered, then looked over to where Orange watched. This was her first time seeing Spectra feed, Lunti thought, and she accepted what she had to do.
"What about her?" Lunti asked, pointing. "Did you bring her here just for this?"
Orange's jaw slacked open as she retreated, afraid of what Lunti was suggesting. "No, I'm not full of love. I hate you, I hate her, you won't get anything good from me."
Spectra smirked, glancing from Lunti to Orange. "I wondered if you'd do it. And I'm not disappointed."
She took her weight off of Lunti and paced toward Orange, channelling a small amount of magic into her eyes to glow in the darkness. The pony's heart and lungs started pumping harder as she pushed her back up against a boulder, one of the many weights in the cavern connected to ropes.
"Don't think you can take me easily," she growled, even if her voice was a mouse's with all the panic choking her up. "I'll fight you, every step of the way, I'll fight."
Spectra smiled. Were all the leaders of ponies like this? Maybe she was just defiant because she was still new to the hive. She let Orange make space between them.
"You're right," Spectra said. She waved her hoof at Lunti. "Hold her down."
"What?"
"Hold her down," repeated Spectra.
"Me?" Lunti stammered. "But, with your strength, can't you just-"
Spectra turned her head to the side and glanced at her. "Lunti. Hold her."
The glow of her eyes forced Lunti's gaze down. "I see. Okay."
Orange tensed as Lunti neared her, swatting her hooves away as she tried to wrap her legs around. "Oh no you don't." Her resistance turned to wrestling as Lunti put her weight on her, taking her back.
"You can't fight," spoke Lunti, clenching her jaw from the effort. "We can't fight her the way we are."
"I don't give up so easily," retorted Orange, flailing her hoof at Lunti's face. She landed her blows, but it cost her control of her limbs as Lunti grabbed at them, clamping them within the joints of her own legs.
Lunti eventually postured herself against the boulder, behind Orange, spreading the forelegs of the pony out so she couldn't kick them around. Her hind legs still thrashed, but Spectra fixed that quickly by pressing down her own weight onto them.
"The thing is, I can smell every emotion going through your head right now," said Spectra, tearing off the mare's orange robe with her fangs and pressing a hoof down tightly on her chest. "You say you hate me, but I know you still have hope for your people, and for Marblestop. You hate me because you love them, so don't think for a moment that I won't eat your magic."
Orange coughed, Spectra's hoof compressing her chest at the sternum. "Just remember that I saved your life," she spat.
Spectra covered Orange's mouth with her hoof and leaned into her ear. "Don't act like you really had a choice." She ran her tongue from the rigid cartilage tip of the ear to the soft, flexible base, biting forcefully but without breaking the skin. "Your days of living with freedom are over."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lunti breathed heavily as Spectra separated their lips. Lightheaded, she felt the effects of Spectra's appetite as she started to lose her sense of balance. Guided by Spectra's grip, she slid down into a soft carpet of glowing mushrooms. As empty as the dark cavern was, there was some beauty in its plants. Lying on the floor, Lunti felt like she was floating on a glowing blue sea.
She figured Spectra was full, or at least sated. She didn't drain magic like a pony discovering a desert oasis.
Lunti shivered, Spectra's cold touch running down her spine. The rough and chilly chitin was soon replaced with a warmer, moist tongue, tasting its way along Lunti's flesh.
"You have your thoracic artery right around here," said Spectra as she passed up Lunti's foreleg and to her neck. "Right now my bite is strong enough to burst straight through it."
"Please don't," Lunti said, her words going soft as Spectra engulfed Lunti's mouth again and syphoned her magic.
"Please?" Spectra chuckled. "What happened to the pony who was willing to throw herself off a nest-room just to free herself? Maybe Orange was right, maybe you have given up."
"I'm just trying to live," said Lunti, reaching out with her own hoof to feel Spectra's face. Hard chitin, smoothed to deflect attacks, but rough where the plates of chitin overlapped. A minor imperfection that reminded Lunti that her captors were not perfect.
Spectra stood up and looked over at her other ponies. The orange one was still recovering from her feeding. For her first time, Spectra had drained a little too much. Then there was Chevron, still unconscious, lying crumpled on a mattress of fungi.
"As simple as that, huh?" Spectra smiled. "Maybe some ponies aren't so different from us after all." It had been almost an hour now. Tomorrow she'd begin her new lessons, and though the idea of her mother giving attention to her was exciting, she needed sleep if she was going to be at her best.
She patted Lunti on the head. "Take care, sweet thing. Make sure not to let the orange one get her revenge. I'd hate to have to replace you after so much effort." She turned and walked to the entrance of the cavern, knocking on the door to signal the drone outside.
Once it shut, Lunti could hear nothing but her own breathing.
Drip.
And the occasional water droplet.
Scritch.
And also a couple cave-critters.
The nothingness of the cavern was calm but terrifying. With so little senses, Lunti had no idea how much time was truly passing. And after what felt like two or three hours, she realized she began yearning for something to do. Even if it was being eaten, she just needed something to do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Morning in the hive was signalled by the scheduled return of a pack of hunter-drones, recovering from an excursion to a far-flung city of ponies to the north. Something plagued their emotions, Spectra sensed, but they were bound for the hunter-drone caverns. Whatever it was, it mustn't have been that important.
"You seem in a chipper mood," she said, smelling her captain coming up behind her.
"You were assigned a larger pack last night, princess," he replied. "Combined with our old numbers, you have fifty drones and five lieutenants as your personal entourage."
"They just agreed to take orders from you?" She asked, suspicious of how easy that sounded.
"I had to kill a few of my older siblings. The previous captain and his two lieutenants challenged me, but they were out of practice."
Spectra chuckled. "I know I said I wanted to sleep, but you could have woken me up just to see you put them in their place."
"Is that so?" Her captain tilted his head. "I'll have to remember that the next time I have a challenger."
"Anyway, what are you doing here right now?" Spectra asked.
"Waiting for a pack of guard-drones," he answered. "The Queen assigned me morning and afternoon patrol around the jungle."
"Do you think you can bring back some fruit from the jungle?" Spectra asked him. "Apparently mushrooms don't fit the pony diet very well, and the hive isn't exactly a centre of agriculture."
"I doubt the guard-drones will know how to harvest surface materials," her captain replied, "but I can have the lieutenants take the pack for a quick raid."
Spectra nodded. "Do it. It'll be a good exercise for the new pack."
Her captain nodded and hurried away into the hunter-drone caverns, giving the orders quickly so he would make it to the patrol on time.
Spectra wondered what had changed about the hive. When she was younger, everything seemed still and calm, like the world focused on her and nothing happened if she didn't need it too. Now the hive was swarming with captains and lieutenants entering in and out of the hive, worker-drones carrying away flaked fragments of stone, and guard-drones watching with silent eyes.
She smelled her mother descending from the exit tunnel of her chamber at the very top of the cavern. Even surrounded by so many Changelings, her mother's aura was overwhelmingly powerful.
"Good, you look ready." She gestured Spectra to hover with her. "We're going to one of the training chambers. Come on."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
About halfway up the main cavern, the walls widened suddenly, creating a ledge wide enough for two to walk side by side, one that stretched around the length of the side. Spectra followed closely behind her mother through one of the many tunnels that opened to the ledge.
"I assume you've learned how to heal other creatures by now," her mother said.
"Yes."
"Good. What I'm about to teach you will require that you know how to control life with your magic."
The passage they walked through was old, though not natural like so many others in the hive. Spectra could walk down the centre and have both sides of the tunnel the same distance away from her. The edges, though eroded and transformed by countless years, were still cut in an organized fashion.
Drone-made, but unlike so many other artificial tunnels in the hive, this one had small blemishes. Flowstones, stalactites, and other underground features had begun to form on the edges of the tunnel. It must have been ancient, hundreds of years old.
"The hive looks to us because we are its means of survival," her mother continued as they walked down the passage. "Only we have the power to decide the future of our drones."
The tunnel widened into a plain square room, bright from the sacs of light that were evenly placed at each corner. There were wooden tables with carved designs that Spectra hadn't seen before, though the icons were clearly of some of the animal gods that ponies believed protected them.
More bulbous sacs lay on the tables, along with parts of animals Spectra couldn't easily identify. The blood on them dripped steadily off the tables, staining the room's floor.
"Do you know how other animals produce their young?" Spectra's mother asked.
"Of course," she answered. "They fertilize eggs, some inside their bodies, some outside. I've seen it countless times in the birds around the hive."
"Birds are sophisticated creatures, yes," her mother nodded. "But the process of mammals and insects, the creatures we are so closely related to, is both impractical and disgusting. We live too long and require too much food to spawn in masses as insects do, while female mammals go through far too much for the small number of young they produce."
Her mother levitated a pod from one of the tables and brought it closer for Spectra to see. She bit herself, dropping in a spurt of ichor into the viscous fluid, sealing the sac with magic by forcing the leathery shell to grow.
"We, instead, populate the hive with magic," she said, giving the pod to Spectra. "Using just a small piece of ourselves, we coax new life using magic to control the process."
Spectra stared at the pod. "What do I do?"
"Give it magic," answered her mother. "Think back to your egg-dreams. The anatomy of our kind, the details of every type of drone at the hive's disposal, is ingrained in our instincts."
Spectra did as she was told and focused on the pod, imagining it was the same one from her memories. Well, they weren't exactly hers. They were from a long-dead predecessor, one so old that their memories had become automatic commands. If she focused on the heart, she didn't need to know how every chamber worked together. She just felt her way through, piecing it together.
Lost in thought for was felt like hours, Spectra finally pulled herself from the dream-memories and inspected the pod. At the centre, the hunter-drone she was trying to grow was just a speck.
"It didn't work," she mumbled.
"You've only been charging it for forty minutes," replied her mother. "At this stage, you should be glad you got anything to grow at all."
"Well, then how long will it take?"
Her mother shrugged. "Every princess learns differently. You'll have to find your own pace. But I can tell you that it won't be easy. Don't expect anything to come out of that pod for the next few months. And when it opens, don't be surprised by what it is."
Surprised? Spectra looked at the pod again while her mother left her to let her work alone. She was hatching a drone, wasn't she? What could be so surprising about that?