//------------------------------// // Chapter 12 - Evolving // Story: Lost Little Wolf // by PrincessColumbia //------------------------------// “We've all lost something along the way.” ― Po Bronson, "Why Do I Love These People?": Understanding, Surviving, and Creating Your Own Family As awesome as it would have been to play tourist and check out Ponyville, there simply wasn't time to do so. We deboarded at nearly three in the morning and switched tracks to head to Las Pegasus; the train to Canterlot left at 4:30 AM for the early morning commuters that had jobs in the capital city. While I enjoyed the farming community atmosphere, the small town of Wanderlust (the tiny frontier town closest to the hive on the badlands) was even smaller and cozier, and as farming communities go Ponyville was a boomtown in comparison and could be considered "massive" by virtue that it actually had a dedicated government building, as opposed to sharing space with the general store. After about fifteen minutes on the train, the rest of the changeling entourage started evacuating the cars, a coordinated dance between the infiltrators removing the baggage we'd brought for the trip. When it was just Chrysalis and me, she quietly got up and knocked her head to the side slightly, indicating I was to follow. Calmly and casually, as though we were simply getting up to stretch our legs, we stepped out of the car and onto the gangway. With a glance behind her to ensure nopony was watching, Chrysalis quickly shed her disguise and leaped up to the roof of the car with a bit of wing assist. I hadn't been briefed on how we were going to deboard, but I wasn't really surprised. This kind of thing was done all the time in training during school and learning hours at the hive, so with a mental shrug, I replicated her move. (though granted, I wasn't nearly as graceful and practiced as she was at it) With the royal entourage fully gathered, save one changeling, we quietly packed the numerous saddlebags, everyling having at least one bag, including me and Chrysalis. Once we had done so, a subtle ping echoed through our tiny little hivemind announcing our disembarking point was approaching. Looking ahead on the course of the track, I could see a tree with a single branch with leaves that were a distinctly different color from the rest. The tickling sensation that had been pestering me all night suddenly happened, and the final changeling in our group finally connected into the hivemind. Ah, I thought to myself, Must be a scout sent ahead to find the drop point. We leaped off the train at the indicated spot, a narrow corridor perfect for such a departure but completely invisible to a train passing by at 40-ish miles per hour that was the average land speed of an Equestrian locomotive. Once everyone was on the ground and accounted for, we followed a well-disguised path deeper into the forest. All in all, it was a pretty standard operation for a race which had 'I'm a spy!' Embedded in its DNA...but I think I can be forgiven for humming the 'Mission Impossible' theme song, the sidelong looks from my hive-mates notwithstanding. Thicket was Rivendell, there's really no better way to describe the reindeer city. Massive trees buried deep within the Everfree, hidden from the view of other races who didn't know the explicit path through the forest. I lived in a hive where the tunnels changed on a minute to minute basis, and even that wasn't as mind-bendingly confusing as the labyrinthian heath that surrounded Thicket. I didn't see any guards to the city, but then the "city walls" were the forest itself, so they could have an army hidden in there and you'd never know. The buildings themselves were built around and into the trees. It was clear the reindeer had some magical means of moving and adjusting the growing plant matter of the towering giants, as there were no tool marks (or even tools visible) anywhere to be seen. Even the filigree which might have been called carved had any other race made them were simply growth patterns in the wood. Imagine entire city blocks "built" the way Golden Oaks Library (R.I.P. ...but then it hadn't been destroyed in this timeline yet, had it?) was in Ponyville, and you'd have a solid idea of what I was looking at. The reindeer themselves roamed their city at a sedate pace that reminded me of the way Buddhist monks carried themselves, especially the ones who'd mastered the basics of Zen. Even the fawns maintained a noble gait, though they did tend to stumble and trip, as all children do. "...they're freakin' elves!" I expectorated after several minutes of staring somewhat slack-jawed at the city. The year after the 9/11 attacks that brought down the World Trade Center in New York, my wife and I were given some complimentary passes to Comic-Con in San Diego. This was before the event turned into "Hollywood South" and you had to reserve your ticket months in advance, so it wasn't the massive, city-wide event it would eventually turn into. It still took up three-quarters of the San Diego Convention Center, so it still couldn't be called "small." Nevertheless, to a woman who'd been raised in a household where the parents actively drilled into the kid's heads that science fiction and fantasy were "kid's stuff" and "wastes of time" and "boring," JoLene was completely unprepared for the experience. When she walked onto the vendor floor, she made it about three steps in and just stopped, eyes bugging out and jaw slack. My own expression upon viewing Thicket had to have been nearly identical. "How the hell did you guys come up with a way to make pony elves?!" I gasped at the universe. I usually try not to get too meta and address the fourth wall, but the feeling of shock that was exactly like what my ex-wife felt a couple decades ago was enough of a cage-rattler that I had very little filter. Chrysalis was watching my reaction with confused amusement. She tilted her head to the side, as though trying to read a book only to realize after you've opened the cover and discovered it was in another language. "Elves...ah! Fantasy creatures, mostly similar to humans, save for long life, pointed ears, and a deeper connection to magic; also, frequently written as being tied to nature and living in trees." She chuckled, "Yes, I can see the resemblance!" This snapped me out of my shock, "You know, I forget that the hivemind has access to American English as I knew it." It was my turn to chuckle, "And you didn't understand the comparison to Romulans and Vulcans?" She snorted, "We were in a dream, that's a separate simulated environment from the hivemind. For me to access both at once would require some preparation that I hadn't done." I nodded in comprehension as we resumed our approach to the city of Thicket. King Aspen was basically Elrond with a sense of humor. "It would seem," he was saying in his stentorian voice with a wry grin, "That you have decided to, ah, catch up? When last we spoke, you wouldn't even consider having a child to be an heir." His gaze was flickering between momma Chrysalis and me. Chrysalis rolled her eyes, "I've told you before, I have no need to play your silly, 'who has more children' game. I have the entire hive as my children, after all." If his wife wasn't sitting there next to him with a similar playful grin on her face, I'd swear the old deer was flirting with my mom. I wasn't sure what to think of that. Aspen was continuing to speak with mom, "As good as it has been to see you, I am aware of the unfortunate circumstances that have conspired to cajole you from your hive. Our ancient brothers are once again on the move." Smiles faded from everyone's faces as Chrysalis replied, "They're also getting better at moving in stealth. My scouts lost the trail as quickly as they found it." I sighed, settling in on my haunches and listening with only half an ear; this was going to be a long meeting. I was more or less stumbling my way to our assigned quarters (a very nice suite in what was essentially a luxury treehouse), the hour wasn't actually that late, but the early departure from the train combined with the stealth ops and the hike to the city were compounded by the several hours long talks with the royal family; I was knackered. I was by this point larger than the average changeling, but still had a way to go to be as tall as mom, so while I made decent time down the hall, it wasn't nearly fast enough for my fatigued brain thanks to legs that were still at least a couple feet away from being as long as I was accustomed to in my old human form. Thus it was I was simply tuning the sound of giggling out. "Hey, Princess," came the voice of a young buck faun from a path that branched off from the one I was taking, "We found a pet for you!" Blinking owlishly, I turned to face what I just knew were going to be a group of children looking to prank... and got a face-full of stick-bug. Sure, it wasn't actually on my face, but it was less than an inch away. Adrenaline shot through my system, "" I shouted in English and leaped nearly perfectly vertically, my instincts causing me to grasp onto a low-hanging branch. After enough deep breaths to restore something that wasn't a fight-or-flight reaction in my nervous system, I managed to look down to see a trio of fauns, a buck and two does, laughing their fuzzy butts off, a poor confused little stick-bug scrambling away as fast as it's little legs and wings would take it. "Yeah, yeah," I groused at them, "Laugh it up, fuzzballs!" This only made them laugh harder. "Whoever heard of a bug that was afraid of other bugs?" Repeated Prince Bramble...for the twelfth time. I rolled my eyes, "I keep telling you, changelings are..." The other deer children (we had picked up a couple more) walking with us chanted in unison, "Equinoid isopods." A somewhat small and lean doe slugged Bramble in the shoulder, "Geeze, just drop it already!" "Ow! Sandalwood, stop it!" Groused the prince. The doe's fairly small and unimposing form hid a pack of muscle that had nearly bruised my own carapace during some roughhousing earlier. Bramble's complaints, while a bit whiny, were justified. I rolled my eyes in exaggeration, "OK, but if any of you tell me you found a map to Candy Mountain, I'm gone." The poleaxed confusion that greeted me to this rather oblique reference made the stick bug incident worth it. I was tired enough that the giggles turned into a ground-pounding belly laugh. Sleep eventually did happen, and I was tired enough that I didn't object to the fauns wanting to do a cuddle-pile. While not the norm for deer as a species, it was apparently a thing that friends did. Nobody in the group was of age for puberty to wreak havoc yet, so one mixed-race cuddle-puddle was a go. Naturally, waking up to Chrysalis and Queen Heartwood giggling and cooing over the adorableness wasn't embarrassing at all. Guess which part of that sentence was a complete lie. Mom briefed me over breakfast on the meetings from the day prior, she knew I wasn't up to the meeting sessions, and it was her who told me to go get some rest, so the rehashing of even the stuff I'd been there for wasn't objectionable. "Aspen naturally put out feelers for us to Thicket's allies," Including Equestria, I mentally added with a satisfied nod. If Chrysalis knew what I was thinking (which I'm sure she did), she refused to acknowledge it, "But without any solid treaties in place, it's impossible to organize any sort of dedicated search. Since we," she indicated herself and me to specify 'changelings,' "Have only loose mercantile ties with the other nations, and even those are under disguise, it, unfortunately, falls to Thicket's allies alone. The deer are understandably reluctant to disclose the nature of their...relationship with the caribou, so it's somewhat difficult to explain the threat, especially since they have remained rather stealthy for the last half millennium." "What's a maluminum?" Asked Rosewood, a faun who'd managed to attach herself to my unexpected juvenile deer escort by virtue of being Sandalwood's younger sister. "Millennium," I corrected as I went to take a sip of the chocolatey brew that had become one of my breakfast favorites, "And it means '1,000 years.'" "You mean how when the ponies are just trying to say, 'a really long time ago'?" Replied Bramble. Chrysalis and I both nearly snorted our drinks up through our nose. "Not quite, though it does technically apply in this case. 500 years is a long time no matter how you measure it." Chrysalis shrugged, "It's only about a third of my life...though I've seen quite a few generations of changelings pass in that time." I thought back to my life on Earth and realized that would compare to about 17 years of my human existence and shuddered to think of what I would have gone through emotionally if I had been forced to watch Freya and several generations of her children be born, grow old, and die while I aged, in comparison, not at all. I shivered as the feeling of the grave rippled over me, all in all, a disturbingly familiar feeling when you've dodged death's visit like I had. My melancholia, mirrored slightly by Chrysalis, was lost to the fauns. "You have everything we'll need for food packed, right Sandalwood?" Bramble was saying, taking after his father as the group's de-facto leader. Sandalwood rolled her eyes, "It's only going to be a day-trip, not like we need more than snacks." Sandalwood was, by accident or device, proving that girls matured faster than boys. She seemed to recognize that the "epic adventure" the group was anticipating was merely going to be a simple hike, one which the fauns were well prepared for by virtue of their living environment. Bramble was having none of it, "Never-the-less, we should be prepared for every eventuality! We'll be out until after dinner time, so I expect lunches, at the very least, to be secured from the storehouse." "What seems to be this 'epic quest' you lot are embarking on?" Asked Momma Chrysalis. At that question, the excited babble was replaced by tense silence. The fauns looked at each other, then me, then Chrysalis, and then seemed to be inspecting the rest of the room for a moment. Finally, Sandalwood rolled her eyes again (She seemed to do that a lot...ah, the joys of being a 'tween. All the angst of being a teenager, all the precociousness of being a kid.) and said, "She's a changeling, guys, it's not like she's gonna tell the other adults." I grinned at Chrysalis sidelong, "Congratulations, mom, you're an honorary faun." She chuckled, and with a flash of green flame now appeared to be a near twin of Sandalwood, but with a darker pelt and a slightly more equine shaped skull. And, of course, Chrysalis' omnipresent cunning grin. As though her appearance made her one-and-a-half-millennia-long life vanish with her carapace, the fauns seemed to accept that she was, indeed, a youngster just like them and the previously cheerful atmosphere returned. They all started speaking at once. "There's an old pony castle in the forest!" Blurted Bramble "Nobody's 'sposed tah go there 'cause of ghosts or somethin'" interrupted Rosewood. "The grownups say we're not supposed to go because the structure isn't safe." Snipped Sandalwood in the 'I'm the older sister so I'm right' voice. Chrysalis and I shared a look as she sent over the hivemind, Celestia's old castle? Most likely, I thought back to her. "What are you gonna bring, Chrystal?" Asked Rosewood innocently. "Wait, what?" I blinked in confusion, refocusing on the conversations. Chrysalis chuckled quietly, You really need to get better at splitting your conversational attention, my dear. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes as Bramble repeated with more clarity, "We're all bringing something to help with our quest, what are you able to contribute?" I was now confused in a slightly different way, "Wait, I'm going with you? When was this decided?" Momma Chryssy smiled that infuriating smile mothers get when they want you to do something, "It sounds like a great experience for you, actually. I know you'll be bored silly at the meetings with the king and queen and their officers. Besides, young Bramble here," she nodded across the table at the prince, "Will one day take his father's place, just like you'll take mine someday. This will be good for you two future rulers." While Bramble practically preened as his spine stiffened and a beaming smile crossed his face at the prospect, I knew my face had a haunted expression. I knew what that responsibility meant, I knew Chrysalis knew I knew. She knew at that moment I was wishing I could glare daggers at her in polite company. Still, she had that cheese-eating grin. I didn't even have to use the hive-mind to relay the thought, I'll get you for this! Similarly, she didn't need the hive-mind to reply with a mere upward curl of one side of her mouth, as if to say, You'll try, my dear. Damnit. The challenges of the Everfree, while intimidating to a pony and dangerous even to your average human, were pretty mundane for our little troupe. The reindeer had grown up here, after all, and I was being trained as a master spy by the best this world had. The fauns, for the most part, didn't see it that way. For them, it was an epic quest that even the prematurely cynical Sandalwood was taking super-serious. A brief altercation with bramblevines was treated as though it were the Fellowship fleeing the Mines of Moria. A cragodile encounter held the gravity of Smaug attacking Laketown. I chose not to mention the signs that we were in a chimera's territory, nor the indicators that we were being monitored and said chimera had been dealt with in some non-violent fashion. (No blood on the ground, for example) It was damn expertly done if I do say so, and any creature other than a changeling might not have noticed the signs. Inside of a couple of hours, we were at the Castle of the Two Sisters. Bramble and company, being rangifers and a close cousin to the capra genus, made fairly easy work of the ravine between the rest of the forest and the castle. I just flew across the gap. Once inside, we began exploring. Thankfully, they listened when I insisted we stick together. I didn't want to do a live reenactment of "Castle Sweet Castle" with a small herd of immature deer. It wasn't until we got to the throne room that contained the dais with the inactive Elements of Harmony (sans Magic, of course) on it that anything noteworthy occurred. I was again firmly insisting that Bramble not touch the god-damn rocks on pedestals when Sandalwood's concerned voice rang out, "Where's Rosewood?!" “Shit!” The evidence of adults monitoring the expedition notwithstanding, I was well aware of what a solitary child could get into, including all forms of trouble, “OK, that’s it. Bramble, I’m taking charge of this party.” “But…” began the princeling. “No, this just graduated from ‘fun little romp in the woods’ to a real situation. Everyone call out a buddy. Bramble, you’re with me.” I admit I was using my now forty-odd years worth of experience as an adult to take charge, but I wasn’t going to take chances. Cowed, Bramble sidled over to my side. The search took about half an hour, and in the midst of it, I received a ‘ping’ (for lack of a better word) from Chrysalis. She had heard that we were having trouble and was on her way to assist. Once she arrived, once again disguised as a faun, it took just a few minutes to find the trail. “You’d gotten close,” she reassured me as we scrambled down the stairs on the side of the cliff next to the castle, “I think in just a few more years you’d have found the trail before I even pinged you. You’re doing well.” Bramble was still behind me, just barely keeping up as Chrysalis and me, “I don’t understand, there’s nothing here…” “Emotional residue,” I interrupted. “Since we can eat emotions, we can smell them like predators smell meat or herbivores smell their favorite plant.” I felt his emotion shift into something resembling juvenile comprehension, I have a feeling he nodded, but I was focussing too much on finding his subject to look back. As it was getting later in the day, we were able to see the dim glow from the cave well before we rounded the lip of the entrance and the entire party skidded to a shocked halt. “Dear God…” I said in English. “Great Mother Faust…” echoed Chrysalis in a whisper. The fauns that were with us were similarly shocked, though just into silence. Before us stood the Tree of Harmony. It’s impossible to convey what it was like to see it in words alone, though if you can imagine encountering a tree made of crystal standing a good four stories tall in a massive cavern, glowing weakly as it's branches were festooned with angry looking vines, thorns somehow digging into the silicate structure. At its base sat Rosewood, struggling to pull a massive length of vine away with his teeth. Stepping carefully, I rushed over to the little deer as quickly as I could and pulled him away from the vine. “No!” he gasped out, “It’s hurting! Can’t you hear it?!” I gripped him in my magic and hauled him toward the entrance and the rest of the group, “You have no way of fighting those things. Even alicorn magic can’t begin to touch those things.” Chrysalis spoke to me without looking away from the Tree, “It would appear our wayward faun is a sensitive.” She turned to face me only when I had come even with her. “This is that tree you said the pony superweapon came from?” At my nod, she continued, “And the vines?” “A creation of Discord,” I answered. “As sickly as the tree looks now, it’ll be fifteen years or so before the vines overpower it enough to become a threat, and even then they’ll go after Celestia and Luna first before attacking anything else.” She pondered the potential threat in front of her, “...that idiot. Didn’t you tell me that this tree was connected to the land itself?” I nodded again, “I don’t know if that was the intent or an unintended consequence, but from the moment that tree sprouted the fate of Equestria became locked in with the fate of the Tree.” She sighed, “Discord was always a shortsighted fool.” I blinked in surprise, “You knew him?” She shook her head and turned to the entrance, “No, but I watched from the shadows as he played with the ponies. He always made so many decisions that made no sense at any point.” I joined her, the rest of our group following our lead. “Yes, well, it’s Discord, if he made sense he wouldn’t be a being of chaos.” As she nodded in resigned comprehension, Rosewood gasped out, “My pack!” we looked over to the group to see Bramble and Sandalwood restraining their youngest friend. We glanced back at the roots of the tree to see a little saddlebag sitting amidst the vines. As we watched, a thorn hooked the back-loop of the bag and started dragging it over a root. “I’ll get it,” I turned back into the cave, “Rosewood, stay put.” Whether he was simply reassured that someone older than him was moving to retrieve it or he was actually following my orders, he stilled as I moved carefully back through the vines. “Careful, my daughter…” came my mother’s warning voice. Nodding in response, I reached out for the saddlebags with my magic, only to have it be fouled by the plunder-vines. It was like they exuded an anti-magic field. Sighing gently so as not to be heard by the others, I gingerly stepped over the vines to rest my hoof on the root and reached out to pick up the pack. As I did so, my hoof slipped and my barrel hit the trunk of the tree… ----- ...you are not of this harmony… ...your music is a minor key… ...you are the minor key… ...the abyss awaits your turning… ...your brother awaits your returning… ...you shall create the new harmony… ----- I wish I could say it was my own willpower that broke...whatever the Tree had done to me, but it was more like I was pushed away. I found myself stumbling back, tripping over plunder-vines, the saddlebags hooked over a hoof making my flailing for balance even more difficult. I finally collapsed at Chrysalis’ hooves, “Daughter!” she gasped out, “What happened, what did it do to you?” Weakly shaking the saddlebags off my hoof, I scrambled to my feet, “It was...some sort of message? I think?” I rubbed my temple with my fetlock as I sat down again, still quite rattled by the experience. “I don’t think it expected me…something about a brother and music…” She glared briefly at the tree and shifted back to her native form. Magicking me up onto her back, which was getting harder for her to do because I was getting too big to easily be carried like that, she moved back to the entrance. “Alright, let’s move.” she ordered the rest of our party, “Your parents are waiting for you back at the city. I think I’ll have a word with Aspen about restricting any further forays to the castle. I suspect it’s getting far too dangerous even for us.” Whatever happened between me and the tree must have been more taxing than I at first thought, because we weren’t even out of the ravine before I nodded off, lulled to sleep by the gentle rocking of being carried on Chrysalis’ back.