Nymph
The sound of rushing water pouring through the grate was deafening, testifying to a ravenous hunger threatening to drag me down into its watery depths, yet I still clung to the wall above it and held my breath as I waited for the guard patrol to leave. Trying to ignore the spray of water soaking into my tail, I kept careful watch on my empathy sense, a bead of sweat running down my brow as the two guards slowly ambled through the far door.
I let out a breath, easing my way back over onto solid ground. With nary a backward glance, I slunk my way through the other doorway.
My progress through the dark underground labyrinth of the Canterlot sewers was significantly slower than I might have liked, but the cover of darkness and the loud rushing torrents at least made it much easier to maneuver around unnoticed. There were still a few patrols of guards down here, and I managed to stay undetected by hiding just out of sight around corners, pipes, or on the ceiling. I’m all but certain that Celestia had noticed my unusual climbing abilities, but at the moment, I much more valued my immediate safety and obscurity.
The primary issue slowing me down was simply figuring out where to go. The group filling in the dug-out tunnel were still there, so I had no one else to follow, leaving me to examine every tiny crack or imperfection in the floor to find any evidence of where the pods had been taken. The general moistness covered up a lot of the trail, but with so many large objects being taken away, there were still a few breadcrumbs to follow. Places where the slime had been scraped away or remnants of cobwebs hung uselessly weren’t exactly loud and clear signposts, but there were enough signs that something large had come through, not just two-pony patrols.
Hopefully, I wasn’t wasting all this time chasing a hobo dragging all of their stuff through the sewers. I frowned. Celestia, that would be embarrassing.
The door ahead had a light crystal above it, much brighter than the numerous crystals lining the corridors, and a small metallic sign in the middle which simply read, “STORAGE SOL-18.” My empathy sense told me there were a few signatures far to the front right of me, so I took a small pause.
“Princess,” I muttered to myself. “Where am I?”
“Give me a moment. It has been a long time since I have had to consult maps of the sewer system,” she replied, the disembodied voice sounding faint and distant. “Solar District, just on the border between high-class housing and the markets. That is one of the storage areas for maintenance supplies.”
I crept forward, opening the door slowly. The hinges let out a prolonged squeak and I froze, intently listening for anyone who might have heard it. With no immediate response from either my ears or my empathy sense, I slid into the room quickly and shut the door behind me.
True enough, it was a storage area of some sort. There were shelves all along the walls and in rows in the middle of the room, lined with large crates and barrels, almost like a warehouse. Despite the lights along the walls, the various obstacles in the room cast long shadows across the floor, affording plenty of cover.
I trotted slowly through the room and ran my gaze over the various items, my light hoofsteps much more audible now that the sound of water had been muffled by the stone walls. Many of the crates were marked with an unintelligible jumble of letters and numbers, and some of them had a little stylized logo of a honeybee on them. It wasn’t consistent, so I had no real way to tell if this was abnormal or not.
The signature I had noted earlier when I was still outside the room was now coming from behind one of the walls here. Perhaps there was an adjacent room? There were no doors along that side, so it wasn’t immediately accessible. I filed that information away for later.
As for my primary objective, a quick glance at the floors was enough to tell me that I had hit a roadblock. I was looking for signs that something large had come through, but this was a storage area, where there was nothing but large objects moving through. Any sign of the missing pods would have been well camouflaged under all the other scrapes and divots.
I felt a headache coming on, and I brought a hoof to my temple as I considered what to do next. Maybe I could try to find out what room I was next to? Either that, or I try to search the other two exits for any other signs.
I was interrupted in my musings by a ping over the hivemind, like a water droplet, and I immediately sent my own ping in response.
“By the sands, girl,” Sinister’s voice echoed in my mind. “I can’t believe you’re still alive.”
My brow furrowed. “What makes you think that?”
“We’ve been trying to ping you for ages,” Dexter responded. “We tried waiting for you back at your apartment, but uhh…”
“You had some visitors while you were away,” Sinister said. “Broke in and everything. Ransacked the place. Stuff was everywhere. Whatever you did, somepony ain’t happy about it.”
“Nymph, what did you do?” Dexter’s tone brooked no nonsense.
“Nothing,” I replied quickly, deigning not to mention my escapades in exfiltrating Fancy and the unfortunate aftermath. “I was all but certain no one saw me leave.”
Dexter hummed, murmuring to himself. “Perhaps we’re looking at this from the wrong angle. I bet they were looking for Miss Lily instead. She was much more prominent than Nymph yesterday, and she was the main reason we were able to get away.”
“Ahh shoot, hope they didn’t get her. That’d be a shame.” Sinister sighed. “Nymph, you know where Lily is?”
“I… do,” I replied carefully, leaning closer to a random spot on the floor to give the illusion that I was still looking around. “It’s not in a very accessible place though. She and I were uhh… caught in a compromising position by the Princess.”
Silence.
“Wha?” Sinister said, dumbfounded. “What in Tartarus did you get yourself into this time?”
I scowled. “I just need to lay low. She’s keeping a close eye on me and tracking me. I think I’m earning her trust for now, but I can’t risk direct contact with either of you.” I paused. This topic was a hair short of venturing into very uncomfortable territory. “What of the operation?”
Dexter huffed. “Got some bits of information from the chatter that could be useful. With the… unforeseen circumstances with Fancy’s capture, we couldn’t really paint a full picture in our report, but the hive heard us loud and clear when we said that the other hive had significantly more influence than we had initially anticipated. There’s no telling the full extent of their reach into the guard and the nobility, but we know they’ve got their fangs in pretty deep.”
“Not that we’ll have to worry about that any time soon,” Sinister grumbled.
I raised my eyebrows. “What do you mean by that? Has the hive given us orders to do something else?”
“If you can call it that, sure,” Sinister all but snarled. “Word from up top is that all the remaining non-essential infiltrators are to pull out. Apparently, the Queen doesn’t want to lose any more drones, especially without any significant gains or even any way of responding to the aggression.”
I nearly tripped. “W-w-w-wait, what? What does she mean by, ‘non-essential?’ So we’re just supposed to leave?”
“‘Non-essential,’ meaning infiltrators who aren’t replacing important ponies or in positions to get important information, which is basically every infiltrator in Canterlot at the moment. We didn’t expect them to hit the Royal Guard as hard as they did, so here we are. Oh, and another thing: when the Queen said, ‘all the remaining infiltrators,’ she specifically didn’t include you.”
I balked. “Wait, but why?”
“I asked the same thing,” Sinister said with a snort. “The official word is that the Queen believes you’re more likely to stay hidden and undetected, which I guess is kinda sorta true except she forgot that you’re a lost little girl with zero training and zero experience with anything to do with infiltration in the big city. Personally, the official word’s bollocks. I think she just hates you.”
“Ah-buh-wuh?”
“On the bright side,” Dexter chimed in, “if Celestia’s keeping you close, that’s a pretty good spot for an infiltrator that started out as simply a random guard. It’d be silly to pull an infiltrator out from a position so close to the Princess, not to mention what might happen if she catches us trying to pull you out from under her nose.”
“About me being under Celestia…” I swallowed. “My task is to help combat the other hive. She got wind that her ponies were being abducted and replaced by umm… unknown elements.”
“...There’s no way this is a good idea,” Sinister replied. “Dexter, she hasn’t even been an infiltrator for a month. The Queen’s gone wack. Putting her under the scrutiny of the Princess of the Sun is a disaster waiting to happen. Nymph hasn’t been under that kinda pressure. She’ll reveal too much.”
I grimaced. Might be a little too late for that. “She already figured out a lot on her own while I was still asleep. She’s deduced that I wasn’t a pony, but she doesn’t know many details about the changelings.”
“Well, she’s gonna figure out a lot more if you keep fighting changelings while under her watch. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the other hive or not, if the ponies get wind of us, you’re as good as dead.”
“I just need to be a bit careful, is all,” I murmured.
“You’re insane,” Sinister grumbled. “Dex, please tell me it’d be better to pull her out. Even if she disappears, Celestia ain’t gonna be able to find her, and then she won’t have to tiptoe around possibly revealing too much.”
Dexter hummed in contemplation. “But it sounds like Celestia is already aware that something strange is going on. She’s just going to look into it herself, and then we won’t even be able to know how far she’s gotten, nor be able to influence her in any way. Keeping Nymph in just to keep tabs on her might be the better option. By most accounts, direct contact with the Princess is very much an essential position, and the Queen was specific about keeping her here.”
Sinister snorted. “So she’s stuck where she is and we still need to exit stage left. The Queen’s pretty adamant about getting the most mileage she can out of a foal. By the sands, we’re all going to be damned to Tartarus if this goes pear-shaped.”
“By the way, Nymph, where in Equestria are you?” Dexter said. “I’ve been walking back and forth on this street trying to find you, but…” He paused. “Are you in the sewers?”
“Yeah, I am,” I replied with some surprise. “How’d you know?”
“You’re coming over loudest from here. I think you’re right under me, but it’s hard to tell.”
“Could be.” I tapped a hoof to my chin in thought. “Say, Dexter, what’s up there?”
“Up here? I’m right next to the guardhouse. There’s a couple shops here and there, and I see the wall separating out the high-class housing.”
My ear twitched, and I noticed that one of the emotional signatures from behind the wall had begun to move towards me. Goosebumps ran across my skin, and I hid behind a few of the boxes, training my eyes towards where the signature was moving. A sharp headache hit me, and I only barely stopped myself from wincing.
I heard it before I saw it. A low growl like a lion’s, rumbling. Warning of impending danger. A paw stepped out from behind the boxes. The manticore’s head emerged, dimly silhouetted in the crystal’s light.
It stopped and turned towards me, its eyes glowing in the darkness and its teeth bared. I stared back, unable to turn away. My breath caught in my throat. The headache throbbed again, my heart beating loudly in my ears.
I blinked.
Just as quickly as it appeared, the manticore was gone, replaced by a mere stallion. He wasn’t very distinct in the dim lighting, but he was levitating a large crate in. Without much care, he set it down to the side against the wall and disappeared behind the boxes again, his signature following him back through the wall.
I waited, forcing myself to take slow and careful breaths as I tried to make out any other noises, but I heard nothing except the ever-present sound of water outside. Another hallucination, just like yesterday?
I shook my head, trying to put it out of mind, but it still took a moment before I could muster up the nerve to move out of my hiding spot.
I slipped over to the boxes where the pony had disappeared and was met with a wall, exactly what I saw when I first surveyed the area. There were no openings that I could see in the large stone bricks. Was it a trick door of some sort? I ran my hoof over it, feeling nothing out of the ordinary.
Stepping back a little, I charged up a small stun spell and unleashed it at the wall. Instead of leaving a small scorch mark, it ricocheted back at me, and I jumped with a small squeak as it fizzled in the floor where my hoof was.
“A barrier then,” Crystal mused. “A barrier with an illusion over it? I wonder if it might also be selective in who or what it lets through.”
“Nothing I can do about it for now,” I replied and turned towards the crate that the pony had brought in.
It seemed like a standard wooden crate like all the others here, but looking closer to the edges, I found a little jumble of letters and numbers as well as the logo of a bee that I had seen on some of the other boxes. I squinted at the icon, trying to read the words on the circle around it.
“Busy Bee?” I muttered. It was getting difficult keeping up with the various conversations in my head.
“Ahh, I remember hearing that somewhere,” Crystal said in my ear. “Some sort of trade company?”
“Trade and shipping,” Celestia replied tersely. “I do not believe there is a corner of Equestria they do not travel to. I have certainly heard the extent of their business dealings, at least, though I was not aware that they had anything to do with the sewer system.”
“I have met the owner once,” Crystal said. “She left quite the impression, but in many ways, it was not a very good impression. Overwatch, take a look inside that box.”
I called up my magic and removed my axe from my holster. Carefully, I wiggled the blade into the slit under the lid, slowly easing it open. Once I got the opening large enough, I peered inside, lighting up the inside with a glow from my horn.
“Hey Nymph, you there?” Dexter asked.
“Yeah, give me a second.”
It was hard to tell what was inside at first, but it was metallic, reflecting some of my horn glow back at me. I channeled a little more energy into my horn, and it became clear what I was looking at.
“Armor for the Royal Guard?” Celestia seemed astonished. “That is… quite unexpected. Busy Bee handles many things, but I am certain that the guard’s armor was handled by a government entity, not a commercial trade company.” She muttered quietly to herself. “Check some of the other boxes.”
I closed the crate quickly, hammering in the nails I had pulled up with the flat of my axe before moving to the other crates with the Busy Bee logo.
“More armor,” Celestia murmured, “as well as other guard supplies.”
“Those are books of explosive runes in the back,” I whispered as I shut the crate. “Doesn’t look like it’s just one crate of contraband.”
“I wager I could probably spin this into a search warrant,” Celestia said, before wincing. “Nevermind. I would have to go through the guard for that, and this is just more proof that the Royal Guard is not as trustworthy as it should be.”
My empathy sense told me that somepony was approaching, once again from the space behind the wall. I shut the crate quietly before rapidly ascending the high shelves in the middle of the room. There was a small space above the crates on the top shelf, enough for me to maneuver at a crawl, and I pulled myself in before I turned my gaze down to the false wall, my heart pounding loudly in my ears.
The pony came through first, his horn glowing green in the dimness. He phased through the wall as if emerging from inside a pool of water, followed in short order by another crate. It seemed to match Crystal’s theory that it was a barrier masked by an illusion, and it certainly proved something was behind that wall, but what was the method to getting through, and where would it even lead?
My eyes followed the pony and his burden. It was clear from my viewing angle that the box was also marked with a little icon of a bee.
The pony made his way briskly across the room, moving the crate so that it hovered just behind him before exiting through a door on the other side of the room.
I waited for a couple seconds more, keeping a close eye on him through my empathy sense, before I made my way down.
I moved lightly over the stone floor to the door the pony had left through. “Dexter, I’m on the move.”
“What, where to?”
“Don’t know. I’m tailing somepony. I think he might be able to lead me somewhere important.”
“By the queen, you’re just asking to get yourself killed,” Sinister said with a snort. “You know that, right?”
I caught something out of the corner of my vision, like eyes burning in the blackness. Watching. Waiting to pounce. When I turned to look, however, I found nothing but the usual dust and cobwebs. With my fur on edge, I replied, “I’ve been told that before.”
I opened the door and slipped through like a cat, back into the darkness.