“Spike, I'm home!” Twilight called into her tree home. She and her friends had recently came back to Ponyville and Twilight wanted to find out what was so familiar about the strangers name. As she looked in the 'W' section of her treehouse/library/ home, familiar scratches of clawed feet descending the wooden stairs echoed through her ears.
"Did you find Fluttershy? Is she ok?" Spike questioned worriedly. Twilight didn't stop searching.
"She's fine, Spike, just unconscious. Apparently, while she was coming home from her walk through the Everfree, she saw a manticore get killed by a hunter. He said his name was Witcher Th- Found it!" She cried as she pulled a few books from the shelf. Spike gave his surrogate sister a questioning glance.
"What was that about a hunter killing a manticore?" Spike was more confused at the situation than worried. Twilight coughed into her hoof and prepared her lecture mode.
"When we were looking for Fluttershy in the Everfree forest, a strange stallion in armor told us that Fluttershy fainted when he killed a manticore in front of her, he said his name is Witcher Thorn, and from the contents of these books." She tapped the stack of books with a hoof. "Tells me that he is a resound author of a few bestiaries detailing the most dangerous animals in the world. It seems like he's writing a book for the Everfree and Fluttershy got a front row seat to his.... works." Spike walked over and saw that the books were, in fact, bestiaries of the badlands, whitetail woods, Hayseed swamps, and other places he hasn't heard of. Probably from outside Equestria. He thought
"So... what does this have to do with Fluttershy?" Twilight perked up at this.
"It... doesn't. I should probably check on her though, it must have been traumatizing to her." she said as she walked out the door and towards the hospital where her friend was stationed.
"Ok, then." Spike said to nobody in particular as he put the books back on the shelf and went back upstairs to finish his comics.
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I walked into camp and saw Chitin eating a squirrel, it wasn't uncommon for changelings to eat meat if they couldn't find any love to fill them. "No luck today?" I asked and he shook his head. I opened my inventory and picked out one of my modified rose seeds. He looked at the seed and glared.
"No." I slumped my shoulders and wined.
"Come ooooon. Just this once. Please?" I turned into a puppy dog and pouted.
"I said no." He crossed his hooves and turned away. "The last time you did your Love Flower project it only expelled lust, LUST! Do you know what too much lust can do to changeling." Unfortunately I do. That was not a pleasant week "Unless you are One-hundred percent sure this will work, I'm not taking it." I was ninety-five percent but close enough.
"Yes, I'm sure. Now you can try this and not go hungry or you can starve. Your choice." I turned into my default form and held out the seed in my hand. Hearing a grumble from his stomach, confirming that he was hungry, Chitin lit his horn with a light blue aura that surrounded the seed. "All you need to do is to pour magic into it then watch the magic happen." What I found out earlier about changelings is that they don't feed on emotion, but the magic produced by that emotion. Odd, I know. What the flower is supposed to do is that when it is introduced to magic it will cause the flower to bloom and produce 'love' from its petals, which is actually magic with good feelings in it.
Once the flower had enough magic, it bloomed and a pink mist streamed out from the petals. So far so good I thought as a small stream of the flowers 'love energy' entered his mouth and down his esophagus. Immediately after, a much larger stream of love entered and disappeared in the changeling. "I'm guessing its working?" the changeling only nodded as he started to absorb more of the Love Energy. "When your done, stop using magic and it will stop producing Love." A few seconds later and Chitin stopped using magic, looked at me with a Cheshire grin on his face, then pounced.
"Thank you thank you thankyouthankyouthankyou." He cried as he tried to crush my ribcage in a hug, a grin threatening to split his face in two. "This will surely feed the hives for generations. With this flower, we won't need to feed on living beings anymore. Do you realize what you just did? You saved an entire species from starvation." I let him hug me for a minute longer than I was comfortable with before slowly pushing him off.
"We have to find the others first in order to save them." Immediately the excited changeling flew in a direction yelling 'The hive is this way come on!' Sighing I burst into a mass of tendrils and absorbed the biomass around me. Using my senses, I teleported to the still buzzing changeling. Smiling, Chitin pressed a few pieces of bark on a tree and it opened up to reveal a green stone in the center of the hollowed out tree. Before I could ask, Chitin pressed his horn to the stone and started to fill the gem with magic, once filled, the gem emitted a green light and blinded me for a second. What I saw next was that the tree had a sickly green portal where the entryway was a moment ago.
"Holy shit." I turned to my changeling companion. "The hell Is this?" I pointed to the tree portal.
"It's a secret entrance to the hive."
"I know that but why can't we go towards the main entrance?"
"This is much faster."
"Alright, but if were going in, were going in my way."
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Mantis, Queen of the Sapphire hive, looked out upon her kingdom in sadness as she watched her children be piled onto carts and literally dumped into holes because the graveyards were filled to the brim. Over the years she watched a once thriving hive become decimated by the actions of a selfish, power hungry queen of the Emerald hive. Changelings evolved to stay in the dark and operate in the shadows, not whatever Chrysalis had done. She didn't even finish off the Sun princess when she had the chance. Now the changeling race was out in the open and the ponies have created spells to remove their disguises! Because of that bluster most if not all of the thriving hives crumbled due to the lack of food.
Mantis sighed and looked to one of the palace guards. "I'm going to be in my chambers. Leave me be unless the hive is collapsing." She drawled in her two tone voice, the guard bowed and went back to patrolling the hive palace. Queen Mantis entered her chambers and flopped onto her silk threaded, bed. A gift from the Arachne on their fifth anniversary of peace. The food shortage had taken a lot out of everybody, especially the Queens, the remaining Queens of the circle had decided to hold a meeting in a few days to figure out what to do about the shortage. As she was getting comfortable, a large boom and rumble that shook the entire hive sounded through her bones. Mantis shot up from her bed in shock, one of her guards clad in purple chitin armor came bursting thru the double doors.
"My Queen!" he said as he bowed, shock evident in his voice. Queen Mantis looked over at her general with a shocked expression.
"What was that? Why does it feel like the hive is blowing up?"
"My Queen, I believe the disturbance is coming from the entrance portals." Mantis launched from her bed and put her face to the Generals.
BOOM!
"Where." She said as sinisterly as she could.
"Th...this way my queen." He stuttered as he ran down a few corridors getting closer and closer to the sound. They ran past guards and servants alike as another boom rang through the palace, causing them to fall on their hole ridden hooves. General Rino assisted his queen to get up then continued running, as they neared the palace entrance both horns lit up and blasted the doors outward, almost cracking the hardened palace walls. They looked in confusion at what they saw, or didn't see. Instead of slaughtered changelings, burning buildings and mass destruction, the only thing unnatural was the pink fog that covered the streets and the changelings running thru it. With a questioning look on her face Mantis took a wiff of the air and found a familiar smell. A smell that all changelings have to know to survive.
"Love."
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"Are you sure about this?" Chitin asked as I shot another love bomb into the streets. I shrugged as more changelings from the other side of the hive came to see what is happening then joining in.
"What about the guards? What if they come to stop you?" As if right on que what looked like to be several dozen solders came buzzing towards the duo. Taking aim I fired into the group of armed and armored changelings, when it detonated, everyone stopped and started to consume the airborne love, noticing there was more on the ground they swarmed to it like a moth to flames.
"I'll just do that." I smiled at all the happy faces. "You weren't kidding when you said you guys were starving." I fired a few more bombs into the streets. "When's your queen going to get here? I mean this area has more love than.... anywhere really." Chitin shrugged.
"Can I try that?" He asked pointing at my arm cannon. I could refine it to be detachable but that's going to take some time to work out the blueprints for a hoof instead of a hand I thought. While I was thinking up plans for a changeling arm cannon/hoof cannon?, a changeling, that was twice as tall as Chitin landed before me with a smaller changeling covered in armor at its side. Probably the queen I looked to my changeling companion who was, as I thought, bowing Yep, definitely the queen
"Are you the creature giving all this love to my children?" she asked softly.
"Just making a good first impression..."
"Mantis." she answered "Queen Mantis of the sapphire hive."
"Well Mantis. The calvary is here."