I’m not sure what happened for the rest of that conference. I stood still, frozen in fear; that I know. Beyond that, I really have no clue. I only know that I was dismissed to go back to my prior duty- Queen Chrysalis doesn’t seem to believe I am what Broodmother Nyadra claimed me to be- and sent back out of the chamber.
As I exit, I sense something alarming behind me- and bolt quickly to the side, glancing back as I do.
It’s levitation. Queen Chrysalis is propelling Broodmother Nyadra after me.
… her levitation has close to a million runelets. The most I’ve seen.
The courier master hasn’t come up with a fresh assignment for me yet; this is normally the time I head for the storage sheds- just down the hall from the work zones. There, right in the middle of the most common pickup locations for my jobs, I will get as much on-the-job rest as possible. I rarely actually get to rest down there; he’s usually got a fresh task for me long before I get there.
But until he gives me a task, and delivers it via the hivemind, I am allowed to do basically whatever I want, so long as I am ready to get to work the moment he does come up with something.
That, coincidentally, gives me the freedom to watch Queen Chrysalis dominate Broodmother Nyadra.
Wait, no. I already watched that, while standing frozen in the conference room. Now, Queen Chrysalis smashes Broodmother Nyadra against the ground in her frustration, crushing her wings even worse than mine. I spot Broodmother Nyadra shift her head, quickly getting her horn out of Queen Chrysalis’ line of sight- and the Queen then turns away, slamming the door shut before making an announcement on the hive mind.
“Broodmother Nyadra has been stripped of all rights as a Broodmother, and will work henceforth as a courier, no meals.”
Nyadra wasn’t able to satisfy the demands of the courier master. Since the punishment for failing like that is a missed meal, though, that was no loss.
Now, denied her own normal sleeping quarters and any new assignment in the workers’ quarters, she collapses on the floor of my room as soon as the door lands closed.
I step closer, crouching to meet her eyes. “B- Nyadra?” I ask. Queen Chrysalis forbade the hive from addressing her as a Broodmother. “Are you okay?”
She groans into the floor, before looking up tiredly. “How do you do that, all day, every day?” She snorts weakly. “And still look like you’re ready to do it all over again!”
“I don’t know,” I answer, and repeat my question. “Are you okay?”
She sighs. “No. Three weeks of that and I’m toast. Three weeks of torture before I die.” She looks up at me again. “And you’ll probably be next.”
“Okay,” I answer simply.
But my mind isn’t anywhere near that simple. My broodmother has been condemned to death- and I must agree with her, it’s very likely I will be similarly condemned soon.
It’s a rare situation. Usually, a ‘ling doesn’t know they’re going to die until they run out of love and simply… cease functioning.
But it does feel kind of… strange. I refuse to allow myself to fall into the same desperation Nyadra is falling into; that could only accelerate my end.
What fills its place, though…
Determination.
“What are we going to do about it?” I ask her.
She blinks a couple times, staring at me. “What?”
“I don’t want to just wait for it,” I answer her. “So what are we going to do about it?”
“Y-y-you do realize what you’re talking about, right?”
I nod. “What choice do we have?”
She stares for several seconds longer, before averting her gaze. “I… I suppose you’re right. I’ve still got enough love to make us invisible for a day or so; that’d be enough to escape… but I only know the basics for how to transform, and you haven’t a clue.”
“If I can see it, I can learn it,” I inform her. “That’s how I learned to levitate.”
She looks back at me, and sighs. “You know, I might have doubted that, if I hadn’t already seen the results. Whelp… Escaping won’t do us any good if we can’t transform. There’s a team of infiltrators leaving tomorrow afternoon. I’ll see if we can’t get you to where you can see ‘em do it… then we’ll bail. If that’s not enough, I should still be able to transform- in theory- to harvest love to bring back for you.”
I nod. “Works for me.”
She shifts on the floor. “If it is enough, you’ll be able to go out with me, and we can both pretend to be ponies.”
“Would it work?” I ask. “Would they find us?”
“I don’t know,” she answers sadly. “We won’t be able to replace ponies, that’s for sure. We’d never get the transform right, nor the memories. So we’ll have to be our own ponies, and fit in with pony society as best we can- and that’s going to be hard.” She pauses for a few seconds. “I… I don’t know. It depends on how fast we adapt, and how fast they start looking. And if there are any infiltrators already in the area to take notice.”
“How can we maximize our chances?”
She smiles. “You know, I’m liking how you’re thinking.” She glances back at the door. “To answer your question, we can go to Ponyville. They already get some weird disaster or another going on every other Tuesday, being next to the Everfree Forest and everything- a little more weird shouldn’t stand out that much.”
“Sounds like a plan. Do you want the bed? I can sleep on the floor.”
“What-? No, I couldn’t-!”
“Please?”
In the end, I manage to convince her. While she gets comfortable on my bed- or, as comfortable as she can get on a bed that doesn’t even compare to what she’s used to- I prepare myself for the night.
As much as I told her I can sleep on the floor, that was never my intention, and still isn’t. ‘Lings still freak out whenever I levitate without those extra nineteen runelets- but a sleeping ‘ling can’t freak out. And, the love cost of holding something still in levitation is practically nothing next to the cost of moving it. I could hold a heavy load in midair for days with the same amount of love it would take to carry it to the next room, about a fifteen second trip.
So I levitate myself, without those nineteen wasteful runelets. I do have to add forty-seven runelets to the matrix to allow me to anchor it on the room instead of myself- but these have flat nothing in terms of continuing love cost, so I don’t worry about them. It’s not actually half bad, I find. Not as soft as the bed, true- but not as hard as the floor, either. And unlike both of the above, it’s infinitely flexible.
We both work normally- well, normally for me- all morning. Nyadra woke to the same wake-up call I always do- and did freak out, once she realized I was floating in the air.
Though it wasn’t the same panicked freak-out that most ‘lings have when they see my glow-free levitation. She was more impressed, thinking that I’d somehow learned how to fly in my sleep. It took some talking to convince her it was nothing of the sort, just a “standing spell” I had placed. Those don’t make a visible corona as they do their jobs, but are purely mechanical in nature, breaking down after a fairly fixed amount of time, depending on how much love was used to make it.
In any case, all morning, I worked normally and she did her best, still coming nowhere near the courier master’s demands.
Then as afternoon came, we abandoned our duties. Crossed paths in a side tunnel. She turned us invisible there, and we headed up to watch the infiltrators transform.
I remember the full matrices of each one’s transformation. Some of them were transforming to unicorns, some to pegasi, and some earth ponies. And, all before they headed out of the hive, as a group.
Nyadra transformed herself at the same time, studying them carefully. Exactly why she shrunk down to my size as she transformed, I’m not sure; she seems a bit miffed as well, but we couldn’t say anything without breaking through our stealth. At least her invisibility did hide her transformation effectively.
We followed the others out. As it turned out, her smaller size turned out to be handy; Broodmothers, as low-tier Royals, are significantly larger in their true forms than regular ponies or drones. We were able to fit together in spaces that she wouldn’t have had a hope of fitting in alone before, even if her fur did feel weird on my carapace.
But eventually, we got out, and split apart from all the infiltrators. We waited until we were a safe distance away before she dropped the invisibility, but we didn’t stop running. She told me she would have dropped her transform as well and carried me- her larger ‘ling form could move faster than either of us now- but she wasn’t so sure she could get the transformation right a second time, so she was going to remain an orange pegasus filly.
It’s now evening, and we’re resting under a bush. As near as Nyadra can tell, we’re just a few miles away from Ponyville. Reportedly, she’s thinking about a pony name for herself. And pouting more than a little, for her pegasus wings are too small- smaller than any pegasus foal of her apparent age. She tries using them, even beating them as crazy fast as a ‘ling beats their wings to fly- but she fails to take off. All she manages to do is make a stiff breeze.
I’m spending this time analyzing the transformations I remember. Isolating the part that does the transformation itself, isolating the part for each species. I have difficulty figuring out which parts control appearance and which parts are the extraneous nonsense every other ‘ling puts in their spellwork; as near as I can tell, this nonsense manifests itself as the green flame on the transform spell.
Then I look up at Nyadra, absently beating her wings as she thinks. “If you can’t fly with your wings, perhaps a scooter could help?”
She stares at me for a second, then nods. “Yeah. Pass it off as a disability, use them to propel a scooter instead- Oh, I wonder what kind of speed I could hit.”
“Fast,” I answer.
“Hmm, but I’m still going to be needing a name, especially if I’m going to be scootin’ a lot.” Then she blinks. “Hay, why not. Scoot-a-lot… Scoot-a-lah? Nah… Scoot-a-loo? How about it?”
“Scootaloo?” I ask, stitching the broken syllables together. “Sounds like a good name to me.”
“Then Scootaloo it is. You figure it out yet?”
“Most of it. I got the transform down, I got the species. I can’t seem to tell what does appearance, though.”
“Species?”
“Yeah- pegasus, unicorn, all that stuff.”
“Oh… That’s tribe.” She glances out of the bush. “Try going for the unicorn. I… might be able to help tell what’s missing.” She sighs. “And it won’t work if there’s something missing, anyways.”
I concentrate, formulating the spell in my mind, building it into my horn. Then I funnel some love into it, and feel it take hold.
Very suddenly, I’m… taller. And I feel weird all over, as if a hundred Nyadras- no, Scootaloos- had wrapped themselves around me.
She gasps.
“What?” I ask- and blink. That’s not my voice.
“You-! You-!” she stutters.
I lift one foreleg up in front of my face to peek at it. After the spell, I ended up lying on my side under the bush.
… My foreleg is covered in green fur, not black carapace.
“You did it!” she finally announces. “You’re… You turned into an adult pony.”
I look down at her. “Adult?” I ask.
She nods slowly. “Yeah.”
I sigh, planting a hoof in my face- and immediately flinch away from the painful contact. “Ow-! Well, this is going to be a pain… and facehooving hurts more as a pony.”
She nods at me. “Yeah, our carapace acts as a natural armor- but ponies have sensitive skin covering their skulls.”
“And fur overtop that skin,” I finish.
She nods. “And fur overtop that skin,” she agrees. “So, uh… You mind if I ride you the rest of way into town?”
“Um, sure,” I blink, and concentrate. “But first…”
It’s a spell I spent most of last night coming up with- and the reason I didn’t wake up before the wake-up call like I normally do.
I spent the night analyzing the hive mind. Finding out how it works, what makes it work.
The good news is, we’re completely invisible to it until and unless we say something on it. The bad news, it’s universal- no matter where on the hive mind we say something, everyling can hear it if they so desire.
The last thing I did last night, at the cost of about half of my stored love, was to create a second hivemind- with only me in it. I would have added her to it right away- a simple spell, by comparison, at only eleven hundred forty-seven runelets- but I worried she wouldn’t be able to keep it to herself.
I do that now.
She gasps as she feels it connect, eyes going wide. “Is- is that what I think it is?” she asks.
My spell draws to a close, and I open my eyes again, smiling. “Yes. Last night, I created us a separate hive mind. I just connected you to it.”
“And- and they can’t touch it?”
Nod. “They can’t touch it. Haven’t a clue it exists.”
She pumps a hoof. “Awesome! Oh, and, um… what about our future children?”
“Our?” I ask.
She nods. “Yeah. If you’re serving as the host for a hive mind… Well, you haven’t grown into the form just yet, but that kinda automatically makes you a royal… and all royals can lay.”
“... What?”
She sighs. “Yeah. I knew something felt different about you when we headed out. Didn’t know what it was, but… that explains it.”
I blink. “Oh. Um… any nymphs should only be linked to our hive mind.”
She blinks. “Huh?”
“I had to put Chrysalis’ hivemind into a subservient position in our minds… or it wouldn’t work.”
“... Ahh. But yes, that is awesome. For now, with the two of us… I’ll pretend to be your daughter- and we can use your hivemind to help me play the part of a foal, and you the part of an adult. Until we both get familiar with those positions ourselves.” She glances down, towards my tail. “Um, can you roll right-side-up? All adult ponies have ‘cutie marks’ on their flanks- and we’ll have to use a false cutie mark story for it.”
I roll right side up for her, turning my head to look. The first thing I notice, is that my tail is blue and white.
The next thing, is that I have a musical instrument of some sort on my flank.
She gasps. “What-! A lyre? That’s-! That’s not one of the generics!”
I look at her. “Huh?”
She looks back at me. “Oh, no, this is gonna be big. Um, you know how changelings can change their appearance to anything they like?”
I nod.
“That… That includes the cutie mark. But it takes careful precision to fake an original cutie mark- or even one from a real pony. Without that special attention- including focusing on the target cutie mark- a ‘ling turning into an adult pony will end up with a generic cutie mark- a series of bubbles or an hourglass, usually. But to accidentally have an original cutie mark…” She shudders. “That’s very rare. And it means you must be very strong, in the tribe in which it appears…
“Because it’ll never appear on its own if you change to any other tribe; you’ll get a generic.”
I glance at her flank- but it’s just orange. “What about you?”
She covers her flank with her tail. “I transformed into a filly,” she states. “And one young enough, at that, to not have a cutie mark.”