//------------------------------//
// Struggles of Mind and Might. (Chapter 23, Battle for the Rift, Part 4.) 
// Story: Meta Gamer in Equestria: The Blight of Bane. 
// by reflective vagrant 
//------------------------------//

As Prince Shining Armor went to the mesa, Tempest could see the desire on my face.  With a role of her eyes and gesture of her head, Tempest ordered the squadron to follow him.
When we arrived at the foot of the mesa, I could see dragons flying into and out of the area at the top.
A mine entrance was at the base, with a sturdy lift rigged to take cargo to the top of the mesa a couple yards away from the entrance.
Small amounts of smoke could be seen coming out of the entrance, but more importantly, the entrance was completely collapsed into a fresh pile of rubble.
"Mandible! Are you in there?  Are you hurt?"  The prince yelled into the mine.
"Y-yes!  I'm f-fine!  I hurt my wing when the c-collapse hap-p-happened, but otherwise I'm f-fine!"
The prince pulled back with a look of worry on his face.  "His voice.  He's suppressing a panic attack."  
He then looked at the rubble, and up to the top of the Mesa.  "We need to get to him soon.  He's just barely an adult by his kind's standards and hasn't fully gotten over his nyctophobia.  If we leave him in the dark of that mine too long then his phobia will take over and he'll hurt himself."
He looked at Tempest and Plasma Wave.  "Tempest, take that soldier and any flyers you have in your squad up the mesa.  Do what you can top side.  See if you can get him out through the top entrance.  I'll work with the remaining troops and see what we can do from this end."
With Tempest and Plasma Wave running to the lift and working the crank to go up and the pegasi among the squad flying up to aid as well, the prince turned back to the entrance and shouted again.
"Remember your emergency response training, private!  Stay focused!  Help is coming!"
With this, he ordered a soldier to go get more help for the cave in then started analyzing what was left of the entrance within the derbies.   "It could be moved, but it would take too much time to do it without risking another collapse."
I looked at the entrance along side him.  "The gaps between the rocks are too small for ponies to fit through without shaking something loose and risking further collapse, but I could fit in if I shape shift into something small like a ferret."
The prince looked at me with a face mixed with both admiration and tear welling pain.
"I'm sorry, Moss, but you are too mission critical right now.  As much as I want to save Mandible, I can't take the risk of losing you in there too.  Stay out of the mine. That's an order."
I clenched my fist, but saw the logic in his order.  I spoke with a hint of rising frustration, "How else can we get to him?"
"Send me."  I heard inside my mind.
"What?"  I called out, looking up to see Archimedes descending to me from his constant watch overhead.
"Send me.  You can't go, but I can.  Even if I lose my body as a familiar, my spirit can still act as your clerical catalyst and help you seed the seal. Send me."
As he perched on my arm, I looked over to the prince.
"My owl thinks he can help."
When he gave me an odd look, I tapped my temple.  "We have a mental link, and I can teleport him past the rubble."  I then told Archimedes to pick up a clod of dirt on the ground.  When he flew down and did so, I grasped my wand, still stuck in my sleeve and mentally willed him to channel my magic.  With little trouble, I managed to get the clod of dirt in his talon to glow with light.
"We can calm him down and buy time."
The prince looked at Archimedes with a bit of shock, back at the mine, and then at the crew he had left to work with, and the soldier running back to the town.
When he looked at me with uncertainty, I answered the question he didn't need to ask.  "Even if he dies, it won't affect anything mission critical, and it was his idea."
His face barely had time to shift is eyebrows up before they shot back down in the scowl fit for a general having to make a tough call.
"Do it."


* * *


Within minutes, we managed to get Archimedes to the other side of the rubble, got a stone to glow in his talon, and located Mandible near the entrance of what they told me was the elevator to the top.  In order to stay in communication range with Archimedes when he turned a corner, I had to move a little ways down the mesa base.
"I see him!  I see a bird c-carrying a l-light!"  Mandible yelled to us.
"Good!  Sit tight and he'll come to you!" The prince called out to him in joy.
"Tell them that I can see in the dark.  Might help calm him further."
I turned to the prince and called to him, "Archimedes says to tell him that he can see in the dark!  Should help calm him down!"
The prince simply beamed at this and turned back to the mine again. "Our friend we sent you can see in the dark, he'll keep a look out for you!"
"He's bruised up pretty bad, partner.  Do you think we should heal him?"
"O-k-kay!  I'll t-trust the bird to keep w-watch!"  Mandible called out again as I waved the prince over a little.
"Archimedes says he's hurt worse than he's letting on.  He's wanting to know if we should heal him."
The prince grimaced as he came over.   "From what I'm told your healing is great for pony anatomy and likely most mammals, but Mandible's kind has a very different anatomy from any mammal.  Healing with your magic may stabilize him, but it could also mess something else up even worse in the process.  We need to get him checked out by another of his kind.  So hold off for now.  If he looks like he's about to keel over, fine, do it, but otherwise wait."
I looked back at the blank mesa wall with a frustrated sigh and put the fingers of one hand to my temple, mostly for symbolic reasons.
"Negative... Partner.  The prince says we need to let his own kind heal him if we can.  He gave us the clear if it's absolutely necessary, but otherwise hold off."
"...You need to see this then.  Use my eyes.  And before you ask, just will it like you did to make the stone glow."
I knew what he was talking about from the game, but I wasn't exactly comfortable with testing it in the field.  Regardless, I had to do something, so I braced myself against the rock wall and closed my eyes.
Almost instantly, it looked and sounded as if I were in a dark cave.  My field of vision moved on its own, down to the body of a grey bug the rough size and shape of a pony.  Archimedes looked right at his horn.  It was wrapped in bandages but clearly healing from an old crack down its side.  Then he turned to the bug's leg, with a fresh wound still bleeding out, and to a full medical kit on the bug's side.  Finally, he turned to the bugs face.  His eyes were focusing heavily on the glowing stone to combat his phobia, which was good in itself, but the look on his face was awful.
I didn't want to admit to what I was seeing, but there was no denying it.  Mandible wasn't just fighting his fear of the dark.  He had the look of someone that wanted to give up.
Snapping out of my familiar vision, I called out to the prince and explained what I saw.


* * *


The prince psychologically wrestled with Mandible and got him to treat his wound, but he looked even worse emotionally as I peaked through Archimedes' eyes.
"I'm useless!  I can't fight!  My damaged horn won't let me shape shift!  Now I can't even fly anymore with my hurt wing!  There's nothing more I can do with my life!  I'm a waste of hive resources!  I just want to die and let the hive move on!"
"The hive isn't like that anymore!" I heard the prince call to him through the echoing of the mine.
"Bugs are bugs!  Changelings are no different!  When one gets hurt too bad, the others just leave it behind!  That's what's supposed to happen!"
Archimedes heard a sound from above, looking up, we saw a pony coming down the elevator shaft on a rope.  With the pony touching down on the ground and coming forward a few steps into the light, I could recognize the pony as Plasma Wave.
"I don't believe that for a second, kid.  An injury isn't the end of your life.  By Celestia, it's barely a bump in the road."
"How would you know?"  Mandible turned around and snarled at him.  "For all twelve years of my life that's how it's been for any drone or grub that couldn't keep up from getting hurt!"
Plasma Wave looked at him with a frustrated, yet extremely smug grin.  "Twelve years, you say?  Well I'll see your twelve years, and up you another two decades!"
With this, he brought his de-feathered wing forward to bare, causing Mandible to reel back in shock.  "And from what I'm told, your hive had a major overhaul in management recently.  With your hive rediscovering itself, you would be doing it a disservice to not let them try to learn how to deal with their injured now."
He knelt down and offered the second harness loop to the young bug.  "If your hive's new ways still wind up saying that you need to die, that's... fine."  I could sense a bitter undertone with the last word of that sentence.  "But let the hive come to that decision themselves.  Don't make that decision for them."
With a moment practically paused in time, Mandible stood there while gazing into Plasma Wave's eyes and soaking in what he said. Then, as time seemed to start again, Mandible lowered his head and gimped forward, putting his body into the harness loop.





While the rescue was taking place, the civilian members of the squad had been investigating the entrance.  By the time Mandible was about finished being lifted out of the hole, the prince, a civilian and I were on the lift.
"The cave in was deliberate?" the prince asked as he operated one side of the lift mechanism.
The civilian nodded as he and I worked the other side together, combining our meager muscles to match the prince's moderate build.
"The timbers were still too new and there were several fractures in the stone rubble inconsistent with a natural cave in.  It was struck hard by something." He looked above us, to the dragon nest. "Or some creature."
I could swear the prince practically went cross eyed with a migraine as we reached the top.
Turning to the small crowd around the top entrance of the mine, the prince marched straight forward.  "Garble!  I'm through with you!"
A red drake about twice my size looked up from the crowd and turned in our direction.  "Hey! I didn't do anything!  The little bug tripped and fell down the hole himself!"
Several of the pegasi that were in the group immediately surrounded me and the prince as the air got thick.
"And you know the arrangement."  Garble continued to strut up to the prince confidently.  "Empress Ember has forced us to follow pony orders on the battlefield, but if you want to impose your rules on our nests, you do it dragon style!"
He punched one curled up claw into his other claw.  "Power by dominance!  You want command up here?  You take it by force!"
It was at this time I noticed Tempest, Plasma Wave and Scraps surrounding the injured bug, guarding him against the dragons.  Scraps had glass bottles of a clear liquid in his hand, and Tempest was holding a strange spherical rock cluster in the frog of her hoof.  One dragon had his arm encased in stone, locked into a blocking position, and another looked like he had a severe acid burn on his face and upper torso.  The rest of the dragons were backed off, holding their line but otherwise letting the scene with their nest's leader play out first.
When I saw Speaks with Talons jump out of the bag of holding on Tempest's side to compensate for the reduced ranks, I realized how he and Scraps had gotten here.
Garble looked down at the prince.  "So what is it going to be?  Are you going to challenge me today, mamby pamby pony?  Or are you going to take your little bug charity case and run back to your tiny pony town?"
When it came to a tactical battle with troops, the prince was clearly the superior fighter, hands down.  But in a cage match against this dragon?  Not so much.
After a deep breath and a sigh, the prince whistled sharply while not taking his eyes off Garble.  With a gesture of his hoof, he ordered Tempest's group to retreat to the lift I was on.
With a smirk on his face as the group retreated, Garble looked up at me and gave a small laugh.
"Well look here boys!  We've got an invader up here in the nest!"  With the cocky and smug tone he was using, it was clear that he knew exactly who I really was, but didn't care.  "Lets show him what happens to his kind when they enter dragon territory!"
With a leap, Garble was in the air, flying over the group, over the lift and to the back side of the lift, where he promptly plucked me into the air.
With the height of the mesa and his sharp turn upward, I was several hundred feet into the air.  My mind went into overdrive, estimating scenarios of how this might play out and what methods I could use to get out of this.  Not many came to mind, and they all basically ended with me falling.
With a deep breath, I reached for my wand and just about set off a lighting bolt, to be followed up by a feather fall spell.
I wasn't able to execute that plan, however, as Garble tumbled over backwards when a blast hit him, throwing me up into the air with a sharp spin.
I could see a dark blur zoom past me as I did my best to simply hold onto my wand, my only way to catch myself from this high up.
As I felt myself coming out of the sharper part of the spin and starting to fall again, I found several more blurs catching me.
I was carried back to the lift by a group of bug ponies that looked like Mandible, save for being an array of pastel colors instead of grey.
Looking forward again, I saw a darker, and slightly larger, bug pony yell.
"Nest Commander Garble!  You have abused the changelings sent to your nest for too long!"
Garble got up and started brushing the dust off of himself, unconcerned with what the bug was saying.
"I, Changeling General Pharynx, do here by strip this nest of any and all privilege to call upon changeling aid!"
Garble looked over at the dark bug with an uncaring glare as the group finished getting Mandible settled on the lift.
"But since you only seem to understand violence, I'll just have to explain it to you in your language.  Thankfully, unlike the rest of my kind, I still speak it fluently."
A seething anger could be seen from the bugs eyes as he twisted one of his front hooves back and forth, digging it into the dust on the ground slightly.  Meanwhile, Garble casually walked forward without saying a word and the lift started descending.
"Commander Garble!  In accordance to the ways of dragon succession, I challenge you for leadership of this nest!"
The last thing I saw before I lost sight of the two was Garble managing to smirk and extending a claw back to his other dragons, telling them to keep back.