//------------------------------// // Discovery // Story: Blood Thicker Than Venom // by theOwtcast //------------------------------// By the time Viscera had brought one of the communicators from the cave, I was fairly sure nopony had noticed anything amiss. I’d kept my ears perked for any noise suggestive of guards gathering in front of the royal bedroom and watched for any shadows passing by the window; I’d even sent the disguised Plague to investigate the hallway once or twice, but all she had to report was the peace and quiet of a castle oblivious to the threat that had seized it. When Viscera was gone again, I decided to give it a few more minutes in case she’d been spotted, and then I dropped my disguise and activated the communicator. Chrysalis was there on the other end, waiting for my report. “What took you so long?” she barked. “We wanted to make sure we haven’t been spotted before reporting to you, Your Highness!” “I take it the invasion went well, then?” “It did. The cocoons are on their way to you. I’ve kept Phantom and Viscera here to assist in case of unforeseen complications, but so far, everything has worked out the way you want it!” “Excellent,” she smirked, but that smirk turned into a disgruntled frown immediately. “If only the same could be said for Canterlot!” “They didn’t fail, did they? Ooh, when I get my hooves on them…” “They had to abort capture,” she interrupted me. “There was a fire in the castle kitchen, no casualties or anything, but the whole castle got so worked up over it that everypony’s routine got disturbed to the point of unpredictability, so Banshee and Grim decided not to risk it.” “And you believed them?” “About the fire? Yes, Menace and a few others reported it too.” She snorted. “As much as I’m itching to punish them for postponing my victory, I have to admit that their decision makes strategic sense. But they will have to do it tomorrow, or I won’t be so understanding!” “Did the Ponyville team succeed, at least?” “Yes, perfectly according to plan. Their cocoons are on their way already, too.” “As they should be!” “Is there anything else going on on your end that I should know about?” “No, not for the moment.” Should there be? I realized my instinct was stirring again. “Then keep reporting regularly!” “Understood!” I terminated the link. I stood there for a few moments, looking thoughtfully at the communicator. Something Chrysalis had said had caused my subconscious mind to start whispering again, or at least I’d become aware of its whispering because of something in the conversation. What had she asked me? Yes, she’d wanted to know if I’d neglected to mention something! But what could I have found that I’d forgotten to mention, having been here so short a time? This time, the whisper was harder to ignore again. Common sense dictated that I should catch a few hours’ nap like Raptor and Plague were already doing, but I doubted I’d be able to sleep with my instinct’s constant prodding. So, I reapplied the disguise I’d dropped earlier and went exploring the castle. Chrysalis had seemed to expect me to tell her something more than ‘yes, Your Highness, we’ve succeeded’, but what that something was, I hadn’t the faintest idea! Whatever it was, I got the impression it would have to be fairly obvious, therefore I should be able to find such a thing pretty easily. If it existed. I wandered around the castle aimlessly, finding nothing that I would describe as peculiar or out of place… not in the context of a pony dwelling, anyway. A drone on his or her first mission might have been pretty confused and disoriented with how different pony society was from our own, but having completed my fair share of missions in Equestria throughout my service, I knew what to expect by now. Even the overwhelming cuteness had left me largely unfazed! And yet, there was something here that my instinct had recognized as a threat. But what? Not even the few Royal Guards I encountered in the hallways thought too much of me wandering like that; they were all ready to accept my excuse of being ‘unable to sleep for some reason - just one of those days I guess’ and think nothing of it! Everything else was just as the supports had described it, too: a calm and peaceful city full of love and other things ponies valued! No signs of preparations for a battle, no anti-changeling propaganda… absolutely nothing that could be a reason for sudden heightened concern! But my instinct was still screaming. What about, for Hive’s sake?! Eventually I did find something out of the ordinary. I was almost ready to give it up for now and go to bed when my path led me past Shining Armor’s office… my office, now. I’d examined it superficially near the beginning of this nightly round of mine and found nothing of immediate concern. I’d decided I was going to have plenty of time to search it thoroughly during the day; anything that could threaten the hive or information on such a thing would most likely be hidden there, but so would heaps of other things of no consequence to us, and I wasn’t going to make much sense of it by randomly sifting through paperwork under the moonlight coming through the window, especially if I didn’t know what I was looking for specifically, and I was going to have a perfectly legitimate reason to be in that room during the day anyway, so I’d opted to get the lay of the land of the rest of the castle first. I knew I’d left the office exactly as I’d found it: dark, quiet, and nopony inside. Now, however, I saw a line of light under the door and heard soft noise from inside. Noise as if somepony was looking for something... Spies and traitors among ponies? Not a common thing, but not impossible, either. This, if anything, was worth looking into! I opened the door and stepped into the office. A bespectacled orange unicorn with bloodshot eyes, clad in a dark blue cloak and engrossed in scrolls and log books, recoiled at the sound of the door opening. A brief moment of shock and apprehension registered on his face before he pulled the said pile of scrolls and log books to himself, kicked something under the desk, and forced a polite - and obviously fake - grin at me. You must be Sunburst, I realized. Flurry Heart’s crystaller - whatever that was - and a prominent figure in the Crystal Empire, according to Phantom’s reports. So what are you doing here in the middle of the night? “Oh, h-h-hi, Prince Shining A-armor,” he stammered out. “I didn’t e-e-expect to see you up t-t-this late! Or would ‘e-e-early’ be the cor-r-r-rect word?” “I could ask you the same thing,” I retorted, closing the door behind me and approaching him. “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?” “Well, I-I-I was go-go-going to, b-b-but then I remembered-ed-ed that spell I’d g-g-given you toda-da-day, and it wasn’t quite r-r-right, so I went to-to-to correct it before you n-n-needed it…” A spell? This guy sounded like he wouldn’t be able to make a coherent shopping list, let alone the kind of a spell that a leader of a country’s defense force might need! Then again, Phantom had done a background check on the guy, and apparently he did have solid understanding of magic, if not the ability to perform most of it, so it was at least possible that he’d devised such a spell. Not likely, though; his eye twiched as he looked at me and that stupid grin was still fixed on his face. I decided to play along for now. “And it couldn’t wait until morning?” “Oh, well, um… y-y-you know me… can’t let t-t-things go somet-t-t-imes…” I raised an eyebrow at him. He winced. “O-o-okay then, I guess I-I-I’ll leave…” He took a step closer to the door, turning slightly so I would remain in front of him the whole time. “G-g-good night, Prince Cha-” His eyes went wide and his hooves flew to his snout as the realization of what he’d nearly blurted out hit him. My ears perked up at the same moment and I fixed a murderous glare at him. I replayed the scene from earlier tonight in my memory. The royal bedroom in a mess, Raptor and Plague goofing around, me surveying the room, and the bedroom doors ajar. I’d thought I’d noticed a brief glimmer of something in the hallway through the crack in the doors, a glimmer that had disappeared as I approached it. I’d taken it for a random reflection of a torch on a conveniently-angled surface of the crystal hallway; in retrospect, it could have also been a reflection in somepony’s eyes, but having found nopony in the hallway, I hadn’t considered that possibility… until now. I should have. The glimmer had indeed been a reflection of the torch in somepony’s eyes… or, more likely, on somepony’s spectacles! He couldn’t have run away so quickly! Had he hidden behind the door? Why hadn’t I checked? It was of little consequence. If he’d seen what he shouldn’t have, he probably wouldn’t have been too eager to go looking for anypony to help him lest the pony turn out to be another changeling. But he was a loose end either way, and I had to get rid of him! The nervous gulp and beads of sweat rolling down his forehead told me he’d reached that same conclusion. I lunged at him while simultaneously dropping my disguise; he’d barely had the time to light up his horn before my fangs found their way into his neck and filled his blood with venom. He let out a gasp and fell unconscious. I looked out the window. Celestia hadn’t begun to raise the sun yet, but I had no doubt that she would soon. I had to hurry if I wanted to carry Sunburst to the supports’ cave unnoticed! I didn’t want to risk keeping his cocoon anywhere in the castle! I approached the unconscious unicorn and was about to disguise myself as a pegasus Royal Guard when my gaze fell onto the pile of scrolls and log books that had fallen on the floor, next to a bag he’d tucked under the desk. What had he been looking for in there? A spell of some kind? Something that would help him defend himself against us? Something he could use to reveal our true form? Or was it some classified information that he couldn’t allow to fall into our possession? I decided to take a quick look, just to see if it would give me a rough idea of what we were up against, and whether or not it was safe to leave it unattended until I returned. One glance into the bag was all I needed to finally know what my instinct had been trying to warn me about… though how it had known was beyond me. The bag contained a couple of notebooks, some rolled-up drawings, a photo album, and several framed photos. The topmost one was turned face-up and fully uncovered. It featured a happy-looking group posing on the converging point of the Crystal Empire’s streets, next to the heart-shaped crystal I’d seen earlier. Sunburst was there, and Princesses Cadance and Twilight Sparkle, and her henchmares, and the dragon Spike, and a unicorn I believed to be Twilight’s protege, Starlight Glimmer… and, in the middle, the one face I’d never thought I’d see like that. My own brother, smiling at the camera. Thorax, right here in the Crystal Empire. Thorax, standing as an equal among some of the most famous citizens of Equestria. Thorax, fully undisguised in public. And whether he had ended up living here or had only come for a visit, there was no way that both the infiltrators stationed here permanently and the support drones sent here for this mission would have failed to notice him or learn about his presence and report that find to me or to Chrysalis! But I’d never heard a single word about it. Not from the supports, and certainly not from Chrysalis! I’d walked into a trap, hadn’t I?