//------------------------------// // Part V - Chapter 11: Dishonest Work // Story: Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky // by PortalJumper //------------------------------// Alicornae: The Legend of Starlit Sky Part V - Chapter 11: Dishonest Work * * * Fluttershy was making a considerable effort to maintain her composure as she walked alone through the void. Her hoofsteps echoing out into the nothingness, the sound her heart in her ears, and the slow exhalations of her own breath was the only thing telling her that she even still existed in this place. She couldn't tell how long she had been walking, and it was even harder to figure it out without the sky and the rhythm of the environment around her to tell her. "You have been going forward for a long while, Fluttershy," the deep voice said, sending Fluttershy turning about with a start. "That's what I said I was going to do," Fluttershy answered, keeping an eye over her shoulder as she started walking again. "This must be tedious for you, the waiting and the wondering where this is all going." "It would be less tedious if you were telling me things I didn't already know," Fluttershy sniped back. "Are you going to show me this path you talked about, or is this just a conversation that isn't going to go anywhere?" The voice didn't reply, and Fluttershy found herself thankful for the quiet. The void was, oddly, more comforting than the voice, and even after gaining some appreciation for having somepony to talk to over the last few days she found the silence after a tense and irritating exchange of words soothing. When the silence was broken by the sound of sloshing water, the feeling of it lapping against her hooves, and the sight of silver balls of light floating in amongst the trees, it took Fluttershy a moment to register that the void had even vanished. When it finally clicked in her head she quickly turned about, looking for Sun standing anywhere close by. "Sun!" Fluttershy called out. There was no response save for a quick gust of wind in the trees that blew her mane about, but when she heard galloping through the water she quickly turned to find Sun running through the swamp towards her. "There you are, I've been trying to find you for ages!" Sun replied. "Were you in that black nothingness too?" "I was, it was terrible!" Fluttershy replied, wrapping her hooves around Sun as they shared a quick hug. "What happened? Did anypony talk to you in there?" "No, I didn't hear anything, but there were a lot of visions," Sun answered. "I think it was the Heart trying to give me a message, or imparting power, or something like that." "Power? What kind? And how can you even use it without your horn?" Fluttershy asked. Sun gently ran a hoof along his horn, which was still quite badly damaged. As he touched it Fluttershy noticed that he wasn't wincing or recoiling in pain, which piqued her curiosity. "It gave me the power that I need to give to Starlit in Canterlot and a way to reach her, but first we have to get out of this part of the Glowing Wastes," Sun answered. "Magic here is weird and I can't get a proper focus to teleport out." "What about Chrysalis? She said she wanted to see you personally," Fluttershy replied. "That was about as personal as it was going to get, really," Sun answered as he started to walk back into the swamp. "That nothing space was her, sort of." "What do you mean 'sort of'?" "It's hard to explain, really," Sun continued, gesturing Fluttershy forward. "Come on, I'll explain on the way." As Sun continued forward, leaving Fluttershy more confused than anything, she took notice of something she was surprised she hadn't noticed before; Sun wasn't wearing his cloak, his saddlebags, or his dagger sheath. "What happened to all of your things?" Fluttershy asked. "What things?" Sun replied, turning around with a quizzical look. Fluttershy stopped dead in her tracks, the slight splashing of water the only noise in the vastness of the swamp. Sun's quizzical look slowly turned to realization, just as Fluttershy was sure that hers was. "You're sharp, I'll give you that," Sun said, before becoming engulfed in a glut of teal fire and shifting back into a Changeling. Its compound teal eyes shimmered and glinted in the silvery lights of the bog, and even without eyelids Fluttershy could tell it was giving her a glare of smug satisfaction. Fluttershy didn't think twice lunging forward with a scream of rage as she tried to tackle the creature to the ground. A blast of water sprayed out behind her as her wings propelled her forward, and the Changeling had barely enough time to dive out of the way as Fluttershy missed it by inches. "You can fight all you want, but this one's task is complete," the Changeling mocked, in the same deep, soft tone she remembered from the nothingness. "We have both played our parts in our Queen's design, and now all that is left for the both of us is to stay out of the way while it comes to fruition." Fluttershy quickly whipped around, throwing out a haymaker that managed to catch one of the prehensile mandibles on the Changeling. A sick popping crunch sounded out as the blow connected, followed by a cry of shock and pain from the Changeling as a clear fluid dribbled out from the stump where the mandible once was. "What did you do?!" Fluttershy demanded. "Where is Setting Sun, what have you done?!" The Changeling spit and wretched in pain as it held a glossy hoof up to its mouth to try and stanch whatever ichor it was bleeding out. "He goes to see the Queen, as she told you," the Changeling answered, gurgling out spittle and ichor. "He will be a vessel for her power, and with it he will make right what your alicorns have set so very, very wrong. The world will be made new, magic will be free again, and the Heart will correct the mistake it made in creating your loathsome kind!" Fluttershy felt her blood run cold at the creature's answer, and she was shocked long enough that it had time to fly off and away to the south. "It's going to kill us all," Fluttershy murmured to herself. "Chrysalis is going to wipe out pony-kind and she's going to use Sun to do it!" Thinking quickly, Fluttershy started sprinting back towards the south, but she had gotten no further than where she had exited the darkness from when a massive, opaque wall of silvery mist erected itself to halt her progress. "No, no, no!" Fluttershy cried out, running back and forth down the length of the wall to try and find a breach point. The entire wall was a solid as a cypress, and there were no spots that she could even press into, let alone break through. Starting to hyperventilate, Fluttershy wracked her brain, trying to find a solution, before she noticed her gaze being drawn upward. The wall extended into the sky farther than she could see, but she had to believe it had a point where it stopped. Dropping all of her bags and pouches into the water, Fluttershy stretched her wings out, working out the muscles and loosening them up. She had never had to fly this high up before, and probably never would again, but she had to warn Sun. "Actually starting to care about what happens to anypony other than yourself," Fluttershy muttered to herself. "It's just a day of firsts, isn't it?" With a powerful flap Fluttershy ascended into the air, doing her best to dodge and weave through the tree line as she did. A few sticks and branches snapped against her legs and face as she made the climb higher and higher, and more than a few times she found herself having to land on a branch and propel off of it to gain more speed and altitude without flapping her wings into anything. Sweat beaded off of Fluttershy's brow, she could feel her heart pounding and her lungs burning from exertion as she fought against gravity with every ounce of her strength. The straining her her wings and shoulders begged her to stop, but as she crested the canopy of the swamp she saw a sight that gave her a renewed vigor. The misty wall stopped just at the top of the canopy, fading away into the darkened sky, and far off in the distance, probably more than a mile away, there was a massive, black structure that glowed with silvery light. It looked something like a spider's egg sac, only covered in plates of black chitin and scaled up to the size of a small mountain, and surrounding it on all sides was a field of pure darkness that extended right up to the wall of mist. Taking a sharp breath to calm her fluttering heart, Fluttershy started a glide towards the hive, doing her best to keep above the darkness and not taking her eyes off of her goal. She was terrified of what was going to happen when she got there, but for the first time in as long as she could remember, she was more scared for Sun and everypony in the world than she was for herself. * * * In the infinitude of blackness Sun had been walking for what seemed to him like an eternity, one that was laden with moments out of every life ever lived in all of Equestria. Silver framed windows into the births, marriages, deaths, struggles, sacrifices, and successes of an innumerable number of ponies spread out all around him, a field of memories pockmarking the darkness. He passed by a scene of a pegasus grifting a unicorn by up charging for basic essentials like food. He saw a team of earth ponies widening the trench of a mass grave for thestrals. He saw two stallions sharing a tender moment under the stars. He saw a young mare running from her home in tears, being chased by her mother. So many visions of lives Sun had never even known existed before now, and the effect of seeing them all blasted at him was akin to placing a bucket under a waterfall to try and fill it up. The voices that had initially been speaking to him had been surprisingly mum ever since the visions had begun, and Sun was getting the impression that they wanted all of the memories to speak for themselves. What the visions were supposed to be telling him was a mystery, but for each life he was given a glimpse into he thought of his home, of everypony waiting there for him. Sun found himself concerned with lives he had never lived, places he had never been, and ponies he would never meet, and if that wasn't the sort of message he was supposed to be receiving then he wondered what the Heart was trying to tell him at all. So caught up was Sun in all of the views that he had been shown, the images of all of these lives, that he scarcely noticed when the blackness vanished entirely until he felt the wetness of the swamp water lapping at his legs again. The cold, gentle motion was a welcome friend compared to the endless void he had just been traversing, but it was nothing compared to the feeling of hearing a friendly voice say his name. "Sun!" Fluttershy called. Sun turned as swiftly as he could, but was still caught off guard when she slammed into him, wrapping her hooves around his neck in a tight hug. "Woah, easy on the horn," Sun playfully chided as a wave of soreness pulsed through his forehead. "Where were you?" "Oh, it was just awful!" Fluttershy said as she pulled away. "There was just nothing, and then there was a voice that kept asking me questions, and I thought I'd lost you out here and that you were dead an—" "Fluttershy, Fluttershy, calm down, you're okay," Sun said placing both hooves on her shoulders as she babbled away. "I had the same sort of experience, I understand. You're okay, and so am I." "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just that I was so worried that I'd failed you or that you were dead," Fluttershy replied, taking a few deep breaths to calm herself. "Well you haven't, and I'm not, so let's get our heads in straight," Sun said, patting her shoulder as he looked around, only to be met with something he was ashamed he hadn't noticed before. Just to Sun's right, towering above both him and Fluttershy, was a structure. It glowed with a silvery light that suffused every chitinous inch of its surface. It looked like a massive spider's egg, constructed with dull beige webbing that was then plated over by shiny black chitin that Sun recognized from the Changelings they had encountered. Situated right in front of the both of them was a ramp made of this same material that protruded from a large aperture that led into the murky, beige interior of what Sun could only think was the Changeling hive. "I think we're here," Sun stated, dumbfounded at the sheer size of this organically crafted structure. Fluttershy let out a small yelp when she turned and saw it. "We have to go in there?" Fluttershy asked. "Chrysalis did invite us, so we should probably have safe passage in," Sun replied. "Something tells me that she doesn't have a lot of options left, so she can't afford to try and kill us without hearing her out." "And if we decide not to hear her out?" Fluttershy asked, a slight quiver to her voice. "Then we'll figure it out like we have for this entire trip," Sun answered as he stepped up onto the ramp. Fluttershy quickly followed after, and together the two of them stepped through the aperture and into the dimly lit hive. The air inside was muggy and humid, a feeling Sun had only felt whenever Cherry Blossom's bar had a particularly crowded and rowdy night with a lot of ponies chatting and drinking. Such nights were few and far between, but it gave him a good idea that they definitely weren't alone. "So, did anything happen to you while we were separated?" Sun asked Fluttershy. "Something spoke to me, but honestly I was too scared to really pay much attention to what it was saying," Fluttershy answered, hiding her face a bit behind a loose lock of her mane. "You didn't get anything? You're normally so attentive to your surroundings." "When you're having a full-blown panic attack in an infinite void and deep, scary voice starts talking to you it tends to get lost in the terror," Fluttershy quickly cut in, catching Sun off guard with her suddenly defensive tone. "Alright, I understand, I won't pressure you," Sun hastily apologized. "If you want, I could tell you what I saw." "You saw things?" Fluttershy asked. "All I had was the voice." "I had a couple of voices, actually, and they not only showed me things but they told me things too," Sun continued. "For one, they told me why Equestria has no magic anymore." "It was because the Princesses left, right?" "You see, that's what I though too, but apparently what we were both experiencing was being brought on by the Heart of Fate, which is the source of magic itself, and the ancient alicorns that existed before the Princesses essentially made their own version of and bound up Equestria's magic into their Crystal Heart." Fluttershy went quiet, only looking ahead as Sun continued talking with a pensive look on her face. "It was the Princess's jobs to manipulate and manage the magic of Equestria by funneling it out of the Crystal Heart, and when they all vanished it was just stuck in the Heart with no way to get it out," Sun continued. "Why Twilight didn't just take over in Canterlot and manage the Heart herself is beyond me, though." "Do you think she wanted to?" Fluttershy asked. "After all, you told me that she is a scholar and an exceptionally powerful sorceress, maybe she never wanted to duty that came with being a Princess." "That is… surprisingly insightful, actually," Sun stated, rubbing his chin with his hoof. "But if she didn't want to rule, then why even take the job to begin with? Starlit always told me that the four alicorns had been chosen for their duty; Twilight must've had a reason for taking this on if she didn't want the duty that came with it." "Did she ever give you any reason to believe that she wanted anything more than just the Princesses to do their jobs again?" Fluttershy asked, stepping over an loose plate of chitin. "No, but then again there was a lot she just didn't tell us," Sun replied as he a Fluttershy rounded a corner. Ahead of them was a massive hollow space, rising so high that Sun couldn't see the top and delving so far down that he couldn't see the bottom. Criss-crossed all over this empty chamber were taut bridges of webbing and chitin that ascended and descended at seemingly random intervals. The harsh buzzing of Changeling wings filled the air as they flitted around, crawling a,long the walls like the insects they so resembled. "Which way do we go?" Fluttershy asked, staring down into the chasm below. "Which way can we go?" "Chrysalis said she'd be in the inner-most chamber, so that either means the top or the bottom," Sun answered, gaze flitting around at all of the Changelings illuminated in the dull green light. "My bet would probably be the bottom, though." "I was afraid you might say that," Fluttershy replied, taking a few steps away from the edge. "How are we even going to get down there? None of these bridges connect with each other." "Almost like they were designed for creatures that can fly," Sun said, nodding towards Fluttershy's wings. "That might work out for me, but what about you? You don't have wings, and I doubt you could float yourself down with your horn in the shape that it's in." "I couldn't levitate myself even before I broke my horn, but that's not what I'm suggesting," Sun replied taking a look over the edge to get an appreciation of just how far that would be to fall. "I could ride on your back and you could just glide us down." "I'm not that strong of a flyer," Fluttershy admitted. "You would probably just make the both of us plummet." "Have you ever tried?" Sun asked, trying to goad Fluttershy's confidence. "You lived alone in a swamp for ten years, you must've developed some strength in all the time fending for yourself." "I mean, I did, but not so much that I could carry a whole other pony in flight!" Fluttershy countered. "It is really taxing to fly just carrying a few animals or some bags of food, much less however much you might weigh." "I'm pretty slight, all things considered," Sun countered back. "You might actually weigh more than I do, and it's not like you're going to have to be doing any flapping. All you need to do is glide and avoid the bridges going down." Fluttershy looked out over the edge one more time, as though she were eying up a descent. Her furrowed brows betrayed her fear, that much Sun could tell, but he could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. "I mean, I might be able to hole between the bridges, gliding to them and then resting when we get to them so it isn't just a complete free fall," Fluttershy admitted, stretching her wings out as she began to unstrap all of her bags and pouches. "I'm going to have to leave everything on my behind to cut down on the weight, though." "It's better than trying to jump between them unaided," Sun replied as he started to unstrap his own saddlebags. He kept the dagger strapped to his foreleg just in case something went horribly wrong, but discarded all the rest of his belongings and left them in a pile away from the ledge along with Fluttershy's bags. "Maybe for you, but I'm going to be the pony doing the work," Fluttershy sniped back as she went through some pre-flight stretches. "Are you feeling alright?" Sun asked. "You're a bit… short-tempered." "I'll be fine," Fluttershy answered, in a tone that distinctly did not sound fine. Even still, Sun decided to let the matter lie. After everything the two of them had been through it would be understandable that she'd be irritable; Sun was certainly ready to get out of the swamp, that much was certain. Sun felt Fluttershy dip a bit as he climbed into her back and wrapped his hooves around her chest. She grunted with exertion as she got used to his weight, and Sun did his best to keep his body clear of her wings. "Sorry," Sun said as he carefully readjusted himself. "It's not your fault, don't worry," Fluttershy replied as she stood back up to her full height. She took a few steps back from the edge after taking one last look at their target, a bridge maybe twenty feet below them and ten feet away, before running as fast as her new burden would let her and leaping off the edge. Fluttershy's wings caught the air well, but even that only caused their plummet to turn into a controlled descent. They were falling far more quickly than Sun had anticipated, and looked like they were about to miss the bridge entirely. "Fluttershy, I apologize in advance for this!" Sun said as he started to readjust and get his hooves underneath him. "What're you talking abo—" Fluttershy started to ask before Sun stood quickly up in her back and jumped off with all his might. She let out an involuntary yelp of surprise as Sun sprung off of her back, which was followed quickly by a thunk of hooves against chitin as Sun tried to grab hold of the bridge. The chitinous surface of the bridge was slick and polished, far too much for Sun to get a good grip, and he quickly found himself slipping backward. Scrambling against the bridge for any kind of purchase, Sun instinctually tried to light his horn and cast a spell to hold himself in place. The sudden shock of pain lancing through his forehead was the grim coda to what was, at best, a half-baked plan, and as he fell he knew that there would be no recovering from this. He had failed, as plain as that. Just when Sun had begun to accept the inevitable, he felt his body lurch in the air like coming out of a nightmare about falling. Opening his eyes and looking around he saw a field of silvery magic encasing him. Fluttershy was nowhere to be seen, and as he felt himself descending further and further down into the bowels of the hive he saw that there were no other Changelings nearby either. The further Sun descended into the earth the more he felt the omnipresent thumping in the back of his head grow in strength. It wasn't painful like the first few times he had felt it quicken in pace, and instead gave him a sense of comfort that he didn't think he'd find in a place like this. The magical field carrying him downward slowed, flipping him right side up and placing his hooves gently on a floor of polished black chitin. Just ahead was an aperture similar to the one Sun had used to enter the hive to begin with, and a vivid teal-green glow emanated from inside of it. It was a draw for him, like a moth fluttering towards a flame, and Sun couldn't help but be entranced. As Sun rounded a corner he was greeted by three things in the large, dimly lit chamber beyond. Firstly was a shard of black crystal, roughly the size of his horn and achingly similar to the one Starlit wore around her neck. Secondly was a large throne made out of the same chitinous material that most of the hive's architecture was constructed of, with a round back that had a single sharp point at its apex. Lastly was the pony seated upon the throne, one that felt familiar and yet not familiar. The pony seated before Sun had the general shape of an alicorn, being approximately Celestia's height, but that was where the similarities ended. This pony had no fur, instead being covered in a black, chitinous exoskeleton like the Changelings. She had a large, pale blue pair of diaphanous wings that were folded against her back with a similar material used to make her mane and tail. Her horn was twisted and crooked, and her hooves and legs were dotted with holes punched straight through. Most striking of all were her eyes, her giant, glimmering green eyes that Sun recognized immediately. "Chrysalis, I presume?" Sun asked as he entered the throne room. "You presume correctly," Chrysalis answered. "Come, you must be tired. Let's have a talk." * * *