We are warriors.
Our Queen bred us to be warriors. Thousands of Her children, made of the strongest stuff she could muster. Our ichor sings with the exhilaration of battle. We were taught that strength was justice, that love was something we had to take, that we should rely on nobody but our Queen, and that She was all-powerful. She led the swarm to conquer Her enemies and seize control of the land from weak ponies.
She failed. She was expelled from their city by the power of love, and we Her warriors were expelled with Her. Those who survived the battle limped home, confused. How could the gullible, naive, trusting ponies have defeated us? How could love, of all things, have defeated Her?
Thorax showed us another way. A way to give and accept love instead of taking it. A way to make life better for all, the strong and the weak together. He became our new King, not through conquest but through example. We found a new purpose under His leadership. A new ideal for which to strive.
But no matter our ideals, our nature remains.
We are warriors.
I leapt from the ledge dressed as an eagle. By the time I landed I was a razor-toothed liger. I pounced on the nearest changeling, slicing limbs from her body, then turned, ready to disembowel the next. He was a bugbear, his stinger turned ready to impale me.
We both hesitated.
Is he one of us, or is he one of them?
I could see the same question in his eyes. Neither of us wanted to hurt an ally; but were we allies, or were we foes?
We stood mere hooves apart. Around us the battle raged, changeling fighting changeling.
Now that we had each other's attention, we were locked in place. Neither of us could turn away without risking death – if the other was the enemy, or even if they thought they were, for mistakes in battle are commonplace.
There was one simple way to tell whether we were on the same side: transform back into our real form. Whether cheerfully coloured or stealthy black, our allegiance would then be evident. But whichever of us revealed themselves first would place themselves at a disadvantage, both in information and armaments, should we happen to be enemies.
And so we stayed focused, great beasts standing muzzle to muzzle, slowly turning around each other in the middle of the fray.
Very slowly, without releasing eye contact, I backed away. My opponent didn't move, but his eyes narrowed. I could see the calculation in his eyes: were my actions those of a knight, or those of a rebel? In a flash he leapt, just as I turned into a phoenix and darted out of his reach.
I turned into a roc and plucked Petiole from her own battle, depositing her safely on the ridge overlooking the dry riverbed.
I returned to my own form – a light green with autumn-red tinges – and my opponent returned to his – black with spiky red ridges. We were enemies after all.
I nodded to him, and he to me. Then he and his changelings fled back into the tunnels.
They left behind the cocoon they'd been carrying. It was fresh; the skin was soft and the pony inside was still twitching. With any luck they'd be able to go back to their life with nothing more than mild amnesia.
“Somebody's still alive,” said Petiole. She always had better eyes than me. She pointed down into the mess of bodies.
“Let me take a look.”
I flew back down into the battlefield, and moved cautiously up to the bleeding changeling, stepping over broken limbs and scattered entrails. It was possible that it was a trap, so I didn't approach too quickly.
She hissed as I approached, and I realised she was the one I'd wounded moments before. “Why don't you finish me off already, traitor,” she snarled. Ichor drooled from her mouth.
I cast a spell to numb the pain, and another to close her wounds.
She looked confused. “What are you doing? We're enemies.”
“You were in my class, weren't you? Elytra, isn't it?”
“You—” She coughed, spraying deep yellow liquid on the ground. “Instructor Maxilla. You remember me?”
“I trained you to be more aware of your surroundings,” I admonished her. “You should have looked up.”
“If I had, you'd be dead.”
“That's no excuse.”
She dropped her head to the ground. “Don't bother. It's too late now. You got me.” Her words were becoming blurry. “I never thought it would be you that got me. You taught us how to fight, and now we're fighting you. We should have seen how stupid that is.”
“Is it so different from before? I taught you all to fight, then I sent you out into a cruel world full of danger. So many of my students never came back. I set them on a path to their death, as surely as if I'd fought them myself.”
“We're changelings. That's what life is,” she said.
“It doesn't have to be. There's another way now. A better way.”
“Not for me. I must be such a disappointment.”
I leaned in close to her. “I'm sorry,” I said.
“So am I.” She drew in a deep, sudden breath, and then her eyes widened. She began to glow, light radiating from her skin and pouring from her open wounds. The light enveloped her, lifting her off the ground, wrapping her in a spectral cocoon. When it dissipated a moment later she was a changed changeling.
Her transformed form was beautiful. Her colours were now a pale indigo with yellow ridges and green wings. The holes in her legs had filled in.
A shame it came too late. Her wounds remained as fatal as they had been. She settled back onto the ground and released her final breath.
Petiole stepped up behind me, keeping a respectful distance. “Sir?”
“I need to take the cocoon back. Can I ask you to bury her, Petiole?”
“Yes, sir. What should her marker say?”
“Here lies Elytra, Knight of The New Hive.”
“I… yes, sir.”
I turned to the nearest of our troupe. “You two, with me. The rest of you, stay with Petiole.”
Within the cocoon, the pony's eyelids were fluttering. A sweet dream? I didn’t want to disturb them, so I brushed gently against the pony's mind. There was another pony in them, cherished memories swimming past on repeat. That was the source of the love that the other changelings had been drinking.
Moving past that, I found images of a village by a river, with a water wheel and orange trees. The sort of place ponies loved. It was remembered from a lot of angles, jumbled together, but centred on the place where this other pony could be found.
I hoisted the cocoon in my magic and took to the air, flanked by my two allies. It would be a long flight.
I closed the entryway to my suite.
There isn't a lot of privacy to be had in the hive – my sleeping chamber doubled as my office, and as a meeting room. It was decorated with mismatched hangings representing the various lesser hives we'd absorbed during the tyrant's reign, and were now trying to respect. The banner most obviously missing was the black and green of Chrysalv.
There was a big table in the middle of the room, carved from dark brown marble that rippled with interesting patterns, and around it four low cushions: orange, green, blue, violet and black.
I kicked the fifth cushion as I walked past. It squeaked.
“Hey, Ottoman,” I called out. “Black isn't a good colour to pick if you're trying to fit in. Not in this room.”
The cushion transformed into a small black changeling. She rubbed her horn resentfully. “My name's not Ottoman,” insisted Ocellus.
“And nor is it Maxilla Junior,” I said, turning to face her. “What are you doing here?”
“It's comfy here,” she replied.
“On the floor. Pretending to be one of my cushions.” I sighed. “You know, I could have mistaken you for a spy. Or sat on you.”
“How do you know I'm not a spy?” she pouted.
“Because you're not the sort, Ocellus.”
“I'm on the other side, you know,” she insisted, though without conviction. “I have every reason to hate Linntalv. And Thorax. And you.”
“The little nymph I met in Speltalv wasn't capable of hate.”
“The little nymph you kidnapped, you mean.”
There was a general agreement among the transformed changelings of the hive that our new lives came with a complete amnesty on any and all crimes committed in service to the tyrant.
It was true that, under the tyrant's direction, I had stormed the doors of Speltalv at the head of our swarm. I had kidnapped Queen Proboscis and her daughters. I had dragged them back to the tyrant as political prisoners, hostages to ensure the smooth integration of the changelings of Speltalv into the tyrant's army.
And when the tyrant started executing her prisoners and assassinating her rivals, I was the one that had smuggled Ocellus to safety.
Thorax assured us that only our actions going forward mattered, but I couldn't help but feel like my actions before and after were measured in a great balance – and Ocellus was an important weight on that balance.
Linntalv, the ‘hidden hive’, is what we'd been called before the tyrant's egotistical rebranding. Chrysalv is what we'd been called as a conquering swarm, growing as it absorbed hive after hive. After the tyrant's defeat, lots of changelings had wanted to go back to the old name; but Thorax hadn't considered either name appropriate when he stepped up, so instead he'd dubbed us Amicalv, the ‘friendly hive’. Still, there were some – especially among the untransformed – who kept using the old name.
“This place isn't Linntalv any more. It's not Chrysalv any more either. It's Amicalv now. And the tyrant isn't coming back.”
“How can you be sure she won't?”
“Even if she did come back here, changelings wouldn't follow her. Old or new, none of us want the tyrant back.”
She looked so frail – no doubt from years of starvation – that I could never really be mad at her. I sat close and wrapped my forelegs around her.
She didn’t return the embrace, merely leaned into it. I held her for a minute before letting go. I could see there were words in her throat that she was holding onto, but dragging them out wouldn't help.
Eventually she drew in her breath and said, “I tried… changing. Into one of you, all colourful. I tried walking around like that, to see how it felt. To see if changelings treated me any differently.”
“And did you learn anything from this?”
“I learned that everyone knew who I was anyway. They weren't fooled by my shape at all, just confused. I hate being a queen.”
“You can't blame them. With the other queens dead—”
“I don't,” she interrupted. “I don't blame them. It's just the way it is. I'm the only queen they've got, and I'm not even from Linntalv. They have to keep me safe. It's me or… the tyrant.”
“I told you. She's never coming back.”
“She's not dead, you know.”
I frowned. I did know, but that information was classified. We had teams keeping a careful eye on the tyrant, of course, reporting on her crazed ramblings; but they were under the strictest secrecy.
“How do you know that?”
“I can hear her, singing in my head.” Ocellus winced.
“Singing? How often?” I didn't want to interrogate the poor nymph, but it was hard not to.
“All the time,” she replied.
She'd never told me about this before. “Is she nearby right now?”
Ocellus shook her head. “No. It's just a whisper. She's miles away. But it's always there.”
“Do you think she can hear you?”
“No. She's never heard anyone but herself.”
It hadn't occurred to me that the old connection between queens might still be there, especially between Ocellus and Chrysalis, who can't have met more than twice. It was a relief to know that the tyrant couldn't hear is; but if other changelings knew that Ocellus could hear the tyrant's thoughts, what would they do? What would the enemy do? What would we do?
“I think it's probably for the best if you don't tell anyling else about this.”
“I know.” She looked up at me. “I can't trust anyling. Anyling but you.”
I never could understand what made Ocellus trust me. I was the warrior who'd taken her from Speltalv, who'd delivered Queen Proboscis into the hooves of the traitor.
“Are you sure I can't stay the night here?”
“Only if you want me to sit on you,” I threatened.
She appeared to consider that option before reluctantly slinking away.
I swear, queens will be the death of me.
I found King Thorax in the broken throne room at the top of the hive, watching the dawn.
A change had come over the scenery in the few months since our transformation, just as surely as over the hive itself: greenery had started to return, recolonising the wasteland that had previously been drained of life. In just the few days he'd been away, the patchwork of brown had turned a few shades greener. Some vines had even started to grow up the broken walls up here in the former throne room, encouraged by the upswelling of magic.
Thorax sat on the platform where that horrible black throne had been. It was the highest point in the hive, and from it one could see the world around us. He seemed lost in thought. He didn't even have a guard with him.
I stepped cautiously up to the platform. The king's new form was taller than any of us, as tall as the tyrant had been, as tall as one of the pony princesses; and the raised platform where he sat only added to that. I approached the pedestal and coughed.
“Good morning, Maxilla,” he said.
“Good morning. How was your trip to Equestria, sir?”
“It was… instructive.” He sat still, looking out and not back at me. His voice had a dreamy tone to it, as if he were looking at something more distant than that green horizon.
“…sir?”
“I met the new Dragon Lord there,” he said. “She gave me some, well, interesting advice about ruling.”
“She did? I wouldn't think changelings are much like dragons. They're fearsome and individualistic, while we're subtle and social.
“You'd be surprised. There are more similarities than differences, I think.”
(Insert some lines here)
“Stop!”
Thorax spun around, dropping into a low pose that brought his face closer to mine. I stopped.
“Do you think I'm stupid?” he snapped. “Do you think I'm blind?”
The king's cheerful smile was gone, replaced by an animalistic snarl that would have felt more in place on the changelings we used to be. He crouched low, like a cat ready to pounce, stalking slowly down the steps towards me.
“I… sir, I–”
“Do you think I can't count the number of changelings that go on ‘long trips’? That I can't smell the fear gripping everyling behind their smiles? That I can't see the results of your fighting all over the hive?”
I hung my head. “I'm sorry you had to see that, sir.”
“Wrong answer, Maxilla! You're supposed to be sorry for doing wrong, not for getting caught.”
I bridled at this accusation, possibly because it hit home. “I am sorry, but it's necessary, sir. For the good of the hive, we have to curb the crimes of the untransformed.”
“You do? Why? Why can't you set your differences aside? Explain it to me, Maxilla. If it's the good of the hive you're fighting for, why are changelings fighting changelings?”
“Because they're still capturing ponies to drain them!” I declared.
“I know that,” he said.
“You know that. And what do you think will happen when Equestria learns that changelings in our hive are still abducting their ponies? You think they'll respect the new friendship? You think they'll give us more time to work it out for ourselves? You think they'll send a friendship ambassador? No. If the other races get so much as a whisper that changelings are the same predatory creatures we used to be, they'll never forgive us. If that happens then Amicalv is doomed.”
“You're desperate for the other races not to see us as violent, and that somehow justifies violence?”
“We can't let the rebels keep taking prisoners like this. Don't you see? They'll bring ruin on us all.”
“You think doing battle with them is going to change that? You think violence is going to teach them how to love? We have to find another way, Maxilla. A way that doesn't make enemies out of our fellow changelings.”
“And are you going to apologise to the families of ponies who die while we're looking for a better way? Send them a polite letter?”