I wasn’t halfway down the stairs before Raindrops and Rivet were upon me. “Holly!” Raindrops called, as she glared up at Gilda and anything else that might have followed us inside. “Are you okay? We heard that howling outside, and that singing ever since. Maud said you went out by yourself?”
I nodded. “O-Ocellus had a lead. I’ve g-got something we can use against the g-ghosts.” Raindrops looked skeptical, but she followed behind as I moved towards the rest of the group, in the middle of the wrecked library.
“I’m fine too,” Gilda groused from behind, as she followed me down the stairs.
Rivet chuckled, and took the metal plate that Gilda passed to him. “What’s this?”
“Holly’s breastplate. She had kind of a rough landing, this got messed up from the fall. Think you can beat it back into shape?”
Rivet blinked at that, then looked back at me as I walked away. “Hah! You’re tougher than you look, filly. Better the armor than you. I’m no smith, but maybe I can bend it a little.”
Gilda smirked at me as we all rejoined the group; apparently she wasn’t going to mention the sunlight flask if I didn’t. I didn’t really see any reason to do so, since it was empty now, and would take a while to refill.
Posey seemed to have joined Maud in teaching Ocellus Equush again, but all three of them stood up as I approached. Roma had been checking over the dead changelings, and gave me a friendly nod, while Raindrops paused before rejoining the group. She looked at Ocellus—who had assumed her disguise as Twilight Sparkle once again—with a surprising amount of fear. RIvet stopped at the edge of the group to consider the ruined breastplate, and Raindrops hovered around him, instead of coming any closer to the changelings, living or dead.
“Hey, Raindrops, catch.” Gilda flicked the sheathed knife to her, and Raindrops caught it out of the air, before she looked at it in confusion.
“Thanks. I thought Holly went out to get it?”
“Like I said, bad landing, I carried it down. She also stirred up the ghosts in the process, but that’s not a bad thing, considering.” When I looked at her in confusion at how riling up the phantoms outside could ever be a good thing, Gilda chuckled, then explained. ”Means they left the library unguarded, so this group got back without even seeing one. Couldn’t get away from the damn singing, though.”
Raindrops turned it over, still confused. “Why is the sheath...tied shut?”
“You can’t feel how rutting cursed that thing is?” Gilda scoffed. “Holly said not to let the blade touch your flesh, and that sounds like a good rule to me.”
“I mean, yeah, I can feel there’s something wrong with it, but we’re gonna need to untie it when we need to use it—”
“Keep closed,” Ocellus chittered quietly from across the room. “Blade...like neck-lace. Hungers, for heart-soul.”
“Great, so like everything else in this damn city,” Roma mused from beside the corpses. “Changelings, cursed artifacts, and now evil knives. Why did everything that eats souls end up here, in this city?”
“Well, it’s a good thing there’s so many wandering souls outside to feed all these things, huh?” Gilda said, with a quiet cackle.
Raindrops shook her head. "It's a good proof of concept, but it's still only one knife. You girls did good getting it and bringing it back, but what exactly does that do against an army?" Her gaze drifted to the door, and to the rest of the college beyond. "Dammit, Star Bright…you were our group's only unicorn, you could have told us something at least…"
Gilda glanced at the dead changelings, in which Roma seemed to be quickly losing interest. "Where'd the old Hollow coot go, anyways? He's not with the dead any more."
"He woke up just before we got here. Maud and Ocellus were...containing him...when the rest of us arrived, but you'd already flown away by then. We just finished barricading him into a bathroom a few minutes ago." Raindrops' voice was heavy with regret. "Roma, the changelings?"
Roma hopped over the last dead insect-pony, and joined our group properly a few steps later. "Not Hollow, as near as I can tell. There was fire, but...not any more, like it's been extinguished. Whatever ponies have that keeps at least an ember, Changelings don't. All that's left is empty husks." Her eyes caught Ocellus, and the disguised shapeshifter looked away, her muzzle scrunched up as though she were in pain. Roma winced at the sight, but she didn't apologize.
Maud nudged the purple faux-pony's side, and they sat down together, though Ocellus kept glancing back at the bodies.
“Holly.” I turned back to look at her, and she held the sheathed knife up. “You just got back from what seems to be our closest encounter so far with those ghosts outside. I didn’t believe Gilda when she told us about them, and I didn’t get a good look myself on the way here; what’s your take on them? What are they, and is there any other way we can fight them?”
What were they? That was a difficult question to answer, but I tried my best to explain what I had seen, and how they had acted. The ghosts were separate entities from the Banshee; they had individuality, and if the one I’d narrowly escaped by hiding as a ponnequin was any indication, they seemed to remember at least some of their life before they became ethereal. But the Banshee undeniably controlled them, and commanded them through her song in some way. Only the twitchy pony who had attacked first outside the museum had disobeyed the Banshee, and she had suffered greatly because of it.
As for the ghosts themselves...as far as I could tell, they seemed to be made of mist. I had heard of ghosts, and had vague recollections of old ghost stories, but the details were lost. In those, I’d always gotten the sense that they were an illusion, or could pass through walls and floors. But these ghosts seemed limited, and could only flow like the mist they were made out of with a great deal of effort. Otherwise, they moved like normal ponies, and needed their hooves to pound the ground and wings to beat the sky, albeit all silently. Perhaps the Banshee herself followed different rules than her followers, but I hadn’t seen any proof of that yet.
I kept my suspicions as to the Banshee’s true identity a secret; I didn’t think any of the ponies here, save perhaps Maud, would recognize the name “Sweetie Belle,” even in relation to Rarity. To tell them would only invite confusion, or grief, and right now...right now, we needed to be strong, and to be prepared to fight our way out of here, whatever that took.
Ocellus was able to fill in some gaps I missed, and the practice with Maud already seemed to have helped her. She stuttered much less now, and the words came easier, more confidently. Her speech was still heavily accented, and names were still given in Changeling tongue, but she was much easier to understand now, at least.
She could tell the ghosts were extremely magical in nature, even more so than ponies or changelings were, almost as if they were beings of pure magic. Because of that, it seemed that magic could stun or distress the ghosts for brief periods of time, but anti-magic weaponry was incredibly effective. That was what had given her the idea of the knife—her next guess would have been attempting to locate cold iron in some form. But now that we had the knife, that wasn’t necessary.
“About that,” Raindrops said, as she passed the knife back to Gilda. “I still need to see this knife unsheathed, just so we know what we have. Holly, did you check to see if it works?”
I shuddered, and the memory of the ghosts being shredded into wisps and consumed by the blade flashed through my vision, as I heard their final screams in my ears. “It w-works. It’s...it’s h-horrible. But it works. V-very well.”
Gilda eyed me sympathetically, as she undid the knot, and carefully exposed the blade. “I didn’t see it get used, but that howling we heard? Pretty sure that was the ghosts that this thing touched. And the other ghosts behind her, that she was running from? They looked rutting mad. Like they were gonna rip Holly into pieces too small to rip apart any more, and then maybe keep ripping anyways.”
Everypony unconsciously stepped back from GIlda as the knife was unsheathed. We could all feel the cold dark radiate off from it, as though it was sucking in any warmth the library had. Wisps of fog oozed from the crystal, and it left vapor trails in the air as Gilda held it closer for Raindrops to examine.
Now that she was seeing it up close, Raindrops seemed to grasp just how wrong the artifact was. The fur on the back of her neck stood up, and her wings shifted nervously under her armor as she forced herself to lean in close. Her ears twitched erratically, listening for whispers that nopony else could hear. She could only handle it for a moment or two before she stepped back, and shook her head. “That’s-that’s all I needed to know. Sheathe it again, please. I’m sorry I asked.”
We were all much happier when Gilda did so, and even then, none of us took our eyes off the knife until she had securely re-tied the knot to hold it closed. As if it would suddenly escape Gilda’s grasp and lunge for one of our throats if we took our eyes off of it, even for a second.
“So this cursed little toy will definitely kill the ghosts, right? And we’re pretty sure it’ll make quick work of the Banshee, if we can get the blade across her throat.” Gilda looked around the group. “What’s the plan to make that happen, exactly?”
All of us were silent for a few moments, as we looked around the room, or down at the floor. Raindrops eventually sighed. “Dammit, Star Bright. If he hadn’t...augh. We’d have a lot more options if he weren’t Hollow now.”
“Can still use sorcery,” mumbled Ocellus. “Little b-bit. Lift, throw. W-wards, and light. M-magic bolts...weak, but...w-will stun.”
“What about shapeshifting?” Rivet asked. “Can you sneak past them, somehow?”
“Any other creature…b-but not Banshee.” Ocellus shook her head. “M-mimic material. Physical. M-meat...bone...chitin...stone. All, can do. M-mist...cannot.”
“They’ll attack anything physical anyways.” Maud stated. “Ocellus told me the ghosts attacked ponies too. She thinks the ghosts are convinced they were disguised changelings, and still are.”
“So it’s a psychotic legion of paranoid ghosts.” Gilda huffed through her beak. “That’s a little harder for ponies to solve with rainbow magic, huh?”
“I wish the Elements of Harmony were here now. Maybe they could solve this.” Posey whined quietly.
“Yeah, well, I rutting don’t, and they’re not, so we gotta work the problem ourselves,” GIlda snarled, with a clack of her beak. “We’ve done distractions; they might be wise to that now, they might not. If they’re smart, they’ll be hesitant to chase after me again, wait for the rest of you to make a move first. Or just split up, like before, and leave the rest here to watch the building.”
“We definitely can’t sneak out now,” Raindrops nodded. “Not with pegasi flyers circling the building. You two have already broken through their blockades twice, so they’re extra vigilant that it won’t happen again.”
“Maybe we bank on that, do the dumb thing? Rush the Banshee with the knife, hope the element of surprise lasts long enough to strike?” Gilda glanced at the windows around the room, and the skylight above.
Raindrops shook her head. “That might work, but it’s all our eggs in one basket. If it doesn’t, then we’re down a pony, and we’ve lost the knife.”
“This was a private university, or something, right?” Rivet asked, looking at the door to the rest of the building. “They have a chemistry lab? I might be able to whip up something to give us a smokescreen, or blow out a wall to confuse them.”
“I already checked.” Maud bluntly stated. “It’s not that kind of university. They held lectures here, and exhibitions of art.”
Gilda glanced around, claws tapping at her beak. “Actually, the idea’s got merit, just not an explosion...a fire would be weird enough that it would get their attention, confuse them…”
“Are you insane? We’re in a library, and I’m not burning books.” Raindrops said, as she glared at Gilda.
If the hen noticed, she didn’t acknowledge it. “I’m not saying a big fire, and this place is full of fancy wooden furniture—I’m sure we can break enough tables and chairs to make firewood. We just need a nice thick smokescreen. There’s another building close by, I bet you could jump from one window of this building into that one.”
Raindrops looked up at that. “I’d need to see this other building, and the windows in question...but that would get a pony or two past the blockade at best. What then?”
“With all eyes on the fire and the library, they could do...what, exactly?” RIvet mused. “What does that get us?”
I had an idea. A really stupid idea. But it was an idea. “Th-there was an auto-mobile...we p-passed by it on the w-way here.” I looked at Gilda and Maud. “St-Star Bright said it hovered on air, r-right?”
Gilda shrugged, but Maud raised her eyebrow. “He speculated that it worked by forcing air away from the underside and sides of the hover-mobile.”
I nodded, and stood up. “If...if they are m-made of mist...do you th-think I could b-blow them away with that?”
Ocellus blinked, then looked contemplative. “Banshee...hates w-wind. Hides during the heaviest of storms...has tr-trouble moving during.”
“It might not kill them, but if it stuns them long enough that we can get in and get a stab in on the Banshee…” Raindrops mumbled to herself.
Gilda shook her head. “Rut me, you’re serious. That is a pony plan if I’ve ever heard one, stars and moon…”
Rivet glanced at me. “Do you know how to drive an auto-mobile? Or even start it?” I shook my head, but that didn’t dissuade him. “I bet between the two of us, we could work out the controls. I’ve used other heavy machinery, it can’t be too different. You find prismapetrol to gas it up and get it flowing through the engine, and I can drive—or fly—the thing.”
“Wait, why do you need Holly for that?” Posey asked.
Rivet chuckled, in response. “Prisma engines are pegasus-made; pretty often, if they haven’t been run in a while, they need kind of a kickstart. And the fuel’s less volatile when they pour it; no idea why, seems like the stuff just prefers pegasi.”
“Oky, but why Holly specifically?” Raindrops asked, hesitantly. “Any pegasus—or Gryphon—could do that.”
“Are you volunteering?” Rivet asked bluntly. For a moment, Raindrops looked like she might, but Rivet cut her off anyways. “Seriously, don’t. This is kind of a silly idea, and if it gets us killed, then it’s your job to stay safe and come up with a better one. Gilda should stay here too; she’s got opposable thumbs, she can get that knife into the Banshee’s throat if it does work.”
“Yay me,” GIlda chuckled, though she looked perfectly happy to sit out on this plan until she was needed.
“So,” Raindrops said, as she looked around the room at everyone. “Just to be clear; the plan is for Rivet and Holly to sneak out, get that one single auto-mobile running, and then hope that distracts, or stuns, or dissipates the ghosts long enough for Gilda to stab the Banshee?”
Rivet chuckled. “Anypony got a better plan?”
There was an awkward silence for a few moments, as all of us failed to offer suggestions. Eventually, Raindrops clapped her hoof to her face. “Okay. Great. At least it’s something, I guess...what about after that?”
“W-what do you mean?” Posey asked.
Raindrops glared at Ocellus suspiciously. “After we deal with the Banshee. We’re heading into a Changeling Hive to rescue Trixie, right? Where is that? What’s our plan once we get in there? How many Changelings are we expecting to have to fight our way through?”
Ocellus was suddenly hesitant to answer. “Hive entrance...not say specific, but near factories. Sisters killed...f-few. Wish for zero. B-but sisters defend hive with lives, keep safe. Will not b-be able to bring all p-ponies in. Some...stay put, distract. Sisters w-watch, do not attack. This...I hope.”
“So, you want us to stay put somewhere, while you take some of our group off into parts unknown.” Raindrops repeated, just to clarify.
“Not...some. One. Too many...too noisy. Two b-beings much more quiet.”
Roma scoffed at that as well. “Bug, you have to know how shady that sounds. How do we know you won’t just pick us off, one by one? Don’t you share a hivemind?”
Ocellus shook her head vigorously. “No! No Hive...mind. Changeling brain...doesn’t work. Too m-much. Too in...divided?”
“Individual.” Maud corrected.
“Yes, too that. Hive-mind...simple, l-like ant, bee. Changelings share em-emotion—through scent, through magic.” Once again, Ocellus glanced at the dead changelings lying on the floor, and the blood soaking into the carpet. If she could smell the blood so well, I realized...no wonder it seemed like she was so nervous.
She shivered again, and continued. “Will distract...scent-mark path, for dangerous hazards. Direct towards ponies, as...curious intrusion. Changelings should scout—not attack. We two sneak past—unseen.”
Raindrops nodded slowly, but she shifted her wings under her armor nervously. “And once you get into the hive...I wanted the rest of you here as well, before I asked this question. Ocellus, You told Maud, Holly, and Gilda that you took Trixie to your hive, right?"
At Ocellus' nod, Raindrops continued. "And she's safe there, how? How do we know the other changelings won't suck her dry, or haven't already?"
Ocellus shook her head, violently. "No! Still live...know it true. Changelings p-parasites! Need living host. Kill host—kill hive. Ti'see live."
Raindrops nodded. "Okay, but I know Trixie. If she hasn't already tried to fight her way out, then she will, and soon. What if she makes herself too much of a problem? Would they kill her, to keep the hive safe?"
“Cannot fight. Changeling venom...deb-debil…” Ocellus stumbled over the word. Eventually, she just repeated herself. “V-venom. Cannot fight. Sleeping, in p-pod. Dreams of...b-better times. Before...sun became sick, maybe.”
“To generate love for the Hive, right?”
“Close enough to truth,” Ocellus admitted. “Slow bleed. Soul r-repairs self. Still does, but...must be slow. M-much more slow. Something...in soul, sick. Like sun. Fights f-for control, consumes weakness. Always w-wins. But...pod slows soul-death. Take just enough to s-survive. Have to s-survive…”
Raindrops sighed, and forced herself to look away. “Okay. Ocellus. I need you to tell me the truth: how many other ponies are down there, in pods, besides Trixie?”
Ocellus stiffened, for a moment, against Maud’s side. Then suddenly she stood, and Posey jumped back as the changeling snarled suddenly, “Will not take! Will not help you st-starve hive!”
“Both of you. Calm down—” Maud stated as she stood as well, and stepped in front of Ocellus.
“Pony know. P-pony always knew. Then pony know answer. Too m-many.” Ocellus interrupted her, but the face of Twilight started to slip, melting like softening wax. Maud stepped away, startled, while Raindrops subtly shifted in her armor, so that she could draw her sword if needed. “Hive starving now. Hive dies without pods.”
“The ponies in those pods are dying slow deaths as you suck them dry,” Raindrops spoke calmly, but she couldn’t keep her gaze focused on Ocellus. “I know how it feels to be in those pods, Ocellus. Changelings kept attacking Ponyville for a while; I’ve been captured three, four times? Enough to know how this all works, and how your damned Queen likes to treat her hostages. Those ponies need to be rescued. All of them, not just Trixie.”
“Mistake. Mistake to trust…” Ocellus mumbled, apparently to herself. Her eyes darted around the room, at the ponies and Gryphon all looking at her.
Raindrops hissed through her teeth. “Ocellus, I’ve already lost two ponies. I can’t just leave a bunch of ponies in danger like that. I know you don’t like it, but—”
“Don’t like?” The disguised changeling hissed. We could see her fangs, between her melting lips. “Ask to kill Hive. B-betray sisters all!”
Of all ponies, it was Posey to speak next. “Raindrops! Stop and think about this.”
“What? I am thinking about it, we can’t—”
“No, you’re not.” Posey was standing now, and stamped her hoof against the marble floor with a loud clack. “These ponies, they’ve been captured for a very, very long time. Some of them since before the sun stopped. That means they’re like me, like Holly, like Merry May was.”
Merry May’s name brought Raindrops to a halt. “What?”
“They’re civilians. They don’t know how to fight; they don’t know this world, now.” Posey clenched her eyes and teeth, and shivered. “Raindrops, if you pull them out of there and try to march them all back to Ponyville, how many do you genuinely think are going to make it all the way there? Past the rest of the changeling swarm, past whatever ghosts are left, past the demons and Hollows that wander the mist.”
Raindrops tried to answer, but couldn’t.
Posey sighed, and looked down. “Tartarus, I envy them. To not know all that’s happened...To dream safely of happier times. Isn’t that a better fate than our own? Wandering this world, dying over and over until we lose everything that made us ponies?”
“We—we have to give them a chance—” Raindrops mumbled.
“Do we?” Posey looked back up at her. “Especially when it would come at the expense of killing so many other beings. From how Ocellus is talking about it, it sounds like every other Changeling there would die to keep them in those pods, because they’d die anyways without the ponies there. What do we really have to gain from trying to ruin the thin peace there?”
“You’re talking about leaving them there!” Raindrops shouted suddenly. “To be bled and drained slowly until they go hollow anyways! At least this way they have a choice!”
“Really? If you sit them down, in the middle of this breakout, and explain the state of the world to them, you’ll really let them crawl right back into those pods if they want?” Posey asked, incredulously. “That’s no choice at all.”
“We can’t just give up on them either!” Raindrops said, but tears were welling up at the corner of her eyes. “We can’t lose them, like we did Merry May and Star Bright, or Cloud Chaser and Flitter…”
Posey sighed. “None of them should have been put in those situations in the first place. None of them were like you are, Raindrops. You’re tougher than them, tougher than me. You can handle this fighting, handle the killing. But they couldn’t. They weren’t ready for any of this, and ponies that aren’t ready for this, can’t handle what you can...the only reason they haven’t gone Hollow already is luck. Their number hasn’t come up yet.”
Raindrops was silent for a few moments, before she narrowed her eyes “This—this world...it’s a forge now, Posey. We have to adapt. We have to be tempered, like swords—”
“And what if the forge makes those swords shatter, Raindrops? Instead of tempering them.” Posey sighed and shook her head. “I’m not afraid to admit my steel is weak, or brittle. I’d rather not be tested at all, when I know I’m going to shatter.”
“But you still came out here,” Raindrops pointed out.
Posy just nodded. “Yeah. I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have come with you. Neither should Merry May or Star Bright.”
Raindrops wanted to argue. Really, desperately wanted to argue. But as she looked around the room, no one else wanted to. Eventually, she sighed. “We should at least tell Celestia about this—about the Changelings.”
“Yes.” Maud agreed. “She has more resources. She will know what to do here. But all we’re here to do right now is retrieve Trixie. We need to keep focused on that mission.”
“Can spare Ti’see,” Ocellus agreed, as her face reformed, and she looked like a pony again. “No others. H-hard line.”
“Well, first we gotta get rid of the damn ghosts,” Rivet said, as he stood. Posey took his spot, and he gave her a relieved nod as he started moving towards the staircase to the upper floors. “Come on, Holly. Let’s go find a good window.”
As we left, Raindrops looked exhausted, but that didn’t stop her from working out everyone’s orders. “Gilda, head to the front door. Stay out of sight for now, and when you strike, stay low. The pegasi might not be affected by the attack. Posey, Maud, keep Ocellus safe; I don’t trust her…but she’s our guide.”