//------------------------------// // 40 - Daughters of the Hollow Hive // Story: The Hollow Pony // by Type_Writer //------------------------------// Tor’inx was going to kill us here. I had to act, I had to move, I had to fight. My sword was drawn already, but Tor’inx didn’t seem to need one himself; he merely bared his fangs and leapt at us, and I couldn’t parry that. Ocellus fled vertically, her wings buzzing like mad as she flew straight upwards to temporary safety, and that left me to fight Tor’inx alone. I jumped backwards, just barely dodging what would have been a vicious bite, and before I could recover, Tor’inx ducked his head and slammed his jagged horn into my un-armored breast. The chainmail shrieked and pinged off as the horn broke the rings, then ran me through, and I felt blood leap up my throat as I gagged. But I wasn’t dead yet, which took him by surprise. I slammed the pommel of my sword into the side of his skull, and he jerked away from the blow, dazed, as my black blood spurted across him and spattered onto the waxy floor. I had to catch my breath for a moment—figuratively, at least, as I felt the air leaking out of me, he must’ve pierced a lung—and by the time I’d swung my sword at him again, he’d recovered enough to smack it down. My longsword dug a shallow furrow in the changeling resin, but I didn’t drop it. Instead, I whipped it back around in a wide windmill, which he easily sidestepped, and the pain from my breast brought me fully off-balance. Tor’inx used the opportunity to tackle me, and I fully lost my grip on my sword. Distantly, I heard it clatter across the floor, but I was more focused on the angry bug trying to get his fangs in my throat. I battered him with my hooves to keep him away from the gaps in my armor, and a horrible feeling of deja vu overcame me. Hadn’t I just done this, with that other changeling back in the library? This same “tackle and go for the throat” trick, where I battered at them and tried to keep them away? The memory of that poor half-maddened drone back then made me hesitate now, almost as if I could feel her inside my mind, disapproving as I attacked another one of her siblings. My hooves trembled with the weight of her eyes, just before Maud had smashed her to paste, but Maud would not be saving me here and now. Tor’inx grabbed my forehoof and pulled. Pain shot through my body ,as the bones within cracked, and my leg went numb and fell limp. He merely slapped my other hoof aside, since that single hoof was barely worth the effort to fight with any more. Instead, I saw the flash of fangs before Tor’inx ducked under my chin and clamped his jaws around my throat. Hot, white pain, and then a terrifying ice-like numbness, spread through my body as he pumped venom into my cold, dead blood. I saw his eyes, but then, it was hard to focus on anything but, since they weren’t more than a hoof-lengths distance from my own. There was hate in those eyes, and fire, just like us ponies. But more than anything else, there was this odd sort of exhaustion. He could have killed me in a dozen different ways, done more damage to ensure I was dead, and he seemed to be considering them, since I’d recovered so quickly from the horn stab. But in the end, he decided I wasn’t worth the time, now that I’d been pumped full of his horrible freezing venom. He opened his jaws, and let my body drop back to the floor with a clank as my armor smacked the resin. I felt it, distantly, as though hearing echoes down a tunnel. That it was happening to me didn’t really seem to register any more, as the cold crept through my veins and my hind legs turned to cold mud. Tor’inx stepped over me like I was already a corpse, and his eyes were searching for Ocellus, his next victim in his crusade to defend the hive from us. The cold wasn’t like death, not exactly. I’d felt death over and over now, the cold nothingness creeping over me, breaking me down on the spiritual level like ice-cold water, like the black lake of Cloudsdale had. I couldn’t know what returning from that cold death felt like, for obvious reasons, but I felt as though I glimpsed it every time I drank from that flask of liquid sunlight. Just for a moment, as the fire flowed through me, and burned the death out of my body. The chill of Changeling venom was similar to the creeping, all-encompassing cold of death, but slower, less thorough. It didn’t seek to remove from this world, only preserve me. It didn’t kill, not by itself, but it kept the victims docile, and stationary, until the changelings decided whether that target would live in a pod, or if the cold veil of death would finish the job that the venom had started. My fire fought it just the same as it fought the cold darkness of death, and against the venom, it could just barely keep up, just barely outpace it. Enough to give me the faintest hint of control, while Tor’inx was distracted. The single, intact foreleg that I could still feel, and could still move, crept down my side. It felt like I was tugging at the strings of a puppet, and I dragged my numb forehoof clumsily across my armor. It scraped over the resin of the floor and the metal plates that were meant to keep me safe, and then across the strange texture of the metal chainmail between those plates as I searched, blind, numb, for the flask. It was in my bag, and I had just barely enough control to tug at the drawstrings. Slowly and laboriously, I tried to fumble the mouth of the bag open. My hoof fell into the yawning darkness of the bottomless bag, and hung in the nothingness. I had to think of the flask, but the venom was in my head, and it made my thoughts foggy. I was losing control of my hoof. Please. I just need a sip. I don’t want to die in here. Warmth bloomed against my frog, and I grasped that warmth as firmly as I could, before pulling my limp hoof back. Glass clinked against the resin, and it sounded so loud, I was sure that the rattle must have echoed through the whole hive. Tor’inx must have known what I was trying to do. He would try to stop me soon, I had just moments to act. But it was taking an eternity to drag the flask of sunlight merely into my vision, let alone to my lips. My eyes were doing strange things, thanks to the venom in my blood, in my heart. Light dimmed as my body fell into stasis, and my limbs were forgotten, all except for that single forehoof, and the flickering Pyromancer’s grasp that held the flask. The colors of the hive distorted, and the edges of the walls and the buzzing changelings above twisted and spun, and it all hurt to look at them. But when I saw the flask, when my limp forehoof finally dragged it into my own vision like a lazy workhorse dragging a plow through the dirt, that made it all so very worth it. The sunlight within roiled and spun, flowing and swirling inside the glass like whirlpools of fire. It churned like the stormy surface of an ocean, crashing against the internal walls in waves, and erupting upwards from the surface wildly. Explosions of light and fire shined through the glass as coronal maelstroms made strange arcs, like solar flares on a miniscule level. I’d never seen this before, but I’d never looked so deeply into the fire; it felt like I’d have gone blind, just as anypony would go blind from looking directly into the sun. My mouth. I had to find my mouth. I had to understand my mouth, to raise the flask to my lips. Otherwise I’d only waste what little I had, as I poured it across the resin uselessly. I tore my eyes from the hypnotic sunspots shimmering and undulating within the flask, to the silvery cork, which even now, gleamed in the dim light of the hive. I pushed the cork closer, until I forced it into my eye directly. Then, down from there, as I dragged it across my muzzle. I missed it the first time as my venom-numbed hoof learned the contours of my face, but the second time, I pushed the cork into my mouth, and used that contact to try and return feeling to my jaw. It was still numb, and I felt the heat more than any sort of contact, but I trusted my jaw to move like I told it. In the end, I think I nearly bit through the cork entirely, and what a problem that would have been, if my clumsiness had permanently sealed the bottle until I found a corkscrew. But I had a grip, and I pulled the flask away from my face until I felt it pop. Warmth poured across the numb surface of my face, and I jammed the neck of the flask back into my mouth, until it was clogged with the flask and the cork for the same. If I still needed to breathe, I would have drowned with how the liquid sunlight filled my throat, and bubbled from my nose. I couldn’t swallow, I could barely force the liquid down my throat by shoving the flask deeper between my teeth, until feeling started to return to my body. Liquid fire flowed through my muscles, so hot that it seared them, and still I couldn’t move, because the venom had frozen them solid. But the fire began to melt that icy chill away, and feeling spread outward from my lips and my belly, spreading through my body slowly. So slowly. Surely, Tor’inx had to see this happening, and was surely moving to stop it, and end me permanently. Tor’inx. The changelings...both he and that changeling drone from before, they’d done something to me with their eyes. It was as though they’d left a little piece of their soul stabbed into my own, to make me behave. The drone from before, her little mental fang had lain dormant, until Tor’inx’s had joined it. Then they had both made me hesitate, froze my hoof when I needed it to strike. Maybe Ocellus had done that too, without me realizing it. I’d looked into her eyes several times now. Maybe she wasn’t even aware she’d done it herself. I’d have to burn it all away, cleanse myself with my fire, until it consumed me. When I emerged from the ashes, born anew, I would know that I was purified of any control except that of my own. The fire roared within my very soul, like an inferno at the heart of a furnace, and my veins carried the heat through my limbs as it burned away the venom, burned away the broken bones and torn muscles. I drew in a gurgling breath as the liquid sunlight filled my lungs, but I did not stop, as it suffused my very being. I turned my head and spat out the empty flask, and the silver cork as well, as fire danced across my lips. I rolled to my hooves, like I’d never been sundered by Tor’inx. Like his fangs had never pierced my throat, as though I’d never died to begin with, however long ago my first death had happened. I was alive now. I was reinvigorated. And there was to be a reckoning. My eyes flicked across the drones buzzing around the ceiling, but I saw neither Ocellus nor Tor’inx up there. While I had been incapacitated, he’d chased her down and grounded her, and seemed to be mid-monologue at the far end of the cavern as he stood above her. I didn’t bother to pick up my sword; I wouldn’t need it. He never saw me coming, but he might have felt the heat of my fire as it approached. He’d been turning his head, to look back at me, but I slammed into his side like a train crash before he even knew anything was wrong. I tackled him right off of Ocellus, and we fell to the ground together. Tor’inx hit the ground first, and hadn’t even raised his hooves before I slammed mine down on his shoulder. One held his hoof in place, while the other grabbed him by the holes in that same leg, pulled, and twisted. I learned that trick from him, and just like when he had done it to me, I felt his leg crack as I yanked it out of the socket. But I had bones, while he had an exoskeleton. Muscle and flesh and blue changeling blood squirted from the broken gaps in his chitin as it sheared through the soft flesh under the surface, but he could still move his leg. So I pulled harder. Tor’inx screeched so loudly that it echoed through the hive, as I started to yank his foreleg free of his body. When it still didn’t come loose, I punched him in the jaw, and dove in like he had done to me, but I clamped my teeth around the bleeding muscles of his shoulder. I chewed, with my flat, broken teeth, meant for crushing and gnashing, and ground his chitin between my jaws as my mouth filled with blue changeling blood. It tasted like salt and like copper, and it dribbled down my chin as I ground through the muscles of Tor’inx’s shoulder, until I had chewed all the way through. There was a satisfying sucking noise, and I was reminded of pulling the leg from a sandcrab, as the limb shuddered and gushed blue blood. I threw it away, now that I was done with it, and realized that Tor’inx had clamped his own jaws into my shoulder in kind. Now that I wasn’t focused on his leg, I could feel his fangs, stabbing deep into my flesh, injecting more cold venom, but the pure fire within boiled it to nothing as soon it entered my body. I grabbed his horn with my other hoof, and yanked his head away from my shoulder. His fangs were flexible, like a snake, or a spider, which was a pity. I wanted to feel them shatter as I twisted them out of my own flesh. I’d have to settle for his horn. I tried to slam his head down onto the resin, but he jerked himself free, and staggered away, tottering unsteadily on three hooves and a bleeding cavity in his shell. Green magic crackled up his horn, as he charged up a spell to kill me instead of his bare hooves. I wasn’t a unicorn, but I could do magic too. He fired a missile of magic towards my chest, and I leaned to the side a split-second before it would have struck me. As I did, I felt fire coalesce in my hoof, hot hatred given form, and I slung the fireball at him in retaliation. He dodged, but it didn’t need to hit him. It struck the floor between his hooves, and a burning wave of pressure exploded outwards, blasting him back and ruffling the colorless strands of my mane. The resin didn’t like to burn, but it melted with enough heat, and a scent like cooked rubber filled my nostrils as puddles of boiling resin hissed and spat angrily in the new crater. I strode forward as smoke poured from within, and Tor’inx leapt from that smoke, hoping to take me by surprise. The underside of his body was charred white, like a boiled lobster. Heat had permanently changed the color of his chitin, and the surface was cracked, dribbling blue as he moved. He held my sword in his magic—he must have grabbed it while in the smoke—and he whipped the blade down in a crescent slash that was meant to separate my head from my body. I threw my foreleg into the path of the blade, and only the armor and the fire within kept the sword from removing my foreleg, like I’d ripped away his. It still smashed into the metal, broke the chainmail underneath, and bit into my leg down to the bone. To say that it hurt was an understatement; I bit through my lip as a feral howl filled my throat. But I didn’t need that leg to tear Tor’inx apart. I jerked my foreleg down, sword and all, and that wasn’t enough to dislodge Tor’inx’s magical grip. So I grabbed at the blade directly, felt it slice at my frog as a burning corona of pyromancy grasped the sharp edge itself, and I yanked it back up into his side. He let out a pained hiss as the blade—now turning red-hot from the heat of my fire—stabbed right through his chitin, and I forced it deeper, until his magic flickered out. Then I slammed him in the chin with the hoof he’d slashed, which knocked him back on his hinds, where he was unsteady. The blade still protruded, stabbed a hoof-length into where the ribs would be on a pony, not far from his ruined, bleeding stump. Instead of tackling him, I grabbed the hilt of the sword, and watched it steam as blue blood dribbled down onto the hot metal. Then I forced it forward, towards myself, through his breast, as he desperately tried to stop me with his remaining foreleg. The chitin across his barrel cracked like the shell of an egg, but did not split. Judging from his scream, it hurt, but he wasn’t finished yet. I twisted the blade, then yanked it back out suddenly, and watched as blue blood gushed from the wound and the cracks across his shell. Tor’inx seemed stunned from the pain; he might not have been totally conscious anymore, between the lost blood and the litany of wounds I’d carved across his body. He was only barely managing to stand. My longsword was long ruined now, warped and eroded by the heat. Maybe a skilled blacksmith could have repaired the blade, and sharpened it properly. But I didn’t have the time. Now that it was no longer as a sword, it became a club, and I brought that blunted steel rod down into the chitin of Tor’inx’s shoulder, hard enough that the cooling red metal bent from the blow. Then again, as Tor’inx toppled to the ground, and now that he was immobile, I was free to pound the broken blade down on his body again and again and again. The blade shattered after the fourth blow, then again not long after, and I was merely holding a jagged, broken hilt. Even then, I stabbed that broken hilt into his side, and felt his chitin crack again as fresh blood welled out. Without a weapon, I resorted to my armored hooves, and I slammed them down again and again on his broken body until his pulped insides started to ooze through the cracks in his exoskeleton, and he looked like nothing more than a smashed insect. But he wasn’t dead yet. I could still feel fire within his corpse, and I knew I wouldn’t be done here until I took it, every last ember. I grabbed his jaw and pulled his mouth open, full of broken teeth, and grasped his fire with greedy, burning will. And then I pulled. Tor’inx struggled one final time, and tried to fight me as I tore his soul out of his body. Maybe he recognized the feeling; this was what chagelings did, after all, so he must have been familiar. But I don’t think he ever expected to be the victim of such an attack, and so he had no way to fight it. Everything that Tor’inx was, everything he ever knew or saw or said, it was all drawn across my own soul like the tide across a beach. There was too much; I knew I should have slowed down, should have paid attention. He must have known things that could help me, since he seemed to know so much about their “Ken a’ Kens.” But I didn’t care, and I could feel another changeling approaching, so I ignored it all, forced it down, and left him nothing more than a broken, bleeding husk in the belly of his own hive. The fire within me ate it all. The changeling drew close, from behind, trying to get the drop on me. But I could feel their fire, and so I waited until they were too close to dodge away. Then I spun, snapping my hind hoof up and back. The blow landed true, and I felt the chitin of their cheek crack as they fell back, screaming. I glanced around me, waiting for more to approach. I would fight every damned bug in this hive if they stood between me and the exit. None approached. I was disappointed; they were all hovering around the ceiling, and I could feel the fear radiate off them as they cowered, afraid to descend and face my fire. The changeling I’d struck down lay on the floor, sobbing; they weren’t a threat any more. I’d take their fire next. They struggled as I drew close, and I pinned them down with a hoof as they babbled incoherently at me. They were weak, nothing like the changeling soldier I’d slain moments ago. Just a drone. I reached for her fire, and grasped it tightly— “Hol’lee! Please! Stop!” That sounded familiar. Enough that I hesitated, and the changeling under me shuddered as their fire twitched in their chest. I still held it tightly, and could tear it from their body with little more than a thought. “P-please...stop…” The changeling sobbed, shaking. Why did their voice sound so familiar? It was so close. I could almost remember. But the fire was too loud in my ears, pounding like my pulse. Waves crashed in my ears as I tried to listen, as I tried to slow down. Tried to recall where I’d heard that voice before. The fire in the changeling’s chest slipped away as I forced my own fire to cool. It wasn’t so easy to grab, now that I was letting myself grow weak. Nothing would ever be so easy again. Already, I could feel the aches and pains of my Hollowed body returning, because they’d never left; the fire had just kept them at bay while the inferno raged. My leg burned, and I felt my black blood gush down my hoof, more fluid than I’d ever remembered it. My shoulder too; now that the flames weren’t protecting me, I felt the venom again, dulled, but still filling the wound, mixing with my blood. “H-Hol’lee…?” I’d heard that voice before. Where had I heard that voice before? In an instant, reality snapped back into place, and I staggered back from Ocellus as if struck by lightning. I’d almost—to her! I’d almost taken her fire, killed her more thoroughly than Tor’inx or the ghosts above could have, because I’d forgotten about her! I forced my eyes down, and looked at Ocellus on the resin floor, cowering. Cowering from me, because I’d nearly killed her. And she held a hoof pressed against her cracked cheek, where blue blood leaked out around her chitinous frog. There was blue blood everywhere. She lay in a puddle of the stuff, and I felt it, warm and sticky around my hooves, cloying in my fur. I was absolutely coated in blue changeling blood, yet again, and this time I knew it was all because of my own vicious attacks. The last of the fish emerged from my throat, and I doubled over as I emptied my stomach at the thought of what I’d done, and what I’d almost done, the scene I’d left behind, and oh Celestia, the smell… When I was finished emptying my stomach for good, I collapsed again, lacking the strength to stand. I instantly regretted that, because I fell into another puddle of blood, but I would have had to stagger a good distance away to fall onto resin that wasn’t thoroughly stained. I don’t know how long I laid there, trying not to think about what I’d done. Eventually, Ocellus stood, blue blood dripping down her cheek, and she shook my shoulder with a shaking hoof. “H-Hol’lee? Get up. P-please.” How could she ask that of me? Even after she’d seen what I’d done? After I’d come so close to ending her, too? She must have been scared out of her wits, and yet, she still shook my shoulder, and tried to get me on my hooves. “Can’t carry Ti’see...not strong enough. Need save...w-world. Need...element, yes?” She was dedicated to that idea. Even after everything I’d done, and everything I’d almost done, and even now that we’d invaded her hive and slain its protector...still, she wanted to help us ponies. It would have been admirable, if it wasn’t so stupid on her part. I didn’t deserve whatever fragile trust she was granting to me now. But she was insistent, to the point of trying to haul me to my hooves. Soon, I realized that fighting her would take more effort than it would to merely stand, and follow. If Ocellus thought she needed me still, then that was her mistake to make. She began to lead us once more, and I dumbly staggered behind. We left a trail of dark blue footprints and spatters across the resin floor of the hive. My eyes turned upwards, away from the viscera I’d torn from Tor’inx’s body in our battle. Back to the other changelings, where they continued to hover around the ceiling. Like big black bumblebees, huddling in fear. They were nothing like the patrols we’d dodged on the way in; I doubted they even knew how to fight. Ocellus followed my eyes, and said something that was meant to calm me—something about how they were the Hive’s nurse caste? The specific words were lost beyond that. It was surprisingly hard to focus on anything in particular. She led me deeper into the hive, away from them and the dim light they huddled around, and Tor’inx’s broken, bleeding body. We passed under the little nook he had been resting in, when we first entered, and descended into the tunnel that he had stood guard over for...who knows how long. The tunnel itself was surprisingly short; not much more than fifty body-lengths, and again,  bored through totally smooth resin. I almost didn’t believe this had once been part of the pony-made tunnels under Baltimare, it looked like it had been hewn from the rock itself before being coated with the quick-drying organic building material. The room that we entered was dark; there were lights here, torches and braziers, held up by folds and pillars sculpted from that same resin. But every one of them had burned out long ago. There weren’t even any of the organic changeling lights to be found here—seemingly by design. The only light source was at the back of the room, where a large mass of glowing ovoids had been piled, in the deepest part of the hive. In the middle of the room, I could see the silhouette of a large throne, carved from the same resin in intricate detail. The carvings themselves were impossible to make out in the dim light, but I could see the care and attention that had gone into crafting this grand throne. All around it were changelings, huddled as though in prayer, or bowing in submission. Ocellus spoke, in the quietest of whispers. “Here...Ken sleeps. Qu-quiet...do not wake. Tor’inx was r-royal guard, but Ken...Ken trains guards. She eats those that f-fail her. Cannot be caught here.” I nodded, and we silently shuffled into the room, sticking to one of the walls, hoping to avoid the throne entirely. I kept my eyes on it, watching for movement, but I could make out a tall shape sitting on the throne as we passed by. A massive silhouette, the size of an alicorn, and unmoving. For now. It couldn’t last. A voice, surprisingly male like Tor’inx, echoed through the room just as we passed by. “What? Who-who trespasses the Ken’s nest? Och’alis? I smell...I smell you, and kinblood. What has happened?” Ocellus swallowed, and motioned for me to keep going. She stepped closer to the throne, and approached it from the side. A shape that I had thought to be part of the throne shifted, and I saw the glint of eyes, but they didn’t seem to see us in the darkness. Ocellus bowed to the throne, but spoke to the shape. “Tor’aks, adv-visor to Ken. M-minor attack...ev-everything is alright now. M-more ponies await in tunnels above...sisters watch them now.” The shape reached out to her, with a thin, withered leg. The holes in the chitin were so large that I could see right through the limb, and I pondered briefly how it was still so flexible with so little mass. It came to rest gently on her face, feeling across it, and it smeared the blood as “Tor’aks” blindly caressed her broken cheek. “Wounded...you are wounded. Others m-must be as well, so much kinblood I smell...disturb not our Ken a’ Ken, but take what you m-must. W-when she awakes, she w-will reward you for defending our hive, I’m sure…” “H-how has...b-been?” Ocellus asked quietly. I reached the back of the room as she continued to distract the odd, withered changeling, and peered into the dim glow of the eggs...cocoons? The blurry shapes within were shaped like ponies, but it was hard to make out any features, through the resin shell and the fluid within the cocoons, that the ponies floated in. Perhaps that sustained them, fed them, and kept them alive and dreaming, while the Hive whittled from their souls over the decades. Or perhaps it was like the venom, and merely preserved them as they were. I had no intention of finding out for myself. Tor’aks responded quietly, back in the center of the room. “Our Ken...still sleeps. I worry sometimes that she may sleep overlong...I do not know how much time we have hidden down here, from the ghosts above. Perhaps...perhaps they are weakened now, and she could banish them, when she awakes?” As they spoke, I focused on the cocoons before me. Trixie had to be at or near the top of the pile, for there weren’t many, and Ocellus claimed they had only just captured her. I had to place my hooves onto the flexible resin of the cocoons, and push down, causing the flesh to bulge outwards as the ponies within came into focus. A mare gave me hope, but she was a pegasus. I saw a horn on another captive, but he was a stallion, and deeply Hollowed besides—barely more than a desiccated corpse. An earth pony of indeterminate gender...then a filly, barely older than six winters… Raindrop’s wishes to raid this Hive, and rescue all these captives, echoed deafeningly loud in my ears. So many ponies...all lost down here, kept in cocoons to sleep for what might be millenia, and certainly for the rest of their lives. It hurt me, to look them in the face, and know that I couldn’t help them. No matter how much I wanted to do so, I knew that I could only barely carry Trixie out of here. Of all ponies, it had to be Trixie I was rescuing. Not that filly, or any other pony in this pile of cocoons, who I knew to be more deserving of rescue. Would she even thank me? Or would she simply attack me on sight? If she did, and I had to slay her here, maybe I would cut open a second cocoon after all… That thought brought me pause. Damn. I’d broken my sword, and left what remained back there...even if I went to get it, I was sure it was no longer in any condition to cut. I brushed my hoof across my broken and heat-scarred armor, to see if the edges of any of the plating was still sharp enough to cut the thick material, but I was not so lucky. Mostly it had been dented and bludgeoned. Yet again, my body seemed easier to fix than the armor that was meant to protect it. I still had my bottomless bag...and within it, I realized a moment later, Zecora’s axe. I withdrew that weapon, the first that I’d been trained to use, and peered at the edge of the blade in the dim glow from the cocoons. Hopefully, it was sharp enough. I found Trixie not long after; her hat was soaking in the cocoon along with her. Somehow, the changelings hadn’t taken it from her when they captured the cantankerous mare, nor the Element of Generosity—It was still clasped around her neck. Ocellus had mentioned that it was cursed, like the knife, so perhaps they’d been too afraid to take any of her belongings in case they were cursed as well? In any case, that made finding her easy, and I only hesitated for a long few seconds, considering how much I really wanted to save Trixie, before I brought the axe down onto the resin. It didn’t cut cleanly, like I’d hoped. It made a nasty wound in the side of the cocoon, and glowing green fluid began to bleed from within, but the resin stood strong as the wet noise of the impact echoed through the room. Ocellus and Tor’aks both jumped at the sound, and Tor’aks twisted oddly, as though he was trying to look back at me. For some reason, he seemed immobile, unable to move away from the throne. “What…?” There was no time. I brought the axe down in the same spot, and this time it carved through, only for the head to get wedged in the new crack I’d carved into the material. I had to grab it tightly, and brace myself in a strange way to get enough leverage to pull it free, and glowing green fluid gushed free, pooling around my hooves. For some reason, the smell reminded me of a midwife...foals and nursing. It smelled like amniotic fluid, but...off, in some way. As though mixed with honey, and a faint scent of poison. Tor’aks began to grow more agitated, as I had to grab the axe head directly to laboriously saw through the resin, and widen the hole. “Och’alis! Don’t just stand there! What’s going on? I smell eggfluid, has one of the wounded cracked a cocoon? They take too much! Stop them!” Ocellus seemed to be panicking, and her eyes glinted as they reflected the glow of the fluid, then turned back to Tor’aks. Her loyalty was being split in two, torn between the sleeping Queen and Equestria above, and she didn’t know how to handle it. She must have known this would come up; we couldn’t have avoided fighting the hive’s guardian before, nor waking Tor’aks here. Unless she really had been so naive to think that we could do all of this undetected? I was a fool to volunteer for this, and to come with her. Gilda should have been here, she wouldn’t have hesitated. And that was all I could think, as I sawed—painfully slowly—through the resin. The changeling fluid within was beginning to get everywhere, all over my hooves, and it made my grip on the axe head and the cocoon itself slippery. And then the cocoon yielded. Either I had sawed through too much of the flesh for it to maintain its shape, or I had cut some unseen support structure deep within, but the cocoon ripped open suddenly, and Trixie was flushed out with a wave of insectoid amniotic fluid. I was knocked to the ground, and coated in the gunk as I tried to scramble to my hooves, but it made the resin floor slippery. New light filled the room as the glowing fluid pooled outwards, and ran towards the throne through the carvings in the floor.  “Och’alis! Stop them! You are Kenbrood, wake her!” Tor’aks shrieked in fear. Ocellus had already made her choice, it seemed. “Sorry! So sorry, Tor’aks! Need save Element! Promise I return!” She shouted, voice trembling, as she spread her wings and buzzed over to help me stand. Tor’aks shook and tried to pull himself from the side of the throne, but to no avail, and as the glowing fluid illuminated more of the room, I saw why—he was bound to the throne by more resin, trapped against the side. Other changelings were as well, but they remained still, and there was one space on the opposite side of the throne to him that was completely vacant. “Ken...brood?” I murmured in confusion, as Ocellus hauled me to my hooves. Any further questions were knocked from my mind, as Ocellus dragged Trixie towards me, and started trying to pick her up. I ducked low, and soon, Trixie had been tossed over my back like a sack of potatoes. Her head lolled over my shoulder, not even a hoof-width from my face, and she seemed to be starting to groggily stir. Ocelleus slapped Trixie’s waterlogged hat onto her head, where it seemed to stick as if glued in place by the glowing goop. “Leave now! Before Ken aw-wakes!” Ocellus hissed, and I nodded. But first, I made sure to reach up to Trixie’s neck, and unclasp the Element. It disappeared into my bottomless bag, safely hidden from Trixie when she awoke. Zecora’s axe followed it inside, still coated in glowing amniotic fluid. Now, we just had to get out here in one piece. I was slowed down significantly, with the weight of a waterlogged pony across my back, but we made haste as best we could. As Ocellus galloped past the throne once more, she whimpered out a quick “Sorry, m-my Ken...” I paused as I passed by the throne for myself, and came to a clumsy stop. With the glowing amniotic fluid trickling through the resin carvings in the floor, and with how both I and Trixie were coated in it, I could see the throne much more clearly. The imposing, princess-sized figure seated there was not what I was expecting. She was clearly dead, and had been dead for a very long time. She sat, with her forelegs curled into her chest, and her eyes—no, her entire skull, and the space where her soft midsection should have been—were all empty. In fact, there didn’t seem to be anything left of her except her chitinous shell, just like the other changelings. All that was left of the Ken of Kens was a long-dead husk, bound to a throne. And still, Tor’aks beseeched her corpse for help. I saw his eyes, as I turned and followed Ocellus towards the exit; even for changelings, his simple eyes were dull and glassy, almost milky green. He was blind. “Ken a Kens! Betrayal! Traitors, in our hive! Wake up! Like you promised! Help us repel the invaders, protect the eggs! Please!” He kept calling as we fled the Queen’s nest, her grand throne room. Soon, the other changelings would return. There was no way that our attack had gone unnoticed now, and the closer we were to the surface when they returned to the hive and found the Queen’s protector dead, the more time we’d have to flee. I only paused one last time in the antechamber to retrieve the emptied flask of sunlight once more, and I re-corked it before dropping it back in my bottomless bag. It was a good thing I did, too; I couldn’t stomach the thought of carelessly leaving that here. * * * Trixie started to wake up shortly after we left the hive proper, but we’d a long time yet before we escaped their territory. The walls were a dancing pattern of changeling resin, as we galloped down the tunnels of Baltimare, glowing like green fireflies. The other changelings within the hive itself had kept their distance as we ran past them, and though they might have been giving chase or watching us as we left, none attacked. I think they were afraid of us—afraid of me—after seeing what I’d done to Tor’inx. Blue changeling blood still soaked my body, and left smeared hoofprints in my wake. Good. Maybe they should be afraid. It would keep us safe, until we put some distance between ourselves and the evidence left below. When Trixie was conscious enough to speak, she indicated as such by making a whining noise, and clumsily wiping her eyes with a goop-stained hoof. “Whuh...why am I wet…? Starlight...? Come back, please, where’d you go…?” “Shush!” I hissed up at her. As though her groans of pain and confusion would hinder our stealth more than the glowing fluid with which we were soaked through. “Don’t shush me, you nag...where’s Starlight? She...she was right here, in our hammock...is this  a pony-napping? You’ve drugged me, haven’t you?” “We’re r-rescuing you, Trixie! You and your...your st-stupid ego and the stupid element that you st-stole!” I snarled back up at her. “Element…?” She mumbled drunkenly. “Element of what…? Unless you mean...that was..so long ago, before Starlight, that can’t be right…” After a moment, Trixie groped at her own throat, searching for the necklace. “You...you took it! That was mine, I earned it...had to fight an army of skeletons for it, give it back…” “Trixie. No you d-didn’t, I was there, r-remember?” “You were...? Who are…?” She continued to mumble to herself. After a moment, she flinched, as though struck. “The...Hollow? You came back for revenge, kidnapped Trixie? Tracked her all the way to...where did I...you…” She trailed off again as she wiped at her eyes, but her hooves were still as sluggish as her mind. Mostly she just smeared more glowing gunk across her face, and seemed confused at the taste in her mouth. She started to drool on my shoulder as she pondered, and we galloped onwards. It was good that my focus left her a second later, because that was when we ran headlong into a changeling patrol once more. They had been buzzing down the tunnel back towards the hive, either to report back or to serve as reinforcements; it didn’t matter. We were intruders deep within their nest, covered in precious fluids from their food stores. They only paused for a split second, before they bared their fangs and dove towards us. Ocellus let out a pained wail as she fired a volley of pitiful magic missiles down the tunnel. Her aim was inaccurate, and in any other situation they would have been trivial to dodge. But the tight tunnel made that extremely difficult, and the changelings had to halt their advance to avoid the glowing darts. One changeling who had tried to move faster, and dodge through the fire, only ended up being struick. He spasmed and tumbled to the floor, hissing in pain, but still very much alive. I had a pony on my back, and no weapon to speak of; to drop Trixie and draw the slippery handle of Zecora’s axe from my bag would take too long. No, it was better to use my weight and mass to my advantage, and I charged forward with Ocellus behind, galloping headlong towards the halted patrol. Two of them leveled their own horns, either to charge spells of their own or just to impale me upon their jagged lengths, but I lowered my head as far as I could without exposing Trixie, and slammed right into them anyways. I felt a horn snap as it was driven against steel, and the other changeling was smashed in the muzzle by my armored shoulder, spattering me with more blue blood. I kept charging as though they weren’t even there, and my steel-clad hooves stomped down on chitin as I galloped, trampling one of them underneath as I passed. More horns ignited around me as I stumbled over the changeling under my hooves, and my momentum was lost. One changeling buzzed overhead—probably Ocellus, since she didn’t seem to be stopping as she continued the way we’d been going—but the others were all around me. I could slam myself into one of them before the other three blasted me with whatever spells they were preparing, but I could never get all three of them. Instead, I snapped my eyes closed and called upon my pyromancy once more. What was meant to be a simple combustion spell, a flash to disorient them and buy me time, became tainted by fear and hate. I heard hissing and a yelp of pain from atop my back, as fire rolled over me and filled the tunnel. My armor turned hot against my flesh, and Trixie began to struggle, throwing me off balance. I snapped my eyes open to look around, and found that the spell had worked too well. The resin coating the floor was smoldering, as was any bits of exposed, colorless fur I had remaining. The changelings around me reeled, blinded by the light and heat of the flash, and as they moved, I saw inverted shadows on the walls behind them. I’d scorched the bricks, except in those places, and burnt the silhouette of the changelings permanently on this tunnel’s walls. Even that wasn’t enough to dissuade them, however. Hissing in pain and anger, they leapt blindly at me once more, and I had to duck out of reach as I continued my mad gallop down the tunnel. They pursued, stumbling and skittering, as I ran to follow Ocellus again. Trixie seemed more awake now, and the heat of the blast had dried the fluid coating us both, caking it into a hard, crunching layer that flaked off with every step. “That was—those were changelings!” She whined, confused and blinking on my back. Then she caught sight of Ocellus. “Watch out!” “Not her!” I barked. “She’s our g-guide!” “What?” That can’t have helped her, considering how confused she was already. Trixie shook her head, but didn’t blast Ocellus—instead, she turned her head back the way we’d come, and saw the blinded changelings giving chase. “They’re still following us!” “We know!” Both Ocellus and I barked. Trixie screwed up her eyes, and a point of light sluggishly formed at the tip of her horn. “Did they…there was...Twilight Sparkle, but…but not…” “Captured!” Ocellus hissed back at her. Apparently she wanted to try and explain the situation while we were galloping. “Sisters captured Ti’see, captured you. We save you! Save Harmonic Element! Save world!” I noticed she left out her direct role in Trixie’s capture—not that I blamed her. That was too much information for Trixie right now. “Wha…” Trixie blinked at the changeling drone dumbly for a second. “I...you sound really familiar…” “You, teacher! School, under Ken Ti’lit! Was student there, Och’alis!” “You...that’s not how their names are pronounced, why are you saying them like that...?” “They’re g-gaining!” I groaned, glancing back at our pursuers. My legs and lungs were beginning to burn. So much running, I’d been doing so much running my entire unlife, and I was still really bad at it before I had been carrying another pony on my back… “Ugh, rutting—why does my head hurt, why‘s my horn feel...clogged…?” Trixie groaned again, wiping the crusted fluid from her forehead. The sparks at the tip started to grow, and after a second, they began to glow brighter and brighter. Trixie blinked at her own horn in abject confusion, before mumbling to herself, “If it’s working, why is it so numb…? How much power do I need to feed into this stupid—” Her whole body jerked on my back as the point of light leapt from the tip of her horn, and fired like a firework rocket into the ceiling of the tunnel above us. I was instantly deafened by a world-shattering explosion of lights and colors and sound, and it was all too much—I had to focus on my hooves, and the tunnel underneath them, and the burning in my lungs and my chest. The tunnel rumbled, and I was tackled from the side. The three of us fell to the floor as a wave of dust and splatters of mud—stars, yet again I hoped it was mud—washed over us. After a few seconds of vibrations, my hearing and vision began to return, and I lifted my aching head from the bricks it had been smacked against. The tunnel behind us hadn’t entirely collapsed, but the ceiling had definitely fallen in, and a pile of rubble at least partially blocked the path behind us. Several pipes and wires had burst or been torn, showering the pile with water, sparks, and steam. And even then, one of the bricks at the top shifted, and a changeling hoof pushed through, already trying to rip apart the pile and make a path through for the others. It bought us some time, which we used to start galloping again and put more distance between ourselves and the changeling hive, but even that collapse wouldn’t stop them for long. * * * Ocellus had the lead, and she knew the tunnels under Baltimare by heart. I don’t know why, but I was expecting to emerge from the same tunnel where we’d first diverged from the group. Instead, she clearly decided that all subtlety was to be abandoned, and we emerged into a massive cistern littered with the black, chitinous bodies of the dead. A stone figure stood in the middle of it all, and I thought it an odd place for a statue, until I realized it was Maud, her stone armor spattered with gore. She was waiting, still as a coiled spring, for the next challenger to leap out at her. Ocellus dodged an arrow that just barely missed her by a hair, and she leapt for cover behind a concrete office that was labeled “Flow Control Station 12W.” I continued forward into the room, taking it all in, as Ocellus yelled as loud as she could in her buzzing voice, “Friend! We are friends! Have Ti’see!” “Scat!” Gilda swore, and dropped down a few leg-lengths to see us clearly. “You got her? Let’s get the buck outta here then!” She and Raindrops had both been hovering near the ceiling, where one of the larger grates allowed natural cloudy sunlight and wet rain in. That made them harder to see and to target, while allowing them to see the entire room. It was clever, but it only worked for winged creatures, and I couldn’t see any spots of color amongst the scattered piles of black bodies, aside from all the blue blood running down the channels… Gilda and Raindrops both swooped down to cover us from above, as Ocellus took wing and buzzed towards the largest tunnel out. Gilda had her bow out, and she spiraled and dove to avoid blasts of green magic from the dark corners of the room while matching them, shot for shot, with an arrow each. Raindrops focused on the changelings that attacked directly, and dove down to slam her hinds into a changeling’s spine with a horrific crunch, before knocking another one senseless with a brutal-sounding right hook. Maud rolled Avalanche onto her back, and the floor shook as she silently galloped alongside us. They were all covered in blood, mostly the blue blood of the changelings, but their bodies were marked with several wounds of their own. One of Gilda’s eyes was clenched shut, and Raindrops had a variety of slices across her forehooves where her armor had been ripped away, and the chainmail hung loosely. Only Maud seemed to have avoided injury, thanks to her unbreakable armor. “Wh-where’s Roma, and P-Posey—?” I asked, between gasps of air. The look of pain on Raindrop’s face would have answered the question by itself, but GIlda confirmed it. “Whatever you did in there, it set them all off! Got hit from multiple sides by three different patrols, and we lost Posey too fast. Roma fought for a few minutes, but they overwhelmed her too, and we had to retreat to the ceiling.” “W-what if they’re—” “Then they’re Hollow! Screw it, we have bigger problems right this second!” Two more, gone. No wonder Raindrops looked so miserable. It was a minor miracle the three of them were still alive to greet us. Maybe if we’d moved faster, or been just a little bit more quiet…I couldn’t think about that, in that moment. We left the cistern behind, and consigned the bodies within to whatever fate awaited them. Most of the changelings faltered there, maybe because they saw how many of them had fallen, or perhaps because they thought the immediate threat was retreating. Only a patrol or two kept up the chase, firing magic at us as we fled, but that was enough that we knew we couldn’t afford to stop. The bright light of the exit loomed, too bright to see outside after hours spent within the dark tunnels, and we pushed ourselves harder. One final effort was all that was needed, so long as they didn’t follow us outside of the tunnels. Until Ocellus gasped loudly enough that we could all hear it, and froze in place at the boundary, where she’d laid her wards. “Why’d you stop, they’re still following us—” Raindrops tiredly groaned, but the question was answered as the rest of us saw what awaited us outside. The Banshee, Sweetie Belle, stood only a few paces from the wards. Her foreleg had begun to regenerate, leaving her with a misty stump that terminated at her knee. Her wings were spread in full pegasus battle-stance, and her song, slow and patient and powerful, echoed through the tunnel. Her eyes were cold and hostile as she looked at our group, and the glowing eyes of the changelings in the tunnel behind us. And she said nothing; she merely waited outside, for either we would emerge into the open space where she could rip us limb from limb, or she could continue to wait until the changelings did her work for her.