The next day, Shining Armor interrupted my afternoon reading session shortly after lunchtime. He marched into my room, once again without knocking, and I recoiled almost to the point of falling over, startled by his sudden arrival. I recovered pretty quickly, but my book had already closed itself.
Great. How was I supposed to find that page now?
“Come with me,” he commanded.
I got up and followed him out of my room and down the stairwell. Paladin was behind us at a distance; had he been unsure at first whether or not to leave his post at my door to follow us now that his commander was already keeping an eye on me, or was he simply giving him some respectful space? And where were we going?
I figured out our destination a little before getting there. It had been a while since my previous visit, but things hadn’t changed much: a few guards were milling about, a couple of them were chatting or snapping to attention upon seeing their Captain, and two fully-armored guards stood at the entrance to Shining’s office. Headquarters? Base of operations? I’d forgotten to ask after the last time!
The procedure was similar, too. Shining opened the door to let me in, which I did hesitantly, noticing that Paladin was only approaching the hallway at this point. Would he be in there with me during whatever Shining had in store for me? Please let him come in! I didn’t want to face Shining alone! But my prayers went unanswered; Shining followed me into the office and closed the door behind us, and I was sure he’d seen Paladin arrive. My friendly guard was going to have to wait in the hallway by the looks of it! Would he even wait there? Or would he decide that his presence here was unnecessary and return to his post at my room? I hoped he would remain here, even if he wasn’t going to do anything!
Shining placed one of the small chairs in front of the desk like the last time, commanded me to sit, and sat down in his own chair. I obeyed reluctantly, staring all the while at the drawer from which he’d taken the chains the last time. Was I about to have the unflattering pleasure of meeting them again? But why? I hadn’t done anything, not this time!
Uh-oh. Had Sheriff Silverstar sent any letters? Had Shining found out about Sentinel’s behavior and decided to blame me for it? Had Soothing Dusk complained about me, requested that I get punished for what I’d done to her? Had any more changelings shown up around here, reigniting Shining’s suspicions about an incoming army that I was supposedly part of? Was Chrysalis about to find out where I was? Did she already know? I gulped and did my best to suppress the urge to turn into a mouse. Needless to say, I was barely managing to stay in my own form, though I felt like I was shrinking like a deflated cocoon under Shining’s piercing glare.
“How was Whinnyapolis?” he asked.
“Soothing Dusk didn’t forgive me,” I said. “She was scared to death of me at first, but Princess Cadance managed to calm her somewhat, and she heard me out. She said in the end that she understood why I did it but couldn’t forgive me. Yet. That’s what she said, at least. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she never forgives me.”
“Smart mare,” he nodded. “Now, you’ve lived here for a while and somehow managed to stay out of trouble. Ponies are even beginning to be fine with your presence, and you haven’t given them a lot of obvious reasons not to, but the fact remains that we don’t really know much about you.”
“Oh.” This sounded innocent enough, at least in terms of Shining Armor, so why was I getting a bad feeling about it?
“And I’m not comfortable with that. I expected to learn more about you by now, both about you personally and about changelings in general.”
“...okay. What do you want to know?”
“Let’s start simple. When were you born, or hatched, or whatever you call it?”
“Twentyish years ago, I think. I don’t know the exact date if that’s what you meant.”
“You don’t know your own age?”
“I know I’m old enough to be considered an adult by hive standards. Probably by pony standards, too. I’ve never needed to get more precise than that.”
“Seriously, your parents never told you how old you are?”
“I don’t know who my parents are. Or were.”
He raised a suspicious eyebrow.
“It doesn’t work the same as around here. Parenthood isn’t a choice for changelings, it’s a privilege only granted to the most skilled and most loyal drones as and when Chrysalis demands it. The drones get paired up with whoever is worthy and available at the time and they may or may not see each other again after the eggs are laid. Marriage isn’t practiced because there’s no point in it, and the eggs are taken from the mother and placed in one of the hatcheries.”
“You had to have had some kind of a caretaker, then.”
“Yes, whichever guard was assigned to watch the hatchery at any given moment, and they got rotated regularly. All they had to do was to make sure we learn to be obedient and loyal to the Queen and to keep us from slithering away to other parts of the hive.”
“Slithering?”
“Larvae look like little worms.” I showed him.
He made a face. “I see. Drop the disguise, you’re even more disgusting than normal!”
I obeyed. “Sorry.”
“I take it you can’t tell me anything about any siblings, either?”
“I can. The eggs are arranged in clusters in such a way that all the eggs in the same cluster came from the same mother, and the larvae are expected to remember the location of their cluster so everyling would know where to sleep. I was the youngest of five, but two sisters and one brother are dead now.”
Don’t ask about Pharynx, I pleaded silently.
He nodded. “And you said you were always the weak one?”
“Yes. Ever since I hatched. I was getting beaten up all the time.”
“You never tried to fight back?”
“A few times, but it never did any good. I couldn’t bring myself to get nasty enough, not even in military training.”
“Then why did you enlist into the army if you didn’t want to fight?”
“I didn’t have a choice! All nymphs are expected to learn basic combat and infiltration!”
“‘Basic’,” he repeated. “So there are advanced skills too?”
“Yes, but nymphs don’t get to choose which advanced training they want to attend. We’re all expected to know the basics of everything so we wouldn’t be completely lost and useless in emergencies, but aside from that, basic training helps drill instructors decide which drone should attend which advanced training based on each drone’s performance up to that point. The ones that perform exceptionally well at basic training can sometimes get assigned to multiple advanced training programs, but it’s usually just one.”
“Which advanced training did you get assigned to?”
“None of them. I was deemed too incompetent about halfway through basic training and expelled so I wouldn’t stall the progress of the rest of my training group.”
“Was that before or after Canterlot?”
“Years before.”
“And you said you were deployed there? Why, if you were so useless and out of practice?”
Because Pharynx had hoped it would spark my bloodlust and get me to ‘quit fooling around’. But how to tell Shining that without going into too much detail? I didn’t know much about security protocols and military tactics, but if Shining found out that the hive’s First Commander was actually my brother… there were undoubtedly a million different ways how things could go wrong! He was certainly paranoid enough to get all kinds of ideas from it! What if he assumed I knew more than I was telling him? What if he accused me of lying? What if he assumed I’d been deployed here to keep an eye on the city and its leaders and to spread misinformation about my kind? He’d already suspected that when I first showed up! One wrong word and he’d be convinced that his suspicions had been correct all along! He could have me imprisoned, or tortured, or killed!
Worse yet, what if he decided to invade the Changeling Kingdom? What if he forced me to assist in the invasion? Could his armies handle the swarm on its own barren, hostile, magic-suppressed territory? Would Shining listen to my attempts to warn him what he’d be up against? Even if the ponies won, it would be a bitter victory; Chrysalis’ soldiers wouldn’t go down easily, and there’d be countless casualties on both sides! I didn’t want so many deaths on my conscience, no matter how badly they might have treated me!
And what would happen to Pharynx? Never mind the fact that he’d be furious like he’d never been before if I told ‘the leader of the enemy armed forces’ about him; would he even survive long enough to yell at me for it? Would he get captured and thrown in prison? If I knew anything about him, it was that he’d rather die than to be subjected to such a disgrace!
But I couldn’t not tell Shining what he wanted to know! I’d vowed to be honest with my new leaders and friends! I’d most certainly lose their trust, maybe even their friendship, if I started keeping secrets from them! It was dumb chance that Pharynx had never come up in a conversation before; should I have mentioned him to somepony regardless? Why hadn’t I predicted this conundrum and told Cadance or Sunburst about him on my own? They would have probably reacted to the confession more calmly than Shining, and they would have known how to relay it to him without it potentially leading to bloodshed! There would definitely be bloodshed now because no way would Shining believe that I hadn’t been deliberately concealing tactical information, and he probably wouldn’t be completely wrong anyway! No matter what fate might have awaited me on my journey to find friendship and what fate could still await me, I simply didn’t want to betray Pharynx!
...but would I betray my pony friends by trying to protect him? Would I betray my Prince and Princess, my new home?
“I was included because Chrysalis demanded as many drones as possible to partake in the invasion.” True enough, at least.
He smirked. “She must have been pretty desperate if her success depended on including a weak and barely-trained soldier such as yourself.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it desperate. There were plenty of skilled fighters in the Canterlot swarm, but a fair amount of skilled fighters had to remain in the hive to keep it safe in Chrysalis’ absence. The First Commander and sub-commanders were merely following orders when they had to decide which drones to deploy and which to keep in the hive.”
Why had I mentioned a First Commander? Please don’t ask me anything more about changeling military!
“Ah, the hive and its occupants. That’s another thing I know nothing about.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat and shifted nervously in my chair.
“Are you… are you going to attack them?” I asked, unable to keep an uneasy quiver out of my voice.
“Why? You suddenly care about them?”
“I may not want to live with them, but that doesn’t mean I want them dead.”
“Even if it means they won’t ever find you?”
“I’d rather that they just forget about me.”
“You made it sound like that’s not very likely to happen anytime soon,” he retorted. “And they seem to know plenty about ponies. Why not even the score a little now that I have a changeling here who’s so very friendly and cooperative?”
“I-I-I don’t think I know that much…”
“But you know something. C’mon, out with it! Where is the hive?”
“I’m not sure if you have a name for that part of the world-”
“Quit stalling!”
“All I know is that it’s a good distance south of Equestria, beyond the jungle, in a wasteland!”
“That’s better. See how useful you can be when you try?”
“Uh…”
“What kind of defenses does it have?”
“...you are going to attack it,” I sighed dejectedly.
“That’s none of your business! Answer the question!”
“Well, there are border patrols, and occasional patrols randomly sweeping the wasteland, and airborne sentries circling the hive and watching the whole area in case something manages to slip past the border patrols, and guards at every entrance on ground level-”
“How many entrances?”
“...I don’t think anyone’s ever bothered to count-”
“You don’t know how many entrances you’ve got?”
“There’s plenty of them, usually one every few steps-”
“So it’s too many to count?”
“No, it’s just that most of them open and close randomly.”
“Why? You guys have nothing better to do?”
“Huh? Oh, you mean like pony doors! No, we don’t have anything like that. The entrances are merely holes in the walls, and the hive shifts and changes similarly to us. The holes just kind of zap in and out of existence.”
“Who’s your architect? Discord?”
I stared at him blankly.
“Nevermind,” he groaned. “What about the command structure?”
“Chrysalis rules everything, and like I said earlier, by far the biggest part of ‘everything’ is the army. There’s the First Commander; he answers to Chrysalis alone and commands the entire army in accordance with her wishes. He has sub-commanders - I don’t know how many exactly - and each sub-commander is in charge of a particular division, such as armory or border patrols. The rest of the soldiers are low-ranking grunts, except for a few who work as drill instructors. Sometimes there can also be an assigned team leader if a group of drones are sent on a mission, and this ‘team leader’ is a rank somewhere between a sub-commander and a low-level grunt. That rank is also only valid during that particular mission only, and after the mission ends, the team leader is restored to their previous rank. Infiltrators and prey hunters are basically divisions of the army and function by the same principle.”
“Couldn’t Chrysalis invent a more elaborate and impressive hierarchy?”
“I’m sure she could, but she didn’t want to. Too many ranks in a hierarchy and too many drones holding a better-than-lowest rank would give some level of authority to more drones than she would like, and the more times her orders have to be relayed further down the chain of command, the more chances for them to be misunderstood, misinterpreted, or freely interpreted until the end result is unrecognizable compared to the original version.”
“Any non-military stuff going on there?”
“Not much. As far as I know, there’s a communications hub, and an archive, and prey storage areas, and a maintenance service, but pretty much everything serves to support the army in one way or another.”
“How many changelings exist?”
“I don’t know.”
“Got any weapons other than spears?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are the hive’s weaknesses?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?! If you escaped from there, you had to have known of at least one or two weaknesses you could exploit!”
“I’m sure they would have been addressed and fixed by now…”
“Let’s hear it! How did you escape, anyway?”
“I snuck out of my sleeping burrow some time after curfew, navigated the hallways and vertical shafts the best I could, disguised myself as whatever was credible enough when I saw a patrolling guard about to come up, and hoped they wouldn’t notice anything amiss. I got out of the hive at the altitude where the airborne sentries are circling, disguised as the First Commander, and pretended I was there for an unannounced inspection. I knew they rarely remember to look up so I got far enough above them to remain unnoticeable in the night sky and flew away.”
“First Commander, huh?” he snickered. “Wouldn’t it have been an awkward situation for you if the real First Commander had shown up while you were there!”
“Um…”
Something must have clued him in that I wasn’t telling everything; he suddenly went dead serious and gave me one of his piercing glares.
“Seriously, if you really did that, you took one heck of a risk. How did you know that the First Commander wasn’t going to be there?”
That caught me off guard. I’d known Pharynx couldn’t have been there because I’d left him asleep in our burrow, though in hindsight, there could have been an upcoming unannounced inspection that he’d forgotten to mention in my presence, and I’d spent enough time dodging guards that he would have had plenty of time to get there first. But how was I going to tell Shining that I’d known with reasonable certainty not to expect Pharynx there without revealing too much? And to avoid giving him any hints that I knew more than I was willing to share at the moment? If only he weren’t so paranoidly suspicious about me, I wouldn’t have found it nearly so hard to tell him everything!
“And how did you know that the airborne sentries wouldn’t look up?”
“Um… they hardly ever do…”
“Again, how do you know that? If my subordinates showed such oversights, I wouldn’t be eager to spread the fact around for every useless low-level janitor to take advantage of! If that’s what you really were!”
“I was! Wait, how did you know that?”
“You told Sentinel! Do you really think I’d forget to question your guards about things you might have revealed?”
“Oh.”
“Don’t ‘oh’ me! You haven’t answered my question!”
He got up from his chair and stood on his desk; his scowl intensified as he loomed over me, ready to pounce me or to blast me through the wall at the slightest of provocations.
I cowered under his burning glare and ice-hot aura.
“Um… I… uh…”
He got in my face. “What are you hiding? Talk!”
“Nothing!” I whimpered. “I just… um…”
“Lies!” He blasted me out of my chair and leaped off the desk, pinning me to the ground. “You either know this First Commander personally or were spying on him for some reason! I want to know which of that is true!”
“I- I-”
“Spill it!”
“Please don’t hurt me…” I whispered.
“I will if you keep refusing to talk,” he growled, lighting up his horn. “What do you know about the First Commander?”
“I… I can’t tell you…”
“Why?!” The sight of his burning horn sent my heart into my throat as memories of the last such episode flooded my mind as vividly as if I was back in that moment, and the ice-hot bitterness of his love aura was just as unbearable.
“He’s my brother...” I whimpered, closing my eyes in terrified, heart-wrenching defeat.
The change in his aura of love was so abrupt that I opened my eyes in confusion, half expecting to see somepony else in his place. The intense ice-hot bitterness had evaporated instantly, and though some of it remained, it was mixed in with probably every other flavor that an aura of love could have. His horn was almost extinguished now, and he stared at me wide-eyed as if he’d never seen a changeling before.
“What did you say?” he whispered.
“He’s my brother, and I knew he wouldn’t be there because I’d left him sleeping in our burrow,” I said despondently. What was the point in not telling him everything now that he’d broken me? “I also knew about the sentries because he let it slip once or twice when he was furious about the oversight persisting despite his best efforts to correct it.”
Shining kept staring at me, saying nothing.
“I didn’t want to tell you this because you made it sound like you were planning to attack the hive… I wanted to spare him… But please, if you do attack the hive, please don’t hurt him… or if he leaves you no choice, at least kill him quickly and painlessly… I couldn’t bear to see him suffer in prison… he’d hate it more than death…”
Shining’s stare was still persistent.
“Please, Shining… he always protected me from other drones whenever he could… I owe him that much… he’s the only family I have left…”
Shining stared at me for a moment longer, then got off me and strode slowly out of the room, not saying a word. His aura was so jumbled that I couldn’t make any sense of it.
I’m so sorry, Pharynx… I didn’t want to betray you… please forgive me…
Tears welled up in my eyes; I curled up on the floor and let out a painful moan, wishing I could die right then and there. After what I’d done, I deserved no better!
I squeezed my eyes shut, sobbing uncontrollably. Images flooded my mind, scenes of the worst possible consequences of my moment of weakness. Shining’s troops storming the hive unprepared for what awaited them… getting overwhelmed… captured, enslaved… drained, killed… blood everywhere… no soldiers left to defend the ponies…
Shining’s troops storming the hive, fully prepared to deal with Chrysalis’ armies and everything they could think of… unimaginable carnage… terrible losses on both sides… both armies annihilated… a whole species annihilated…
Pharynx joining the battle… getting overwhelmed… unable to fight off the invading force… Pharynx in chains… subdued and humiliated, dragged to prison… Pharynx wilting away in a cold, lonely prison cell…
Pharynx fighting valiantly to save his Queen… no choice for the pony army… my brother’s spear-riddled body in a pool of blood…
And it would have been my fault… no matter what happened, no matter who or how many fell, their blood would forever lie on my hooves and fangs, mine alone, even if I wouldn’t personally touch any of them!
No! I couldn’t let that happen!
But the damage was already done… or was it? What I’d told Shining wouldn’t be enough for him to plan a strategy that might stand a chance of succeeding, but would he realize it in time? Yes, he probably would; he’d devoted his life to know this kind of stuff! He’d undoubtedly try to get more out of me, by force if necessary, even if there was very little I could still add that might interest him! A talented commander would know how to get the best out of an unfavorable situation and draw every advantage out of it, and I had no doubt that Shining had both the skill and determination to pull it off, but the fact remained that he couldn’t do it blindly and I’d just provided him with what may be enough to solidify his decision to invade the hive! And considering the questions he’d asked, I was certain that that had been his intention even if he hadn’t openly admitted it! I didn’t want to bear the burden of whatever the outcome would be!
Why had I told him all these things? Why couldn’t I have kept my mouth shut?
The knowledge of all the bad things that could happen hurt me deeply, but what hurt the most was knowing that Pharynx was bound to be caught in it and suffer the consequences. Why had I blurted out so carelessly that he was my brother? No wonder Shining had been so baffled! He must have seen a whole new world of classified information he could get out of me; he must have gone to prepare for every imaginable method of acquiring that information! He would be disappointed, but the fact that I didn’t have much to betray my brother with didn’t make it easier to bear the fact that I’d betrayed him at all. He’d been more loyal to me than he’d had any reason to be, protecting me from bullies and from Chrysalis, attempting to teach me how to stand up for myself in our unforgiving world… and how had I repaid him? By throwing that loyalty into the wind!
The changeling hunters I’d come across on my journey had called me a traitor. I’d pretty much ignored that label; in fact I’d hardly expected them to call me anything else after I’d turned my back on Chrysalis’ tyranny and fled from the hive. I hadn’t seen my actions as treason, more like an attempt to be left alone and to live my life in peace. But now, the full gravity of that label hit me hard and clenched my heart painfully.
Yes, I was a traitor. Maybe not to Chrysalis, maybe not to the hive, but to my brother… I was definitely a traitor to him, a traitor of the worst kind!
And I wanted to be punished for it. Not for betraying Chrysalis and the hive; that hardly counted as betrayal. But for betraying Pharynx, for possibly sending him to his death or to a lifetime of rotting away in a dungeon… that was unforgivable!
I vaguely remembered seeing some weapons on my first visit to Shining’s office. I hadn’t bothered to take notice of them earlier today, but they had to still be there! My vision was still blurred with tears and my hooves were still shaky, but I was pretty sure I could see the weapons on the far wall of the room when I got up.
I trod there slowly and carefully. Sure, there were some spears and halberds like I remembered. I could use any of them to inflict a fatal injury on myself and hopefully deny Shining a source of any more information he’d still absolutely need if he were to wage a war that could claim Pharynx’s life or freedom!
I took a deep breath and reached for the nearest halberd.
ZAP!
I woke up on something soft and warm, so incongruous with my pounding headache and the sense of utter failure that I thought at first that I’d been thrown into a deranged nightmare. Not daring to open my eyes out of fear that whatever lay beyond my eyelids would drive my worn-out mind insane with senselessness, I stirred uneasily, half dreading what might happen if I pushed the fabric of reality a bit too far.
Then something touched my hoof. I did have a hoof, right?
“You okay, buddy?” a voice echoed through the void, elusive at first, but something in it made me cling to this sole fragment of whatever it was that I was in, to use it as an anchor to pull myself back into Reality.
Tentatively, I opened my eyes. Soft light shimmered on the crystal walls, familiar sounds and sensations slipped into existence, and a friendly, concerned face gazed at me from a little beyond the edge of a bed. My bed, I realized.
“Oh, thank Celestia! You had me worried there, Thorax!” Paladin sighed in relief.
“Mmmmhhhh… why…” I moaned.
“Don’t you remember what happened?”
“...I remember a purple shield… and getting struck by lightning… is that what happened?”
“Not really,” he said hesitantly. “Shining Armor took you to his office, and I guess he questioned you because I could hear him shout at you to speak, and I think he blasted you at some point, or at least that’s what it sounded like from the hallway. Then he marched out without a word - I’ve never seen him like that - and you were there alone for a few minutes and we didn’t know what to do until we heard the zap.”
“I think I’m starting to vaguely remember… but what-”
Pharynx. I gasped and opened my eyes wide.
“Thorax?”
I let my head slump back onto the bed.
“I’m a traitor,” I said to no one in particular, tears welling up in my eyes again.
“Well, I guess leaving the hive can be seen that way-”
“I’m not talking about the hive, Paladin,” I interrupted him. “I’m talking about my brother.”
“...you have a brother?”
“Yes. It wouldn’t be a big deal, except that Pharynx is the hive’s First Commander. That’s pretty much Chrysalis’ second-in-command in practical terms. Shining questioned me about the hive and it got to the point where I had to tell him about Pharynx. Now he’s gonna think that Pharynx or Chrysalis sent me here on an agenda and I’d be surprised if he won’t want to retaliate! What should I do?”
“Just to be clear, this brother of yours - First Commander Pharynx, right? - he didn’t actually send you here on a mission or anything like that, did he?”
“Of course not! He didn’t even know I was going to leave! Heck, I didn’t know I was going to leave until I did on a whim!”
“You didn’t ask him for help getting out?”
“No, I don’t think he would have wanted to help me. His duty to Chrysalis would have prevailed.”
“Sounds to me like he betrayed you, not the other way around.”
“He didn’t! I’d be long dead if it weren’t for him! He defended me from bullies all the time!”
“Then why wouldn’t he have helped you leave the hive?”
“Because he’d see it as an act of treason as much as Chrysalis does. And because he’s too proud of the changeling ways to accept anything else. That’s how he got so high up in the hive hierarchy despite me being his main disadvantage, and he takes his job very seriously.”
“Let me guess. Since he’s so dedicated, he wouldn’t want us to know how his army works, and you think you betrayed him by telling Shining about it.”
“Something like that, plus I might have given Shining a target to retaliate against, even if the reason for retaliation is purely imaginary.”
“Did you tell Shining about it? Or at least tried?”
“I’m not sure,” I mused. “What I do know is that I begged him to spare Pharynx if he intends to attack the hive, or at least to spare him too much pain if he’s left no other choice.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. He walked out of the room and left me to cry on the floor.”
“That explains the puddle,” Paladin muttered. “But what were you trying to do with the weapons?”
“I took weapons? I’m sorry, I don’t remember that... I only know that I felt so unbearably guilty that I wanted to punish myself…”
Paladin closed his eyes and let out a heavy sigh.
“I should have told you,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d find out, not like this…”
“Find out what?”
“When you first came here, Shining changeling-proofed all weapons he could find in the city, thinking you might try to use them against somepony. It never occurred to any of us that you might try to use them against yourself! I knew there weren't many things in his office protected that way so it wasn’t that hard to guess what had happened. Also, one of the halberds was slightly disturbed when I entered the room, and you were unconscious on the other end of the room.”
“You carried me here?”
“Yes.”
“Does Shining know?”
“About you being here rather than in his office? I didn’t ask for permission, but he’ll probably figure it out when Galea and Brave Heart tell him that I took you.”
“He’s going to kill me, isn’t he? And then he’ll find Pharynx and kill him too-”
The door opened abruptly, revealing Shining Armor on the other side. Paladin stood up and snapped to attention, and Shining walked up to me, ignoring the guard for the moment. His aura of love was still a jumbled mess, though I wasn’t sensing the ice-hot undertone as strongly as before.
“Okay, you win this one,” he said gravely. “I don’t know why I believe you when you say your brother didn’t send you here, but I guess I do. And I’ve decided not to attack the hive, but only because I still don’t know of any weaknesses I could exploit to win the battle. So I suggest you make the best of it. If you still have a way to contact that brother of yours, I suggest you use it and warn him to steer clear of Equestria and the Crystal Empire, because I won’t be as merciful if I run into him!”
“I’m afraid I can’t reach him, not without risking my life-”
“Then you better hope he’s smart enough to stick to the hive. That’s as far as I’ll go.” He started to trot off, then seemed to finally register Paladin’s presence. “Back to your post, soldier,” he commanded.
“Yes, Sir!”
“Thanks,” I said as Shining was walking through the door. He glanced back and fixed me a look, but didn’t say anything.
“I’ll be outside,” Paladin said. “Shout if you need something.”
I nodded absent-mindedly and he left.
I was still sulking on my bed when Sunburst dropped by a few minutes later.
“Shining told us what happened,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” I asked half-heartedly.
“Things aren’t so bad, you know. He’s gonna leave your brother alone! Didn’t he tell you? He wasn’t as mad as he’d been with some other things about you, and Cadance and I hardly even needed to talk him out of going on a mission of revenge this time!”
“That doesn’t change the fact that I betrayed Pharynx because I was afraid of a little pain. I would have deserved it!”
“Is that why you tried to… hurt yourself?”
I stared at him. “How do you know about that?”
“Paladin just told me. Sweet Celestia, I can’t believe I’m glad that Shining made me invent variations of that spell!”
“You?!”
“Well, yes. I’m not that good with casting spells, but I understand the theory behind them perfectly, so that made me a logical choice for the job. Don’t get me wrong, I refused initially because you were already living with us, and I would have kept refusing if Shining hadn’t convinced me that he intended to use the spell against other changelings. He didn’t want to put identical spells on everything lest the changelings figure out how to counteract it, but they feel mostly the same because I didn’t want to make it obvious that they weren’t the same spell- er, you’re probably not interested in the technical details, sorry. Anyway, he also said he wouldn’t enchant any object that you were allowed to use, and I didn’t think it necessary to warn you against touching weapons because you don’t strike me as the type who likes them. Now I wish I had; it would have at least spared you the jolt!”
“It’s okay, Sunburst. I deserved it!”
He tilted his head and adjusted his glasses. “Well, maybe for getting suicidal for a moment there, I’ll give you that much. But that’s it!”
“Not for that. For betraying Pharynx!”
“Your loyalty to your brother is admirable, but why do you insist on thinking you’ve betrayed him?”
“Didn’t I? What if Shining had decided to go to war against the hive? Pharynx could have been killed or imprisoned!”
“But he didn’t decide to go to war!”
“But he could have!”
“But he didn’t,” Sunburst insisted. “In fact, I got the impression that your mention of Pharynx was at least partially responsible for him dropping the idea of the war against Chrysalis!”
“How?”
“I don’t know, really. He didn’t explicitly say anything. It’s just my own impression. I could be wrong, though.”
“He told me he dropped the idea for other reasons,” I shrugged.
“Well, as long as your brother is safe… Anyway, why didn’t you ever tell me you had a brother?”
“It just never came up. I’m starting to wish I had, though. It might have made things easier for me today.”
“Wanna tell me about him now? He must be a great guy if you care about him that much!”
“He is,” I said. “Okay, what would you like to know?”