//------------------------------// // 156, 387: 6 // Story: They're EVERYWHERE! // by Nameless Narrator //------------------------------// Gasping for breath, 156 looks up at the black form of Chrysalis reclining on the changeling throne and measuring the infiltrator, who’s suddenly feeling tiny, with a frown. She can sense the thousands of voices of the hive mind in the back of her head, many belonging to the pairs of glowing eyes in the dark holes dotting the walls of the throne room. Two dozen double-digits are standing at attention, lining her path to the throne under which stands “the merciless succubus” - rank 1 along with rank 5, both infiltrators watching her with an expression that expects incoming… amusement.  She knows she must approach even without anyone saying anything. Queen’s will is permeating the air itself. “I am disappointed,” is all the queen needs to say for 1 to give her a bloodthirsty smirk. That single short sentence has, in 156’s eyes, enough quiet power to outclass any direct threat ever made. She hangs her head. “I apologize, Your Majesty. I made a critical mistake in mapping the village contacts and my identity got compromised. It won’t happen again.” Please. Please… Please! “No, it will not,” says Chrysalis. 156 knows what it means and closes her eyes, “However, you might still be of some use.” The infiltrator’s eyes shoot open again and her head snaps upwards to look at the queen. Is there a chance she could get out of this alive? “Anything!” she nods eagerly. “Heh,” Chrysalis chuckles, “I’m feeling rather bored today, so how about we engage in a little... contest.” 156 quickly looks from side to side, lowering herself into a fight or flight stance. Hmmm… a battle for my life, possibly? It’s not as if this is an uncommon situation. Double-digits everywhere, but if she chooses someone in the upper half of the top hundred, it’s winnable. If it’s a warrior, doubly so. “I’m ready to fight for my chance, Your Majesty,” 156 nods. “I have something much better suited for a failed infiltrator than a simple fight in mind. No, it will be a hunt of sorts.” “I’m listening.” “Of course you are,” Chrysalis rolls her eyes, “Now, I have no use for an infiltrator who can’t even drain love from a small, dirty hole like Appleloosa without being caught and nearly leading a guard patrol to the Badlands. However, some of the higher ranks are getting restless, and I feel like this could be an opportunity for them to stretch their muscles.” 156 glances at 1, which doesn’t go unnoticed by Chrysalis. “Not her, don’t be silly,” says the queen with a laugh, “I want you to at least be able to leave the throne room. No, the fun part is going to be that you’re not going to know who is hunting you. It could be a group of high ranks, it could be a swarm of drones, it could be anyone but it won’t be everyone. Of course, if you harm a changeling who isn’t hunting you then I will have no choice but to consider you an enemy of the whole hive. Now you can look with barely contained fear at 1 here, because in that case you’ll be her meal, yes.” “So I won’t know who is hunting me or how many of them there are and I also can’t just knock out everyone relevant standing in my way. Understood. How do I-” 156 is smart enough not to use ‘win’ in front of a painfully touchy queen, “-survive?” “By leaving the hive and never coming back. Once you’re out of reach of the magic-blocking aura of the throne, you’re safe, at least from me.” 156 grits her teeth. It’s painful but she did hear rumors of stragglers who escaped the hive and survived even without the hive mind knowledge. So… painful but not impossible. “I… thank you for the opportunity, Your Majesty. You’re far more merciful than I deserve,” 156 bows. “I am. You should be tossed into the crusher and every atom of your body transformed into love for your hive, but I do believe some practice for my chosen high ranks will be of value as well. You have a two minute head start. Get out of my sight.” 156 bolts out, accompanied by amused chuckles of the top ranks. Okay, okay, okay, don’t panic. If she was telling the truth, which is a huge IF, there’s no time limit. Just enhancing my legs and getting to the edge of the Badlands crater in two minutes is out of the question. Maybe some of the warrior top ranks could do that but definitely not myself. While the topmost layer of the hive is fairly small, even if I get out, the rest of the crater is a wide-open area and that’s where at least some of them will be waiting. You’re an infiltrator, 156, not a panicking animal. Act like it. She quickly copies the most recent map of the hive tunnels and suppresses her hive link as hard as she can. All voices inside her head go silent, but the walls of the hive still react to her touch and open a passage. Passage deeper down. *** “HOW DO DRONES LIVE HERE?!” screams 156, the green glow of her horn forming a blade which cuts a tentacle pulling her into a pool of green sludge in half. Before she can get the one wrapped around her other foreleg, it tugs with a sudden burst of strength and she dips her fetlock in the goo. Spikes of fire shoot through her whole leg immediately as the acidic liquid seeps into her hoof that’s cracked and fractured from all previous encounters with monsters she had no idea existed. Another flash of green frees her from the tentacle, she pushes herself backwards with her marginally healthier foreleg, and collapses on the floor, gasping for air through teeth gritted in agony. “Damn it...” she just lies on the cold stone floor until she stops trembling from a combination of shock, exhaustion, and pain, “This whole place is a death trap.” Okay, okay. Love reserves? Bad. Wounds? Not great, not terrible. Experience? More and more with each bleeding gash in my chitin. Good points? So far, no changelings. Good points other than “Not dead yet”?  … There should be a crevasse leading almost all the way to the surface. I’m not a drone but I should still be able to dig my way up through two pony lengths of baked, rocky ground. She takes her time as far as recovery without love is worth it before approaching the acid pond again. When no more tentacles appear, she jumps over with the help of her wings. She’s wary of flying, having learned that things down here react to their buzzing far more aggressively than to simple hoofsteps. Why? Possibly they learned that flying drones can’t dodge the rather common leech-like mouths breaking out of seemingly solid stone walls as easily compared to anything that can run. She did learn. She did learn everything they had to learn to survive here for more than one shift. With her surroundings lit only by the bioluminescent blue glow of her eyes, she proceeds further until… She can’t stop herself from tearing up. The crevasse is there just like the hive map promised. No cave-in, no changelings. She’s so close to freedom. Unfortunately, there’s no realistic way she could climb it. The walls are coated with some kind of slime making using the natural hooks and jagged protrusions on her legs impossible. Growing claws or talons wouldn’t be enough either. No matter what, she’s going to have to fly.  “...like ripping off a bandaid, better to get it over with quickly...” she whispers to herself. She spreads her wings… and freezes. Why didn’t she think of it before? She did encounter a cave filled with bats, after all. With a shimmer of green fire, she transforms her wings into bat-like ones. It’s a risk, because she isn’t used to flying with them, and using pegasus ones without any air currents could be disastrous, but if the creatures here are using the high-frequency buzzing as a way to detect prey, the flapping of bat wings could throw at least some off her trail. Of course, a bunch of stuff here is bound to be eating the bats too but the bats are small and she is big. That could help. Gathering her wits and courage, she jumps into the air. 156 almost gets all the way up before the grinding of something on rock reaches her ears. She grabs the ledge the second a powerful tug shakes her whole body. Something is completely wrong but she’s up, she made it- Her vision swims as she quickly turns her head and realizes that half of her pelvis and one hind leg are missing, leaving only a fleshy, green mess protruding from her barrel. “...wha…?” Her body must have gone into such a strong shock that she can’t feel it even now as she’s looking at the horrific wound. A worm-like creature, as thick as she is long from her horn to her tail, with many heads, each covered in glowing, yellow eyes and each sporting an acid-dripping mouth filled with rows and rows of teeth rises in complete silence. How? 156 doesn’t know. “...no...” whimpers the infiltrator. She almost made it. But ‘almost’ is just another meaning for failure. Two heads shoot forward. She blasts one with a beam of green fire from her horn but the second one’s mouth simply bites 156’s entire remaining lower half off. Despair washes over her. She knows she lost. She knows she’s going to die so close to her goal. That knowledge, though, only makes her angry.  She turns her pain sensors off completely, gathers all her love, and as one of the heads reaches close for another bite, she lets out a blast of the brightest light she can conjure. The creature lets out a series of sounds of someone choking on gravel which only grows stronger as 156 starts flailing with her sharp and jagged forelegs and feels all the eyes on the head above her get ripped open. The head retracts with 156 hanging by one foreleg stabbed into it and hacking everything she can reach into pieces with the other. “...fucking DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE!” Of course, the satisfaction from the one final act of revenge doesn’t last long as the adrenaline runs out and her vision quickly starts fading. All of a sudden, a shockwave passes through… everything. She can’t see it, it doesn’t seem to have any effect on the dark tunnel, but it makes the hydra-worm-creature spasm with such strength that the fetlock hook 156 is hanging by breaks off and her body gets flung against the rocky wall near the ledge. She has no idea what happened and she knows it doesn’t really matter anymore. All she knows is that she at least left a wound the monster will remember for the rest of its crippled life. That’s when something grabs her foreleg, and pulls downwards… into the solid rock. “...nnngh...” she can only grunt. The numb feeling of dying all throughout her body suddenly vanishes with a shock similar to waking up from falling and hitting the ground, followed by her mental defenses shattering completely under an unknown blazing emerald hive link searing itself into her mind. She flails her foreleg and whatever was holding her flies off. “Ehhh-mmmhm?” hums a dizzy, familiar voice. The source of the unique link invading her mind is right in front of her, so even without opening her eyes, she punches ahead. Her hoof hits another one which doesn’t budge and slowly forces her leg down. “Come on, honey, fighting in front of the foal is bound to scar it for life.” 156’s eyes shoot open. In front of her, surrounded by a green shimmer, is smirking 387. Next to him, 47989 is watching her warily with its head tilted after being tossed away by her. “Are you real?!” she shoots out. “Can’t speak for the dummy here,” replies 387, upon which 47989 sticks its tongue out at him, “but I’m the realest motherbugger you’ll ever meet. Speaking of real- HURK!” He can’t finish the sentence as 156 pulls both him and 47989 into a chitin-crushing hug. Eh, it can wait.