It was now half past eleven as we approached the place known as Stir’s Cafe. Thorax had told us to meet here. Apparently he had something that couldn’t be shown in our dream meeting place.
Onyx walked by my side as we discretely walked down an empty street off Main. I had left the prosthetic back in my apartment, so I was walking on three hooves. The morphine had– much to my disappointment– worn off. However, the strange healing potion seems to have done the trick as I felt no pain in my chest. I did however feel fatigued from the extreme mana usage earlier today.
I kept thinking back to the encounter with the spook.
‘Division-P. Cadence had said she was busy with Division-P, didn’t she? I can ask her for answers. Luna too. So there’s a secret-ish organization that uses changelings to root out other changelings, and traitors too. Forget the Stasi or Gestapo, a secret police with a walking lie-detector is far more dangerous. They can point out a changeling by just being near them, and they can check to see if you're lying without you even knowing. It’s not like changelings sensing emotions is common knowledge, so you would be caught totally off guard.’
Stir’s Cafe turned out to be a small joint at the far corner of town. It was small, tucked away, and completely closed up for the night. I tested the door handle and it turned without resistance. It seems that somehow Thorax arranged for it to be unlocked.
‘A question for later.’
There was quiet music coming from inside, as well as low, idle chatter. I opened the door and entered inside, with Onyx following close behind.
It was dimly lit but I could still see the changeling that sat next to the doorway, almost entirely out of sight. He was disguised, of course, just as disguised as every other changeling in the room. Of which there were about eighteen. Most were seated around a table that took up the majority of the right side of the cafe. Each changeling sitting at the table either had a hoof of cards or were watching the game intently. The rest were sitting at either the counter or sitting in booths around the room. There was a changeling behind the counter, talking idly to one of the changelings sitting across from him.
When Onyx and I entered, all conversations stopped and every eye was on me. The door shut slowly behind us.
‘Holy shit, Thorax. How did you find all these changelings?!’
“... Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
“It’s the Prince!”
As I walked further into the room, changelings got up from their seats and started to gather around me. A changeling double checked that all the shades were shut firmly. The one manning the door locked it and pulled the deadbolt closed. We were alone in here, and the music coming from a jukebox in a corner ensured that no pony would overhear us.
For the first time since I washed up in Hooferville, I was actually safe to drop my disguise. I probably shouldn’t have, considering it makes a slight flash of light. But damn it, I yearned to be me again.
So with an orange flash, I discarded Far Sky and became me, Prince Phasmatodea, heir of the Fourth Hive. All around me, changelings dropped their pony disguises. Most were unicorns, and the rest were pegasi. No ling wanted to be an earth pony, as that severely limited combat and escape options. Sure, you could bust through a wall to escape being surrounded, but then what?
Flashes of green surrounded me as I became surrounded by changelings. Actual changelings, chitin, fangs, and fins and all. I stood above them, getting close to one-and-a-half times the height of the average changeling.
I must’ve been a sorry sight with a missing leg and scarred up carapace. I didn’t care.
“Prince Phasma!’
“The Prince!”
“Thorax was right!”
“I knew you weren’t dead!”
“The war isn’t over!”
“How?” I asked. “How are you all here?”
“We’re all Lodgers,” one of them answered.
The changeling who was behind the counter pushed his way to the front of the crowd. “When the invasion failed, those of us in Canterlot scattered. We stuck together as best as we could, and we established plans to contact each other should the need arise. One of us was on the road on our way to Manehattan when they felt your Weave. They came back to Manehattan and got all of us to come here. Then, when we arrived to investigate, we found Thorax, too.”
“Heya Phas!” A changeling called from the back.
‘That would be Thorax.’
I looked down to the changeling in front of me, the former bartender. I knew him. My Weave gave me his name.
“Coxa.”
“Hey boss. Didn’t think you could look any uglier than before, but you did always seem to go for the impossible.”
“You’re alive…”
“Yeah. Thorax caught us all up on what happened to Oestridae and Cicada. I take it Weevil didn’t make it, either?’
I shook my head.
“Ah well. I’m sure the ling’s happily laughing at us all from heaven, having earned a spot in the Six Halls thanks to his sacrifice. Smug bastard– anyways, we’re just a fraction of the Lodgers that made it out of Canterlot. The ones that didn’t stick with the Legions, that is.”
“Phas! Take a seat! They’re teaching me how to play poker! I… haven’t won yet. But I am having fun!”
I walked through the crowd and sat down at the table. Thorax sat down on my right, and Coxa on my left. The changeling formerly named Onyx sat behind me. I had a feeling the conversation would eventually get to him, so I didn’t rush introductions. The rest of the changelings either took their seats at the table, dragged chairs over, or sat in the nearby booths.
The table had cards, chips, and an extinguished cigar on a circular cigarette tray scattered across it. The smoke from the cigar wafted slowly upward towards a slowly spinning ceiling fan. At each seat was a glass of either beer or coffee. The whole thing felt like a genuine poker club, the kind that people made paintings of. The changeling at the head of the table gathered up all the cards and chips and started dealing.
“Evenin’, Your Highness. Bets are just the chips, as we don’t exactly have anything else to bet with.”
“Alright.”
And so, we started to play poker while talking.
The changelings of course wanted to know exactly how the fight went down, and what happened after. Hearing it from Thorax was one thing, but I was there. I saw it all.
“So no shit there I was, in the middle of Canterlot Castle’s main foyer. Coxa and the injured Lodge members retreated, leaving me, Oest, Weevil, Cicada, and a few others…”
As I regaled them the tale of the duel between me and Chrysalis, my survival and fight against the wolves, and stint in the guards, my contact with Princess Luna, and finally today’s event, I lost several hooves of cards and rounds. As bad as Thorax was, I really wasn’t too much better. You can only do so much with single pairs, or if I was lucky, a triple or rare full house.
Or maybe that’s normal and I just suck at poker. Equally likely, I presumed.
When I described the encounter with the bitch from Division-P, every changeling was already hanging on my words, but I’d like to think that now they were hanging on with both hooves. It wasn’t everyday that you met a division designed to hunt you down and not only win but free one of their captives.
That was when Onyx got to introduce himself. His name is Thalamus, and he was with the 601st during the Siege of Canterlot.
“After the defenses were run over, me and the boys from Panar’s Hammer split up into our squads and more or less went wild. Next thing I know, I’m one of the teams put on guard duty, making sure no ponies escaped through the air dock. Guard duty, in the middle of the invasion! Anyways, shit was going down in the Castle, we could see it even from the docks, right? Laser beams flying through the air, explosions, a whole lotta fun! Then, things eventually go quiet and stay quiet. Turns out, the Queen lost the final fight with the ponies. But noling told us!
“We were sitting there, wondering just what the hell was going on up there when suddenly we were ambushed by an Equestrian Royal Guard squad! Apparently a lot of ‘em went underground when the front lines fell and were hiding amongst the civvies that we were still trying to round up. They freed their friends and in the confusion of the Queen’s retreat, started the counter attack immediately, and took us down, some still partially covered in pod gel. I managed to escape and start heading south to regroup with the Legions.
“Problem is, I didn’t go the exact direction that the rest of the lings did, meaning I was off course and lost sight of ‘em pretty quickly. That was when I noticed that there was a squad of pegasi on my tail. Five days of frantic flying later, they managed to trap me in some rotting barn in the middle of a fallow field. There was no way out of that…
“Eventually they breached and though I knocked down one or two of ‘em, they got me good. They threw some cuffs on me, dragged me all the way back to Canterlot, and threw me in a cell to slowly starve to death. After… I dunno, a week or two of starving to death, they figured out that changelings don’t eat pony food. Or someone told them. Either way, they eventually brought me love. Didn’t ask questions how they got their hooves on some, I just ate. I later learned that they made some of the changelings they captured harvest love from their criminals. Promised ‘em time off for good behavior for feeding the insect captives. Bunch’a morons.
“Bing badda boom, next thing I know they slap some kinda magical collar on my neck and line me up with a bunch’a other lings with similar collars. The collar stops all of our magic and makes it so we can’t go too far from our assigned magistrates. Turns out, we were to be volunteers to be part of Her Ponyness’s inquisition force. Well, they called it Division-P, but it was pretty clear the whole shtick had huge religious vibes. So, we had to obey orders and find our fellow changelings, or they’d kill us and find someling who would follow orders. A few resisted. They were tortured. I didn’t see any of them inquisitor types kill a changeling, but they way they acted? They wanted to do it. They were so happy to show a demonstration of the collar blowing up…”
‘Oh. I see how it is, Daybreaker. I’ll remember that. I’ll fucking remember that, indeed.’
“They made sure to make us want to find changelings amongst ponies. During training– if you can even call it that– they had us find changelings they planted amongst a group of ponies. If you don’t pass, you get tortured. Then, they frequently place changelings– watched from a distance, of course– out where we do our sweeps. If you fail to point them out, you get tortured a lot. If you succeed, you get rewarded with extra portions of love. Of course, they never let us talk to each other, but they did love to tell us and show us how other lings failed, and what happens when you fail. So sure, you could call their bluff and not point out changelings, but why risk it? It became apparent pretty quickly that there it was too risky to resist and there were plenty of rewards to out your fellow changeling. Kinda like how it was in the Hive, you know? Every ling for themselves.”
‘Hmmm. There’s a lot to unpack there. I doubt that this zealous Division-P is releasing changelings into its own population to train its hunters. I bet they’re lying frequently to their changeling prisoners. But Thalamus raises a good point, resisting might not even be something that the changelings consider. As much as changelings hate ponies, they’re used to not trusting other drones and are predisposed to the whole betraying your bother thing. Way to go, Chrysalis.’
“Eventually, the magistrate I was stuck with got sent out here to Hooferville on a routine sweep. And whaddaya know, there’s a monster attack just as we arrive! We sit it out, and check up on what happened. All the meanwhile, I felt a tugging that started as we arrived. There was a royal here, but I didn’t know how, why, or where, so of course I kept my mouth shut. What would I gain by talking? Anyways, the magistrate starts poking around for strange or suspicious ponies. Captain of the local guard explains what His Highness here did during the fight, and of course how he keeps his history a secret. So the magistrate got interested in His Highness’s skills and started asking questions. That was the bad kind of interested, by the way. That led us to Prince Phasma, who was looking pretty sitting on a hospital bed, about as chewed up as a grunt from an Underhive Sortie. Prince Phasma’s already told you the rest, but you can guess how happy I was to see that there was hope for me yet!”
That got a round of cheers from the changelings.
“They’re hurting prisoners?” Thorax asked.
Thalamus nodded, “They also say that they killed more than a few. They showed us a few bodies, but they could have easily taken bodies from the front line or whatever. They were probably lying about that, but again, who would take the risk? It’s not like you’re going to make the Swarm lose the war from all way over here by pointing out the deserters.”
I sighed, “I’ll investigate into the matter further, Princess Cadence said she was involved with Division-P. I’ll do a little digging and find out how much of this is real, and how much of it is hot air blown by these unicorns of Division-P. If I can get public opinion against the usage of changeling P.O.W.s, we might be able to stop their usage. In the meantime, we need to be careful of them. If you see a collared changeling, you need to get out of town immediately.”
When my current hoof folded, Thalamus asked from behind me, “So Your Highness, now what?”
“Yeah Phasma, what’s the plan?” Coxa asked.
“The plan is to continue working with Princess Luna. Thorax here discovered a way that we can survive living alongside these ponies. It’s not going to be easy getting to that point, but it is a goal we can work towards. That’s enough for me. In the meantime, we have to leave Hooferville. Far Sky as a disguise has been burnt, and it’s going to be raining suits here in Hooferville the moment Canterlot figures out that something doesn’t add up with their missing changeling and broken equipment. So we need to be long gone by then. I’ve got one last job with the Guard Captain here, and then I’m gone. I suggest you all do the same.”
“Thanks for the advice Phasma,” Coxa began, “But honestly? We were all kinda hoping that we could stick with you.”
That got nods and some yeah’s from the crowd.
“That so?” I smiled, “If we’re all being honest, I had hoped that would be the case. Counted on it, in fact. You see, I’ve got a plan. The Fourth Hive as we know it is finished. The Masquerade Protocol isn’t going to be unbroken and Chrysalis is inevitably going to lead them directly to the hive structure itself. We’re going to need to completely change how we live in order to survive the upcoming years. I’m already working on eventually normalizing relations with Equestria, but we need more than that. We need income, an equipped military, land, resources, and more.”
“So where do we come in?” Thalamus asked.
I tapped on the table, “Right here. Where are we?”
“The place with the best coffee in town,” Thorax answered cheerfully.
“Sure. But how did we get this place to use at night?”
“Honestly, Coxa picked the lock a few hours after Stir closed up shop. We’re leaving bits for the stuff we drink, but no one knows we’re here.”
“So we’re here without permission, because we’re changelings. We’re already being hunted down, what’s a couple of trespassing charges on top? Hehehe, and as it just so happens, a huge market just opened up for those who have fallen on the wayside of the law! A market filled with bits, easily accessible ponies if we need food, and very little competition.”
“... The Prohibition?” Coxa asked.
“The Prohibition. As it is, Daybreaker has just eliminated all regulations on alcohol. She may think that what she’s doing is decreasing its consumption, but that’s not how it works. What she has done is destroy supply and actually increase demand. So, what I’m saying is that we move in on this potential business, and use the profits to support us changelings who live here in Equestria. From coast to coast, we can build a ‘criminal network’ that is in reality a support network for each other, from moving alcohol, to transferring bits to each other, to moving love. Coxa and Thorax, I want you and whoever you select to look for opportunities to gather magical artifacts. We’re going to need any help we can get. But do that in the background as we establish ourselves. Our first priority will be creating this network and our second priority will be securing the means to protect ourselves.
“I’ll speak with the pony princesses that are sympathetic to our cause and tell them about Division-P, as I said earlier. Hearing this, I’m sure they’ll raise a stink and won’t allow Daybreaker to torture P.O.W.s. I also might be able to convince them to try to cut down on the number of changeling prisoners, or somehow sabotage Division-P’s operations. If we can get communications up with the prisoners, we might be able to coordinate resistance within that organization. Learning exactly what is true and what is just a projection of power and a web of lies will help us dismantle them. Eventually though, the princesses’ plan is to get rid of Daybreaker altogether.
“Once Daybreaker is tossed out the proverbial window, we keep our alcohol smuggling empire, legitimize it, and use the profits as a substitute to how ponies fund their government. We can use the bits to modernize the Hive. Or rather, establish an entirely new one. Modern problems require modern solutions, after all.”
“Aw hell yeah!” Coxa cheered.
“A new hive?” A changeling whispered.
“The Queen wasted her rule. Why did we wait till the last minute to get more love?” Another asked.
“The Fifth Hive,” Thorax murmured.
“The Fifth Hive,” agreed another.
The whispers and mumbling grew in volume until Coxa cut through it.
“I think we’re all of the same mind. All in favor, say aye.”
A green shield enveloped the walls and ceiling. The changelings closest to the walls had casted some sort of barrier around the room. It immediately became apparent that the shield was to block sound from exiting, and alert the neighbors of our increasingly loud gathering.
“Aye!” Cheered the room.
“Those against, nay!”
I looked around. Every changeling was smiling and many were nodding slowly.
“The ayes have it!”
“What do the ayes have?” I asked.
Coxa stood up and pushed his chair back. All around the table, the other changelings did the same. Those sitting down around in booths also rose to their hooves.
“The old hive is dead!” Coxa cheered.
“Long live the new hive!” The changelings cheered.
“The old Queen is renounced!” He called out once more.
“Long live the new ruler!”
I blinked, “Wait, what’s going on?”
I rose from my chair and looked to Coxa for answers. He certainly had them.
“Phasmatodea, heir of the Fourth Hive, champion of the Hive Eternal. Your words ring true; the Fourth Hive is over. Queen Chrysalis has failed in her duties to protect Panarthropo’s chosen. Do you accept the mantle of ruler over the changelings?”
I felt something at the back of my mind; Coxa was accessing knowledge in my Weave that not even I knew existed. How I even knew this was beyond me. There was still so much about the Weaves that I didn't know.
‘Oh. So that’s what’s happening.’
I kneeled before Coxa.
“... I do.”
“Do you swear to uphold the wishes of the drones of the hive, the silent majority?”
“I do.”
“Do you swear to execute Panarthropo’s will here on the Great Tapestry, as all before you have?”
“I do.”
“Do you swear by the Nine Threads to protect the changelings, and bring reckoning upon those who dare call us their enemy?”
“I do.”
“Arise, Phasmatodea. Arise, not as Prince of the Fourth Hive, but as King of the Fifth Hive and champion of the Hive Eternal. A king of exiles for now, the king of all changelings as Panar wills it!”
I slowly rose back up.
The changelings immediately all bowed around me.
“Long live King Phasmatodea!”
The changelings stomped an applause.
“Long live the King!”
By the stroke of midnight, in a rundown cafe at the edge of a transit town, the changelings crowned me their king. It was a far cry from the pomp and ceremony that took place in the polished stone locale of the hive’s Throne Room. I was a ruler of the drones, from the Lodges to the exiles. There was no need for jewelry, priests of Panar, feasts of love, or days of celebration.
I was a new king in a new age.
“Long live the King!”