//------------------------------// // 97- Shezmu // Story: Changing Expectations // by KKSlider //------------------------------// Arc 8: Broken Masquerade “Tourniquet!” “What in Panar’s name is a tourn–” “For fuck’s sake Web, if you’re not going to help then go be stupid somewhere else!” The changeling pushed the other aside and pulled close the medical kit that was tucked away under the side seat. Flinging the top open on the unlatched kit, Aorta pulled out the tourniquet, flinging other pieces of first aid equipment onto the cart’s floor as he did so. Then, he wrapped it above the King’s wound and tightened it. Web leered over Aorta’s shoulders. “Already need new gauze…” Aorta muttered as he worked. “Is blood supposed to be black? I don’t think it’s supposed to be black.” ‘King Phasma was right in keeping Web on the surface. Though he should have been put on cart duty. Something to keep in mind for the future.’ “No Web, it’s not,” Aorta answered through gritted teeth. “Is… is His Majesty going to be okay?” Aorta paused briefly before resuming, “I… don’t know.” “... That was the part where you were supposed to lie to me and say yes, Aorta.” “Shut up, Web. That’s His Majesty’s duty, not mine.” “What happened down there? Did you see how he got hurt? Why is–” “Go bother someling else! I’m trying to save his life here! Go…. Go ask Swallowtail what happened! Yeah, if you want to actually be useful, get out of my fin and go find out yourself!” “Aye aye, sir!” Aorta heard the flapping of pegasus wings that signalled the disguised changeling’s exit from the flying cart. Aorta shook his head slowly and went back to worrying about his boss’s health. “Please survive this, sir. I don’t want to be left in charge of these idiots…. I suppose authority would transfer to Coxa, now that I think about it.” Aorta paused long enough to tap his chin in thought before glaring at Phasma’s unconscious body, “But don’t think that gets you off the hook!” King Phasma groaned and twitched on the ground. “My King?” Aorta pressed up against the royal, putting his ear to King Phasma’s muzzle. This was the first sign of life he had besides breathing. If he was waking up, Aorta needed to know. He had heard the tales of many medically trained changelings being blown to bits after getting on Chrysalis’s bad side during various medical procedures– and she often wasn’t even the patient, given the fact that the healing pods were a miracle cure. Though Phasma was far from having Chrysalis’s hot wrath, he deserved every bit of extra attention possible for what he had done for the common drone. “Trotsylvania,” the King whispered through the Weave. Aorta pulled away, “Sir? Can you hear me?” The changeling royal didn’t respond. “What was that?” Their pegasus-disguised changeling pulling the cart called back. “The King! He just whispered that word. Mean anything to you?” The white pegasus yelled back, “Yeah! It’s the capital of Vallachia! Why did he say the name of a city in the opposite direction of where we’re going?!” That was a question that Aorta didn’t have an answer to. He prodded King Phasma and asked him, “Sir? Can you hear me….? What’s this about Trotsylvania?” King Phasma twitched, but otherwise had no response. “Aorta! Aorta! The King, he– oof!” Web flung himself onto the flying cart’s open deck. While it was easy to take off from a moving cart, landing was always the hard part. Web decided to opt for slamming himself into the wooden board floor of the cart. A surefire way to land, but one that lacked any grace and was sure to hurt his fur-covered pegasus body. “The King!” Web gasped as he slowly rose up to his hooves. “As soon as I mentioned the black in his blood, Swallowtail said that it was probably a sign of corruption! He said King Phasma was attacked by one of the monsters!” Aorta’s blood ran cold. ‘Corruption?! Is he going to turn into something like that Prophet monster? How the hell could they fix him now?! If King Phasma turns, then the whole Fifth Hive could be dragged down, too! From what Aorta saw, if the Prophet had been the downfall of the sealed city, then a corrupted King Phasma could be the downfall of Eq–’ A hoof wrapped around one of Aorta’s fetlocks. He looked down in surprise and saw King Phasma grimacing, looking up at him. “Trotsylvania,” he groaned. “Vallachia. Thestrals. Help. Now.” With a gasp, King Phasma went slack on the floor, clenching his eyes shut. “Did the King just wake up? What did he say?” Web asked from behind Aorta. ‘If King Phasma is being corrupted, then anyling near him would be doomed. But… no one will leave his side. Not Web, not Swallowtail, and most certainly not me. He’s done so much for us all. What kind of King goes back into certain death to save a single drone?! The smart thing would be to isolate King Phasma. But damn the smart thing, if he would throw his life away for one of us, then how could we not do the same?!’ “Change course, we need to go to Trotsylvania! Web, spread the word!” ‘This could be the corruption speaking. Going in the opposite direction of any possible help could just as easily doom the King. But… what help could we even offer back at the Fifth Hive’s base? Pray for a miracle? Vallachia may be in the opposite direction from Manehattan, but if there’s even a hope of saving him there, then that’s what we’ll do!’ Web nodded and took off, shaking the cart when he pushed off. “Trotsylvania? Is that what the King said?” The changeling puller asked. “Trotsylvania! Do you know the way there?” The changeling banked to the left slowly, changing their course. “Yes, I do! Make sure everyone stays in formation behind us, it’s a long way to Thestral country! But I have to ask, how much food do we have for the journey?” Aorta moved away from the prone King and started to open the secret compartment at the front of the cart. Removing a few pieces of wood, he looked into the stash. “If the other carts are as filled as this one, then I think we might have enough for five days.” “It’ll take a day of flying to reach there, and one and a half to get back to Manehattan from Vallachia!” “Two and a half days, plus another day and a half to get back…” Aorta murmured to himself. “We’ll need someone to go to Manehattan and have them send supplies over to Trotsylvania. Hopefully they will be able to find us in that city using the King’s Weave… Yeah, that’s the plan.” “Well don’t tell me! Go get a spare changeling to go! I’m a bit busy up here! Unless you want to take over?” “No thanks! You keep doing what you’re doing!” Aorta nodded to himself at the plan he was putting together. Then, he recalled a detail that the Prophet had said back in the pyramid. “Hey Hopper! You ever heard of a ‘human’ before?” The changelings had some items in the cart that Daring Do was in that she helped herself to. It was only fair, really. They didn’t exactly give her a choice in whether or not she wanted to come with. Though to be fair, if she was given a choice, she would have said yes, and if they left her behind, she would have followed. They also couldn’t provide her a sleeping bag, meaning when Daring Do decided to sleep for a few hours, she had to sleep on the wooden floor of the cart. From what she could tell after a brief stop onto the ground around midday, the changelings were taking shifts pulling the carts and resting. She could have really used a blanket; it was cold up in the sky and in the wind. So Daring Do didn’t feel guilty when she found a box that was tucked away underneath one of the bench-seats that ran along the edge of the flying cart. There was another box, but that one was clearly marked with a red cross. She didn’t really need any medical attention, so she left that one where it was. The box she did open almost blended in with the corner it was stuffed into. It wasn’t even related to the false panel she had spotted during the long hours of nothing to do but stare at the landscape they were flying over. That panel she was tempted to open, but decided instead not to piss off her faux-captors. They can keep whatever secrets they were carrying, as long as they didn’t hurt anypony. Daring lifted the lid on the small wooden box. Her lips parted into a smile that widened by the second. “Oh baby! Jackpot!” Daring pulled one of the notebooks from the box. Thankfully, there were a few pencils within the box that she could use to write with. She closed the box and took out a small pocket knife from one of her shirt’s pockets, and began whittling away the wood around the new pencil. Without a pencil sharpener, this was going to take a while Daring looked out over the cart’s edge. Equestria stretched out before her, going on and on for miles. Far in the distance, she could even see Canterhorn mountain. Between her and the heart of equestria lay tracts of farmland, woods, winding rivers, and mountains that grew in size as they got closer. Daring guessed that Vallachia would be mountainous and not at all like Equestria proper. She’d never been there. Nopony really has. A few traders make their livelihood bringing goods to and from the reclusive bat-pony nation, but for the most part everypony steers clear of the thestrals. They’re just too creepy. Daring sighed and continued to whittle away. Her mood turned sour when she saw the distant clouds of Las Pegasus. The city had stayed roughly where it was for the past few months now, close to the ground. Rapid response ability from the E.U.P. was prioritized over the grand sweeping views the city normally possessed. The thought angered Daring Do. The pegasus city of Las Pegasus was grounded. The unicorn city of Canterlot was burned to the ground. The earth pony city of Manehattan had its southern boroughs and neighborhoods sweeped of life, like locusts devouring an entire farm. And now she was willingly following the changelings as they took her to a nation few ponies have ever ventured to. ‘Are these different changelings, unrelated to the invaders? King Orobouros…. Is a fake name he gave me. The only ruler changeling that we know about is Queen Chrysalis, and her lackey Prince Phantom, who… was presumed to be dead, but no body was found. Hmmm. That really gets your noggin’ joggin’.’ She looked down at the pencil. It had been sharp for some time now, and she was cutting into its soft graphite. Putting the pocket knife away, Daring Do started on writing brief notes of what just happened. It was important to her that she got things down quickly. The quicker she wrote, the fresher the memory was. The fresher the memory was, the better story it could be. But before she got into the meat of the notes, she quickly jotted down some questions to ask later, as well as some theories she was brewing up. At the end, she had made a note to herself to find a picture of the dead Prince. Daring regretted not being on top of the whole war, but it had all happened so far away from her home in Vanhoover that she just kept focused on her work and let the Royal Guards handle it all. Now her inattentiveness has come to bite her in her flank. Daring Do spent the rest of the afternoon writing. It was only when the sun began to set again that she closed the journal and placed it within one of her shirt’s pockets. The terrain had finished its transition by then. What were once grand views of sweeping plains, distant cloud banks, and islands of civilization, were now jagged peaks that jutted up into the sky, like the claws of some buried behemoth dragon. The unexplored West in its infancy. Further West, Daring knew from reading, was a sea of grass that stretched to the horizon. There wasn’t a demand for settlements far away from Canterlot, all the way on the plains, so there were no expeditions out that way. A few went, but nopony could find the limit of the plains. They stretched for hundreds of miles. The great plains at the edge of the known world weren't visible at the moment. The white-stone peaks of… some-cool-sounding-name commandeered respect as they tore jagged figures into the sky. Blanketing the spaces beneath the exposed stone peaks was a lush green forest of coniferous pines, as dense as a thick carpeting. Then, the cart rounded a bend slowly and something grand came into view. In the light of the dimming sun, a castle and its surrounding town. If one could even call it a town; the white stone, dark-blue roof castle stood tall on the mountainside, lording over an expanse of half-timbered buildings that stretched from one end of a valley to another. Right through the center, a river wound its way through, cutting the town-slash-city in half. “Wow,” Daring breathed. The castle was about half the size of Canterlot Castle. Meaning, it was quite sizable. What might have once been a block-shaped fortress of thick stone was now a small village in and of itself, its homes being the towers and extensions that fought for air above the shingle sea beneath. Tall arched windows dotted the magnificent structure frequently. One of the previously mentioned extensions had a massive circular, divided window of stained glass that caught the setting sun and shone like a portal of stars. The huge window and the gothic architecture that surrounded it suggested that the extension served as some sort of cathedral. The castle seemed to have not been intended to see much war in its time. Instead, like a portly count dressed in fine silks and jewelry, it stood proud above the mountain rustic city. As she was taking in the view, and as the cart was slowly banking around and making its way to the massive castle, Daring picked up the fact that their convoy was no longer alone in the sky. Flying shapes– thestrals, no doubt– had joined them and began closing in on the carts. They acted as the guides for the changelings pulling the cart. Black-metal plates formed pauldrons, while countless lames lay over each other, forming leg-armor, barrel plates, and neck plating. Only the helmet, boots, and peytrals were solid pieces of forged metal. Between the black plating, what seemed to be red cloth draped over the thestral’s forms. Only their wings lay open and exposed to open air. Unless you counted the dull silver blades that edged the back of the thestral’s wings. A few had claws of similar dull metal at the end of their forehooves’ boots. One or two instead carried lances of polished wood and more dull silver. ‘The lack of shine has to be intentional.’ How anypony could fly in such heavy gear was beyond Daring Do. No normal metal could be light enough for a flying warrior of any level of experience to use for any extended period. The Royal Guard had its own special issue of Imperial Gold, forged and enchanted by the greatest line of smiths and arcane artisans that the crown could afford to keep on payroll. All the way out here, hundreds of miles from Canterlot, the thestral’s armor had to be unenchanted. That meant that whatever metal it was made of, was light enough to be flown in. Daring was in the middle of hastily scribbling this conjecture down in her retrieved-notebook when a loud thud nearly made her throw the notebook out of her hooves and off the cart’s edge. Gripping it tightly to her chest and scowling, Daring Do sent the changeling who had not-scared her a death glare. “Pony. We will be staying here, in Trotsylvania, for the time being. Speaking at all about our nature will lead to your…. I dunno, death I guess?” “If you want to sound intimidating, not being sure of yourself will defeat any attempts at that.” “Listen pegasus, you know what’s going to happen. You’re going to stay quiet. You’re going to do as we say. And we won’t hurt you. In fact, we’ll make sure you’re protected. A fair trade. As fair as you’re going to get, at least.” Daring sneered, “I’ll comply. But not because you can threaten me, I’m not scared. I’m only here for answers. And I will get those answers.” The pegasus-disguised changeling blinked slowly. “.... Whatever you say.” The flying carts had closed in tight enough that Daring Do could see the occupants of the other carts and hear them, too. One of the changelings yelled over to her. “Web! Get back over here, I’m going to need you to help me lift His Majesty when we arrive!” The changeling in front of her yelled back, “Coming, sir!” Then he shot a glance back at Daring, “Don’t do anything stupid. From what I’ve heard, you like doing that. So don’t.” ‘I’m not the one who shattered the ancient staff artifact or awoke the dead. That was your king and his angry yelling, I was nice and calm,’ Daring thought to herself but bit down the comment. “I’ll behave,” She replied instead. The changeling took off and landed in the other cart. Daring then went over to the cart’s edge and peered down below. The rustic city was rushing up to meet them as they came in for a landing at the castle. The designated landing zone, a massive strip of white-brick road flanked by fields of grass, had been cleared for them. ‘Nopony training? Nopony running? Nopony running drills, or practicing? How long ago did they spot us coming? Did they even, or did they somehow know we were coming?’ The convoy set down, jostling Daring as the wooden wheels clattered against the stone brick road. They came to a halt at the center of the path. Craning her neck around, Daring could see that this was some sort of receiving entrance for the castle. Ahead, two massive doors of dark wood and silver bracing slowly opened. Behind, the path ended in a semi-circle. Around them, the thestral escorts set down. Some stayed in the air, but most had set down facing the carts and their inhabitants. From the doors ahead, eleven more bat ponies marched out. Ten were equipped with long spears with red ribbons that fluttered in the wind tied at the spearhead’s base, and their armor was a shining silver color, rather than the matte-black or dull silver of the flyers. Ten moved to flank the convoy on each side, and the eleventh stopped before the lead cart. A changeling dismounted to greet the thestral. From her position in the second cart, Daring overheard their conversation. The eleventh thestral did not wear armor. Instead, she wore a slim-fitting full black suit with red interior. At her cuffs, more red fabric was embroidered in a repeating cross fashion. At her neck, her suit jacket opened up to a white frilled shirt underneath, pressed down by a necklace of gold in the shape of a tailed comet. Horseshoes of silver gave her trot a sound not dissimilar to the armored troops that escorted her arrival. The guards halted, and she spoke softly with a measured voice. “Good evening, travelers. I am Elder Sanguine, and I welcome you to Vallachia. We have been expecting you, and understand the necessity for discretion.” ‘So they did know we were coming.’ The changeling did not introduce themself, “You were expecting us?” “Of course. Now, I do believe that time is of the essence, and–” “If you do not mind me asking, how?” If she was annoyed at being interrupted, the bat pony did not show it, “The Night Mistress herself appeared before our seers to speak of your dire need. She has informed us of the developing situation. Somepony dear to her is dying, are they not?” ‘Night Mistress? Is this another big bad villain, or something more? King Orobouros was more than what he first seemed, so perhaps this Night Mistress may become important very soon. “... Yes.” “You are no ponies, also correct?” “For the most part. We brought with us one pony. But that doesn’t matter.” “Indeed. What matters is seeing to the aid of this very important pony. If you would entrust him to our care, we may yet save his life.” “How? We don’t even understand what’s happening to him.” “Unfortunately, we believe we know. No cases have happened in centuries, let alone recent history, but the techniques for curing it have been passed down all the same. This ailed changeling– who we would very much like to meet properly and be introduced to once they are saved– will be cleansed of the taint of darkness. Now, if I may be so bold as to give you orders, I suggest that you heed my instructions and hoof him over, before he dies. Or worse. There’s always worse.” “.... Web.” The mentioned changeling disembarked from the lead cart, levitating the unconscious form of King Orobouros with him. His left haunch had been bandaged and attended to, and he was twitching slowly in the magical grip. The female thestral appraised the changeling royal, drinking in the details before giving out an order, “This is the one! Fetch a stretcher, and prepare the anointing oils! We must begin immediately!” Behind her, three thestrals glided out from the ajar doors. Two carried a stretcher between them and did not wear garments, but the third was clad in a black robe. A mask of flat silver covered her face, leaving only her mouth, nostrils, and ears exposed. She carried with her an incense censer that leaked red vapor as she flew. Daring watched as the King was set down on the stretcher, and the censor was shaken over his prone form. Her mouth moved in silent prayers as she did so. “Bring him to the chambers and begin posthaste!” The thestrals lifted up off the ground silently and began to glide back into the castle. “Web, go with them. You will be relieved four hours from now, but stay with the King.” “Yes, sir.” “Web. I’m entrusting the King’s safety to you. Do you understand?” “Of course, sir!” “Good. Now go.” The changeling took off after the retreating forms of the thestrals. Elder snorted softly, “Now, may I have the pleasure to actually be introduced?” “... I am Aorta, designated second-in-command of this expedition. King Phasmatodea is the rightful leader, as you no doubt understand.” ‘Aha! I was right! Who was right?! ME!’ Daring grinned and rocked on her hooves. “King Phasmatodea… Thank you for the name. We shall have need of it soon. As for you all, quarters will be provided. You are honored guests of the Night Mistress herself, and will be granted the honor that deserves.” “Night Mistress… Is she coming here herself?” Elder Sanguine smiled, “She has yet to reveal that to us. Now, let us take leave of this cold. Warm food, cold drinks, and nice beds are inside. There, we may talk at great lengths. I would be lying if I said that I did not thirst for knowledge about the Night Mistress's suddenly important friend.” 'Oh yeah? Get in line, I was here first.