//------------------------------//
// Chapter 21 
// Story: The Blueblood Papers: Royal Blood 
// by Raleigh 
//------------------------------//

I have a healthy suspicion of ponies who volunteer for things unasked for; it might just be my own habitual paranoia, but any individual willing to give up their own time, effort, money, or even life for something without being prompted for it must invariably be up to something.  In my experience nopony offers anything without seeking some sort of recompense for it, even if what they get out of it is entirely incomprehensible to someone as self-centred as I.  Of course, I have been proven wrong by a tiny number of outliers before, though I still remain somewhat suspicious of a few individuals (who know who they are and what they did), but in this particular case that unfolded over the course of the weeks following my sudden and unexpected success in ruling Virion Hive, my suspicions proved to be vindicated once more.  It was a shame that by that time, it was too late to do much about it.

My interrogation of Odonata, such as it was, proved to be of at least some material worth.  Though Market Garden was quite sceptical of her assurance that Chrysalis would not make a move to retake Virion Hive from us, the massed hordes of Changelings consistently failed to materialise outside the southern wall of the city.  This left our General scratching her head for some time, as her strategy thus far had, as the Purestrain pointed out, sought to entice the enemy into a crushing battle of annihilation.

At any rate, what Market Garden was plotting next was nothing for me to worry about, for as long as I remained the ‘Provisional Governor of Virion Hive’ (with aims to have the ‘provisional’ part discretely excised from that job title, and, if I was truly fortunate, turned into a barony) I could almost guarantee that whatever her peculiar little mind could come up with next would not involve me.  Besides, I had to keep two thousand ponies from starving, so what the generals were up to was the absolute least of my concerns.  What was foremost on my list of worries, however, was Odonata’s grim warning about the unaccounted-for Changeling drones possibly secreted amongst the population.  The notion that this was a clever ruse to waste our time and resources on a futile Great Seedling hunt had occurred to me, being the sort of rather petty trick a Purestrain would pull just to annoy me, but if there was one thing that two years of this damned war has taught me it is that an over-abundance of caution and paranoia is nowhere near enough where Changelings are concerned.

The revelation that there could be any number of infiltrators hiding amongst the ponies we had liberated had sent everypony into the sort of panic that comes with realising what was in hindsight very obvious, like a pony who just remembered they forgot to lock the front door of their home before leaving three hours ago.  Thus far the Changelings, if there were any, had remained quiet, but this only made me feel more unhappy, as no doubt they were taking the time to regroup, re-establish contact with one another, and plan Faust-knows what havoc to wage behind our frontlines.  The memory of my near-assassination at the Ministry of War was still fresh in my mind, and only scarcely outshined by the more recent horrors I had been through.  Each day that passed without something exploding only added to my anxiety that tomorrow would be the day.

That was when Second Fiddle volunteered his services.  I had merely issued orders for systematic patrols of our territory and routine checkpoints at important areas to be set up, all conducted by the Guards Division.  It was not without its flaws, as even if it was fully up to operational strength the division alone would not be sufficient to cover both the city with its hovels and alleys and the sprawling mass of tents around it.  There was still ample opportunity for any Changelings hiding out there to slip through the great, yawning gaps in our net, and either carry on to Equestria proper or remain here and cause yet more grief for me.

“I am about to make work a lot easier for you,” said Second Fiddle one evening in the officers’ mess, which had been relocated from a tent to one of the more spacious and attractively furnished rooms in the castle keep.  If I didn’t know any better, I would have said that the Changelings might have used this same space for that exact same purpose, though it was hard to imagine Odonata sitting on a plush armchair with fine cognac and a smouldering cigar, regaling her officers with witty anecdotes about Queen Chrysalis’ last garden party.

“Are you now?” I said, not bothering to hide my irritation at my ‘friend’s’ violation of the old club rule about not talking shop within the sanctity of the officers’ mess.

“I’ve been corresponding with our comrades in the Commissariat,” he continued, oblivious as ever, “and we have a proposal.”

I nursed my glass of armagnac as he droned on, watching as the amber liquid swirled inside the deep bowl of the snifter.  Elsewhere, the conversation was hushed, as it often was this early in the evening before most officers clocked off for the day and sought to relax.  The staff here had a job on their hooves to turn this place into the sort of warm, welcoming, and refined gentlecolt’s sanctuary their clientele expected, and I might have discreetly used my influence to bump outfitting the mess higher up the list of priorities than it probably deserved to be.  The dense clouds of cigar and pipe smoke rose and clung to the ancient stone ceiling, and though the heady scent called to me, ever since I had my throat and lungs burned out by gas the art of smoking had suddenly lost its appeal.  No doubt my physician would rejoice that just one of my very many vices no longer held quite so tight a grip over me, and perhaps give him some false hope that the others might soon be on their way out.

“We don’t have the ponypower to run a proper search of Virion Hive and carry on this war,” he said.  “We have to keep moving; onto the next battle, and the next one, and so on, until we win.  The Commissariat has authorised me to set up a new security organisation, separate from the Ministry of War and civilian security services.  That way, we won’t be constrained by rules and regulations from doing the job of rooting out the spies and saboteurs hiding under our muzzles.  This is where you come in, Blueblood.”

I was afraid of that, having to do something; I was rather hoping that whatever mad scheme he and his desk-bound chums in Canterlot could be accomplished without my muddy hoofprints on it, but if it meant less work for me in the long run I was at least open to the suggestion.  

“I haven’t agreed to anything yet,” I said, wondering if it would be rude of me to wave over one of the staff and ask him to eject this interloper violating the sacred edict, when I remembered that this was most certainly not the Imperial Club back at Canterlot, no matter how much I fantasised about being in that perfect little grotto of refined civilisation.  “It sounds like you have everything organised already, and I’m only the provisional governor here.  I’m sure Canterlot will send a more suitable pony to replace me soon.”

Not if I could bloody help it, I added to myself.

“And you’re doing a great job of it!” he said, and I scanned his words for any sign of sarcasm and could detect none.  While I polished off my drink and contemplated another one before retiring for the night, he carried on: “This group will need to gather intelligence about any infiltrators lurking among the civilian population.  Civil authorities in Equestria rely on tips from a network of trusted informants and members of the general public, though between you and me, friend, we think some of them are using it to settle old grudges.”

“Which is damned unsporting of them.”

“Quite.  But we don’t have that here, not yet, anyway.  You have ponies working to tidy this place up and make it fit for ponies again, so you make sure you impress upon the native heathens that if they want to carry on living in the Princesses’ Harmony, they need to report any suspicious activity to us.”

“I’m not sure they want to live in the ‘Princesses’ Harmony’,” I said; most of them didn’t even know of the existence of the Princesses in the first place.  “That’s what makes them ‘heathen’.”

Second Fiddle squinted at me, and I returned that suspicious look with a smirk and the sort of casual, vague shrug that seemed to annoy him.  “Of course they do,” he spat, “they just don’t know it yet.

“You sort out their education -- remind them who saved them from the hated Changelings.  I’ll even send a few commissars to keep an eye on your ponies, just to make sure.  They’ll pass on any leads to me.  With commissarial authority I can then requisition whatever I need from the garrison to deal with any possible threats for you.”

At the very least, that little speech helped me come to a decision about my course for the rest of the evening, and thus I waved down one of the liveried staff for another glass of brandy - a double this time, but I think I could be excused the vulgarity in this case - while Second Fiddle was still rambling on.  By the time he had finished, the glass was delicately placed on the table between us, and I immediately embarked upon drinking it.

“We’re calling this organisation RAID,” he said.  “That’s R-A-I-D.  RAID.”

He seemed rather proud of that name, and I imagine that he worked very hard to make it spell out ‘RAID’.  That is, until I had to ruin it for him and ask what those letters actually stood for.

“Response Action: Infiltration and- um…”  He trailed off, stared blankly into the space between us, and chewed on his lower lip.  By the time he spoke again in a coherent sentence, which was admittedly quite a while but I enjoyed the pleasant if awkward silence, I had finished my drink.  “I’ll have to get back to you on the ‘D’.”

[The meaning of the letter ‘D’ in RAID has been lost, owing to the intense secrecy around the founding of this organisation and the subsequent destruction of records.  There has been a lot of speculation about what it could be, with suggestions posited by military historians encompassing almost the entire D section of the dictionary, including ‘deception’, ‘drones’, ‘deviants’, and so on.  Others, including myself, believe that it doesn’t really stand for anything, and that its founders started with the four letters, tried to work backwards to find words that matched, and then gave up.]

***

In the end, I largely ignored what Second Fiddle had said and left him to it; as far as I was concerned I merely had to sit back and let the great machinery of administration that I had set up carry on running, and, like an airship mechanic, only directly interfere to maintain its smooth running.  Despite the unnecessarily annoying way in which he explained it to me, when I was not in the best frame of mind (which is to say, more drunk than usual) to accept the torrent of information he spewed forth, this RAID-thing meant that the largest and heaviest thing weighing on my mind had been lifted and the burden taken by other ponies.  Should Changeling drones start crawling out of the woodwork and start making a nuisance, I could at least blame him.  It was at that moment when I learnt that having somepony above me in terms of rank could actually be something of a blessing.

However, the Changelings, if there were any, were still being much too quiet, and for the time being things merely proceeded as I had set out.  Earning the trust of the natives would remain a difficult task as long as they continued to associate their former masters with the safety and security they claimed to provide.  We would have to do better, which one would think was rather a low bar to clear, really.

There was a certain horror in the daily mundanity of Changeling oppression.  The propaganda spewed out by the Ministry of Misinformation at the time would focus on lurid and attention-grabbing tales of violence, torture, and murder of helpless ponies by the enemy, and while that did indeed happen in places, the fact is that, for the most part, the lives of their slaves were ones of dull and closely-monitored tedium.  After all, the Changelings needed them alive to continue harvesting and for forced labour.  

In a twisted way, I found that daily banality to be more disturbing than those atrocities best remembered by the general public.  Theirs was an existence for which there was no escape and no distraction from the heavy hoof of the Changeling oppressor, save for a premature death by illness or one’s own hoof.  In their short lives there was no art, no songs, no pleasures, and no stories except for furtive little snippets of what freedoms their ancestors enjoyed.  Odonata and her ilk had seen fit to stamp out whatever indigenous culture existed prior to their arrival, all to serve a greed perpetuated by their hateful ideology.  Only traces remained, to be scavenged and re-assembled by Equestrian academics.

Day and night their lives were monitored by their overlords, their words and deeds watched for any trace of defiance.  This had been going on for over a hundred years, and now the ponies knew nothing but the lies their masters had taught them.  No wonder they had no idea what to do with themselves once liberated.

“We treat our ponies very well,” said Odonata during another one of our little chats.  I nearly choked on my tea when she said that, for just that morning I had signed off a requisition form from our medical experts asking for more emergency vitamin tablets.  “Before we took Virion Hive, the city was in an almost constant state of war with its neighbours and itself.  The Changelings brought peace and order, and purpose to their lives in serving stronger creatures.”

For all their supposed ‘strength’ the Changelings were parasites wholly dependent upon ‘weak’ ponies for their continued existence, and this irony was apparently lost on her.

We continued having our little heart-to-hearts.  These rarely lasted more than an hour, as I could hardly stand to be in her presence for much longer than that, and I think I would have enjoyed General Market Garden’s company far better than Odonata’s.  At least the former didn’t keep a half-breed foal on her lap throughout the conversation, such as it was.

Invariably, however, the one question that had been nibbling away at the back of my mind eventually pushed its way to the fore and demanded that I ask it: “Just why are you still alive?”

I remember it clearly: it was a late afternoon, and one of the rare moments of free time that I had during the day before I clocked off duty and slipped off to the mess or found somewhere quiet to read.  The ponies I had hired to turn Virion Hive into a productive little settlement had tried to re-introduce the concept of farming to the earth ponies living among them, and despite their natural talent for growing crops, as is their place in society, the arid conditions made that quite tricky.  Therefore, it had been turned into a dual lesson, whereby the pegasi were being taught to make rain.  Although it was little more than a lacklustre drizzle dribbling past the thin slit of a window, it was a start at least.

What drew me to seeing Odonata again when I was at liberty to do almost anything else, however, was less clear.  Under normal circumstances I think I would have rather spent time with an enraged manticore instead, and the conversation would have been far more entertaining.  The question of her survival had nagged at the back of my mind ever since Market Garden revealed it to me in what felt like an age ago, but I couldn’t say that I felt particularly desperate to have that answered.  No, there was something else that compelled me to see her, and as much as I tried to deny it to myself at the time, the mere, slim chance that her mutant offspring was also mine was what drew me.  And if it was, the question of what in blazes I was supposed to do about it likewise reared its head and bit me on the nose.  There was the question of succession, as I wasn’t sure if the system of primogeniture covered Changelings, but in theory I would have to be dead before that became an issue and therefore none of my concern.  More immediately, however, if I was to take complete leave of my senses and acknowledge the spawn as my own in the absence of definitive proof (and where would one even begin to find that?  Besides waiting two decades to see if the creature develops the characteristic Canterlot unicorn build and a keen touch with the opposite sex), then was I expected to take any particular role in raising the poor thing?

There were too many questions all at once, and I was far too young at the time to even consider them.  The only thought that I had given that topic, in spite of my nigh-constant philandering, was that should the almost-inevitable results of such activity finally bear fruit, that I would give fatherhood a much better stab than my own father did.  That is to say, I planned to write a few cheques to the lucky mother and keep actual contact with the bastard(s) to an absolute minimum.  Simply not being involved at all in the business of raising a foal would be an immeasurable improvement on my own upbringing.

We sat at our usual positions on either side of the coffee table, with the habitual mugs of hot tea steaming away atop its chipped surface.  Odonata, however, appeared not to have heard the question, and indeed she had barely acknowledged me when I entered and took my seat on the cushion.  The nymph was curled up on her lap, silent and still -- Elytra, unlike most infants, tended not to make much noise, though it would squirm and fidget relentlessly, but this time it was clear even to me that something was wrong.

“I said, just why are you still alive?” I repeated, a little more firmly this time.  Odonata finally looked up from her daughter on her lap.

“Do you mean, ‘how did I survive the fall?’” she said, apparently trying to mock me but I could tell that this time her heart, if Changelings have them, wasn’t in it.  “It’s what Changelings do; we always survive, one way or another.  You and that stupid filly Rainbow Dash didn’t bother to check.  I landed on a ledge and broke my hindleg.  Your pretty little rapier only nicked my artery but I still lost a lot of blood.  I stopped the bleeding by clamping down on the artery itself with magic - the benefits of Purestrain adaptation.  My wings were broken, so I tried to climb my way out.  I lost count of how many times I fell before I remembered I can turn into a bird; I must have been delirious with the blood loss.  Then I simply flew out and tried to reach the Queen’s Hive.  I must have passed out, because the next thing I remember was seeing Chrysalis standing over me with her hoof stamping on my head, demanding that I beg for forgiveness for failing her.”

I suppose making sure that a dead Purestrain is really dead is a lesson I should have learnt much earlier, but if all went according to plan then it would be one I wouldn’t have to put into practice ever again.  At the time we were hardly in the best position to be as thorough as we should have, considering that I was being held over that same deadly drop by Rainbow Dash, whose strength had been slowly fading with the brutal aerial duel we had fought.

As soon as Odonata finished telling her story, albeit in a sort of listless and distracted manner as though she was merely going through the motions, she lost all interest in me, her guest, and turned her concerned gaze back to her foal resting on her lap.  She raised a hoof, as wide as a dinner plate and fashioned more like some sort of tool for bludgeoning whales, and, with a delicacy that belied the brutish mass and shape of the appendage and its wielder, gently nudged the nymph to try and elicit some sort of reaction out of it.  Where an ordinary, healthy pony foal would have immediately started voicing its complaint at being woken with intense screaming, this creature merely opened its eyes, huge against the gaunt, withered sockets, and stared back at the concerned face of its mother, but otherwise remained still.

Despite me having little actual knowledge on how to care for foals in general, let alone Changeling ones, I understood that they should be at least somewhat more animated than that.  The creature looked like a lifeless doll.  As I sat there, leaning forward on my cushion over the little coffee table, I suddenly felt as though I was intruding on a private moment and that I ought to leave.  Yet I found that I could not, perhaps arrested by that slim chance that this thing could be mine, and my concern was evidently betrayed by some quirk of body language.

“She’s dying,” said Odonata, her voice deliberately flat and level.

“Why?” I asked.

“Starving.”  The Purestrain stroked her hoof delicately over the nymph’s head.  “She needs love or she will die.”

I chewed on my lower lip, watching the two intently and my hangover-numbed mind looking for any sign that this was some sort of elaborate ploy.  Odonata stared back, her face a blank masque as devoid of emotion as her voice.

“How long does it have left?”

A crack formed in her masque - a tiny, hairline fracture snaking its way across an otherwise flawless porcelain surface.  It was a faint quiver of her lips, followed by the powerful muscles in her oversized jaw visibly tensing under the skin.

“Days,” she said.  “Her last feeding was before the battle.”

“Then feed it,” I snapped, and I was rather surprised at just how urgent I sounded.

“I have no love to spare.”  The ice in her eyes chilled me to the core, and in spite of myself I shuddered.  “Your army saw to that.  Without our source of food - the ponies - we will starve.  You know this.”

“And what about you?” I asked, trying to meet her gaze.  “How long do you have left now?”

“A few months, or longer if I conserve energy.”  Her voice was quiet now, and lacked that sneering, mocking tone it had in our previous chats.  I felt, in some odd way, to have found the ‘pony’, as it were, within the Changeling - something vulnerable, relatable even, that was common to all creatures that might be called a ‘soul’.  If, and as far as ‘ifs’ go this was a fairly large one that made the Crystal Tower look like a toothpick, this was all true, that is, then what I held before me as I sat across from her on a lumpy old cushion was truly a mother in fear of losing her foal, yet trapped, broken, and beaten by a cruel system that gloried in struggle and hardship and cared nothing for the tiny, weak thing on her lap.

There remained, however, the bigger, unanswered question - can a race that feeds off love to survive express that emotion?  Such questions were better left to philosophers, I thought, not a shallow noblepony simply trying to drift through life with as little fuss as possible and still failing on that.

“Purestrains receive priority rations,” she added.  “Chrysalis first, then her Attendants, then we Purestrains, then soldiers, workers, and drones, and so on, all according to their position in the hierarchy.  Nymphs of mixed parentage are at the very bottom.  The strong survive, and the weak perish.”

There it was -- the naked, ugly reality behind the ideology that made the Changelings ‘strong’ was one that allowed foals to die because they were judged to be weak and a burden upon the Hive.  It was all well and good for Odonata to rant and rave about how the strong must dominate the weak and all that rot as she had done before to an irritating degree, but, as ever, when theory collides with the real world, experience itself must inevitably batter down those meaningless thoughts and words and reveal the truth.  This clash was laid bare in the foal slowly starving to death before me.

What I did next was not out of altruism, as some of my fans and apologists like to espouse in years following the end of the war, and they often forget that this act was extremely controversial once it was revealed to the general public.  No, in some way I was motivated by a foalish desire to prove this mad ideologue wrong, and, by helping her, place her more in my debt than before and thus ensure some kind of dependent loyalty.  In truth, in the ten seconds it took for me to come to that decision I was absolutely agonising over it, and not least because it required some small sacrifice on my part.

I held out my hooves, pointed at the nymph with my muzzle, and said, “Give her to me and she can feed off my love.  Just tell me what to do.”

Odonata’s hooves wrapped tighter around the frail body of her daughter.  The raw incredulity plastered over the rigid, armoured contours of her face was most evident in her eyes -- they boggled, and I could almost see the well-oiled gears of that sharp, cunning mind of hers turning, trying to sift through my display of kindness for the golden specks of self-interest.  If she knew me, and she did in more than one sense of the word, then those ulterior motives would be positively glittering amongst the filth.  Yet those cold calculations were nothing against the equally cold fact that she needed my help and I was offering it freely, at least at face value.

“Odonata,” I said.  “I am offering help.  If it makes you feel better, I can order you to take it.”

She sighed, her shoulders slumping in what was another unsettlingly equine gesture, and placed her infant in my hooves.  I had never held a pony foal before, let alone a Changeling nymph, but I’d seen my governess hold a few newborns years ago and it didn’t seem all that complicated.  However, Elytra was surprisingly heavy for a newly-hatched nymph and I damn near dropped the poor thing on the table.

The creature felt cold and slimy in my hooves, as one would probably expect from an oversized bug.  My instinct to pull my hooves back might not have been entirely to do with her unexpected weight, perhaps.  Her head was limp, lolling on a neck too thin to support it, so I held it up with my hoof as I pulled Elytra onto my lap.  Her eyes, disconcertingly pony-like, stared directly into mine with that strange, unblinking manner foals do when they stare at ponies.  Yet these were pale, watery, and stark against the slick black chitin.  They were, to my sinking horror, pale blue, like mine.

“Think of the ponies you love and who love you,” said Odonata.  She perched on the edge of her cushion like a gargoyle, her tall, broad form dwarfing mine as Celestia’s would but without the motherly warmth.  “It won’t work if you only think of yourself.”

Even when I was trying to help her starving infant she couldn’t resist trying to mock me, but that she still seemed not to know that I was the very last pony who I loved and who reciprocated was something of a reassurance.  There were still some things that I could keep to myself, at least.  However, trying to think of a pony who fulfilled that criteria proved to be rather more difficult than I imagine it would be for most normal ponies.  

A commoner would pick an immediate family member first, if he was a bachelor like me, but a family such as mine is not sustained by filial affection for one another -- the parents’ union is born of dynastic manoeuvring; the eldest-born foal is groomed from birth merely to be the next link in the great chain; and the siblings wallow in the jealousy that comes with not being born first.  As for friends, I had my little gang of sycophants and hangers-on growing up, Second Fiddle among them, but there was no affection between us, save for a few individuals whom I have not seen in years.  Today there were merely associates, work colleagues, and fellow nobles with whom I was expected to exchange witty badinage with in the club and at events in the Canterlot season - enjoyable company perhaps, but certainly nothing approaching love.

That narrowed it down to two candidates, which was a depressing prospect whichever way one looks at it.  The first was Princess Twilight Sparkle.  Lust was certainly present as far as she was concerned, but any prospect of romantic love had been thoroughly extinguished.  However, I think it was safe to say that there remained at least some sort of friendship between us, albeit one that had taken something of a beating in the aftermath of our drunken liaison.  She was, after all, one of very few ponies who would speak with me on an almost even level, without the awareness of the gulf between the common ponies and me granted by my regal title.  That, I thought, had to count for something.

The other was Princess Celestia.  The figurative mother of all ponykind, she certainly enjoyed the love of almost all of her subjects, and she was still more of a mother to me than my actual mother.  The all-too brief holidays spent in Canterlot Castle were the closest that I might have had to what one might call a ‘normal’ foalhood, albeit one still largely isolated from my fellow scamps, but at least I could explore, play, and learn without the expectations forced upon me by others.  Though she could do little about the deficiencies in my soul that made me grow up to be the stallion I am now, I like to think that had it not been for her intervention I might have turned out far worse.  Those brief memories, both faded by time and polished by it, were treasured.

Imagine, what it might feel like to be a tube of toothpaste squeezed when one’s valet prepares one’s toothbrush in the morning, and that might come close to the sensation of being fed upon by a Changeling.  It was a tightening sensation all over, as though the air itself wrapped around my entire body and began to very gradually strangle the life out of me.  A snake had slithered inside my rib cage, wrapped its length around my rapidly-beating heart, and sunk its fangs into the straining flesh.  The ends of my hooves tingled with pins and needles, my vision swam and golden stars danced before my eyes.  I was distantly aware of the guards rushing to my side, and the sound of them arguing with Odonata registered as though my ears were stuffed with cotton wool.  The pain faded, taking with it the horror of what I had lived through these past years, and everything felt delightfully numb, comfortable even.  Perhaps, I thought in an abstracted manner, I could merely surrender to this oblivion and never feel a thing again.

Then it was over.  Whatever it was released its grip upon me and I slumped into the cushion as though I had been dropped onto it, letting its plush softness absorb my battered frame.  The sensation of something being drawn out of me had gone, but now there was a strange lack of a feeling within me, noticeable only for its absence.  Nevertheless I was back, and awareness flooded into my being like a champagne poured into a flute.

The two guards were on either side of me, swords drawn and aimed at Odonata, who sat and almost dared the two to strike her with that arrogant sneer on her face.  She might be unable to harness magic and her body might be damaged, but I was absolutely not about to assume that she had truly been rendered harmless.  So, for their own safety I raised a hoof and waved them off, and they reluctantly complied, sheathing their swords.

Elytra wriggled in my hooves, flailing her tiny limbs to grasp at nothing.  Life returned into her tiny form -- she giggled and babbled the usual nonsense that pony foals do, but it was interspersed with a thoroughly alien-sounding chittering and the odd high-pitched squeak.  Her ice-blue eyes were fixated upon mine, and I found myself staring back.  The sinking feeling that this infant might somehow be mine returned, and with it the normal emotions that an ordinary pony feels when presented with an adorable newborn of any race or species was quite rudely shoved out by that familiar sense of revulsion.

I looked up, tearing my gaze from what I was starting to suspect might be my daughter, to see Odonata watching in a state of complete utter incomprehension.  She had perched so far forward on her seat that she might fall off her cushion and flatten the coffee table between us.  Her eyes were as wide as saucers, vast black pits a particularly slim mare might lose a hoof in, and her heavy-set chest was panting with short, sharp breaths.

Odonata took her daughter from my proffered hooves, her own trembling, and held the tiny thing tightly to her broad, armoured chest.  “I…”  She looked at her foal, who giggled and chittered away as she drummed her small hooves against heavy chitin, then back at me.  Her thin, lipless mouth gaped open, and her eyes became rimmed with- were those tears?  The maw closed and she swallowed hard.  “I don’t understand.”

“What’s there to understand?”  My voice sounded dry and strained as though I had been shouting at a gaggle of slovenly soldiers who dared to turn up to parade with bits of uniform missing.  “I couldn’t bear to see a foal starve to death.”

“You just sacrificed a part of yourself to help a Changeling for no benefit or advantage.”  Odonata squinted her eyes at me.  “None that I can see.”

I rose to my hooves, though a sudden rush of vertigo threatened to send me crashing into the coffee table.  Whatever part of myself I had ‘sacrificed’ appeared to have been much greater than I had anticipated, and I cursed myself for not asking about side effects first.  

“You spoke about strength and weakness earlier,” I said, once I’d straightened myself up and the room stopped lurching like a ship’s cabin in a storm.  “Equestria’s strength, its true strength, is friendship.  That is what allows those whom you call ‘weak’ to stand up together and fight Chrysalis’ tyranny, and what will allow us to prevail without succumbing to your barbarism.”

“Tell that to the Changelings and ponies you gassed,” she said, her sharp, clipped voice regaining its domineering tone as before.  “Such ideals are inevitable casualties of war.  Each time you put them aside in the name of victory you will find it becomes that much easier to do it again, and again, until you have abandoned them without even knowing it.”  

With that, the glimpse of vulnerability, that crack in Odonata’s masque was smoothed over and repaired with the work of a skilled restorationist.  Nevertheless, beneath it all that crack remained.

“You started it,” I snapped, tiring of hearing the same old nonsense from her, or perhaps, deep down, I feared that she could be right.  I remembered that moment at Twilight Sparkle’s party, which now felt like a lifetime away, and her words rang clearly through my thoughts like a bell - ‘But what use is friendship in war? How can it survive against all this hate?’.

“I never thought this would happen to me,” she said, shaking her head.  “I’m ‘going pastel’.”

“What?” I blurted out.

“Drones, ones with weak wills, who spend too long undercover sometimes forget their duty to the Queen and the Hives and bond with the ponies they feed off.  Gradually they become more and more pony-like in thought -- it’s like an infection.  They call it ‘going pastel’, but the official term is ‘sympathising’.  Either way, Chrysalis calls it treason.”

“Perhaps it’s just the Magic of Friendship,” I said.  “Besides, I think the ship has already sailed and docked at Port Treason now, if you’re truly helping us.”

“Like I said, me and my daughter’s survival is now dependent on Equestria winning this war,” said Odonata.  “And the Changelings as a race.  Whatever it takes.”

We stared at one another across the coffee table in uncomfortable silence, and I was suddenly aware of just how tired I was.  Lack of sleep, my habitual drinking, and frequent nightmares meant that I felt tired for most of the day, except for those brief moments of being shoved into mortal terror where adrenaline invigorated both body and mind.  This, however, felt rather worse, like the aftermath of an all-night cruise through the more lascivious districts of Canterlot when one was woken by the delicate birdsong from just outside the police cell window.  I would feel better with some strong Trottingham tea, I thought, and failing that I might send Cannon Fodder to scrounge some decent coffee.  

“I have things to do,” I said, leaning on the most basic of excuses.  “This war won’t win itself.”

Odonata sighed, nodded, and turned her head to look out of the miserable excuse for a window in this cell, where the faint drizzle had turned earnestly into rain.  “Thank you,” she said, apparently unable to meet my gaze, “for helping me.”

“I did it for your foal,” I said.  “Any pony would have done that.”

I turned to leave, and as I crossed the short distance to the door where the two guards stood they watched me warily.  They exchanged a glance, silently daring one another to be the first to say something.  The one on the left proved to be the braver of the two; he gave me a concerned look and said quietly, “Sir?”

“I’m quite alright.”  I was about to leave when a thought abruptly pushed its way through the mental fog -- soldiers will gossip, and what I had just done would spread through the fortress and across the camps like a case of the Trots.  I dreaded reading the tabloid headlines for this fiasco.  Taking a technique from Auntie Luna’s book, I made a show of reading the names on their tags.  “You two are the only ponies who saw this.  Am I correct?”

They exchanged a sideways glance with one another and nodded fiercely.

“Excellent,” I continued.  “So, if what you just saw gets out I’ll know exactly which two ponies told everypony else.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir!” they chorused together, saluting with impeccable precision.  

Satisfied that they wouldn’t dare risk the wrath of the one commissar with the reputation for being both fair and reasonable, I trotted straight out of the room with a mind to go to my office and sleep for the rest of the afternoon.

One of the first orders I had given after the battle, after a double gin and tonic from the officer’s mess, was the installation of lights inside the castle, as part of the general cleaning-up process to make this place worthy enough to accommodate a prince of the realm.  The formerly dark and gloomy corridor that stretched along much of the length of the outer wall was now softly lit by ceiling lamps at regular intervals, though the cold, bleak stonework would have to remain until I could scrounge enough from the budget to afford carpets and tasteful wall decorations.  This allowed me, however, to see the pony leaning against the wall just outside my office door, apparently waiting for me.

Beige.  The stallion was beige in every sense of the word, both in appearance and temperament.  One’s eyes almost seemed to slide off of him, so entirely non-descript and dull he was -- the very metaphysical ideal of the sort of middle-aged white collar worker who has just worked through his mid-life crisis and has settled in for a lifetime of managerial mediocrity.  He was slightly overweight and wore a dark suit that was still too baggy for him.  Small but intelligent eyes peered through thick, square spectacles as he watched me walk through the corridor.  A worn briefcase was on the floor by his hooves.

“Your Highness?” he asked, standing straighter and away from the wall he was leaning on.  I nodded and he smiled.  “I’m from the Ministry of War.”

“You mean S.M.I.L.E.?” I said.

“That is a sub-department of the Ministry of War, yes.”  He extended his hoof for me to shake, which I did so hesitantly.  Odonata had said one of those secret squirrels had asked her questions, and here he was apparently taking an interest in me.  I wouldn’t normally be afraid of a fat, middle-aged stallion with creaky joints, but here standing before me was the rare exception.  “You were expecting a handsome young stallion in a tuxedo?”

“Of course not.”  I checked my watch.  “It’s not after six o’clock yet.”

He chuckled, and even that sounded beige.  “And you needn’t worry, sir, you aren’t the subject of an investigation.”

Yet.  I like to think that I’d become rather skilled at masking my true emotions behind either aristocratic coldness or heroic bravado depending on the circumstance, so when this pony who hadn’t even given me his name (and I didn’t want to know it, for the less I had to do with an organisation like S.M.I.L.E. the better) appeared to have picked up on the knot of anxiety I had been trying to suppress was more than a little alarming.  Then again, I was rather tired after having been fed upon just a few minutes earlier.  Even then, I wondered if this was just a stock phrase he used to unnerve whomever he spoke to, and in this case it was certainly working.  At least this damned spook here gave me a newfound appreciation for General Market Garden’s bluntness -- one was always assured that she truly spoke her mind.

“That’s reassuring,” I said, feeling anything but reassured.  “Apologies, I assume you’ve been waiting to see me?  Shall we go into my office?”

“Oh no, I wouldn’t want to impose.  I know you’re very busy.”  The beige stallion picked up his briefcase, and even his magic aura was a rather dull shade of beige.  It clicked open and he picked out a small manila file stuffed with papers.  “I only wanted to give you this.”

I accepted the proffered envelope.  It clearly had seen some use in its short life, with the flimsy cardboard frayed in the edges and the distinctive ring-shape of a coffee mug stain almost in the middle of it.  The label in the upper right corner stated in fading printed letters ‘Dossier - The Black Prince’.

“What is this?” I asked.

“It’s you,” said the beige stallion as he closed up his briefcase, struggling a little with one of the clasps that had been bent out of shape from use.  “The Changelings have been keeping files on prominent Equestrian figures to help with their infiltration schemes.  They probably started after Queen Chrysalis was almost exposed by Princess Twilight Sparkle when she was pretending to be Princess Mi Amore Cadenza.  I thought you might find it an interesting read, sir.”

[The Changeling reforms to their military also extended to their infiltrator corps.  While cells tended to operate independently of one another, the sharing of information was centralised by the Queen’s Hive.  Dossiers were kept on a wide range of individuals, not just ‘prominent Equestrian figures’; files on griffons, donkeys, and seemingly random ponies from all over Equestria and beyond were discovered in the Changeling archives.  These dossiers had an idiosyncratic naming system, which was a colour associated with the subject followed by an identifying characteristic.  Surviving dossiers are held in the Canterlot archives and access is heavily restricted.]

They could have at least used my actual name and title.  I was both rather curious and a little afraid to see what information the Changelings held on me, and for whatever reason I hoped that there were certain large gaps in their records.  If anything, the contents therein would give a potential enemy of mine ample material for blackmail.

“We’re also curious to see how accurate their intelligence is,” the beige stallion carried on.  “If you could give that a read and point out any mistakes or omissions then that should give us a good idea of the quality of their sources.”

I thanked him and he went on his way, lumbering down the corridor with an awkward gait.  Though I had thought to spend the rest of the afternoon napping, the contents of this folder intrigued me.  That I was a ‘prominent Equestrian figure’ as the beige stallion had put it was a given, but having been accidentally catapulted into the public eye as some sort of bally hero I had also earned the unwelcome attention of the enemy and their Queen herself.  A nap could wait, as my curiosity was stronger.  Well, a certain saying involving the death of cats comes to mind.

The office I had procured was small and modest, as befitting a prince of the realm who had graciously given up on some luxuries for the benefit of the war effort.  Not all luxuries of course, mind you; I made a detour to the drinks cabinet on the way to the desk to pour myself a glass of vintage port.  There were a few messages and letters for me waiting on the desk, and most of it was drivel that I could allow Cannon Fodder, who occupied the office next door, to sort out on my behalf.  One letter came from an unexpected source, Rarity, who thanked me both for advising Sweetie Belle to settle her problems with one of her bullying school chums by challenging her to a duel and for the sword I had sent her, but informed me that she will be returning the deadly weapon and dealing with the issue by speaking with the teacher.  How in Equestria was that young unicorn filly going to learn how to defend her honour without duelling?

First, I popped next door to see how Cannon Fodder and Saguaro were getting on with the day’s paperwork.  The latter proved rather difficult to get rid of, frankly, having imprinted on me like a baby bird after being flushed from his cocoon, and so I decided that if he was going to take up space here and occasionally follow me around, asking inane questions about basic Equestrian life along the way, that I might as well put him to work with my aide.  Cannon Fodder seemed to derive some measure of enjoyment out of having somepony to boss around for once, and put him to use delivering messages on my behalf.  That at least kept him out of my business for hours at a time and would go some way to satisfying his newfound curiosity about the strange ponies from the north.

My aide was stuffing his face with biscuits between reading requisition reports when I left him instructions that I was not to be disturbed for the rest of the evening (I intended to nap after reading the document, but I didn’t tell him that).  Saguaro had arranged wooden boxes in the corner to the height of a pony, and he would climb this tower and then leap off, wings flapping frantically but to no avail, and he plummeted to the ground.  I watched him try to teach himself to fly three more times before leaving him to it; the Changelings had clipped his wings but that didn’t discourage him.

It was with some trepidation that I opened the folder, feeling rather wary of its contents.  Inside was, as expected, a series of papers.  What was surprising, however, was that the text on these was clearly typed with typewriters, and the image of an office of Changeling typists hammering away at the keys to produce these dossiers brought me some amusement.  

A photograph of me was pinned to the first page by a paperclip.  It was an older photo, before Auntie Luna had forced me into this damned uniform and sent me to the front with little more than a lacklustre pep-talk.  If I remember correctly, I was at a gala and, being in a good mood, I flashed the paparazzi a charming grin, instead of taking his camera and attempting to insert it lengthwise in an orifice that is often mistaken for his mouth.  There was a small standing mirror on the desk, which I used to make sure that I looked the best I possibly could before attending meetings or hurling myself into mortal peril again.  Curious, I held up the photograph to the mirror and adjusted myself in the seat until my face was fully visible.

I tried to replicate the grin, and though the muscles in my face eased into that familiar expression as naturally as can be, there seemed to be some unidentifiable quality that the photo possessed that my reflection lacked.  It was a sense of innocence, if one could call anything I had done as a youth ‘innocent’, but the younger-me had no inkling that this would be as good as it would get, and that everything was largely downhill from there on.  That photo must have been taken no more than four years ago, but judging by my reflection I appeared to have aged at least ten.  The photo and the thoughts that it had conjured were making me feel depressed, so I put it down and turned my attention to the document itself.

The first few pages contained basic facts that were merely a matter of public record: name, titles (that one took up a good few paragraphs), date of birth, and so on.  As far as I could tell it was all correct with the exception of my weight, as after getting gassed I had lost a not-insignificant number of pounds.  A family tree was included, albeit truncated and it only extended back half a dozen generations.

The next page was a series of tables of statistics titled Abilities, Skills, Equipment, and Spells, among a great many other things.  Some of the entries in these tables had seemingly arbitrary numbers assigned to them, and none of them made any sense to me at all.  According to the Changelings I possessed seventeen ‘charisma’, whatever in Tartarus that was supposed to mean.  I only wasted about half a minute trying to decipher it all before giving up -- it was probably something best left to the secret squirrels in Canterlot.  What little I could comprehend mentioned a ‘truly singular’ skill with fencing, with a horn-written note advising that to engage Yours Truly in single combat with a sword was to invite certain defeat, which I thought was over-selling it a little.  A portion about magical ability noted that I seemed to have the potential for developing ‘above average’ magical power, but that I was much too ‘lazy’ to put in the effort to learn.  I don’t know about ‘above average’, but even if I could I’d say I simply don’t have much cause to; it was all rather boring anyway.

The next few sheafs contained a written summary of my life thus far, from a rather uneventful birth to just after I had presented myself to Market Garden and almost everything in between.  It was in places quite vague but in others incredibly detailed; for example, a foalhood spent travelling with my father through Coltcutta, Griffonstone, and Zebrica was concluded in a single sentence, but an incident when I was seven years old that resulted in the hospitalisation of my then prep school music teacher was described in striking detail.  I could only assume that the Changelings had somehow gained access to my academic record, likely had a good laugh at the vast sea of F’s in everything besides fencing and baking, and picked out a few things that they thought I might use as anecdotes.  From there it went on: the disappearance of my father; my mother’s deterioration; living with Auntie Celestia; brief military career (the first time around, where I did nothing of note); and so on and so forth.

The very last entry, however, caused me some alarm.  I sat very still and very silent there until flank-cramp made it necessary to move, as my overactive anxiety presented each and every one of the possible consequences of the Changelings, S.M.I.L.E., and Faust-knows who else out there having read this.  And that was before I could get to the equally disturbing question of how such information was acquired.  Right at the bottom, written in shockingly neat and precise horn-writing in green ink as a new addition to the file, was the following:

“Friday 13th April - The subject engaged in sexual intercourse with Princess Twilight Sparkle (see Dossier: Purple Smart) at a party.  Potential for royal scandal - high.  Suggest coordination with media infiltration teams for maximum effect - allegations of impropriety i.e coercion, pregnancy, etc. need not be true, but the accusation alone may be sufficiently damaging to the subject’s reputation.”