He blinked a few times, then slowed to a halt in the air. He listened. After a minute, he wondered if he'd imagined it, but then he heard it again.
He put his musings on hold as he realised something was down here that shouldn't be. He also realised he was excited, not annoyed, by the intrusion. Maybe he had been down here too long, if he was getting excited at such a trivial thing.
After a brief internal debate, he became Riddle Tome, deciding that he didn't mind the Gryffindor straightforwardness he would have to embody to satisfy the phoenix fire. At the moment, he enjoyed the idea of hunting down the intruder, and his human self couldn't move through the air without resistance like his thestral self could. Tom Riddle made currents of wind when he moved quickly. Riddle Tome, when he thought of freedom, did not affect the air so much.
Except he quickly found, to his surprised displeasure, that he could not feel free so easily anymore. Just as displeasing, he came across the intruders – black, insect-like ponies – at the very moment of realising it. He did not slow down in time to avoid causing a breeze in their direction.
"What was that?" asked one of the creatures.
"Don't know," said another. "Maybe the cave opens up somewhere."
"Doesn't smell like outside air."
"Probably nothing," said what looked like the leader after casting a few standard detection spells. "Come on. We need to find a good place to put her."
Thankfully, most creatures are stupid.
Riddle decided to follow invisibly behind the small entourage, noticing with curiosity that they were hauling a pink alicorn behind them. She was inside a cage, on top of a wheeled cart, hitched to two of the creatures. It was then that he experienced a nagging Gryffindor impulse to jump to her rescue.
Information first, action second, he tried to tell that internal fire.
Quizzically, it seemed to accept this, settling down to a low simmer.
Interesting. Phoenixes team up with wizards and witches because they are not wise. Riddle knew that much. Does that mean he could guide his own fire like wizards guide their familiars?
Perhaps this is a good time to run some tests in order to understand that internal fire more precisely. He promoted a few ideas to conscious attention to see what the fire thought of them.
Thoughts of leaving, of doing nothing – not as a strategy of delayed action, but as a result of complete apathy for the fate of the pink pony – produced that same vomit feeling that thoughts of cheating Dumbledore's test had produced. Annoying.
Thoughts of intervention were mostly acceptable. Even intervening on behalf of the insect ponies, interestingly enough, was more acceptable than doing nothing at all, although a bit more testing revealed that it was only acceptable if they turned out to be the wronged party, somehow.
He was tempted to do just that out of spite for the phoenix fire. Take the side of the insect ponies just to go against the grain of the Mirror's stupid plots.
Back came the vomit feeling, a bit stronger than last time.
The nearest creature wrinkled its nose. "Anyling else feel that?"
Riddle's full attention was torn back to his targets.
"Feel what?" asked one of the farther ones.
"Like... vomiting?"
Riddle sighed internally. Magical empaths? What a wonderful time to learn that little fact. He needs to get the fire under control. It's still 'vomiting' at the thought of taking their side.
Fine. He would do everything in his power to prove the insects are the wronged party, and then he would take their side.
The fire didn't seem to care, just so long as he didn't deliberately spite it, and just so long as he actually did something about the situation in front of him.
And he would do something. After he gathered information, lest he make the situation worse out of ignorance.
The fire simmered down again.
"Huh," said the creature who had 'felt' him, looking confused. "It's gone now."
"Where was it coming from?" asked the leader.
"Up."
"If you felt a pony vomiting," said the leader after his detection charms once again produced no results, "maybe we're beneath a hospital or something. Your range is bigger than ours."
"Yeah, but I didn't think it was that big."
"Or maybe you just had a bad breakfast," snorted another.
"I wish," said the first. "I haven't eaten since yesterday. I'm starving."
"We all are."
"Yeah, but we can kiss that goodbye after tomorrow," said a third.
"Doesn't help me right now though."
"I'll get you something to eat after this," said the leader. "Keep moving."
Hm... creatures acting out of desperate hunger is a sad situation, right? Moralists would say they deserve sympathy. Yes, that's the perfect thing to satisfy this cursed internal fire. Now he just needs to prove the pink pony had been in the wrong. Or rather, he needs an opportunity to prove it.
Invisibly, inaudibly, and weightlessly, Riddle followed the creatures as they wandered the cavern network. His notice-me-not and forget-me wards seemed to work perfectly, redirecting the insects whenever they wandered too close to his workshop/hideout.
So, they aren't all that magically powerful. Or at the very least, they're not magically perceptive. That's good to know.
Eventually, they found a place that the leader deemed acceptable, then deposited the cage on the ground. Once they did...
"Split up and establish wards," said the leader. "Groups of two. Buzz if something happens. I'll stay behind to guard the cage."
They all nodded and followed orders.
Riddle, still currently in his pony body, took a very small amount of time to consider his approach. It had to be fast, it had to be decisive, and he had to control his emotions so he wouldn't be perceived until it was too late.
Simple enough.
He maintained his invisibility as he flew through the air towards the lone, remaining creature, then dropped his transparency the moment he saw signs of reaction in the insect. He met the creature's gaze with an effort of Legilimency, bringing his own empathy magic to the fore. He would put thoughts of 'I'm following his orders' into the creature's mind before anything else, like he had once done with Professor Sprout.
And then something utterly strange happened.
Even as he felt the creature's mind accept the command of his own, he also felt himself being pulled, as if he were transferring his consciousness via his horcrux ritual.
A moment later he was being assaulted by a swirl of Legilimency probes and questions. His standard barrier of a perfect false personality did not seem to satisfy the probes. On reflex, he resorted to the old kind of barrier: he pretended to be an utterly simple mind, like a rock. That caused the probes to diminish, then stop entirely.
When he took stock of the situation outside his mind, he found himself in a familiar, yet unintended situation: he seemed to be possessing someone else.
The body he occupied was not too alien, for it was pony-shaped, but he felt distinctly different in it. He also felt as though he was on the ground. The creature he'd accidentally occupied had likely collapsed due to the force of the magical/mental blow. It had happened to Quirrell too, back when that man first found his Horcrux.
His own pony body had almost certainly collapsed as well, for it no longer had a consciousness to command it. Thankfully, even though it was abandoned, his body has a number of failsafes on it, including charms that would sustain its functions if he was gone for extended periods of time. Just one more precaution on the path to immortality. He also intelligently positioned his only Horcrux some time ago.
Riddle had done something similar after his first return, setting Horcruxes in smart places to ensure he would never be trapped in his Horcruxes again. Like Horcruxing a wizard's glasses, or Horcruxing the doorknob of the Leaky Cauldron in Diagon Alley. He'd thought of Horcruxing a few silver sickles, but individual coins sometimes fell out of circulation. With that practice under his belt, it had been a simple matter to think of a good place for the Cloak.
At the moment, the Cloak of Invisibility is being used as Keen Eye's bedsheet – the kind that rests directly beneath the unicorn's body when he sleeps, but never covers him. A memory charm, a notice-me-not charm, and an extremely minor compulsion charm are working in tandem to ensure that Mr. Eye notices nothing awry about his new bedsheet and doesn't swap it out for something else.
Before enacting that plot, the Hallow had responded to Riddle's willful effort for it to change shape into a flat piece of fabric. He suspected it to have that ability, or something like it, ever since it changed from a human-shaped cloak to a pony-shaped cloak. If the Cloak hadn't been able to change shape so easily, he would have modified his plot, or gone with a different idea. As it stands, Riddle now has a reliable unicorn body to possess in case his own body dies.
With Mr. Potter gone and unable to deliver the Cloak by hoof if the worst happens, Riddle needed to automate the process. Now, like clockwork, a pony unicorn is in contact with his Horcrux every night. If this Changeling possession goes sideways somehow, it would be a simple matter to possess Mr. Eye and resurrect himself. If the situation goes well, he might be able to take the Cloak back from its current, ignoble location. Or he might leave it there, just for added options and security. He knows where it is; he imbued it with a locating charm so he can track it if need be.
That, along with a few other Horcrux-related ideas, had come to him during his meditations, in part because he realized how close he came to utter disaster. If that reflected Killing Curse had struck him in the vault, if he hadn't dodged in time and his body had been killed, he would have been trapped in the Cloak, which at that point in time had been inside his other cloak, which meant he might have been trapped indefinitely again.
A pony who was NOT Celestia or Luna might have touched it at some point and returned his freedom, if Luna or Celestia allowed the normal cloak on his dead body's back to be rummaged through. Or he might have been forced to possess Princess Luna, if she had been the one to first touch his cloak under that hypothetical scenario. Or more likely he would have requested her aid, since she could be too powerful to possess, and she has already Vowed to help him. But that's a level of exposure and gamble that he would not willingly take. Not ever.
Now, at least, he's in somewhat safe territory again.
In short, he isn't panicking. He's able to act without urgency or alarm. At the moment, his (the insect's) eyes are closed and his (its) body is unmoving on the ground. He doesn't trust he can move it properly, so he didn't try. For now, he would keep his focus inward.
"Ugh..." groaned a mental voice that wasn't his. "What just happened?"
As dominant personality, he had the choice to keep his host either completely suppressed or something like a helpless passenger. As Defense Professor, Lord Voldemort had given Quirinus Quirrell no freedom at all, keeping him completely unconscious at all times. The man had been a perfect Occlumens. Attempting to deal with him had not been worth the effort.
As Tom Riddle, or rather, as Riddle Tome, he needs information from this creature, so he was going with the helpless passenger option for now. His Legilimency command to obey instructions should have been ingrained before the accidental transfer. This creature is no Occlumens.
"I arrived," he replied mildly in a mental voice of his own. "Can you hear me?"
"Uh..." came a reply, slow and confused. "My... King? Why are you... No... King... that's not right..."
"It is exactly right," he thought in a confident, authoritarian tone. "I am your King. You are my servant."
"No..." replied the creature. Then it rallied, seeming to tap some core magic within itself. "No! I have a Queen, not a King! Who are you?!"
Thorax is loyal to his Hive.
Even when he's following orders that he privately thinks are bad for the Hive, he does it in the way that causes the least amount of damage. He's been getting more and more of those orders recently, as the Queen revealed more and more of her master plan. But as a drone, he can't disobey her.
He literally can't. He is part of the Hive, and she is his Queen. If she says to jump off a cliff, he would jump off a cliff, then open his wings and fly to safety. If she says he can't fly to safety, he would teleport to safety. If she says he can't fly or teleport, he would find a cliff that's over a body of water, then swim to shore. But he would jump off a cliff. There's no getting around that. Ever. She is the Queen.
And so, when a male voice occupied the place in his thoughts that the Queen sometimes occupied, he was confused. Had a king taken over? Was Chrysalis deposed?
But then his thoughts became less jumbled as the surprise and confusion faded. He drew on the strength of the Hive, who followed a Queen, not a King, and confronted the invader-
An instant before his connection to the Hive was severed.
"So THAT'S what sucked me in," said the intruder. "Well, that's enough of THAT."
He would have screamed if he could control his own mouth. He felt like a grub. Like less than a grub. He began panicking, his Hive was gone, he was lost, he was abandoned, he was nothing-
"Don't be such a foal."
At once, his connection returned... only, it didn't. His mind was connected to the Hive, but he couldn't interact with it. He couldn't talk to anyling.
"Better now?" asked a sarcastic voice.
"What-" said Thorax, his mind having trouble focusing after such a traumatic loss. He felt like crying, but he had no eyes. He felt like screaming, but he had no mouth. "What did you just do?" was all he could think to ask, since he couldn't do anything else. Knowing what had happened to his connection with the Hive was far more important than knowing about the intruder.
"I closed your... hm... I don't have a term for it. Let's call it your inner eye," said the intruder. "After you whined for me to open it again, I established a false personality as a barrier. At the moment, all anyone will see of your mind is unconsciousness."
"You... what?"
"Curious," said the intruder. "Your species maintains a constant form of Legilimency on each other, and yet you do not know Occlumency? Or even that the connection can be forced shut? Closing the window through which it accesses your mind shouldn't have been physically painful. I don't know why you were panicking."
Before he could come up with any reply, words began to reach their consciousnesses. Through his ears, not the Hive.
"Captain!" shouted Gossamer.
Thorax felt a buzz hit the 'false personality', which didn't reply in any way.
"I'm calling everyling back," said Silk. Another buzz came and was ignored.
"Is he okay?" came Gossamer's voice again.
Thorax felt hooves on his forehead, then a horn on his chest. "He's alive," said Silk, sighing in relief.
"What do you think happened?"
"Probably an ambush. Look. One of the Night Guard must have followed us."
"He's not wearing armor."
"Maybe he's undercover?"
"Maybe. At least the captain took him down. Let's get him in the cage. Give the Princess some company, eh?"
There were sounds of a body being dragged, a cage being opened, Gossamer and Silk grunting, and finally the cage closing again.
Then there was light.
"Yup," said one of the insect ponies, its face filling his entire field of view, the tip of its hoof lifting his eyelid. "The captain's definitely out of it."
"That stinks," said the other one, who had taken guard beside the cage. "He was supposed to get me something to eat."
"Well, maybe he did," said the one who was staring into his eye. "Why don't you give that pony a taste?"
"Vampires?" Riddle thought, only now noticing the fangs – which were currently taking up a good portion of his field of view. "Brilliant. That's going to be a joy to cure." As in, make-a-whole-new-body-using-non-infected-blood amounts of joy. He might even have to re-do some of his old fusion rituals.
"Hey!" objected his host. "We're not vamponies!"
From the corner of his still-open eye, Riddle watched as a hungry insect walked with purpose and a glowing green horn, then touched that horn to his unoccupied body's forehead.
"Uh... he's empty." Tap tap tap went the insect's horn. "Nothing inside."
"Is he dead?"
"Nope. Still breathing."
"Probably a full coma," said the insect, still inspecting his host body's eye. "If he was dreaming, you'd get something out of him."
"Hah!" the insect declared, pointing a hoof at his body's face. "That'll teach you to mess with our captain."
Then his current body's eye closed, the first one done with her inspections, and darkness returned.
"Amusing, aren't they?" Riddle asked his host.
He cast a wordless and hornless (and therefore invisible) spell of sound manipulation to prevent any more noise from reaching his host. Simple wizard spells often go unnoticed by ponies because they're invisible and use little magic, and this one went unnoticed by the Changelings.
"So if you aren't vamponies," he said, "what are you?"
"I don't have to tell you anything, intruder."
Riddle felt the impulse to make a mental attack in response to the obstinance... but over the past two years he'd gotten into the habit of not using Legilimency out of anger. The past eleven years, really. And he didn't want any more strange things happening. The first Legilimency attack had gotten him into this mess.
He took a moment to critically weigh his options. The game was afoot. He'd already possessed someone, even if it was an accident. What to do...
He decided that a cautious, read-only Legilimency probe would do. That, of course, would require prompting.
"True," he replied. "You don't have to tell me about your species, or the connection you have with each other, or the Queen you mentioned."
Hmm... Changelings... hive mind... stupid Queen...
"You don't have to tell me why you're here, or what you're doing, or who you are, or even your name."
Starving citizenry... infiltrate Canterlot... loyal soldier... Thorax...
That would do for now.
"You don't HAVE to tell me any of those things," Riddle agreed with the Changeling. "But don't you want what's best for your Hive?"
Thorax couldn't believe it. He had finally found someling he could honestly talk to. Er, well, somepony.
Thorax turned out to be ridiculously easy to turn. Without implanted Legilimency impulses.
A little prompting (and the promise that his thoughts were currently safe) was all it took to get the Changeling ranting about the Queen's stupidity, arrogance, incompetence, and a number of other things that threatened the Hive after over twelve centuries of safety and secrecy.
Like this ridiculous plan to impersonate a Princess, infiltrate/raid Canterlot, take control, and feed on the ponies 'forever!' That sentence grew more and more like an impersonation as it progressed.
"Are you the only one who thinks this?" Riddle asked after the Changeling's rant wound down.
"I'm one of the only ones who's allowed to think like this," Thorax replied. "Almost everyling else is stage one."
"Stage one?" asked Riddle, already using Legilimency to find the answer.
Tiered intelligence system. Stage one: Drone/Worker. Stage two: Officer. Stage three: Queen. Higher tiers require more energy. Stage one and two are semi-fluid, officers can be demoted by Queen instantly, but it takes longer to do the reverse. Food shortage means not many officers.
"Workers," Thorax answered his question. "Laborers. Don't think much, just follow orders."
"I see. And this little contingent you lead? Are they all stage one?"
"All stage two," said Thorax. "Important jobs need smart officers."
Riddle wasn't impressed by the 'smartness' of the officers. But then again, maybe stage two simply meant 'pony level intelligence', and he wasn't impressed by that either. In all likelihood, only a Queen would have the biological potential to rival his own intelligence, and if Thorax's criticisms are accurate, Chrysalis is utterly squandering that potential.
"Let me guess," Riddle posed. "Your current Queen was born into royalty? Third or fourth generation of her line, perhaps? Spoiled from birth?"
He didn't use Legilimency to extract the answer in advance; he genuinely wanted to know if his guess was right.
"Uh... yeah," said Thorax. "Her grandmother established the Hive. Why?"
"The first generation puts in the hard work to build it," thought Riddle. "The second generation, wanting to live up to their parent's example, play the role of respectable stewards. They maintain what their parents built. The third generation, which has only ever known prosperity, squanders all that they have, for they never earned it in the first place. They do not understand the concept of hard work, so they never truly understand the value of what they have, even after they lose it. They only ever understand that they want it, that they want more, or if we're past the squandering stage, that they want it back."
"That's..."
"Accurate?"
"Yeah."
"A simple enough pattern, as these things go. I'm a scholar, you know. It explains how pony society has not crumbled. Equestria's leaders still remember what it was like when Discord ruled the world, and what it was like to build and maintain their kingdom."
His host didn't say anything. Was he speechless?
"But enough dallying," Riddle declared. "I can feign unconsciousness forever, in theory, but I shouldn't. There are things to do, and at the moment I can't create a false personality to truly fool your hive mind." He could read and understand the thought patterns of others better than any other Legilimens on Earth. He couldn't perfectly pretend to be a specific intelligent being after only ten minutes of talking to them. Nobody could. In order to accomplish that... "I would have to observe your mind in action for a while, but that requires trust. Will you betray me to your Queen if I return control to you?"
"That depends," said Thorax. "Will YOU betray ME to yours?"
Riddle snorted. "They are hardly my Queens."
"Oh really?" asked Thorax. "I'm a spy, you know. I read Equestrian newspapers. I recognized your body, Court Scholar. Is this where you've been since you disappeared?"
"You believe I'm the Court Scholar?" Riddle asked with a mental tone of amusement. "Your spying needs work. My true title is the Royal Fool. Was, rather. I suppose I'm fired by now. Not that I mind. I must admit, I am dissatisfied with the state of Equestrian rulership in general."
"Let me guess," thought Thorax. "You want to overthrow them?"
He snorted again. "Hardly. I've been advising them about their military weakness for almost a year now and nothing has been done. At this point, they can get invaded for all I care. Maybe this infiltration will be a wake-up call. Assuming Celestia doesn't fry her enemies out of the sky the moment things go sideways."
"That's what I'm worried about," whined Thorax. "But Queen Chrysalis just. Won't. THINK."
Great. He'd gotten the Changeling started again.
"Look," thought Riddle. "We really DO need to get up. I will promise to help you with your problem, and I will promise not to betray you, but I need to know something first."
"What do you need to know?"
"Your Queen. Is she a malicious threat to Equestria? Would the world be a safer place without her as your Queen?"
"Oh, absolutely," Thorax answered without hesitation. "Ponies AND Changelings would be better off."
"Perfect," thought Riddle. "I'm reconnecting you to your hive and allowing you to resume control. Do as you normally would have for a while. When I'm confident I can fake your personality to your Hive I will resume control and deal with the problem. It goes entirely without saying that any attempts to betray me will be met with severe consequences. Celestia would not burn your hive from the sky because she is a kind-hearted pony. I would do it for target practice, or just for fun, if you gave me a reason. Understand?"
He felt Thorax mentally shiver. "Understood. But if the Queen gives me a direct order, I can't disobey."
"Then let us hope," thought Riddle, "she is as incompetent as you claim."
He dismissed the silencing barrier and let Thorax use his own body again.
"Get. Up."
Thorax instantly stood at hearing an order from his Queen.
"Oh?" said her surprised, mocking voice. "So you can move after all."
"Apologies, my Queen," he said, dropping to a kneel. "I was ambushed. Mental attack. Couldn't move until just now."
"Is that the truth, Thorax? Answer."
She hadn't ordered him to say the truth, only asked a question, then ordered him to answer it. But he answered truthfully anyway. "Yes, my Queen."
It wasn't the full truth, but hey, what she wouldn't know would hurt her.
"Could you at least hear me?" she asked, superiority and disdain seeping from her voice.
"No, my Queen. I only heard you say 'get up'."
"Wonderful," said Chrysalis, the word laced with sarcasm. "If you are so easily ambushed, maybe I should demote you?"
That got his heart racing. He couldn't let that happen. Not now. "It was the Court Scholar," he said, acting just as he would have and hoping his passenger wouldn't call it betrayal. "Hired by Princess Luna. He was powerful, but he's in a coma now."
"The Court Scholar?" asked Chrysalis in surprise. She walked over to the cage, inspecting its contents. "He's a thestral alright... a thestral alicorn? My, isn't that a surprise." The Queen grinned, turning on her hooves. "Change of plans," she said. "Thorax, since you captured him, you get to impersonate him. Take his effects, then go to the Night Guard team and get as much love as you can from his Princess. When you're finished, make sure she's deep asleep."
"Er... yes, my Queen."
"Love?" asked his passenger, sounding disgusted. "Don't tell me-"
"Not like that!"
Walking down the halls of the Canterlot Palace in someone else's body, disguised as himself, was an amusing experience. It was made even more amusing by the fact that he was in control. It would have been extremely amusing if he was also visible. He was even wearing his own effects; nopony would doubt it was him. But he didn't take the risk.
It wouldn't have been a problem a few... weeks? Yes, probably a few weeks ago, but Thorax spoke as if ponies were wondering where he'd been, and he didn't want to draw attention.
Riddle told his host in no uncertain terms that nopony could fake being Riddle Tome better than he could. Thorax, on the other hoof, would probably be figured out by Luna in less than a minute. Therefore, Thorax would handle the hive-mind connection, which the Changeling seemed to be able to do even when he was not in control of his body (so long as Riddle let him). Riddle would handle the Princess.
Thorax had taken care of the initial disguise, though. The magic was fascinating – a perfect copy of Riddle Tome, even down to his voice, though Thorax had never heard him speak normally. It was more thorough than the best Metamorphmagus transformation, despite taking no conscious effort of visualisation at all, as far as Riddle could tell. It did take a good amount of magic, however, and the effort to maintain it was more draining than Riddle thought it should have been.
"Why is your body so sluggish?"
"I haven't eaten in a while," Thorax replied. "OR slept. Maybe if you hadn't distracted me earlier, I could have asked the Queen for some lo- er, for some energy."
"I see," thought Riddle. "How can we get more without her?"
"Did the princess care for you?"
"She claims she did."
"Then that's where we'll get more."
"Won't she notice if she is fed upon?"
"Do extroverts notice when others are uplifted by their presence?"
"Yes."
"Do they consider it being fed upon?"
"No."
"There you have it."
"Interesting. Ponies are not harmed at all by Changelings who feed from them?"
"They are if we try to take the emotions, like Gossamer did earlier. But we only do that when we have to. It doesn't taste all that good, and it's not as filling. Not like when the emotions are freely given. That's why we like to live in secret. And it's why we can change like this, to collect genuine love from unsuspecting ponies."
"Interesting," Riddle repeated.
"My turn for a question," thought Thorax. "How are you invisible? And why isn't it taking up my... energy stores?"
"Personal reasons," Riddle said, and left it at that.
His connection to his Deathly Hallow Horcrux was still strong, and he could tap that connection wherever he was, even in other bodies. It was a power that was completely his own, fueled by his own magic, tied to his own consciousness.
No matter where he hides the Cloak, it will always be his Horcrux. That it is immune to the energy/magic tradeoff system of Changeling biology did not come as a surprise. Most other spells he wanted to cast did require Changeling energy, however, to his consternation. It helped that wizard spells are less magic-intensive than unicorn spells on average, but it was still annoying.
"You know..." thought Thorax. "If you're a pony, why can't YOU provide the energy? If your normal body doesn't have any because you're here with me, then it should all be here, right? Can't you just... I don't know... energize yourself, or something?"
Riddle chuckled internally. He was beginning to enjoy Thorax's company. "I don't think that will work."
"Why not?"
"You said that your species calls the energy 'love', yes?"
"Yeah."
"There you have it," said Riddle. Just that, and nothing more. "We're almost there," he thought. "You said her guards have been replaced by Changelings?"
"Yes."
"What about the secretary?"
"Um... no."
"Great," sighed Riddle. "I'm dropping the invisibility and returning control to you. Convince your allies, but make sure I am in control by the time I speak with the secretary."
"Got it. Um... you won't betray me, right?"
"It is not my intention to," thought Riddle. "But Luna can detect honesty, and this situation might influence her perceptions. As with your own Queen, let's hope nothing goes wrong. If it does, I'll play it by ear. Do not panic if I say something that seems to betray you on the surface; I did not panic when you did the same."
"Okay."
It took no time at all for Thorax to convince the Night Guard. One 'buzz' and a quick hive-mind order later and they were ready to admit him entrance. Now just came the actual pony.
But that also took no time at all. Or effort. Or even a single word. She was knocking on the court door the moment she saw him, her spell of communication penetrating the wards – as it was designed to do when calling for the Princess's attention.
"What is it, Dusk?" asked the voice of Princess Luna.
"He's back!" she said excitedly.
The doors flew open in a burst of magic, to the startlement of the two Changelings standing guard.
Riddle quickly entered. He made sure to close the doors behind him, just as he would have done if he had returned normally. This conversation is probably going to be the private kind. He was tempted to suppress Thorax's consciousness, but decided against that. For now.
The hug did not catch him off-guard this time. He had been planning to dodge, but...
"What is THAT?" he asked Thorax, mesmerized by the feeling of euphoria that had come over him.
"Love," thought the Changeling.
The strength-seeking side of him noted that he'd just gone from feeling utterly weak and drained to feeling more magically powerful than he'd ever felt before.
His scheming side wondered if he could cleverly exploit that power, or store it for later use.
The cynical side of him, the part that had read Mr. Potter's biology textbooks, and in particular some of the expansions on Darwin's Theory of Evolution, would point out that it was only natural for Changelings to evolve such that their nourishment felt this way. It was just like how humans had evolved to enjoy the tastes of meat and sugar, giving a massive biological incentive, not to mention a reward structure, in acquiring the nutrients necessary/helpful for survival.
Of course, at the moment, such thoughts weren't so sophisticated or complex. They went by in flashes of concepts like 'dopamine' and 'power' and 'useful'.
He was otherwise completely distracted by the signals that this Changeling body was sending to its brain. He was so distracted that he didn't even try to extract himself from the hug even as his (former?) employer pressed her cheek to his.
That seemed to hit some kind of limit.
"Love overload!" Thorax thought frantically.
Riddle barely had time to think an incoherent "What?" before he lost his concentration on the disguise and reverted into an insect in a flash of green fire, causing Princess Luna to leap back in surprise. With no control over his body, he doubled over and hurled out a mass of pink fluid, then another glob, then another.
And then he was being assaulted by a blast of magic and a blast of negative emotion, only one of which was actually hard to handle.
"What's THAT?" Riddle asked.
"Hate," replied a terrified voice.
The sudden shift from love to hate felt horrible, likely because it would have been good for Changelings in the ancestral environment to avoid making ponies feel that way towards them. Again, that thought wouldn't become so sophisticated until later, when he wasn't in the process of being assaulted.
Thankfully, Princess Luna didn't seem to be trying to kill him, only subdue. Once he acclimated to the overwhelming hatred, he tapped the stores of magic he'd just acquired. He had to waste a good chunk to power the strongest shield he knew, but then he saved the rest by going invisible and apparating away. He cast a silencing barrier beforehand – on both his location and his destination, so neither pop would give him away – but that took little from his stores compared to everything else.
He watched from the other side of the room as Princess Luna's stunner went through where he used to be. He still needed to get higher, but this body didn't have broomstick bones, and he didn't know how to fly with insect wings, let alone fly silently...
"Show thyself, Changeling!" his employer demanded. Her horn and mane were glowing in power and the promise of pain. "Surrender and I might show thee mercy."
Riddle rolled his eyes. As if she hadn't been showing mercy already. "Thorax," he said internally, "is there a quiet way to get to a higher-" and thus safer "elevation?"
"Changeling hooves can stick to walls," thought a quavering voice.
"Show me," he thought after casting another wizard's silencing barrier – which he once again did wandlessly and invisibly, without a glowing horn, unlike the unicorn equivalent. "Climb up to the ceiling."
"SHOW THYSELF!"
Once Thorax had got them to the ceiling – his body was easily light enough to stay up there, and there was no discomfort for standing upside-down – and once Riddle was confident he could keep the 'clinging' muscles clenched, only then did Riddle retake control of the body and respond.
"Apologies for the scare," he said, using the ventriloquism charm to throw his voice.
His employer impulsively threw a wide stunner in that direction, completely missing him.
He audibly sighed. "If you would let me explain-"
"We will not hear thy pleas, Changeling!" she shouted. "Thou hast taken our fool from us, and thou seek peace? NEVER!"
She cast a circular area-effect stunner that covered the entire ground of the room –the alicorn go-to when confronted by multiple enemies, and which prompted his desire to get higher up in the first place.
"Believe it or not, it is actually me," he said, still throwing his voice.
"HA! We will not be gulled so easily. Thou thinkest us a fool?"
"Haven't I always?" he asked with his standard cynicism. "If you do me the favour of hearing me out, I might require nothing else in return for that hug. Otherwise I will demand the military overhaul that you and your sister have been foolishly neglecting once this whole fiasco is over, and you will comply. You know what I think about hugs."
That caused her to pause.
"Thou hast studied thy role well," she complimented, though her hatred was only growing. "How long did it take to extract such knowledge from him? Didst thou use torture?"
Riddle couldn't really blame her for leaping to that conclusion. Such paranoia served Moody and Bones and Dumbledore well in their fight against Voldemort, even when they only had suspicions of treachery. Still, it was annoying to deal with as a pony.
Voldemort's go-to solution to the problem of loyalty and traitors had been to invent and control the Dark Mark. What options are available to Riddle Tome of Equestria?
"Can we skip to the part of this conversation where you use your connection to Honesty to prove to yourself that I speak truly?"
"We are well beyond that point," said his employer as she seemingly tried to pinpoint his location with several spells and without success. "T'would be only natural for thou to think thou could fool it. Thou art a Changeling, after all."
"I was under the impression that nothing could fool your Element."
"Oh, thou art doing thy best," she said in tones of false praise, "but our fool has never been so straightforward as thou art being. If thou art truly him, where is thy undercurrent of deception? From that alone, thou and he are obviously two different beings. And if thou could not fool my element in some capacity, why dost thou, a Changeling, not already have that constant deception? Thou are less clever than thou believest. When my Element fails me, logic is an excellent backup."
Leave it to his employer, or maybe his luck, to punish him for one of the first times he's been almost completely straightforward with her.
"The fact that I can go invisible, and use my unique method of teleportation- no, you'll just say the Changelings extracted it from my mind or some such. Hmm... and I suppose it is a bit absurd to believe that I accidentally took over the body of a Changeling, regardless of the claim's veracity. It would be equally absurd for me to claim that I've been a Changeling all along; it's not true, and I probably would have been asking for more of those hugs all this time." He made sure his tone of voice conveyed how he felt about that.
"Thou truly are a good actor."
"Is it really acting when I can become whomever I imagine myself to be?"
"We see thou hast given up the pretense. Good. That makes this simpler."
Her much wider area-effect charm didn't quite reach him, and it clearly left her a bit winded.
"Most interactions between ponies are filled with acting and pretense," he replied. "Ponies imagine themselves a certain way, and simply play out the role that their imagination produces. They rarely go off-script. I'm simply pointing out that I can switch roles, from the wandering scholar who aided Twilight Sparkle to the royal fool who helped you and your sister. As you said, I'm a good actor. It would not be wrong to say that I should have come into this world as a Changeling, since it is more fitting to my personality." He briefly imagined himself waking up in that meadow as a Changeling King, but the Mirror's 'become an equinoid' function probably operated on wish-fulfillment parameters, not personality-matching. "In any case, I was not expecting this from you, but it seems that you are at the level where it would be worse than pointless to ask how you might be convinced, because you'd know that convincing you is exactly what I was trying to do, and I would want that as myself or as an imposter. I do have a question, though. How do you know about Changelings? Before this day, I only encountered the name of their species a single time, from the description of a spell that claimed to remove their disguises, and that's after scouring your sister's entire private library."
"We come from a different Era, Changeling," said Luna, a bit of her ancientness reaching her voice. "We have encountered thy kind before."
"Were Changelings able to fool your element then?"
"I did not have my Element then."
"What about Celestia?"
"We promised thy Queen we would not to tell our sister about thy species, so long as thou did not harm our subjects whilst doing as thou must to survive. It seems thy Queen's mind has been addled by the passing of a millennium."
"Changeling Queens don't live that long!" Thorax objected.
"The host of this body claims that their Queens don't live that long," Riddle told Luna. "How long do they live, Thorax?"
"Um... about five hundred years."
"That's still a long time," Riddle said out loud. "So, Chrysalis's grandmother made that deal with Luna?"
"Maybe?"
"Your species isn't all that keen on keeping historical records, is it?"
"Thy performance is not fooling us, Changeling."
"Yes, leave it to the royal fool to be unable to fool his princess," said Riddle. "Very well, I'll get straight to the point. Diarch of Equestria, I am here to parley. The Changeling Queen is an idiot who has infiltrated Canterlot and might or might not be planning an overt raid."
"Hey! You said you wouldn't betray-"
"I'm working with Thorax to end her reign," Riddle spoke on without pause, "since Changelings are unable to directly disobey Queenly orders, and we would like your help in stopping her without killing the whole hive."
"Oh. Uh... thanks."
He continued to ignore Thorax in favour of Luna. "Chrysalis has replaced a good chunk of the citizenry and the guard with Changelings, including the two outside this door. It's disappointing that such an incompetent Queen was able to accomplish so much against your national security, but I digress. They've taken a pink alicorn prisoner, and probably replaced her as well."
Princess Luna gasped.
"Princess Mi Amore Cadenza," Thorax informed him. "Queen Chrysalis is handling her impersonation personally."
"Thorax says her name is Princess Mi Amore Cadenza," he relayed, "and that Queen Chrysalis has replaced her. By your reaction, I'm assuming she has some sort of significance. Is she a recent ascension? I'm out of the loop from Canterlot affairs."
There was a long pause in the room.
"If thou art really our fool," the Princess said hesitantly, seeming to ignore everything he had just said about the threats to Equestrian national security, "what is thy motive in helping the Changelings? And why art thou in the body of one?"
"Now you are not doing a good job of convincing me that you are starting to believe me," said Riddle. "You have not addressed me as your lesser in a long time. Likewise with the Canterlot voice. You stopped upon my promotion to royalty. But to answer your questions anyway, my motives are my own business, and I am inside this body thanks to... let's call it a magical accident."
"And there's the honest deception," sighed Princess Luna. "Where have you been all this time?"
"Away."
"Why have you been away?"
"I needed time to meditate on my own motivations. And the future."
"How did you come to discover the plot of the Changelings?"
"Happenstance."
"Why have you chosen now to stop being candid?"
"Because you started asking about me."
"You know I can't betray your secrets."
"And you know better than to pry anyway."
Luna sighed again, much more heavily this time. Her horn stopped glowing as she dropped her battle stance. "Welcome back, fool."