The Blueblood Papers: Bound By Blood

by Raleigh


Chapter 5

‘Queen Chrysalis wants him alive.’ That’s what Hive Marshal Chela had told Scarabaeus to stop him from cracking open my skull with his bare hooves and turning my jellied brains into a modern art painting; like most other ideological thugs, my fellow commissars amongst them, he was thoroughly and dangerously deficient in the humour department and tended to react to innocent little quips with threats of violence.

Nevertheless, I hoped that my safety would be guaranteed right up until the point where I would have to meet Queen Chrysalis for the third time. I could only imagine the sorts of horrific torture she would put me through for her own sadistic amusement. Still, that was in the future, and they would have to keep me alive and well until then. If I could stay on Chela’s good side by behaving like a trophy for her to trot out to impress her guests at dinner parties, or whatever it was that Changeling Purestrains got up to for fun, then with a bit of luck I could go the rest of the war without having to meet the dreaded Queen of the Changelings at all.

If her promise that I would be treated well was genuine, though I had no reason to trust their kind, then perhaps this was finally the break I had been looking for ever since Princess Luna had forced me into this now-ruined uniform -- to wait out the end of the war in the relative safety and comfort of a Changeling prisoner-of-war camp, having more than done my part for Princesses and Country, to be gratefully released by the victorious Equestrian Army just as this horrid conflict ends (and far too late to take part in any more fighting, to my insincere regret). The only potential hiccup would be having to maintain my reputation for derring-do with the occasional token escape attempt, but… well, I’ll get to that in the fullness.

For now, however, the remaining fifteen ponies left alive after that ordeal and I were escorted away. A few were incapable of walking and had to be carried by drones on stretchers, and as I never saw them again I have no way of knowing if they survived the Changelings’ version of battlefield medicine or not. Chela and Scarabaeus had gone off ahead, presumably to direct the rest of the battle now that they had finally taken Hill 70, and we were left in the care of an assortment of officers and drones who regarded us as though we were each liable to explode with the slightest provocation. They did not chain us up, as I had fully expected from their barbaric sort, though our weapons were collected and our pockets searched, rather more delicately this time, for what they considered to be ‘intelligence’. Well, there was precious little of that to be found both in our pockets and in our brains. Yours Truly, of course, being the only unicorn, had his horn fitted with an inhibitor ring, which was somewhat too small and itched abominably; such things seemed to only come in a single size, and their makers seemed unwilling to accommodate the well-endowed unicorn.

As for Captain Frostbite’s body, Square Basher looked reluctant to part with it, but offered no resistance as the drones lifted the still, lifeless corpse from her back and carried it away down the slope. Whether or not they would fulfil their promise of burying him with, as Chela had put it, ‘all due military honours’ or just what the Changelings’ definition of those words actually meant was entirely up in the air. I was struck, however, by the respect that the enemy we had learnt to hate and dismiss as mere savages afforded to the body of the officer commanding the unit that had been a nasty thorn in their side for nearly a week.

All that mattered to me now was that I was safe for the foreseeable future, and as soon as I had my fill of water and something more substantial to eat besides hardtack biscuits and weeds I could go about collecting the scattered remnants of my wits and formulating some sort of plan. We were herded down the slope towards the Changeling side of the lines, in the vague direction of Natalensis Hive, and were thus brought to one of their encampments about halfway down the slope.

There, I was surprised by how familiar the scene felt; it was a military camp very much like the others that I have seen and unfortunately lived in these past few years, with tents, stores, offices, bivouacs, canteens, and cooking fires, but that it was crawling with Changelings was somewhat unnerving. As we passed, they all immediately stopped whatever duties they were performing to watch us shamble on in, staring with those unnerving compound eyes of theirs, and I felt peculiarly self conscious about it. The camp even smelt similar, which, while not entirely identical to the combined body odour of hundreds of ponies sharing a cramped living space with minimal hygiene, was at least evocative enough of that all-too-familiar bouquet. In hindsight, I’m not sure what else I should have expected to have seen. After all, I hadn’t given it much thought at all, if any, about how their lot conducted themselves when they weren’t trying to turn my body into an equine pin-cushion, but I suppose looking back it should have been relatively obvious that they must invariably pass the time between battles and prepare for them in much the same way that we did. For example, the scene of a group of drones sitting around a campfire and playing some sort of strange game with peculiarly-shaped dice as a pot of something bubbled away over the campfire could have easily fitted into any encampment of ponies with only a change of species involved.

One other thing that struck me, as I watched this disturbingly familiar scene, was the number of wounded drones around. We passed what might have been some sort of medical tent, and outside we saw drones in varying states of consciousness, most listing in and out of it, arrayed out on the dusty ground around the tent. There must have been hundreds of them scattered about the place, and each bore some sort of injury, from cracked chitin that had been glued back together with some sort of organic paste, to missing limbs and eyes, while others were apparently beyond saving and were simply left to expire. I could see glimpses through the open tent flap and gaps between the cloth panels of figures moving back and forth, each wearing white smocks smothered in green ichor that was congealing into black slime, wielding what looked like implements belonging in a Griffons’ butcher shop. Throughout, I could hear the sound of cries of pain and bestial hissing emanating from this tent, and I imagined that their doctors either hadn’t heard of anaesthetic or simply didn’t bother. Outside one tent flap there was a small mound of severed hooves and legs, and every now and again one would be tossed through to join this slowly growing pile, which attracted all manner of flies and other vermin. If I had to say, all of this implied that, on the face of it, the Changelings were not doing terribly well in this battle.

As we were ushered past them, I overheard whispered snippets of conversations from the drones, both wounded and healthy. Most commented on ‘The Black Prince’, of course, in tones of quiet awe and a sort of grudging respect for a pony whom they believed to be a gallant if misguided hero. Other than that, I overheard a brief portion of a rather heated conversation between two drones on sentry duty outside an ammunition store.

“I heard we’re retreating tomorrow,” said one.

“That’s stupid,” said the other. “You’re stupid. We just took Hill 70 and we’ve captured the Black Prince!”

“But the Tin Cans aren’t running away like Chela said they would. We took Hill 70 but we lost three others yesterday. They’re just relentless, and-”

“Will you shut up before the Attendant hears and we both get in trouble?”

They left us in a large tent, which provided enough shade from the midday sun as to be almost comfortable. I assumed that they had erected it for the express purpose of holding prisoners, though judging by the wide open space and lack of other ponies within they appeared to have been terribly optimistic about how many they were going to capture. Two troughs were along one side of the interior, one filled with dry hay and the other with water, but other than that it was almost completely bare. There was also a large bucket filled with water with a few damp towels that were probably intended for the purposes of personal ablutions, which I gratefully took advantage of to wipe some of the week’s worth of muck, grime, dust, blood, and sweat that had accumulated on my face. The result meant that the towel, which was already little more than a rag, was rendered unusable without a thorough cleaning.

With little else to do, I threw myself on the ground and rested for what felt like the first time in an eternity. I could not completely relax, of course, as the quiet chatter of Changelings and Purestrains just outside the tent flap, just hushed enough for me to pick up some ominous-sounding terms like ‘processing’, ‘indoctrination’, and ‘work’, but little else, was more than sufficient material with which my overactive imagination could conjure up images of the sorts of appalling torture camps our propaganda had hinted at. However, though I still felt sick, tired, hungry, thirsty, and more than a little dizzy, I could at least take a great deal of comfort in the fact that, despite everything, I had survived yet again. Faust knows how I managed it this time, but I did, and as I felt the dusty, lumpy earth against my skin I could at least take some solace in that. The trick, however, was doing it again and again.

[At this point in his career, Blueblood’s knack for survival was already taking on mythical tones. I had even overheard my own staff whispering that he might have been an immortal alicorn who had lost his wings. Such rumours proved useful for the purposes of propaganda, and so were hardly discouraged, though he privately resented them.]

The other surviving ponies took my lead and likewise rested on the floor. Another, a little more able-bodied than the others, went about passing around the hay and water like the splendid little chap he was. Right then and there, after a week of oat rations and biscuits, I’d have said that this meagre little meal could have given the likes of Gustave le Grand a run for his money. However, Sergeant Major Square Basher would not, could not, perhaps, relax; she paced around the vicinity of the tent flap, forwards and backwards, pausing occasionally to peek through it and grumble something under her breath. I ignored her, but clearly her constant moving about, even after a week of privation and brutal fighting, began to irritate at least one of the troopers.

“For Luna’s sake, Sarge!” he snapped. Square Basher turned on him with a look that would have reduced Iron Will into quivering jelly, but this soldier, having survived Hill 70, clearly feared nothing. “Will you stand easy, sir?”

The two glowered at one another, almost daring the other to be the first to strike. I lifted my head, wondering if I had survived the battle only to be beaten to death in a stupid brawl between squabbling soldiers. However, Square Basher chose to ignore the impertinent soldier and continued to peer out through the gap in the tent flap.

“Two guards,” she said quietly, “armed with spears, and the camp is crawling with more bugs. But I reckon we can take these two out, grab their weapons, and then make a run for it into the desert.”

The silence that followed revealed everypony’s thoughts on that suicidal plan more than mere words could, but I had to nip this sort of talk in the bud early before ponies whose common sense had been beaten down by desperation started to be swayed by it. “Assuming,” I said, choosing to be diplomatic in my response given the circumstances, “that we eleven ponies prevail against an entire camp of Changelings and at least some of us make it out into the desert, like you said, then what? What are we to do next?”

Square Basher turned her death glare towards me, but if she thought she could intimidate an officer, a commissar, and a prince of the realm who had just survived Tartarus with the same parlour trick that terrified common soldiery into submission then she had another thing coming. “We make our way back to Equestrian lines.”

“Just like that,” I said flatly. “Just walk back, through the entire Changeling army, to our own lines, which we don’t even know are still there, seeing as we have no idea as to the course of the battle.”

“Then we join up with the partisans and continue the fight!” Square Basher was raising her voice now, and I could hear that the murmurs of small talk from the Changeling guards had ceased. “We have to do something! We can’t just give up!”

I had to put an end to this sort of talk, lest some of the other soldiers start getting swept up in this absurd fantasy, so I stood up and marched on over to her. Well, it was more of a stumble than a march, really, but what it lacked in gravitas I made up for in drama. I pulled her by the shoulder to the corner of the tent, and it was to my mild surprise that she actually allowed me to do that.

“You stand down,” I said, sotto voce, but only just loud enough for a few of the more attentive soldiers to overhear if they were so inclined. “These ponies have all done their duty and more; you should be proud of them, instead of demanding the impossible. It’s over.”

Square Basher snorted like a minotaur, and stared at me with a grim, haunted expression. There was a certain sense of despair in her dark, smouldering eyes, as one who has crossed past that threshold where life, either one’s own or anypony else’s, ceases to have meaning or worth, but only the last gasp of tenacious defiance in the face of the inevitable pushes one on. Well, it had to be crushed before it could ruin the peaceful, albeit unpleasant, remainder of a war in a prison camp that I was looking forward to.

“How can you say it’s over?” she said, with her voice no longer raised. “Blueblood, after everything we’ve been through!”

Sir,” I insisted. “Address me correctly.”

She had the good sense to look suitably admonished and embarrassed, and bowed her head. “Sorry, sir.”

“That’s better.”

I swung my hoof in the direction of the surviving ponies, less than a dozen of them in the tent. Some looked back attentively, but others stared vacantly into space or had finally fallen asleep for what must have been the first time in days; each bore the scars of what they had been through, both physical and emotional, plainly on their bodies and in their haunted, gaunt expressions. One had been bandaged up in whatever rags we could find, after our scant medical supplies ran out after a few days, and her blood had dried and crusted over them. Others had half-healed wounds, which still occasionally wept blood and pus into their matted, sweat-soaked fur. Another gazed into the blank, off-white wall of the tent unblinkingly, gently rocking back and forth with his forelegs clasped around his hindlegs.

“Look at them,” I said softly, as though to a foal. “Are any of these ponies fit to carry on the fight now? They’ve done enough, let them rest.”

Square Basher followed the direction of my hoof and looked over at her soldiers, the ones she supposedly shepherded first for Captain Redcoat and then Captain Frostbite, both now dead. Her expression was tense, but still rather blank, then she breathed a heavy sigh. I knew her to be roughly of middle age, and for the first time she looked it. The rigid, military posture that she always held, which also accentuated her imposing stature and build, slackened into a defeated slouch that made her look like a mere shadow of the strong, imposing, disciplined mare that I had known. It was rather sad to see, as indeed was the sight of the ponies huddled in the tent in general, but I suppose it had to be done, just as much for her benefit as for my own.

“Very well, sir,” she said finally, and staggered away from the tent flap like a pony being led to the gallows. I could not see clearly if tears had formed in her eyes, but the way she snapped her head away from me as though to hide them certainly implied it. Finally, her military bluster and bravado had cracked and cold, hard reality set in.

Really, I just wanted her to stop speaking, but showing concern for the ponies ostensibly under my command, now that I was the most senior officer left alive and everypony and the Changelings seemed to naturally think I ought to be in charge for some reason, would at least put me in good stead not only with them, should they start getting ideas about daring escapes and dragging me along with them, but also Chela. The Hive Marshal seemed to be imitating the old Equestrian ideal of being both an officer and a lady, acting with great chivalry and courtesy even to the hated enemy, and Yours Truly maintaining the appropriate level of attentiveness to the well-being of one’s own cannon fodder, including the Cannon Fodder, who was busy attacking the hay provided with his usual disregard for manners and the appetites of his fellow diners, would only elevate her opinion of me. For the time being, until I was safely inside a prison camp, my best bet to ensure that said camp was at least survivable, if not comfortable, was to play into that odd perception of me.

Square Basher sulked in the corner; everypony else either paced about like, well, caged animals, or curled up on the ground; and I indulged in what was the first proper meal I had in nearly a week by continuing to gorge on hay. However, Chela had invited me for ‘dinner’ later, whatever that meant to a Changeling Purestrain, so perhaps I ought to have paced myself, but this stale, flavourless hay did begin to help in some way to ease the pain and emptiness in my stomach.

“What’s going to happen to us, sir?” asked one of the other soldiers, a chap with a foreleg in a sling but who had insisted on walking.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m a bit scared myself, but I’ll do my best to make sure you’re all looked after.”

Sometimes, a little emotional honesty from an officer goes a long way to helping the common soldiery; as much as they need to believe that we are infallible so that they trust us to bring them out of this alive and well, it pays to remind them that, in spite of all outward appearances, we are still the same species. Not too much, of course, as that risks utterly destroying one’s credibility in their eyes. None of them needed to know that this stiff-upper-lip facade was all that was stopping me from simply going to pieces. Was I to rot away in the sort of appalling prison camp as I had heard from other ponies? Perhaps I was to be paraded around like a trophy, or, as was most likely, dragged to the hooves of Queen Chrysalis for a prolonged torture and execution. It didn’t bear thinking about, and getting worked up about it wasn’t going to change things anyway. So, as I had done for the past two years of war, it was merely a matter of getting through one day at a time, over and over, until it was finished.

“That Chela said she’s having you for dinner, sir,” said another.

Invited me for dinner,” I said, though the thought that I might just be drained dry of love continued to unsettle me.

After some length of time, I don’t know how long, as my watch had stopped days ago and I never bothered to wind it again, a drone came to fetch me. He escorted me out of the tent, and I made a quiet farewell to my fellow survivors as though some terrible fate awaited me beyond. Back outside, I could see that Celestia’s sun was very much in a different position from when we had been discarded in the tent, almost approaching the horizon. It certainly had not felt as though I had been in there all day, but after that week on the hill perhaps my perception of the linear passage of time had been all bent out of shape somewhat.

I was led to another, smaller tent and was informed by the Changeling waiting there that I was to ‘get dressed for dinner’. That was rather confusing at first, but it became readily apparent when I was brought inside and saw the double-breasted ivory-coloured dinner jacket with a shawl lapel, a white linen pocket square, soft marcella front evening shirt with gold and mother-of-pearl studs, and a blue velvet bow tie hanging up on hangers from a clothing rack. Quite where they got these exquisite clothes from and just why the enemy had brought them to an active warzone ostensibly just for me to wear had eluded me, but as I’d been living in the same filthy, sweat-soaked uniform for a week without changing, I was quite ready to dismiss any questions and misapprehension for this rare opportunity to return to a more civilised life. If only for a short while, at least, as I feared that once I’d left the company of the Hive Marshal, assuming I survived that encounter, my immediate future would hold little opportunity for dressing for dinner.

There was also a full-length mirror standing next to the clothes rack, and I was shocked at the sight of the pony staring back at me. Over the course of the past week I hadn’t had the chance to see my own reflection, and though I knew that my physical state had deteriorated somewhat, I could not have anticipated that it would have declined so far. My fur had become stained, patchy, and dull; my frame had lost some of the softness that came with a lifetime of indulgence and not enough exercise; my mane was a greasy, slimy mess; my face became afflicted with a patchy, week-old beard; and my eyes stared back from sunken, dark hollow sockets. In short, I looked just about as bad as I felt.

Mercifully, there was a large metal tub filled with steaming hot water, practically overflowing with soap suds that filled the room with the sweet, heady scent of soap. I eagerly removed my hat and unpeeled myself from my coat, tossed them carelessly on the ground, and slipped into the hot bath with all the grace of a drunk elephant jumping into a pond. Much of the water spilled out over the sides of the crude tub, and it wasn’t terribly comfortable to lie in and relax as its sides were unfortunately straight and perpendicular, but it was a bath, and the first I’d had since my disastrous stint as the military governor of Virion Hive at that. The warmth of the water and the scent of the soap had an almost intoxicating effect, akin to a glass or two of invigorating champagne; I could feel it metaphorically cleanse my spirit of the stains of war and its accompanying misery as readily as it washed my coat of muck and grime.

When I reluctantly climbed out of the bath after a good, long soak, as the temperature of the water had dropped from just pleasantly hot to uncomfortably lukewarm, I’d left behind enough dust, muck, and Faust knows what else accumulated grime to turn the water a sort of murky dark brown colour. I towelled myself off and looked around for some shaving implements to rid myself of this itchy, patchy beard. Some ponies simply don’t have faces for facial hair, and numerous adolescent attempts to follow the trends for moustaches, side burns, muttonchops, and so on that come about in Canterlot every few months proved that I was much better off clean-shaven. However, for reasons that should have been very obvious, the Changelings did not see fit to provide me with a sharp razor and I was not about to trust a drone anywhere near my face with one, so I would have to put up with what looked like small, localised outbreaks of yellow mould over my lower face.

Now that I was about as clean as I was ever going to get with what the Changelings had provided me with, I towelled myself dry and set about getting dressed, and I found that putting on shirt studs and tying a bow tie was extremely difficult with only one’s own hooves to do it. Quite how common earth ponies and pegasi managed to dress themselves without the aid of servants was beyond me, but after a great deal of trial and error I managed to make myself look at least presentable, if not dapper. I suppose using my hooves instead of magic added a certain sense of sprezzatura in the imperfect, lopsided bow tie knot that suited me quite well.

I still looked dreadful; like a homeless pony who had been put through a very rudimentary grooming regimen and then forced into a tuxedo for the amusement of bored, young aristocrats, and after the week on the hill that comparison felt particularly apt. Nevertheless, my valet, Drape Cut, had told me that the assumption of semi-formal evening dress has a particularly stimulating effect on one’s own morale, and the sight of myself, only moderately cleaner than before and still sporting that damned patchy beard, dressed as though I was about to attend the Canterlot Garden Party did at least help lift my flagging spirits by just enough to make the prospect of a ‘dinner’ with a Changeling Purestrain seem survivable. I was rather struck by how well the dinner jacket fitted me, and wondered perhaps if one of the many tailors on Saddle Row I had commissioned over the years had been infiltrated by Changelings. That, I thought, would also explain why some of them had become quite stingy with prices recently. Nevertheless, for the first time that week I felt like myself again, or as close to my old self as I possibly could.

Having completed my toilet in the tent [He means this in the archaic sense of washing and grooming himself, or I certainly hope that he does], I slipped out through the flap to find an escort of two Changelings, both of whom looking like they’d much rather be doing anything else besides looking after me, waiting with impatience. I don’t know how long I had taken to get dressed in the tent, but I probably spent a little longer than strictly necessary trying to perfect the fold on my pocket square so that it looked as though I had simply stuffed it in my breast pocket. Certainly, the look of ponies bored and annoyed but doing their very best to hide it was one that I had seen often from hoof-servants, carriage drivers, and relatives just as I emerged from my wardrobe was plain on these two.

They led me away, past throngs of curious Changelings gawking at me, and towards a great tent. Along the way, I found a rather pretty little flower blooming amidst the detritus of the camp. It was small and with white petals, so I plucked it with great difficulty using my hooves and slipped it into the lapel buttonhole for a boutonniere, much to the continued irritation of my escorts. The camp itself, as I got to see more of it, still seemed disturbingly similar to any Equestrian equivalent, which made the differences seem all the stranger. There were a few domed structures made out of chrysalite, which glistened with an unsettlingly organic sheen in the afternoon sun, whose purposes I could only guess at. I caught glimpses of drones entering into them via holes that opened up in the sides and then closed behind them with no apparent indication that there might be a door there, and what went on within I could only guess at.

As we approached the tent I started to hear classical music played on a scratchy old gramophone; one of Beethoofen’s melodramatic symphonies, if I was not mistaken. I still had no idea what to expect from this encounter, so the presence of Horsetrian classical music was terribly perplexing, though in hindsight not surprising. My guards lifted the tent flap and beckoned me in with a series of jabbing hoof gestures and hissing, and inside I could see Hive Marshal Chela seated at a large dining table that had been set out for two diners. Elsewhere in the tent I could see that some small effort had been made by the ‘hosts’ to make it look welcoming, with the decrepit gramophone spinning away in the corner and an assortment of desert flowering plants, most of them already close to death, placed on the centre of the table. Somehow, rather like those creepy porcelain dolls that certain elderly relatives of mine liked to collect, the attempt at creating a welcoming scene that just missed its mark only made it more unsettling, as though it would all explode into bloody violence without warning.

“Prince Blueblood!” Chela rose from her seat, as manners dictated. I saw that her uniform was immaculate, with the grey-green cloth freshly pressed and the brass buttons and medals shined and polished to within an inch of their short lives. “Come in! Please, take a seat.”

I muttered my quiet, awkward thanks, being more than a little confused by the display, and stumbled inside and took my seat on the opposite end of the table. There was a space for a plate, framed by a stained old set of knives, forks, and spoons arranged in what I might call an unconventional setting. I still did not quite understand the purpose of this, but if I had to guess then I assumed that Chela, for whatever reason, was trying to impress me.

“I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to this,” Chela said as she re-took her seat. I felt safer with the heavy wooden table separating us, but only marginally so; for all of her pretensions at being civilised and Equestrian, she was still a Purestrain and therefore, in my experience, very capable of acts of great cruelty and violence at the drop of a peaked cap. She waved her hoof from the table with its modest setting to the gramophone warbling away in the corner, and smiled with fangs showing. “You see, Prince Blueblood, we are not all monsters.”

That remained to be seen, thought I, but I kept that to myself, for it took a damned sight more than a dining table and recorded chamber music to count as civilised. Not kidnapping ponies to harvest them for love would have been a good place to start, perhaps. I was not much in the mood for conversation, and despite her attempts, Chela was not exactly a sparkling conversationalist; there was a certain forced quality to her whole manner, but I can’t entirely discount the thought that it might actually be genuine and had more to do with my perception of her as, well, a ‘monster’, as she had put it. Nevertheless, I could only respond with a polite smile and a nod.

With a clop of her hooves on the table, Chela summoned Changeling wait staff from beyond the tent flap. When I say ‘wait staff’, I mean two drones clad in clumsy approximations of formal evening dress and each bearing a dish. One had a dull emerald-green crystal that was roughly the size of my hoof, which was placed before the Hive Marshal, while the other, piled high with what looked like grass clippings, was apparently mine. When it was positioned before me, I saw that it was indeed grass clippings, likely ‘harvested’ from the patch of dried-up weeds just outside the tent. There was no wine served, I noted with some disappointment, but on reflection I think now that it might have been a mercy, as I shudder to think of what passes for wine in the Hives.

“We must do this properly next time,” said Chela, apparently noticing the expression I’d pulled when I was presented with grass clippings for dinner. “When this war is over, of course, we can dine in Canterlot.”

“I’m not sure any of my clubs would allow Changelings inside,” I said glibly; some of the more traditionally-minded ones had only recently allowed earth ponies to join after endless complaints, and I dreaded to imagine Chela or indeed any other Purestrain seated in the prestigious Imperial Club’s dining room.

“Unless they do not know that I am a Changeling.” Chela grinned, and picked up the crystal from her plate. I was quite curious as to what she was going to do with it, as I doubted their kind consumed gems in the same manner as dragons. “I can be whomever I wish. And besides, once we win this war and the green flame flag flies from Canterlot Castle, things may change there.”

“Quite,” I said, nudging the pile of grass clippings around with the fork. The thought of my beloved city under the oppressive hooves of Queen Chrysalis didn’t bear thinking about; there was little room in her new order for the refined frivolities provided by prestigious clubs. “Do you really think you’ll win?”

Chela laughed, and it was a sharp, refined sort of titter that just had to be affected. “What an odd thing for one soldier to ask another,” she said. “Of course we will win! But I dare say that if I asked you that same question you would respond in exactly the same manner. No soldier goes to war anticipating that they will lose.”

In response, I could only mumble some sort of agreement, before nibbling on a few strands of the grass clippings. They were dry and tasteless, but still an improvement on the hardtack biscuits.

“I spent many happy years in Canterlot before the war,” she continued, as she fiddled around with the peculiar crystal in her magic aura. “Would you believe that I used to be a farrier there? My shop was close to the Royal Academy, next to that statue of the Iron Duke of Trottingham gazing sternly in the direction of Griffonstone, so I served many old Royal Guard officers. I don’t believe that I ever shod your hooves, sir. Not that you or anypony else would recognise me now, of course. I picked up quite a lot from listening to those old officers talking; they tell their farriers things they would never tell their wives, or mistresses for that matter.”

“Yes, I remember seeing your shop now,” I said, lying as I’d never paid the little shops around that damned statue much attention, but it made Chela smile and I thought that keeping her happy by playing the role of the attentive and appreciative guest would only increase my chances of preferential treatment. “I shall be more careful with what I say around farriers in future.”

“I was only interested in listening to military matters,” said Chela. I watched her tap on the crystal with her hoof a few times, each with a sharp, chiming sound like a tuning fork being struck with a hammer, until it cracked. A pale green miasma, one that reminded me of that abominable poison gas they used, wafted out of the cracks like vapour. She opened her maw, revealing rows of sharp fangs and a slithering forked tongue, reminding me that behind her attempts at appearing civilised she remained the enemy, and sucked in this vapour as though inhaling smoke from a hookah.

“Crystalised love,” she explained, apparently seeing my quizzical expression at what passed for table manners amongst their kind. “In the past, our war-swarms would bring ponies with them to feed on while out on campaign, but as the scale of our conquests over the Badlands pony tribes grew, bringing hundreds of livestock with us and guarding them simply became impractical. Queen Chrysalis invented a way to harvest love and transform it into easily-transportable crystals. Though on the Eastern Front I took enough ponies prisoner that feeding the war-swarm as it advanced was no longer an issue. The taste, however, leaves much to be desired.”

[The story of Queen Chrysalis personally inventing crystalised love is pure propaganda. The origins of the practice have been lost, likely purged from archives, but it is generally believed that Changelings based this on ancient experiments performed by the mages of the Old Crystal Empire.]

“And is that what I am to you?” I asked pointedly, and poked at the plate of grass clippings before me to emphasise my next point. “I’m to be livestock?”

“Hives, no!” Chela sounded almost offended at that. “You are a prince and I will make sure that you continue to be treated as one.” She placed the crystal, which had lost some of its brilliant green lustre, down on the plate and leaned over the table, resting her large hooves on it. “I have a colleague, Dorylus, who has some new and very interesting ideas about how we look after the ponies in our care. He will see to it that you and your ponies are treated well. In time, you’ll learn to willingly donate your love.”

What the Changelings considered to be ‘treated well’ remained to be seen, and from what I had witnessed of the poor, unfortunate wretches who had suffered under their rule in Virion Hive and how Odonata insisted that the slaves were looked after, my fears were not totally eased. At least, however, they would keep me alive until this blasted war ended, and I was quite willing to endure whatever hardship they could throw at me so long as I came out in one piece -- even the worst ideas my imagination could conjure of a prison camp seemed like a holiday compared to the week spent on Hill 70.

In truth, as this peculiar evening wore on, the subtle sense of unease, divorced from my more obvious anxieties about the uncertain future that lay before me, began to weigh more heavily upon me. This veneer of civilised behaviour, crudely painted over and already peeling away, could not even begin to mask the brutality of the regime that I would be entrusting with my immediate well-being, given what I had already seen of it. Despite my misgivings about the conduct of this conflict from our side, the too recent memory of those haunted, barely-equine creatures who had suffered under Changeling rule left no doubt in my mind that our cause was the just one.

As for Chela herself, much has already been written of her alleged ‘chivalry’, both from fellow ponies who had developed a peculiar sort of respect for her and from more modern Changelings who are still rather embarrassed about their dark past and cling to anything that might suggest that they weren’t all bad. All that I can say is that while her affable nature seemed to be genuine, and she at least appeared to be concerned for my continued safety, she still embraced a cause that called for the subjugation and enslavement of ponies.

“Don’t you think it’s unfair,” she said, when a lull in the stilted conversation had descended and she seemed to think it needed filling, “that Equestria has so much love, the very thing our kind needs for sustenance, and you hoard it all to yourselves?”

“It is unfair,” I said, pretending to concede out of politeness and concern for my own skin. I cared little that the average drone was desperate for food, for as far as I was concerned it was a crisis of their own making.

Chela smiled. “I knew you’d be reasonable. The Hives are starving, and now Equestria launches a war of aggression against us. Do we not have the right to defend our lands from invasion?”

I failed to hide my smirk; this was far too easy, I thought. “Tell me,” I said, apparently regaining some of my bravado with this filling, if tasteless and nutritionally deficient, meal, “if our invasion of the Changeling Hives is a ‘war of aggression’, as you put it, then what does that make Queen Chrysalis’ foalnapping and impersonation of a Princess of Equestria and the cowardly surprise attack on Canterlot?”

Necessary,” said Chela, and a little too quickly for my liking. “I know what that traitor Odonata has said, that we could have asked for Equestrian assistance with our food problem. Equestria would have the Changelings become vassals, slaves dependent on your goodwill and benevolence. Dependence breeds servitude, which begets weakness and decadence, as your ponies have become under the rule of a Princess who has coddled you with a thousand years of peace and safety. I’m sure you understand, Prince; I’ve taken a great deal of interest in your family’s history, and in it I see the remnants of the old ponykind that conquered Equestria, crushed the Griffons, and purged out the rot of the Nightmare Heresy from itself, before your kind wasted its strength on friendship.”

[Chela is referring to Odonata’s public statement calling upon the Changelings to rise up and overthrow Queen Chrysalis, whom she blamed for the war for being too prideful to ask for Equestrian assistance. This had very little effect in the Hives, as most drones were not in a position to read it. Chela’s speech appears to be a summarised response produced by the Hive of Propaganda and shared among the Purestrains, who were believed to be the intended target.]

There it was, the ugliness that lay beneath that neatly-pressed uniform, shiny medals, and warm smile. Dress up the open sewer in the refined trappings of high civilisation by placing an attractive cover over it however one pleases, but once the lid is lifted it still becomes thoroughly clear that it is all full of effluence.

“Except you failed at Canterlot,” I said. I don’t know if it was the grief that I had just been forced to endure, still raw with Captain Frostbite’s death, but somehow I felt that I just had to say it. While we sat and ate and conversed, the war still raged on, and here I was being made to pretend in order to satisfy the ego of an upstart enemy general. “And because you persist in underestimating ponies, you will continue to fail. What you consider our weakness is in fact our greatest strength.”

Chela hesitated; her face was expressionless, but it was damned clear that she hadn’t expected me to answer back. I imagined that my capture was quite the propaganda coup for the enemy, and no doubt they wished to turn me as we had done with Odonata; the difference is that Odonata already held doubts about the direction her nation was taking, whereas with me, although I disagreed with a great many things involving the ending of aristocratic power in Equestria, I knew wholeheartedly that our cause was the just one. Well, I thought as I continued to shovel grass clippings into my mouth, they had another thing coming.

“Queen Chrysalis will guide us through this war,” she said at length. “And we shall emerge stronger for it, for the Queen is the Hive.”

“And the Hive is the Queen!” chanted the other drones in the tent simultaneously. I nearly jumped out of my hide when they did that.

There was little arguing with fanatics, but I almost gave it my best shot before abruptly coming to my senses. “Your Queen is nothing more than a bloody…” Jumped-up, arrogant, crude, brutish, tyrannical, cruel, ignorant, and utterly joyless parvenu, possessed of a foalish obsession with violence and domination at the expense of the well-being of her own subjects, to whom she promises no golden future to strive for, but merely short lives of struggle and hardship.

Of course, I did not say any of those things out loud, no matter how much I wanted to; the balance of power in my interactions with Odonata had been completely reversed, and as I sat there listening to the drivel spewing forth from Chela, I felt a sharp reminder of just how precarious my position was barging into my brain and loudly shouting down the urge to put Chela straight. My bow tie suddenly felt rather tight around my neck. I eyed the other drones in the tent warily, those dressed up as waiters to continue with this absurd play-acting of a formal meal, and had no doubt that they were thoroughly perplexed and embarrassed by this ordeal and were looking for any excuse to put an end to this ridiculous affair by beating me with musket butts. As for Chela herself, while I knew that she was genuine in her reassurance that I would be perfectly safe, for a given definition of ‘safe’, it was still dependent upon her goodwill.

“The grass is delicious,” I said, violently steering the course of the conversation back away from the icebergs of politics.

“No, it isn’t,” said Chela, smiling politely. “But thank you. Dorylus will provide you with meals more befitting a prince, so don’t you worry. And I’m not offended; we’ll bring you around to our way of thinking soon enough, and the Queen’s new order will need ponies like you to keep the masses in line.”

That remained to be seen, thought I. I stuck to more benign, banal, but ultimately harmless subjects like family history, places to see in Canterlot, and, something that I’d picked up through my long association with those ponies from a certain rainy isle, the weather. It all seemed to entertain Chela, at least, this pantomime of polite civility, and I could even begin to relax ever so slightly. Oh, I still felt like I was coiled up tight like a spring, but at least a little bit of the tension had been eased somewhat.

The afternoon proceeded; I continued to nibble away at the grass, while Chela continued inhaling the fumes from her cracked crystal through her mouth. Despite the Changelings undergoing some sort of food crisis, she and the other Purestrains still seemed to be doing rather well out of it, and the hungry stares of the other drones fixed upon what must have been a tantalising source of sustenance for them was not lost on me. Chela seemed quite comfortable ignoring them.

After a while of this, I’m not sure precisely how long, I heard the tent flap swish open and the hoofsteps of some large and heavy creature stomping on inside. I looked over to see that dumb brute Scarabeus barging his way in.

“Chela, there you are, I’ve…” His words trailed off, and his eyes almost bugged out of his malformed skull as he saw the admittedly absurd sight of a Prince of Equestria dining with a Changeling Hive Marshal. “Chela, what in the Hives are you doing now?”

“I’m hosting,” said Chela, very matter-of-factly.

Scarabeus frowned. I didn’t think that the chitinous plates on a Changeling’s brow would allow for such a distinctive expression, but such was the intensity of his confusion that he somehow managed it. His mouth, too, hung open, as though his brain had to divert attention normally spent on keeping it closed to grasp this rather simple concept. His head even tilted to one side, like a particularly ugly puppy. “Why?” he asked finally.

“To help make our guest here feel more comfortable,” answered Chela.

Prisoners aren’t supposed to be comfortable!” Clearly, he was still struggling to understand what was going on, but in all fairness, I continued to have some difficulty too. He fixed his little, pig-like eyes on me momentarily and sneered, and I bristled under that hateful glare, before he collected himself and turned his attention back on the Hive Marshal. “You should be directing the battle.”

“I have given my general orders for the evening, and I trust my officers to execute them well,” said Chela. “The battle is lost anyway. All that is left to do is prepare a rearguard as we retreat.”

[Hive Marshal Chela’s doctrines prized the individual autonomy of junior officers to interpret orders and react fluidly to changing circumstances on the battlefield, in contrast to Market Garden’s preference for detailed planning and her top-down leadership style. It was not unknown for Chela to refrain from issuing orders at all until ‘the opportunity for decisive action presents itself’.]

Lost?” Scarabeus looked thoroughly aghast, as though Chela had sprung up from her seat and slapped him hard across the cheek. “The battle is not lost! The Queen commands that every inch of our territory must be defended to the last Changeling!”

Chela placed her crystal, now devoid of its lustre and looking more like a dull stone, on the plate before her and peered over at her Attendant from across the tent. “At the rate the Equestrians are tearing through our ranks, the last Changelings left alive will be the two of us. We’ll fall back and prepare for a counter-offensive.”

Then, apparently getting bored of explaining this to Scarabeus, she turned her attention back to me. “Forgive me for talking shop, but your Market Garden is the most stubborn general I’ve ever fought against; unimaginative and predictable, perhaps, but when she sets her mind on a goal she’ll never let it go. If she wants Natalensis Hive so badly, then she’ll take it.”

“I don’t believe this!” exclaimed Scarabeus. “The Queen ordered that Natalensis Hive must be held at all costs.”

Chela breathed a deep, frustrated sigh, as a parent who tires of explaining things to an aggressively curious but rather stupid child would. “My dear Scarabeus, your devotion to our Queen is second to none, but in your years watching over me you still fail to grasp the basics of military tactics. Land that has been lost to the enemy can be regained, cities can be retaken, but experienced drones are not so easily replaced. Our casualties are unsustainable -- we must withdraw if this war-swarm is to survive as a fighting force. Then, when Market Garden has over-extended herself, we strike back!” She punctuated her point with a dramatic sweep of her hoof over the table that nearly brushed her plate off. “A backhoof strike!”

Except that Market Garden didn’t do that; Chela had yet to pick up on our venerable general’s reluctance to advance with any particular urgency, which, while rather frustrating for everypony else, including Hardscrabble, eager to get this benighted war over and done with as quickly as possible as though it was some sort of race, was probably the best thing to do in my uneducated opinion. Still, at the time, as I sat there watching this peculiar argument with the same sort of awkwardness as any dinner guest has when their hosts start arguing with one another, it was rather worrying that the army could be marching straight into another trap. I thought about everypony else I had come to know in my time as commissar - Sunshine Smiles, Starlit Skies, Blitzkrieg, Bramley Apple, and even Fer-de-Lance, to name a few - and wondered if they too had made it through the battle unscathed. I hoped they had, but thinking about them suddenly made me feel sad for reasons that I could not adequately explain rationally, and it took whatever willpower I had left after all that I had endured to keep myself from burying my face in my hooves and start sobbing. That would have been rather embarrassing in front of the enemy.

Chela and Scarabeus glared at each other, while I continued to pretend to find the chipped plate in front of me very interesting. Then, after a while of listening to the scratchy gramophone music, Scarabeus approached Chela, and the other drones scurried out of his way. “I ought to report this un-Changeling behaviour,” he said quietly, and pointed directly at the table I sat at. “I can have you removed from command and you’ll waste away with that damned princeling there in a camp.”

Chela merely smiled, and I knew well that confident little smirk of somepony who knew that they were untouchable. “Do it, and then you can explain to the Queen why you fired her best general. She personally appointed me to command this front, no? I doubt that she would take kindly to you insinuating that she has made a mistake.”

Scarabeus, apparently having exhausted his wits, merely shot me what he had probably intended to be a death glare. However, having been subjected to such glares of far greater intensity from my dear Auntie Luna, his was merely a pale imitation and even in my current fragile emotional state it failed to have the intended effect. If anything, after his dressing-down from the Hive Marshal, it rather cheered me up. Seeing that he had talked himself into a corner, he simply hissed at me, turned on his hooves, and marched himself out through the tent flap, presumably to go and find a drone or two to abuse if I knew his bullying sort well.

“I do apologise for him,” said Chela. “He is committed to the old ways.”

“Not at all,” I said. “If anything, this has been quite reassuring.”

“Oh?” Chela arched an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Reassuring to see that your command structure appears to be as dysfunctional as ours.” I hastened to add: “We have since made improvements.”

“I’m sure,” she said with a cryptic smile. "You see? We're not so different after all."

"No, we are. It's just that we're so different, we go right around and meet up at the other end."

Her only response was an amused smirk. The rest of the meal, if it could even be called that, carried on in much the same awkward manner -- Chela would make a banal comment, I would reciprocate with another of similar tedious quality, and then a lull would ensue. This would be repeated a few times, until, merely out of politeness at this stage, I had finished the plate of grass clippings and pushed it away. Mercifully, as dinners with high ranking officers go, this one was relatively short, for the Changelings were not the sort to go for extravagant meals consisting of more than one course and I doubted that they would be passing the port around any time soon.

“Well, Prince Blueblood, it’s been delightful,” said Chela, likely lying through her fangs. “But I’m afraid Scarabeus is right on one account – I do have a battle to direct.”

“Yes, delightful,” I said, very definitely lying. “We must do this again when this war is over.”

“Quite.” She rose to her hooves and I followed suit. “I do hope you enjoy your stay with Dorylus. I know he’s looking forward to having you. He’s wanted a suitable pony to test out his theories on equine care for the longest time, and I think you’ll be just the right pony. Have a good evening, sir.”

With that, she left, and I was escorted back to that tent with the bath. Along the way, I struggled to process the peculiar scene that I had just witnessed; I could only conclude, after a few minutes of muddling through those thoughts, that Chela had some kind of strange, contradictory view of Equestria and ponies. She clearly admired our civilisation in an odd way, or at least parts of it, having seen fit to imitate the habits of our refined upper classes in rather shallow terms, but she continued to subscribe to what Odonata had referred to as the ‘truth’ behind this world, that we are weak and therefore must inevitably be conquered by a stronger race, according to their own warped definitions on what 'strength' means. Perhaps, if I was a more intelligent sort of pony, I could say that this pointed to some fundamental sense of inadequacy commonly felt amongst the Changeling high command, or indeed some sort of strange mental defence mechanism triggered by the fundamental disconnect of their propaganda not matching up with the reality of the situation - that a supposedly weak and decadent empire was beating seven shades out of the supposedly strong and virile Hives.

I’m not exactly what one would call a deep thinker, and as I was led back to the tent with the bath I came to no particularly insightful conclusions about this. Once there, the drones escorting me directed me inside, and again left me alone. The bath had been emptied, but the tub, still with a residue of water and suds at the bottom, remained. The mirror, reflecting back the image of the tired old prince in semi-formal evening wear, was likewise still there, as was the uniform I had been captured in, now hung up on the clothes rack. Upon inspection, I found that the ripped seams had been sewn shut, the holes darned, and the entire garment given a thorough brushing that removed most of the dust and some of the stains. The brass buttons and the medals, all accounted for, had been re-attached. I could only guess that when I was to be paraded around like a prize that they wanted me to look at least halfway presentable. A brief check confirmed that all of my belongings, including Slab, remained safely in the pockets.

I assumed that they expected me to disrobe and return the dinner jacket, and I was about to do just that when I felt it slither off my back entirely of its own accord. The garment fell behind me in a heap, and the tiny, nagging suspicion I had been harbouring ever since I had put it on was confirmed when the crumpled up jacket became engulfed in green flame and transformed back into a rather embarrassed-looking Changeling drone. Likewise, my bow tie and shirt quickly followed suit, untying and peeling off my body, and each returned into their original forms. The three drones looked at one another, chirruped oddly with a flutter of their insectoid wings, and then trotted out of the tent without saying a word.

I immediately poked my head out of the tent flap and demanded another bath -- this was going to be an even more unpleasant incarceration than I had first thought.