As I stared into the dark corridor, I fully expected a Changeling drone to emerge screaming out of the coagulating blackness and tear my face off. However, none were forthcoming, and so, though my mind imagined all manner of nightmarish monsters within, I dared to poke my head through the open door and peer in a little harder. I tried to light my horn on reflex to banish the gloom, but the noticeable lack of any light and the sudden and unpleasant sensation of pressure in my forehead, as though my frontal lobe had just tried to batter its way out through my skull, reminded me of the nullifier ring still affixed firmly to my horn. Still, from what I could make out as my eyes began to slowly adjust to the darkness, it was a short set of stairs that led down to a long empty corridor, devoid of any sources of light besides that cast from my room. It was quite narrow, too, and a tall and only slightly overweight stallion such as myself would have to bow one’s head and find the rough wooden walls uncomfortable against one’s sides, but a small and lithe Changeling drone would be able to slip through without much difficulty. The corridor itself was not entirely uniform, and slowly I began to make out oblong shapes along the walls, which I took to be other short stairways that led to other such rooms.
“They’re everywhere,” said Cannon Fodder.
“I imagine they would connect to every single room in the building,” I said.
I tried to work out a rough plan of the place in my head based on my earlier wanderings, trusting my special talent to do its damned job for once and help fill in the gaps. As far as I could work it out, the corridor must have run along the entire length of the long gallery, cunningly constructed to be concealed inside the outer wall itself, but halfway between ground floor and the first floor so as not to get in the way of the windows on either. Assuming that it went further along than that, it could certainly have reached those rooms on the ground floor along the outer walls, such as the library, the servants’ quarters, and the dining room. I had to admit that it was rather clever of the Changelings, and altogether not particularly surprising of them.
“How in Tartarus did you find out about this?” I stepped away from the open doorway, back into the bright light of the mid-afternoon sun streaming through the windows.
“I saw one of the drones do it in the servants’ hall.” Cannon Fodder made another one of his casual shrugs, as though he was merely describing an interesting pigeon he saw on the way to the market, or wherever common ponies get food from these days. “I don’t think he knew I was watching him, though. I found another one in the drawing room.”
His unique fragrance aside, Cannon Fodder had a peculiar knack for almost disappearing into the background that I am at times envious of. Few ponies, or even Changelings for that matter, ever paid him much heed, being a rather dull-witted chap with little in the way of personal charisma, physical attractiveness, or personal hygiene, but though he would be amongst the last ponies I would select to be my partner in a game of Trivia Trot, he at least seemed astute enough to use this perception of him to his own advantage. The thought that this might be some sort of side effect to his unique affliction had occurred to me, but given the rarity of the condition and Twilight Sparkle’s strange mania about the subject contributing to his intense reluctance to submit himself for further testing (and who can blame him?), I expect that it would have to remain a mystery for the ages.
[Blanks are exceedingly rare, so research into the condition has suffered from a lack of subjects. However, what little is known seems to indicate that many seem to ‘fade into the background’ to an extent that implies that it is indeed an effect of the condition, though the evidence is anecdotal.]
Secret passages, of course, are nothing new, particularly in old grand houses. The Sanguine Palace, my ancestral home over which the burden of millenia of blood rests heavily like an iron cloak, has a great many such obscure passages and hidden tunnels all over the place, not all of which are mapped or known at all, for the use of servants to navigate my humble little home without having to disturb the occupants too much with their unsightly appearances, as a certain number of my ancestors regarded the necessary work they do too unseemly. Such passages, I must admit, also served the secondary, but no less important, purpose of allowing the master of the house to make clandestine visits of a more salubrious nature to his favourite guests without the risk of another finding him stumbling around the corridors at midnight. I doubted very much that the Changelings had built these passages with those innocent purposes in mind, or that I would be making much use of the second one during my stay here.
I bade Cannon Fodder to show me how it worked; there was a chair rail along that wall at about shoulder height, and he demonstrated that there was a hidden catch just underneath it that unlocked the hidden door. When he shut it again, I could find almost no indication that there existed such a door. Where there should have been an identifiable gap, however small, it appeared to be smooth, uninterrupted wallpaper instead, but when I ran my hoof over its surface I could just about feel a slight groove around the outline of where it should appear to be. If I had to make an educated guess, there was likely some small degree of illusory magic involved, though how exactly the Changelings could project it presumably from afar escaped me -- it made me wonder what else around here was merely an illusion, which was a deeply unsettling thought.
Well, I was not about to go exploring through dark, Changeling-infested tunnels in what amounted to merely a fancier sort of prison camp almost immediately upon arriving, despite my curiosity, so we left it at that for now.
“Let’s just keep this to ourselves,” I said to Cannon Fodder. “No need to let anypony else know just yet.”
The last thing I wanted was for Square Basher to find out about these and start turning her ridiculous thoughts of escape into anything resembling a coherent plan that she could reasonably act upon, so I would have to keep as much information about this place from her as possible. Come to think of it, I would also have to keep it from the other ponies too, lest the lower orders do what we nobles have always feared and start organising into a collective front. It was then that I started to consider that perhaps manual labour, disease-ridden barracks, and a diet that would be considered unfit for a Trottingham orphanage would not be quite so bad after all, if conditions were so dire that I could not possibly think to oppose even the most ambitious and foolhardy escape plans, thus avoiding this infuriating dilemma I found myself trapped within.
Still, as ever, I would have to take it all one day at a time, as I have always done since I first donned the peaked cap and Auntie Luna sent me on the train straight to the front. I met Commandant Dorylus again at dinner, and though I had been very tempted to pass the intervening time by calling upon the personal services of one of the too-perfect mares he had paraded before us earlier, I thought perhaps that it was not particularly helpful to my intentions of keeping our ponies on side if I was to be seen taking advantage of the more questionable of the camp’s amenities quite so enthusiastically. However, I needn’t have bothered, really, as when I ventured out again to try and walk off those certain urges that the thought of those mares had awakened in me, no doubt having been fueled by a week sharing a hole in the ground with the likes of Square Basher, I spotted Ploughshare escorting one of them, and it could have been any of them as their illusory disguises all looked more or less identical, to his quarters; their bodies pressed together, his foreleg over her slim shoulder, and she giggling as mares do, left very little doubt as to what they about to get up to. He had the good sense to look guilty when he saw me, not that the hypocritical look of disapproval I had affected dissuaded him at all, and the two slipped through the door and slammed it shut behind them.
“Less than a day,” sneered Square Basher, peeking her head out from the half-open door to her chambers. Her lip curled in intense disgust. “They’re already in bed with the enemy, literally. Wave a bit of flank in front of them and they’re willing to turn theirs on the Princesses.”
“It’s not entirely surprising, given what we’ve been through,” I said with a vague shrug.
“Don’t you worry, sir,” said Square Basher. “I’ll keep them in line for you. Like you said, the Princesses will need us soldiers, and they don’t want us going soft and weak in this putrid hellhole.”
A Changeling drone in formalwear trotted merrily on over, carrying a tray with a full jug and several glasses upon it on his back. “Good afternoon, sir and ma’am. Would either of you like some lemonade? I made it fresh myself!”
“Piss off.” Square Basher slammed the door shut, and the sound of her hooves stomping off to what I presumed was her bed could be heard through it. I was left feeling rather embarrassed, alone in the corridor with this distraught drone. The lemonade turned out to be rather lovely, and I thought perhaps the Changelings had actually missed their calling in life by trying to be conquerors instead of the more edifying jobs of making beverages. It all seems obvious now, of course, given the strange circumstances that ended the war, but at the time we still considered them to be merely monsters, barely sapient or capable of reason, independent thought, whimsy, or joy, so it was still all rather shocking.
What was not shocking, however, was that very few of the ponies attended dinner with Commandant Dorylus. There were three others, in addition to myself, sat around a modest dining table with places set out for two dozen. Square Basher had decided to host a separate meal in her bedroom for those of us whose loyalty to the Twin Crowns of Equestria remained unquestioned, and surprisingly the Changeling staff here were happy enough to oblige by bringing the food and drinks up for the eleven crammed in there, apparently sitting on the floor and eating from bowls like Diamond Dogs. This, however, had put me in something of a quandary, as while I had to remain in the Commandant’s good graces if my captivity here was to be a perfectly safe and relatively enjoyable one, free from the sort of hardship and misery that characterised my last brief incarceration with Earthshaker, which I was determined not to repeat, I had also to keep in mind my perception amongst my fellow prisoners. I was still their commissar and so commanded at least a modest amount of their respect by default as much as through my reputation garnered through the years, but that could all so very easily be lost if I was to be seen to be getting much too close to the enemy.
If the distinct lack of dinner guests had upset Dorylus he masked it very well, though I thought that even he could not have believed that the others would so enthusiastically accept his invitation. Dinner was a single course of dried hay served with a side salad of seemingly whatever leaves and flowers they deemed edible from the gardens outside, all paired with an agreeable if unspectacular Pinot Grigio apparently bought, or perhaps stolen, from somewhere called ‘Barnyard Bargains’. I hadn’t heard of that particular vintner before, and so I made a mental note to avoid them in future, if I could ever return home again. Still, however, it was the first drop of alcohol that I had seen since I crawled up that slope to the summit of Hill 70, and considering that the drones were ever eager to top up my glass I might have over-indulged somewhat.
Dorylus himself sat at the head of the table, as the master of the house, with myself as his guest of honour sitting to his right hoof. He still wore his smoking jacket, though as traditional dress codes dictated he had swapped his paisley cravat for a black silk bow tie. The other guests had filled up the seats closest to him, despite their clear and obvious anxiety about sitting so close to a Purestrain of all creatures, much less the drones standing around as wait staff, which had left more than three quarters of the long dining table peculiarly bare.
The dining room was quite small, with not much space for ponies to move between the large, sturdy oak dining table and the wood panelled walls. There was an entirely superfluous fireplace in the corner of the room, mercifully not being used for its intended purpose in this heat, framed with an ornate mantelpiece filigreed in intricate designs of gold. Aside from the small windows, wide open to let the cooler air of the deepening evening inside, light was provided by candles, whose flames flickered and danced in the draft, from a chandelier hanging precariously over the centre of the table, and did a rather inadequate job of illuminating the whole place. This had the rather unfortunate effect of casting the portraits hung upon walls all around us into deep, dancing shadows, and considering that the largest one was that of Queen Chrysalis herself, hanging directly behind and above where Dorylus sat, with the dread monarch perched upon a most terribly uncomfortable-looking throne, judging by its sharp angles and the sour expression on her face, it was almost enough to thoroughly put me off my dinner were I not still peckish after my recent ordeals.
“To tell the truth,” said Dorylus, as he swirled the glass around and sniffed the cheap wine with an overly dramatic flourish, “I hadn’t expected to receive so many guests so early, and certainly not one as esteemed as yourself, Prince Blueblood. We are still in the process of finding a suitable chef for you, but Boiling Point is proving surprisingly difficult to foalnap.”
[Award-winning but volatile chef Boiling Point escaped no fewer than three foalnapping attempts by Changeling infiltrators, though the reasons why he was specifically targeted would not become known until the news of Camp Joy’s purpose had become public knowledge. On one occasion he had beaten a drone to death with a stale baguette, then served him on a bed of wild rice to the ambassador from Griffonstone.]
The name Boiling Point meant very little to me at the time, but I doubted that even the greatest cooks in all of Equestria and beyond could have crafted anything resembling haute cuisine with the resources available here, but at least this dry, tasteless hay and the wilting plants were a damned sight more appetising than both brown stew and those miserable ration bars (the off-putting portrait of Chrysalis with its sickly green hue aside).
“We’ve been eating wild grass for the past week,” I said. “Anything your staff can provide can only be an improvement.”
I made an encouraging smile at the other ponies sitting at the table, who each looked more than a little uncomfortable wearing the approximations of black tie provided for them by our hosts. Switchblade, who I certainly hadn’t expected to see at the table, kept fiddling with his collar as though it might strangle him. After the last time with Chela, I had elected to forego the proffered dinner jacket and instead wore my only slightly dusty uniform complete with medals, though with the requisite black bow tie; as a Prince I had a certain amount of liberty to be creative with the black tie dress code, and unlike certain other stallions residing in Applewood who believe they can just do as they pleased, I possess the knowledge of the rules to know when and how to break them. With the uniform’s tunic worn open at the collar and chest like a dinner jacket and the bow tie peeking out from between the turned-over lapels, I looked rather dashing, if I might say so myself.
Dorylus laughed, or tried to, at least; it sounded like a seal dying of dysentery. “I am glad you are so understanding,” he said. “When I read Chela’s letter saying that I’ll be looking after you, I was beside myself with worry. How can my humble little home be suitable for a prince?”
“You needn’t have. My expectations of Changeling hospitality were not particularly high.”
“We are learning. The Hives are nothing if not adaptable.”
Dorylus turned his head to look up at the painting of Queen Chrysalis leering back down at him, and there was a fond smile on his thin lips, as though he was gazing upon the portrait of an absent lover and not a brutal tyrant. The artist, whomever they were, and I certainly would not have put it past the Changelings to have foalnapped any one of the very many talented portrait artists in Canterlot who sell their services to self-important nobleponies like Yours Truly, and forced them to perform the same for their dread queen, was certainly a very talented one. It was almost as though she was in the room with us.
There seemed to be no attempt to paint her in a more benign light, and indeed he appeared to have had very little of that to work with in the first place, for much of her was still shrouded in darkness; she did not smile, nor pull the empty, blank expression typical of most classical portraiture, but instead her lip was curled slightly in a domineering sneer and her eyes were like narrow slits, as though regarding the artist as merely a half-eaten rodent dragged in by a pet cat. The painting inspired the very same feelings of mortal fear that I had felt when I saw her in the chitin in that bloody quagmire of a courtyard in Fort E-5150; in my drunken state, head spinning with cheap wine, it was almost as though she was right there in the room, peering over the Commandant’s shoulder. As the artist had painted her from much lower down, presumably from the floor unless she had, as her ego would have dictated, raised her throne upon a dais tall enough to bungee jump off of, it made her look toweringly huge. The portrait most likely depicted her as she desired to be seen by all sapient creatures -- powerful, mysterious, dark, and perhaps slightly constipated.
“Awe-inspiring, isn’t she?” said Dorylus.
“More like awful,” I retorted drunkenly, with a sly wink to my fellow prisoners at the table.
Dorylus smirked, then shook his head. “You ponies wouldn’t understand,” he explained, and as he started his little speech I immediately beckoned the nearest drone over to fill up my glass and leave the bottle. “She took a race that had spent thousands of years cowering in the darkness, living off whatever scraps of love we could find from ponies, and forged a new, virile empire that’s ready to take its rightful place on the world’s stage.”
“Or damn it to failure,” I said, swirling the pale wine around in the glass. “As I recall, King Sombra had rather similar ideas, and look where he ended up.”
“It’s funny you should mention him.” Dorylus chuckled, and I decided that I didn’t much like the sound of that. His hooves folded on the table, and it was then that I finally noticed that he hadn’t eaten for the entire meal and that his plate was bare and clean. “How does ‘King Blueblood’ sound to you?”
I stared at him, not quite certain what to make of that unexpected remark. “I’m quite attached to ‘prince’, thank you. I’ve no intention of trading in my title.”
“Just give it some thought, sir,” he continued. “The Hives must consider how we are to rule Equestria once your Princesses have been deposed, and I feel that your ponies will be much more amenable to the new order of things if there was some… some continuity, shall we say, with the old regime, in the form of yourself. I can think of no better pony to rule Equestria on behalf of Queen Chrysalis than you, sir. And to further cement the bonds between our two races, in the spirit of the old ways of diplomacy, perhaps a more personal union would be appropriate.”
“A personal union…” The meaning took a moment or two to navigate its way through the wine-addled synapses of my brain, at which point my instinct for self-preservation sounded the metaphorical siren and I was almost overcome with an intense feeling of primal disgust, as one would when presented with the sight of a maggot-ridden corpse.
“You are suggesting that I marry… marry that?” I pointed up at the painting behind him. Switchblade broke out into hysterical giggles, and an attempted death glare from Yours Truly only made it worse.
Ever since I was able to grasp the concept of marriage I had long surrendered myself to the inevitable fate of all royals, which is to be locked into a loveless political marriage for the purposes of securing land, titles, privileges, and the production of an heir and sufficient substitutes, but until then I had thought that the worst possible case would be my future wife being Norikerian. One could certainly have mistresses, and it was downright expected, of course, but I could not imagine Chrysalis to be anything less than the possessively jealous type. The image of the potential wedding night and the consummation thereof rudely manifesting inside my head, like an uninvited distant aunt coming to stay, almost threatened to bring up my dinner, and indeed I had to swallow some of it back down again for a second time.
[Blueblood's reference to the Germane-adjacent province of Norikeria likely reflects aristocratic prejudice towards their oft-ridiculed policies of broad cultural acceptance and integration leading to 'mixed blood,' especially during the Clapsburg dynasty. This has survived to the present day, as ponies sometimes unfavourably compare Equestria to them.]
My obvious distress at the mere thought of such an absurd idea as marrying the Queen of the Changelings was clearly a source of great amusement for the other guests and Dorylus, who grinned inanely. The problem, however, was that I could never be completely certain that it was just a foalish joke at my expense, but when the thought occurred to me, I could not help but feel a certain sense of aristocratic indignation at being made the subject of mockery. Were he some upstart noble and were I not entirely at his mercy, I’d have reached across the table and slapped him across his smirking little face with my hoof and challenged him to a duel right then and there. I could only sit quietly, suppressing the fury that threatened to boil over.
“She would have to agree, of course,” said Dorylus, once the laughter had finally ebbed. “But she has taken a personal interest in you, sir.”
“I’m flattered,” I sneered, taking solace in the abundant wine provided. Inebriation seemed to help calm my anger somewhat, or at least put me in a state where I lacked the physical coordination necessary to act upon it.
“Between you and me,” he carried on, leaning forwards over the table in a rather conspiratorial manner, as though he was worried that the drones might inform their local friendly secret police officer on him. It was an act of course, but we all fell for it when we all leaned in to hear his scurrilous gossip. Then, with a nod to the other slightly bewildered dinner guests, “And your friends, of course. Our Queen might not be in the right frame of mind to meet you now, sir. You have been quite the thorn in her shell, so to speak, and with her sharp and decisive mind focused on the tasks of ruling the Hives and winning this war, she is unlikely to be in a forgiving mood. It took a lot of convincing from Chela not to have you sent straight to her.”
Dorylus let the implication linger in the air like a fat, lazy pegasus -- if I didn’t behave and do as I was told like a good little princeling, then the worst sort of conditions that my all-too-vivid imagination could manifest of a more traditional sort of prison camp would seem like a lovely holiday in the Prench Riviera, compared to the sorts of horrors that Queen Chrysalis was prepared to inflict upon me, and she was positively itching for it. It was only his goodwill that kept me from her clutches, so I’d better fly straight and support his absurd little project, or it’s off to be brutally tortured by a power-mad tyrant. The thought was only marginally more horrifying than that of marrying her, and I was certain that still constituted a war crime. Still, I suppose it was nice to have someone looking out for me, even if he was a Purestrain and only did this to further his own career within the convoluted hierarchy of the Hives.
The evening proceeded with the usual sort of awkward atmosphere that I had come to expect, like a sombre funeral after one of the guests had loudly passed wind at the emotional height of a touching eulogy, and everypony else trying desperately to proceed as though it never happened regardless. Dorylus was not particularly gifted with small talk, but to give him his dues, none of his guests, myself included, felt particularly amenable to idle chatter. Polite inquiries about one’s family might be all well and good in a typical sort of dinner party, but coming from a Changeling Purestrain they could only sound terribly invasive. There were no safe topics, for even the weather felt as though that might be giving too much information to the enemy, and that’s when it struck me like a lightning bolt.
Information. If the Changelings could be said to possess one significant advantage over us, aside from the fact that they were clearly more experienced at this war business, it was in information gathering; as we had learned more about them, it became clear that they were not the innumerable horde that would sweep us away like a tidal wave we had first feared, but significantly deficient in both ponypower and firepower compared to our newly reformed military, and so they must make up for that with sly cunning and intelligence. Equestria, however, had learnt to mitigate that to an extent, or, at least with Market Garden and Hardscrabble, to elevate our two advantages to render theirs ineffective; as far as our generals were concerned, it mattered little that the enemy knew how much artillery, magic, and ponypower would come bearing down upon them if the quantities we had were so thoroughly overwhelming and could be readily replaced. Dorylus could very well have been sincere in his beliefs about ponies and Changelings living together in some sort of unsettling co-dependent arrangement, and indeed he had seemed to put rather too much thought into this for it to be entirely a front, but the prospect of this ulterior motive was enough to make me feel suddenly and unpleasantly very sober.
“I’ve read that you were in the Royal Guard before the war, sir?” asked Dorylus, addressing me once he’d apparently tired of Ploughshare describing his favourite flavours of crisps.
I instantly felt wary of the comment, though I couldn't imagine what the state of the Royal Guard prior to the conflict had to do with anything. “Yes,” I answered. “It was quite an unspectacular career, however.”
“Still, I understand you were involved in the colonial wars in Zebrica.”
“Again, rather unspectacular,” I said. “Compared to this one, those little spats overseas barely count as wars.”
“Nevertheless, sir, you’ve clearly been around in your life: Zebrica, Neighpon, Cathay, Coltcutta, and Marelacca, to name a few. Have you ever been to Manehattan? I hope to visit there very soon.”
“My role as prince takes me all over Equus, yes.” The line of questioning seemed quite peculiar, and though the frankly ludicrous amounts of alcohol I was being readily given was most likely intended to loosen my tongue to the point where I’d give up every single state secret I knew, from the precise spell to open Celestia’s forbidden library to Market Garden’s preferred brand of toothpaste, he hadn’t counted on my rather considerable tolerance, born out of years of fine appreciation and proper breeding. “Manehattan is hardly as exciting as Coltcutta, though, but one can catch a fun show on Bridleway and stalk the bars afterwards. I tell you, the best place to get a Manehattan cocktail is in a rather seedy little bar on the West Side I know called Dirty-”
[Prince Blueblood spent a great deal of his leisure time in Manehattan, when he was not in Canterlot. Many bars and other establishments, mainly brothels, claim to have been his favourite haunts, though as ever it’s impossible to verify.]
“And the barracks?” he interrupted. Ordinarily I’d have been annoyed, but as that little slip of his mask of refinement illustrated that he was getting frustrated by my deliberately meandering story, I found it quite amusing. “I’d also read you were stationed there.”
There it is, thought I, and it could only be a more obvious ploy to uncover military secrets if he seized me by the throat, shined a bright lamp in my eyes, and demanded to know precisely how many ponies-at-arms were ostensibly protecting the city of Manhattan from the microscopically minute risk of a Changeling sneak attack. Still, if they were daft enough to even consider such an attempt, Dorylus also hadn’t counted on the fact that I had absolutely no idea myself; perhaps they had counted upon me being privy to the entire array of information concerning our gargantuan war effort, and I might even have the appropriate security clearance to find out such obscure things as the precise shade of gunmetal grey our supply airships were painted in, but they had clearly miscalculated if they believed I had bothered to even read any of the forests’ worth of literature I was sent on a daily basis. The less I know of things unrelated to my own self-interest the better, and that maxim has served me well for much of my life.
“Yes, I was,” I said. “The mess there wasn’t as well-stocked as in the Canterlot barracks, unfortunately, so my fellow officers and I often had to make trips into the city itself for entertainment. As any young bucks would, we’d start off with a show on Bridleway, and then we would see where the night would take us. Once, we were drawn into a drinking competition with some chaps in the Navy, and I tell you, sirrah, never get into such things with ponies in a service whose chief traditions are rum and buggery. Thankfully, there was no lash that night; I usually have to pay extra for it. I think I won, but I woke up on the floor in a Kirintown restaurant with my legs wrapped around a fiery little waitress and a rather large bill to replace the marble in their bathroom shoved in my face. It was a simpler time, before this beastly war ruined things.”
“Yes, very interesting,” said Dorylus, as he beckoned one of the drones over for more wine for himself. “But speaking of the barracks…”
This carried on for a few more rounds, with more tales of princely debauchery, before Dorylus realised that this line of questioning was futile and gave up. He tried the same with the other ponies, asking them about the conditions in the Trottingham barracks, but having taken my lead, they too told pointless stories about anything but military matters.
Golden Ticket spoke of his problems with the authorities about the working conditions in his chocolate factory, before he was ‘encouraged’ by the magistrate to escape the crippling fine and imprisonment by joining the Equestrian Army, and then he went into great detail about how inadequate and downright insulting the chocolate rations were. Switchblade told tall tales about the street fights he had won, and threatened that any Changeling invasion of East Trottingham would be met with such extreme violence from the local gangs that they would surrender before they even reached the East Coltcutta Docks there. And so on, until the evening dragged on and it became apparent that, even with our inhibitions freed by the sheer amount of wine drunk, we had actually gone much too far and would chatter pointlessly about everything but what he wanted from us.
Still, I was surprisingly having a great deal of fun, drinking and sharing sordid stories with these common soldiers at the expense of our host, who sat there observing this rather inane display with increasingly obvious frustration. Eventually, after the sun had set fully and the view outside had turned to an opaque blackness, he gave up trying to extract any useful information and retired for the night, citing the need to turn in early so he could get some work done in the morning. We, however, continued, and a few others from upstairs joined us, until we were all paralytically drunk with the free-flowing wine and required some assistance from the drones to go to bed.
Needless to say, I woke up the next morning with the most appalling hangover I’ve had since I first discovered that absinthe can be mixed with champagne. However, for the first few weeks or so things went well, for a given definition of ‘well’. When it came to matching the sort of holiday atmosphere that Dorylus was aiming for, he had clearly fallen short of the mark, but on the face of it I had still lucked out as far as my choice of incarceration was concerned. A prison camp was still a prison camp, with fences and guards almost all over the place, but for the most part I was at my leisure to do as I pleased within the restricted confines of this ‘manor house’. Under the constant watch of the guards, or whatever inanimate objects they might have disguised themselves as, one could never truly relax; we were each all on edge at all times, wary of every potted plant, vase, and even of each other. It became quite maddening.
For the most part I spent my time reading in the library, discussing adventure stories with Musca (whose company I was unexpectedly coming to enjoy), and simply pottering about aimlessly; it was still all rather dull and tedious, with little in the way of excitement or variation once the routine had been established, but I’d much rather be bored and paranoid than breaking rocks with my bare hooves all day. The others likewise continued in this rather pointless existence, and just when I finally felt I could let my guard down and relax I would be called upon to sort out an argument or fight that had broken out. These were always over ridiculously minute and inconsequential things -- one pony slapped another for breathing too loudly, others devolved into foalish name-calling over a game of croquet, and on another occasion Square Basher and I had to restrain two ponies lest they strangle one another over a game of scrabble. I could hardly blame them, for I too was feeling the weight of this monotonous, empty life, where the days blended together, and while we had every need catered for, it did not feel like much of a life worth living.
Regarding our host, however, I still did not know what to truly make of him. Superficially, Dorylus was genial enough, and well-mannered and willing to provide for his ‘guests’ within reason. The ponies had made a game of asking the Changelings for increasingly outlandish things, and the damned thing was that they actually came through with many of them. Light Roast asked for an espresso machine and one of sufficiently high quality was provided for; Square Basher asked for a spear and she was granted a practice stick with soft foam padding; and Switchblade asked for a manticore but his request was sadly rejected. I asked for the small portrait of Princess Celestia that hangs in my Canterlot apartment, in the living room to remind me of the importance of kindness and cakes, and was rather disturbed to find that they had procured precisely the right thing, or otherwise made a damned good forgery of it. Her motherly smile, however, made me feel terribly homesick, so I tucked it away where I couldn’t see it.
Dorylus remained a constant presence, seemingly on the prowl around his modest mansion and trying, and usually failing, to ingratiate himself with the ponies. Anypony who is much too friendly in a very obviously disingenuous way is unlikely to make many genuine friends, and he was finding that much to his frustration. I would find him lurking around the camp, trying to engage any one of the ponies unfortunate enough to be out and about at the time in conversation, and while most of them were not what I would consider to be impolite or outright rude, it was evidently clear none were interested in speaking with him. He had the manner of a pony who had read how to make friends from a book, and was trying his best to put it all into practice.
I, however, indulged him a little by attending dinner and whatever little events and games he tried to inflict upon us. “I have to make him think I’m on his side,” I explained to Square Basher when she asked why I was spending so much time with the Purestrain, and she seemed to buy it. His generosity with cheap wine was an added bonus.
I was under no illusion that he was still trying to extract information from me; most egregious was the time he convinced me to play chess with him, which I did primarily to alleviate the growing tedium of captivity here. He had arranged the board in the library, and it was rather an attractive set -- the black pieces were Changelings, of course, with Queen Chrysalis as the king and drones as pawns, and likewise the white pieces were Royal Guard ponies with Princess Celestia taking the place of the king. They all seemed well-carved and were even painted, and I was a little embarrassed to see that my likeness had been used for the white knight pieces.
[Based on this description, this chess set appears to be one of many commemorative sets that were produced early in the war, which are now collector’s items.]
“Ah, chess,” said Dorylus, admiring his set. “Since time immemorial, creatures of all kinds have put aside their differences to play a nice game of chess.”
I could hardly imagine the Hooffields and McColts taking a break from their exceedingly bitter feud for a stimulating and civilised game of chess, but I mumbled in the affirmative and got to work right away by opening with the King’s Pawn Game. He followed up by sending his Queen’s Pawn forward to meet it.
“I like to imagine General Market Garden and Hive Marshal Chela as two chess players,” he continued as I pondered my next move. “The Badlands as the chess board, and the divisions of infantry as the playing pieces, and each commander perched over, formulating their plans while considering what the other will do. Their keen minds focused single-mindedly on keeping up with all the potential ploys and traps and stratagems, like, uh… chess masters. It’s so very evocative, n’est-ce pas?”
“Market Garden is terrible at chess,” I said, as I moved my King, the lovingly carved and painted figurine of Princess Celestia, forward into the space vacated by the pawn in a move that was officially known as ‘bloody stupid’ by the sorts of mentally-afflicted ponies who take this game too seriously. Dorylus raised his eyebrows in surprise at the move, and I simply gazed back with an expression of mock-innocence on my face. “I played against her once, and she complained that she couldn’t use logistics to bring more rooks onto the board.”
Again, he hadn’t counted on me not having a damned clue about our strategic plans in any detail, and in particular what went on in Market Garden’s neatly-organised mind, and to be fair it wasn’t much besides getting as much stuff as possible and throwing it directly at the enemy’s face until it caved in under the pressure, so I’m not entirely sure what insights he thought he could glean from me. Still, I played stupid, which tended to fit in well with what many ponies think of me anyway.
“Do you think she’d make a straight drive for the Queen’s Hive, or maybe make a diversion for Teratoma Hive to hit our industry?” he would ask, and I would shrug in response.
[Teratoma Hive was the Changelings’ second city, and had rapidly industrialised as part of Marshal for Armaments Isoptera’s efforts to keep pace with Equestrian military production. It became a city-sized forced labour camp housing a huge population of enslaved ponies and dissident drones to work in the armament factories under appalling conditions.]
“I wouldn’t know,” I’d say, taking inspiration from Cannon Fodder. “I just go where the Princesses will.”
I won the match, despite having handicapped myself with the suicidal opening move, and left Dorylus staring in shock at his checked Chrysalis.
As for the rather less tasteful activities on offer, well, all that I can truly say is that it had been rather a long time since I had last been with a mare, and though it was enough to make Sergeant Major Square Basher seem like an attractive option for a roll in the hay, she was not exactly in the mood to lift her tail for me. So yes, I had indulged in carnal delights with those Changelings, who apparently had done their homework in finding out where my specific tastes lie. Yet it still felt like something vital was missing from the whole experience; it was certainly enjoyable from the perspective of slaking one’s animal lusts, but they were each far too submissive for my liking, and too eager to do whatever depraved thing I wanted without asking for anything in return. I might have had the more than justified reputation as a concupiscent debauchee who’ll dive into bed with any pretty mare(s) capable of saying ‘yes’, but a tip from Yours Truly to any young stallion of a certain age who might have stumbled across these writings, it’s altogether much more satisfying if she’s having fun too.
Contraceptives were provided, this time, so, assuming that these could be trusted, I was reasonably confident that I could avoid yet another paternity scare. Unless, however, there are now dozens of strangely pale and blond-maned Changelings of indeterminate parentage living amongst the Hives.
Speaking of Square Basher, she had certainly made good her promise to ‘keep the ponies in line’ for me and stop them from going ‘soft’, as she had put it. Each sunrise, without fail, she would be out there on the manor grounds with whomever she could drag out of their bedchambers and line them up for an inspection, often while they were still in their pyjamas (provided for by our hosts, of course). On occasions when she felt as though they were being spoilt by the Changelings, she would even make them march up and down the grounds in parade fashion. I would attend, in uniform if I could remember, just for appearances, and observe as she carried on as though she was a drill sergeant with a section of fresh volunteers sent straight from the recruitment centre. They all complained, of course, but they still did it, and I wagered that they went along with this absurd charade because they were still more afraid of her than they were of the Changelings.
The little moment of peace that I had earned could never last, for like all good things in life they bloom but once like a rare rose and then rot away. However, I like to think that I made the most of that limited time, as best as I could given the circumstances. It was just after another one of these inspections, and I could not help but notice the number of ponies who turned up for these diminished with each day. This time, Square Basher cut it short, and just as I was about to flounce away and see about some sort of breakfast, she trotted up next to me.
“Sir,” she said, looking this way and that in a manner that instantly set me on edge; she was up to something. “Excuse me, sir, but there’s something I need to show you.”
I should have told her to get lost, but I didn’t, and I followed her back inside the manor. She led me through the hall, down a corridor, and straight for the downstairs loo. We paused to wait for the hoofservant at the other end to totter off with his feather duster, then she opened the door and beckoned me inside.
“In the ladies?” I whispered.
“It’s fine, sir,” she whispered back. “Quickly, before they see us.”
With that I followed her into that sacred, unknowable sanctuary, and noted that even here it was in much better condition than the gents next door. My hooves itched, and there were two possibilities that my febrile mind could come up with: the first was that she was planning her long-awaited and much-anticipated escape attempt and it somehow involved the latrines; and the other was that she had been secretly lusting after me all this time, and in which case she could have picked a rather more appropriate and sanitary location for a secret liaison. I wasn’t sure which I feared more, but, and I must admit this, now that she was out of her armour I found that there was a certain appeal to be found in her impressively bulky build.
“What’s this about?” I asked, once the door had been shut behind me. Here was quite possibly the most truly private place in the entire mansion, or at least one would hope that the Changelings were not so curious as to see what ponies got up to behind the privacy of the locked cubicle door.
Square Basher said nothing as she slipped silently to a cubicle door that had been marked with an ‘X’ scratched into the wood just above the lock. It was the furthest from the door, up against the outside wall, and through the window just over her shoulder I could see the clear sky and the tall fence that surrounded the camp. Curious, and filled with a sense of mild dread too, I followed to see her casually lift the porcelain throne from the floor, from where it carefully concealed a much larger hole in the ground than would otherwise be required for the purposes of plumbing, and place it delicately to the side of this rather spacious cubicle. She beamed proudly, as though displaying a piece of art, and in spite of myself I stepped closer, tip-hooving awkwardly as though the guards might hear me, to peer down into the darkness. There, I saw that the concrete had been crudely chipped away by some large and heavy implement, which Square Basher had wordlessly explained by presenting me with a weathered dessert spoon she must have stolen from somewhere.
Oh no.
“That,” I said, once I’d finally worked out what I was staring at, “is an escape tunnel.”