The young unicorn sat in his room, studying and reviewing everything he had already seen so far under the light of the day. Unfortunately, he was constantly distracted by memories of what had happened to him. He tried to look it up in the university's library, but couldn't find any spells that could help him contact his ancestors through magic. He didn't know why, but lately, he felt a strange tug in that direction. He frowned when going over a subject on Equestria's fabled 'lost history' that ponies had only speculated on up to this point. Sunny shifted in his chair. In the past, this would have fascinated him, but now? With what happened to him in the last few months, he could only confirm that Equestria's history had not just been lost, but destroyed. If only his...great great great...something exponential aunt would let him write down everything she knew and let him parse through the obvious bias she had regarding herself and her sister.
He heaved a sigh and closed the book. He had studied enough for the time being, and seeing the book on history did little more to make him excited as it did exhaust him. Sunny was going to have to find something else to do today. Moon was busy training her soldiers, and he felt awkward standing in the keep with all the guards around. Sure, he could admire the new decorations for the throne room, but what was the point of that when he went there almost every day?
The stallion hummed to himself. Perhaps he could find a way to get Moon to teleport him to the changelings so he could study the symbols. He could try asking her during training or a potential downtime, but--Sunny slapped the sides of his head. No more pondering or debating or anything like that! He knew the alicorn had the ability to teleport things long distances. Maybe she could do that for him? Or...he could check the portal and see if it would work with his magic. The future queen of Equestria would at least permit his magic to work, right?
Sunny quickly gathered up his writing tools, stuffed them into some saddlebags, and hurried out of his campus towards the castle. The guards gave him a belated greeting, their expressions dull and melancholic. The unicorn couldn't help but chuckle internally. Even he sort of missed the older days, but now was not the time to reminisce on how the 'older' days might as well have been yesterday. The stallion hurried down the damp stairs in the dark dungeons and let out a little orb of light from his horn to illuminate his path. He wasn't interested in just slipping and breaking his neck. Nightmare Moon wouldn't let him live it down. Plus, it felt worse down here than when he was with Moon. An oppressive energy bore down on him, like the dungeon itself wasn't happy that this unicorn was here without its master.
When the unicorn finally got to the teleportation pad, the stallion audibly gulped. "She didn't...trap it to kill anypony else but her who tried to use it, did she?" he wondered.
Sunny hesitantly tapped the surface of the stone before fully stepping onto it and letting his magic through it. To his surprise, it reacted to his magic, but instead of allowing him to walk through peacefully, he was instead yanked violently through the magic and tumbled upon landing. He groaned in pain and opened his eyes to a multitude of changelings staring at him in the thick fog that surrounded their hive.
"It's the white one that followed the big pony," one of the changelings commented.
"Where's the big pony?" one of them asked Sunny.
"Um...well..." The stallion sat upright and shook the dirt and gravel from his mane. "I came here to study the room covered in magic runes."
"Not allowed to come into the hive without asking the queen."
"Ah..." Sunny felt himself shrinking under the gaze of the bugs. "Well...c-could one of you go and ask her?"
The same changeling stating the rule was shoved by another. "The queen said he and the giant pony can come into the hive as long as they greet her first, idiot!" The shoved bug hissed at his aggressor and stepped away. "Follow me, pony," the shover told Sunny.
It struck the stallion once again to the extent of the damage that Nightmare Moon had caused. Even after all this time they still hadn't cleaned out the rubble and fully repaired their home. He dreaded going deeper into the hive...which was exactly where they were going, and Sunny decided that breathing through his mouth would be a good idea considering the stench there was deep below last time. To his surprise, however, the lower castle tunnels had been mostly cleaned out and the walls repaired with the weird green gunk the bugs produced. Some were mixed with pieces of stone as well, but Sunny didn't think that really changed the solidity in any real way since the pieces were present in significant numbers.
"Wait here," Sunny was ordered.
He did as told and waited at the base of the stairs, watching nervously at everything around him. The unicorn couldn't help but jump in surprise whenever he spotted the bugs crawling along the ceiling. Every second here without Nightmare Moon was a disconcerting moment of pure terror. Then a realization hit Sunny almost as hard as his hoof hit his face. He didn't leave a note for her. Sunny started to get goosebumps when a massive figure entered his view from down one of the corridors. It was Queen Hepetia. She seemed disgusted to see him, and it caused the pony to shrink slightly under her glare.
"What do you want, pony?" she asked Sunny. "I know you're the one who was with the alicorn, so why isn't she here?" the changeling hissed.
"I uh..." The unicorn cleared his throat. "I came here on my own to take notes and try and figure out what the symbols in that room we saw are."
The bug raised a brow and craned her neck down to look at Sunny directly as she walked around him. "You're not trying to have us wiped out, are you? Nothing threatening?"
"By my own life, no! Never! I-I-I-I Wh-No! I didn't even think of that!" the stallion stammered.
"Very well," the queen said while raising her head. "Then I'll accompany you, just in-case," she hissed. "I just finished my egg-laying period and I have a bit of free time before checking on the rest of my hive."
Sunny paused. "You what."
"My egg-laying period, pony," Hepetia repeated. "What, did you think we reproduced like you mammals do?" she asked with a tinge of repressed laughter.
"W-well, yes," Sunny confirmed. His eyes darted between the queen and the other changelings observing. "You look like equines, and there are others that--"
"Convergent evolution, pony," the queen stated with a boop of Sunny's muzzle. He sniffled and frowned while the queen smirked. "Just because we look like you doesn't mean we are part of the same family." Her smile quickly disappeared. "Now get moving. We'll lead you."
The pony gulped nervously. He was trapped between the queen of the changelings and her drones, without Nightmare Moon's support. He started wishing he was back in the campus dorms. Instead, he was now in a nursery where the grubs were moving about like worms. The stallion expected them to try and swarm him, but they ignored him completely, and he wasn't sure why. At least it was for the better.
"Here," Hepetia said with an outstretched hoof.
She was pointing to the immense door left open but blocked off by some stone blocks the grubs wouldn't be able to get over but the adults could easily step over.
A changeling peered out from behind the immense door and bowed her head. "My que..."
The changeling stopped when she noticed Sunny. There was a brief pause where she stared at him, dumbfounded, then hissed at the stallion and buzzed away rapidly into the tunnels, leaving the pony stunned.
"What was that about?" he asked the queen.
"Don't mind her. She is one of the grubs you chased away when last you were here," Hepetia stated apathetically.
"She what?! But it's only been a few months!"
Hepetia pushed Sunny into the room, still carrying her bored expression. "We age faster compared to you ponies." She looked the unicorn in the eyes. "We are bugs, remember? They don't exactly take long to mature."
"W-well...I mean, that depends on the type and the genus and--I'll do the research," Sunny trailed off when he noticed the queen glaring at him.
He dropped his saddlebags and dug through them with his magic to pull out a pencil and some paper.
"What are you going to do first?" the queen asked.
"Um..." Sunny pulled one of the books on the floor up to him and opened it. "Well, first I need to see if the Solar Tyrant made any magic notes. This is a completely unknown type of magic, one that I'm fairly certain she built from the ground up." The unicorn quickly wrote down something on the paper and went through the book further. "Most of these are damaged from age, but if there are enough intact pages and parchments, I should be able to parse enough information to get at least a very simple understanding of the concept itself."
"You don't know what it is and you're trying to learn how to read it. Okay," Hepetia resumed.
"Uh...yeah. Sure," the stallion grumbled.
It had only been a few minutes that the queen was already becoming antsy from boredom. Sunny couldn't understand why she wouldn't leave. The changelings could stay behind, and it wasn't in a single day that he would be able to decipher anything. There were so many procedures to go through, and he would need the experience of proper linguistic historians, magic archivists, and the alicorn's help to figure out the magic. It was still fascinating to him. Some of the magic letters seemed to follow each other, like cursive writing, while others were stamped aggressively on the surface they were written on. Did this mean this room had multiple different languages? Were there experiments mixed into the finalized language? In fact, had the language been finished at all? Which writing was the finalized, functional version? What would happen if--
"This is a spell," Hepetia noted whilst looking at the wall.
Torn from his thoughts, Sunny turned to face her. "What makes you say that?" he asked.
"The way the characters are placed and how it all seems to intermingle with each other." She stepped back, letting Sunny get a closer look. "Changeling and griffonian magic share a similar pattern." She raised a brow. "Do you want to try it?"
"I don't even know what to do!"
"Then let me guide your magic. We will see if anything happens."
"But this is incredibly dangerous!"
"It's okay," Hepetia said calmly. "I can't die from something as simple as a rogue spell, and my hive has closed the door partially and evacuated the area.
"We don't even know what kind of spell it is!" Sunny felt his mouth drying up and his heart beating faster. "What if it destroys the whole mountain?!"
The queen leaned in closer to Sunny and started speaking softly. "Imagine the recognition you would receive if you did this. All the accolades from rediscovering a brand new magic language. You could just taste it," she teased. The queen stuck her thin tongue out and hissed in the unicorn's ear.
"Blagh!" Sunny cried out. He slammed his ear several times with his hoof then started dragging his head across the ground. "Grossgrossgrossgrossgrossgrossgrossgrossgrossgrossgross!" he kept repeating in rapid succession. "That's disgusting!" he cried out. "And you stink, too!"
Hepetia, shocked at first, smiled with renewed interest. "You're immune to changeling magic and pheromones, like the alicorn," she stated in amused awe.
"If I try the spell, will you agree to never do that again?!" Sunny screamed.
"Very well," the queen agreed. She lied down next to Sunny and pointed her horn at the wall. "Focus on the pattern of my magic and try to follow it as best you can."
Still digging into his ear with a hoof and shivering in disgust, Sunny slammed himself down on the ground and followed. It took around fourteen attempts to see a result that wasn't just sparking, but the close approximation of the wall spell took root.
"It's working!" Sunny declared. "Wait, what's happening?!"
The entire room swirled around faster and faster in the red vortex. Hepetia and the changelings attempted to catch him, but they couldn't reach him or touch him. Sunny found himself stuck in a space without gravity and could only waggle his legs about. He wasn't about to get some respite, however, as the red void around him tore itself apart for flames of great fury.
"What is this? What's happening?!" he cried.
Through the storm of heat and light, a face emerged, wreathed in the world Sunny now found himself in.
"What is going on? Who uses my magic?!" the face shouted. Its every word caused its blackened face to crack and splinter off itself. "No pony should have been able to use it!" Its eyes of a blinding yellow locked onto Sunny. "Why do you look like me?" it asked. "Why do you look like my child?" Sunny didn't respond. "Answer me!" the face bellowed.
The white unicorn flinched from the flames whipping angrily around and at him. "Wh-The Sol..." He caught himself. "Are you Pr-Princess Celestia?" he stuttered.
"Who else would I be? Three years and I'm already forgotten?"
Sunny wanted to go back to bed.