The words ‘I have a plan’ have never filled me with much confidence, but I was so indescribably happy to see Cannon Fodder that I was quite willing to go along with the first rare independent thoughts that had materialised inside his barren mind. My aide had popped down outside of view again, so I tried to see if I could make out what he was doing by angling my snout down and pressing my face against the clear surface of the cocoon. His ‘plan’, as far as I could tell, seemed to involve hitting the base of the cocoon with a large, curiously asymmetrical dagger that he had acquired from somewhere. He wasn’t getting particularly far with that, as whatever seemingly organic substance that this cocoon was made, or perhaps even grown from mended itself with every stab he made. I recalled that Saguaro's cocoon opened of its own accord when Fer-de-Lance had accidentally grazed it with a careless barrage of magic fire, but alas my horn was still rendered as useless as my aide’s with the ring still firmly attached to it.
“Cannon Fodder?” I called out. My throat hurt with every word, but I wanted nothing more than to be out of this stupid, hateful thing as quickly as possible.
My aide ceased stabbing the cocoon and popped his head up again. This was getting nowhere and with each plunge of his dagger the tip came precariously closer and closer to where my numb hindlegs were, and I was hardly in the mood to suffer more damage to my three remaining undamaged limbs. “Sir?” he said.
“Go and find a unicorn,” I said.
I watched Cannon Fodder turn his head left to right in rapid succession, then he darted off before I could tell him not to leave me alone here. Something was going horrendously wrong, clearly; the presence of quite that much fire about the place tended, in my own personal experience, to illustrate that things were not proceeding in a logical and careful manner, quite the opposite in fact. I tried to make out the figures in the smoke, but they were fleeting and quite distant even accounting for the blurring effect of the cocoon’s translucent surface. They were definitely pony-shaped, with four limbs, a body, a head, and sometimes wings or a horn, but which were Changelings wasn’t something that I could work out with any sort of clarity. However, what was very clear from the way these shapes moved amidst the smoke and the burning foliage was that they were fighting, and it was a particularly nasty sort of fracas if fire was involved. Not only could I hear the sounds of brutal violence that I had become much too acquainted with over the years, muffled by the cocoon itself, but I could see these figures charge, grapple, punch, buck, kick, and bite one another. Here and there I would see flashes of flame, perhaps musket fire at an extremely close range, briefly illuminating some of the silhouettes. Two would embrace one another, and the deadly dance of one-on-one combat would ensue, and they writhed on the ground with one another until one silhouette became still and the other darted off for more.
I don’t know how much longer I had waited for Cannon Fodder to return, but it was sufficient to make me concerned not only for my own continued safety, as that a few stray musket shots getting rather close to my cocoon was not lost on me, but also his. Just as I thought I might attempt shouting again, though my throat felt as though I had been gargling with shrapnel shards, his dull, vacant face popped back into view, along with that of a creature I hadn’t expected to see, but in hindsight I probably ought to have.
“Cannon Fodder,” I said carefully. “That’s a kirin.” So that explained why things were on fire.
Cannon Fodder looked at said kirin, who stared back with a quizzical but amused expression. “She has a horn.”
“So do Changelings, but that doesn’t make them unicorns,” I snapped flippantly. Her horn was entirely the wrong shape for either; it was longer, curved in an S-shape with a strange fork in the middle, and was shiny. The kirin mare was a little older than I, probably in her mid-thirties, I’d say, with a pretty, soft face that was just starting to gain a few wrinkles around the edges of her eyes and lips. A shock of electric-blue mane framed her face, and, in that odd way that characterises their race, it resembled more like that of a lion than an equine and complimented the pale yellow shade of her coat quite nicely. I couldn’t quite see her figure from where I was in the cocoon, but if her face was any indication I’d imagine that she was quite soft and plump, as far as they go. At least the presence of kirins explained why everything was on fire, thought I.
“Nihao,” I said to the kirin, with a faint nod of my head; it always paid to be polite to mares, especially if they could burst into flame at any moment.
“I’m Neighponese, you gaijin,” she snapped, speaking in decent Ponish but with an exotic accent that sounded quite familiar.
“Gomen-nasai,” I amended.
The kirin blinked vacantly twice at me, and then shook her head. “I’m only joking, you’re in Marelacca.” She seemed cheerful enough, despite the fight to the death happening not terribly far from where we were having this conversation.
Of course, where else would I be? Commandant Dorylus wanted me to watch Equestria burn, and I imagine that his desire for revenge for my part in the downfall of Camp Joy, despite being entirely not my fault for once, had overridden his own common sense as it often does with ponies more driven by emotion than reason. He obviously wanted to make good his promise, no doubt attempting to maximise my misery by not only dragging me halfway across the sea but also ensuring that I would be around to observe every step of their audacious plan, unable to stop it in any meaningful way, until they pulled it off and Chrysalis had perched her chitinous backside upon Princess Celestia’s throne. Still, I found myself feeling quite relieved at this revelation; my father had served in some capacity in running this place on behalf of Princess Celestia, as he would later do with Coltcutta and various bits and pieces of Zebrica to varying degrees of success and profit, and I myself had spent a few months here as a colt. The relief lasted about as long as it took me to remember that dear old Father had not done a particularly good job of working with the locals, pony and kirin alike, and if anything had briefly united the two races together in mutual hatred of him. Still, I suppose that meant we could all agree on something.
“Would that I had returned under better circumstances,” I said, though I received little more than a blank stare in response. “But to start, do you mind helping me out of this bloody cocoon?”
The kirin looked the cocoon up and down, which made her messy mane swish and bob, pulled a face as if deep in thought, and then shook her head vigorously. “If you’re asking me to nirik-up and burn you out of there,” she said, “then that might boil you alive at the same time. I can’t exactly do it on demand, either; I have to get myself really worked up over something, lah.”
“The fight going on behind you isn’t making you angry?” I asked, incredulous.
“Not really.” She shrugged casually. “What can I say? Meditation works wonders for keeping down the angry thoughts, lah. I mean, it is a little rage-inducing that the Changelings have just invaded our land, especially since we still haven’t gotten it back from you Equestrians, and-”
I quickly noticed that hot blue and red flames began to dance around her elegant horn, and given that I had no intention of being boiled like a potato ration, I interrupted her, which, upon reflection, could have worsened the issue. “Not today, perhaps.”
That calmed her down, and the flames stopped. Of course, there was always something; so much for there being an easy fix for this, but I suppose after being stuck in this blasted thing, which was starting to smell rather horrible, I might add, I could afford to wait a little while longer. It was at that point however, that a crackle of musket fire, much closer and I could see the flashes of tongues of flame through the roiling smoke, ripped through the air and struck something just near enough to me to cause me some concern. The kirin flinched from the shots, emitting a sharp yelp; Cannon Fodder looked up at where they had hit with his usual vacant expression, as though the enemy had hurled a custard pie up there instead. The dark figures in the smoke began to deepen, taking on more solid forms, and they advanced.
“Get me out of this horrible thing!” I shouted, or at least I tried to, for it came out merely as a hoarse, quiet cry, but I think what I lost in volume I made up for in desperation.
Cannon Fodder turned to face them, legs apart and shoulders square with his flanks ready to take them on; as determined and experienced a fighter as my aide was, even he would struggle unarmed against five drones. However, the kirin had other ideas. I watched, unable to do anything to affect the proceedings save shout uselessly at everypony and be ignored, as she grabbed my aide’s shoulder, the urgency of the situation apparently overriding whatever disgust she might have felt at his lack of personal hygiene, which had been exacerbated by whatever conditions of captivity he had been forced into that even I in my sealed cocoon could begin to detect traces of his unique aroma.
“This way!” shouted the kirin, and before I could begin to politely ask them not to just leave me out here, the two of them quickly disappeared from view.
The Changelings emerged fully from the smoke. There were five of them, all wearing that distinctive grey uniform of the Blackhorns, already arrayed out in a firing line with their muskets at the ready. I was about to find out if the cocoon was bulletproof, which I very much doubted.
“Whatever it is you’re doing, hurry up!” I shouted as loud as I could, though I had no confidence that my voice could be heard. Though my limbs still felt stiff and weak, I had managed to get my right hoof up and gave the cocoon’s clear wall a forceful shove. Again, the surface indented slightly under my hoof, but rapidly hardened and solidified until it was as solid as steel.
The Changelings took aim, and I threw up my hooves over my face as though that might ward off the hail of lead from turning my brains into a fine paste. Yet just as the officer hissed out the order, their hooves closed around their triggers, and I saw the priming pan of their muskets flash with smoke and flame, the cocoon lurched backwards, which sent my head rocking forwards to bash my muzzle painfully against the wall. The muskets cracked, and I felt a sudden sensation of shock ripple through my much-abused body. My breath caught in my throat, yet I drew another, for the enemy had missed. My cocoon started rocking, jolting me from side to side. I watched the Changelings seem to drift away, and I finally realised that I had been stashed in the back of a wagon like a rolled-up carpet, which was now being pulled by both the kirin and Cannon Fodder. How enterprising of them, but the enemy quickly gave chase. Quite powerless to do anything, I could only stand in my tube and watch them take wing and charge after me.
“They’re chasing us!” I shouted. “Faster!”
That seemed to spur them on; if there was anything a fat, pampered aristocrat like me could do, it was to annoy the lower orders of society into doing things for me by shouting rudely at them. The wagon lurched forwards, which had the effect of propelling my head forward so that I bashed my snout on the cocoon’s wall again, this time leaving a little imprint there. I could only watch the Changelings chasing on after us, starting to close the distance. Trees with strikingly bright green leaves in astonishing abundance swept past us, along with wooden homes with tall roofs all perched up on stilts for some peculiar reason, and the dirt road rocked beneath our wagon, jostling me this way and that in my tube. At least the thick fluid that kept me suspended within also prevented me from being shoved around too much, at least from the neck up.
It was then, however, that I noticed that my cocoon had sprung a leak. The level of fluid had previously reached up to my neck, but now it had dropped to the level of my shoulders. Feeling encouraged by this turn of events, I looked down, trying to find where it was coming from, and found that there was a rather large hole, the size of a coin, in the cocoon just between my hindlegs. Well, that was dashed lucky, thought I, and if that would-be sharpshooter had lifted his musket just an inch or two upwards, accountants in every brothel from Canterlot to Prance would be beside themselves with grief.
[It is likely that the Blackhorns had orders to keep Prince Blueblood alive, and that they were in fact aiming for Cannon Fodder and the kirin instead of him. This must have been a stray shot from the infamously inaccurate weapons, rather than a deliberate effort to shoot him.]
The impact had created a spider’s web of cracks in the front of the cocoon, and I could see that the musket ball itself had embedded itself in the rather more substantial back of it. I lifted my hindleg, finding that the dense fluid supported my weakened limbs enough for me to move it without too much difficulty and pain, and pressed the hoof against the hole. The outflow of fluid slowed to a dribble, but I began to push with my hindleg as hard as I could. At first, nothing happened, but as I braced my back against the back of the cocoon with my forelegs and pushed again, the cracks began to deepen and spread across the clear surface. The stinking fluid gushed out through the cracks, splashing onto the floor of the wagon. Though my leg ached with the exertion it had not been put through for days on end, this was certainly encouraging and I carried on pushing. The cracks rippled across the entire surface, and then with a peculiarly wet ‘crunch’, the front lower portion broke into jagged shards and the fluid flooded out.
At last! I dropped down, just as the wagon veered violently to the right, tossing the cocoon and me still in it to the left where we both fell against the side wall of the cocoon with a jarring jolt. However, though my shoulder stung from the impact, the angle made it easier for me to drop down and crawl out of the hole I’d made. Well, it was still a terribly clumsy affair, but there I was, gasping on the floor, covered in fluid, limbs burning with exertion, and heart racing with fear, alive and free for the time being.
The enemy were getting closer, almost enough for me to reach out and shake a drone’s hoof with only a moderate risk of falling off, and I wished that I had the full use of my horn. I looked around hastily in the wagon, and found that I had been stored with a whole host of supplies. It was impossible not to feel at least a little insulted that I, an Equestrian prince of long and noble lineage, had been sharing a wagon with mere ammunition, weaponry, and uniforms. However, it suited my purposes fine. I dragged my limp body, covered in that awful slime that matted my fur and made everything terribly slippery, over to a box of crates and pushed the lid open. Inside were muskets. I had seen earth ponies use them before, but I was not about to attempt to imitate them even if I wasn’t in this state, so I grabbed one, finding it rather heavy, and hurled it with as much might as I could muster out of the back of the wagon.
My efforts were rewarded by a sharp, shrill yelp of surprise and pain as my airborne musket smacked one of the drones square on the nose. The others, presumably more shocked that I was throwing the damned things at them instead of using them for their intended purpose, hung back a little, but quickly renewed their pursuit. I had more muskets in the crate, but my legs felt like jelly and so I was not particularly up for throwing another gun at them. The next crate held some Blackhorn uniforms, folded neatly as though they were on display in some gentlecolt’s atelier. I grabbed one, and despite the life-or-death situation I found myself in, I could not help but notice the shoddy construction and the roughness and flimsiness of the rough canvas-like material used, before hurling it out of the back of the wagon at the pursuing drones. The balled-up tunic opened up in mid-air, and then wrapped around the face and torso of the lead drone, and in his efforts to pull the stupid thing off of him, he collided with his fellow and the two struck the ground in a collective heap.
That, however, only served to slow them for a moment and annoy them. The feeling of elation did not last long. The one I hit with the musket rejoined the pursuit, the chitin on his muzzle cracked and his compound eyes full of murder; the other two had pulled off the flying tunic, extricated themselves from their awkward embrace, and were quickly catching up with the others. It looked as though I would have to very quickly learn how to load and fire a musket, despite never having done it before in my life. Surely it could not have been that difficult if earth pony peasants could be trained to do it reliably, though they had to endure weeks of repetitive training to reach that minimum of three rounds a minute. I tried to grab another musket from the box, and looked all over for the cartridges, but found nothing resembling them. Of course they would be in another box, but with the enemy breathing down our collective necks I hardly had the time to go searching for them. I would have to use the damned thing as a club, then.
“Faster!” I shouted.
“Lose some weight, lah!” the kirin yelled back at me.
That should have been obvious to me, but I suppose in my state of panic it simply hadn’t come to mind. There was still the cocoon-thing, leaning up against the side of the wagon like Yours Truly up against the bar on a colts’ night out, and I imagined that would weigh a fair bit. My suspicions were proved true when I tried to shift the damned thing; I squeezed past the crates behind it, and then placed my forehooves on its still-slimy surface and pushed. My forelegs ached with the exertion, but I managed to roll this cylinder along the ground and the wall, leaving behind a sticky trail on the wooden surfaces, and then over the edge of the wagon where it crashed onto the ground. That, at least, was a start, and there was a noticeable burst of speed.
“More!” the kirin shouted.
I was reluctant to throw out the muskets, even though they were probably the next heaviest thing left on the wagon. It was clear that these kirins were part of some sort of resistance group, and quite a well-organised and determined one at that, and so if I was going to ingratiate myself with them it would certainly pay for me to bring them much-needed weapons as an offering. Still, there were the uniforms, likely useless to the kirins, so I hauled myself over to that crate and started tossing as many coats as I could out of the wagon. The Changelings seemed to expect it this time, and deftly dodged the hail of badly-tailored tunics.
Blast, it wasn’t enough. They were close now, on the verge of being able to reach into the wagon and grab me out of it. I grabbed another musket, though barely able to even hold the damned thing, and wielded it like a club, swinging it this way and that as though I might ward them off. The nearest drone flinched, but it didn’t deter him for long, and he, still buzzing after the wagon, reached out with his jagged hooves for me.
There was another crack of musket fire from somewhere to the right. Hot, stinking ichor splashed in my face, and the drone dropped from mid-air like a stone onto the ground. The others ceased in their pursuit, looking for the source of the volley. I heard a shrill battle cry and the sudden roar of something being ignited, like a furnace. From the side streets between two rows of tall, brick homes, kirins, or rather niriks, alight with primal flame, charged out and assaulted the stunned drones. They never stood much of a chance, and as our wagon charged along the dirt path, I watched, as they receded into the distance, as the niriks tore into the hated oppressors with fang, hoof, and flame.
“I think we lost them,” I said, slumping back against the side of the wagon. Gasping for air like a beached fish, I felt my heart, which hadn’t been put through such exertion in a long time, beating frantically as though it was trying to escape my ribcage.
Cannon Fodder and the kirin carried on, then turned into a dark side street, the sort that ponies of wealth and taste such as I would be hesitant to walk down at risk of losing the former. They stopped, after a few moments, which I spent continuing to try to catch what little breath I could, both of them peered around the corners of the wagon at me.
“Looks like we’re safe,” said the kirin. “Now, who are you and why was it so important to rescue you?”
I peered around into the darkened depths of the alleyway all around; it was certainly sheltered and away from prying eyes, though I felt them peering through the shuttered windows all around. Either end receded off into an infinite darkness, and it smelt like an open sewer.
“I’m Prince Blueblood.” I didn’t see much point in lying to my rescuer. “And this is my aide, Cannon Fodder.”
The kirin looked me up and down with a sceptical expression. “Prince Blueblood? You sure, lah?”
“Quite sure,” I said; it wasn’t one of the typical responses that I was used to, being either quiet awe, demands for my autograph, or very deliberately trying not to look too impressed by me. There were no mirrors in the wagon, but I could safely assume that I didn’t look very much like Prince Blueblood after the abuse I’d suffered over the past week or so. I certainly didn’t much feel it, either. “And you are?”
“Spring Rain,” she said with a casual shrug.
“You’re in the resistance, I take it?”
She shook her head emphatically. “Not resistance. I’m a cook, lah. I sell nasi goreng in the market. I just happened to be around when all of… that happened and this pony that smells like belacan and durian made love behind a dumpster grabbed me.”
[Nasi goreng is the local version of fried rice and is a popular street food. Belacan is fermented shrimp paste and durian is a type of fruit, and both, as Spring Rain intimated, have very strong, distinctive smells.]
It was difficult not to feel sorry for Cannon Fodder, who took the abuse with his typically admirable phlegmatic attitude and shrugged vaguely, before staring off into the distance. So, I had just been rescued by a fast food street vendor, but I suppose I couldn’t really afford to be picky at that moment. Still, I had to admit that it was quite brave and suicidal of her to have gotten involved when she would have been well within her right to tell my aide to find some other ‘unicorn’.
“Well, thank you for your efforts,” I said, “but if you’d like to drop me off with the resistance, they can get me back to Equestria and then I’ll be out of your mane.”
“Aiya, do you think I would know where the resistance is hiding so that I can just drop you off?” Spring Rain said, rolling her eyes. “They wouldn’t be very good resistance if anyone off the street can just find them.”
“Fair point,” I said, conceding that yes, a resistance movement in a Changeling-occupied city would probably make an effort to be difficult to track down. Still, that meant I was stuck in a foreign city that I had only a hazy recollection of, and it would only be a matter of time before said occupation forces came across Yours Truly, covered in slime and generally bewildered, along with his aide wandering around the streets. “Still, any idea of where I should look?”
Spring Rain squinted back at me with a thoughtful expression on her face, and then sighed as one would when coming to an unhappy conclusion. “Yes, but not here,” she said. “I’ll take you to my home, you can hide there.”
“Oh, thank you! That’s very kind of you.” In truth, I was rather struck by her generosity, but she had to ruin it by explaining that it wasn’t entirely out of the goodness of her heart and loyalty to our dear old Princesses.
“You want to go back to Equestria, lah?” she said. “I’ll help you, then when this war is over you’ll remember me and send me something nice, or I’ll tell everyone you burnt your privates off mounting niriks.”
“I assure you, any efforts to help me return home will be richly rewarded,” I said, drawing upon all of my previous experience in the fine arts of diplomacy not to tell her which orifices she could ram that threat into. I suppose I ought not to have been too surprised, as it was certainly not the first time that ponies and other creatures thought to do me a favour in return for a share of my prodigious wealth, though most of them tended to be a little more subtle about it. If I did get out of here alive then I supposed I could stand to write a small cheque, assuming that she had the means to cash it here once this misery was over with.
The promise of money or some other material reward cheered up the feisty little kirin. However, there was still the little task of getting me to wherever she lived without me being seen by the Changelings, and the guns we had looted in the wagon too, for that matter. However, Spring Rain had the solution, which involved me lying down on the wagon’s floor, near the boxes full of weapons, and then covering me with some cloth found in the wagon and some banana leaves that she and Cannon Fodder spent a few minutes harvesting from somepony’s garden, presumably without the owner’s permission. I was quite sceptical that it would work at all, but in the absence of any other alternative besides giving up, I went along with it.
Still, relief washed over me, though it was still early and things could, and would, continue to go wrong, for now I was safe. I lay there, still soaked to the skin with the horrible slime and covered with the rag and the banana leaves, catching my breath, and watched the houses of this strange city roll past through a gap in the cloth. When I was last here I was quite young at the time, and even then I spent very little of my stay outside of the governor’s palace, though, as I would do in Coltcutta, still being largely ignored by both of my parents meant I had to spend more time socialising with the palace staff, who were largely made up of Coltcuttan ponies anyway. Nevertheless, I did feel a little nostalgic at hearing the exotic languages spoken and the smell of spices in the air as we passed some sort of market.
Both Cannon Fodder and the kirin dragged our wagon through narrow side streets and alleyways, all under the protective shadows of these buildings, and I peered out from under the cloth and the fragrant banana leaves. We must have started on the outskirts, for the buildings here became sturdier and taller, and, most reassuringly of all, I could hear ponies and kirins going about their daily business. I gathered that it must have been quite early in the morning, no doubt just as some form of enforced curfew was being lifted. It was then, as the adrenaline gradually washed away and I could start to think rationally again, that I realised just how damned hot it was; the Badlands had been hot, of course, it was a desert, but there are varying kinds of ‘hot’, you see. It was one that I had become familiar with as I travelled with my father as he went across Equestria’s various colonial holdings and antagonised the locals with his combination of idiotic incompetence and supreme arrogance. It might have been quite early in the day, but the heat and humidity had already become terribly stifling, and I knew that it was only going to get worse as the day dragged on. Night would be of little respite, for unlike the desert where the temperature would drop dramatically, here it would merely recede to only a slightly less cloying heat.
Despite ostensibly being under Changeling occupation, the scenes that I saw seemed disarmingly normal, at least by my standards. I only spotted a few of their number out patrolling the streets; no doubt many of them would have been dispatched to poke around the wreckage of the kirin resistance attack on whatever convoy I had been travelling with, and it seemed that we had managed to slip out of their net before they had even cast it. Marelacca was not a small city, having started out centuries ago as a trading post built by explorers from Trottingham, who discovered that there was more profit to be made selling the spices rather than using them in their cooking. Certainly, it was no Manehattan, but given the Hives’ problems keeping their frontline war-swarms topped up with fresh bodies, if Hive Marshal Chela’s objections were any indication, keeping the population nice and sedate for long enough for them to pull off this Operation: Sunburn must have been an expense in drones that they could ill-afford. While initially reassuring, it did also imply that the enemy truly were dedicated to pulling off their audacious plan. As I had just witnessed, their hold on the city and its population was tenuous at best, and at the very least showed evidence of an organised and dedicated resistance that would be tripping over themselves to help me get out of here. They could, if I was particularly persuasive, sabotage whatever preparations Dorylus was making out here, but only after I had slipped away to safety, of course.
Speaking of my erstwhile former host, I had to wonder if he had been caught up in that deadly ambush. While I would have preferred that he was slain in the fight as just punishment for his treatment of me, the thought of him surviving and then having to explain to Queen Chrysalis that not only did he fail with Camp Joy, but he had just also lost their most valuable prisoner was a cheering one and would be of immense comfort to me in the days to come. I could only imagine just how awkward that conversation would be, and just how desperate Dorylus would be to save face with Operation: Sunburn.
Still, the journey was tense, and though few ponies, kirins, and Changelings paid much attention to a kirin and a pony pulling a wagon through the streets packed with them, I would feel my breath caught in my throat each time I saw the gleam of polished chitin in the bright morning sun and the foreboding grey of a Blackhorn uniform from under the cloth. After what felt like hours, the wagon was pulled into a dark side street between two of those stone houses with tall roofs; I gathered that kirins tended to build their homes out of whatever least flammable materials were available to them wherever their diaspora took them, and at least there were sufficient flame retardant building materials here that this community didn’t feel the need to resort to a magically-imposed oath of silence.
It was a relief to finally stand, though I was still terribly unsteady on my hooves, which still ached. I had almost forgotten the injury that I had suffered in Lightning Dust’s disastrous escape attempt, and was both relieved and slightly alarmed to find that the jagged wound ripped into the frog of my hoof had mostly healed. The damned thing still stung a little and was rather nauseating to look at, with the puckered, ripped flesh having mostly knit itself back together so that it no longer leaked pus and blood all over the place. Still, it was an improvement, and I found that I could stand and walk without much in the way of too much discomfort.
“In here, quickly!” hissed Spring Rain.
Cannon Fodder and Spring Rain pulled the wagon into a sort of annex by the side of the building, and I followed. The gate was shut behind us, plunging us briefly into darkness before it was banished with a warm yellow-orange glow from the kirin’s horn, like that of a small flaming torch. Now I could see that we were in a garage of sorts, with a door leading into what I presumed was her home; there was another wagon of sorts, much smaller, made of metal, with a small roof over it and a sign written in Marelay, which I took to be a mobile fast food stall from which she presumably sold her goods from. Other than that, it was quite bare.
As Spring Rain busied herself with the wagon, lifting the various boxes of weapons and uniforms from it and piling them up in the corner of the room, I approached Cannon Fodder, who had taken an interest in the fast food stall.
“So, how in blazes did you get here too?” I asked him. “I thought I saw you escape.”
“I did,” he said with a vague shrug. “I came back. Then the Changelings grabbed us again.”
“Us? There are more ponies out there?”
My aide nodded, which dislodged a layer of dandruff that fell like snow on Spring Rain’s swept floor. I saw that he had kept the strange wavy dagger he had found, and tucked it into his belt like a pirate. “When I told them you weren’t with us, half of us came back with me and Square Basher to look for you. The others went off with the natives. The bugs caught us and put everypony except me in a cocoon and shipped us off here. Then when those creatures-”
“Kirin,” I corrected. “They’re called kirins.”
“When those kirins attacked I escaped and found you in that wagon.”
“And what about Square Basher?” I asked; it was damned foolish of her to come back for me, but entirely within her character. I was her officer now, after all, and she would walk through Tartarus itself if she thought it would save me, though, even in this grim situation that I found myself in now, I could not help but think that our intimate moment in that dank cell might have provided an additional motivation.
“Don’t know,” said Cannon Fodder with a shrug. “She and the others might be out there somewhere.”
Though I could have certainly done with a few extra bodies between me and the Changelings who would now be hunting us, I supposed that two ponies secreted amongst the still relatively hostile population, assuming that the ferocity and violence of the resistance attack on the convoy was any indication of their strength and organisation, would be harder for them to find over a larger number of them. Besides, if Square Basher was here, she’d be itching to liberate Marelacca all by herself, and I’d much rather not get involved in the hell of urban partisan warfare if I could.
“Prince, is this yours?” said Spring Rain abruptly. She held up the tattered rags that had once been my uniform and my hat, glowing in her orange aura, and I was introduced to the novel sensation of being quite pleased to see that stupid cap for once.
“Oh yes, that’s my uniform.”
Spring Rain looked at the winged alicorn skull insignia on the cap and pulled a face. “Creepy,” she said, and I wholeheartedly agreed. She then tossed it with the other boxes full of assorted stuff. “Don’t wear it in public or the Changelings will find you instantly, or think you’re crazy. Come on, this way.”
Before I crossed the threshold through the opened door, I picked up my cap and found that the notes were still hidden in the lining there. While they might have been a bit redundant now that I was here and terribly far from where they would be useful, I did at least feel some sense of gratification that they remained undiscovered. I left the cap and the notes there for the moment, and followed Spring Rain into her home.
I have always felt slightly alarmed entering the homes of normal ponies, let alone kirins. Of course, I understand that the overwhelming majority of creatures out there aren’t princes with several grand palaces and large apartments to call home, but always, upon taking sight of the small, cluttered rooms, of which there always seem to be far too few for comfort, I would feel a peculiar sensation of unease, as though my mind struggled to wrap itself around the concept of ponies living like this. This kirin’s home was no exception.
I was ushered in through the door into a single large living room, which had a few doors leading off to other rooms and a tall ceiling that was many times the height of a pony that allowed the cool air to collect at the bottom, and with wide airy windows closed with shutters. The floor was bare, smooth stone that was quite cool under my hooves, and the room itself was sparsely decorated and furnished. There was a sofa along one side, made out of bamboo with several limp cushions, a bookcase, and some pictures along the wall. I noticed blackened scorch marks on the floor and against some of the walls, where I presumed that she must have lost her temper, though some of them seemed to be much smaller than others.
“It’s not much,” said Spring Rain, as she shut the door behind us. “But make yourself at home.”
“Thank you,” I said, standing dumbly by the door with Cannon Fodder, who paced around the room as though looking for Changelings hiding in the corners. “It’s a lovely home.”
“Ah, don’t lie, Prince,” the kirin snapped, brushing past me. She threw herself on this old, abused sofa, and peered at me where I stood by the door. “You live in palaces with many servants.”
“All the same, I have recently spent a week living in a hole in the ground, followed by a sojourn in a Changeling prison camp, where they put me in a basement. I would be grateful for your hospitality; it can only be an improvement on the Changelings’.”
That she could be a Changeling in disguise had certainly occurred to me, but I still had that damned nullifier ring stuck to my horn, so I could not cast the appropriate spell to find out. I knew that such things required magic to remove, and so Cannon Fodder would be of no help here, which only left Spring Rain, whose magic seemed to be almost exclusively fire-based. “Do you mind removing this ring from my horn?”
“Ah? Come here then!” She waved me on over, where I knelt next to her on the cold floor so she could take a look. “It looks like the ones the Changelings put on prisoners to stop them using magic. They would put those on all kirins and unicorns if they had enough of them.”
Her face screwed up in concentration, and the thin lines across her peculiarly-shaped horn glowed. I felt the sensation of heat at the base of my horn, which grew until it started to become quite uncomfortable and then rather painful. However, before I could tell her to stop, the ring was wrenched from my horn like a champagne cork, and Spring Rain presented it to me with a triumphant expression on her face. I could feel the magic flowing back into my body as wine would be decanted into a waiting cup, and I eagerly wrapped my aura around the annoying little ring, unsteady though it was after weeks of unuse, and I could examine the bally thing more clearly; it seemed to be of a more primitive design than the one that Earthshaker had forced on me before, and certainly if it could have been released by a seemingly ordinary kirin.
“Thank you,” I said, before hitting her with the Changeling reveal spell. She jolted in alarm, but remained the small, soft, middle-aged kirin sprawling on a sofa before me, and I felt an immense sense of relief that I hadn’t blundered into yet another trap.
“What was that?” she asked.
“I had to check that you’re not a Changeling.”
“Ah, you could have asked me to turn into a nirik, the bugs can’t do that properly; they look right but they don’t actually burn.” She fixed me with a queer look, pursing her lips slightly. “Why are you here in Marelacca and why were you in that tube-thing?”
I saw no point in withholding that information from her, and considering that the enemy would soon be crawling over her city looking for me and she had thus placed herself at a considerable risk in hiding me, then the least I could do was afford to be honest, for once. There were a few embellishments to my story, which Cannon Fodder refrained from commenting on, and I certainly left out the part about my deliberate sabotage of Square Basher’s escape tunnel. She listened intently and silently as I described how I overheard the details of the preparations of Operation: Sunburn, and how I had almost succeeded in escaping only to be brought low again by the witless idiocy of the organisers of said escape attempt.
Spring Rain hummed thoughtfully. “So, is that why the Changelings invaded?” she asked, but before I could answer she carried on thinking out loud. “They said they were liberating us from Equestrian oppression. Ah, figures. They brought flying ships to the docks; big, dark ones with lots of drones. They have taken many ponies to work there, all day and all night. Some don’t come back.”
It would appear that Dorylus’ plans to accelerate the preparation for Operation: Sunburn was no idle threat, and I feared that I might be much too late to warn Equestria. “That’s why I need to speak to the resistance,” I said. “The same fellows who attacked that convoy. They need to help me get home so I can tell the Princesses about it.”
“I see.” Spring Rain paused, apparently deep in thought, while I paced around the room a bit, pretending to be interested in the paintings of wooden houses on stilts and Cathaynese junks. After a while, she spoke again. “I sell nasi goreng in the market. All creatures go there, ponies, kirin, and even some Changelings, and I see almost all of them. I know some kirins, they use me to pass messages between cells wrapped in rice. Come with me and we could arrange a meeting, only, you’ll have to blend in, so leave the talking to me.”
“I speak the language,” I said, in that perfect Cathaynese that had been drilled into me from a young age to show off.
Spring Rain laughed and shook her head. “You speak like a Prince, lah,” she continued, still in Ponish. “That is how fancy ponies talk with the Princess of the Universe [A direct translation of my title in Cathay], not how normal ponies speak in Marelacca. Speak like that in the market and you stand out more than if you wore that creepy hat.”
She had me there, I suppose; my language tutors had always taught me the most formal version of each language, which can be as far removed from the common lingua franca as standard Ponish is from whatever it is that Applejack speaks. Besides, most ponies here spoke Marelay, which I had only a very passing familiarity with - I could order wine and I could swear, which would ordinarily have been sufficient for me to get by - and the kirins, as it turned out, spoke a variant dialect of Cathaynese that might as well have been an entirely separate language. I recalled that a number of the palace servants were from neighbouring Coltcutta, which I was almost fluent in, having spent far more time there than I had in Marelacca; the only problem was that I still doubted that I could pass for a recent immigrant from that ancient jewel in our empire in terms of appearance alone, even in my current state.
“Fine, I’ll have to stay quiet,” I said. “But won’t they recognise me?”
“I didn’t,” she answered, peering over at me with a sceptical look. “You look awful, lah. Not like a prince at all. Scruffy, dirty, and tired. But you better wash that Changeling gunk off you before we go out.”
“Now?”
“Yes, lah. I’m already late for work, and some other kirin might have taken my favourite spot in the market already.”
Spring Rain let me use her bathroom, which consisted of little more than a tub for bathing in and a lavatory that was really a ceramic hole in the ground with some sort of flush mechanism that I was reluctant to use. There was a mirror, and I could see that she was in fact being rather diplomatic with regards to my appearance. The slime that still matted my fur and the splash of Changeling ichor on my face aside, I did indeed look ‘awful’; I appeared to have lost a few pounds of weight while in that tube, but I certainly would not have recommended it as a method of losing it, and despite having been technically asleep for days on end the sunken eyes and dark rings around them made me look as though I had been wide awake for that entire time. I also had a scruffy beard, which, after a few aborted attempts during adolescence to try and grow one to look more grown up and regal, I had learned it was not a good look for me; some ponies just don’t have the face for facial hair, and I was one of them. However, my cutie mark aside, I thought that perhaps my new host was correct in stating that most ponies and even Changelings might fail to recognise me, at least on first glance.
Bathing in the tub, with that rare moment of solitude, gave me the opportunity to think about just what an almighty mess I was in. Still, after weeks of captivity, it was a relief to be able to use magic again, having an improper amount of fun making the sponge float, and despite being in a terribly sticky situation, both metaphorically and literally given the goo that stubbornly clung to my coat and mane, being able to pick things up with magic as a unicorn should certainly lifted my mood considerably. Furthermore, I was free, in a manner of speaking; though I was still in a terribly hostile place under the tentative control of the enemy, I could see a way out of this madness with this resistance group who I was certain would be tripping over themselves to help their Prince, and more than that, I was at liberty to do something about it on my own terms.
A banging on the door and Spring Rain’s muffled voice imploring me to hurry up interrupted my thoughts. I hastened to finish, and managed to get as much of the slime off as I possibly could; I was far from completely clean, however, but it would have to do, and I would be sweating horribly as soon as I dried myself off anyway. Still, there was nothing like a bath, however brief, to lift one’s mood, which only lasted after I’d wandered back into the living room, my mane still damp, and I found Spring Rain standing there, tapping a hoof impatiently and holding up a sharp, heavy cleaver and a bunch of spring onions.
“You will have to blend in,” she said. “Police patrol the market. We cover up your flank picture and you and the smelly pony will chop spring onions for me. You’ll pretend to be my employees.”
It was far worse than I could have possibly thought; I would have to work.