//------------------------------//
// Damascus 
// Story: Crystalforged 
// by SilverNotes 
//------------------------------//

The architecture had changed.

Rutile Quartz knew that she was, charitably put, a bit of a brute. She'd been firmly part of her settlement's lowest class, a unicorn born for labour. Her magic hadn't been seen as useful for much that wasn't hauling and lifting things with telekinesis, and so all of her spells had been self-taught. And when a pony didn't have a wide range of magic, but could pick things up, one of those things ending up being a gun when danger reared its head--or when the mare who claimed to own the planet sent one too many taxcreatures and needed to be reminded that she was outnumbered by her supposed inferiors--was a natural result. 

She didn't have a formal education, and much of her understanding of history had come from the stories her parents had filled her head with and her own hunt for books about the Crystal Empire. It meant that she didn't know what the change in architecture meant, but the difference was still stark. The halls they'd found the chaospawn in had been more angular, while these didn't have a hard edge in sight, instead flowing together in almost organic-looking curves, despite being built of what looked to be the same metal as before.

Tundra, now out of immediate danger, looked enthralled, and the sensation of her awe was a nice change from the fear. "It's fascinating how well-preserved this is. This facility has to be thousands of years old, and yet..." She peered at a computer terminal, squinting at the symbols on the screen. "I wonder what they were doing here. Military research?"

Rutile shrugged, and glanced at her thaum-cannon, now attached to the other front leg to keep from aggravating her burns; that was one advantage to being a hoofed species, that it was easier for technology to be swappable from limb to limb. "If this was the first world they settled, then probably. You can't be an empire with just one planet." 

She'd known that there'd been wars... but to say "there'd been wars" was a bit like saying "ice turned into water." Conflict felt like such a fundamental part of life that it went without saying. The Crystal Empire had had enemies, and had eventually succumbed to the cumulative damage. Tale as old as time.

It was as she was musing that Rutile placed down the hoof on her burned leg, and suddenly everything was cold. The warping was different this time, with no sense of things outside clawing their way in, but instead a sense of being yanked elsewhere, and she heard Tundra's distressed bleat as she was pulled along too.

The walls were the same organic shapes, but now the metal was barely visible through the green, wax-like substance caked onto it. Cocoons large enough to hold ponies hung from the ceiling, and clusters of eggs were nestled in corners. And in front of the pony and reindeer both were several forms of buzzing, hissing, fang-baring black and green.

Hunger pushed in on Rutile's mind from all sides, and her heart ached.

"See what I mean? Something worse." She tossed her pistol toward Tundra, who nearly dropped it as her magic fumbled, then leveled her cannon at the largest of the hissing, equinoid shapes. "Let's see how you like this."



"I would hope you'd reconsider. This path you're on will only lead to ruin."

Rutile glared at the changeling in front of her, his exoskeleton shining a brilliant, pearlescent white that threatened to burn her eyes. She knew that wasn't what he really looked like, because everyone who wore those blue and pink robes made a point to look as similar as they could. Ponies and other creatures limited to mundane ways of changing their appearance would bleach their fur, feathers, and scales, but changelings' natural glamour led to them effortlessly making themselves into the shining stars they wished to be. The ones in the deep blue and silver robes would do similar, making themselves the deepest, glossiest black.

She liked to think that the actual changeling under that illusion was something much less glamourous. Maybe dung brown, with a dash of puke green to go with it.

"Your king and the empress were allies once. Practically family." She looked at his golden sun medallion and made no attempt to hide her grimace. "I don't see why you'd throw in your lot with the Order."

"He was never my king," the changeling scoffed. "The time of kings, queens, emperors and empresses is long gone, little pony. You'd do best not to chase shadows of the past."

Rutile took the mental image of a dung brown and puke green changeling, and added the detail of him being shorter than her. "That's rich, when your goddesses are long dead."

"The Sisters can not and will not ever truly die. They simply shed Their mortal shells and now live on in every moon and star." He bared his teeth at her, and for a moment, she could almost see fangs. "Unlike the false alicorns."

She looked at him, and she hoped he choked on her revulsion. Rutile looked at him and saw a changeling brimming with love, his body barely able to contain all that had been offered him. Freely given to him, and then shared... with a select few of his rank. Elites passing around goblets overflowing with affection, who never thought to give back to those on the fringes. Sharing love made it more filling, made it last longer, but she had seen the way isolation could still slowly starve. 

She had seen what happened when the glimmer faded and the holes started to form, but he never would. He was insulated, pampered, bathing in more adulation than he could ever consume. Enough that he didn't seem to even be able to taste her loathing.

"You have my answer," came the words through clenched teeth. She turned away, finally sparing her eyes the shine of worthless false pearl. "It won't change."

"Such a waste," came his voice like poisoned honey behind her. "Your unique magic would be of great use in aiding the starving."

Rutile stopped. Allowed the few moments that would allow him, in his arrogance, to think she may look back.

Instead, she kept staring straight ahead as she kicked him in the face.



Compared to the chaospawn, bullets did a little better here. While their exoskeletons were harder to pierce, at least a fatal shot had the decency to actually make them stop moving. Tundra wasn't doing half bad handling the pistol, once she'd gotten a feel for the weight and recoil, and Rutile regularly heard the sound of a shot landing and a body hitting the floor. 

The thaum-cannon, on the other hand, seemed to be having some difficulties, mostly because these were flying targets who retained just enough higher brain function to dodge the beams of death. Chaospawn were powerful, but had no self-preservation instinct, spreading havoc for unknown reasons. Here, Rutile could understand entirely why she was under attack, though understanding didn't mean that she didn't need to fight back.

"What in all loving grace did we walk into?" Rutile hollered as she fired off a beam that managed to clip a drone's wing, sending it careening into a wall.

"My best guess? An alternate reality."

"Oh is that all?"

"You asked." Tundra fired off a series of shots that felled a drone, tried to fire off a couple more to no result, and hastily started to reload. "Anywhere with chaospawn is going to have some tears in the veil. This is probably a timeline similar to ours, just one where these... whatever they are infested the facility."

"They're changelings."

"They're what?"

"I said they're changelings." Rutile fired off a spell as the cannon recharged, and the pained screams as the flame consumed the drone she'd struck buried itself deep, ready to emerge again in her nightmares. "I found a nest like this once. This is what they turn into when they're starved of love."

It was a lie. She had seen this more than once. She'd heard that changelings had once thrived as allies of ponykind, stalwart friends who grew stronger the more they were loved, but that had been on the homeworld, where a hive with resources running low could easily pack up and move closer to a community they could integrate into. The vast distances of a post-spaceflight era had not been kind, and sometimes things happened to cut them off and make everything shut down but the barest necessities to survive and the instinct to feed on the first living soul they found.

Tundra looked at the largest of the changelings, and seemed to be looking with new eyes. "I don't suppose you could love us out of this, then?"

The pain in her heart was near unbearable. "I would if I could, but they're too far gone." I'm sorry. "Duck and cover!"

Tundra obeyed, leaping back and summoning a thin barrier. Rutile activated the cannon, and the orb of magic flew. It struck the starving royal, the explosion obliterating them and all drones unfortunate enough to be close, and that's when the ranks broke, survivors scurrying off into dark corners and giving mare and doe alike room to breathe.

"Okay..." Rutile looked around. She could still sense the hunger, now mixed with potent fear, and but it didn't give her a lock on the direction of the stragglers. "Now, let's find a way back to our reality before they decide they want a round two."

Tundra nodded, her antlers lighting up as she closed her eyes, swinging her head left and right. "It's hard... to get a grip... on..." She suddenly pointed to a spot beyond what was left of the fallen royal. "Here, I think."

Rutile walked toward the indicated spot, and she felt the sudden chill and sense of being pulled before she was back in the sleek metal hall again. She sighed in relief, and glanced over as Tundra faded into sight beside her. "Care to say anything else? Like 'I'm glad that's over' or 'I hope we don't run into any more of those'?"

"No, I'm good." Tundra took off at trot, but Rutile didn't need to be an empath to see the shaking in her legs. "Let's keep going."

"Finally, after all this time, somepony competent..."

Rutile paused, ears perked, listening for more of what she'd thought was a barely-perceptible whisper. Silence reigned for a long moment, and then she shook her head and followed Tundra. Just an aftereffect of the assault on her empathic sense, she reasoned.

How wrong she would turn out to be.