//------------------------------// // Chapter 52 // Story: The Siren // by McPoodle //------------------------------// Apple Bloom was dying. The air was saturated with hate. Scootaloo was trying to kill her. She was trying to kill Scootaloo. And she was no longer in control of her body. Apple Bloom was terrified. She had been trained by her family to be a changeling warrior, to fight the enemies of her clan to submission—or worse—if necessary. She couldn’t stop herself from using that training now. Scootaloo…Scootaloo was very physical. Scootaloo could match her for a few minutes. But eventually Scootaloo would fall. At least it wasn’t Sweetie Belle. Or Diamond Tiara…she didn’t know what she would do to Diamond Tiara. And then…something changed. The wave of a spell swept over the Garden, and suddenly the body she could not control forgot its training. That body was still trying to hurt Scootaloo, but that’s the worst that it could do. Scootaloo was trying to put Apple Bloom in the hospital. And she didn’t want this at all. She was mad at Apple Bloom. She no longer wanted to be friends with her. But she would have been fine with walking away and never talking with her again. But her body was no longer under her control. And so there were tears running down Scootaloo’s face despite her expression of rage. Diamond Tiara was having a nervous breakdown. Because Golden Peytral was right about power. Behind her she heard Golden trying to fight against all twelve of her followers. None of them wanted to hurt anybody else other than her. And of the fillies from Ponyville? All of them were attacking her, with only one exception: Scootaloo was attacking Apple Bloom. That also fit with Golden’s revelation: Apple Bloom was the only other one of them that had any degree of power, so it was fitting that she would be the only other filly of their group defending herself. Sure, her body was out of her control, and she was fighting back against all of her attackers, but that meant almost nothing to Diamond. After Babs Seed, she expected to lose control like that at any time. What made this different was that a part of her was watching what was going on, a part that knew in real time that this was all wrong. Thorax pushed his sickness down on witnessing what the fillies and colts in his charge were doing to each other. He waded over to the largest fight, that of Golden Peytral vs. her followers, and tried in vain to separate them. The hate they were radiating was somewhat painful to him, but no hate was being directed at him, so he wasn’t suffering too much. ‘Thorax!’ a voice in his mind demanded. ‘What are you doing on the surface! Return to the underground base at once!’ “They…they’re killing each other!” he cried out loud—with the hate all around him, he couldn’t summon up enough concentration to send his reply by telepathy alone. It didn’t matter—Queen Chrysalis heard him all the same. ‘Exactly,’ she thought at him. ‘They are too distracted to notice anything you do. Get down here before you get hurt.” “But what about them?!” he exclaimed. “I can’t witness such suffering and do nothing!” ‘I find that closing your eyes helps,’ Chrysalis quipped. ‘Besides I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s our life’s purpose to be inflicting misery on ponies.’ “No, I reject my life’s purpose!” Thorax declared with sudden determination. “I don’t want to be a monster anymore!” ‘What are you going to do? You better not be going against my will, Thorax. Having every pony in the city turn their hate on you would be a drop in the bucket compared to what I will do to you for disobeying me!” Thorax did not answer. Instead, he leapt between Polished Pewter and the battered and prone Golden Peytral. Inside Polished, Thorax could feel both the hate that had been imposed upon her as well as the terror at what she was being forced to do. And then Thorax transformed into a second copy of Golden. One that was somehow even more annoying than the original. She picked up Golden with her magic and tossed her up into a tree. The entourage turned on her. But Thorax as Golden could cheat. She sprouted a pair of pegasus wings and led the angry unicorns off on a merry chase. By staying mostly out of sight, she was spared the devastating effect of all the hate being generated. Eventually she succeeded in getting the entourage trapped in the animal containment pens, and then flew back to deal with the other groups. All the while Chrysalis’ ranting continued inside her head. Now hovering in the air in his native form, Thorax looked down upon Apple Bloom, and once again had trouble deciding what to do with her. He could detect that she was a changeling, but she was a changeling unlike any he had ever read before. There was an independence there, a strength of will, that Thorax thought could only come from a Queen. Was this filly the queen of her own hive? An adult a century or two old, disguised as this earth pony filly? Thorax by his transformations had revealed himself to multiple ponies, so he knew that he didn’t have long to live in Chrysalis’ hive. Apple Bloom had actually been scared of him. Thorax made up his mind. He landed among the Ponyville fillies as Tabula Rasa. “Sanctuary!” he cried. They continued to attack each other. Thorax transformed into Diamond Tiara. Four ponies jumped her, including the actual Diamond Tiara. All of their hate entered her, and she cried out in agony. ‘What are you doing?!’ demanded Chrysalis in his mind. ‘I’m taking you over.’ “No, My Queen!” cried Thorax as Diamond, before her senses were taken from her. “What have you done?!” Thorax then declared with the voice of Queen Chrysalis. “You’ve exposed yourself! Kill these fillies!” “N…no!” Thorax cried. The force of the mental struggle between Thorax and the Queen caused the disguise to drop, revealing the true form of Thorax. “I’m not giving you a choice!” Chrysalis’ voice announced, before turning Thorax’s head towards Scootaloo and began draining the love—and life—out of her. “Stop this! Stop making me kill her!” His answer was a sadistic laugh. The trapped mind of Apple Bloom had been paying close attention to everything the changeling nymph had been doing. And when she saw him taken over by “the queen” and used to drain Scootaloo, she decided to act. ‘Hey, rage-brain!’ she yelled at whatever part of herself was running her body. ‘I know where that black creature’s vulnerable spot is!” Just as Scootaloo collapsed, Apple Bloom leapt over her, landing on Thorax’s back. With a feral glint in her eyes, she reached down and chomped her teeth down on a membrane located at the back of his jagged horn. With a wrenching pull, she ripped it off. Thorax cried out in pain. And then he froze, as a blessed silence settled upon him, the ending of a pain much more hated than any physical discomfort. “I’m free!” he cried. “Her voice is finally gone!” Behind him, Apple Bloom rose to her hooves, her eyes still red with hate, and she looked around her to decide on her next victim. But that just meant that every other pony still standing locked their hate upon her. Apple Bloom, finally overcome, collapsed and transformed into her changeling form. Thorax looked down upon her in awe. This was no queen, but her form was so beautiful, so…right. Colorful, devoid of holes. Devoid, as Thorax had always sensed, of hunger. Apple Bloom was the most valuable treasure that Thorax had encountered in his life. He threw her over his back and flew up into the same large tree that Golden Peytral was trapped in. He knew that only one of the fillies, Scootaloo, was a pegasus, and he bet that her current drained state made it impossible for her to fly. (He didn’t know about the other reason.) And there he was forced to wait. With his propagating membrane torn he could no longer transform. And Thorax was a physical weakling, especially in his changeling form. Much as he would wish it, he no longer had the ability to keep the fillies and colts in his charge from hurting each other. His only priority now was in getting Apple Bloom here back to her hive, And hoping that he might learn the secret to her form. Thorax froze for a second time that night. The thoughts that had just gone through his head in the last few seconds were the most-complex thoughts he had ever had as a changeling. Had the Queen’s mental link been suppressing the intelligence of the entire hive save for her? Thorax vowed that he would liberate Chrysalis’ hive from her tyranny if it was the last thing he ever did. He was betting that it probably would be the last thing he ever attempted. How could he possibly succeed at something as impossible as that? ~ ~ ~ A few minutes later, Thorax saw all of the ponies collapse. They slowly got to their hooves a few seconds later. “Ugh…” Apple Bloom groaned beside him. “Take my love,” Thorax whispered to her. Bloom, drained as she was, accepted the invitation before she was fully conscious. She automatically resumed her pony disguise when she had absorbed enough. This act shocked her fully awake, and she stopped feeding. She looked up at Thorax with a nervous expression. “I wasn’t dreaming,” she said. “Apple Bloom, how much do you remember?” Thorax asked her. Bloom thought for a moment, then her eyes went wide. “Everything,” she said. “Oh,” Thorax said, dropping his head down. “That won’t be good.” Apple Bloom looked down at her friends, who were looking up at her and Thorax in shock. “What are you?” asked Silver Spoon. “I’m a—” Thorax began. “I mean you,” Silver said, pointing at Apple Bloom. “Although I suppose the same answer applies to both of you.”