Shining Armor paced back and forth in the throne room of Canterlot Castle. Sitting on the throne was Princess Celestia, who was now clean of the slime she'd been encased in, her face frowning in worry. Beside her was her sister Princess Luna, who despite her stoic facade, was just as concerned as her sister.
Off to Celestia's other side was Princess Cadance. Shortly after she and the rest of the ponies found out about the changeling being captured, hoofmaidens had taken her to a private bathroom and made the princess look more presentable. As she stood beside her two aunts, she had a stoic appearance that masked a flurry of emotions that were all fighting for control of her attention at that moment.
Sitting in front of the pacing stallion was his sister Twilight. The lavender unicorn was lost in thought, likely asking similar questions to herself that her brother was asking himself. Around her were her five friends, who shared different expressions.
There was an uncomfortable silence, and Princess Celestia decided to break it.
"Captain Armor, would you please stop pacing?"
The unicorn stallion stopped and looked at the princess. Before he could answer her, she gave him a warm smile and an utterance of "Thank you."
Though the stallion had stopped moving, the air was still tense. Everypony was waiting to hear back from the interrogator.
"Princess," Twilight spoke up, "I couldn't help but notice that Princess Cadance had a good idea of what the creatures who attacked the city were, but I never even heard of them before, not even in books about mythological creatures. Why is that?"
Celestia's attention turned to her student, and she blushed a bit in embarrassment. "Well," she reluctantly began, "that's because changelings have been neither seen nor heard from for centuries. They were few in number to begin with, and I had thought they had gone extinct. Of course, we found out how wrong I was earlier today."
"That still doesn't explain how Cadance knew," Twilight pointed out.
"True," Celestia conceded. "Since Cadance is recognized as the Alicorn of Love, I provided her with all the materials that we have related to love in any way, and the changelings' existence and need to feed upon love is part of the material."
"But why was I never allowed to learn about them?" Twilight asked.
"There were a few reasons," Celestia responded, "some of which I now see were wrong in hindsight. First is the fact that I had wanted you to come out of your shell and make friends. At the time, you were practically a shut-in, and every nudge that I tried to give you to go out and find friends of your own wasn't working. If I had given you the information on changelings, you would've researched them until there were no documents left in the world about them. I even feared that you would try to replicate their magic, be it to try and master their shapeshifting, or worse, try to draw love out of a pony."
Twilight didn't say anything or react. In reality, it was the truth. Even now, she was thinking to herself how to copy their disguising magic and either find a way to detect one while it was disguised or to enable a unicorn to turn the tables on them by changing their appearance into one of the many drones that attacked Canterlot.
"Besides that," Celestia continued, "I believed the changelings had gone extinct, so I didn't see them as being any kind of significant threat. My giving Cadance the materials related to them was to teach her of them in case I ended up being wrong."
"I certainly hope you'll give me the opportunity to research the changelings now in light of these recent events?" Twilight said, a hopeful tone to her voice.
"I believe that may be for the best," Luna chimed in. "We were nearly taken over by those fiends. I wish that I had been present at the wedding. That monstrous queen would have been no match for the both of us together, dear sister."
Celestia nodded. "I believe so too," she agreed. "Were we together, she would have stood no chance in besting us."
Luna nodded in agreement. "The next time that we have a royal wedding, I fully intend to be present, and not be asleep in a bed with orders given not to disturb me for any reason."
"That was nopony's fault," Celestia responded to her sister. "Those guards did as they were instructed, and they answered the call to arms when the attack began in earnest."
"Were I not asleep, I could have answered the same call," Luna countered.
"Pardon me, yer highnesses," Applejack interrupted,"but ah don't think this bickerin's getting anypony anywhere. Nopony was expectin' what happened today."
"Which is why we need to prepare should it happen again!" Luna barked at the earth pony, a bit upset that she had been interrupted by one of her subjects.
Fortunately for everypony, the interrogator walked through the door carrying his parchment, rather quickly defusing the situation. Shining turned to him as he approached.
"What have you found out?" he asked the interrogator.
The unicorn guard gave a salute to his superior, who returned it quickly. "The prisoner answered all questions asked with no hesitation or reluctance whatsoever, but we don't have any way to verify if the answers given are truthful or not."
"Then tells us what answers you were given," Shining Armor told the guard.
The guard read off the answers he had on the parchment. "The prisoner identifies himself by the name Thorax. Tone of voice indicates the prisoner is a male, and he gives his age at approximately twenty years."
"Approximately?" Shining Armor questioned.
"Yes sir," the guard confirmed. "According to him, their kind don't celebrate birthdays, or as he claimed, egg-hatching days; he informed me that their kind are hatched from eggs."
"That's interesting," Twilight mused. "They appear to have many traits in common with us, as well as many other mammalian species, so I had figured that their reproduction would've been the same male-female copulation followed by the implantation of the resulting embryo into the endometrium as in many other placental mammals with and a gestation period comparable to ponies, but it seems their insectile traits preclude them from that method of procreation."
The guard stared at Twilight for a few seconds before shaking his head and continuing. "He also told us that the changeling hive is located in the badlands south of the town of Dodge Junction."
"Terrific!" Shining Armor exclaimed while slapping his hooves together. "We'll arrange a raiding party and-"
"I wouldn't advise that just yet, sir," the guard interrupted. "He also said that there's regular patrols and an anti-magic field that prevents any non-changeling magic from functioning."
Shining Armor growled. "Is there any way to confirm this information?"
"In the immediate? No. The first thing we could do is send a reconnaissance team to observe the area, which will take time to organize," the interrogator answered. "Outside of that, we could inform our post in Dodge Junction to interview the ponies there and ask in any of them experienced anything like what I just described. If this anti-magic field is as powerful as the prisoner says, I would think the earth ponies there would notice it. Either method will take some time.”
Shining Armor hummed as he thought over the information. "Then we'll have to investigate this information further and confirm it. Did he mention anything else?"
"The only other information I got is that the inside of the hive has some sort of enchantment to cause it to change shape and form constantly. I can't be certain, but I think it may be related to the anti-magic field. My idea is that the anti-magic field may not actually cancel out magic as the prisoner claimed, but simply absorbs the magical energy to use as fuel for the enchantment, and thereby making the magic too weak to support the spell being cast."
“That sounds plausible,” Twilight commented.
Shining Armor grit his teeth. "It will have to be looked into," he told the guard as he took the parchment from him. "Your assistance in the matter is appreciated greatly by myself and the princesses. You are dismissed, and tell your superior I'm taking you off your normal duty roster and having you placed on the survey detail to assess the damage done to the city."
The guard saluted firmly. "Yes sir!"
Shining Armor returned the salute and the guard left. The captain then turned and faced Celestia.
"It is good that this captured changeling has been cooperative thus far," Celestia commented.
"If he isn't feeding us lies," Shining added with bitterness in his voice. "I'll have to have the prisoner moved to a cell in the dungeon before this evening."
"Shouldn't that interrogator have done that before coming here?" Luna asked Shining Armor.
"I instructed him to leave the prisoner under guard after he finished his initial interrogation" Shining explained. "I would like to interview this changeling myself."
Celestia looked at her captain rather sternly. "Not without my sister or myself you won't."
Shining looked at Celestia in surprise. "Your highness?"
The solar princess rose from her throne and stepped down from the dais. "I don't need to be able to sense emotions to tell how much animosity you have towards the changelings," Celestia told Shining Armor. "It's understandable, after what has transpired today, and what you have endured for who knows how long, but that prisoner is our only chance of finding the changelings and possibly putting an end to their horrific ways once and for all. I will not risk him being alone with you where you could claim that he attempted to attack and you had to react, potentially with lethal force."
Shining wanted to retort, but he realized that he had no ground to stand on. While he was responsible for the guard and the safety of all ponies in Equestria, he still answered to the princesses. "Of course, your highness," he said in defeat.
"Very good," Celestia said to the unicorn, then turned to her sister. "Now, I believe we may benefit greatly from interviewing this changeling ourselves."
Luna gave a nod. "I would think if this changeling was smart, it wouldn't do anything foolish."
"Princess Celestia," Twilight called out, catching the attention of the princess. "Would it be possible for me to join in this questioning as well?"
Celestia thought over the request for a moment but shook her head. "My sister and I would like to interview this changeling by ourselves first. Some of the information that we may obtain could be rather sensitive, and we would like it to stay known only to ourselves and those few ponies in the royal guard who are allowed to know things of such a sensitive nature."
Twilight deflated at the princess's response and hung her head, but the princess used her hoof and lifted the unicorn's muzzle to look at her.
"I do not wish to see you disappointed," Celestia continued, "so I will arrange for you to be able to interview this changeling with a guard liaison and proper clearance at a later time and date."
While not particularly thrilled that she couldn't sit in on the interview the royal sisters were about to conduct, the lavender mare did smile at the princess's consolation. "Of course," she said, "but I'd like to take Applejack with me as well for that. I think she would be able to help me while I conducted my own interview."
"I will have to get her clearance as well, but I believe that will be okay," Celestia told Twilight.
"Thank you," Twilight responded with a bow.
Celestia smiled at her student, then turned to her sister. "Shall we?"