The Triumvirate

by Fedora71


Riot part 2

Chapter 12
Riot part 2


Ancro turned to fly, but found himself in the telekinetic grasp of one of the changelings. He watched in horror as the cart rolled down the tracks and two of the changelings chased after it. Ancro, in desperation, fired a shot from his horn but the changelings didn’t even bother to avoid it. From looking at them, the power behind it wouldn’t have done anything to them if it had hit. Luckily, Ancro was a strategic thinker and knew not to aim for something he couldn’t hurt.
The fire raced ahead to the changelings and it exploded against the support beam in the tunnel. There was a slight rumble, and the changelings stopped short of running into a cave-in and being crushed beneath the rocks. They turned back and looked towards the relieved looking Ancro, their eyes narrowed. Their horns charged as they turned back towards the cave to blast it open.
“We don’t have time for that,” Una yelled, “we need to leave now.”
“What about the princess?” They hissed.
“Forget her, we’re running up the clock.” She turned to face Ancro, her rage veiled by a thin mask. “First, I’m going to cut off your legs, and then I’m going to shatter your spine and give you to her majesty in a nice box with a pretty pink bow.” Ancro realized that she was the sadistic type that really did enjoy this way too much for it to be healthy.
“I prefer the color blue,” Ancro said, or would’ve said, had claws not been playing tickle the organs,so all that came out was a disorganized series of screams and groans. There was another groan, but this time it came from the vent above them.

Specs darted down the halls at a blistering speed, trying to get distance between herself and the praetorian that had been breathing down her neck. She was fairly happy to be feeling him get further and further away. Then she ran into a dead end.
The praetorian had been pursuing her feverishly, and while they couldn’t feed on other changelings, their emotions were still delectable… Especially fear. It was such a luscious taste, especially from a changeling. They are such a proud race that tasting fear from one was a delicacy. He stopped flying and started to walk, sensing the fear bleeding off her. He rounded the corner at a slow pace, trying to bring the fear up to an even higher apex.
He rounded the corner, a sadistic smile on his face. Specs stood her ground halfway down the hall. He licked his lips, tasting the fear in the air, even though she wasn’t showing it. ‘It’s okay,’ he thought, as he smiled wickedly while approaching her, ‘I’ll enjoy making her show it.’
Suddenly, the fear vanished as Specs pulled out a harmonica. The praetorian stopped his paced walk down the hall and cocked his eyebrow. She blew into the harmonica and smiled confidently.
“If that’s all you’re going to do to defend yourself,” he said popping his neck, “I will be getting started.”
She took a step back, her smile still confident as she blew a few notes out of the harmonica. The changeling walked onward, steadily becoming less amused.
“Do you know any good torturing songs?” The praetorian growled as he got closer. It wasn’t so much the harmonica that was annoying him, the buzzing noise that came from the vents was getting annoying. “If you’re a masochist, I’m just letting you know I don’t believe in safety words.”
The buzzing turned into a rumbling noise that got closer and closer, until it stopped and several colored puff balls with clear, bug-like wings popped out of the vent.
“Just a hint, you may want to run.” She smiled as she put the harmonica to her lips. Her action only seemed to anger the praetorian, who transformed into the creature she was so familiar with. It didn’t matter where you were from, or who you were, every changeling dreamed of being able to turn into that thing, even if it was just for a second. “Turning into an Apex won’t help you.”
“Yes, beware the small fuzz balls of doom,” it growled, in a much deeper, more sinister sounding voice. “Now I’m going to break every bone in your body, and laugh at your pain.”
Specs didn’t say anything; she just smiled and blew on her harmonica one last time.

Stigandr barely avoided the backhand and blocked the follow-up punch. He didn’t notice the kick, though. It landed squarely in the jaw, and sent him reeling back on his hind legs, exposing his stomach to the other leg. As if in slow motion, Stigandr watched the changeling raise its knee and saw the snap of the round house kick. He felt it, and heard it, too. It dulled the feeling of the table he had landed on.
Scott was up now, and was desperately trying to hit the extremely agile creature that seemed to have more fun taunting him than actually hitting him. Every time the griffin would throw a punch or slash with his claws, the changeling would merely step out of place by an inch, or sometimes even less. He knew he wasn’t getting close, the changeling was taunting him and that infuriated Scott to no end. Scott bull-rushed the changeling, and just as he was within an inch of him, he felt his body become rigid and a soft green light hazed his vision.
Using its magic, the changeling flung Scott into the far wall. Not with a lethal amount of force, but what he hoped was just enough to remove him from the fight. Stigandr had gotten up by now, and charged his horn. The changeling turned with a smile on his face.
“Good, you’re still up,” he said, his voice full of mirth, “I’d be disappointed if I went to all this effort to tra-“
A massive amount of force sent the changeling flying backwards at incredible speed. Stigandr watched with some satisfaction as it sailed toward the wall. Then with one flap of its wings, all movement stopped, and it righted itself before charging again. Stigandr went on his guard and charged his horn, hitting the changeling with another, more concentrated blast. The changeling stopped in midair for a second before continuing its charge. Stigandr barely made it out of the way of the horned head, but was clothes-lined by one the changeling’s outstretched arms. The changeling got behind him and with one ‘arm’ wrapped around the unicorn’s neck, and the other holding onto the horn, the changeling lifted up on its hind legs and let gravity do the work.
Stigandr couldn’t breathe and couldn’t use magic to alleviate his weight. The changeling’s height made it impossible to get a footing, or… hoofing, and step around him like he was trained to do. Suddenly, the changeling let out a scream and released his grip on the unicorn’s horn to backhand whatever had just cut his back.
Scott was ready for the backhand, and ducked beneath the wild swing. Coming up from the duck, he landed a haymaker across the changeling’s face and while it didn’t have the desired effect of sending him soaring across the room like the ones he received, the satisfaction was still there when he saw the creature spit out some green blood. Then, in small puff of green fire, its face healed and the slashes on the back closed up. To top it off, Scott was pretty sure he messed up his shoulder when he threw that punch. Regardless, he got the changeling’s attention, if only momentarily.
Scott had distracted the changeling just long enough for Stigandr to use his magic to push the changeling forward, and the unicorn land squarely on all for hooves. As soon as his hooves hit the ground, he collapsed. His front legs bucked up with his back, breaking the changelings loosened grip and sending him into the air. This time he didn’t charge, he just hovered there for a moment, floating back and forth, staring at them with apparent frustration,
“Do you think you can blast him like you were?” Scott whispered in his all too loud voice, keeping both eyes on the changeling, while desperately trying not to show how bad he was hurting by hiding behind his wings.
“Unless you can follow up with something, I don’t think it’ll do any good,” Stigandr said.
“Damn.”
“You should know I can hear everything you just said,” the changeling said, landing on the wall beneath an air conditioning duct. He wiggled his ears for emphasis.
“So I take it that your hearing isn’t that good, normally?” Stigandr said with a smile, “Hey Scott, how loud can you get again?”
Scott didn’t say anything, he just grinned and screamed in a voice that shook the entire cave network. Stalactites shook as the griffin’s loud voice echoed through, being heard by everypony and changeling. Including the one who was in the cafeteria with them, unfortunately he didn’t seem to care. The changeling smiled and shook its head, and its horns changed shape. They were further apart, and at an incredibly shallow angle. An oval of green fire started to form.
“I’m afraid you’re a few hundred years too late to take advantage of that feature,” the changeling said. “I probably should’ve done this a while ago, but I was so concerned with doing as little harm as possible. You two, however, seem to like doing things the hard way.”
There was a groaning noise from the duct, which drew the changeling’s attention away from the spell.

“Did you hear that?” Twilight said, shortly after the scream had echoed its way out of the cave. They had gone in and set up a base in the warden’s office, a grizzled old griffin that was standing on the other side of the room, and making Fluttershy very nervous.
“Twi, I think everypony in Canterlot heard that yell.” She looked over to Fluttershy and coaxed her on with a warm smile, “It’s alright sugar cube, you remember how that griffin’s voice carries.”
“Yes, I guess you’re right,” she said, in a tone scarcely above a whisper.
“It’s still hard to believe,” she said, looking deeper into the caves, “that the whole time they were under his mind control.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Shining Armor said, “our top priorities right now are finding Cadence and getting this prison under control.”
“Do you all here a buzzing sound?” The warden asked, looking toward the vent directly above his head.

All over the prison, vents burst virtually simultaneously, sending thousands upon thousands of the parasprites into the prison, stacking even more chaos on top of the riot and fighting. Twilight and her friends looked out over the mess that had descended upon the prison. The warden barely raised an eyebrow as they got into his beard. They flooded the atrium where Scott and Stigandr were fighting the changeling, buying them time to get past him. The small creatures flooded down on top of the praetorian that thought he had corned Specs. He was unfortunate enough to have the double whammy of the vent landing on top of his face before being crushed under the flood. Shift found himself swept up in the multicolored tide, and carried off without any control. Ancro looked on in a mixture of horror and childlike fascination as Una’s claw turned into a bone-like blade. As she raised it to take off the first of Ancro’s limbs that they had decided to remove, a tidal wave of parasprites came flying down the hall in all their adorable fury. The changelings quickly became disorganized as they were pushed off towards the cliff. Una lost her grip, and Ancro went plummeting over the ledge into the black abyss below. All the while wondering why they didn’t have guard rails along the ledge.

Specs trotted through the prison, trying to find her brother so she could leave. She had already given up on saving the changeling. The praetorians had beaten her to it, and she wasn’t about to go and take them on again without the element of surprise or numbers on her side. Serious numbers, she had seen what the ten praetorians could do to a griffin village first-hoof. The griffins blamed the destruction on a meteorite.
She pressed up against the wall as several more inmates passed by, screaming about how the parasprites were in their manes.
“Scott, pick up the pace, we don’t want that changeling to catch us,” a pony called out. All she could think about was how unusual that name was.

“Dude, what if he’s not there?” Scott asked, out of breath, and trying to keep up with the pony through the maze of multicolored, purring, adorable insects.
“We’ll keep looking,” Stigandr said. “Even if we have to go all the way to the changeling capitol or hive, or whatever they call it.”
“Okay, just making sure we have plan B,” Scott said, looking over his shoulder to be sure they weren’t being followed. Satisfied that he didn’t see a wall of green flame barreling down on them, he turned back. When he brought his head back around, he saw something that caught his attention. Screaming, he lunged down the hall and grabbed the changeling that had peaked around the corner.
“I’m going to take a guess and go ahead and say you’re not our friend Ancro, are you?” Scott said, holding onto the changeling with all his might. Stigandr walked over and brushed some of the parasprites out of his eyes.
“Hey Scott,” The unicorn spoke up in a calm voice. “I don’t think he can breathe.” His horn lit up and the unicorn loosened the griffin’s grip around the changeling’s neck. Her horn lit up, but Scott grabbed it and cancelled the charge, which burnt.
“Let me go!” The changeling hissed in its weird, layered voice that never ceased to creep the griffin out when Ancro used it.
“Not until you tell us where you are taking our friend!”
“I don’t know what you are talking about!” She pleaded, “I’m just looking for my brother.”
“We just ran into him and he attacked us.”
“Scott, she means the other changeling,” Stigandr said calmly. “The one that ran, terrified, in the opposite direction when the other changeling showed up.”
“Yeah, that sounds like him,” she sighed. “It’s good to know he got away.”
“Now if you would just be kind enough to answer our question?” Stigandr said, levitating her out of Scott’s grip. She relaxed as her feet touched the ground, only to be slammed back into the wall by the unicorn's magic. “Now.”

“Of course, all this happens the week before retirement,” the warden said in an indifferent grumble.
“Warden, do you have any instruments?” Twilight desperately asked the griffin.
“Yes, they are in a storage room in the minimum security cafeteria,” the griffin replied.
“Do you know any ponies who could play them?” She asked.
“Yeah,” he smiled slightly. “The inmates.”
“…The inmates,” Twilight blinked in shock, “you mean the ones that are….”
“Rioting at this very moment?” He asked with a pause before laughing. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
“We’ll be fine.” Shining Armor said, completely ignoring the parasprites. “These are disciplined ponies of the royal guard. A few parasprites aren’t going to hurt them.”
“Okay, if you’re sure,” Twilight said. “What’s the plan?”
“The plan is for you to stay here while I get things under control,” her brother said in the tone she heard him bark orders with.
Twilight’s brow furrowed. “I thought we were doing this together?”
“Twilight, I’m sorry, but it’s just too dangerous.”
“And defeating Discord wasn’t,” she replied sarcastically. “What about Nightmare Moon, that certainly wasn’t a cake walk.”
“Twilight, this isn’t open for discussion.”
“I’m saying it is,” Twilight’s eyes narrowed as she challenged her brother’s gaze. She scarcely noticed that his horn flashed, and all around her, the world went pink.
“Keep an eye on her,” Shining Armor ordered the warden, who gave an apathetic two-talon salute. The captain went back to issuing orders.

Ancro limped down the hall as best he could in his guard façade. Parasprites were everywhere, which is something he was glad for, it would allow certain aspects of his disguise to falter and nopony would notice. Everything hurt and he kept replaying the fight in his mind, trying to win it. Each time it concluded the same, sometimes worse. He had to admit that he was completely outmatched, and that really pissed him off. ‘On the plus side’ he reassured himself, ‘at least I managed to get Cadence out of there’.
It had taken a long time for him to pick himself up off the cave floor. Even then, it was reluctant. Only when he heard the buzzing of the changelings’ wings had he decided to move. Then it was slow going, and he was rationing out all of his energy between healing and keeping himself from collapsing from all the background magic that was flooding his senses.
He turned down a hallway and heard a distant tuneless humming, followed by a burning sensation of an extremely energetic presence. Around the corner popped a pink pony with a wild bouncy mane, that Ancro just wanted to poke and see if it stayed in place.
“Miss Pie,” he said in his guard voice, slipping further into disguise, “we need to hurry up and get you somewhere safe.” Ancro wasn’t lying, there were a lot of places she needed to be. In the middle of a prison, surrounded by hostile ponies and changelings, was not one of them.
“Okeydokeylokey,” Pinkie Pie said, and Ancro could barely contain himself. In his eyes, Pinkie Pie is best pony. They were halfway down the hall when she stopped, and looked at her hoof for some reason.
“Ma’am, is there a problem?” Ancro asked, wondering if his favorite pony had been injured in some way.
“Nope,” she said, smiling widely, to which he shrugged. Ancro turned back around, and a moment later felt himself propelled forward at great speed until a wall stopped him, painfully. Ancro’s eyes came back into focus and he found his disguise had faded and he was covered with confetti and streamers. Pinkie Pie was standing behind the smoking barrel of her party cannon, and all Ancro could think about was ‘so, that’s what that feels like’.
“Pinkie sense?” He asked, smiling through the fresh batch of pain, hoping he hadn’t learned what broken ribs felt like he struggled to his feet.
“Mmhmm,” she said, “now you’re going to undo that mind control spelly thing you did to Scott and Stiggy, or else.” How is it possible to cock the barrel of a cannon?
“Pinkamina,” Ancro said, using her formal name to get some footing in the conversation and to gain her full attention before she fired the party cannon again. “I don’t do mind control spells. Besides, why would I need to use that on my two best friends, who I would readily go to Tartarus and back for?”
“…you sure you’re not lying, are you?” She said, eyeing him suspiciously.
“Yes, I’m positive I’m not lying; cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye,” he said, putting his holed hoof over his eye.
“Okeydokeylokey,” she said, bouncing over to him and helping him up. “So where are you heading?”
‘Well, that was easy,’ he thought. “No idea,” Ancro said, “just hoping that I don’t run into anypony or changeling, or any really tough parasprites that want to hurt me.”
“That’s silly,” Pinkie Pie said. “Parasprites don’t hurt anypony, they just eat everything.”
Her voice normally would’ve driven him to vomit at this point with a migraine, but surprisingly it didn’t seem to bother him. He assumed it had something to do with her special talent. Regardless, he was happy that he was getting to spend time with Pinkie Pie. He was seriously about to lose all containment on himself and go super critical with joy. He also scratched off the universe-ending theory involved with meeting the mane 6, since the world was not going insane and falling to chaos. As far as he could tell, it was the typical chaos that came with Equestria.

“Look I’m not with the other changelings,” Specs repeated to Scott for the umpteenth time as they trotted down the hall. “I’m just here with my brother.”
“On what, a family vacation?” The griffin replied, as he flew alongside them to ease the pain on his shoulder.
“No, we were here to free Ancro,” she replied, practically facehoofing as she spat out the changeling’s name. Who named their larva ‘Ancro’? “we thought he was rogue like the rest of us.”
Scott choked on a parasprite.
“After the attack, a few of us got the idea to just up and leave,” she said. “The less sadistic ones, that is.”
“Less sadistic?” Stigandr asked, his curiosity piqued.
“Yeah, we’re all a little sadistic,” she shrugged. “Of course, we didn’t have anything to really compare ourselves to. Until we got to Equestria, that is.”
“Go on,” Scott said after she paused for a few seconds.
“It’s pretty simple, actually,” She said. “When you feed off of emotions, you develop a certain taste for them. Love is our bread and butter, it’s the most nutritious by a large margin. Other emotions though, they’re what you all call…” The changeling paused in thought. “Junk food.”
“How so?”
“Not nutritious in the least, but sure as hell tasty.” She smiled in a way that made both the griffin and the unicorn’s skin crawl.
Suddenly, the changeling stopped at a corner and froze, signaling both of them to do the same. A group of changelings buzzed down the hall, pushing aside the swarm of parasprites and burning those unlucky enough to not move. When they had flown past, Specs turned and spoke.
“Well, that plan’s out the window.”
“What do you mean?” Scott whispered.
“Those were the changelings that ran off with your friend, and they were pissed, and minus your friend.”
“Are you sure?”
“Trust me,” She said, fully expecting to hear some level of scoffing, because… who trusts a changeling? Instead, she was met with agreement, they actually trusted her. Her face betrayed her shock.
“Don’t look so surprised,” Stigandr replied. “If you were with them, you would’ve turned us in.”
“They went that way, we should be following them,” she replied, letting the conversation drop there. She didn’t like to be figured out.

Twilight beat her hooves against the pink barrier her brother had trapped her in. If she hadn’t exhausted her magic teleporting all of her friends to Canterlot, she may have been able to tear through it. Applejack and Fluttershy had gone out to try to round up as many of the parasprites as they could and help the guards concentrate on retaking the prison.
“It’s not going to work,” the warden said, as he sipped his coffee after shooing away the parasprites.
“Shouldn’t you be out there in your prison trying to keep it under control?” Twilight grumbled as she kept bucking the barrier.
“Not my prison,” he said taking another sip. “My replacement is currently undergoing his first week of actual work; I’m just here to see if he passes or fails.”
“So, you’re not even going to help?”
“Not a lot I can do without undermining his or your brother’s authority.” He replied, “If I go out there and start acting like it’s my job to run this place, now it makes my replacement look incompetent, which hurts how the rest of the guards and even the inmates view him.”
“Can’t you do anything to help me?” She pleaded.
The old griffin put a talon under his beak and tapped it in thought. “Y’know, Shining Armor’s shield spell doesn’t account for underground, only the surface.” He stepped out from behind his desk and walked over towards the door. “I’m going to get some fresh air.”
Twilight thought about what he had said and tapped her hoof against one of the wooden floor boards. She smiled when she heard it reverberate in only the way a wooden floor could when nothing was beneath. She grinned and charged her horn with what little magic she had restored from the teleport.

Shift was hiding in a storeroom below the warden’s office. The old griffin had just left, and was heading out. Now if only some other guards would head anywhere but in, or leave with a scroll, he may have a chance of getting out of here. He wasn’t worried about his sister, she was the one who always had a plan and always kept her cool. He knew Specs would meet up with him and the rest of the deserters tonight, and they would all share a good laugh before packing up and leaving before the praetorians could track them down. He heard the faintest sound of a unicorn’s horn charging above him. He looked up just in time to get showered with splinters and a lavender unicorn that he was all too familiar with from the time she blasted him, when his platoon had unsuccessfully attempted to capture the elements of harmony. She had pinned him down and blasted him from hooves to head with her magic. It didn’t hurt so much as it completely overloaded his system and incapacitated him. Regardless, underneath this mare was the last place he wanted to be, ever again.

Twilight had just regained her focus when whatever she had landed on smiled up at her awkwardly. It took her a total of two seconds to go from dazed, to frightened, to confused, then finally to enraged. Her eyes narrowed and her horn glowed. Yes, she was aware she could scarcely light a candle right now, but the changeling didn’t know that and she was counting on bluffing.
“Get moving,” she growled, and the black insect complied, heading towards the door. “Transform and lead me to Cadence and your friends.”
“But I-“ He started, then her horn started glowing and he assumed the identity of the guard he had been hiding as. There was no use arguing with her, even if he had succeeded he would consider it a miracle if they didn’t kill him on sight, given the current state of things. He led her back into the prison the same way he had been washed out by the parasprites.

“Hey Pinkie Pie,” Ancro groaned, feeling slightly better but still not up to a fight. “Do you have a map of the prison?”
“Well duh,” she in her happy voice that made Ancro squee. “How else did I find you?”
The element of laughter seemed somewhat shocked when the changeling rushed forward to hug her. Ancro was a fairly huggy person, and being incapable of giving any had been torture. In his opinion, hugs made everything better. Even as a human, he would argue this point and use them to prank his friends by squeezing the air out of them. Pinkie didn’t seem to mind, and in fact returned the favor and a small hug war started between them. The much stronger earth pony won. Ancro argued that he put up a good fight.
“May I see it?”Ancro asked patiently, after they stared at each other for several long seconds.
“Sure,” she handed him the map and he rolled it out on the ground, and gave it a hard look.
“Pinkie Pie, do you know where we are?”
“Well duh silly, we’re in a cave,” she said as she hopped around in circles, making an audible springing noise that baffled Ancro’s inner scientist to no end.
“No silly, I mean on the map.” She hopped over to the map and looked at it extremely hard. Ancro had an internal face palm. He stood by for a few more seconds, wondering if she was seriously looking for them on the map or just being a smart-ass. “Pinkie, I’m being figurative, what I’m saying is where are we located in the caves at this present moment, located anywhere on that map, and if so where is it located, so as that I may get a bearing on our current location and find out where the mine cart Cadence was on got sent to.”
“Oh, I knew that,” she said in an awkward voice that dictated the contrary. “We’re here,” the pink pony pointed to a spot on the map. “And all the mine carts run to the laundry room here.” She pointed to a spot that wasn’t that far away.
“Thank yo-“ Ancro called back to her as the pony stared intently at something on the map.
“Well, except for one.” Pinkie Pie said, “The one closest to maximum security goes to the furnace.”
There are moments in life when words are not necessary for exchange, and everything is communicated perfectly fine through glances, and panicked gestures and screaming down the hallway amidst what amounted to flying tribbles with a broader color spectrum. This was one of those times.

(Well finally got this done don’t worry next chapter I’m hopefully going to get them out of the prison. Feedback is always welcome whether it be positive or negative. It helps me make this a better story for your enjoyment. Big thanks to my wonderful editor/artist Sara, who I’ve also commissioned to draw one of the transformed praetorians it should be on my blog by tomorrow if anyone wants to see it. Also big thanks to my best friends who inspired the other two-thirds of the Triumvirate. Once again let me know how I did!)