"I don't understand," Twilight says, looking up into the changeling's emerald-green reptilian eyes.
The changeling drapes her insectoid wing over Twilight's withers, holds Twilight's head to her chitinous chest, and says, "I'm sorry you had to see me like this, my faithful student. I wish you wouldn't think any less of me."
Twilight pulls away. "You're a changeling, Celestia! What am I supposed to think?"
The changeling winces. "My outward appearance does not reflect what's in my heart. I'm still the same Celestia you've always known." The changeling raises Twilight's head with her perforated hoof. "I still love you, Twilight."
Twilight's eyes glisten. "How can a creature who feeds on emotion ever understand love?"
The changeling smiles down at Twilight, exposing the tips of her fangs and causing her ethereal mane to cascade over her right eye like bioluminescent seaweed. "Unlike normal ponies, who are born with that knowledge, my sister and I had to learn it for ourselves." Her smile fades. "Alas, our story spans centuries—it is far too long to tell."
Twilight rises to her hooves, stands on her hind legs with her hooves against the changeling's shoulders, and stares into the changeling's eyes. "Then show me."
After a moment's deliberation, the changeling touches her twisted horn to Twilight's forehead, closes her eyes, and sighs, "As you wish."
Twilight's eyes widen. Her pupils shrink to pinpricks as her world falls out from under her hooves for the second time today.
***
When Twilight awoke, her body wasn't her own and her vision lacked the red and blue spectrum, although that was probably the atmosphere. Beautiful mushrooms of a species she'd only seen in encyclopediae of prehistoric fungi grew out of every crack in the damp rock walls, floor, and ceiling, bathing the misty cave in brilliant green light. She heard gurgling echoes from a distant stream. By her side, the buzzing of translucent, filamentous wings caught her attention.
"We were lead to believe Mother had an important assignment for us," a scratchy, metallic distortion of Luna's voice asked. "Were we mistaken?"
"Be patient, sister," Twilight heard herself say in a similarly distorted version of Celestia's voice. "Mother gifted us with autonomy so we could better perform our duties, not so we could call her motives into question." She realized her lips weren't moving. Her head turned to give her a full-length view of Luna's body, which was indistinguishable from those of the changelings she'd seen at Cadence's wedding. She could only assume that Celestia was still an ordinary changeling as well. In all probability, they didn't even have names yet.
A third changeling appeared in their midst via the sort of fire portal Chrysalis had used to trap Twilight in the caves beneath Canterlot. The changeling's stature and features were similar to Chrysalis's, such as a seaweed-colored mane and tail, more developed wings, and a longer, gnarled horn. She wore a dainty black plant-like crown whose points terminated in turquoise bulbs, denoting her status as queen, but her tired eyes showed none of Chrysalis's malice.
She spoke aloud in a voice familiar, alien, and laced with familial love that eased Twilight's discomfort, "I apologize for my belated arrival, my children. Rather than waste time with the details, though, I'll cut right to the chase: the pony races have escaped our notice for as many centuries as I've been queen by virtue of their constantly being at each others' throats, but some of our scouts whose return home was delayed by a freak snowstorm have recently witnessed an unprecedented event—pegasus ponies, earth ponies, and unicorns alike have set aside their differences to form the united nation of Equestria. I'm assigning you two, my most trusted informants, to infiltrate this nation, learn everything you can about its government, military, and social structure, and report back once you've determined enough for us to begin harvesting."
The queen knelt between Twilight and Luna and pulled them into a group hug. "If all goes well, you two will forever be known in the hive as the heroes who ended the thousand year famine. Make me proud, my children."
"Yes, Mother," Twilight and Luna thought in unison instead of the vitriolic rebuttal that smoldered at the forefront of her mind. Twilight wasn't exactly sure what harvesting entailed, but she was fairly certain their success would send Equestria back into the dark ages.
On the other hoof, despite her belly being stuffed, she felt a different sort of hunger gnawing at her chest. She was starved for love, and the taste the queen had given her only exacerbated her hunger. With that in mind, infiltrating Equestria didn't seem like such a malicious idea. She would never fault a predator or parasite for its need to eat, and changelings were no different.
The queen pulled away, looked at Twilight and Luna, and blinked away the tears in her slitted eyes. Lighting her horn and conjuring a fire portal beneath their hooves, she said, "If I loved you anymore, I'd have none left for myself."
***
From the ambient magical energy in the air, a bubble of yellow-green fire coalesced on a cliff skirting the southern border of a farming village. The fire shrunk into the ground to reveal Twilight and Luna and leave a charred circle in the grass and soil around their hooves.
Once the disorientation of long-distance teleportation wore off, Twilight was struck with the jarring feeling of her body moving of its own accord. Her belly pressed against the dewy ground and crept to the edge of the cliff to peer down at the ponies below.
The sun was barely peeking over the horizon, but the earth ponies were already up working the fields. Most wore wide-brimmed straw hats that limited their vertical field of view. Being farmers, the ponies had little reason to look up.
Being infiltrators, Twilight and Luna were adept at mimicking the forms of others, but to blend into such a small population, they would need to dispose of their doubles without anypony noticing, and the wide expanses of open grassland below provided tragic little cover.
Luna, who was likely coming to the same conclusion, thought, "Our best chance will be to create disguises from scratch."
Twilight nodded. She crept away from the edge and pulled herself up as Luna followed suit. Twilight didn't see the problem, but alien thoughts forming in her head assured her she was about to find out. "We've never had to disguise ourselves as ponies before, but how hard could it be? We share all their best features."
On cue, electric-green magic crackled around Luna's horn. Starting from her hooves, a change swept up her body. Her sleek black chitin became soft indigo fur, her withered gray tail became lush cobalt, her insectoid wings became shrouded in bone, muscle, skin, and feather, and her membranous Mohawk gave way to a shoulder-length mane of the same color as her tail. Upon reaching her curved rhinoceros-like horn, the change made it longer, straighter, and narrower with a spiraled groove from tip to base. Aside from her lack of a cutie mark, Luna looked exactly as she had the first time Twilight saw her. Luna spun on the spot like a puppy chasing its tail and looked herself over before turning her gleeful teal eyes on Twilight and smiling a fangless smile, "We make for a rather pretty pony, do we not?"
Twilight would have blushed were her body her own. Instead, she chuckled—the first vocalization she'd heard herself make. "Certainly, sister, but you seem to be forgetting a few key details. First, you're a full-grown pony without a cutie mark," Twilight said, gesturing to Luna's bare flank, "and second, you're not even a pony. Mother mentioned horned ponies, winged ponies, and those we see in the fields below, but she said nothing of whatever you're supposed to be."
"All right, sister, let's see you do better," Luna pouted.
Twilight mentally braced herself for the agony that was sure to accompany the body-warping transformation, but it never came. All she felt was the familiar tingle of magical energy envelop her horn and wash over her body before dissipating, leading her to believe that the transformation was purely a sensory illusion. Her eyes looked up through the strands of her pink mane to confirm that her horn was still present, though it had turned white and taken on an identical form to Luna's. Twilight's head twisted around to survey the rest of her body. Her angelic wings gave a testing flap as her eyes gazed at her flanks, which were bare save for her milky coat and pink tail.
"Checking yourself out, are you?" Luna teased.
Twilight's urge to curl up in a ball and hide her face under a pillow was rewarded with a faint blush. "We must admit this form is easier on the eyes."
"With luck, the ponies will be so taken with our appearances that they overlook the discrepancies. Shall we?"
"Indeed." Twilight's wings spread. Her hooves raced to the edge of the cliff before leaping off. Her wings flapped to steady her trajectory before easing into a glide toward one of the less-populated wheat fields below.
Luna fell in beside her as the ponies looked out from under their porches, hats, and scraggly manes to see the two strangers sailing into their midst.
Twilight paid them no mind. Having realized she wasn't going to fall to her death, all she could focus on was the blissful feeling of the crisp morning air blowing against the sensitive undersides of her wings, her neck, her chest, her belly, and between her thighs. She blushed internally, hoping the expression didn't manifest on her real body.
When she and Luna alighted on the ground, the crowd of earth ponies who had gathered in the field took a collective step back and whispered amongst one another. A young colt broke away from his mother, ran up to Twilight, and tugged at her foreleg. That his hoof didn't brush into one of the cavities was a testament to the veracity of her illusion. Having her attention, he asked, "Are you a goddess?"
Twilight turned from the colt to Luna, whose look said something to the effect of, "Who's laughing now?"
Looking back at the colt, Twilight felt her lips curl into a pleasant smile and form words for the first time. "I am," she said in a tone indistinguishable from the one Celestia had always used with her. Twilight looked up to the crowd. "My sister and I were brought into being by your collective decision to live in harmony with the other pony races. So long as it persists, so will we remain to serve and guide you."
"Clever," Luna thought.
"Thank you," Twilight replied, watching her message sink into the gathered ponies and feeling an immediate change among them. Where she had felt nothing before, she began to feel a faint warmth radiating off them. From the way it eased the gnawing discomfort in her chest, she could only assume it was some primitive form of love. Bodily aches she hadn't realized she had washed away. Feeling better than she had since before the memory started, she stood a little taller.
An elderly earth pony stepped forth from the back row and asked, "That explains your appearance, but why don't either of you have cutie marks?"
"Alas, we know why we came into being, but we can only assume our special talents correspond to our place in your society," Luna said aloud in her undistorted voice. "Perhaps your leaders can help us discover it."
The elderly pony bowed, turned, and shouted orders while herding the crowd off toward the village square.
Twilight and Luna followed close behind.
By the time they got there, a modestly furnished wooden carriage was already waiting for them. The elderly pony turned to them from an animated conversation with the two draft ponies harnessed to the carriage and said, "I've instructed these two to take you through the neighboring villages to Canterlot, a unicorn stronghold built into the side of a mountain before the unification, which now serves as our capital city."
"Thank you," Twilight said, stepping into the carriage after Luna. Poking her head out the window to meet his friendly, wrinkled eyes, she asked, "How long may we expect to be on the road?"
"With minimal stops, you should get there within three or four days. We all wish you the best of luck."
With that, the draft ponies set off down the well-traveled dirt road. They picked up speed as they left town and entered the beautiful Equestrian countryside.
Watching birds, flowers, and other travelers whisk past in a blur of sound, color, and warmth, Twilight and Luna couldn't believe their luck.
***
In the evening of the third day, after an afternoon of climbing winding cliff-side paths up the mountain, Twilight and Luna's carriage stopped outside the castle gates in Canterlot. While the city still bore vestiges of its military past, the castle looked much as it would a thousand years hence.
In contrast, the love Twilight and Luna had been showered with in the towns they passed through had already begun to morph their bodies into the stature and regality Twilight had always known. Both stood almost a head taller than they had when they left the hive, putting them at eye level with their draft pony drivers.
Twilight stepped off the carriage, thanked the drivers, receiving bowed heads in response, and set off toward the gold-plated castle gates, where a charcoal-coated unicorn night guard in polished silver armor met her and Luna. Twilight took deciphering his stoic visage as a personal challenge and found beneath it a flurry of emotions all fighting to manifest on his face or in his eyes. She could taste each one—salty anxiety, savory curiosity, and sour envy, but none of the sweet affection she'd grown accustomed to inspiring in ponies. Catching herself feeling affronted at that and noting how her identity had become blurred with Celestia's over the past few days, she began to wonder what long-term implications the memory would have for her mental health.
The unicorn's gruff voice derailed her train of thought, "What's your business here, strangers?"
"We are goddesses of harmony brought into existence by the unification of Equestria," Luna delivered the cover story in a deadpan tone that gave his a run for its bits. "We understand your leaders are expecting us." Seeing the unicorn's hesitance, she added with an edge, "You would not be wise to keep them waiting."
The unicorn bowed his head and opened the gate. "Of course, Ma'am. We'll show you the way."
With a unicorn mare flanking them, Twilight and Luna followed him up the bleached stone steps toward the castle door, where two more night guards joined their ranks as they went inside. Several winding corridors and high-ceilinged halls lined with stained-glass windows later, they arrived with their entourage at the foot of the red velvet carpet that stretched across the throne room's black-and-white checkered floor.
At the opposite end, in a gold-leafed mahogany nest of silk cushions, the white-coated, purple-maned unicorn known as Princess Platinum sat. Accompanying her on either side were a sandy-coated, magenta-maned earth pony and a cyan-coated, white-maned pegasus pony, Chancellor Puddinghead and Commander Hurricane, respectively. All three were mares, and all three wore regalia nearly identical to what Twilight and her friends had during the Hearth's Warming Eve Pageant.
Platinum stood to greet the newcomers, "Welcome, travelers! We've been expecting you." She levitated a dainty ceramic cup to her lips and took a sip. "Won't you join us for some tea?"
"Is that not somewhat informal?" Luna thought.
Twilight had grown so accustomed to their telepathic communications that she replied without a second thought, "We admit we didn't expect them to be getting along this well, but who are we to reject their hospitality?"
Luna watched the guards standing around them bristle as she took a step forward before calling across the room, "We appreciate your hospitality, Princess, but we're hesitant to come any closer lest your guards misjudge our intentions."
Platinum covered her mouth with her hoof and giggled, "Oh, silly me." Regaining her regal composure, she addressed the guards, "Thank you for escorting our guests here, but you won't be needed further."
"With all due respect, Princess," the first guard began, "how do you know—"
"Dismissed," Platinum cut him off and stared him down until he relented. Once all the guards had filed out and closed the doors behind them, her expression softened. "As I was saying, we were just having some tea, and—"
"You were just having some tea," Hurricane groused.
Platinum rolled her eyes and spared a glance at her. "Yes, Commander, we know you value your masculinity too much to be caught performing an act so scandalously feminine as drinking tea in public."
"I thought you said you were a mare," Puddinghead chimed in. "Maybe I should double check." She got up to do just that, eliciting a blush from Hurricane.
Platinum stood in her way. "Please don't embarrass the Commander, Chancellor. There'll be plenty of time for that when you two retire for the evening."
"What's that supposed to—" Hurricane began but cut herself off when she saw Platinum's knowing smirk. She cleared her throat. "Hey, weren't we all about to sit down for some tea? Why don't we do that?"
Twilight managed to stifle a giggle, but Luna was less successful.
"That sounds like a wonderful idea, Commander," Platinum said. "Why don't you pour some for our guests?" She turned to them and sat back down. "What are you two still doing all the way over there, admiring the carpeting?"
Puddinghead piped up, "I know whose carpeting I'll be—"
"Please, Chancellor!" Platinum cried, startling Hurricane into dropping the teapot. Platinum caught it in her magic and set it back on the tray.
Meanwhile, Twilight and Luna had made their way to the cushions. They sat down beside each other and across from Hurricane and Puddinghead, between which Platinum settled in—for the former's safety, Twilight realized.
Despite her earlier objections, Hurricane had poured herself a cup of tea. It rested between her forelegs and held her undivided attention.
In response, Puddinghead had taken to intensely scrutinizing her own cup. Her expression implied she had yet to find anything deserving of fascination. She leaned across to peer into Hurricane's cup but found Platinum in her way.
"You two must be tired from your journey, so I'll make this brief," Platinum began before Puddinghead could protest. "Hurricane's scouts told us to to expect you, so I've already arranged for a room to which you can retire once we're done here. They also told us that you're goddesses representing Equestria's future of peace and harmony and that you came here in hopes of discovering your special talents. Is that correct?"
Twilight took a sip of hot chamomile tea, reveling in the taste as if for the first time before setting her cup down and confirming, "That's correct."
Platinum smiled. "In that case, I believe I speak for all of us when I say that we're happy to welcome you to Equestria, and while we'd like to put you to work immediately, we can't just hand out administrative duties to whomever walks through our doors claiming to be gods or goddesses no matter how convincing their appearances may be. Please don't think we doubt you. The trials you will face are really more of a formality than anything else."
"What are these trials of which you speak?" Luna asked.
"None of the ponies who've come to us claiming to be gods or goddesses in the past have ever been worthy of a second glance. In your case, we decided we would each propose a trial to test one of three godly qualities—strength, wisdom, and benevolence. If you pass all three trials, we'll place the future of Equestria in your capable hooves. Do you find these terms acceptable?"
"Please tell us we're not dreaming!" Luna thought.
"We're not," Twilight replied despite knowing she was, for all intents and purposes, dreaming. She said aloud, "That sounds reasonable. When may we begin?"
"Oh, do me!" Puddinghead exclaimed, waving her hoof in the air.
"Don't you want to get some rest first?" Platinum asked.
"Well, yes," Twilight said, "but so long as it doesn't take too long—"
"We'll be done lickety-split, I promise," Puddinghead said.
"Very well," Platinum sighed, waving her on.
"Your first trial is a test of wisdom." Puddinghead cast a sultry look at Hurricane before turning to Twilight. "To pass, all you have to do is guess what I'm thinking."
Twilight raised her eyebrow and reached into Puddinghead's mind with her telepathy. She wasn't keen on further exposing Puddinghead and Hurricane's affair, but if that's what proving her worth required, so be it.
The telepathic connection must have gone both ways, because Puddinghead's first thought was, "Don't worry, I'm just trying to make Hurricane nervous."
Twilight cast a glance at Hurricane, whose face hadn't quite turned as white as her mane, but not for lack of trying, and responded, "You're succeeding."
Puddinghead gasped, "You literally read my mind! I thought I was just reading your expression really well, but as I was about to respond, you responded to my response! You totally pass!"
Twilight hoped Puddinghead hadn't been rooting around in her mind while she was rooting around in Puddinghead's and chided herself for her carelessness.
Puddinghead grinned. "I wasn't, but now that you mention it..."
Her eyes widening, Twilight cut the connection.
"Aw, I was only kidding. I wouldn't invade your privacy like that even though you just invaded my privacy like that, but how else would you know what I was thinking? You'd have to be omniscient or something."
"Okay," Hurricane drawled, looking between Twilight and Puddinghead. "I'm not sure what just happened, but I got the part where she said you passed, which means my trial is next. As a test of your strength, we're getting up bright and early tomorrow morning to assist my soldiers in repelling an Ursa Major who's been attacking one of the settlements on the outskirts of the Everfree Forest. They've managed to draw him out of town, but you're going to help me make sure he never comes back." She smirked at their blank looks, stood, walked toward the door, and called back, "Sleep tight, ladies!"
Puddinghead got up and bounced out the door after her. "Hey, wait for me!"
"Please tell us we misheard her," Luna thought.
"Which one," Twilight asked, "the flamboyantly homosexual Chancellor or the suicidally insane Commander?"
Platinum looked between her and Luna, bit her lip, and said, "That won't be a problem, will it?"
"Of course not," Luna responded aloud. "Considering that getting here took us almost four days, we were just wondering how the Commander intends to get there in time to be of any assistance."
Twilight would have marveled at Luna's ability to lie on command, but she was too busy calculating how slim their chances of survival were against an Ursa Major. That Celestia had survived to pass the memory on to her was proof they would succeed, but only time would tell how.
"Oh, don't worry about that," Platinum said, sounding relieved. "The Everfree Forest is right near the base of the mountain. You three can probably glide there before noon if you leave early enough. Now if there are no further questions, why don't I show you two to your room?"