The insectoid guard leaned in to bite into the cocoon holding the purple unicorn when a sudden searing light blinded one of his compound eyes painfully. He spun around, screeching in pain and fury, and for a moment he saw a little white shape running up the strand that connected to the throne. It was shouting in defiance as it charged, horn glowing with light that was dazzling to look at. The guard screamed an alarm just as a second lance of light, more focused than the first, penetrated his carapace and cut his alert short.
Luminous charged towards the cocoon as the chitinous horror fell sizzling from Twilight's prison. “Twilight!” Luminous shouted desperately as she fended off another creature with a brilliantly unfocused flash of light. In its sudden flaring luminescence, Luminous thought she saw the figure inside move a little.
Now that the hive had been alerted, more and more of the creatures were filling into the room, their buzzing wings drowning out Luminous. She continued to charge up the strand of whatever tough substance connected the walls to the throne, ducking and weaving around the criss-crossing strings of green material where they crossed her path. “Twilight!” Luminous tried again, right as two of the insectoid creatures swooped down towards her. She blinded one with a painfully bright flare of light, but the other managed to tackle her off the strand and fly up with Luminous in its sharp, perforated hooves.
Instinctively, Luminous bit one of the creature's legs but found the carapace was more than a match for her jaw muscles, and too smooth for her teeth to get a grip on. She felt herself being lifted towards one of the dark passageways, around the tangles of green threads. Images of the cocoon filled her mind, of having her emotions leeched from her, and instinctively, she angled her horn up and fired as potent a spell as she had ever flung, straight into her captor's face.
The beam of light disintegrated the creature's face, cut down two more creatures, and sliced one of the strands clear of the wall, which it melted a deep gouge into. The panic this caused was immediate; as the strand started to fall, the chitinous creatures swarmed around it, attempting to pull the cocoons off of it before they were crushed. It quite distracted the carapace-covered creatures from Luminous, who had fallen from her dead captor's hooves right onto another strand. Unfortunately for her, the strand was angled sharply enough that she soon found herself sliding down it on her belly, while her hooves scrabbled ineffectively against the slick substance of the green cable.
Luminous flipped herself over as she slid, and winced as the movement opened the cut on her flank. Before she could worry about that though, the strand abruptly changed direction, and Luminous had a split second of terrified anticipation before she was flung off through the air. Adrenaline slowed the progress of time to a crawl, and she saw the throne, with Twilight's prison above it, far below her.
Moments stretched as she tried to angle herself in mid-air, before she closed her eyes and cast. Searing pain erupted all along Luminous's back as she reflected herself off one of her shields straight towards the cocoon with Twilight in it. She shot through the room, trailing smoke from her back and blood from her flank as she arrowed straight for the imprisoned purple unicorn.
Luminous hit the cocoon with enough force to knock the wind out of her and slightly deform the side of the green prison. She gasped for breath for a moment, and tried to hammer on the cocoon with the strength left to her. “Twilight,” she rasped as loudly as she could, staring into the green liquid which held the knight, “Twilight,” Luminous said more strongly, her voice rising as the buzzing around her began to surge once more. Inside, Twilight stirred a little as if dreaming, “Twilight!” Luminous shouted, and she started to summon the last of her reserves to cut open the cocoon with her magic.
Between running through the hive, spellcrafting on the fly, and fighting off the creatures, Luminous was running very low on magical potential. She focused all she could into this cutting spell, intent on at least freeing Twilight. Luminous horn started to glow fitfully, and her legs began to shake, but before she could even try to cast she was tackled painfully off the cocoon by an armored chitinous creature.
“Mommy!” Luminous shouted instinctively as she fell, terror lending her voice strength as she felt armored limbs close coldly around her. She saw Twilight's cocoon start to fade from view until, at the bottom of the armored guard's dive with her, Twilight's cocoon exploded, and Luminous stopped falling altogether.
It happened so suddenly that the guard was torn off of Luminous from the stop. He hit the spherical floor with a tremendous cracking noise that sounded incredibly final. Luminous felt a soft tickle licking up her body, which was covered in violet flame. She tasted love in the fire and felt its fury even as it gently held her in the air, which smelled of burning paper. Twilight floated above the throne, her eyes pure white radiance, her body lit with flames that were both orange and purple that whispered with dark secrets and crackled with violent ire.
The creatures swarmed, attempting to tackle Twilight out of the air, but the heat and brilliance of her display kept them at bay. Those that strayed too close, out of bravery or madness, let out shrieks of agony as they immolated. The swarm kept trying, with a rabid determination that was as terrifying as it was ineffective. The shrill screams of the dying filled the air, warring with the smell of burning carapace for the most horrible sensation in the spherical hall.
Luminous felt a touch caress her mind as she floated, exhausted and worried. It was powerful, but tender, and Luminous relaxed a little as the fire began to spread outward from Twilight. It coursed through the strings of hard, cocoon-like substance into the shells that contained the ponies. The other cocoons were soon lined with purple fire as well, and Luminous felt rather than saw the fire spread deep into the rock, melting its way through the stone like the questing tendrils of some burning tree.
Smoke and terror filled the hall as the swarm began to realize the futility of their efforts, and they pulled back, towards the edges of the spherical room. Luminous felt her exhaustion and injuries stealing her sight once more, as the air became filled with the subtle resonances of magic. Twilight began to glow with a brilliance that stabbed at the eyes, and then with a bright flash, Luminous knew no more.
In the Citadel, Princess Luna watched as the fake Twilight trotted past, leading yet another noble suitor through the halls to her bedroom, giggling and flirting blatantly in the moonlight that filtered through the windows. When this whole thing is over, Luna thought with distaste, we shall have to burn that bed. She had been amongst those to suggest to Princess Celestia that they play along with the imposter's charade, at least until the location of the true Twilight could be discerned. That did not, unfortunately, make the reality of her choice any easier to deal with.
As the door shut, Luna snorted, and almost ran into Trixie, who had walked up quietly beside her. Trixie had hardened in the time since she'd joined Twilight's service, and she no longer flinched when Luna looked at her. Since Twilight had been taken and Luminous had disappeared, Trixie and Luna had worked long hours together, trying to find both. They had had to work covertly, so the fake Twilight wouldn't suspect anything, but so far it had seemed the fake Twilight was more interested in wooing suitors, rather than looking for signs of discovery. Still, they had taken no chances, and Luna had a new appreciation for the skills of changelings that wished to remain unseen.
Trixie jerked her head down the stairs, and Luna nodded before following the changeling, away from the sounds of increased revelry coming from Twilight's bedroom. As they walked, Luna slid a sideways glance at Trixie, who was alert and wary despite the circles under her eyes. The whole Citadel had been on alert since Twilight had been taken, and the changelings had successfully found more imposters amongst the mortal pony tenants at the Citadel. They hadn't done anything to the fake ponies, for the same reason that the imitation Twilight's excesses were accepted, but they were watched constantly.
It galled to let the imposters linger, especially for the changelings, and several times violence had almost broken out. It was only through the cunning of Trixie and the charisma of Princess Luna that the illusion of peace had been maintained, but from the expression on Trixie's face, Luna guessed the illusion was close to shattering. Changelings seemed to take particular exception to the idea of their fellows being replaced, even more so than non-changelings. Luna couldn't blame them, but the violence with which they reacted was still a little disturbing.
Luna and Trixie descended to the Baths, which had been finished exquisitely in the days since Twilight's capture. It had been little more than busywork really for the changelings, polishing and re-setting all the marble and stone, but the Baths looked magnificent as they lifted clouds of steam into the sky, colored gold by the setting sun. It reminded Luna of Twilight, rather appropriately, and her heart was gripped by a brief flutter of worry for the violet knight.
Luna's thoughts were diverted when Trixie stopped and turned to face her. She looked grim and determined, and Luna was struck once more by the way the wiry changeling had strengthened since joining Twilight's service. Gone were the days when Trixie flinched from direct eye contact with Luna or her sister; she seemed more confident in general, and was steadily becoming quite an ingenious engineer. She had had a couple suitors in the Citadel, Luna knew, but it was hard to imagine where she found the time, between working for Twilight or working on the Citadel. Trixie's low voice brought Luna out of her distracted thoughts quite sharply, however, “We've found her."
Luna's heart skipped a beat at the simple phrase, “Where? Where do we fly?” Luna asked eagerly, her quiet voice resonating in the open Baths with its sheer intensity, her wings half-spreading as if to leap off at that very moment.
Trixie shook her head, “No flight this time, we're going to be going by Hedge, Princess,” Trixie said as more changelings stepped out of the darkness. “We need to go quickly, who knows what they're doing to Twilight and Luminous in there...” Trixie winced as she realized what she said, while Luna's eyes widened in shock.
“Luminous?” Luna asked with alarm, “Luminous has been captured as well? How do you know? How...” Luna broke off as the changelings wouldn't make eye contact with her. She thought back to the enchanted armor the squire had been given, and her mind jumped to a terrible conclusion, “Bait. You used her as bait, didn't you?” Luna said slowly, her voice low and dangerous as she focused on Trixie who, to her credit, didn't look away, though she swallowed on reflex.
“We just tracked her,” Trixie said smoothly, too smoothly for Luna's comfort, “We had to make sure she didn't come to any harm so-”
“So you failed to tell me that you were doing so? Because I would recognize bait in a trap when I see one?” Luna interrupted, her voice hard. In the darkness of the Baths, Princess Luna seemed larger, and her voice, while still low, was as ominous and threatening as the groan of thin ice, “You overstep yourself if you think you can use a filly like that, let alone one that trusts thee so much.” Even the light of the moon seemed to grow darker as the Princess continued, “How could you possibly send her-”
“She left of her own free will,” one of the other changelings put in unexpectedly. He was a stallion whose green, stone-like skin concealed ticking mechanisms beneath, which were beginning to speed up as tension started to build in his frame. As the Princess' furious gaze turned to him, he licked his lips but continued, voice breaking only a little, “She wouldn't listen when Lady Trixie told her to stay put and wait for Twilight to be found.”
Luna frowned at the changeling, whose internal mechanisms were beginning to skip audibly with nervousness, and switched her gaze to Trixie. The blue mare looked distinctly uncomfortable, but defiant as Luna continued in the same dangerous tone, “Luminous is a great many things, but patient is not one of them, especially when Dame Twilight is involved. Thou didst know that, and exploited it. Thou didst send a filly unto the jaws of uncertain danger to be the bait for a trap.”
Princess Luna's accusatory declaration made several of the other changelings wince, but Trixie actually exploded at Luna, her voice rising in passion, “They'd blocked us from scrying Twilight, kept us from tracking her, flew her off to who knows where and you expect us to not try everything to get her back? Dame Twilight is everything to us, everything!” Trixie's voice lowers to an urgent hiss, full of a long-hidden frustration and anger, “To watch her form desecrated by that... That thing-”
“There were other ways,” Luna interrupted, noting the 'desecrated' for later as she advanced on Trixie, her expression unyielding. A thickness seemed to fill the air between the two, like an impenetrable barrier of two competing personalities, “Thou couldst have asked the crown, acquired help from the arch-magi of the Academy, anything but send a filly.”
“She's seen more combat than any Royal agent!” Trixie responded stubbornly, her eyes flashing with fury, even just a few feet from the Princess of the Night, while the other changelings backed away from the increasingly more vocal argument, “And how could we have trusted any other pony to do what's right, with creatures that can take our form? Take anypony's form? Sharp Claw is dead from one of those creatures, and he had good instincts!” Now Trixie actually advanced on Princess Luna, bottled up anger briefly overcoming good sense, “If you had better ideas, you should have voiced them, Luna. It isn't like Twilight's just going to return out of thin ai-”
Trixie stuttered into silence as a great static charge suddenly took hold of the air around the Baths. “What...?” she rasped, as Luna's Fire flickered about the area, casting an eldritch glow along the elegantly carved designs of the marble surfaces, making them seem to dance with life. A pressure filled the air, pounding on the ponies' eardrums. “We're under atta-” Trixie started to say as Princess Luna's eyes widened and she instinctively tackled the surprised changeling mare to the ground right as an anguished scream echoed from Twilight's bedroom, and the air erupted.
With the force of a thousand thunderclaps, Twilight Sparkle appeared, hovering over the Baths. The resultant sound and force of her transit blasted the whole Citadel with enough strength to knock over all the changelings that had gathered for the now-redundant mission, shatter all the glass and rattle every stone of the fortress. Stones and wooden beams slid off the mostly-finished Astronomy Tower, while the rest of the Citadel shook awake.
When Luna looked up, her jaw actually dropped. Twilight floated over the pool of water, with Luminous in her forehooves and several hundred green cocoons around her, all floating in her telekinesis which had shaped itself into heatless, violet flame. They spread out across the Citadel like strange lanterns, glowing with Twilight's magic and twitching as whatever was inside began to stir. Changelings stepped out of their homes and stared, while others simply sank to the ground in awe.
Twilight's eyes were like white beacons in the darkness, while her burning mane was an inferno of violet light around her, sending tendrils of writhing shadows out across the courtyard. In her mane, words of raw magical puissance hammered through Luna's vision in flaming orange. Her cutie mark blazed like a constellation on her dark flank, while more shadows danced across her body like mad cultists giving homage to some ancient power. The stench of burning paper was overpowering, it pounded into Luna's senses relentlessly, while the waves of power rippling from the violet unicorn shook the Princess invisibly.
For what felt like an eternity, Luna stared at Twilight, then, as if a switch had been flipped, her eyes faded, the telekinesis faltered, and the whole display cut. Everything fell, Twilight and Luminous included, only to be caught by the telekinesis of Luna, and once again chaos erupted across the Citadel.