//------------------------------// // Chapter 12 - Luna // Story: A Journey Unthought Of: Revival of Chaos // by Hustlin Tom //------------------------------// “As soon as your sister suspected what was happening to her, she came to me,” the Maiden said morosely as she looked away from Princess Luna, “I wish to my very soul that I could help you, just as I wished that I could have helped her, but I don’t have the information that either of you need.” Princess Luna couldn’t move as her mind tried to process what her mother had said. This couldn’t be happening. This was... As what she had been told started to sink in, she fell onto her back legs. Her forehooves were shaking violently, and she yelled in frustration to herself. She then turned her eyes back up to the Maiden, and they were filled with steely determination, “NO! I refuse to accept this! There must be something, anything at all that we can do for her! I won’t stop so long as she remains alive. Tell me everything you know about the ones who did this to her. Tell me about the Changelings, mother.” The Maiden silently looked down at her daughter for several moments, offering up no visible reaction to the Princess’ statement. After a time, she sighed softly, “Alright.” The Maiden stretched out her arm, and the grey fog around the two of them melted away. What replaced the all-encompassing murkiness was a clear picture of a room made almost completely of metal. Princess Luna and the Maiden stood on a catwalk that hung over hundreds upon hundreds of chambers, each surrounded by metallic bars coursing with electricity. Within each cage was a black insectoid-like monstrosity. Some were more aggressive than others, in that they attacked the electrified cages without abandon, while the rest simply sat in one position as they eyed the bars with loathing. “As you know,” the Maiden began, “the humans in my colony planned to retake Earth’s surface with the help of engineered intelligent life. According to what I found in Vanguard’s databanks during the many years I was alone, modern equines are the second iteration of intelligent horse-derived life. The originals, the prototype equine society, was in fact the Changelings.” Princess Luna looked down at the hundreds of buzzing black forms below the two of them, “So the Changelings are the equine race’s ancestors?” “Not quite,” the Maiden shook her head, “They are more like your cousins; removed by several generations. I was never involved with this project myself, but from what close friends had told me, and from the security footage I viewed of them, they were once an intelligent and peaceful race. The first plan dictated that each Changeling would be an alicorn, so that any task could be achieved by any individual pony. After repeated bombardment with Tessaractal radiation and exposure to mutagenic compounds, they became just as they were planned to be and more. They rapidly became more and more insect-like, developed a hive-mind, and evolved an ability to rapidly adapt to any negative stimulus.” As one Changeling struck the bars of its cell, it found that it was no long affected by the shock of its cage. It slowly walked into the cage wall, and walked right through the bars by amorphously gliding through them. It screeched out to the others around it in victory, and at its success, the rest of the Changeling Hive redoubled its efforts, until the entire chamber was flooded with black bugs. The klaxons were already sounded, and security was on the way. “As you can see, they even became immune to their cages. Eventually, though, the Hive was captured with the help of a shapeshift-lock compound and imprisoned in reject storage, where they were meant to be frozen forever. The revised societal plan for equines required less tampering with the genetic template, so that unwanted mutation was less likely to take place as it did then. You and your sister are the only truly successfully created alicorns by humankind. I’d guess that with their reappearance now, the Changelings managed, one by one, to adapt to the frozen temperatures over the long centuries, so that they could one day escape.” “When they were studied,” Princess Luna asked impatiently, “did the Changelings ever poison anyone?” The Maiden shook her head, “No. Since they experience hyper accelerated evolution, their bodies are in a constant state of decay and transformation. Almost anything that applied to them when I was alive could be completely different from what they are now.” “There has to be some way of saving Tia!” Princess Luna yelled out, “There has to be something you’ve forgotten or that you haven’t remembered yet!” The Maiden covered her eyes with one hand to wipe away her eyes, and she sighed haggardly, “Dusk, there is nothing I can tell you now that I haven’t said already. I don’t know what to do or how to help you, and I’m afraid of what is to come. If Dawn dies, your entire world will be tossed into chaos.” “Then I very simply won’t allow her to die,” the Princess said with resolve, “Goodbye, mother. I’m not giving up. Have faith!” Princess Luna left her mother’s presence to seek further help elsewhere. As she watched her daughter teleport away, the Maiden coalesced the little star-like points that made up her ethereal body into her cloudy green human form. She sincerely hoped that Dusk would succeed against all odds, but she just couldn’t see how it could possibly be done. The Maiden returned to her container, where she began to cry once more, and waited. Teleporting down into the depths of the Royal Science Division’s headquarters, Princess Luna half galloped to the office of the Chief Science Officer, Ditzy Doo. Ditzy had been looking over some files related to the recent progress in upgrading the Canterlot Defense Grid with the help of her fellow pegasus Lieutenant Swiftfeet, when the Princess barged in. She opened the door to the grey pegasus’ office with a bit of accidental excessive force, as the door’s handle slammed into the plastered wall and stuck there. Lieutenant Swiftfeet quickly saluted to his highest superior, while simultaneously nudging his immediate superior, “Ma’am.” Keeping one eye on her work, her other eye glanced up to see who the noisy visitor was. Upon seeing that it was one of her Majesties, Ditzy stood up and gave her undivided attention to the Princess with a genuinely large smile, “Princess Luna! It’s so nice to see you! What can we help you with?” “Ditzy Doo, I need your entire staff to stop what they are doing, and prioritize to a new goal.” The normally bubbly pegasus was dumbfounded by this urgent and sudden order, “What do you want us to do?” she asked. The Princess breathed in sharply, and she began to fully explain the situation. Both Ditzy Doo and the Lieutenant were completely stunned by what the Princess had just told them, “Princess Celestia is sick, and you think she may die if we don’t think of something?” “There is no need for subtlety when you assign this task,” Princess Luna clarified, “She’s already been poisoned for three weeks; we..I don’t know how much longer she has.” The two Pegasi saluted and Lieutenant Swiftfeet grimly affirmed with, “You can count on us, Ma’am.” Ditzy Doo cued the intercom system from her desk began to speak, “Attention R.S.D. Attention R.S.D. Emergency meeting on the Floor. I repeat, emergency meeting on the Floor. Ditzy Doo out.” Princess Luna pointed to the Lieutenant and barked, “I need you to go to the Division’s archive; find any and all documents you possibly can on Changelings that might not have been found in the cursory search from after the invasion. Run like Tartarus’ flames are clawing at your fetlocks!” “Yes, Ma’am!” Lieutenant Swiftfeet barked back to the Princess before running out of the room as fast as his nimble hooves could carry him. “Tell him to drop off his findings at my chambers,” she commanded of Ditzy Doo as she teleported once more, “I need to check on my sister’s condition.” Scalpel and Triage had done everything they could think of to try and drain the poison from out of Princess Celestia’s body. They had tried pumping her stomach, but because her digestive tract hadn’t been physical in nearly a millennia and half, they hadn’t even gotten any digestive juice out of it. They’d even exhausted the old, draconian methods of medicine like leeching. Immediately after being placed on her body, the leeches would spectacularly explode in a burst of golden light and fire. The spots were the leeches had been placed no longer had any skin surrounding them, but Princess Celestia’s regenerative healing had not activated. This offered the doctors a view of the pocket dimension located within the Princess’ body, from which her golden magical power found its source, just as Princess Luna had said there would be. Within the layers of pulsating bright light they had seen flickers of a dark green sludge-like substance. Scalpel had tried simply grabbing ahold of the ooze with his magic and siphoning it out, but he couldn’t contain it; the substance could not be influenced by his magic, but it was quite readily affecting the Princess’ magical reservoir, and it was ravenously eating away at her life force. Princess Luna appeared in her sister’s chambers in a burst of dark blue light. Princess Celestia had been given extra blankets in addition to the ones already on her bed, and she had been momentarily sedated by Triage. “Tell me you two have found something,” she implored as she reappeared in the room. Triage helplessly looked to Scalpel, and then she looked back to her sovereign. Princess Luna’s world began to crumble as she realized that almost every available option that she had been able to think of up until now had been thwarted for one reason or another. “How long does she have?” she quietly asked. Triage sighed deeply, “You must realize, your Highness, we have no familiarity with this type of anatomy at all. Princess Celestia could remain alive for a very long time, or only a few hours; we are completely out of our depth, and we cannot accurately predict how or when her condition will catch up with her.” The Princess of the Night looked over to her sister’s bed; she lay fast asleep, but Luna could tell that it was not a restful sleep. She realized that her sister looked completely different from what she had become so accustomed to seeing her as. The bright white color of her coat was now very pale by comparison, and it almost felt like she had shrunk in just the past couple of hours. Celestia had always been a part of pony society, so she had always had a larger than life existence for most any being she came into contact with in one way or another. Now, she looked like any other frail pony, and that scared Luna for many, many reasons. In her sister’s absence, she would have to run the entire kingdom. How could she possibly fill her sister’s shoes in both her status as a national icon and as a leader? She also realized another blood-chilling thought. A little over one thousand years ago, in her darkest time of being Nightmare Moon, she had boasted to her sister that the both of them were gods. Now that the situation came down to it, she knew that neither she nor her sister was actually invincible, and they certainly weren’t as powerful as others thought they were. A new feeling crept into Luna’s heart; the fear of death. She shook her head softly. She would not allow herself to focus on this feeling of hopelessness, not when there were still ponies depending on her. She turned and began to walk to the double doors of her sister’s chamber. As she opened the closest door, she looked back to her sister’s caretakers. Tears began to well up in her eyes, but she firmly declared to them, “Make her comfortable in any way you can. I have many tasks I must attend to.” “Yes, your Highness,” Scalpel and Triage said together as they bowed to the Princess. When the Princess arrived back at her quarters, she found a stack of dossiers and files that had been left for her by Lieutenant Swiftfeet. She would read them later. Approaching her writing desk, she slowly unrolled a fresh roll of parchment and prepared a bottle of ink and a quill. She tried to think of the best words to use before she began her letter. She decided that she would write only the truth, but she would try her best to soften the blow; she owed the recipient that much. When she believed she was ready, she put the quill to the paper, and she began. To Ms. Twilight Sparkle, Element of Magic..