From the heart of the city, a single word is broadcast through the network.
Now.
My veins catch fire as ichor is blasted to my wing muscles. The mountainside shakes as the two thousand units of the swarm shoot into the air, describing a wide, downward arc. A giant pink sphere of energy shimmers before us, encasing the white pony city.
We speed towards it, continuing to accelerate. Information blasts from the swarm network into my brain, assigning each changeling with an impact zone on the shield. The swarm fans out, each unit locking on to its respective zone.
Fifty meters before the swarm hits, three quarters of it brake suddenly, hovering above the city. I am not among them.
We slam into the barrier, five hundred thuds melting into a rumble. The shield holds.
I retreat, allowing the next quarter to attack. The network transmits energy into my body, fixing my broken forelegs and ribs.
My endocrine system reignites my ichor, and I am drawn back. I ram into the shield again, my jaw snapping back into place as I pull back.
I attack again. Hoof mends itself.
Again. Hoof mends itself. More slowly.
Again. As my skull fuses back together, I can feel myself grow weaker. The swarm’s energy is fading fast from its continued exertion.
I smile. Any moment now…
A quarter of the units smash into the barrier yet again, to no avail. One does not retreat for another try.
The unit in question continues its voyage downward, sliding along the shield, its broken wing refusing to heal. Low ranker. There’s no longer enough power in the swarm for it to be bothered with. Its shriek pierces the air and the network, but is completely ignored by all.
All but me.
Entranced by the unit’s downward motion, I fight my ichor’s call to war. Let me see this…
The fire in my veins becomes unbearable. I throw myself at the barrier again, but my eyes stay fixed on the damaged unit until it falls out of sight.
I feel it hit the ground. Not the pain – the swarm cares not for the pain of a dying unit, so it does not get broadcast – but merely half a second of gibberish transmitted from the unit, and then silence.
Silence.
As the army continues to smash into the shield, crippled units begin to rain from the sky. As their final sputters get broadcast to my mind, it becomes difficult to distinguish between their death and my own.
It feels like I’m dying. And it feels great.
But the feeling does not reflect reality, as my high rank ensures my continued supply of regeneration energy.
I attack the shield again, and this time, my shoulder isn’t the only thing that shatters. A gigantic web of cracks consumes the shield, and it disintegrates. Pink shards rain down on the city, evaporating in mid-fall. The army pours into the city, locking on to the surprised food. The scent of love wafts through my legs, shoving my thoughts aside, the urge of hunger flooding my mind in their stead. My sight fixes on to a single target, painted red against a fading grey background by my hunger-ridden senses. I prepare to dive, when a new transmission freezes me in place.
New targets. Capture alive.
The images and scents of six ponies cloud my senses for a while, and my hunger drops a notch, defeated by the urge to obey. Six running figures alight in my vision, the rest of the world dissolving into a blur.
As we dive towards them, a new order ripples through the network. Hundreds of unit horns begin to glow. I feel the fire in my veins being channelled into my horn, which spits it into the outside world. My entire body is enveloped in magical fire, and the swarm morphs into a rain of deadly flaming projectiles.
Deadly blinded flaming projectiles, that is. Was this ridiculously bright light show another one of Mother’s exceedingly clever schemes?
That last thought is barely formed when the network blasts it from my mind. When there’s a battle in progress, the swarm hasn’t time to care if I take delight in seeing my brethren die, but any form of dissent against higher authority is not tolerated. It is only my high rank that ensures that half my mind does not get burned away along with that snide remark.
My legs unimpaired by my horn’s fire, I am able to follow the prey’s scent. It does not, of course, allow me to make a direct hit, and I bash into the ground twenty meters off target. My ichor-stained muzzle begins mending right away. More energy wasted. Nice one, Mom.
This time, the network is less kind. My complaint is noted and blasted into oblivion. My torn lines of thought ripple and knot together, spitting out an inexplicable image of a red-maned alicorn yelling at a bottle of wine before I regain control of my mind.
Slightly dazed, I follow the group as it surrounds the six ponies. Another message is broadcast through the group, and my gaze locks on to the yellow mare.
The world turns black.
In the dark, the yellow pony shines with impossible clarity. My eyes suck in every possible detail of her form, while further information pours in from the network, providing images of the parts obscured from my point of view. An independent pony shell begins to form in my mind. Years of experience provide educated guesses to fill in any gaps.
The image complete, my horn glows, dissolving my body into a green shimmer, which warps and repaints itself in yellow and pink. Finally, I am completely encased in my new shell, virtually indistinguishable from the actual pony.
All this in two seconds flat.
The disguised swarm attacks. I take the time to rip a rainbow tail off an otherwise pink rookie unit before following suit.
I quickly realise that the using shells was a bad idea. At close range, inexperienced units – of which we have no shortage – have limited accuracy when attempting to pinpoint fellow units’ broadcasts or ponies’ love scents. With the confusion of so many signals emitted so close together, it becomes frustratingly easy for a pony to pass by undetected.
I hiss as a group of yellow shells walks right by the very target they had taken the form of. Before I can broadcast some sense back into them, a blast of purple magic knocks me backward. I am careful to not file any more complaints to higher authorities as my shell crumbles and I fly into a wall.
For some reason, I am merely dazed and stripped of my disguise. If not for the special configuration of the purple blast, I would be but a mound of ash. Ponies seem to have an odd stance against killing. A possible vulnerability, worth noting.
I send a request for the disabling of all shells, but the targets have already broken through, leaving scores of incapacitated units in their wake. To my dismay, they too are merely dazed. My anger almost spews forth a desire to kill a unit myself, but I dispel the thought before the network can detect it.
The ponies do not get far; the swarm has occupied most of the castle by now. They attempt to enter a section of the castle only to find it already overrun, and the swarm has them cornered at the doorway.
One blinding whitish-purple blast later, that is no longer the case. Every unit within ten meters of the targets is blown halfway to the moon. Even fifty more meters away, I am almost thrown out of the sky.
Despite the swarm’s impromptu aerial acrobatics, this was once again non-lethal force. My brow creased almost to cracking point at this new disappointment, I follow the group as it zeroes in on the ponies once again.
A reddish glow flares into life at the entrance to the room. My reflexes – be they damned – have barely enough time to pull me out of the way as a fiery blast turns the units beside me into ash.
Time slows to a virtual standstill as a chunk of the network shuts down. A flood of corrupted data pours into my brain – a plate of spoiled eggs and bacon here, an army of pirate pickles there – and then the void the dead units leave behind.
Quiet. Oh, so quiet.
What feels like hours later, and yet still too soon, the sensation fades away. Time is restored, and the pursuit recommences.
The ash of about a hundred units stings my eyes as I charge through the charred doorway. I can feel the swarm regrouping and preparing to follow. My trajectory forms a tight arc, and I plant myself in front of the purple unicorn, blocking her path.
Correction: The flaming, white-hot unicorn with the murderous red eyes.
I bare my fangs in a smile. Murderous red eyes. Perhaps these ponies aren’t entirely hopeless after all.
Her horn ignites like a torch. I can feel the love for her fellow ponies radiating from her, a thousand times hotter than her fire. My hunger reignites, my horn alights, but I realise I am no match for her. One flick of her horn, and I’ll be but ash in the wind. Silent, unresponsive ash.
She bends her head, aims… and hesitates. Long enough for me to register the rug we are both sitting on.
No!
My horn glows brighter as the swarm assumes direct control of my body functions. My horn conjures up a green flame, which races over the width of the rug between us. The unicorn’s half detaches from the burn line and, in the green glow of my levitation magic, jumps at the pony. Surprised, she can only misfire a fireball at the ceiling before being trapped in the folds of the rug tightening around her.
A brief flash is emitted from inside the rug, and the unicorn reappears behind me, already beginning to retrieve a set of... jewellery?... from a case. I start towards her, but a message freezes me in place.
The weak one.
I feel the barrier holding my hunger back wane as I turn to the other five ponies, which have been subdued by the swarm during my little bout with the unicorn. The world fades to dull greys, while the yellow pegasus glows bright red. She reeks of fear, but the strength of her love scent is surpassed only by that of the Love – and maybe the Sun? – Princesses themselves.
My horn spits out tendrils of magic, which wrap around the struggling mare’s head. Penetrating her skull like light through a window, they bury themselves in her brain.
The prey screams. It always does, for why wouldn’t it?
Reaching deep into my mind, I begin pumping years of misery, hunger and enslavement into the pegasus. Half the tendrils deliver this cargo to the pony; her love recedes from it like oil from water. With nowhere to go, it is forced through the second half of the tendrils into my brain. Extinguishing my hunger, ever so slowly.
A muffled shout is barely registered by my ears. In my grey feeding ground, the loudest of noises are but whispers, the brightest of flashes but twinkles in the dark. But this whisper is echoed by a message from Mother.
Stop. Bring them. Alive.
My obedience locks my hunger away once more. The world regains focus, and my tendrils dissolve into mist. The mare’s hoarse cries begin to subside, and fade into weak sobs. I turn to see the purple unicorn, no longer ablaze, approaching her group, a hundred units watching her every step.
“I surrender. Just… stop.”
There’s a slight tremor in her voice, but she holds her head high as she reaches out to comfort the yellow pegasus.
A curious rage flares up to consume my mind. But this one is not ichor-born. It was ignited by the realisation of how close death had passed me by.
How close silence had passed me by…
My anger burns white-hot, muffling the chatter of the network. I jump at the unicorn and throw her halfway across the room. In an instant, I am on top of her, pinning her to the ground.
Why did she hesitate?
I pull a hoof back to bash her confused face into the back of her head, when a transmission of overwhelming intensity penetrates my anger.
ALIVE.
The network takes control of my hind legs, which straighten with a force that fractures them both. I am propelled forward, executing a double flip before landing on my face.
My legs do not heal.
My rage is wrestled from my brain and dispersed. At the swarm’s command, my wings pull me from the ground and escort me alongside the pony prisoners. The network gives me no control over my body, aside from my eyes.
As I hover by the captives, a strange gust of love catches my attention. Its source turns out to be the yellow pegasus I fed on earlier which, weak from her ordeal, is supported by the other cyan pegasus. As the latter tries to comfort my prey, I notice an unusually strong and complex dynamic of love currents between the two, pumping life back into the yellow Pegasus, nurturing and restoring her.
I am transfixed, and not due to the scream of my ever-hungry ichor. Prey exchange love all the time, and a more rapid transfer has often been observed when partially consumed ponies are involved. But love flows the likes of the one between the two pegasi are not common.
The shock of my discovery beginning to subside, I notice further love currents forming an even more complex network between all six ponies. Smaller, but still abnormally strong. The strongest, as expected, flow into the yellow pegasus.
How did I not notice this before?
By the time we reach our destination, the yellow pony has already been restored enough to enter the wedding room on her own four hooves, with only the occasional whimper, slight shaking and bloodshot eyes to indicate what she has been through.
If this was the weak one, exactly how much power do these ponies have?
“You do realise the reception’s been cancelled, don’t you?”
Hello, Mother. I’ve been a bad, bad unit.
Although apparently focused exclusively on the ponies before her, I can feel Mother pouring into my being, occupying every corner of my mind. My thoughts are torn apart, and my meagre supply of defiance and autonomy is flushed away by the uniformity of the collective mind.
And then, as suddenly as she began, Mother stops, extricating herself from my being. She returns to her state of eternal presence in the collective mind.
My punishment has been postponed.
Her command booms into the network. Go. Feed.
I feel an influx of energy, and my back legs repair themselves. Regaining control of my body, I follow the group out the doors, which swing shut behind me. As I fly out a window into the city, I manage to form one more thought before the urge to feed takes over my mind.
I’m going to be demoted.
***
My new hunting ground fades into a sea of grey mist and glowing red lights. My legs pick up a particularly strong whiff of love, and I angle towards a group of three ponies: male earth, female unicorn, female earth foal.
I lock on to the brightest – the mother – and dive.
The male jumps in front of her in a protective stance. Without breaking fall, I remove him from my path with a blast of magic. He slams into a wall, unconscious and missing a foreleg and a half.
The mother screams, grabs her foal in her magic and starts running. I fire another blast at her hooves, knocking her off them.
As I land on top of her, I retch and spit out a litre of mucus. Catching the green blob in my levitation magic, I divide it into four and use it to pin the mare’s hooves to the ground. I spit another blob at her horn, which has already begun to glow in preparation of a counter-attack. The mucus hardens in less than two seconds, immobilising her and blocking her magic.
My ichor flares up even more, nearly burning through my veins in anticipation. Tens of tendrils blossom from my horn and hover two centimetres above the mare’s head. I kick her wailing foal out of the way and shove the tendrils into her brain.
The familiar scream of prey greets my ears as I shoot my accumulated misery and pain into her. The mare’s love flees my darkness, tearing apart the delicate network of currents woven by memories of her loved ones. The broken currents dissolve into brute love energy, which is forced through the outgoing tendrils into my own brain. Most of it gets passed on to the swarm, but what remains pours into my own circulatory system, extinguishing my ichor and providing me with energy to operate and stay alive.
Stay alive. My sustenance is my poison, and I cannot help but consume it.
And yet, as I chop through her love, I begin to fantasize that I am cutting through the network of the swarm. A ridiculous thought; the feeding process is of course what reinforces the swarm and the web binding it together. Still, my mind grows drunk from the thought, and I plough into the mare’s mind with renewed vigour.
Deeper still I dig and cut, through thoughts of her spouse, her foal, her family… friends... a lesbian college roommate she shared a one-night fling with…
I shove the latter aside. We feed on love, not drunken lust.
All the connections to her loved ones severed, I reach the core. The central network that ensures the stability and continued existence of all love-powered beings.
Love of self.
From the core, a myriad of currents blossom before looping around and falling back in. I cut through them all, sucking the last remnant of love out of the mare. As I retreat from her mind, the darkness remaining sets itself in motion, creating currents of its own and reinforcing the dark currents that were already there.
I emerge into the physical realm, the last of my tendrils fading away. Where there was once a bright red light, there is only the dark silhouette of my victim, matching the faded greys of her surroundings. Mouth half-open and drooling, she stares at nothing, no longer possessing the will to scream.
Or exist, for that matter.
Magical aura starts pouring from her horn, slowly wrapping her head in a cocoon of light.
The cocoon begins to contract.
I feel my insatiable ichor calling again, and I head for the now-biped husband. I hear the crunch of the mare’s skull caving in behind me.
A pony’s life is a pony’s love. One cannot exist without the other.
The male pony is already dying; I consume what I can before he fades away. The foal is long gone. Strange that a pony so young would have the strength to abandon her parents to save herself. I pick up her scent, but do not follow it. The love of such small infants is often simple, and their modest supply of memories does not allow many connections to be made. This city holds promise of far better prey.
Although the urge to feed remains – it always has, always will –, its intensity has died down slightly now that I have fed, and I am once again able to focus on my prior realisation.
My incoming demotion. The hint of free mind that comes with my high rank has finally led to too great a disruption. I will be stripped of myself; once again I will exist purely as an extension of the collective mind. A brainless puppet on a string. A low ranker.
Other units will take my place. They will rise, and they will fall; some right away, some sooner, some later. And then they will rise and fall again, until the day they go silent and are removed from the network. Free, but most often without the mind to realise it.
I have little doubt that I myself have been demoted before. How many times matters not; no unit retains memories of past selves. A faded remnant of their skills, sometimes, but nothing more.
I am not going to die. Merely return to hell.
I emerge into a square. Red lights flood my vision, and my ruminations are pushed aside.
As I feed on the rich currents of a kindergarten teacher, a sudden pang of surprise pulls me out of my prey’s mind. My surprise quickly coats itself in dread.
Mother’s dread.
A second vision flickers over my own. It’s Mother’s. I catch a glimpse of a rapidly incoming pink blast, before a shock wave is fed into the network.
Corrupted data floods my mind. My brain almost tears itself apart trying to process the meaningless information. As the network tries to recover, I receive further transmissions from other units. Glimpses of a rapidly expanding pink wall. A wall of raw love energy of impossible intensity.
I force my eyes open. It’s right in front of me.
As the love wall slams into me, I feel every hint of pain, hate and torment in my body accelerating away from it. They pull my body along with them, lifting me into the air.
Every bone in my body broken from the impact, I ride the blast past the outer walls of the city. The love energy burns through my mind, tearing apart my thoughts before they can even be formed.
What is probably just seconds later, although it may have just as well been eons, the pink wall wanes and finally disappears, entrusting my continued flight to my momentum. My thoughts re-form and fill my mind.
No other thoughts follow.
It’s quiet. Completely so.
The network is down.
The network is down.
And I am alone.
I can barely comprehend the bliss that overcomes me. I feel my mind expanding as my thoughts seep into the space once reserved for the collective mind. It’s mine now. I’m mine.
A vague awareness of my innumerable injuries returns; they will never heal without my supply of energy from the swarm. And with gravity and a hard ground preparing to bless me with even more damage, my life will no doubt end with my flight.
No matter. It seems beyond unlikely that a unit would have the physical ability to survive outside the network. I would probably have died in a few… days? hours? minutes?… anyway. And I have no use for that time. Just for this moment.
…Which is waning fast. The edges of my vision are darkening, and the sound of the wind is fading away. I have passed the peak of my flight, and I face the heavens as I speed downwards. The dark edges of my vision expand to consume the sky, squashing it into a clear blue dot before extinguishing it completely, severing my last link to the outside world.
I smile in the darkness.