As if somepony had flipped a switch.
Shirei winced, not quite sure herself what was happening. She certainly felt more pain, but different pain, almost a good kind of pain. Her body was overcome by a sense of awakening; it quickly remembered every cut, every chip and bruise in her carapace. That cloaked, red pony had just given the piece of paper a quick glimpse, and when he had looked back to her, this.
She wished that he would keep up whatever he was doing. It was relieving, but very straining and somehow disgusting. Can he just love anyone on a whim? This… intensely? Probably not; the flow did not feel very natural, anyway. Shirei dimly realized she was writhing on the floor; it was difficult to keep her view fixed on anything. Every time she glanced at that face sticking out of the cloak, bright mane over those lines on red, it just stared at her expressionlessly.
The burning sensation of flowing energy made it hard to think straight. She must have had a dire need for it.
The next time she looked the stallion's way, he was strangely closer than before. Or was her eye having trouble to focus? Depth was hard to perceive on one eye; her state of mind didn't help either.
The chaos in her mind tried to get a grip on the situation. What was the pony doing, or thinking? It must have been apparent that she was in pain. But whatever he was doing, it was necessary. So, putting in all her effort to stay focused, Shirei grabbed one of his legs, looked up to him, and nodded vigorously – which was possible without too much pain as long as she kept her neck straight. She couldn't make out whether he understood, but continued until she was so dizzy that she dropped back down to fidgeting about on the floor.
This time, she felt no urge to resist as her consciousness drifted away yet again.
Lyra walked a little ahead of Bon-Bon, rarely allowing her eyes off her friend.
“So, uh, poisonous?” she asked carefully. “I mean, they don't know the sort, but they can figure that out?”
“Well, the nurse didn't call it poison, just said it can have… adverse effects. They said it could be from the thorns of a flower which shouldn't grow here… did you see an orange flower back there?” Bon-Bon's voice was still a little unsteady, but she already looked much better than she had when Lyra had dragged her back.
“Uh, no… I'm so sorry, Bon-Bon. I had no idea there are dangerous plants here, I mean, outside the Everfree Forest. This is all my fault, I—”
“No, it's not,” Bon-Bon said in a soft, but confident voice. “And don't worry. You heard it, it passes by itself. Just a night's rest and I'll be all back to normal.”
Lyra lowered her head, feeling bad about herself. She had just wanted to show Bon-Bon the cool spot, and now it had gone all wrong. She tried to think of ways in which she could make it up to Bon-Bon.
They reached their house – they had been housemates for quite a while – and as Lyra stepped inside, she noticed a pile of bags that was topped by the absurdly huge hat Bon-Bon had been wearing at the Canterlot wedding.
“You haven't had time to unpack? Let me help you with that. It's the least I can do!” Something about not being too… proactive waved from the back-seats of her mind, but was ignored.
“You, er, sure?” Bon-Bon sounded a tad skeptical. “Sometimes I wonder if you know where your own things go. Really, it's fine. You could help me with the bed, then I can get some sleep.”
“You can sleep in my room, it's all done! And I take care of everything!” Lyra wouldn't let her friend get the short end of this, not after the trouble she'd caused her. “You just rest and get better. I'll be extra careful!”
“You… I… uhm.” Bon-Bon paused, then sighed. “Alright, fine. Thank you, Lyra. The things for my room… just put them in there on the floor. I'll sort them tomorrow.”
Bon-Bon slowly made her way up the stairs, followed by Lyra's concerned looks. Before long, the sound of breaking glass rang from above. Glass? What? Lyra almost fell over as she darted to the stairs.
Banging open her own room's door, she found the windows intact. Then, what had made this sound? To her side, a confused-looking Bon-Bon sat in front of hundreds of crystal shards.
“I… Uh… Ly— I… sorry bu… I didn't mean to…” Tears were welling up in Bon-Bon's eyes.
Some things from Lyra's shelf seemed displaced. A little humanoid figure lay among the shards, too, obviously knocked down with the rest. Lyra did not know how Bon-Bon had managed to accidentally pull things from a shelf on her way to the bed, but Bon-Bon had generally been quite disoriented ever since she had stepped on that branch.
Bon-Bon could make a few more unidentifiable sounds until Lyra had finally managed to walk around the pieces and give her a hug.
“It's alright,” she said, trying her best to sound soothing. “It's not your fault. Just come over here. You really need some rest.” She gently led Bon-Bon onto her bed, eventually getting her to lie down.
Lyra picked up the blanket with her magic and placed it onto the sobbing bundle that Bon-Bon had become. She dimmed the light and sat down beside the bed, unsure what to do. Bon-Bon had curled up under the blanket, only a few strands of her pink and blue mane still showing. Her unsettled breathing was the only sound in the room.
“It's okay. Bon-Bon, don't worry,” Lyra whispered, carefully caressing her friend's head through the blanket.
Lyra was certain she did enough worrying for the two of them. Sweet Celestia, what if it's dangerous? There had been no orange flower there. And nopony seemed to know what the weird branches were. Then again, Lyra had cut herself on such a branch on her way back, but nothing had happened at all! Who really knew what was wrong with Bon-Bon, what if… No, no, don't think that way. The nurse didn't seem worried at all. Ponies sometimes get sick. It's not like we always know why, but they still get better!
Bon-Bon must not have been feeling well at all. Yes, she was a very sensitive pony when it came to apologies, but it was rare for her to lose composure like this. It was scary to see her so bewildered, almost… overwhelmed. Lyra was supposed to be the unreliable, crazy pony, who needed her mature housemate to keep her hooves on the ground. Of course, Lyra gladly returned the favor, but she wished it wouldn't happen like this.
The item Bon-Bon had shattered was a present she herself had given to Lyra. It was a decorative mobile made of various types of crystal, brought back from a trip to the far north. Lyra had loved it. When put into sunlight, it would make a beautiful sight, scattering specks of light everywhere. Still, she wouldn't let her friend feel bad for wrecking it.
It had taken Bon-Bon some time to calm down. Lyra remained at her side, trying not to show her worries until Bon-Bon had the peaceful, regular breath of a pony that is soundly asleep.
Lyra slowly got up. After a quick check around the room, she tried to carefully sweep up the crystal pieces. But no matter how slowly she moved, it still made a lot of noise.
She glanced at the quietly sleeping figure on the bed.
With a sigh, she began to pick up the pieces, one by one, with her magic. They turned out to be annoyingly hard to move this way, but she had to do this. With the confused impression Bon-Bon had made, leaving sharp pieces lying around was out of the question, as was doing anything that might wake her!
She silently continued her task, working deep into the night, determined to continue until the floor was thoroughly picked clean.
Tick tick tick – click. Click, tick, click click, tick tick tick tick click.
Shirei was sufficiently awake to not flutter her eyes open like some stupid animal this time. She'd quietly regain her senses, while appearing asleep for a little longer.
Krrrrrr rr rr tick tick tick tick tick, tick, tick, tick, tick – tick – tick – tick click.
Her position was quite comfortable. She was lying on a really soft surface, and something pleasantly warm had been placed beside her. She wasn't tied up, aside from what felt like the chain on her hoof. The color shining through her closed eyelids made her suspect it was dawn, though after all that had happened, her grasp on time was rather limited.
Click, tick, tick, tick, click.
Whatever it was that she was half leaned against, it moved a little while the strange sound was heard.
Oooh no. The word “experiments” came back from memory, and Shirei found herself more awake and far less comfortable. In fact, she felt an urgent need to figure out what was going on, how these noises came to be, and whether that uncanny earth pony was right beside her.
She carefully opened her functioning eye just a little bit, trying to get a peak at the horrid contraption she would be placed in.
There was nothing noteworthy in the direction she was facing; nothing to strap a changeling onto anyway. Peeking as far right as possible without turning her head, she could make out the blurred back of the pony – the warm something she was partially leaned against. This was just great, she might draw his attention with the slightest movement.
Still, she had to find the source of these weird noises. She closed her eyes and nonchalantly rolled her head, trying to mimic how she imagined she'd do it while asleep.
Her neck still hurt a little, but it was much better while lying down. Or was it also better in general? Her energy reserves were still low, so that wasn't it – or were they, maybe, low again? Her limbs had that sensation of enhanced healing, something she'd only expect to feel when she was well-fed before injuring herself. She had never experienced feeding while she had been injured. Changing shape with an injury was hard, and ponies wouldn't feed her when she was in her natural form. Well, not until last night. How long had that continued? There was no clear memory of how she had ended up in the bed.
Her head touched the pony. She hadn't intended that, but now, of course, she'd not move it back. To her irritation, this was answered by a notable flow of love energy that stayed for a few seconds – after which it was cut off as quickly as it came.
This sensation was absolutely, undeniably, indescribably weird. There had never been any pony, or changeling, or creature in general, that had fed Shirei in such clear-cut bursts. No kind of love or affection would work this way; the pony had to be using some trick to feed her. But even that was strange: hives had some methods to store love energy, but none had felt like this on consumption. It just wouldn't deplete so suddenly; the flow couldn't stop in an instant.
Shirei concluded that the pony wasn't just a bored guard messing around. This was good on one hoof, since he'd not accidentally kill her before the experiment, but bad on the other hoof, since chances to sway him from his job would be dim.
Click ssssshhh click, click rrrrrrr rr r r tick tick tick tick tick, tick, tick, click.
She couldn't resist peeking, just a little, at the origin of the noise right in front of her.
There was a crystal in black and violet colors, laid into and surrounded by multiple intersecting metallic rings, floating in mid-air. Shirei blinked, but it was not her eye fooling her. There was no visible aura on the structure, which was about the size of a pony's head. Not that it would weigh as much; most of the volume between the thin rings was just air. A hoof, featuring a web of bright lines on it, entered Shirei's field of view, to adjust a tiny lever on one of the rings, making a different one rotate. When the hoof let go, the lever kept turning, slowly wandering around its ring while making a ticking noise on each of the little markings. Finally, the hoof stopped it and pushed something that made a click.
“Whattinde hay?”
Shirei's mouth and eyes – she could feel the blind one now – stayed wide open after she had heard herself whisper.
The pony rolled around, and a shock-frozen changeling felt the sudden onset of an energy flow. Note to self: stop trying to be sneaky, or you might scare yourself to death.
“Oh. You can talk. Well, whisper, I guess. Good morning.” The stallion rolled over to sit upright.
He wasn't wearing the cloak, and looked scary. Those lines were covering his body from head to hoof, and they looked neither natural, nor did they seem to depict anything she'd know of. They weren't exactly subtle either. He seemed to be oblivious to the impression he was making, showing a slight smile as he turned his head to the floating object.
“Fascinating, is it not? It's a Realms' Eye, one of the finest ever made.” At a single move of his hoof, all but one of the rings started rotating, as did the crystal in the center, until all simultaneously locked in a new position.
He gave the changeling a brief look, as if expecting a response, but there wasn't really something to respond with, was there?
“Anyway. We'll have to make this quick. May I ask what your name is? Oh, and, given the circumstances, there should hardly be a benefit in giving a fake one. Not that I could stop you.”
“Waxing Moo—”
“What was that?” He leaned a little closer.
“Shirei.” He was right. Lying was pointless. Now that she had said it, she noticed how sick she had become of all the lying anyway. It was a relief to speak her true name, which she had always liked, but rarely ever been called by.
“Shirei,” the pony repeated, and she nodded. “Well then, Shirei. Are you feeling well enough to survive without me for half a day? I have an urgent matter to attend to that might take this long.”
She just opened her mouth and let her brain work for a moment.
“I can provide you with the normal, I mean pony, food, which you know from before, as well as access to most of this floor. However, getting a pony to close proximity, let alone have it submit to your peculiar feeding process, would be problematic.”
“Mot a probmem,” she mumbled, deciding to try again after getting angry at her malfunctioning mouth. “Not – ah – prob-lem.”
She wanted to let out a snarl, but couldn't. Shirei hated that injury even more than the others. At least it was healing quickly. She opted for a sigh, that worked.
“Excellent. Now, listen closely. I have one important rule for you to follow. I have to leave some of my equipment in your reach. You cannot touch it. If you see an item you'd not expect every other pony to have, and you try to interact with it in any way, you are likely to regret it.” He made a strange gesture for emphasis on any. “Please confirm that you understand.”
Shirei must have been looking a little confused, and in her opinion, for good reason. Tying her down tightly would have been a viable tactic, acting nice would have been a different one, but this combination seemed a little clumsy.
The stallion was still staring. Shirei took a breath.
“I won't touch your ekf— e – quip – ment.” That was honest; she doubted he had left something in her reach that would be of more use than harm to her.
The red pony nodded and all but jumped off, to move things about in a frenzy.
“I will see you later. Food is in there.” He waved his hoof at a cupboard, then snatched the floating object and his cloak, almost in the same movement. Shirei managed to blink about twice before he was out of the door.
The door snapped shut, and the room stood silent.
She took an even deeper breath.
“Oh, by the way, I'm Creepy vam Lumatic, but you cam callme Creepy.” – “Mithe to meet you, fo, amy immoral ekfperimemth comim?” – “Haha, dom't wanna ruim de surprise, right?” She tried a crazy face at her nonexistent audience.
Her mouth was more weird than hurting at this point. Physically, it seemed fine enough; there wasn't really a sound she couldn't make when she concentrated on it, but some felt fuzzy. Possibly a nerve. She might have to focus on healing it.
Shirei sighed again.
Anyway, it was determined. His name was “Creepy”.
The room was a part of the same wooden building from before, featuring the makeshift bed Shirei was on. One edge directly connected it to a larger room; it wasn't quite clear where one began and the other ended. In the other room, Creepy's desk was visible, holding what presumably was his holy stuff: flasks and bowls containing powders, strange tools with lots of small markings on them, and a book with an elaborately decorated cover. There was a shelf, close to the ceiling, with more books.
As Shirei was examining the room, her mind began to calm down – maybe for the first time since this ordeal had begun. The memory of it was – painful, in more than one way. She had not just lost fighting, but lost faith in what she had fought for, maybe even in herself. Now, she was still living, yet strangely unsure what that even meant.
Life in the badlands had been harsh, but fighting ponies had been worse. Not just combat itself, or the fear of losing; that wasn't very different from fighting for survival in a desert that roasts you alive should you drop to the ground at daytime. It was the way changelings fought. Changelings would blend into their foes' ranks to learn their ways, understand them, and, when a changeling had the chance, feel their love and affection. Shirei had been an infiltrator, living in Canterlot since well before the attack. She had seen ponies struggle with their lives, chatted with them, listened to their worries, learned from their advice… eventually, without her realizing, something in her had changed. On the final days, a part of her had secretly hoped that the ponies close to her would… would… somehow make do? She couldn't finish the thought herself. But she knew she had wanted the invasion's brunt to be elsewhere. If she was honest with herself, she had long feared the invasion as much as being discovered, hoping for it to happen as late as possible, maybe even to fail.
But Shirei herself had been effective in her job. Images returned from memory, images of those who had considered Shirei's persona a friend. Some had been swept up in the panic of the invasion… who knew what had become of them? She remembered the faces ponies had made when she had turned on them. The face of Gold Paper. Her sweet, welcoming face had turned into one of pure terror, like those of most ponies with known weaknesses. Hers had been—
Stop. Shirei buried her face in the pillow. Brain, please stop. I have to get out of here first.
One thing was clearer to her than it had ever been. She couldn't continue down the hive's path, no matter what. If she would manage to break free, she would return to the badlands, where she belonged, but not to Chrysalis's hive. It would be hard, but she would never, ever, rely on it again.
That aside, she had to escape first. She felt guilt, but not enough to become a guinea pig of somepony who'd smuggle her out of a prison. A particular pony that was also hard to read and quite unnerving. Was he not really gone, watching from somewhere what Shirei would do? It seemed unlikely. He hadn't exactly looked the actor so far, and when he had run out, he had seemed to be in a genuine hurry. But then, wasn't he being a little careless about constraining her?
Crawling to the edge of the bed wasn't very straining. She had been healing well; even her broken forehoof looked proper again. It had actually been bandaged a little. Still, it would be wise not to push her luck. She chose to limp for a while.
Healing? As she realized, the pony's actions made much more sense.
You don't know how fast I can heal.
Changelings needed some love to sustain themselves, and certainly, they'd not be feeling very well when they were deprived of it for too long. But they didn't depend on this fragile and troublesome process just to be complicated. Their bodies could use excess energy in various ways. Transformation was just the most prominent skill; the most useful one was extended healing, which, given enough energy, could be more effective than any other healing spell.
The pony had seemed to be concerned whether Shirei would live for half a day without him. He probably had miscalculated the amount of love he had fed her, or underestimated how useful it was. Or, more likely, he was oblivious to the fact that it could be used for healing.
The chain that bound her was simply fiddled through holes in her hoof. Sadly, altering her body was impossible while she was in such bad shape, and changes on her main body – the part that mostly stayed during typical transformations – were especially hard. Thus, getting the chain through her body was no option. She tracked the chain's two ends: one was frozen into a large crystal that was stuck into the ground, but the other was just nailed to some sort of timber column.
Shirei bit the chain and started forcefully pulling on the nail. It budged sideways easily, but didn't move out of the wood at all.
Oo-kay. Creepy trying to be tricky. We'll see about that.
She let go for now and limped toward the easily found bathroom. It was time to get back into shape.
Though, for a moment, she would pause, close her eyes to concentrate, and begin drawing on her remaining energy. Focus: regenerate chewing muscles. And while she was at it, she'd check any nerves in the vicinity.
Lyra had not gotten a lot of sleep, even though Bon-Bon was oversleeping. No, because Bon-Bon was oversleeping. If it weren't for that, she'd feel like dropping into bed, but she just couldn't now. Bon-Bon. Oversleeping. It was unheard of. It was long afternoon, and neither had Bon-Bon gotten up, nor was there any new hint what was wrong with her.
“Sorry, I know it's not much to go by. What else was there… oh, I think I saw her eye do something weird when it all started. Like, getting small for a short moment.”
Zecora was tending to her cauldron while Lyra was telling the story. She had asked a question every now and then, but remained silent this time.
“I'm really worried. She knocked crystals from the middle of my shelf yesterday. You have to believe me, such a thing never happens to Bon-Bon, but now she almost pulls over an entire—”
The zebra had stopped mixing and turned to pick up a book. Lyra stared at her as she was skimming through it.
“Do you know something? What could be wrong with Bon-Bon?”
Zecora showed no reaction, she was focused on reading. A moment later, she snapped the book shut again.
Lyra's ears dropped; she couldn't stand the tension as she met Zecora's gaze.
“What ails your friend I do not know – but there may be someone whom to meet you should go.” Zecora pulled out a piece of paper. “There exists a rare cause for earth ponies' pain – the handling of which is in alchemy's domain.”
She sketched a little map, beginning with Ponyville's bridges and a few other landmarks.
“I should say that, most likely, there's nothing awry. Still, make certain you must, at a place that's nearby.”
That was what Lyra had needed – and feared. The place really was close by. She galloped back through the Everfree Forest without giving her surroundings the slightest thought. Please be home.