"Did you hear that?"
Tailspin couldn't manage more than a grunt in answer. Not only were her forelegs weighed down by a stack of books nearly as tall as she was, she was holding another one in her teeth. It was a heavy load, yes, but she could manage it. She just couldn't manage it and talk at the same time.
She flapped a little harder, bringing herself up and over the top of the bookshelves, and flew over towards Compass Rose. The unicorn had set up a sort of base camp in the center of the library; one of the relatively un-rotted planks of wood had been propped up on a piles of some of the less interesting and more heavily damaged books, making a crude table, and a lantern from Tailspin's saddlebags was acting as a lamp. All the rest of the available surface area was covered in open books. In fact, there were books piled up all around the table as well - Compass had been calling out for more and more tomes to sort through, without pause, since they had arrived.
Tailspin spat out the one that she had been holding in her mouth and dumped the rest unceremoniously onto one of the piles on the table. It creaked in protest. She ignored it.
"Hear what?"
Compass had her back to Tailspin. She was facing one of the jumbled piles on the floor, horn shining, floating books through the air in front of her one at a time. Each one then got tossed into one of two smaller, but rapidly growing, piles to either side.
"Oh, nothing," she said, not pausing in her sorting. "It sounded sort of like music, but I guess it was just this place creaking."
Tailspin nodded and looked upward. The high, domed ceiling of the library was too far away for her helmet lamp to reach. It looked like they were standing in the middle of a sea of ink, with a small bubble of light around them. "Yeah. This place is creepy."
"Creepy? Are you kidding?" Compass actually paused to shoot a surprised look at Tailspin over one shoulder. "This place is amazing. Look at all these books! There's so much here. So much lost knowledge."
Tailspin half-lowered both eyelids. "Uh-huh. Lost knowledge, right." She fluttered over to one of the piles that Compass was tossing books into and peered at it with an air of detached interest. "So what's in this pile?"
"Those are the ones that I have judged important enough to take back with us," said Compass, turning back to her sorting. A rather large book thudded into the pile just in front of Tailspin, barely missing the tip of her nose. She reared up and frowned at the back of the unicorn's head.
"Are you kidding?" she said. "This pile is huge. There's no way we'll be able to carry all of these."
The unicorn scoffed. "Well, I'm certainly not going to leave them here. These are priceless!"
"Yeah, but you're not the one who's going to have to carry them," Tailspin pointed out.
"I'm sure you'll manage," said Compass. Her voice was going distant, and her gaze was locked on the stream of books floating past her.
Tailspin huffed. "Fine. You'll just have to fetch any others you want yourself, then." And she fluttered down to curl up on one of the other piles, frowning.
It was several seconds before Compass blinked and seemed to come back to earth. "Excuse me, what?" She blinked again, still not looking away from the books.
"I said," Tailspin answered, not lifting her head, "that you'll have to fetch the rest yourself, then."
There was a moment's silence. Then Compass sighed and let the books fall back to the ground with series of quiet thuds. "I must be letting all this get to my head," she muttered. Then she raised her voice and said, "I'm sorry."
"What?"
Compass turned. Tailspin was still curled up on one of the piles of books, but now her head was raised, and she was looking around at the rest of the library, frowning.
"I said," Compass repeated, more slowly, "I'm sorry. I'm very grateful that you two let me come along here. I know I've been a burden. I just got... overexcited, with all of these books."
Tailspin didn't even look at her. The pegasus' ears were perked up and twitching, and her eyes were swiveling this way and that, as if searching for something in the gloom. Then she stood up and slid down the pile of books to the floor, ending up next to Compass.
"Apology accepted," she muttered, her voice so low that it was barely audible. "Now listen hard. Do you hear anything?"
Compass blinked, then shut her eyes. The library was mostly silent. There wasn't much to listen to. There was the sound of her own heartbeat, and her own breath. Then there was Tailspin beside her, a quiet, even breathing accompanied by the soft rustle of tiny wing movements. There was the tiny, rapid fluttering noise of the flame in the lantern, and occasionally, at the very edge of audible noise, the sound of wood or stone creaking.
"Do you hear it?" Tailspin's voice was a tiny whisper in her ear.
Compass was about to shake her head when the other sound reached her ears. It was fleeting, barely audible and only so for a moment, but it was there: a brief, high-pitched series of notes, like half a melody. And, barely a second later, a brief buzzing, like an insect's wings.
She opened her eyes and nodded slowly. Tailspin was still staring around at the darkness of the library. She didn't look nervous, like she had when Spike had woken, and she didn't look confused, either. Her expression was set into a stony blankness that made the unicorn think of Pith. She was thinking, hard.
Finally, the pegasus said, still in that same whisper, "Those are changeling wings. They're getting closer."
Compass felt herself shudder involuntarily. "So what do we do?" she hissed, feeling the panic rise. "I don't want to get dragged off to the nest."
"Keep your voice down." Tailspin's voice was sharp and commanding, but calm, and still quiet. The pegasus was withdrawing a machete, nearly as large as the one Pith was always swinging around, from her saddlebags. "They know where we are, but they don't know we know yet, or they'd be attacking."
Her eyes swiveled from side to side again, studying their surroundings intently. They fixed on the lantern. "Open that up," she said sharply. "We'll need the light."
"Are you crazy?" Compass stared at her, open-mouthed. "They'll see us!"
"They'll see us anyway," Tailspin answered, still calm. "They can see in the dark. Light just evens the playing field. Get the lantern and get ready to run. We're going for the entrance hall. If you make it and I don't, try to find Pith or the dragon. If you meet me or Pith, confirmation phrase is 'my favorite food is sherbert'. Ready?"
Compass could see the pegasus spreading her wings, staring upward, preparing for takeoff. She could feel her own legs tensing as well, but they seemed to want to root themselves to the stone rather than make any sort of mad, heroic dash. She forced herself to nod anyway.
"Try to act normal as long as you can," Tailspin whispered. "As soon as it starts, though, don't stop for anything. Just run." She tilted her head towards the lantern. "Go."
The five steps to her makeshift table took more effort than anything else Compass had ever done in her life. Each one seemed to last an eternity, and the soft sound of her hooves striking the stone echoed inside her head until each one was as loud as an avalanche. She could hear Tailspin fluttering into the air behind her, presumably trying for the advantage of height. Ahead of her, the light of the lantern seemed blindingly strong. Finally, after six centuries of walking, she reached it and leaned in, searching for the little knob that controlled the strength of the flame.
It was then that she saw the light reflecting off of a pair of acid-green eyes as the changeling rose up from behind the table, fangs bared. The next few seconds were odd, and she watched them through a strange haze of detachment. Her body seemed to react of its own accord, without actually bothering to wait for input from the brain.
The lungs went first, letting out an ear-splitting shriek of an octave that she was fairly sure she physically could not reach. Part of her thought she heard glass shatter, off in the distance.
Then there were her legs, which kicked back, forcing her to rear up and then swing downward again, catching the edge of the table with her hooves as she did so. The haphazard piles of books that were serving as its legs weren't built for that, and the entire thing collapsed in a truly spectacular fashion, catching the rising changeling squarely in the jaw as it did so. It sprawled across the stone floor, dazed.
But Compass' body wasn't finished. She felt magic surge through her horn as some ancient instinct took over, reaching for the closest weapon with which to defend herself. Luckily, the library was full of substantially oversized and extremely heavy volumes on a variety of subjects, all bound in thick jackets that made them perfect for use as bludgeons. The changeling had just started to push itself upright when the blow caught it on the side of the head and sent it right back down onto the floor.
For almost a full four seconds after that, she stood there, bug-eyed and gulping great, shuddering breaths of air. Then she realized that she was being watched.
From behind every bookcase and the top of every shelf, changelings were staring at her.
"What are you doing?" shouted Tailspin. The pegasus swooped down toward her. "Grab the lantern and run!"
Still clutching the book, and with the lantern bobbing along in the air behind them, Compass and Tailspin made a dash for the exit.
Spike clenched his teeth and let out a low, frustrated hiss.
Someone was playing the organ, and they were doing it specifically to force him towards something. He could hear stone grinding on stone as the hallways of the castle shifted around him. The doors that he tried either refused to open, had nothing but blank stone behind them, or simply weren't there at all.
Whoever was controlling the castle's mechanisms was steering him towards the throne room. He knew enough about the castle's layout to realize that, even with things shifting as they were. The fact that he was completely unable to do anything about it was worrying enough on its own. What made it worse was that, the closer he got to the throne room, the more changeling resin there was.
He took another step, expecting to hear another sharp click as his talons met with the resin caking the floor. Instead, there was a soft squelch, and he felt his claws sink into a pool of black liquid that had yet to harden. He growled, lifted his foot hurriedly, and shook it off as best he could.
There were still no actual changelings anywhere that he could see, though. That was worrying. Someone was leading him into a trap, and there was nothing that he could do about it. As long as the changelings had control of the organ - and he had no doubt that they did - the castle belonged to them, and he had no choice but to follow the trail they left open for him.
Finally, he rounded a corner and found himself standing before the double doors leading to the throne room. These doors were smaller than the ones that marked the castle entrance, but they had obviously been just as beautiful, once. Now they were faded, scratched, and rotted, but there was enough of the original design left upon its surface to make out the image of his six friends, each holding their Element above their head.
Spike stopped a yard away from it, frowning. It was obvious that the changelings - if they really were the ones in control of the organ - wanted him to enter, but he had nowhere else to go. The hallways behind him had closed off as he walked through them, which left him with no other viable options short of sitting in the hallway and waiting for the changelings to come to him.
He started to step forward, but before he could open the doors himself, there was a flare of noise from below. A series of loud, brazen notes sounded, echoing through the hallway, and a slow, metallic grinding sound followed in its wake. Ahead of Spike, the doors to the throne room began to swing open of their own accord.
Sickly green light spilled out into the hallway, glistening on the resin that clung to the walls. Warm, cloying mist spilled out from the throne room and covered the floor, filling the air with the stink of rot and decay.
The throne room was covered in resin. Spike could see that most of it was still fresh, oozing down the walls in thick rivulets and dripping from the ceiling to form huge pools on the floor. Here and there, large, green, pulsating things hung from the resin, emitting that eerie greenness that was the only light in the room. But only a small part of him was paying attention to that. The rest of him was more concerned with the changelings.
They clung to the walls, hovered in the air, hung from the ceiling. A small army of them stood between him and the twin thrones at the far end of the room, all with their teeth bared and their eyes flashing hungrily.
And, sitting on Twilight's old throne, there was something else.
Most changelings were of indefinite gender. Spike wasn't even entirely sure how they reproduced. Twilight had never figured that out. But the changeling sitting on the throne was different. This one was quite obviously female. She almost looked like a princess; she had both wings and a horn, and, viewed from the right angle, she was poised and regal.
But she had no coat. Her body was covered, instead, with glistening chitin. Her horn was twisted and pitted with scars. Her wings were insectile and tattered at the edges. Her body was emaciated, almost skeletal in appearance, and marked with irregular holes where flesh should have been. Her mane was long and greasy-looking, hanging over her face in long waves of blue. Two long fangs hung down from her upper lip, and her eyes, while almost pony-like in appearance, had slits for pupils and were the same sickly, festering green of the light that filled the room.
Queen Chrysalis smiled slowly at him. "Spike," she said. Her voice was a honeyed purr, like a gracious host welcoming a guest, but there was an undercurrent of predatory intent that sent a shiver down his spine. "I was wondering when you would finally wake. We've been waiting for you. Do come in." She made a sweeping motion with one hoof, encompassing the whole of the room. "Welcome to my kingdom."
Spike eyed the army of changelings. None of them had moved, except for the occasional flicker of a wing or slight twitch, but they were all watching him with the same malicious expression. He heard a few of them hiss, and one of them laugh quietly.
"I think I'll stay out here, thanks," he said.
Chrysalis laughed. "Rejecting my hospitality?" She propped up her chin on one hoof and smiled at him. "Putting aside the fact that I wouldn't have brought you here if I didn't have a way to make you obey, what exactly is your plan? Sit there until you starve? Or were you counting on a rescue?"
Spike said nothing. Chrysalis laughed again, shook her head, and continued, "Well, that's too bad." She stepped off the throne and made her way down towards the crowd of changelings. They parted before her, bowing and scraping. Spike was certain he heard one of them murmur "Your Highness", but Chrysalis ignored them.
"We watched you the whole time that you were in the Tangle," she said, still smiling at Spike. "Your traveling companions are hardly intimidating. The pegasus is a chattering fool and the unicorn is incapable of carrying any more than a few sheets of paper without reaching the point of exhaustion. That leaves one earth pony and one dragon - but, since the earth pony is already being prepared for our next meal, that leaves... just you, I'm afraid."
She flashed a horrible, toothy grin at him. "It really was fortunate that he wasn't much of a talker. Otherwise someone might have noticed something off. Thank you for the instructions, by the way. This castle always was extremely frustrating. Now it belongs to us completely."
Spike took one step back. Chrysalis was getting too close for comfort, and he wanted to do nothing more than bolt and find another exit. If what she said was true, then the ponies were in danger, and he doubted that they would be able to protect themselves...
"Where in the hoof did you learn to hit like that, anyway?"
"It's all a matter of leverage. Find me a bigger book. There's more coming."
...But there wasn't anywhere to go. The hallway behind him was closed off, and the only door out led straight into Chrysalis and her army. His mind spun, searching for options, and finally settled on playing for time.
"If you were watching us in the forest," he said, his eyes flickering desperately around the throne room, looking for any openings, "why didn't you just attack us then?"
Chrysalis laughed again. "Oh, come now, Spike," she said. "You don't expect me to be so stupid as to order an attack on a dragon using nothing but a scouting party as muscle, do you? I always have a plan." She stopped walking, standing in the center of the throne room, surrounded by a circle of empty space as her servants shuffled away to make room for her. "But now you're alone," she said, her voice lowering. "You have no friends here. No one is coming to help you. And I have an army."
"Then why aren't you just attacking me?" Spike asked. He stopped searching the throne room for potential exits, instead focusing his gaze on Chrysalis, who just smiled again and made an odd tutting noise.
"Well, why do you think?" she said. "Because we're hungry."
"So?" Spike took another step back. He could feel the heat of the torch starting to fade. It was dying out. Soon, the only light would be the evil green glow from the throne room.
"Sooooo," said Chrysalis, tossing her head and smiling again, "with creatures like you, it's so much easier to feed if you allow it. Oh, we could still devour you if you resisted, but it wouldn't be nearly as satisfying. Why did you think I spent all that time pretending to be that princess? Shining Armor would have fought me, but he trusted his wife-to-be. He would have made an excellent meal."
Spike looked her slowly up and down, frowning. "What makes you think I'll let you feed on me willingly, then?"
Chrysalis laughed, then looked up towards the ceiling. A few of the changelings hanging there dropped away, lowering themselves down towards the floor with a dull, flat buzzing from their wings. Hanging from the ceiling in the spot that they had just vacated was another of the huge, green, pulsating things that lit the room.
Spike heard a faint hiss from behind himself as his torch finally went out. Now everything was cast in green.
"Because if you do," Chrysalis said, "we will release her."
For a moment, her horn shone with power. Then the green, pendulous thing - a cocoon, Spike realized - peeled open slightly on one side.
Even in the green, disorienting light, and even with the thick, cloying mist hanging in the air, it was impossible to mistake the mare inside the cocoon. Her eyes were closed, her coat and mane were matted with slime, and she was so thin that she looked close to starvation, but she was unmistakeable.
Spike felt his heart pounding hard. Inside the cocoon, a prisoner of the changelings, was Twilight Sparkle.
Pith Helmet's head was pounding. For what felt like a full minute, he couldn't imagine why, no matter how hard he tried to concentrate. Then he remembered.
Something had bitten him. He vaguely remebered a pair of bright-green eyes in the darkness. That meant changeling, which explained why he couldn't move his legs. Changeling venom paralyzed its victims, so they could be more easily dragged off and cocooned.
He felt... something. It took him another eternity to figure out what it was. Then he realized that somepony was dragging him along an uneven, rocky passage, none too gently. Or efficiently. He could hear panting and hissing, and the one dragging him had to stop every few paces to get their breath back. Dragging the stallion's bulk was obviously not easy.
He let his left eye open just enough to peer around. His helmet was gone, which was a problem. It meant he had no light source. But there seemed to be light here, if just a bit. It was acid-green and dim, but it was there, at least. He could make out the basics.
It was a large, almost circular corridor. Or a tunnel, more accurately. The floor and walls had been smoothed over roughly, but not expertly so. It was still jagged and uneven, and sloped downward sharply. He was being dragged down towards the bottom of the corridor. That was also where the light was coming from, judging by the shadows.
Part of him wanted to struggle. He overruled it and forced himself to listen instead. Only one set of hoofsteps. He and his captor were alone in the tunnel. That was good. It was probably a changeling, which was bad, as a single bite would put him under again. It had the advantages of a venomous bite, flight, and night vision, along with full use of its limbs. He had none of those, but he did have the element of surprise.
And body mass, he thought. That was likely why he wasn't waking up in a cocoon. He was almost double the weight of the average pony, and he had been bitten before. He was starting to build up a tolerance. The venom wouldn't have as much of an effect on him as most. It would wear off faster.
He just had to hope it wore off before he ended up in a cocoon.
Surreptitiously, he tried to wiggle his right rear leg. It responded, but sluggishly, and he felt pins and needles shoot up and down its length. It felt as if all his limbs were just coming out of being asleep, and slowly. But they control was coming back to him.
He shut his eye again and forced himself to breathe evenly. He timed his attempts to test his returning strength with his captor's movements. Every time the changeling took another few steps, he tried a limb. It was slow, torturously so, with long pauses between each movement that left him wondering if they hadn't reached the end of the line, and he was about to be put into one of the cocoons.
But the changeling kept moving, and he kept trying. After three cycles, he could just about manage to lift his forelegs. After five, he thought he was ready to try to stand.
After the seventh cycle, he was ready to fight.
When the changeling braced itself for another heave, he kicked off the ground with his hind legs, driving the top of his head upward and into the thing's lower jaw. It grunted in surprise and pain, then reeled back, fighting to keep its balance.
Pith didn't intend to let it get its footing back. He spun, still fighting the lingering numbness in his body, and leapt, tackling the changeling to the ground and pinning it beneath his bulk. Its head hit the stone floor hard, and it gave one more grunt before passing out.
Pith heaved a sigh of relief and stood up. The tunnel was bathed in green light now. He turned to the left, towards the bottom of the tunnel, and saw why.
Spike had mentioned a magic tree at the bottom of the gorge around the castle. Something told him that he had just found it.
It looked like a tree during winter, with all of its leaves gone and its branches reaching upward to the sky. But there was no sky here; there was only a cavern, covered in changeling resin and full of pulsing green cocoons. And this tree looked like it was formed out of shining crystal.
And vines. The vines that filled the Tangle had their roots here. They burst up from the ground underneath the tree as if they had burrowed upward from underneath it, then turned and grew outward, out of the cave and up towards the rest of the Tangle. But the tree hadn't escaped their grasp.
Like the castle above, the vines were choking the tree to death. They had wrapped around it a dozen times over, so tightly that they conformed to its shape, and their thorns had pierced its bark in several places. And the vines that were choking the tree weren't lifeless and still, like the ones in the rest of the Tangle. These vines moved, and shone with the same evil green light as the cocoons. That light flowed through the vines in visible streams, starting at the thorns that had pierced the tree and flowing out of them, down through the rest of the vines and into the earth.
They're feeding on it, he realized. Then he shook himself. There were more important things to think about. Tailspin, Compass, and Spike were still in danger. They had to be warned about the changelings. And he was still here, in their nest, with no way out but back up the passage and into the castle.
He scowled and started to pace around the cave. If he was going back in, he'd need a light source, and a weapon. The changelings had taken his equipment and his helmet, leaving him with no tools whatsoever. Running back into hostile territory with no weapons was suicide.
The cocoons here were empty, at least. He had thought about opening one of them, seeing if one of the poor ponies inside had any equipment on them before they were... drained... but that wasn't necessary, it seemed. That would also explain why there weren't any changelings in the area at the moment. If there was no food waiting for them, they would be elsewhere, looking for more.
He spent almost a full minute staring around at the cave, searching for something, anything, that he could use, but there was nothing. There were a few loose rocks, but none big enough to use as a weapon, and that was it. Nothing even approached being a usable light source.
There was a snapping sound from above. Pith blinked and looked around just in time to see a branch drop from above and hit the ground in front of him. It was part of the tree, formed of that same glowing crystal, and the perfect length to be used as a truncheon.
He blinked again, then looked up at the tree. One of the vines had tightened visibly around what was now a broken stump sticking out from the tree's main body, snapping off the branch. Rather lucky, really.
Pith shrugged, then leaned down and plucked up the branch, weighing it in his hooves.
Yes. Yes, this would do nicely.
He gave it a few experimental swings, grinned, and set off back to the tunnel at a trot.