Chapter 5
Nightmare, Dream or Reality?
"Where am I?"
Drip
"Who's there?"
Swish
"Hello?"
Splash
=====
"Wake up sleepy head! I said wake up!"
A cold splash of water brought with it light that flooded Rook's eyes. "Where am I?" He was staring up into the sky, watching each fluff of cloud drifting by. The sound of a nearby stream made it's way into his senses, and so did the scent of freshly trampled grass. Was that laughing he heard?
Rook got up, leaving the comfort of the grass to look around him. Everything was white. Everything except the patch of greenery he was standing on. "Hello?" That one word echoed about five times before fading out to an inaudible range. It was weird... The place was completely foreign to him, a large space of emptiness and isolation with no sign of life other than the blades of green at his hooves and himself, yet he felt right at home. Normally if anyling found themselves in this situation, they would freak out, wouldn't they? No food, no company... no one to talk to? "When did I get this needy?"
The changeling walked around aimlessly, and noticed that the ground only appeared under him while everything else stayed white. Like a reversed shadow or something along those lines. Why wasn't he freaking out at this yet? He started to canter as he recalled the last memories he had. "Ruins... Si... Siren... missing? Secret passages!... Traps and... and... Masked ponies." He panicked.
"What is this place, where am I?! Siren? Ghost? Runner? Zulu? Where are you?! Can anyling hear me!? Answer me!" He broke into a full gallop. He felt like something was chasing after him. Looking back, he saw faded figures but he instantly recognized them as the masked ponies he saw in that room. "What the... I can't fly?" Rook couldn't even feel his wings.
"No. No! Stay away from me!" The ponies multiplied since his last look. There were about twenty of them now and they were still popping up, each with their evil grins cracking up to their ears. As frightening as that sight was, something twice as frightening greeted his view when looked ahead which almost turned his insides upside-down and made his limbs feel like butter under the summer heatwave.
Lined up right in front of him were the last changelings he saw. Ghost, Zulu, Runner, Siren, Jellybean, Brutus, Coal and Coon were all tied up on some torture device. Their bodies were cut open, their insides were being pulled out, chopped into bits and dropped into a funnel that lead to who knows where.
Their blood were being drained right out of their necks by some tubes that lead into some kind of machine where one of the masked ponies was practically swimming in. He didn't even want to know what those things on the captured changeling's heads did.
His blood ran cold when the ponies dissecting his friends turned their attention to him, pointing their tools at him. Rook broke right to avoid them, but that direction brought him face to face with a certain unicorn. "You!"
Rook looked back and saw the ponies were still gaining on him. "Well I'm not gonna die alone! This is where your road ends!" He charged with what energy he had left and drove his horn through the unicorn's chest.
But to his surprise, his target just shattered in an explosion of glass. The next thing he knew, he was falling strait onto the cobble streets below. Time stood still for a moment, letting him take in every single detail that entered his eyes.
The street was decorated with regal banners of the two alicorn princesses. Ponies gasped at the sight of the changeling falling from the tower accompanied by broken glass and splintered wood. The royal guards were jumping into action, not wasting time to catch the intruder, though Rook mused if their haste was aimed to catch him from his fall, or make sure he didn't get up after he hit the ground. Their spears fastened at their side suggested it was the latter.
A dark blur passed his eyes, and a second later something caught him mid-fall. His vision whited out as he was flown away from Canterlot. To where? He didn't really care.
=====
"Hey Rook! WAAA-A-AAA-AAAKE UP!" Something was shaking the changeling by the shoulders.
"I'm up! I'm up!" He said drowsily. Rook blinked a couple of times to stop his eyeballs from spinning.
"You can really sleep when you want to, can't you?"
Rook scratched the back of his head and looked up at the sky. "Its still dawn! Why'd you wake me up so early?" he yawned.
"Cause you'll be missing the best part of the occasion! Come ooooon!"
Rook's eyes fell upon a mareling with an unusual feature. Her right eye was green while the left one was the normal blue. He took time to crack his neck before following the female. "Lead the way."
She took him to a clearing where a small group had gathered in a circle.
"There they are, what took you guys so long?" One of them said.
"Busy trading love I presume?" Another snickered which caused the group to light up with laughter.
"You're all idiots, aren't you?" Rook mumbled. This group felt familiar, yet... he didn't know their names. 'They'll probably just identify each other, no need to ask.'
The group shifted from jabbing jokes at Rook and the mareling, to telling ridiculous stories, to exchanging jokes, and back to ridiculous stories. When the sun rose from the horizon, everyling walked through the thicket of trees and came out to a cliff. Just under the cliff, was the vast expanse of the hive, well, some of the hive. There was still a lot of it underground. The structures on the surface were merely the entrances and watchtowers, but the sheer size of it was just as big as Canterlot Castle. May not be as pretty as Canterlot through pony eyes, but to the changelings, it was a sign of pure beauty.
"It's starting." The mareling who woke up Rook said.
'What was her name?'
The spire at the very top of the main hive structure started to glow a ghostly green and shot a beam straight to the sky. The beam collected to form a crystal. Similar beams from the surrounding forests joined the hub.
'Crystal...'
Suddenly, a black spot ripped through the space in front of Rook and his world slowly drained out into the black hole in front of him. "What the..."
"It's a shame that... you can't stay here longer..." He heard the mareling whisper.
"What do you mean?" Rook could see that she was being dragged into the black hole too. Seeing this, he looked to the rest of the group, just to see that they were long gone, and so was that part of the world around him.
"I missed you... but it's not time yet. Goodbye." Her being was sucked into the abyss.
'Nono, wait!' He couldn't speak. He tried to move, but he couldn't. His world collapsed. The color, the features, the hive, the textures, everything even the wind. What was left was a slimy green liquid that he found himself floating in. 'Where did this come from? Huh... Whispers?'
=====
"Careful! You're gonna break the cocoon. Learn to aim you blind mule!"
Who's there?
"It's your fault it escaped in the first place. Now we have to clean this up."
"Don't touch that! You're gonna rip the sac!"
Rook found himself floating inside some cocoon filled with green liquid. It felt like one of those recovery cocoons changelings were placed in after a skirmish gone wrong. Thanks to the liquid, he couldn't quite make out what it was moving in front of the cocoon. He could hear ponies talking, two of them. Above his head, just a few inches above, there was something sticking into the sac. It's tip was metallic and pointy.
He turned his attention to two moving figures. One was talking, the other one was pulling something out of the ground. The first one noticed that Rook had woken up. "Hey... one's awa... do so... thing?" He heard him say. The cocoon made it hard to catch all the words.
"Get the... quilizer... ba... ling..."
One of them disappeared from his sight and reemerged holding a small hose with a needle-like point. Upon seeing the needle, Rook clawed furiously inside the cocoon, hoping to cause it to break so he could get away from this. Sadly, all he did was twitch. It reminded him of his nightmare, the one where everyling was being gutted and sucked dry of blood. He tried screaming, but nothing came out, not even a squeak.
He felt numb all over. It was the cocoon. Those things were meant to keep changelings sedated for recovery. It also nullified their magic so they wouldn't accidentally discharge a possibly fatal blasts at their care takers. Things didn't look good for him and the liquid he was swimming in made his spur of the moment panic short lived. He was just limp after a minute.
The two figures were preparing to inject the hose into the cocoon, but something made them turn around. Rook couldn't see what, but from their frantic dash for their weapons, he could tell that it wasn't suppose to be there. Whatever it was made short work of the two, slicing them up with a something sharp, most likely a blade and spilling the blood all over his cocoon.
A few more came in and one of them grabbed the metallic object stuck at the top of his cocoon and brought it strait down the length of his prison. Rook fell flat on his face, kissing the ground. From his new vantage point, he could see that the two that were struck down were dressed in the same garb as the ones who hunted him in his dreams. Black suits and masks...
His rescuers - or at least he hoped they were rescuers - started ripping open other cocoons, revealing other changelings. He heard someone saying something close to "Time to go" and he was dragged across the floor. He didn't remember anything but darkness after that. The cocoon's effects were still strong and he couldn't even lift a hoof.
He must have fallen asleep, cause the next thing he knew, all he could hear was the furious grinding of metal on metal, accompanied by battle cries and constant trash talk. To confirm his suspicion, a pair locked in a waltz of death was performing just in front of him. One got his gut sliced open and the victor was rewarded by a blade going through his back. Arrows were also flying overhead, and like a chorus of birds, they sang.
Rook decided to pass out one more time. Maybe he'd get lucky this time around. When he came to, the sounds of battle had ceased, and he was once again dragged across the ground. Body as limp as a rag doll still. He could tell that whoever was dragging him wasn't the same one who pulled him out of the cocoon. Whether this was a good thing or a bad thing, he could only guess.
He was suddenly lifted up and tossed inside a cart, like freshly picked produce. There were others as well, but he couldn't tell if they were changelings or ponies. Someone climbed on and noticed the far-from-sober changeling lolling his head around. He raised a hoof and gave a hard stomp on the changeling's head. Once again introducing him to unconsciousness...
=====
"Ow, my head..." Rook groaned as he lifted himself up from the concrete. While rubbing the sore spot on his head, he noticed a ring at the base of his horn. He attempted to produce light with magic, but all he could feel was his energy fizzling out. That's when the purpose of the device on his head became clear, it was there to inhibit the use of magic.
Grand.
"Hello? Anyling here?" He called out, only to hear his own words bounce back to him a number of times. At least now he knew he was in a closed room. Not too spacy judging from the echoes. How did it get this bad?
He remembered his dream, the one where he was rudely woken up in the most disrespectful way. The mareling, the group of changelings gathered around... the walk through the thicket... he remembered who they were and when that was now. The group was his old foalhood friends. Yeah, they had been together since they were still at the nursery.
And the walk through the thicket? That happened years ago. That was also the last time he saw all of them together. That was when they finally got assigned to their squads. Runner was the only one who was assigned to the same squad as him. But he wasn't in the dream...
Did that mean something?
He didn't get to dwell on it as a loud crash scared away what was left of his drowsiness. A rusty, heavy, metal door creaked open, making the changeling cup his ears into his head as he cringed to the high pitched squeaks created by rubbing metal. The room flooded with light through a crack that grew into a wide opening.
"Finally." A hard-sounding stallion said as he walked into the room with only his silhouette defining him. "Well, well, well, look who's up." The statement was laced with venomous contempt for the changeling, followed by a disgusted grunt.
Rook had to cover his eyes from being completely blinded, but when his senses adjusted, he saw an earth pony adorning the solar uniform. He could see it in the armor he wore, he was battle-hardened and didn't look like the type to be playing the good guard part. Although his face was shrouded in shadows, Rook could see the scorn beaming - no, burning - through the veil, and the glare that could rival a direct shot from a crossbow at point blank. Suddenly, the changeling felt so small, so useless. And the pony knew it.
Oh he knew it alright. His grin said it all, he wasn't going to go easy on the changeling, no, not a chance. "Come with me, we've got questions for you."
Rook could already imagine what he was thinking, and all he could do was gulp. "O-oh, y-yeah?" His voice cracked, which earned a disgracing 'Hah!' from the guard.
"Don't worry, we won't hurt you. Much."
Rook swallowed again. He knew he was going to say that. They always say that.
The bolt of his cell opened with a loud thud and he was dragged out by two other ponies who slid in without him noticing. The trio let out harsh laughter as they threw the changeling into a chair in the room where the guards came from. The walls were bright white and featureless. The lights hung in neat rows, giving off luminosity that, when coupled with the color of the walls, made it difficult to see anything without squinting. The table in front of the changeling was bolted to the floor, and was big enough for four ponies to play cards on.
The hard-sounding pony slammed his hoof onto the table, making Rook flinch.
"Do you know why we're here, changeling?" the pony asked, leaning against the table at an angle.
"You had... questions for me?" Rook forced a nervous smile. His heart was beating rapidly.
"Good." The pony said simply as he leaned closer. "I got questions, and I need answers. Do you think you can provide me with what I need?"
Rook nodded twice, having a hard time making words flow out. He'd have to play real cool with this stallion or he'd risk getting mauled by superior strength.
"Let's start with something simple." The earth pony nodded to a unicorn who was standing behind Rook with another earth pony. No doubt they were there to supply muscle for their leader so that he wouldn't have to get his own hooves dirty. The unicorn summoned a map and laid it across the table.
Rook tilted his head at his interrogator with a confused look. "That's a map of Equestria. Why are you showing me this?"
The earth pony frowned at him and nodded to his minions at the back. Rook suddenly felt his head smashing against the table. The ponies behind him kept his head against the surface while the interrogator leaned in to whisper into his ear. "I ask the questions here. You keep quiet unless I ask you a question. Got that, bug?"
When the interrogator moved back, Rook's head was raised so he could see the pony pointing at the map. "Show us where your hives are." He commanded.
Rook shook his head. "Our hive isn't inside Equestria's borders." The pony didn't seem to like his answer as Rook soon felt himself kissing the map again. The part of the map where his face landed had a smear of blood, and only a moment later, a tiny stream of red trailed down his face.
"You disappoint me." The pony shook his head. "I honestly thought we were on the same page here." He nodded to the unicorn and soon a transparent film the same size as the map appeared over the table. It was brought down to overlay the map. Rook could see red markings that fit around the cities and settlements. One particular mark to the north of Canterlot was of special importance as it was labeled with the words "Changeling Hive."
"I swear I didn't know anything about that place." Rook said.
"Do you think we'd buy that? We know your swarm dug themselves in and tunneled to these different settlements here." The pony motioned to the marked cities. Rook was relieved that Ponyville and the Everfree was not one of them. If the others were alive, they would surely find themselves back to either of those places
"If you knew all that, why did you have to ask me?" the changeling challenged. The pony wasn't satisfied with just letting his minions slam his captive's head into the table this time, as evident with the kick he delivered himself straight to the changeling's face.
The pony snarled at Rook. "You got blood on my boots. I hope you're happy."
Rook had a witty comeback floating around in his head, but his tongue refused to relay the message. In fact, his head refused to even look up to the pony to give him a dirty look. When he finally regained control of himself, the interrogator had already dismissed the session due to Rook's unresponsiveness.
He was thrown back to his cell and was left to himself to either die or recover enough for another session of interrogation. He wasn't looking forward to either option. He had to get out of there quick, but how? A sharp pang of pain prompted him to put his forehooves on his head. He felt something wet and warm. Pulling his hooves in front of him, and - although he knew that the liquid was his blood - ignited his horn for a little luminosity to see what color his hooves were. Surprise, surprise. Red.
Rook wiped the blood off on the floor and moved to the corner that was as far away from the door as possible. This sucks, he thought to himself before settling to curl up in his corner. The situation wasn't the only thing he considered to suck, the room he was stuck in was bland and too boring, it might as well have been part of the interrogation torture. They didn't even bother to leave a light in there. It was a good thing the simplest of magic included creating a dim light. Heck, even lighting up horns was enough to make a glow.
"Wait a minute!" Rook got to his hooves in realization. He was using magic! He felt for the base of his horn and pulled off the crumbled remains of the ring they put on him while he was out. It must have broken when they repeatedly pummeled his face. Things were starting to look up, but he couldn't get careless now. there wasn't any other way out of the room, so he had to go through the interrogation room first. He made a move for the cell door, using his magic to manipulate the lock's mechanism to open it. The lock clicked and he pushed it open. Now, time for the door leading to the interrogation room.
He remembered where the locks and bolts were on the other side, so all he had to do was direct his magic to the spots and drag them out of the way. He gently pushed against the door, only making the minimal noise. When he saw that the room was clear, he went in and started his search for the door out of that place. His search was short lived.
"I see you're still alive."
Rook froze at the voice of a mare. Not two minutes of freedom and he was already caught? Ghost was going to yell at him for this. He turned around and saw a unicorn donning the Lunar uniform.
"Sorry I got rough on you, but I had to sell it," the mare explained. "Besides, the ring broke in the process, so that's a real bonus, don't you agree?"
"Who are you?" Rook asked, frowning. He already had a spell on standby to decimate the mare.
The unicorn looked around briefly before covering herself in green flames. Another changeling replaced the unicorn, but the armor was still the same, leading Rook to think that it was genuine.
The mareling trotted to the other and extended her hoof. "Reaper, specialist of 54th."
Rook couldn't help but smile. "Rook, squad 4. So there are still others out there?"
"You bet." Reaper replied. "A small group of us banded together when neither of us could find an officer. None of them contacted us. We're not sure yet what happened to the higher-ups. However, our scouts have made contact with other similar groups hiding out in the pony's towns and cities. But as you saw on the map, some of them were found out. The guards aren't the only ones hunting changelings, this is important to know."
The mareling motioned Rook to follow her to the door. "There's a certain group that's been 'napping us since week one. They're not affiliated with the guard, and the two don't seem to be on friendly terms either. I'm sure you remember the ponies I'm talking about, we were the ones who pulled you out of their laboratories, and lost you during a three-way skirmish."
Rook flashed back to the maze and the time he woke up in the medical sac. "We're they experimenting on us?"
"As far as we know, they were only studying you. At the time. Others before you, how should I put this... weren't so lucky." Reaper pressed against a hidden panel and some type of scanning device slid out. She then took a trinket from her armor and passed it over the device. "I nicked one of these from the guards' lockers along with this armor." She explained.
"What now?" Rook was disheartened. There was a great chance the creatures they ran away from, the creatures that took Coal and mangled Siren, were once changelings. He didn't seek to ask the question. He didn't know what he would have done if she confirmed his suspicion.
The mareling knew what he meant by the question though; what were they going to do once they got out of there? "I'm just a grunt. It's not up to me to make a decision like that. But we have to get you out of here. No telling what those overzealous ponies would do to you." One panel on the wall near the scanning device slid silently open, revealing a pathway that was long and narrow. "Shift into a Lunar Guard. The Solars aren't very familiar with them, but they're allowed anywhere they are and neither branch seemed to have warmed up to each other yet, so we can get through without much trouble. There's an enchanted door that only opens for genuine armors before we get out of this part of the compound, so I'm going to have to sneak a set for you from the other side." Reaper masked herself in her Lunar guard disguise.
Rook followed Reaper and got himself a Lunar pegasus. "Where should I hang around?"
"There's a bathroom near the enchanted door."
Rook rolled his eyes. "Great."
"Well, we can't have you awkwardly standing around and making the Solars nervous of your fangs and slit pupils, now can we? We're coming to the main hall now, keep the words to a minimum."
"If you say so" Rook said through the channel.
Reaper looked up in surprise, "You know how to use the channel? But that's officer-exclusive."
Rook rubbed his hoof against his chest "An officer taught me how to use it."
"Well don't disconnect, we'll need to keep in touch while we're separated. You should teach me how to do this sometime."