I broke off from the kiss, and couldn't meet her eyes. I was ashamed of myself for what I had done to her. She tried to kill me, unprovoked from my perspective, but did that really justify enslaving her, ripping her loyalty from her queen, from her people? It was a very Istaran thing to do, but I was different. If I was in control, I would have incapacitated her and left her to recover when I was gone, or maybe even escaped without hurting her. Who am I kidding? If I had been in control, I would still be a prisoner, or maybe dead.
"Hey, don't give me this crap!" Wind Chaser grab my muzzle and pulled me around to look her in the eyes. They were fierce. Powerful. Not the eyes of a slave. Worse. They were the eyes of someone wholly, sincerely devoted. Was this the depths of what Istaran had done to her mind, what I had done to her?
A fierce hoof smack to the face broke me from my reverie. That didn't seem like it should have been possible. I blinked looking at her in surprise. "Ow. What?"
"I won't have you wallowing in shame and self doubt, least of all over me. You are my king, and I am your loyal subject. I know you worry about what Turbine did to me, what scary-you did to me. But it really wasn't that much. When my queen gave me over, I was yours in fact and in mind. But my heart was torn; my instincts still screamed to follow the queen I had followed since my hatching. Turbine freed me from that, by making you my queen.. err, king."
"So, what all does that mean? How far does it go?"
"It has nothing to do with kissing you, if that's what you are wondering. I will follow your orders, whatever they are, and aside from that I will fight to the death to protect you. That's all. At least, that's all that was ever forced upon me. My affection for you runs much deeper than that, though, and broader. You are a kind hearted soul, I've seen that.. felt it.. tasted it." It was her turn to blush. "but you've also given me so much. I feel like you take it for granted, or even fear it, but.. I understand now why you named yours 'Deus Machina'. Here.. let me show you what I've been doing while you where out."
I followed her to a window, and she opened the wooden shutters, revealing that we were in a low tower, overlooking a vibrant looking field of vegetables and something that looked like wheat. As I looked out, I perceived another image, the same view of the same field just a few days earlier, when we had arrived. The plants looked limp, withered, on the verge of death.
"The plants were malnourished. The griffons are not the best farmers, and didn't know about crop rotation, and nitrogen fixing. They had been overwatered by the rain, and in their weakened state, disease and pests were overtaking the plants. While I played at being a weather pony, Turbine was able to heal the plants, and even make them thrive in just a few days. Deus Ex Machina indeed. It just solves every damn problem!"
I sat back down on the bed. "Yeah.. except the problems I actually have."
"What do you mean?"
"It allowed me to survive the manticore attack back at the beginning, but if I had chosen something less combat-ready I wouldn't have been in such a dangerous starting place. Wielding such a deadly weapon doesn't help me convince the others to cooperate instead of killing each other. How much does it really help with finding the QR Codes? Are they actually hidden in harder locations because of my power?"
"You give yourself too little credit. You know as well as I do what your potential is. And I want to help you realize it. But first.. we do need to talk more about.. us. And about my needs." She moved back over to the bed, pushing me firmly onto the bed before sitting on top of me. "You know what I am, I know. Surely Deus has told you all about my kind by now? What we eat?"
I blushed. It didn't feel very royal to be turned on by a dominant partner like this, but I couldn't help it. She smelled so good just then. "You live on love. There's different kinds that can sustain you.. you've mentioned the possessive kind Istaran feels for you. I take it you're looking for something more.. intimate from me?"
She nuzzled me gently. "Yes. You don't have to if you don't want to. I know.. this isn't your natural form, and maybe it's not attractive to you. I can try to become a <woman> for you, if you need me to. But I don't need sex. I need your love. Or I need you to let me loose, to hunt for love I can steal from others."
I rolled her onto her back, kissing her with growing confidence. "You don't need sex.. but do you want it? Do you want me that way?"
She nodded, and I kissed her before pausing. "I want our first time to be in our natural forms." I took a moment to close the shutters and make sure the door was locked before returning to human form, crouching a bit to keep below the low ceiling. Green light played over Wind Chaser's form as she dispelled her own transformation, showing me her true form for the first time.
I admit.. it wasn't what I would generally consider the sexiest of bodies. Her smooth black carapace was broken up by strange holes that passed right through to the other side, and I quickly discovered were both sensitive to the touch and a little ticklish. Her ribs were showing, giving her a decidedly hungry look. Her translucent green wings looked impossibly fragile. I had also forgotten her claim, long ago to be 'male'. The truth was not so simple, as she had the parts of both genders. My hands proved quite adequate for her male bits as we consummated out relationship slowly, and more than a little awkwardly. She kept her voice low as we did, as it had a distinctive dissonance to it, like a masculine and feminine voice speaking in out-of-key unison.
As we cuddled afterwards, I noticed she looked a bit more healthy, a few of the smaller holes nearly closed while her ribs were less pronounced. It was tempting to think of this as a sign of my awesome virility, but I knew enough about changelings and human psychology to know the truth. Our physical bonding had helped me to open my heart to her, to give her the sustenance she needed.
When I began to recover from our first round, she shifted back into her familiar pegasus guise, and I did the same, eager to try something different. Abusing Deus' abilities, we were able to bypass some of the natural biological limits of the male form, and go at it for most of the day. We tried out every combination of the pony tribes' forms, as well as a wide variety of positions. In her former life as a changeling scout, she had picked up quite a few tricks that various ponies thought they were sharing with their spouses. I tried not to dwell on where these ideas were coming from and simply enjoy the benefits.
Somewhere along the way we heard steps approaching, claws scraping lightly on stone, and quickly shifted back to a pair of pegasi without breaking pace. A stifled giggle answered our passionate noises before the steps receded again. It was practically a honeymoon, and probably taken as such.
It still bothered me a little, taking Wind Chaser like this. She was my subordinate, and in my culture that made our relationship an abuse of power on my part. But the truth was, I wanted to connect with her, to be affectionate with her.. to make her mine in more intimate ways than just king and subject. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't know the first thing about physical affection in pony form. Aside from the obvious. You couldn't exactly.. hold hands, right? At least I had pushed through my own hangups. I knew now that at least her heart was free, that she chose to be more than just my loyal drone.
Wind Chaser was practically glowing with joy as we finally left our room, heading down to join our hosts for dinner. Her hunger was truly sated for the first time in years, while I was in desperate need of sustenance. Smelling meat being cooked, I was ready to cry for joy myself.
Our hosts were a family of griffons; a couple of farmers, their two daughters and a son, and the mother's father. We had arrived in Gryphonia by slamming bodily into one of their storage sheds, collapsing the stone building in on top of us, and leaving a massive rip in the ground leading up into it. Somehow, I had managed to position myself to take the brunt of it, and Wind Chaser had been able to dig us out. The country doctor had declared me a lost cause, but Wind Chaser's insistence had gotten me into a bed where I could recover on my own.
Wind Chaser had simply declined to provide any sort of believable story as to how we had crash landed so hard and fast. The truth, that we had travelled hundreds of kilometers in a single wing-beat, was something we certainly were not about to share. Given the impact, a bit of lost memory and inexplicable mystery were a lot more plausible than the truth.
"Wind Chaser, good to see you again. And South Wind! I'm amazed and overjoyed to see you so thoroughly recovered," the female griffon said with a wink and a grin. Apparently my alias of the day was South Wind.
"I have magic blood," I declared without thinking. It was my perfect all purpose excuse. Truthy, without digging into the details of nanotechnology. "It takes a lot more than a crash landing to keep me down, or away from my beautiful mare."
The griffons looked at me silently for a moment, while Wind Chaser looked at me, aghast at just how poor of a liar I was.
"So that's why she was so certain you would recover? I guess that makes sense then," the husband said, uncertainly.
I nodded, taking a seat at the table next to Wind Chaser, glancing at the children with amusement as they snuck behind me and started poking and prodding at me. "I haven't caught your names, though you clearly know mine already. Would you be so kind as to introduce yourselves?"
"Oh, how rude of us!" the female declared. "I am Addula Swiftwing, and this is my husband Raymond and our children, Addy," she gestured to the boy, "Eberta, and Bera," she gestured to the daughters in turn. "And this is my father, Bardrick Longclaw." She gestured to the elder male, who nodded quietly.
I smiled to each in turn, quietly smiling to them and repeating their names as I committed them to memory. "Thank you Addula, and thank you for your hospitality while I recovered. I seem to have had quite the crash landing. I hope I didn't cause you too much trouble."
"You took out one of our storage sheds," Bardrick commented matter-of-factly. "To say nothing of the gash you left in our field. It's hard to imagine how fast you must have been going. Whatever led you to such a spectacular feat of recklessness?"
I blinked a few times before bowing my head. "I will repair the structure as soon as I have a chance. It's the least I can do. As for how.. well. It's embarrassing at my age, but the truth is I am still learning how to fly. I have more wing strength than self control, it seems, and I was startled by some bright lights coming down from the sky. I don't really remember what happened after that." I rubbed my head. "Probably hit my head too hard crashing.."
"That's quite kind of you," Raymond said, "though your mare has already done so much for us we feel like we should be repaying the two of you. I don't know how she did it, but she worked wonders out in our fields while you were recovering."
"I saw," I nodded. "She is quite a treasure." Wind Chaser turned her head and blushed.
Addula served dinner then, a finely prepared mutton, with a few vegetables on the side, looking to be more for flavor than anything. Wind Chaser took a small helping of vegetables, more to keep up appearances than anything, while I ate as well as the griffons.. drawing a bit of unplanned attention from the adults, as it slipped my mind that pegasi were pretty much herbivores. Feeling their eyes on me, I looked about for an obvious distraction, and found it in the form of a spear hanging on the wall. It looked to be well used but also well maintained, as far as I could judge such things, but there was also a thin layer of dust on it, demonstrating its current status as mere ornamentation.
"Is that your spear, Raymond? Were you a warrior before becoming a farmer?" I enquired.
"No on both accounts. I was actually a brewer, but the materials were getting too expensive, so I thought to try my claw at growing them myself. It seemed like a wise idea at the time, but if not for Wind Chaser's intervention, it was well on its way to proving disastrous."
"The spear is mine," Bardrick said. "I was a former captain in the steel wings, before young upstarts displaced me, as they always do. Why do you ask?"
I bowed to him respectfully. "I know you don't owe me anything, but I must ask. Can you train me to fight?"
Bardrick considered it. "If you pass my tests, and my daughter is willing to put up with you for a few years, I suppose."
I cut him off before he could go further. "I apologize for any confusion, but I am afraid I must hold to a shorter timeframe than that. I can spare.. probably about a week. I know that wouldn't be enough time to train me to be an elite warrior, but I'd settle for 'basic grunt'. Honestly, what I need most is help breaking through the mental blocks that keep me from, well.. being willing to hurt my enemies."
Bardrick harrumphed. "You ask for the impossible, the absurd. What value would a week of training even have? So you can run out and get yourself killed in some fools errand? Take the time to learn properly or leave the fighting to those who have the patience."
"I mentioned my magic blood already. Because of it, I am one of the few who can stand up to.. the warlord who is invading Equestria from the south, even as we speak. If I wait a few years, Equestria will be crushed, and Gryphonia may well be under assault as well. But if I go after him as I am now.. " I shuddered, knowing too well I would give myself over to Istaran in a desperate gambit to win. Victory in that case could well be worse than defeat. I pictured the ocean turned to a sea of spiders, a tidal wave of destruction washing over the enemy, and leaving the world a dried out husk in their wake. "It would be even more of a fools errand. I am a quick study, and there is less need to train my body than my mind. Teach me how to think like a warrior, a soldier, a captain. Teach me the art of war. Do your best, that's all I ask."
"No."