[We need to go,] Wind Chaser tiredly announced. [There will be a lot of antichangeling reaction, and the ponies may well find a way to see through my disguises. Staying here will only invite danger for my eggs.]
[Eggs?] I hadn't thought of that. Changelings were insect-like, apparently including that detail. Maybe it was part of why she expanded so quickly.. the egg would have to be big enough to contain the full grown young before she laid it. [Right. Do we need Midnight and Fog to come with us? We just got this house established, and her place in the school..]
[No. They can stay behind, and it may be easier for you and I to move as a couple, unnoticed. Let's take flight and get out of here.]
[Where will you even go?] Fog asked, [you can't exactly go to your old hive. Where can you safely lay your eggs?]
[With the changelings driven off and in disarray, we may be able to take over one of the feeding pod lairs scattered around Equestria. I know where several of them are. They are generally pretty defensible locations.]
[Are you going to be alright with fighting off the changelings guarding them?] I asked.
[As far as I am concerned, we are at war with them, now. Do what you must to them, my king,] she answered. I nodded in agreement.
[So.. that's it then? This is goodbye?] Midnight asked, getting a little teary eyed.
I hugged her close. [We'll keep in constant contact. We should be able to keep our connection over a range of quite a few kilometers, and we can cut back if need be to keep in range. The lairs themselves might be a problem for signal, but if that's the case we'll just have to check in periodically. You aren't out of our lives, but you do need to live your own life for now.]
Midnight nodded, and dragged me into a kiss. I broke free when I started to feel like she was trying to make Wind Chaser jealous. [I guess we'll have to find out how far you can send your love to me.]
We disentangled ourselves, and Wind Chaser and I took on pegasus forms, new ones just to be sure to throw off any pursuit. We climbed up to the top floor, and took flight from a bedroom window, swooping low between buildings for a bit before breaking upward and escaping the city.
We flew by ten of the pod sites before looping back around. No changeling presence at any of them. It was a bit unnerving. It was strange for the changelings to not leave guards behind. One possibility was that ponies had already uncovered them and dispatched the guards; they might have guards of their own left behind, or simply loop back with patrols periodically, making them dangerous places to try to hatch changeling eggs. A battle with Equestria's guard forces was likely to escalate if we won initially, and we were in no shape to take on all of Celestria's forces.
Finally, we settled onto the one closest to Pear's farm, only a few kilometers away from the orchards. It was deep in the wild woods, well hidden by nature, out of view of ponykind. And the entrance was well hidden. Ordinarily a changeling's ability to sense its own kind would guide it to the guards, but instead we had to find it on our own, the hard way. We finally found where the concealing underbrush had been somewhat hastily trampled down and out at the small entrance to a larger cavern. We squeezed our way in, made slightly easier by the lubricating residue along the entryway. Wind Chaser smirked at me as I shuddered, shifting back to her natural form. I stuck my tongue out at her in exchange. [Bugs are gross,] I said teasingly.
The front of the cavern was a choke point, normally watched by guards just ahead, but they were conspicuously absent. The place was eerily still and utterly silent. I hovered over the slick floor with careful wing beats, not wanting to get any more bug juice on my fur. As we got away from the entrance, the lighting became nearly nonexistent, only a dim green glow from around the corner, so I finally conceded to taking on the only form I was in any way familiar with that had decent night vision. As I became a changeling myself, she smirked at me again. [Bugs are gross, huh?]
[We are,] I confirmed, giving her flank a light rub as we continued deeper. The green glow came from a hallway of pulsing, glowing green pods, that seemed to be growing out of the walls. The surface of each pod was translucent, and you could see a pony trapped unconscious in each. Most of them were smiling, and they radiated a dim aura of love that I could feel as I neared them. [What's going to happen to them?]
[If we do nothing? Normally, the changelings that manage this place will return them to where they got them from after they have been impersonated for a while. Sometimes the impersonator will even implant some of the memories from the lost time, to help the deception go unnoticed. But this place seems abandoned. Ponies can only survive so long in these pods, especially if no one is here to feed nutrients into the goo. If we do nothing, maybe the changelings will return here, but otherwise these ponies will die.]
[Do you need them? For our children, I mean,] I asked as I looked closer at one of the pods. The cutie mark was visible and I recognized him from Pear Fritter's fond description. He was one of the seasonal workers that should have showed up for work weeks ago. He looked more than a little malnourished.
[No. If I was doing this alone, I would just keep them fed and use their love, but I have a King's love to sustain me, to say nothing of Fog Dancer. Are you thinking of freeing them? or adding them to the Kingdom. You could get your numbers to swell quite a lot right now,] she suggested.
[While they are itinerants.. I don't really think they need us, not like the others did. If we just get them out of these pods, they should be able to get back into the swing of things on their own.]
[Are you really that insistent on only recruiting broken ponies? What about the kingdom's needs? Adding only the neediest ponies and rejecting the most resourceful seems.. doomed to failure,] she critiqued.
[Maybe. But I wouldn't say Fog Dancer or Midnight Oil are exactly a drain on our resources, would you? Broken ponies can be mended, in some sense.]
[And that's what you intend to do,] she stated, resigned. [My king's will be done.]
[I judge the success of my kingdom by how much it has improved the lives of those we have taken in,] I decided. [We're off to a good start, wouldn't you agree?]
She nodded her agreement, before getting started.. secreting stuff. She couldn't really explain what she was doing.. instinct was taking over, and her body was just doing what it needed to do. I just had to stay out of the way.
[Why don't I, just.. start emptying these pods while you do that?]
She agreed, and told me what I needed to know, how to use the pods' magic to push the ponies within out of their loving dreams and into a deeper sleep, then peel open the pods and extract them safely. It was a lot of work to do without an extra hand, but I did it. Dragging them out to the sunlight of a clearing closer to the road, I was able to clean them off, and waited for them to wake outside. I was back in my familiar 'South Wind' pegasus form when they roused.
"What.. what happened?" one of them asked, looking to me for answers as I was the only one not stumbling groggily to their feet.
"You were all abducted, and kept in a magical sleep by changelings. Changelings feed on love, and I believe they were using you as part of the supply lines for an invasion of Canterlot. That invasion has already occurred, but was repelled. I was able to find you and rescue you. My name is South Wind. Are you all itinerant workers?"
They all nodded, eventually, before rushing me to pick me up and start carrying me off. "All hail South Wind, the hero!"
"Yes, well, that's all well and good. But there's more work to be done.. more ponies to be saved. Please, come with me! There's a lot of work, and time is of the essence!" Okay, the last bit might have been an exaggeration. It was unlikely that anypony would starve if we worked a little more slowly, or even if I did it all myself. But it worked to get the ponies focused.
We roved from lair to lair for the next day and a half, freeing ponies as quickly as we could. Many ponies took their leave either immediately after being roused or after helping with a couple more lairs, but that was fine. They had lives to get back to, and we quickly got past the number of hooves that could reasonably fit into the caverns to help.
When we finished, those that remained gathered together and managed to scrounge up a makeshift feast of wild berries, fruits and grasses, mushrooms, and so forth. I ate happily, enjoying the companionship. One of the younger victims, a filly named Cherry Blossom, wound a bunch of flowers together into a makeshift circlet and set it on my head. I wore it with pride, as the itinerants cheered for me. "Thank you, all for your kind support. And for the crown, milady," I bowed to the filly. "I promise to be a most generous and magnanimous king of the itinerants, and to protect my people, everywhere, to the best of my ability."
"All hail, South Wind! All hail the Itinerant King!" they shouted, playing along and laughing. I didn't gain any followers that day, but I did manage to finagle my title into the public consciousness, a rural legend to be shared from farm to farm. And that was enough for me, at least for the day.
"Hello," the two-toned voice of a changeling buzzed out into the cavern. There was something weird going on here, he could tell, and he was on guard. But he could sense another changeling ahead, around the corner, so hopefully that meant this place would be a safe haven. He squirmed his way into the cavern painfully. Three of his legs were broken, but luckily his wings had miraculously survived the crash landing after the love bomb hit him. Once he was through the narrow entry, he took flight again, hovering slowly into the cavern.
The fresh, slick trails of a dozen pods' occupants being removed concerned him. He was here hoping for food while he recovered from the abject failure of their invasion of Canterlot. If there wasn't any food.. well.. there had been a lot of pony activity at the last two lairs he checked, and now he didn't know if he had the strength to try for a fourth.
He passed by the empty pods, following his senses toward the other changeling. He rounded the last bend, only to come face to, well, thorax with 'ling in question. He stared a moment, mouth agape as he realized what she was doing, watching as she strained to push the massive egg free of her too-small body. Worse yet, he realized he recognized her. The traitor. The one who said she was abandoning her Queen for some strange 'king'.