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// Chapter 14: The flow of Love 
// Story: Itinerant Kingdom 
// by Istaran 
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"No, I am not going to have a changeling orgy," I said to the dozen new recruits Mirror had brought me. One raised a hoof and opened his mouth,  but I cut him off. "And no it has nothing to do with your appearance. I don't care about that."

"I knew this so called king couldn't handle all of us," the largest began. He could be a problem.  He was a leader, somewhere between a queen and a drone. The drones reflexively obeyed them, if they didn't contradict the queen.

"Sex is not love," I countered.  "I am perfectly capable of loving all of you without an orgy."

"And we are perfectly capable of taking what we need!" he replied. 

I felt the familiar pull of love being drawn from me, and pulled back.  Hard. I had had a month of practice pulling and pushing love; he had had a lifetime.  I expected to slow the drain until Wind could intervene.  I didn't expect him to collapse almost instantly,  crumpled into a heap. I didn't expect Mirror's investigation to show he had flat out died. They were all in a weakened state, but I hadn't realized how weakened until then. Though I also hadn't realized the magnitude of my own power. 

As king, sometimes you have to admit your mistakes.  And sometimes you need to pretend you meant to do that. "Rule number 1. No one steals love from the Itinerant Kingdom.  Understood? " Agreement was instant and unanimous. 

I took a few minutes to ensure they each had a name, and to take their oaths of loyalty, before offering them each a drop of blood to seed their new subnets. I used the spiders to flood their bodies with sleep inducing hormones and they quickly drifted off, giving me time to meditate.

These new recruits were a problem. They were an asset and an opportunity, and in their own way as broken and needy as anypony else I brought on, but they were also a problem. I could flow my love into Wind Chaser easily, because I loved her on her own right, and Mirror I had been able to accept easily enough. But these were almost a dozen former enemy combatants, and ones I didn't know in any other sense. They came to me out of respect for my power, and desire for food and healing, in short simple biologically driven greed. They were hungry and I was food as the leader had made abundantly clear. Mirror had given up first, I realized. It was part of what made him easier to accept. He was like Fog Dancer had been: defeated, and without hope, barely able to believe it when a way out was freely offered. But these changelings had hope, and felt entitled to have it fulfilled.

I thought back to Earth, searching my thoughts for a direction to go in. With the insect like creatures arrayed before me, I thought of Ender's Game. What would Ender do? While he was perhaps best known for decisive, lethal blows to his enemies, the book had some interesting ideas on his approach. It said that he got to know his enemies.. how they think, what they like and dislike, love and hate. By truly knowing them, he could not help but love them.. and in loving them, knew how to destroy them. I didn't need any help destroying these changelings, but perhaps getting to know them would help me to love them?

As the spider networks connected to their minds, I started dredging up their memories. I watched everything.. viewed their whole lives flashing before my eyes. I was.. in a word, revolted. These were monsters, and they made no excuses, not in their own minds. Cruel. Vindictive. Jealous. I knew Wind Chaser's past was not much better, and Mirrors was almost identical. So why were they different now?

[A moment of kindness.] Wind Chaser said, Mirror concurring. Mirror brought to my mind the simple sharing of imaginary tea with Midnight Oil. I felt the reframing of his worldview that had happened in that moment, like someone had affixed a giant wrench to the universe and turned it 90 degrees. Everything in his past had taken on a new meaning as he viewed it from a new angle. Wind Chaser showed me a memory I had seen before, from the eyes of my other self.. or my other self's other self. Istaran, withdrawing the blade from her neck and offering her a hand up, that cold, possessive, draconic love as he added his enemy to his own personal hoard, treasuring her instantly, far more than her queen ever had.

They had to be shown love before they could rise to be worthy of it. And in that sense it had to be unconditional.

I thought back to another fiction from Earth. Homestuck. Troll romance. Moirallegiance. A form of love born out of pity. I smirked to myself, looking down at the sleeping insect-ponies. Outcasts from the world around them, and now their own hive. Shattered shells covering empty hearts. It was easy enough to pity them if I set aside any thought of grudges. I had healed easily enough from their blows, but they had never healed from their own cruel birthright. But Wind Chaser was proof that they could, and Mirror another point of encouragement. Soon the love was flowing, their starvation deferred even as the spiders repaired their physical wounds.

One of the changelings sat up, quite a bit before the integration should have finished. 

It was the leader, the one I had killed. How did he even have  a subnet? It was one of Turbine's spawn, designated 'null'. [Wind Chaser.. what the fuck?]