The changeling hive was in dire straits, it had been years since the Canterlot attack, they had used far more of their reserves in that catastrophically bad move than they could afford to, and before the spell wave had hit they'd failed to recover anywhere enough to recoup their losses , let alone the feast Queen Chrysalis had promised them all to gain their allegiance. The upper classes, always bred to be more intelligent than the lower castes were starting to mutter angrily amongst themselves. To make matters worse it had alerted both Princess Celestia, and Princess Luna to their existence, and pissed off the Alicorn of love as an added bonus. Never a good thing. Tartarus hath no fury like an irate Alicorn Princess, and now they had not just three but four to contend with.
Even the drones were starting to slip gradually from the Queens careful control, showing slightly more autonomy than they were supposed to as her once unstoppable powers of mental domination and control started to wane. Her reputation, and her body had both taken a solid battering during the invasion. To add insult to injury their carefully planned invasion had been foiled by LOVE.
Now There were rumours of hunters breaking from the hive mind to hunt and survive alone, and harvesters who had been sent to Equestria vanishing without a trace. The Queen of course would have none of that, such talk was destructive to her children and her hive, scaremongering irritated her. so she simply cut the missing Changelings off from the hive mind and created a new one. Creating new drones was far less costly after all than recovering something she deemed expendable.
One thing she couldn't ignore however was the disappearance of ponies from the cocoons. That food was far too valuable to allow to vanish. The situation had forced her a few weeks ago to give the order to round up not just ponies, but lesser prey as well.
The food they provided was far inferior to the high quality the upper castes had come to expect over the years. This only made the discontented grumbling from them worse, and there had been attempts on the queens life. Such actions were of course punished in the worst possible manner that Chrysalis could dream up. A process that the hive knew as husking. The unfortunate victim was drained dry of as much love as could be taken without killing them, then fed barely enough to keep them alive. Too weak to even move they were turned into essentially statues, then their still conscious husks used in construction of the hive itself. Chrysalis often joked that at least that way she got some use out of them. What none of the upper castes even seemed to realise that they were being kept in luxury compared to the lower castes, but then again the lower orders were mindless compared to them, easy to command and control as always. As such they considered them beneath their notice.
Chrysalis had started paying closer attention to what was going on when she had noticed a sharp reduction in her own ration of love, of course she drained the quartermaster who had allowed that change completely dry in order to top up her ration, but he did have a point. She had tried sending guards to figure out the cause of the vanishing ponies, but thus far they had come up completely blank. This had of course infuriated the queen even further resulting in her tightening the control in her hive to even more draconian levels.
Dawn of course completely unaware of this had just entered the hive, and calmly drank from the carefully rationed water supply. The majority of the drones of course completely ignored her, the majority of the worker caste were after all a fairly simple type and had received no orders to report or observe anything around them but their assigned tasks.
The noise in the hive was of course deafening, so many Changelings moving about even if they never uttered a word was rather hard on the poor fillies ears. Dawn just wasn't used to company at all beyond the dozen or so hardshells she had followed here, This was just overwhelming to her. Everywhere she looked something was happening, the noise and work in the hive never stopped. Even if a drone dropped down dead from fatigue they were just carried off to be drained so the love could be used to produce a new one.
So Dawn quietly slipped away from the crowded areas of the hive and found herself a safe little corner to hide out in. An odd practically abandoned chamber tucked far out of the way of the majority of the heavier travelled areas that lead out into a room full of big green pods. Some of them had creatures that looked a bit like her, she would have looked closer but there were big Hardshells there who didn't ignore her like the little ones did, but at least she wouldn't starve as the next room over had little pods. Every once in a while one of the smaller Hardshells would come into that room and put fresh prey into them. Weak little things like bunnies the occasional mouse or vole, and a few other types of creatures she had not seen before.
Her mouth watered at the sight of such a feast but she was careful, she only took one thing, a rabbit, it was enough to keep her going for a day or two, she had plenty of water, and in a few days nobody would notice when something else was taken. She had tried tasting the green goo that the rabbit had been suspended in too, but discovered it tasted a bit like a mix of earwax and snot to her, so she washed the disgusting bogeyslime off it careful not to miss any and dug herself a new den in the waxy hive walls, too small to draw attention but big enough for her to hide away in. That done she lay down and dug into her pilfered meal with gusto, she could probably restrain herself but she was hungry and there was plenty more where that came from.