When half an hour had passed and none of the Rainbooms transformations had shown any signs of wearing off, a certain level of understandable panic started to set in among them, with two reactions in particular summing up the spectrum.
"THIS IS AWESOME!" Rainbow Dash shouted to everyone and their grandmother as she barrel rolled a banked around the gymnasium. When it became clear her wings weren't going anywhere soon, it was all her friends could do to keep the prism headed girl from flying through a window and into the wild blue yonder. Thankfully the school was practically deserted, and the janitor either had his music up too loud, or just didn't care after the Battle of the Bands. Rainbow's friends however, a purple haired girl in particular, did not share her opinion.
"THIS IS HORRIBLE!" Rarity shrieked for what must have been the fifteenth time since they left the band room. "What am I going to tell my parents? What am I going to tell Sweetie Belle?! HOW IN THE WORLD AM I GOING TO FIND HATS TO GO WITH ALL MY OUTFITS?!" She was well past hysterics, pulling on her hair and pony ears as her pupils shrunk to pinpricks.
"Rarity," Applejack said slowly, taking the white girl's arms and gently lowering them away from her destroyed coiffure. "Just calm down. Take a deep breath." She did so, inhaling deeply and holding it. "And let it out." She exhaled, seeming to deflate as she did so, falling back onto a bleacher, numb. Applejack sighed and took a seat beside her, pony ears flattening under her hat in concern. It had taken her fifteen minutes to find a comfortable position that let her stetson hat hide her equine ears. Sunset was across the gym, busy keeping Fluttershy below the point of hyperventilating, and Pinkie Pie was bouncing between them giving no indication whatsoever that anything had changed in the slightest.
"This is bad," Fluttershy squeaked, wings wrapped around her shoulders like a safety blanket. "This is really, really bad."
"I don't know," Pinkie Pie said casually, wiggling her pony ears. "I think this is better actually. I can hear mice scampering under the seats, and I can still smell Cherry Berry's perfume from gym class!"
"Pinkie," Applejack sighed, but not without a smile on her face. "I'm pretty sure that ain't perfume yer smell'n." She paused, looking at each of her friends in turn, but only when she looked at Sunset Shimmer did she see the same suspicion, and she asked the question on everyone else's, excluding Rainbow's of course, minds.
"Sunset," Applejack asked tiredly. "You written Twilight yet?"
"Yeah," she sighed, knowing the message she had sent the Princess of Friendship was more along the lines of a text than a letter, but time hadn't been their luxury at the moment.
Dear Twilight,
Something else happened. We played through Welcome to the Show, and are now stuck in our pony forms. Help?
Sunset Shimmer.
"Hopefully she can find something to help us," Sunset said with a tone of resignation, gently massaging the spot between Fluttershy's wings, something she remembered seeing pegasus mothers do to calm their fillies down. "But until then we need to handle this ourselves. That means getting home without getting noticed."
"Aww," Rainbow groaned, "Where's the fun in that?" Applejack bit her tongue, having had just about enough of her cyan friend's refusal to see any downside in her wings.
"Dash this is serious," she said as calmly as she could manage. "Don't you remember all the trouble Principal Luna went through keep'n the cops away from the school after the Fall Formal? Or make'n sure Sunset wasn't arrested fer that matter?"
The red and yellow headed girl couldn't help but look away at the memory of her she-demon episode, but it had been Vice Principal Luna's willingness to forgive and even protect her that had really started her down the path to forgiving herself.
"What do ya think's gonna happen when someone posts a picture of you flying around main street on the web and some government varmits see it?"
"They'll try to catch us of course," she said casually, flying up and laying down in the scoreboard suspended from the gym's ceiling. "Don't worry girls, I'll protect you."
"Dangit Dash this ain't a joke!" the farm girl yelled, startling everyone except the rainbow haired girl lounging above their heads. "Now git down from der fore I come and git ya!" They all knew how Applejack's accent tended to get thicker with her temper, but they'd never outright made fun of her for it until now.
"Then come and git me Ground Pounder," Rainbow laughed, imitating Applejack's accent poorly. Rarity's head snapped left to look at her friend, as did Fluttershy, Pinkie’s and Sunset's, all to the orange girl slowly clenching her fists tighter as her eyes narrowed.
"What did you call me?" She asked through gritted teeth, as Rarity made the wise decision to move to the other side of the gym with the others. Rainbow rolled onto her side, one arm supporting her head as the other hung lazily over the side of the scorebox.
"Ground Pounder," she smirked innocently, "You know, landlocked, earth bound, flightless. Don't get me wrong, the ears and the hair look great on ya, but wings just make the look." Thankfully the wings came with enhanced reflexes, because the only warning Rainbow had was a feral roar and a split second sound of rending metal before a three foot section of the bleachers handrail impaled itself two feet from where her head had been.
"HOLY McCARTHY!" Rainbow yelled falling back off the score box and tumbling through the air before landing on a pile of exercise mats. "I know you been working out but dang girl!" Applejack barely heard any of it, just stood staring back and forth between where the handrail had been, and where it now hung stuck in the ceiling.
"How in sam hill did I?" she breathed, realizing she wasn't even out of breath, when Pinkie Pie came bounding up into her face.
"OooH! Do it again! Crush something else! Wait, are you gonna go Hulk? Please don't go Hulk, that would be bad. Not mention it was Fluttershy who did the whole rage strength thing in seaso."
"PINKIE!!" Sunset yelled, running up to her. "I think she gets it." The party machine looked at her friend, now several shades of orange paler than normal, and Pinkiepie's hair lost some of it's poof.
"Dang," Rainbow gasped looking at the handrail in the ceiling, then back at her wings. "Just what did that song do to us?" Applejack looked at her hands, her mind slowly registering a flurry of new sensations.
"AJ," Fluttershy asked from across the room, before the farm girl gave a nervous laugh.
"I'm, fine Shy," she said, flexing her arms and rolling her shoulders a little. "Matter ah fact, I feel better than a cow at a chicken dinner!" She looks around, before her eyes settled on the bleachers themselves, which folded out from the gym wall. She crouched down, placing both hand on the bottom bleacher and pushed, forcing the seat underneath the one above it while the inner mechanics groaned in protest. She kept pushing, until the whole bank had folded up under itself and into the wall. Applejack was only panting slightly, and by now Rarity and Fluttershy had joined Sunset and Pinkie in the middle of the gym.
"Oh my," both gasped, while Sunset and Rainbow gawked silently, and Pinkie bounced in excitement.
"OH Oh! I wanna try!" She said, running across the gym and trying to pull one of the handrails off the other rows of bleachers, without much success. "Hmm, Oh! How about those?" She sprinted over to a set of weights, and tried to lift one as big as her torso of the ground, but only managed to turn her face a deeper shade of pink. "Hm, No," she sighed putting down the barbell, then looked up and pointed. "What about that?" Her friends followed her finger up toward the scorebox where Rainbow had been lounging, and Rarity managed a laugh.
"Pinkie darling, I don't think you can lift something already hanging from the ceiling."
"You sure?" Pinkie Pies voice asked not from behind, but above them. Sunset spun around to look at where Pinkie Pie had been, then up to where the pink girl was now waving at them from on top of the scorebox. "Cause I saw this one guy lift a car floating in mid air once. Course he was a traveling magician." Her friends, though used to Pinkie's usual randomness, were still surprised. Oddly only Fluttershy managed to actually say anything.
"Pinkie Pie, I don't think now is a very good time for your umm, you know."
"My umm what?" The party girl asked innocently from her perch. "You girls have never complain about my gags before, on or off screen. Course I did see one of those Anime veins appear on Sunset's head once, but that was back when she was still a she-demon, just not raging yet."
"Pinkie dear," Rarity called tiredly, "We know you mean well, but I would appreciate if you tone down your antics for a short time."
"Why? It's not like I'm doing anything weird," she shrugged. "Well, except for having pony ears. And being a half pony. Oh and this." Without warning Pinkie Pie vanished in a flash of bright red light, then reappeared in another flash right in front of her friends, and giving all five heart attacks.
"Jesus Pinkie warn a gal will ya?" Applejack snapped, already re adjusting her hat after the jump scare caused her pony ears to pop it off. Sunset stared at their bubbly friend, and whether it was the shock of her sudden appearance or just a build up from what had happened to them today, she managed to override a reflex she had trained into herself.
"How?" Sunset asked, only for Pinkie Pie to shrug.
"Magic I guess. Isn't that what these things are usually explained to us as?" Sunset's mouth hung open for a moment, before she realized that really was the best explanation they had at the moment.
"Okay," she sighed, "Sit-rep. Not only will our pony-forms not go away like normal, now it looks like our magic is showing itself in other ways." Rarity looked down at herself, hand nervously running through her carefully styled but now ruined hair.
"What kind of, other ways darling?" she asked.
"Well," Applejack said finally fitting her hat back over her new ears. "From what I can gather, Pinkie's got some kinda flashy teleport'n ability, and I got super strength. You know, if this is our magic showing itself, maybe we all got some crazy new powers."
"Yeah," Dash smiled drinking in the idea. "Hey, if we really did get super powers from that song, imagine what'll happen when we play another one."
"Lets not," Fluttershy squeaked, "and say we didn't. I just want to get home without my wings being seen."
"Fluttershy's right," Sunset said firmly. "Magic powers or not we still need to figure this out. Hopefully Twilight will have an idea on how to fix this, so until she writes back I think we should all."
"All what?" Rainbow asked, flying up in front of Sunset, tone and expression both accusing. "Hide in our rooms and tell our parents we're too sick to move until Princess Twilight returns our call? Do none of you see what is happening? How come all this awesomeness is happening to us, and this time all you see is crap about to hit the." Without warning the gym doors swung open behind her and the outline of a tall woman appeared on the far wall.
"Fan," she finished, swallowing hard as she turned to face the shadow's owner with her fellow rainbooms, ears flattened against their rainbow hair, two with wings folded sheepishly behind their shoulders. To say vice principal Luna looked unamused would have been far too generous, even for Rarity.
"The term you're looking for Ms. Dash," she said flatly, "Is spirit talent. And if each of you wish to venture out in public without ridiculous hats or long coats again, you'll meet me in my office. Now."
Manehattan was known as the city that never sleeps by countless people around the world.
'They're wrong,' she thought as she passed another closed store front, entrance barred with a drop down gate to keep thieves out. Though her age was obvious to any onlooker, she was also unquestionably beautiful despite her mess of dark blue hair, streaked through with bands of Pink and purple pulled up in a pony tail. Her eyes shone with a subtle combination of dissecting curiosity and admirable innocence behind her thick rim glasses.
Twilight Sparkle knew this part of town had its fair share of gangs and thugs to worry about, but this was the only neighborhood where rent was low enough that she could afford to run her own lab. Okay so maybe lab was too generous, but at least it was a place with cheap electricity and plenty of indoor space for her experiments. And most importantly, it was far enough away from campus that she didn't have to worry about those idiots from the University looking over her shoulder.
Twilight briefly thought back to the path that had lead her to where she was now. Two years ago she had graduated from the Crystal Academy ahead of her class and after accepting a number of generous scholarships had moved from Canterlot to Manehattan University. She was nervous about leaving home for the first time, but her parents had never been anything less than supportive of her dreams and goals. Her older brother, Shining Armor, and his girlfriend Cadance helped her get through the first weeks of living on her own and learning to take care of the puppy her aunt had given her. Shining of course had to ship out a few weeks later, some archeology dig up near the arctic circle, but Cadance still dropped in to say hi when she could take off from her job as Manehattan's premier up and coming matchmaker.
Her old babysitter had become as much a big sister as Twilight could ever ask for, and words could not describe how much she'd helped during Shining's first deployment. Twilight thought about how Cadance and Shining's relationship had grown over the years, from friends by circumstance to boyfriend-girlfriend for four years and counting. She was still wondering when Shining was going to pop the question when she heard something scrape the sidewalk behind her.
That something, she saw glancing back quickly, was the steel toe boots of one of the two men walking behind her. She turned back and kept walking, hand reflexively drifting down toward her purse and the can of pepper spray she kept handy. Just to see if they really were following her, she crossed the street at the next intersection, walked down the block a little ways, then crossed back over. They never once left her trail.
Now Twilight's heart was creeping up her throat, and in her panic she decided to try and lose them by running down an alley and out the other side before they saw where she'd gone. Twilight had never been a fan of horror movies growing up, otherwise she would have known just how bad an idea her plan was.
She bolted for the first alley she saw, sprinting between two brick buildings, nearly tripping over a sack of trash and a half full metal trashcan next to a recycle bin, before she skidded to a clumsy stop. In front of her was a ten foot wall of chainlink fencing, and behind her Twilight realized, were her two pursuers.
"St-stay back," She warned, grabbing her pepper spray and raising it with shaking hands. "Don't come any closer!" If the men heard her they didn't show it, and started walking down the alley, their shoulders shifting and a slight sway in their walk. Twilight had seen enough nature documentaries to know the look of a predator circling its prey, and she took a step back when the man on the left, a tall, thin, but well muscled man with dark red skin and highlighter green hair picked up a rusted pipe and started twirling it like a police baton.
"Nowheres te run kid," He sneered, voice heavily accented Manehattan, as his much wider and broader partner chuckled in a deep voice. He was a shade of light blue and had a shaved head sporting a square jaw and crooked teeth that jutted out from his upper lip like tusks.
"Nowhere to hide neither," He laughed, cracking his knuckles in macho display, clearly the brawn of the pair.
"Name's Acid Trip," The red man smiled venomously, "And my friend here is Kick Start." The blue man punched his fist into his open palm.
"And you're coming with us," he chuckled walking closer and closer. "So don't do anything stupid, like scream or nothing." The moment Kick Start was within range Twilight sprayed him right in the eyes. Kick Start yelped and cursed as the burning consumed his senses, but to Twilight's shock he barely stumbled back before shaking his head and looking her dead in the eye.
"That wasn't very nice you know," He snarled through clenched teeth and squinted eyes, clearly more angry than hurt. Before she could squeeze off another spray a hard left handed slap knocked the bottle from her hand, while the other punched her in the gut, winding and doubling her over.
"Careful Kick," Acid Trip scolded walking up, "Remember these little girls break easy." He closed in on Twilight and raised his pipe to hit her, but the purple girl kicked her leg out and up into his crotch. "Herk!" He gasped through clamped teeth as he dropped the pipe and both hands went to cradle his gentlemen's region. KIck Start's had shot to her throat, locking around it like a vice and starting to squeeze. Twilight kicked at scratched at him, but his grip only tightened. Just as her vision began to blur from oxygen loose, something inside Twilight Sparkle snapped.
"Get," she snarled, hands clenched into fists.
"Away." The trash cans sitting nearby began to rattle, their contents within dancing like baking popcorn.
"From ME!." A deep pink, almost red aura enveloped her hands and flashed over her eyes, and before either Acid Trip or Kick Start knew it, a wall of the same color energy exploded out from their would be victim, catapulting both criminals back and out of the alley like cannon balls.
Twilight fell to her knees, panting and gasping as she tried to reintroduce her lungs to air. Before she could even begin to make sense of what had just happened, she heard the groaning curses and swears of her attackers getting back up, then the sudden rending of metal wire as the fence behind her was ripped up the middle like wet cardboard and a man's voice shouted at her.
"Fly, quickly!" Twilight took off through the new escape route, and she didn't stop running until her apartment came into sight. She bounded past the doorman, down the stairs and locked the door to her basement accommodations behind her. She leaned back against the door and slid down to the floor, gasping and panting as her mind reeled.
Just ten minutes ago her world had made perfect logical sense. Now she was struggling just to remember what she had been thinking when she did whatever she had done to those two crooks. Unfortunately, her world wasn't finished being strange.
"Well that could have gone worse," the male voice from the alley said, making Twilight jolt up, turn around and back away from the door.
"Wh-who are you?" she asked, fear welling up inside her. Grogar could practically smell the terror she was feeling, and put on one of his more fatherly performances.
"I believe a more pertinent question at the moment is not who, but what." Twilight felt a rush of cold air slip over her shoulders, and she turned around just in time to see the faint outline of a tall broad shouldered man standing before her, but like fog in sunlight he vanished as quickly as he appeared.
"I am a Nagzul, a wraith," he explained to a wide eyed Twilight. "Many centuries ago, my soul was condemned to a formless existence wandering the living realm." He was expecting a flurry of questions, but instead the purple girl glared at him and crossed her arms.
"Okay where's the camera?" She asked flatly.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I bet you think you're so clever," she deadpanned. "Scaring a girl half to death, then make her think she's in the middle of some fairy-tale with ghosts and magic. Puh-lease, there's no such thing as magic." Grogar realized he should have recognized a scholar of logic, but he suppressed an invisible manic grin when he realized the knowledge of magic had indeed been forgotten to the commoners.
"Is that so," He asked challengingly. "Very well, then if you would be so kind as to explain my presence here."
"Simple," Twilight smirked. "You're not. You're just a recording playing from a speaker someone hid in my lab along with a holographic projector to make your fancy ghost-phantom image."
"Wraith my dear," he corrected cooly. "And I assure you, I am no illusion. Nor were those ruffians who attacked you part of a deception. Though I do fail to see what you needed my help for."
"Of course they were part of the tri, wait," Twilight stopped catching his last words. "Your help?"
"You summoned me my Dear," Grogar lied matter-of-factly. "Quite impressive actually. I've only known a handful of mages capable of even talking with a spirit, much less summoning one." To her credit, Twilight only looked surprised for a moment before shaking her head and gathering her wits.
"Yeah right," she scoffed, "Lemme guess, you're an ancient spirit come to help me, and I'm a magical fairy princess from another dimension. Get real."
"I can't," He flatlined. "Non-corporeal phantom remember?"
"Will you drop the act already!" She finally shouted, yanking at her hair and pulling more than a few strands free of her pony tail. "I know it's a trick, so just give it up!"
"Bark, bark!" Both the girl and wraith's attention was diverted to a small purple and green dog running up to them, yapping angrily as he rushed to his master.
"Spike!" Twilight cried, kneeling down to scoop up the little pup as he ran into her arms as was his habit. He switched from guard dog to puppy in an instant, licking her on the face as she giggled at the coldness of his tongue.
"What a charming little dog," Grogar said without much feeling, truly detesting such animals for their ability to sense him no matter what his disguise. In fact the moment he spoke Spike turned around in Twilight's arms and his lips curled back as a snarl built behind his teeth.
"Spike what's wrong?" She asked, "There's nothing ther ..." Twilight's brain skipped like a record when she remembered dogs never bark at nothing. Grogar couldn't resist a smile.
"All a trick is it?" he said slyly, before he became very serious. "Whether you believe my words or not you did summon me, and that was a self defense spell you cast on those hooligans, so I suggest you start believing in fairy tales my dear. You're in one."
Pain. Unrelenting, agonizing pain. That was all that greeted Chrysalis when she awoke. Memories of her fall into the catacombs and her deal with ... Grogar had he called himself? returned to the front of her mind, along with pure dread of what had happened to her body.
"Oh God," she whimpered through the pain as she sat up and looked down at herself. Gone was her charcoal skin and blue hair, replaced with jet black chitin covering her like armor. Long locks of stringy, sticky hair fell about her face, all the way down to the small of her back, feeling like spider's webbing when it brushed her cheeks. A deep breath made her realize her mouth had changed too, her lower jaw considerably more flexibly, and a quick prod of her tongue revealed all her teeth had become pointed and needle like, with her canines transformed into vampiric fangs.
She held her head as her senses swam, feeling a large mass of chitin bulging out above her brow into three razor sharp ridges that not only held her webbing hair out of her eyes, but gave the impression of a twisted crown. She looked down at her arms, their shape still mostly human save for her hands, which now sported three long spindly fingers between two only slightly thicker thumbs, each digit topped with a hooked talon like claw. The black shell covering her torso was womanly and alluring, sparing none of the curves she had prided herself on as a human, with her bosom and waist covered by an extra layer of vibrant azure chitin. She leaned forward, whimpering and cradling her head as a steadily rising cacophony of voices rose inside her skull, threatening to drive her mad, until she felt a hard but warm hand on her shoulder, and the voices dropped in volume.
"Well, well," a scratchy male voice mocked from somewhere behind her. "This is the new Queen of the Changelings?" Chrysalis rose to her feet, now a pair of avian claws connected to long digitigrade, cat like legs. "Funny," he scoffed. "Usually they come out looked like a banshee's arse. This one's too pretty." Chrysalis felt a new set of lids fall over her eyes, illuminating the dark cavern like infrared goggles, before clearing to something resembling normal vision.
Before her were two creatures, neither in any way human, but both clearly male. One was thin and willowy, branch like limbs dangling from his twisted grey hunchbacked body, which caused his snake like head to jut forward. His red eyes only added to the fearsomeness of his appearance, slanting back along and up his skull like knife marks more than true organs. His body seemed to be shifting all the time, as if blowing in a nonexistent breeze, like he was made of smoke.
"Careful Shadowfright," the deeper male voice of the being beside him warned. "Don't forget when you wake one changeling, you wake them all." Shadowfright shot a glare at his compatriot, eyes narrowing and glowing blood red before turning back to Chrysalis, but she was less worried about the ghost like creature, and more about his titanic friend.
"Of course Tirek," Shadowfright hissed sarcastically at the larger being, "As always your council carries the gravest of weights."
Tirek was a behemoth in every sense of the word: Seven feet of dull, rusted, impenetrable black and red armor towered over every other being in the caverns. Titanic shoulder pauldrons widened his already massive upper body, fitted over a chestplate made to resemble that of a hugely over muscled man, with a horned helm atop his head sporting a visor that completely hid his face. His lower body was no less large, stomach protected by a dozen belts of solid metal, thighs covered by a skirt of linked plating, and heavy metal boots that came to his knees.
"Ignore the phantom your highness," Tirek groaned tiredly, "He has never had a concept of propriety amongst royals, even when he did have a body of his own."
"Look who's talking," Shadowfright sneered at the wall of walking metal. Tirek snarled and lunged for him, only for Shadowfright to faze through his armored gloves like smoke, floating as a cloud through the cavern before reforming behind Chrysalis. "And there are benefits to not having a body." Tirek's only response was a bull like snort before turning back to Chrysalis.
"As I said, ignore the shade. I am Lord Tirek," he said bowing despite his bulk, "faithful sworn-sword servant of Emperor Grogar." Chrysalis barely had time to return the courtesy with a small curtsey before Shadowfright's contempt flooded the cavern.
"You'll have to forgive him," he sighed with an eye-roll. "His people were always overly formal, and the royals were the worst. You can call me Shadowfright, personal liaison between the allies of Emperor Grogar and the forces of Nightmare."
"I am," Chrysalis stumbled for a short moment before remembering Grogar's words. "Chrysalis, queen of the Changelings."
"Finally!" Shadowfright yelled in relief, "A queen that doesn't waste time on imagined titles. I knew our master would find a loyal ally in you."
"Where is he?" Chrysalis asked, not forgetting the shade's words as many more changelings began to gather around their queen. Their chattering and buzzing drew the attention of Tirek, but Shadowfright seemed to be ignoring them outright.
"Our Lord," Tirek explained, shifting uncomfortably as the number of changelings around them steadily increased, "Has left for distant lands in search of new allies."
"Yesss," Shadowfright hissed, "There's an old saying I'm sure you know: The more the merrier when it comes to blows." His rhyme descended into a fit of giggles, and Chrysalis wondered if the shades body wasn't the only thing not all there.
"Lord Grogar has commanded us to offer our assistance to you your Highness," Tirek continued over his compatriots high pitched laughter. "A newly revived hive such as yours must feed soon, and in great amounts."
"And that's the problem with your world," Shadowfright whined, mood flipping like a coin on a see-saw. "Humans these days are nothing but war, hatred, and bigotry, with occasional bouts of genocide. Not exactly prime feeding ground for a race that feeds off positive emotions."
"Leave that," Chrysalis snapped, before her mouth parts curled back in a wicked smile of dripping fangs and pointed teeth, "to me." She put her back to her new allies, turning to the gathered mass of chittering, hissing Changelings. The voices had been growing in her head again, but no instead of a harsh racket or pleading shouts and cries, they were speaking together, waiting, and asking for orders.
"Sisters," She cried, pale green eyes flashing a brilliant shade of blue as those of the Changelings did the same. "Brothers. My children. Too long you've been imprisoned down here. Too long you've waited for a Queen to lead you back to the world that shunned you. Too long you've been starved of the nourishment you need." The buzzing intensified into a roar as thousands upon thousands of pairs of changeling wings beat together as their owners crouched lower and lower to the ground, fangs and claws bared in wild anticipation. And Chrysalis was drinking in every ounce of the pure admiration welling up from them as she turned to Shadowfright.
"I'm afraid I may have shut the door on my way in," she sneered. "Would you mind opening it?" Even without a mouth, the Nightmare Shade was grinning from ear to ear.
"It would be my supreme pleasure, Your Highness."
"My fellow Changelings," She cried turning once more to the hive, before unfurling her own translucent blue tattered insect wings. "LETS FLY!" Shadowfright's body collapsed into a cloud of inky mist, flying through the caverns, up through ancient catacombs, until he found the collapsed entrance that had allowed the new queen entrance.
The first thing the diggers heard was a massive explosion, like the earth itself had been torn open. They scrambled as a geyser of snow, ice and rock erupted from the tundra, and looked up in terror as a grey cloud of smoke seeped up from the crater. Shining Armor rushed outside his tent, just in time to see the mist replaced with a flood of screeching black bodies flying up into the sky like locusts. His enduring memory however, would be the single female form hovering among them, glowing eyes drunk on the power and panic incited by her swarm.