//------------------------------//
// Oh Dear 
// Story: The Prince 
// by BronyWriter 
//------------------------------//

Oh geez. Oh holy me. I mean, I'm not holy, but ponies say "Holy Antares" when they're freaking out, and I hear them a lot, so...

Uh...

Bgwah?

I couldn't really decide which fact I find more disturbing at the moment: the fact that a changeling had managed to sneak into my palace, or the fact that Ara and Veritas didn't seem to be fooled by it in the slightest, so they decided to kill and eat it.

Before that I had to do something about the screaming. I folded my ears and put my hoof on Tulip's back, only succeeding in getting her to sit down. She still shrieked in horror at the sight of her foals eating a changeling. I groaned and cast a quick silencing spell over her. Her screaming would not help the situation in the least.

Well, noticing that no sound was coming out of her mouth, Tulip closed it and put her head in her hooves, tears of horror streaming down her face.

Yeah, I could kind of get where she was coming from. A lot, really, but screaming wouldn't help anypony right now. I ignited my horn and turned Tulip to face me, dissipating the sound spell as I did. She seemed to be about ready to start screaming again, but I raised a hoof to cut her off.

"Okay, Tulip, I know this is shocking, but I need you to go outside while I handle this." I tried not to look over at the foals, who continued happily munching away on the dead changeling. I failed. Shudder. "I don't know what they're going to do when I try to take it away from them, but I know that they can't hurt me, okay?"

Tulip's reply came out as a whimper, but she nodded and slowly walked out of the room. I didn't miss her body convulsing with heavy sobs. I couldn't really blame her. I wanted freak out myself. Once she left, I gently closed the door and turned back to the foals, who were still happily eating the dead changeling. I laid down in front of the two of them, catching their attention. They looked over in my direction with a curious expression, but smiled when they noticed it was me. I weakly returned it.

"Uh... hey, you two. You, uh, should probably stop eating that. You wouldn't want to get a stomachache, right?"

Ugh. Not my best line. Their looks of confusion returned.

"What, uh, what I mean is, that's not really something that you should be eating." I ignited my horn and gently lifted the two of them off of the changeling before sliding the changeling out from underneath them and setting them down away from it. Their eyes followed the changeling as I put it in a corner of the room, but they didn't make any effort to get to it. Good thing they had that connection with me. Any other pony and it might not have gone so well. I gave them my best attempt at a comforting smile, given that my heart felt like it was beating a thousand times a minute. I levitated the foal bag over to me and took out some wipes.

"Okay, let's get you two cleaned up."

Their looks of confusion didn't fade away, but they didn't resist as I wiped the green changeling blood off of them. It took a few minutes and a lot of wipes, but eventually they didn't look like characters from an Eli Roth film anymore. I continued smiling weakly at them and once more ignited my horn, lifting their crib up and motioning for them to go under it.

"It's about naptime, don't you two think? You've had a... busy day. You two need your rest."

They tilted their heads at me, and I motioned to the direction of their crib. After a moment, the two of them grumbled something in foal-talk, then crawled underneath their logs with continued encouragement from me. Once I felt they had settled, I gently set the crib down and turned off the lights.

Well, that's one problem solved. Now I have to deal with the me dammed dead, half eaten changeling in the room! I gulped and turned to the corner I had laid it in. Nope, it hadn't gone away just because I really, really wanted it to. I groaned and levitated the foal bag into the air. I figured that I could get it out that way. Just cast an extending spell on it and...

Huh...

There was already an extending spell on it. Not a great one, but it would have done the job. Guess I know how they were going to get the foals out. I levitated the changeling and gingerly slid it into the foal bag, trying to make the process as clean as possible. Ara and Veritas had done a number on this thing. As such, I failed miserably. I cleaned the bag off as best as I could before zipping it up and walking out the door. Tulip waited for me on the other side, her face, already tear-streaked, went a little green when she noticed the bag. I groaned and flattened my ears.

"I'll... I'll buy you a new one." I began walking towards my secret laboratory. I had to be discreet about this thing. Tulip quickly followed.

"Prince Antares, what are we going to do?" Tulip moaned.

"We're going to get rid of this thing, then I'll talk to Celestia and Luna about it," I said, trying to keep my voice as even as possible, despite my inward screaming.

"That's not what I mean," she replied. "I'm talking about my foals! I d-didn't know that they'd do something like this!" Tulip paused for a moment to wipe her eyes, then ran to catch up with me. "What do we do about them?"

"Tulip, if you can figure that out, please do let me know." Realizing that I said that with a bit too much bite, I adjusted my tone a little. "I'm going to be working on this. I'm not just going to get rid of the body and be done with it. We're going to figure out what happened here today, so don't worry."

Tulip nodded glumly, but didn't say anything else. The two of us reached the door to my research lab, and the pegasi guarding it saluted me. I returned that with a small head tilt.

"Okay, I need to get in there pronto." I hoped they remembered the stress password. "It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again!"

The two pegasi looked at me like I had gone nuts. I groaned and tried again.

"It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told!"

"Uh, Prince Antares, are you...?"

"That's the stress password, remember?!" I snapped. "Put the freaking lotion in the basket!"

The two guards flinched back, but saluted me and opened up the door. I held my hoof up so that Tulip wouldn't follow me before rushing inside. I closed the door behind me and threw the bag underneath the closest table before sitting down, grasping my head in my hooves, and letting out a shriek of uncertainty, fear, and horror.

Good thing the room was soundproof.


*  *  *  *


After taking a few minutes to calm myself down a little, I focused my attention back on the bloody bag full of dead changeling. I grimaced and got to my hooves. Celestia would definitely need to know about this. I mean, if changelings were sneaking into my palace, then that put a definite damper on our plans to move the Elements to Canterlot. I mean, who's to say that they hadn't started sneaking into Celestia's castle, too? It would be a bad idea to move the Mane Six there, only to have them captured or killed by changelings.

They only needed to get one for them to not work. We would have to ward Canterlot Castle and hopefully get them there in a couple of weeks. We'd also double the Blade Wings in Ponyville until then.

I needed to talk to Celestia about all of that first. She might not be in the best physical or emotional state being that she's pregnant with our foal and... gah, I did not need this right now! One stressful event at a time, please!

But, given that our latest intelligence reports indicated that the minotaurs were massing on our western border, and had already had a few skirmishes with Saddle Arabian and buffalo scouts, it would probably get worse before it got better.

I sighed and walked out of the room. The changeling would keep for a little longer while I figured out what to do with it. I had to calm Tulip down to start with. That and find the real Sunny Breeze. There was no way that the mare I initially hired was a changeling. I hope.

I shut the door behind me and nodded to my soldiers before looking down the hall, expecting to see Tulip waiting for me there. I turned out to be mistaken. Frowning, I turned back to my soldiers.

"Do you know where Tulip went?"

The one on the left shrugged. "She just kind of ran off. She said she needed to go get something. Something that would help her protect her foals and Equestria." The guard looked to her fellow. "I think that's how she put it."

My frown deepened. "So wait, is she still in the castle?"

"What castle, Prince Antares?" said the one on the right. "I've been standing here so long, that my whole world has become this door and this bit of hallway."

"Okay, so you don't know." I groaned and rubbed my temple. "So that's... okay. Sure, whatever."

So I suppose that I had to add "find Tulip and figure out what she's up to" on top of everything else. Great.


*  *  *  *


It turned out that, yes, she had left the palace. I didn't really find that ideal, of course. Now more than ever I needed my consigliere, and she needed to be there for her foals. I know she said that she was going to get something to protect them, but come on, she still needed to take care of them!

I guess that's why it's a good thing we found the real Sunny Breeze. Yep, the changeling had left her tied up and gagged in a storage closet. We found her while scouring the castle for any more changelings. Of course in each room we put a changeling detection spell over each doorway. So I guess those were a few more things off of my list.

At least, that's what Celestia, Luna, and I had discussed. We managed to incinerate the body of the changeling Ara and Veritas had gotten to, and had the Blade Wings scouring Ponyville to see how many more there were.

Hopefully the answer was zero. I didn't need the Elements in danger.

A week passed and there was still no sign of Tulip. Sunny Breeze had been looking after the foals all of that time (with an armed guard, of course) which had proved a little more than difficult. Ara and Veritas were quite aware that Sunny was not their mother, and so they became rather fussy whenever she tried to do anything with them. When it got really bad, I had to come in to calm them down. They listened to me. However, I suspected that wouldn't last much longer if their mother didn't appear. I would consider having Valiant come back to the palace to help with them, but I needed all of the veteran soldiers that I could get to train the draftees.

But, every now and again the universe looks at me and decides that it's been too hard on me, so it decides to give me a break. It happened while I sat in my office, doing paperwork, trying to get lost in it so that I didn't have to think about how rough things were.

Then I heard a knock on the door.

I groaned and put my quill back in the inkwell. I ignited my horn and opened the door without even standing up. To my chagrin, I saw Time Keeper on the other side, bouncing up and down like a filly who had no clue where the bathroom was. I subtly grimaced, making a mental note to slip some Ritalin into his morning coffee sometime.

"Yes, Time Keeper?" I said, trying to mask the exasperation in my voice. "Is something the matter?"

"No, I mean, yes, I mean..." I raised my hoof ever so slightly, giving him the signal to calm way down. His eye twitched, but he took a deep breath before continuing. "Tulip is back, your majesty, and you need to see what she brought with her!"

I frowned and stood up. Tulip being back was indeed good news. Her foals would be happy to see her, at any rate. That didn't explain why Time Keeper was going nuts, though. What could Tulip have brought back that would make him act this way?

"Where is she, Time Keeper?" I walked over to my office door and Time Keeper moved aside so that I could get out. "Where is she and what has she been doing?"

"In the courtyard!" Time Keeper yipped. "Tulip has them in the courtyard! More ponies!"

"More ponies?" I began walking down the hall in the direction of my courtyard. "What do you mean? You know I don't like the pronoun game."

"I don't know how to describe it, Prince Antares." Time Keeper whispered dramatically. "I don't even know who these new ponies are!"

That troubled me. It could definitely be Time Keeper being his nervous self, something that the war didn't help in the least, but this was Tulip we were talking about. Her loyalty towards me bordered on fanatical, so I couldn't discount the idea that she'd done something dramatic, especially with this talk of more ponies.

Still, even thinking like I was, I found myself unprepared for the sight before me when I entered the courtyard.

There had to have been at least a hundred ponies standing at perfect attention before me. Each of them wore ornate battle armor, emblazoned with my cutie mark on the breastplate, The armor style itself struck me as something out of the Middle East, but I knew enough about my subjects to know that these ponies were from the southern tribes in Equestria. Standing at the front of the formation, head held high and also decked out in armor, was Tulip herself. She looked like a commander showing off her fresh recruits to a nearby general.

And it kind of freaked me out.

When the soldiers saw me come out to the courtyard, each of them, Tulip included, sunk into a low bow. Not the usual kind to show me respect, no, this was reverence. Bordering on worship.

And I thought I was freaked out before.

I slowly walked up to Tulip, stopping inches in front of her. I had to wait for a moment for my brain to re-boot, but when it did, I spoke quite eloquently, if I do say so myself.

"Huh?"

Tulip snapped to attention, and the rest of the ponies did the same. They had practiced this, it seems.

"Prince Antares, may I present to you my kin." She motioned behind her. "I went to my homeland because I knew we needed more troops. And, um, I talked to the nomadic tribes and told them the situation. These are the sons and daughters of the nobility of those tribes, here to assist you in any way that they can. They came to protect Equestria, its ponies, and, most importantly, you. So..." Tulip bowed to me again. "So yeah, I got some more ponies for you."

Given her speech, I began to wonder if she thought I'd be mad at the offering. I totally wasn't, more troops was always a good thing in this situation, but who she had gotten baffled me.

"Uh..." I blinked once, scanning the scene before me. "Well... I can say for sure that I'm surprised. This is... good."

Tulip looked back up to me, a hopeful smile on her face. "We want to help however we can, Prince Antares. We'll follow you to the end." She followed that up with some kind of war cry in some language that I couldn’t understand, something that the new troops promptly mimicked. But not only them. As the war cries went through the room, I heard the shouts grow louder, until the noise became almost deafening. It seemed that Tulip had brought more than just these few nobles. I flattened my ears to block some of the noise. I have to admit, it was kind of intimidating.

This is going to be interesting.


*  *  *  *


I walked through the muddy, chaotic field that we were using for our supply train. After six more trains exploded during attempts to move troops and supplies into Equestria to begin combat, we decided to forego them. Not that they would have gotten very far anyway. All intelligence indicated that the tracks had been severely sabotaged.

I didn't like it. Supply trains are slow and far too vulnerable. Not to mention the fact that this accursed rain had made moving the wagons nearly impossible. It always came at night, when most of the troops were too exhausted from pulling the supply wagons. We had attempted to put scouts up to catch the ponies involved in this weather, but the first night we tried that, we woke up to find all of their heads on pikes outside of my tent, one of whom had the words "nice try" scrawled on his forehead in blood.

It went on like that for a week. I couldn't understand how they kept doing it. It wasn't until we noticed that the clouds were mixed with some corrosive element on top of sound and camouflage spells that we understood why our scouts weren't coming back. That plus the speed and skill of whomever was doing this, likely Cadance's accursed Blade Wings, meant that no griffins wanted to go up to disperse the clouds. Especially since one head read "acid rain next time" when we found the latest patrols.

Morale was low, and I wasn't sure how it could get any worse unless the ponies followed through with their threat of acid rain.

I reached my tent, ignoring the salutes and murmurs of 'General' from my guard, and set my helmet down on the table that had been set up for me. I ignored the pang of hunger in my stomach as I looked over maps, troop reports, supply counts, and the rest of the boring nonsense that goes into being a field general. I confess that if I was in charge, I'd end this rotten war. We'd lost too many troops with nothing to show for it, and that was just on the western front. I didn't want to know how bad things would get when Mesud finally sent his troops into Griffonia.

We were in for a rough time, and I wasn't sure that whatever our Glorious Emperor had cooked up would get us out of it.

I heard my tent flap open and saw a servant coming inside, a fully loaded plate and a goblet of wine in his claws. I pushed aside some papers and motioned to the empty spot I had created. Some food would likely do me good. The servant put the plate and goblet down before bowing to me and backing out of my tent. I picked up my fork and absentmindedly took a bite of the steak I had been provided, just as my tent flap opened again and one of my subordinates, some lieutenant whose name I didn't quite remember, walked in and saluted me.

"General, I'm here to report on the current state of the war."

I nodded and motioned for him to continue as I took another bite.

"The troops are, well, not happy." He uneasily scratched the back of his neck. "Between the rain and our losses just getting this far, there's talk of desertion among some of them. I had anyone who spoke such nonsense put in the stockade for the night."

"That's a tactic that will only work for so long, I imagine," I muttered. "We need something to get the troops' morale up. Something that shows them that we can win this war!"

At that, the lieutenant grinned before pulling a piece of paper out of a satchel he had strapped to his side. "I think this will do nicely, sir."

"What is it?"

"It's some intel from one of our agents." He placed it down on the table in front of me. "I think this might do the trick."

I picked up the paper and quickly scanned it. It had better be as good as he promised or...

My eyes widened as the words registered in my mind. No. It was impossible. It had to be. But if it was true, then...

I put the paper down and put a claw up to my beak. "Is this accurate, Lieutenant?" I whispered.

His grin widened and he nodded. "Yep. There's no doubt about it at this point. Princess Celestia is pregnant. Antares is the father."

"But that means she won't be able to take to the field. A royal foal... they're not going to risk that." I could feel my face growing red at the idea. "This is... this may be exactly what the troops need. We won't face Celestia until she delivers the foal. Maybe we won't have to!" I stood up and began pacing around my tent. I felt a small itch at the back of my throat and I coughed to clear it up. "We... ah..." I cleared my throat again. Shock does odd things to me, I suppose. "We have to tell Emperor Cromwell if he doesn't... doesn't know already. If the war is still going on when Celestia delivers, we'll have to try to get ahold of it as a hostage to..." I felt the air around me become warmer by the second. I coughed and thumped my chest to satiate the itch. "To sue for peace. Antares and Celestia won't risk their foal for anything. Not even..."

"Sir, are you alright?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine," I said with a wave of my talons. "Just..." I thumped my chest again. "I think something went down the wrong pipe. Just need something to drink." I walked over to my desk where my goblet sat. My steps were becoming heavier, as though weights had been attached to my legs. I collapsed onto my chair and shakily grabbed my goblet to take a sip.

The moment I did, pain shot through my body, the likes of which I hadn't thought possible. I fell to the ground, twitching, not even able to scream. I heard the lieutenant rush out of my tent, shouting for help, but I knew it was too late. It wasn't more than a few moments before everything went black.


*  *  *  *


"It sounds like everything went according to plan," I said, putting the listening gem back in my saddlebag. I took out a sheet of paper which bore the images of each of the high ranking griffins and minotaurs, and put a big red X through the picture of the griffin general we had just poisoned. "Agent D, if you could sent word back to Canterlot of our success, I'd appreciate that."

The pegasus mare behind me saluted. "Yes, Commander Skies."

"One more thing, Agent D. Don't tell anypony about Princess Celestia's pregnancy. We can't have that getting out. Obviously she'll start to show here soon, but the royals want to keep it quiet for as long as possible."

Agent D saluted me again, and took wing towards Canterlot, allowing me to turn my attention back to the tent below me, which was already being flocked by griffins hoping they could save their already dead general.

"It seems things are going well, Agent L," I said with a grin. "Have you gotten to the rest of their food supplies?"

"The next phase is ready to go," Agent L said, saluting me.

"Excellent." I nodded. "We'll see how willing the griffin army is to get any closer to Equestria when they all have the runs. They're all going to go back to Iselin and let their dear old emperor know what they think of this war."

"Of course."

I stood up and stretched my wings out. I felt we'd had a really productive day, if I do say so myself. Time to get some rest. As I walked back towards my cloud tent, a thought struck me, and I turned back to Agent L.

"By the way, in case the poisoned food doesn't get the point across, activate the acid rain tonight if you would."

Agent L enthusiastically saluted me. "Yes, Commander Skies."

Content that the griffins would be out of this war soon, I went back to my tent for some shut-eye.