//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2 
// Story: To Serve the Hive 
// by Minds Eye 
//------------------------------//

	Fire burned in his chest as his last breath was squeezed out of him.  Hot, fetid breath from the minotaur washed over his face, and powerful arms crushed him against its massive chest.  Sparkles shot through his vision, and darkness closed in on the triumphant gleam in its eyes.
 
Power gathered in his horn, strength waning as the life was crushed out of him.  The eyes, had to aim for the eyes.  The bolt, more flash than force, found its mark.
 
A roar shook the hollow feeling in his ears, and he crumpled to the floor, sucking precious gulps of air.  Free, but no time.  He had no time.
 
Hooves found purchase on the craggy floor.  His jaws wrapped around the minotaur’s leg and pierced the soft flesh behind the knee with his fangs.  Wet, metallic heat spread through his mouth, and one violent pull slashed the wound open.
 
The massive beast bellowed in rage and fell to its knees.
 
He leapt on the minotaur’s back and sunk his fangs deep into the thick muscles around its neck, goading the scream until the last moment.  His forelegs wrapped around the beast’s throat like a vice.
 
The minotaur toppled backward, crushing him against the floor.  His jaws clenched harder to hold back his own scream as his still tender ribs endured the blow.  That was all he had to do.
 
Endure.
 
Blinding pain tore at his will as the beast thrashed and ground him between itself and the floor.  His grip cut further into the windpipe as resistance faded and the thrashing slowed.
 
Hold on.
 
His target quivered, and the heartbeat pulsing against his hooves stopped.  Done.  The beast was dead.
 
He pulled his fangs out of the flesh, gasping for air against the dead weight pinning him down.  His forelegs only pushed it off so far, burning from exertion and lack of air.
 
“Brother,” he gasped, his eyes searching the destroyed cabin for any sign of his kin.  Several logs in the walls were scorched black from his blasts.  The beast’s glass lantern, somehow unbroken, lay next to the pages from a toppled bookshelf.  “Where are you?”
 
“H-here,” his Hive brother said, poking his head over the top of an overturned table.  “Is... is it over?”
 
His legs buckled under the bloodsoaked weight of his foe.  “Help me.  We can’t be seen here!”
 
“Right!”  The brother scrambled to his side.  “Okay, push!”
 
Together, they managed to move the body off of him.  The fire in his lungs flared with each breath, but he was free again.  “Windows."  He coughed.  "Look to see if anyone’s coming.”
 
“Who would—“
 
“Look!”  He pressed a hoof to his side, hissing in discomfort.  No breaks.  “Just look.”
 
The brother shook his head and walked around the cabin.  “I see the lake.  I see an empty path leading up to the door.  What were you expecting this time at night?”
 
“I don’t like screams.”  He rolled to his hooves, legs trembling as bands of pain flared and subsided.  “We don’t know who heard what.  It’s bad enough you needed me to step in.”
 
The other flinched from his words.  “I know, but you saved my life.  Thank you.”
 
“I do my duty.”  He took another breath and trudged to join his brother at the window.  “So what about yours?  What did you find out?”
 
They watched the surface of the lake glitter under the moonlight in silence.
 
“Three days, brother,” he sighed.  “You had three days to ask a question, and now the one with the answer is dead.”
 
“He didn’t trust me!”  His brother snarled and spun away from the window, wings flared.  “He’s practically a hermit.  The closest village is half a mile away.  A stranger wasn’t exactly welcome here.”
 
“I know.  I was watching.”
 
His brother kicked the body behind him, a hollow thump in the quiet.  “Why are we even here, anyway?  What could this thing possibly know?”
 
“It isn’t our place to question our Queen’s orders.”  He turned away from the view to stare down his brother.  “Tell me what happened.”
 
“I-I pressed too far, and he wanted to know how a pony knew about the map.  He attacked me.”
 
“And your disguise dropped.”
 
“I was careless.”
 
He took a step forward.  “Like you were careless when you met with that griffon three months ago.  And he discovered you, too.”
 
“He did, and—“
 
“And you were careless with the zebra before that!  You exposed us all again tonight, and again I had to cover your mistake.”  Another step brought them face to face.  “The Hive demands more from you.  Why do you fail?  When will you stop being careless?”
 
“I don’t...”  He shook his head.  “Why are you asking me this, brother?”
 
“It isn’t my place to question my Queen’s orders.”  Confusion flickered briefly in his brother's eyes.  And he lunged forward, his jaws snapping shut on his brother’s throat.





The phantom taste of blood filled his mouth, as it did whenever his mind wandered to his last kill.  His muscles ached and cried for their release from the tight quarters he slept in, but he stubbornly refused to move.  Nor did he illuminate his eyes to see through the darkness that surrounded him.
 
He tried to dream of home, but the illusion was shattered as it always was.  The air was too different—too stuffy and too warm—for comfort, and the carpet scratched against his skin, a poor substitute for the cool stone of the caves.
 
I shouldn’t have skin.
 
Finally giving up, he lit his blue eyes with a dim glow and peeled back the dark.  The closet remained as it had when he had fallen asleep: small, cramped, and yet more comfortable than the wide open room on the other side of the door.  His hoof reached up to the door's handle and pulled it aside, letting the dull light of the morning fill the closet.  His body was finally granted its release as he pulled himself up and stepped into his rented room.  The curtains were drawn shut over the window, and the door locked.  For good measure, a wooden plank he had pulled from a pile of debris was jammed under the handle.
 
The mirror on the closet’s sliding door reflected his true form back at him.  Like bugs, the ponies said in hushed whispers.  Monsters in shells.  The only shell he had was the blue backplate he left leaning against the closet wall.  He could only imagine the ponies’ surprise should they find out the grand secret of armor was not theirs alone.
 
He crouched down and started to stretch.  His muscles and tendons groaned in approval as they loosened under his black hide.  The reflection in the mirror followed every move he made, whether he arched his back, rolled his neck, or mimicked any other pose a pony could.
 
Shells.  His reflection bared its fangs.
 
Those fangs sank into his brother’s throat easily enough.  There had been no resistance.  He felt no hard barrier against his hooves as he sank his brother under the surface of the lake.
 
It was necessary.  Hiding the minotaur wasn’t a concern—a log cabin burning to the ground was no great mystery—but a second body couldn’t be found there, and he had been too weak to carry his brother back.
 
It was for the Hive.  Chrysalis had even praised his decision.
 
A small nightstand stood next to the untouched bed, holding a half-eaten loaf of bread and a large pile of bits.  His first day and mask in Canterlot had been profitable, and he guessed another two weeks worth of bits remained.  He counted out ten coins and looked at the small amount of bread before taking two more.  The hard loaf fit easily in his mouth, and his teeth started grinding it down.
 
I shouldn’t need this.
 
Changelings were parasites, to hear the ponies talk.  He and his kind sprang from their nightmares fully formed and were only capable of leaching what they needed.  The Hive’s existence and survival before Canterlot was never considered, and like all parasites, the only solution was to be rid of them for good.
 
The bathroom next to the door held a simple tub and sink.  He stooped down to the faucet to take a drink and caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror.  The water burst from his snout with a snort.
 
This is what the ponies fear?  Their enemy bent over to drink his water like an animal?
 
After drinking his fill, he focused on the magic flowing through his body.  It flared to life at his command, and he felt it pulse through his body with every heartbeat.  The sensation flowed down to his hooves, following his will, and green flame flashed over his body, replacing his black hide with orange fur and a red mane.  The sneer on Dawnbreaker’s lips remained his.
 
This is what they should fear.
 
He stepped out of the bathroom, kicked over the wooden plank, and opened the door.  The sun beat down on him, blinding him and forcing his eyes to the ground.  He turned away and walked along the row of doors leading to the motel’s office.
 
Hoofsteps followed his progress on the walkway overhead.  A mare’s voice came down.  “We’re gonna have to pay for the lamp, aren’t we?”
 
A stallion laughed.  “I never gave them my real name.  Screw ‘em.  You know another place for next week?”
 
Another beautiful day in Canterlot.  He shook his head and walked into the office.
 
The mare sitting behind the desk leaned her head against a hoof and flipped through the pages of a magazine, dull eyes flicking briefly over each.  She paused long enough to look up at him.  “’Nother night?”
 
He slapped ten bits on the desk and left.
 
“Well good morning!”
 
Canterlot loomed ahead of him, the street leading to its white towers already teeming with ponies.  He slipped into an opening on the sidewalk and lost himself in the anonymity of the crowd.  Even there, at the edge of Canterlot's underbelly, unicorns dominated his count.   Most of the earth ponies he saw were pulling carts or carriages in the street proper.
 
The farther from the motel he got, and the closer to the polished and whitewashed walls and towers that were his goal, the crowd thinned, with pieces of itself splitting off down side streets.  But there were always ponies to take their places at every street crossing.
 
“Lift!” a voice cried overhead.  At its command, two pegasi charged up a rooftop ramp and took off with a sky cart trailing behind them.  Another pair waved at them on their way down.
 
“Feeling homesick, wingnut?”
 
That voice.  He clenched his teeth and growled, “Get lost.”
 
A yellow unicorn stallion stood in an alleyway, leaning against a wall with his legs crossed.  He grinned back.  “Why should we?  You’re in Canterlot, pal.  This is a unicorn town.”
 
Another unicorn—blue coated and shorter than the other—scrambled into view.  “You again?  How many times has the Boss gotta warn you?  This is a unicorn town!”
 
Their red friend, the usual third, joined them.  “You crippled or something?  Seriously, either of you two ever see this scrub fly?”
 
The yellow one stood straight and lit his horn with a laugh.  “Maybe he needs a lesson.”
 
Try it.  I’m begging you.  But Dawnbreaker walked past the alley without another glance, their laughter echoing in his mind every step of the way.
 
"He must be brain-dead, too!"  The laughter intensified, then faded as he turned another corner.
 
The city passed by in a blur, and the crowd of ponies going about their daily routines faded to a never-changing tapestry of colors and noise.  He navigated by the landmarks he knew: the fresh concrete that filled in a crater, or the long gashes that remained in the walls high above the street.
 
Canterlot stayed the same no matter where he was.  Regardless of the differences he had seen between the streets around his room and in the shops and homes in the center of the city, everypony was writing off the Hive.  The reconstruction of the city progressed every day to erase their memory and leave them buried in history.
 
A familiar, sharp scent brushed against the edge of his perception.  Two earth ponies sat together on the edge of the street, one holding a cloth to the other’s flank.  That one lay down, shivering, and the scent grew stronger with each step closer to them.
 
Blood.
 
He clenched his teeth as he passed, examining the cart that sat in front of the pair.  A red streak painted its side up to a loose bolt.
 
His lips parted to show his non-existent fangs.  The ponies had won the battle for Canterlot, but their arrogance demanded more.  Green blood, they whispered.
 
The red cloud that billowed from his brother’s body as it sank below the lake's cold waters told him otherwise.
 
Every drop of blood he had ever spilled had been red.  His own blood, the blood of the Hive itself, was no different, yet the arrogance of the ponies refused to consider even the most basic similarity between their kinds.
 
Their humility would come.
 
A flash of white caught his eye as somepony in the road whipped their tail.  Cherry Blossom staggered ahead of him, her steps shaky and uncertain under the load of two crates balanced across her back.
 
The simmering anger at the ponies’ pride slipped from his mind at the sight of his duty.  Finally, there was something in Canterlot he could understand.  His wings carried him over the ponies grumbling at the sudden wind.  His sneer shifted into a smile as he hovered over her, and the Dawnbreaker mask settled over him more completely.
 
Cherry struggled on, beating the air with her tail with every step and hissing something to the ground.  She passed under him, and his forelegs clamped down on one of the crates.
 
He grunted as the crate slid off her back and its full weight fell to him.  “I thought you—”
 
Her shriek split his skull and paralyzed him.  His chin cracked against the crate as he hit the ground.
 
Cherry jumped back and slapped her hooves to her mouth.  Her eyes snapped side-to-side before she sank to the street, trembling as she hid under her mane and hooves.
 
He looked around and waved back at the sidewalk full of gawping ponies.  “Surprised her!  It’s okay!”  Stars cleared from his vision, and the glint of golden armor did not replace them.  He sighed, the smile slipping back into place.
 
“P-please,” Cherry said, looking up from her hooves, “don’t ever do that to me again.”
 
“You won’t have to tell me twice.”  He rubbed his chin.  “I thought you were a gardener.  What are you doing dragging these things around?”
 
“I told you I wasn’t anything special.”  Cherry shrugged her shoulders and rebalanced the crate on her back before standing up—slowly.  “Could you load that one for me?  It’s a little tricky getting both of them up at once.”
 
Dawnbreaker smirked.  “What kind of a gentlecolt would I be if I did that?”  He tilted the box up and ducked under it, letting it fall over his back.  His wings spread out to keep it in place.  “Why did you even try taking both?”
 
A faint flush crept up on her cheeks.  “I-I’m fine.  I can manage.”
 
“To the castle, then?”  He walked forward.
 
“You don’t have to—”
 
“Is this because of that invasion business?  Do they not allow deliveries at the castle anymore?”  He stopped and looked back.  “Aren’t you coming?”
 
Cherry smiled and followed him, her hoof-falls lighter and her gait easier.  “This makes three I owe you.”
 
“You’re welcome.  What’s in these things, anyway?”  He shrugged a shoulder with an ear cocked, but the shake told him little of what was inside.
 
She shook her head.  “I don’t even know.”
 
“What?  How does that work?”  He flapped a wing, shifting the weight back into place.  “The castle couldn’t even lend you a cart?”
 
“My supervisors said I didn’t need one.”
 
He frowned at the sour note in her voice.  “Well, what about the unicorns?  Couldn’t they spare one or two to levitate these things?”
 
A heartbeat passed before Cherry answered.  “So you’d think.”  The sour note intensified.
 
“Hm.”  He shook his head and sighed.  “You’re giving me the feeling this isn’t unusual.”
 
“It isn’t.  I—” She looked away, eyes downcast once more.  “I’m sorry.  You don’t want to hear all of this.”
 
He gave her a reassuring smile.  “Oh, I think I can surprise you.  I know a thing or two about following orders.”  
 
Despite his invitation, she stayed quiet for cross-street after cross-street until they left behind the last of the dingiest part of town and turned up the long, wide lane leading up to the castle's outer wall.  The street was packed, and even with unicorns and pegasi directing carts and goods laden ponies, the mass moved at a snail's pace.  “It looks like we’ve got time to kill.”
 
Cherry raised an eyebrow.  “You really want to hear this?”
 
Dawnbreaker smiled back.  “Trust me.”
 
She held his gaze for a moment.  “Okay, if you’re sure.  I told you I work as a gardener, right?  I’ve only worked at the castle for a few months, which—”
 
“Which makes you the low mare on the pole.”
 
“Got it in one.”  They stopped at an intersection while a unicorn directed traffic across the wide street.  “The princesses are on top of course, but it’s not like they know everything that happens every day.  There’s an entire staff underneath them to handle the mundane, and just about every single one of them outranks me.  With seniority comes privilege, and I don’t have either.”
 
“And they can get away with ordering you away from your duties like this?”
 
Cherry hung her head.  “I must be good at something, right?”
 
He studied her for a moment.  “What does that mean?”
 
She took a breath before answering.  “I was supposed to be a trainee.  The last gardener, Mr. Greenhooves, he left sooner than anyone expected.  There was a bit of a panic, and, well, I got the job full time when everything settled.  The other ponies on staff said—” Cherry grimaced and swallowed her words.  “No one really thought I earned it.”
 
He tilted his head.  “The fact that you’re there isn’t proof enough?”
 
“Guess not.  You said it last night.”  She looked up to the towers growing closer and closer.  “It’s the castle.  It’s the top of the top, even for the army of servants in this city.”
 
“And you’re the only pony from there I’ve seen.”  He chastised himself for only realizing that now.  “It’s not exactly a small operation is it?  All the ponies that make it run must stay inside.”
 
“Most of them, yes.”  She let her head fall again, and sighed.  “Residence is one of those privileges, leaving me out in the cold.”
 
“I imagine they’re a close group.”
 
Cherry grit her teeth.  “Yes.  Yes they are.”
 
“Sorry,” he blurted out.  “I was just thinking out loud.”  He chuckled.  “Thinking without really thinking.”
 
“It’s okay,” she said with a smile.  “It’s not your fault they can’t stand me.”
 
Silence fell over them, but she had proven valuable.  There were more ponies patrolling the castle halls than the Royal Guard.  The castle staff would have their own daily routine to learn, and their own reactions to predict from whatever disguise he wore inside.  That was assuming they would be in the same place at the same time each day with the same rigid discipline expected of soldiers.  From what Cherry told him, that wasn’t likely.  Daylight would be even more unpredictable than he thought, but the night still carried its own risks.
 
Another topic for another time.  The two pegasus guards standing at the gate watched them approach, passive as statues.  “So why here?  There are other manors you could work at.  Why put up with everything?”
 
Cherry chewed her lip for a moment, but quickly turned it into a grin.  “Not yet.  It’ll be your turn to talk next time.”
 
Dawnbreaker—changeling, assassin, spy—smiled.  “I’ll be looking forward to it.”
 
“Halt,” the guards said in unison.  “Identify yourself.”
 
Cherry took a quick step back, blinking in surprise.  “Ch-Cherry Blossom, making—”
 
“We know who you are.”  The guard on the left looked pointedly at him.  “Who’s this?”
 
“A friend.  He’s helping me make this delivery to—”
 
The right guard shook his head.  “No.”
 
Dawnbreaker smirked.  “So I guess you’ll take this crate, then?”
 
The guard blinked.  “What?”
 
His smile grew.  “What do you mean what?  You want to saddle the poor mare with this heavy thing?  Feel it!”
 
Cherry grinned.  “Yeah, you want to saddle me with that heavy thing?”
 
The left guard looked at her.  Almost imperceptibly, his eyes softened.  “Take the crate, soldier.”
 
The other opened his mouth to protest, but closed it when he saw her smile.  “Yes, sir!”  He stood next to Dawnbreaker, and the two of them moved the crate over.  “Lead on, Cherry.”
 
“Right this way!”  She walked past the gate, but turned back after a few steps.  Four, she mouthed.
 
He looked back and forth between her and the guard, brow furrowed, but a wing shot out to block his view.  “On your way, citizen.”
 
“You got it.”  He nodded at the guard and walked along the wall under the watchful eyes of the unicorns patrolling the top.
 
My turn to talk next time, hm?

She was already expecting it.  He dismissed the diner after a moment’s thought.  She was getting to like him, but if she was going to trust him, she had to value him.  Scarcity would serve him best.