For the first chapter, "outer/public thoughts" will not be in italics.
It wasn't going according to plan exactly, but one thing was for sure: Silk knew they were still winning. Her queen had been exposed, but far too late. Celestia had been defeated for all to see; perhaps she had held back to protect her subjects, or had been weakened now that the elements were bound to somepony else, or perhaps that she was never the deific being she was thought to be in the first place. Their royal guard was starting to put up some defense, but it was too little too late, over a thousand years of peace having made them into a host of new recruits. It certainly didn't matter at the moment.
Silk wasn't with the bulk of the swarm. She was a scout, able to take orders, assess situational information, and quickly relay information to the rest of the swarm. She was quick, agile, and sometimes elusive, but she was not a fighter. That was up to the Soldier and Worker classes.
Changelings had what one might call a hive mind, and yet that term didn't do them justice. Each Changeling could think for itself, decide for itself, feel for itself. Each one was free willed, sentient and sapient, a true being in every sense of the word. And yet, their minds worked differently. Some ponies say that almost everypony can keep track of up to seven things at once. But Changelings? They could think on at least two levels more. At the forefront of their thoughts was a form of telepathy, a massive swarm of information and outermost thoughts that was shared with the swarm in much the same way a Pony could share information when it talked. On the side of their minds, as if a set of invisible ears, one more to be able to hear each other, though "hear" does not always mean "understand".
The massive amount of information coming from the vast swarm was too much to make out individual thoughts; it was often impossible, like listening to an old recording of a crowded Canterlot school cafeteria and trying to figure out what was being said. One could make out if something was going on, to continue the lunchroom simile, as if some filly opened her lunchbox and a frog had popped out, causing the ponies at the table to shriek all at once. You could tell that something was going on in such and such direction, maybe involving some known group you've been keeping an ear on, but that was about it. You couldn't tell precisely what or where, and unless you're checking very, very carefully for individuals you knew personally, you couldn't even tell who.
Then there was their queen, Chrysalis. She alone could hear every voice of her swarm, and know what it said. She did not always pay attention to every word, but so many to listen to, she certainly wasn't expected to. There is a difference between being able to understand something and paying attention to every inane thing that was said. She had the ability to speak to all of them in a loud and clear voice; she was a loudspeaker through the crowd. What's more, were her dreams.
Changelings' "public" thoughts were uninhibited when they slept, and as such, they shared each others' dreams every time they slept. Most of the time seeing another's dream was fast. It happened in an instant, a flash of color and crack of sound, a split second of emotion and then returning to one's own dream. Not even enough time to taste the emotion, let alone feed on it. But Chrysalis' dreams were there. They were bright, vivid, and lasting. But still, the queen's dreams were sour, as if tainted; but she was their queen, and they would do anything to make those dreams come true.
So here they were, doing just that. Silk wondered to herself as she curiously flitted around the castle, looking for the rest of the scouting party. Several voices had gone silent and, for some reason, at least another dozen had just started dreaming. She was deep within the castle, closer to the other end of the mountain than the city of Canterlot now. Darkness painted the walls, becoming an ever deeper shade of ebony marred only by the light of her horn as she buzzed through the halls.
As she flew, a sharp thud emanated from a hallway forking to her left, as a familiar voice cried for help nearby, much closer than the rest of the swarm.
She turned around the bend, flying straight to the source of the cries. Or at least she hoped she did, this place was built like a maze, so she could easily hit a wall and have to double back. Windows flashed by on her right, and eerily, no light came from them. A moment later, she saw burst of green flame illuminate the scene. What looked at first glance to be a big pegasus stallion was standing over an unconscious changeling, but this wasn't just another member of the swarm, this was her friend, and he was hurt. It looked like the right side of his breastplate had been cracked by brute strength; the fact that it was a blunt force that caused that injury caused her no small amount of fright.
Changeling shells were as resistant to blunt forces in much the same way that Pegasus bones were: to be able to function after a crash, which frequently happens during youth, they had to be able to take a hit without breaking anything. In fact, Changelings were probably even tougher to such forces, their very lives dependent on never breaking any bone badly. Only the dragons could boast a higher natural durability.
A changeling's entire body may as well be very tough glass filled with water, but once that glass cracked, it was a very slow and painful process to seal... if it could be resealed before the water escaped that is. Infection, shock, and blood loss frequently spelled the doom of any who took too large a blow.
"Skitter!" Silk called out in her mind, flying swiftly as she could to aid her fallen friend.
The wounded changeling's eyes met hers as he urged her to go back, to get help. But at that moment, the pony looked at her, and time stood still. He was dressed as a guard, but this was not the gold clad Royal Guard that they had known about. His armor was dark, violets and blues while his helmet was adorned with a deep navy crest shaped like that of a sea serpent's ear. His coat was ashen gray, his mane the black of darkest night. His wings were not those of a pony, no. They were those of a bat. And then, most strikingly of all, were his eyes. They were golden, shining brightly even in the surrounding darkness, with slits for pupils: a pair of dragons' eyes.
This was no pony. This was a twisted amalgamation of a creature. This was an abomination! This was a... a draconequus!
The two seemed to be frozen in time, for the longest moment Silk had ever experienced. However, even as her own movements seemed sluggish to her, the creature soon moved swiftly over to her left with one massive flap of his unnatural wings. She saw what he was doing and turned to face him, knowing that she could not help Skitter if she wound up in just as bad a shape. The large pony quickly flipped around in midair and landed a hard kick, landing right where a pony's sternum would be: in the center of her breastplate, where she could best absorb the shock.
Time resumed itself in that instant. Everything happened so fast, it was as if time had decided to make up for her startled reflexes. A sickening snap. A black blob. An excruciating pain. A blur of brown. A bright azure plane. A bloom of green. A horrible crunch.
The changeling picked herself up, more than a little surprised at her location. She was now standing in a forest, and over the mountain she had just be thrown from was Canterlot, hidden from view save for a few gleaming golden rooftops and billows of smoke. She was quite a distance away from where she had been moments ago. She had been in a hallway, how had she wound up outside? Was it magic, or...
Then she saw it: a veil of pitch black, the edges dancing like a swirling mist, was covering a large horizontal strip in the mountain. Shadow magic, then. The younger of the Equestrian royal sisters must have conjured it, nopony else could possibly have dark magic of that caliber. For Nightmare Moon, that spell must have been child's play. Those windows weren't purely decorative eyelets, they overlooked the other side of the mountain.
"Wait, if she's still alive, that means I have to warn the queen!" she thought to herself. She hopped and made to take off, but winced and fell down in a heap. She looked behind her to see that her wings were badly damaged, bloodied and snapped forward. Then she remembered. She had been bucked out the window, hard, and had her wings spread out to brace for impact. Her wings must have slammed against the stone, breaking and tearing to shreds of shreds when the rest of her body kept pulling them backward in such a short period. Maybe one day she would be able to fly again, but it would take years.
A flash of her own sorrow touched her; she spat in disgust. Sorrow was a terrible emotion, a slow and bitter poison to her. Still with a bitter taste in her mouth, and likely one to stay for a bit, she felt and looked for other damage.
The first thing she noticed was that she was standing with her weight on only three legs. She shifted her weight and immediately shifted it back when she received a sharp scolding from her body. She looked down and noticed that her front left hoof was cracked, a small trickle of emerald blood coming from it. A moderate wound, it would get better in a month or two.
She then felt pain in her horn, and as she did so she noticed a drip coming from it. She went cross eyed, and looked up. A light bit of damage, she had feared the worst. This would hurt a bit, and her magic would be iffy... unreliable at best for a week or so, but this crack would seal itself in three days, tops.
"This damage... it was all from the landing... which means... oh no!" she thought to herself, her eyes and her good hoof darting to her chest in fear; fear, another one of those nasty emotions. She saw and felt no other damage, aside from a mild soreness. It looked like she had managed to distribute most of the impact across her body evenly, otherwise she would surely have suffered the same fate as Skitter.
Her fear turned to relief, and then turned to worry as these thoughts drove at her. But she did not allow them to take roost. Her own worry did little for her, and she could not act. So she waited, and did her part to signal the others that there were dangers lurking within the castle, telling her location. She was close friends with Skitter, and as such could tell he was unconscious, dreaming, but the flash of his dreams that she glimpsed were tainted with pain. More so than normal, but with his injuries, it was to be expected.
She did not have long to wait. Queen Chrysalis and most of the swarm suddenly yelled out in anger, defiance, fear, and indignation. They were moving, blazing back toward the swamp, back toward home for some reason.
And then she saw it: a massive magenta bubble grew out of the mountain, lingering there for a time before disappearing.
It was quiet. The Queen's voice still boomed in her mind, and commanded the swarm to regroup in their marshes, but the mountain was muted. For a few moments while the shield was up she thought she heard another, but it was cut off quickly, muffled somehow, most likely by magic.
Quiet. Not a single changeling awake or asleep.
Silk spat again at the bitter taste in her mouth. She knew that she had lost him, and defiantly fought the feelings she felt; despite her efforts, a lone tear dropped unbidden to the ground.
She could not reach the marshes today, or even tomorrow, but still Silk began to walk. Any changeling would do anything they could for their queen. Climb over any mountain, fight any foe, or overthrow the sun, moon, and stars themselves. What was a little walk?
She was weakened, however. She limped along, stumbling over roots and stones, wading through streams, and trudging through mud. She could not disinfect her hoof or her wings (or horn, for that matter, though that was likely unnecessary) without her magic, so all she could do was try to minimize the grime and moisture that got in the wounds. At least it wasn't raining.
On she trudged for two and a half hours, plodding her way slowly onward. However, even changelings, the masters of will over their form, have a limit to how long they can continue when injured so badly. Her vision hazy, she collapsed upon a fallen tree.
Her dreams were dour that afternoon, old memories tainted with the sting of loss and of grief. Her dreams would not last long, however; the Queen's voice soon commanded her subjects to pursue intruders. Silk's dream had turned into a race, chasing a pony through the marshes as the dreamscape whisked by her. She ever neared her target as the queen raged against some distant foe. As silk grabbed her target, it turned around, revealing its shining slitted eyes.
Fear. Absolute, stark terror filled her.
In that moment, the entire swarm screamed in terror. Silk could feel something crawling into their minds... into her mind! There was an icy presence, and Silk could feel a powerful magic, dark as night. Silk looked forward, and her nightmare made itself known. There in her dream flew the ruler of darkness, and one of the most horrific beings to ever exist: Nightmare Moon; the being whose dark magics were so great that they could be sometimes be felt from the moon, spreading to the entire swarm if she touched the dreams of a single changeling. She loomed over the changeling, growing darker, the world around them becoming black as pitch as she laughed.
Then she simply slept. Her mind was unaccustomed to this new situation it was in, and showed her nothing as she lost track of time for the first time in her life. Even in dreams, Changeling scouts and sentries would relay the time. Concepts, such as time, were always easier to understand without words than personal communication, especially if the same one is repeated by many members.
So there she sat, adrift in a sea of darkness. There was no emotion, no glimpse of the dreams of the others. There was no color, a simple dreamscape of black.
In an instant she heard them again, the chorus of agony and fear. It was a screaming, a shared emotion across all changelings. It started loud, so very loud. Then she understood their message, what was happening. A message carried out by the entire swarm was guarantied to be heard, after all.
They were being released from a magical prison, but forced into one far greater. She could feel and practically see a great jade inferno. It was the most common color of magical fire, though not the only one, used by Dragons and Changelings usually. But this was different... eternal. All consuming. Unrelenting. Inextinguishable. The voices streamed into the conflagration below in seconds, growing ever more quiet, until there was nothing left. A gate was sealed.
Silk woke up with a start, a shout, and a wince. Pain had returned to her as she regained her senses and recalled her whereabouts. She found herself lying down upon a log. Her shell was a sticky mess, covered in the her wings' moss colored congealed blood. Wing injuries would bleed a lot, but they were better than shell injuries. Even the worst would stop bleeding on their own relatively soon. Which brought her attention to her hoof. It didn't feel infected, at least not yet, but with the conditions she was working in, and the lack of aid, she would not be surprised if signs started showing eventually.
She had been jolted awake because she had failed to repress her fear, her horror, and that dread had been more powerful an urge to wake than her battered body was to rest. But as she lay there, she noticed that the swarm was gone. It had just disappeared. Only two possibilities existed.
She had been exiled, cut off by the queen from the swarm, or the dream... the dream had been real (a thought in the back of her mind showed her chasing a pony through the marshes), more or less.
Silk once again tasted her own bitter tears, but like always she forced the feeling into submission with her own willpower. She could still tell that the queen was out there, and if things were as bleak as she thought, she needed to be by her side.
"My queen, are you hear me?"
Nothing.
"My queen, can you hear me?"
Nothing.
She kept doing this, calling out to her every five or ten seconds under the shadow of the leaves of trees. The many gaps in the canopy left small beams of tired moonlight hanging in the air. Her body begged her to stop, but she did not. No matter the price, she would serve her queen, and they needed each other.
So on she went for hours, walking toward the swamp. A little lost rowboat out at sea, looking desperate for safe harbor. Then, the Queen began to dream.
Even when awake, Silk could hear her queen's dreams play like a radio. This night she could hear silence... then the scream, and the laughter of the nightmare. Silk shuddered at the sound, but it was an echo of the ones previous.
It was dulled, muted by her own determination, her own pain, the knowledge that it was in the past, that it was not her own dream, and even my the simple fact that she was awake. But then things took a turn for the worse as a short dialogue played in her head.
A sweet but all too familiar voice called out to Queen Chrysalis. “Oh look how the mighty have fallen. Alone in the world, your entire race banished to a realm of wickedness. Chrysalis, queen of the muck and the rot. A pity your subjects shall never return. Without them, you could not have stopped the Elements of Harmony from sealing you away, and never will be able to stop them again. All vengeance has been denied to you.”
“Are you here to gloat, monster?” The voice was the queen's, but it had the tone of a frightened child.
“Gloat? Why would I do that? No, I'm here to offer you a choice. You may remain here, dead in the land of the living, an empty shell of your former self. Or, you may join your kin and live in the land of the dead. I have been generous, and Charon's toll awaits you upon the dead grasses above the gate. I have seen that Cerberus will allow you a one way ticket into that realm. The choice is yours."
The nightmare had replied in a voice of pity, as it often did, but somehow the words lacked the subtle, cold undertones that they had had a mere three years ago. This was obviously a skilled temptation, but somehow it lacked the same degree of malice. It was still cold, though, like a winter draft finding its way through the window of a warm house, rather than a sensation akin to falling through a sheet of thin ice, unable to breathe as the surface bars your way to freedom.
The queen's dream ended, and panic struck the wounded scout. "My queen, can you hear me? My queen, can you hear me? Can you hear me?"
The queen was moving, but she wasn't replying. She seemed to be getting closer. Silk was cantering now, moving as quickly as she could through the forest with her leg, which no longer dripped but trickled, the additional chronic pounding weakening the already cracked shell further.
The changeling kept calling, moving in as straight a line as possible with these twisting pseudo-pathways. the night came to an end. She galloped through to the end, her pain ignored, and leapt across the threshold. To her dismay, the elevation of the ground had played a trick on her eyes, and what looked to be a gently sloping hill was actually a wide stream with a relatively swift current.
Silk landed in the middle of the stream and began to be swept away. She struggled against the current. It was strong, but not terribly so. After fighting for a minute or two, she reached the slick and muddy banks, crawling up and collapsing, her hind hooves still in the water. That was it, she couldn't move any further.
She looked down at her left hoof, still slowly seeping blood, but now covered in grime and sand. If it didn't get infected before, it certainly would now. Her wings, tiny jagged stubs on her back, would not bleed again unless disturbed. That was good, at least, though they still caused her pain. As for her horn, even if Silk knew that it would work, any spell would hurt and with her exhaustion, she would almost certainly pass out.
"My queen, please... can you hear me?"
"Yes, I can hear you," the Queen finally replied. It was a cold, bitter tone of apathy.
"You're going... aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Don't go... please don't go, my queen. We need each other, don't we?"
"No, I have no use for a single servant, especially one too damaged to be called a soldier, let alone a chevalier. Even if you were of merit, one servant simply isn't enough. Even trapped within Tartarus, they are more useful than you. You can't build a sculpture with one tool, you need a hammer and a chisel."
"Then we... we're just your tools?"
"Yes." A one word answer. One word, and yet this one word stung like a dozen manticores.
Silk's eyes began to water, the bitter poison of sorrow proving too much for her to fight. "But... don't you love us?"
The gate was opened, the blazing green flames roaring through it. She sent one final message to the pitiful creature. Even as worthless as she now was, her devotion would be noted. "At one point I might have... so long ago that I forget. But you were not enough for me, and you never will be."
The parasitic queen stepped through, singing a song.
Today was supposed to be perfect...
The great dog Cerberus slammed the gate shut as the moon was tucked below the skyline.
Those last words twisted like a knife in Silk's heart, they were a sound that was even more terrible than the screams of the swarm. But this day was not over yet. What followed was worse still.
Silence. Terrible, unnatural, unknown silence.
She laid there for just a moment. She was cold and wet, battered and bloody, unwanted and unloved, too tired to move and utterly alone. Then, something happened in her mind.
Silk let out a terribly loud yell, control be damned. A cry of mourning, of grief, sadness, loss, betrayal, terror, pain, agony, anger, and rage. A scream of fear and loneliness, of hatred and frustration. All of these poisons in her soul had to be let out, but as a changeling, poison of the soul when released soon became poison to Silk's body.
The sun crested over the horizon.
The last changeling laid there and rested, having vomited from all the negative emotions she gave off. Chalk up another way for her to be miserable. There was only so much more that the universe could throw at her, after all. She could only think of two more ways things could possibly get any worse.
"Oh my goodness, is somepony there? Where are you? Do you need help? Hello?", a concerned feminine voice called from over the bank somewhere.
Yup, captured by the enemy, that's one, she thought as she chuckled at her record breaking poor fortune.
Silk decided she had no choice. A moderate headache formed as she concentrated her magic, her horn stinging just a little. Silk was engulfed in a quick burst of green fire. In a flash, her body rearranged itself, intending to come across as a pony. Her vision blurred. She did not know whether the transformation had worked, only one more thought would get through before she passed out.
At least it isn't raining.