Bad Mondays

by Handyman


Chapter 47 - The Hollow Queen

Handy hurried through the sluice tunnels, guided by the glowing blue flame. The twisting turns, sharp inclines, and the overall maze-like structure led him to believe that this had to be more than some odiously complex sewer, despite whatever ungodly substances he had rather not imagine he’d stepped in. Whatever it was intended to be, no one else was down here, and he could walk reasonably comfortably. That was good enough for him.
 
The sounds of his boots, now stripped of their armour, hitting stone echoed as he drew nearer to the perceptible brightness ahead. As bright as it got in the perpetual gloom of the changeling city, in any case. He doused the torch by suffocating the flame and strode on, exiting the sluice gate by landing on a large, man-sized grate that probably led to a storm drain of some sort. Looking up, he could make out the cavern ceiling above with its luminescence and the sepulchre spires beyond the shadowy structures of the buildings clustered up against the base of the palace walls. He pulled himself up over the lip of the pit and waited in the darkness.
 
Thorax should have been out here waiting on him. If she was not, that meant she was busy dealing with a potential problem. He took note of the nearby changelings; all two hundred of them in the nearby buildings alone, never mind the ones in the ziggurat-shaped palace building and the ungodly huge wall behind him. He retreated further into the dark corner, put on his disguise, and waited. Each passing second, his migraine grew worse and worse.
 
Finally he heard the buzzing of wings and looked up. A lone changeling cast her gaze hither and yon as she drew cautiously closer to this forgotten drain. Chartreuse eyes, purple mane and tail, and unfortunately, her now familiar changeling face. She alighted quietly on the ground and checked her surroundings almost obsessively. Handy wondered how it was she hadn’t spotted him yet but didn’t think to question it. He let her become comfortable with her surroundings first and waited until she turned her back and focused on the drain entrance again, apparently waiting on him. He stepped out of the shadows and walked up behind her. Her ears pricked and she turned around in surprise.
 
"We need to go," was all he said.
 
"When did you get out!?"
 
"A minute or two ago. Where were you?"
 
"I had to make myself scarce—a patrol was coming through. I had to make a ruckus to pull them elsewhere. Did you find her?" she asked hurriedly, wings twitching. Handy paused before responding.
 
"Yes. I couldn't get her out." That was at least true.
 
"So she's alive!? Is she alright?"
 
"She didn't seem to be in pain as far as I could tell," his voice was level and without inflection, "but I can't imagine she's all too well. I could make out a lot of heavy chains, and some runes."
 
Thorax groaned at that, rubbing a hoof into the side of her head in frustration. She stomped and looked around the ground beneath her.
 
"This… This is not how I imagined it'd be like when I got back."
 
"…So how did you imagine it then, Thorax?"
 
"I…" She looked up, eyeing Handy cautiously before forcibly drawing her eyes upwards, staring into the air where she knew his true eyes roughly were, and forced herself to see through his glamour, succeeding after a moment or two of effort. He was getting better at it already. "It was supposed to be simple. I get the artefact back no matter the cost."
 
"Even if I had died?"
 
"Of course!" she admitted fully. If Handy was surprised by anything, it was her forthrightness about it. "I had no orders to kill you if that’s what you were worried about."
 
"Why is that now?" The frostiness in his voice was evident. Thorax glared up at him.
 
"Because, if you must know, you're more useful as an asset than not," she responded through gritted teeth.
 
"Mmm." Handy looked up and around him, saying nothing for another moment. It was quiet in this street for however much that was worth. "She said that if she had a backup plan that worked, she wouldn't be in captivity right now."
 
"Wh-What does that mean?" Handy looked down, unused to hearing uncertainty from her. "She always has a plan. Even if she fails, she always has a plan. She'd plan for this eventuality!"
 
"I'll take your word for it, but if she did, she didn't tell me what it was." Handy saw no reason to lie to the now-panicking changeling. "You can go find her and ask yourself."
 
"Where are you going!?" Thorax demanded incredulously, still keeping her voice lowered. Handy had started walking off.
 
"Home. I'm done here.” He got another few steps before he heard buzzing wings, and Thorax had landed in front of him.
 
"Wait, you can't go!"
 
"Watch me."
 
"Wait, just stop. I might need your help!"
 
"For what?"
 
"Getting my queen out of there!"
 
"Certainly sounds like something that isn't my problem. Good luck with that." Handy's path was undeterred and he walked on, his illusory appearance showing the changeling grasping the torch sideways in his mouth.
 
"You have to help me with this!"
 
"I don't have to do anything, Thorax," he riposted. "I owe you nothing."
 
"Nothing? Nothing!? After sticking with you and putting up with all of your drek this entire time!?"
 
"Putting up with me? Thorax, I've been putting up with you." Handy turned around and advanced on the changeling. Her wings buzzed as she kept herself airborne. "I will not be threatened or strong-armed into helping the changelings again, no matter what you say."
 
"You want help?" he continued. "Maybe you can convince your pet bag of trail rations back at the storeroom to help you, although I wouldn't count on that. I am certain he's as eager to be out of here as I am now that our job is done, no matter how tightly you have him wound around your hoof."
 
"You can't just leave us like this. My entire colony is in danger without her!" Thorax shouted.
 
"And that’s a crying shame. Maybe next time you won't be so eager to kidnap and impersonate my charge and then use her to bind me to a contract. Maybe in such a fantasy scenario where you seek my help, this little black void where my heart is supposed to be may have a phantom twinge of sympathy." He held her gaze for a moment, daring her to push at him, take a swing, or whatever. That would be a good excuse, a fine excuse. He'd love it if she did. He could then have his cake and eat it, smash her into the ground, wipe his hands of changelings for good, and head back home. "As it is? Have fun getting Chrysalis out and then surviving."
 
She didn't do it, but he could see it in her eyes just before the plates closed over that she had been considering it. He turned and walked away.
 

--=--

 
It was a strange feeling, walking amidst aliens so openly like this, hidden in plain sight. Each and every one of them knew what he was—if not by experience from when he was last here, then definitely from word of mouth. Every one of them was potential food to him, and none of them knew it. It was especially strange that it was changelings of all creatures he was walking amongst. They kept their distance, but only because he was the very image of some beggar changeling with a ragged cloak, a bandaged leg, a broken fang, and his latest prize clutched in his mouth. He wondered if this was how changelings felt all the time walking amidst ponies.
 
He got a few hisses, a few warning stares from what he assumed were shopkeepers, even abuse from the guards. Changeling society was very big on the heavy-handed approach, it seemed, and he had to admit that stone did hurt when it hit his leg. He glared at the guards in their burnished armour as he turned to find an alternate route.
 
He'd remember that. It would be a long trek in the Badlands—he knew from experience. He was already thirsting badly, and he'd need to take a bite before leaving. Some unlucky bastard was going to hurl abuse at him or challenge him at the wrong time, and suddenly find the apparent changeling he was harassing was anything but.
 
He had picked up that Thorax was following at a distance some time ago after he had stopped in a dark corner to give his head a break, noticing her in a mirror perched in a nearby stall. He had also seen his own reflection in the mirror while disguised. If his reflection appeared odd to anyone, nobody showed it, but what he saw was a flowing shifting mess of a mix between the changeling he wanted others to perceive and the human he knew himself to be. Limbs and body parts shifted, melded, and morphed in a non-stop nightmare vision that almost made him physically ill to look at.
 
Once again, Handy was glad he couldn't have nightmares.
 
She didn't rat him out as he went. He figured she wouldn't risk it, not even as a threat. It'd probably be pleasing for her to get her revenge on him by doing so, but that would only result in, what? Handy getting imprisoned, or worse? Only for her to draw undue attention onto herself and possibly endanger her only other friendly asset in Jacques. It didn't pay to do so, and Handy knew it.
 
The torch took him by the route Thorax had taken initially, and once more he found himself in the abandoned, ancient, stone bazaar. Once more he heard the increasing sound of splashing water from above and the cold embrace of it pooling just beneath his feet. Once more he passed by the junction where he knew the skull lay, yet this time he did not look.
 
He did not want to be reminded of the unfathomable deep, dark void where its eyes once were. There was no goodness in them, and every time he thought about them, he was reminded of those very same empty expanses of blackness staring down at him, ready to snuff out his own life, the blackness ready to swallow him whole.
 
'As if it hasn't already,' he mused darkly as he slowly made his way past the skull. Just as he thought that, reflecting on his own state in life, for the briefest of moments, he remembered another pair of black eyes on an expanse of white. Ones so deep and full to bursting of something unfathomable and unknown, yet familiar. Eyes of warmth rather than coldness.
 
He pushed the thought aside, and continued on through to the end of the empty passageway.
 
He had no time to waste on droll memories of a hallucination.

--=--

 
Crimson, for all intents and purposes, was a changeling now as far as either of the pair of them could tell. Façade and Glimmer had the misfortune of being very obviously returning Chrysalis-loyal changelings when they had descended the rebuilt staircase into the city below. Their dark blue backs denoted their ancestry rather clearly. Most of their particular ethnicity were loyal to her colony, and the ones that were not… never really left the city.
 
It had only been good fortune that whatever spell the unicorn had cast on herself, for it sure as hell was not changeling magic, made her appear to be anything but what they were. A deep, dark red, an almost black back, green eye plates, a cascading brown mane, and how they had stuck close to her and obeyed her every command made it very clear to observers she was their superior but not one of them.
 
That was probably what saved them most of the hassle when they descended the stairs and ran into several more guards, not that either of them fully understood the dire situation their colony was in given their separation. The grand, winding staircase once made out of ancient oak and decoration detailing ancient histories now lost to their kind had been replaced with crude stone and planks in places where the damage was too great. It descended in sweeping twists and turns before it opened up onto the city of Lepidopolis in the expansive cavern before them.
 
It was a sight to behold, but if Crimson had been impressed, she didn't show it. She had a level of control over her emotions that was, frankly, frightening to the pair of them. The guards had given them no hassle. There was enough of a distance between the surface and the next station of guards along a chokepoint in the descent into the city that they had not heard most of the commotion.
 
"Is this it?" Crimson asked impassively. Façade hurried forward.
 
"Yes, we're… we're here." She tried to keep her voice from wavering. Crimson turned to her. "We… Please don't… you know."
 
"What?" Crimson demanded calmly.
 
"Don't use your magic to bring the cavern down." Façade came up the other side of her and she turned to him. "We… We heard you muttering to yourself a few times. Please don't destroy the city."
 
"You think I can do that?" The pair looked at each other and then back to her, worry in their eyes. Her expression remained neutral. "Very well, I won't break your precious city."
 
The pair breathed a sigh of relief as Crimson pushed past the two, traveling across the expanse between the staircase and the city that was even now being populated with new structures to house the overabundance of changelings. "Come along then. I will have… words with your queen instead."

 

--=--

 
Handy returned to the back street where the store was hidden just in time to see a wounded and winded Jacques crash through the thin stone slab that served as the door. The pony stumbled to the ground as the thin rock fell to the ground like broken slate. He stumbled back to his feet, sword around his right forehoof and his horn aglow, his face awash with fury as he turned to face his assailants in the storeroom. He moved like lightning and spun around on his hooves, thrusting forth with the sword, briefly balancing on one hind hoof before withdrawing, rebalancing and taking a swing as he hopped from one hind hoof to another. His horn lit up, lifting the remains of the door to cover his face just in time to block three black darts that impacted the stone surface.
 
Two changelings jumped out of the store, one bleeding from a gash on its cheek and the other wielding some crude cudgel in its magical grip. Handy did not ask any questions and immediately acted. The changelings saw him coming and called out to him, thinking him an ally in this backstreet fight. They changed their tune when they saw the changeling drop the torch it held in its mouth and swing a hammer up, catching one of the attacking changelings on the chin with the blow. The glamour dropped immediately, and the remaining changeling looked up in horror, seeing Handy looming over them. Jacques wasted no time and pushed the cudgel wielding changeling off of him and brought his makeshift shield up and then down on the changeling's skull. The thin sliver of rock broke apart on impact with a loud crack, and the changeling hit the ground, unmoving next to its companion.
 
"Glad to see you’re back, Handy. How was your walk?" Jacques quipped as he slipped the sword off of his forehoof with magic.
 
"Jacques, what the hell is—Woah!" Handy was rudely interrupted when a bolt flew from the doorway and cracked the wall beside his head.
 
"Don't move," a two-toned voice droned from within. Handy stood beside the swordspony, looking into the storeroom. He heard faint buzzing of wings nearby and hoped to God that was Thorax drawing near and not more changelings. The interior was destroyed, and there were at least two more bodies inside, lying unmoving amidst the wreckage. He made out Quartz being held down by another changeling while yet another hovered in the middle of the room focused on the two of them. It hovered with its rear hooves just an inch off the floor and what looked like a pony-made crossbow in its forehooves. It was already reloaded. "N-Not another step, whatever you are!"
 
"Jacques," Handy whispered out of the side of his mouth while looking down the backstreet and up above. The storeroom was at a dead end, but that didn't mean there couldn't be the chance of more changelings investigating the commotion. "What the hell is going on here?"
 
"Oh, you know, just six lovely guests dropping in uninvited," Jacques replied, wielding his sword in a high guard over his head, leaving his hooves on the ground. "Decided we shouldn't be where we were and tried to forcibly eject us and put me in a pod. I took exception to this." Handy glanced at the two unmoving bodies further back in the room. At least one of them wasn't breathing anymore, while the other had some fleeting feeling left in its body, judging by his auspex.
 
"You can have it, you can have it all!" Quartz shouted, still being pinned by the only other assailant left on its feet. "Please, just let me go. I'm not with them!"
 
"Quiet!  Come on, Aspid, we need to get help! That's the Heartless over there!" the one pinning Quartz shouted to his partner.
 
"Don't you think I know that!?" the crossbow changeling shouted back, never looking away from Handy for a second. Handy glanced up, seeing the form of Thorax on the roof of the squat building, her silhouette against the multi-hued 'sky' above them. She stalked along the roof's edge before disappearing from sight. Handy lowered his hammer and looked at the crossbow wielding changeling directly. He took a step forward.
 
"Stay back!"
 
"Put down your weapon," Handy commanded. Another step.
 
"I mean it, stay back! Stay back, you bucking freak!" the changeling cried.
 
"Put. It. Down. Now."
 
"I-I, I'll shoot! Don't come any closer."
 
"You will not." Another step. He held its gaze. The changeling tried to move its hooves but found itself paralyzed.
 
"Aspid, what are you doing!? Shoot it!" his companion pleaded.
 
"I-I can't, I… I don't—"
 
"Put it down, changeling," Handy demanded sternly. The changeling reluctantly lowered his crossbow.
 
"Aspid! What are you doing!?"
 
"I… don't know," the hapless changeling said, its covered eyes facing Handy as he towered over the creature. He was still over a meter away, but that hardly seemed to matter to the terrified changeling.
 
"Let go.” The weapon clattered to the floor.
 
"Aspid!" There was a crack in the ceiling above them, and a section fell from above, smashing into Aspid and pinning it to the ground under the weight of the stone work and ancient wood, as well as the changeling that had fallen with it. Aspid's companion barely had time to react before it noticed the brown fur of Jacques speeding towards it with a pair of hooves that crashed into its head, knocking it off of Quartz and into the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness.
 
"I think that's enough of that." Jacques, having given the changeling a buck, lifted his hat off and brushed it down with a hoof. Quartz lay huddled and terrified on the floor, eyes darting around at the carnage around him.
 
"What the Tartarus happened here!?" Thorax demanded, observing the destruction.
 
"I admit, I'd like an explanation as well," Handy interjected. "Sound carries weirdly down here. I heard the commotion but thought it was something happening three streets away. Until I saw you break down the door."
 
"I was a little taken aback when half a dozen changelings popped out of nowhere. Forgive me when I was led to believe this was a safe hiding place," Jacques muttered sarcastically. Thorax pulled in the two bodies lying outside. "Apparently, Quartz and his friends weren't the only ones who knew of this store, and these ones had sought to loot it."
 
"Does anyone else know about this? Thorax, did you see anyone coming while you were up there?"
 
"Like you'd care if they did," Thorax mumbled somewhat angrily. "No, we should be fine for now."
 
"Well, any luck?" Jacques enquired. Thorax shot Handy an evil look, and Handy gave her an apathetic one in reply before turning to Jacques.
 
"Yes, my business here is done. Let's go."
 
"Wait, no, hang on." Thorax held her hooves up pleadingly, positioning herself by the exit. "Look, Handy, I know we don't like each other."
 
"Understatement."
 
"Just hear me out. I need your help."
 
"Help with what?" Jacques enquired, going around and checking the bodies, occasionally taking a few pouches he found that happened to have something shiny in them. Handy couldn't begrudge him that.
 
"I need his help, and yours," Thorax began. "My queen is, uh… She's in danger. My entire colony is in danger. We need to find a way to free her."
 
There was a pause for a moment, and Jacques looked up at Handy, who simply shrugged.
 
"Well, you already know my answer. Have fun with that." Handy looked among the bodies. That one was dead, that one is probably almost dead. Hmm, that other one was alive but already unconscious and bleeding. He'd do.
 
"I'm… not sure what good the two of us can do." Jacques scratched the back of his head with a hoof. Thorax snapped around to face him. "I mean realistically, chere. I'm a sellsword. One sellsword. Handy's only one stallion as well." He uneasily eyed Handy out of the corner of his eye as the human knelt down by one of the changelings and put his fingers to its neck, checking its pulse.
 
"Jacques…"
 
"There's an entire city out there, hundreds of thousands of changelings. Even if we got her out of there, what could we do?"
 
"Jacques, this is my home and family. My… My country, if you will. I can't do nothing," Thorax explained. "If Chrysalis goes, so goes my entire colony. There are entire sidhes out there going about their lives in absolute fear of what the other changelings will do to them."
 
"But what then? Say we free her, where would we go? We'd have an army down our throats before we could so much as say boo."
 
"Can't you recruit other changelings of your colony?" Handy posited, knowing the answer but goading it on nonetheless. He gathered his pack of belongings as well as the other one containing water canteens.
 
"You know if I so much as approach any of the sidhes under any circumstances, I'll be swarmed in a minute," she shot back before turning to Jacques.
 
"Then come with us." Jacques lay a hoof on her shoulder. "There’s nothing more you can do here."
 
"I can't just abandon my entire colony, my very queen, Jacques! You don't understand, this is more than just you and m—" Her voice broke in her throat before she finished, her eyes caught on his. "Please, don't do this to me. Please."
 
Jacques looked pretty conflicted as Thorax implored him. She took a step closer and, reflexively, he gathered his emotions into the iron ball in his heart. She stopped, a hurt look crossing her face for a moment. Thorax stepped back and fell to her haunches, looking down at the ground for a long, hard moment.
 
"Remember?" Her voice was barely more than a whisper. Jacques looked up. Handy continued searching for anything useful amidst the crates and broken debris. "Back under the forest, you didn't abandon me then. And I didn't abandon you when you needed me. Don't abandon me now…"
 
Handy was happily ignoring the quiet conversation between the two on the other side of the room as he managed to loot some useful things from the crates. One seemed to have some preservative warding on it to keep the interior fresh, and lo and behold he found some dried bread. Not exactly nice to eat, but it was food that would keep while on the trek through the Badlands, and that was frankly a godsend. He also found some interesting trinkets, but none worth pilfering. There were some vaguely medical-looking supplies he didn't know what to do with, empty portrait frames, a surprising amount of books written in languages Handy couldn't begin to understand, and a lot of that strange broken changeling pottery. Like, a lot. Most of it not stored in the undisturbed crates had been broken during the fighting. Oh well...
 
He heard whimpering from his feet and looked down. Quartz was eyeing a few of the bodies, terrified out of his mind and unconsciously shuffling further away from him on the floor whenever Handy moved. He couldn't sense what he was feeling since he was hiding it, but it was clear the changeling was terrified. He twisted his mouth as he considered the changeling, but then put it out of his mind and slung his water pack over his shoulder.
 
"Alright, I'm done here. Let's go, Jacques. Might want to get something to cover yourself, though. You look awful ponyish."
 
"I'm not going."
 
"…Excuse you?" Handy turned from where he was crouched next to his intended victim; one of the unconscious changelings with a vaguely brownish shell. He didn't know—it was still annoyingly dark, and he realised he had left his torch outside.
 
"I said I'm not going,” Jacques said more forcefully, standing up and sheathing his sword with a hoof. Thorax looked up from her dejection hopefully.
 
"Are you mad? We discussed this. You agreed we'd help each other out of this city and get through the Badlands. I don't think you recall, but that’s a pretty tall order."
 
"I… can't just turn Thorax down, Handy." He turned to the human.
 
"Yes, you damn well can. You know she can't be trusted, and this city is filled with an entire species of lying, backstabbing, soul-sucking bastards."
 
"Like you?" Jacques challenged.
 
"What," Handy said flatly
 
"Look, Handy, I know you don't care about anything, but you're no better than any of these changelings at their worst."
 
"Oh, I'd watch my words if I were you, Jacques, o—"
 
"Or you'll what? You want to go over what we talked about behind Thorax's back? Hmm!?" Jacques’ voice grew louder. "How you asked me to my face how I felt about betraying her as soon as we could to maximise our chances to get out of here?"
 
"I was being practical and realistic about our chances. Her scheming and that of her queen was exactly why any of us are here to begin with. I was looking out for our best interests, you fool!"
 
"I'm right here!"
 
"Oh shut up, Thorax."
 
"You shut up for once, Handy, you despicable bastard!"
 
"Me!? Despicable? I've only ever tried looking out for myself!"
 
"And your secrecy and selfishness got how many ponies hurt!? Part of my home city blew up because of your quest. Because of you, I had to make myself an exile in order to survive when all I wanted out of you was a little insurance. Instead, I have this."
 
"I will not be held responsible for the actions of the Mistress!" Handy bellowed, his anger quickly bursting forth. "Your own actions are your own doing. You knew as soon as you realised what Thorax really was that being involved with me was always going to be dangerous. But no, I don't suppose common sense would apply to someone who sees a heart-eating fucking monster like a changeling and thinks 'I'd tap that!'"
 
"Handy, Jacques, that's enough!"
 
"No, it damn well isn't! This has been a long time coming. You—!" Handy pointed at the furious Jacques, "have some fucking nerve calling me anything. How in the fuck dare you!?"
 
"Dare I what, Handy!?"
 
"Give me shit when I influence people like I did back in the trade post."
 
"You're messing with their minds!"
 
"I did it to stand up for you, you fucking tool! Suddenly I'm a monster for doing nothing more than influencing people with a few words to get us a better deal and, oh I don't know, saving us both from having a crossbow bolt sticking out of our chests five minutes ago? Yet this little bitch," he pointed to Thorax, “goes off, finds a changeling who was living by himself and starving, terrifying him out of his mind, coercing him into helping us and risking his life, and you don't bat a fucking eye!?"
 
"Th-That’s different!"
 
"Why? Because she did worse to a changeling, and I did little more than a mind screw on some asshole of a pony who had it coming? You have a funny way of being racist there, buddy."
 
"Like you have any right to call anyling else racist," Thorax chimed in.
 
"It takes one to know one, and at least I admit it. You're all fucking awful," Handy said, turning his fury back to Jacques. "I don't know what happened to you. Back in the forest, it was you more than any of us keeping the peace, being the voice of reason. I have seen very little reason out of you lately, Jacques. Maybe your girlfriend over here has her fangs in you deeper than you thought. Maybe instead of avoiding eye contact with me for fear that I might do something to your mind, you should probably be more concerned with someone who already has." Handy leaned down closer to Jacques, the pony's face a tight mask of poorly disguised anger. "That's why I am not helping her. That's why I am not helping her queen. I am looking out for myself. If you want to put your neck out for them, then be my guest. Just don't be surprised if someone bites down while you do it."
 
Handy stood back up from Jacques, who was shaking with rage. When he was sure there would be no more forthcoming objections, he turned back around, his own fists shaking. He shuffled his robe to hide them before he bent down and hefted one of the unconscious changelings over his back.
 
"You know, despite all that," Jacques began quietly as Handy stood straight once again, "I still thought of you as a friend. But you're right."
 
Handy turned around and walked past the pony towards the door. Thorax stood to the side, somewhat at a loss. Quartz still cowered in a corner.
 
"You're only looking out for yourself. Everypony else is just a means to that end," he said, his voice growing hard. "Just like the very ones you're condemning. That's the difference between you and me. You're exactly everything you hate."
 
Handy paused in the doorway, shifting the weight of the changeling on his shoulder and walking out, turning to head down the back street.
 

--=--

 
You know, it's probably a good thing this changeling was unconscious.
 
'You need to take from others to survive, just like us.'
 
A very, very good thing, for its sake at least.
 
'A bunch of walking wineskins!'
 
Because the only thing worse than being in the arms of a bloodsucker…
 
'You say I'm like you, right? More than I'd like? Deceptive, sneaky?'
 
... was being in the arms of one that took an inordinate amount of time to decide whether or not it was actually going to eat you.
 
 'I'm so sorry.'
 
Handy looked down at the changeling in his hands. He was holding it under its forelimbs and the creature just dangled before him, head lolling to the side. It probably wasn't the best position to hold an unconscious person… horse… thing, but he hadn't initially planned on holding it here for this long. He didn't know what was stopping him.
 
He gently put the changeling down on the ground in a heap of unconscious, vaguely creepy pain. The light was weird down here. There was no sunlight, and all artificial light was usually indoors, much to his relief. There was nothing but the bioluminescence of the multihued plant life that covered the ceiling like starlight, and the strange, shifting, colourful light that pulsed within the chitinous walls that covered everything. In the back streets here where all was darkness, what little light there was pooled from the distant streets where the changeling public roamed and milled. The strange soft hues cast shifting, flitting shadows everywhere where they were brightest. Here though? Here they were barely enough to cast a shine on the weird analogous skin these changelings had, differentiating them from the overwhelming blackness.
 
It was strange, he mused, how familiar this all was. How similar these changelings lived, going about their day, to the ponies or the griffons above. How they all looked the same to him, here, as he skulked in the darkness like some fell carrion predator of the shadows. These changelings, doppelgangers who kidnapped and stole the love of others, the nightmare of every nervous lover or worried parent whose child had become estranged, they feared him. These creatures, for all their alien mannerisms, may as well be no more different to him than a city full of particularly loathsome ponies.
 
His foot hit against something. Looking down, he realised it was a broken portion of a wall, one of the newer black facades that covered everything. He picked it up and studied it in the light, careful not to overexpose himself to any of the changelings flying overhead who might spot him through the broken and pitted ceiling of the backstreets. He turned it over in his hand. Strange, it felt coarse yet held an almost metallic coldness to it. From the edges, it was apparent it was built in sheets, like the layers of an onion. It looked similar to the shells that covered the pod he had been in so long ago, but he knew from experience that it was not the same material. There was nothing organic about this.
 
He caught sight of the withered corruption that had now covered nearly the entirety of his left forearm. His skin was dry and cracked, and there were dark, purple splotches in random areas. Every now and again, terrible cramps shook through his arm, some worse than others. For the past month or so, it had been inexorably advancing at a glacial pace across his flesh, but had stopped a week ago just above his wrist and onto his palm and just beyond his elbow. It left him with a shaking hand from time to time, as if he had Parkinson’s or some other rotten illness. The dusky, greyish tint of his skin somehow made the black, flaking latticework that covered his forearm all the more noticeable. He didn't know what they were. They weren't veins. Capillaries perhaps? Corrupted and deadened by his magical substance abuse and unable to be removed by ordinary bodily process? Or extraordinary ones in his case, but it was the best explanation he could come up with on his own.
 
'Just one night,' he often said to himself by means of motivation. 'Just one night of sleep with the salve. Just one good night's rest without a care in the world, drifting away as if on a cloud. No nightmares to worry about and no trouble putting thoughts and worries and fears aside. Just sleep, a wink, an instant of oblivion that would finally result in a morning where I could face the world without forcing myself to get up. Just one more time. It's all I want.'
 
Those times he'd think that, he'd notice his fist was shaking. He'd look down, remember what his little comfort had done to him the moment he went more than a few days without it, and realise once more he could never go back to it if he knew what was good for him.
 
He rubbed his fingers together for a moment, amazed he could still feel and move them despite the horror ravaging his arm… and how he could no longer feel anything south of his fingers except when it was cramping up. He looked up, through the hole in the roofed backstreet, and like the bazaar he had seen the skull in, he spied yet another familiar sight.
 
The broken sepulchre. He saw the water cascade from its broken prominence unevenly and fall to the earth at some section in the city. Of all the sepulchres hanging above them he could've seen, he saw that one. He snorted at the absurdity of the coincidence. It brought back memories of the innumerable times in that one day alone he should have died. Hell, he should have died the second he hit the glass window when the dragon threw him. People had survived more ridiculous things back home on Earth, true, but one had to boggle at the incredulity of it all. To go from that one incredibly lucky escape to outright goading fate by taking a hammer to the support pillars holding him up from plummeting to his death.
 
'You're just like us.'
 
The thought came to him unbidden. Was he? He looked back at the heap on the ground next to him, quietly breathing. Even when they were knocked out, the little bastards were sneaky as hell. Just like what he had been forced into becoming. When the hell did he start seeing it as an acceptable state of affairs to skulk in freezing tunnels under a city gripped in winter's icy grasp, or skulking along roads like some common brigand? When did it become acceptable to hide out in back alleys like some drug-dealing scumbag, traipsing along ancient changeling sewers and smelling like the devil? When did he start being content with putting dozens of families at risk to spite his persecutors, a realization that his brain immediately put at the back of his thoughts before the implications slowly stopped him in his tracks with their horror, and then breaking and entering a home and using a family as a disposable shield instead of facing the consequences of his actions like a man?
 
When did he start taking blood from people preferentially instead of out of raw necessity like he had promised himself? He took from that poor traveling mare in the inn at first opportunity instead of looking for any nearby alternatives, like what he was about to do now.
 
Just like that it hit him. It has started when Chrysalis told him he was just like her and her kin. Out of pride and spite, he had gone ahead and proved her right. He had been proving her right this entire time. He was proving her right now by turning his back and damning her, Thorax, Jacques, and God only knew who else that would suffer as a result of his unmitigated self-interest.
 
'You're exactly everything you hate.'
 
He looked back up at the sepulchre once more, and realized that once upon a time he had seen the impossible, did the unthinkable, and won. When did that change?
 
"…God damn it, Jacques, you French ponce," Handy cursed before rubbing his face with his good hand and allowing a shiver. He looked down at the changeling. "Count your lucky stars, kid."
 
He stood up with a sigh, looking up once more between the gap in the floorboards above, spying the permanent mark he had left on this ancient city's face. Well, he might not have known why Past Handy did what he did, and he wasn't entirely sure why he was doing what he was doing now, but if nothing else it would prove Chrysalis wrong about him. Spite was its own reward, after all.
 
He shivered once more and pulled his robes closer together. He missed his armour. While no defence against the cold, it could at least shrug off the worst bite of the wind chill, and that really nasty gust blowing through these stree—
 
Wait... They were underground. Sure, it was a huge cavern with a lot of connections to the dark depths of many other large caverns, but there shouldn't be sudden winds this strong just out of nowhere.
 
He whipped around as flashing green lights, barely perceptible through the sprawling backstreets, flashed over the buildings in the direction of the palace. Moments later, a cloud of debris and dust erupted into the air and the thunderous retort of an explosion reached his ears, causing the ground to shake. The changeling on the ground groaned, and Handy had to steady himself against a wall. Ahead, just over the rooftops and the swarms of changelings taking to the air, he spotted a magical aura he was all too familiar with. Ethereal wisps of sickly green magical energy and mist suffused the air in front of the palace, the remnants of whatever had occurred there.
 
"…You have got to be fucking kidding me."
 

--=--

 
Crimson coughed as she galloped through the advancing dust cloud and the debris. Her lungs were full of dust from being at ground zero at that little… miscommunication.

Still, however one spun it, it had resulted in the destruction of the facade of the central palace structure of the entire city. Now Crimson had to do a mad dash to safety with angry changelings on her tail.

How many angry changelings you ask? Somewhere in the region of lots.
 
It was a less than desirable situation given that things had started off so well. You see, when Crimson had promised her little tag along lings—who were surprisingly reliable, more so now that they realised their little Chrysalis-fan-club was distinctly unpopular these days—that she wouldn’t harm the city or the ‘innocent’ changelings who lived there, the same did not apply to its stalwart defenders. Not that her companions could complain. Crimson was all they had—they couldn't even find changelings of their ilk.
 
Crimson turned a corner before she heard buzzing closing in on her from above. She muttered more harsh broken words, and each hoof step she took shot hard slivers of rock into the dusty clouded air above her. The buzzing noises backed off.
 
"This way!" she heard somepony shout from her right. She turned automatically into the next side street and thundered down it. She sensed her warded changelings nearby and made a distraction. With a flash of red from her horn, one of the few high level spells she knew that was not old magic was put into play. When she reached a cross-section, she disappeared in a flash. Three red, brown-maned changelings thundered down three other streets, while the black-cloaked Crimson took another right and went down a darkened street, descending as the road took her further down until she was fairly certain she was well below street level.
 
She ducked into an alcove, the grey stonework at odds with the black building material that covered everything. She sat to catch her breath, coughing and hacking, clearing her throat and spitting out the dust.
 
When she had promised not to damage the city, she had no intention of not damaging the palace where the stuck up queen was. She… just didn't expect her companions to be so freaked out when the guards had told them Chrysalis was no longer present. Crimson had insisted, but the guards had told her to go do something mildly unpleasant. Crimson took exception to this and questioned the offending guards’ masculinity in a most impolite manner. The guards proceeded to get violent, and then the stairway up to the palace's main entrance just sort of exploded, all two hundred steps of it.
 
Crimson may or may not have been responsible for that.
 
She levitated out her tome, her horn supplying the light, and cautiously looked about the small cramped street and read over the familiar words again, feeling the thoughts settling in her mind. Well, she could now use that spell one more time, at least. Hurray. She put down the book and hoped her illusions were still going. Glimmer and Façade were nearby thankfully, but they weren't moving.
 
Odd; she'd have thought they'd at least still be running.
 
She waited a while longer before looking behind her, eyes narrowing in the direction she came. Briefly her eyes flashed along with her horn, and the ground itself broke apart, the raw earth pulling skyward until it reached the roof above her head. Another few words and the rock cracked and churned, changing shape with the sound of grinding stone. Satisfied at the false wall she had created, she changed course toward her underlings, safe in the knowledge that anypony coming behind her would run into a dead end, and would sooner try other avenues of investigation rather than spend too long lingering there.
 
She brought her book up, flipped through a few pages, and placed it back in her packs. Quietly she walked forward, wary of the sound of her hooves on the broken pave stones beneath her. The pair was just ahead to the right, inside a doorway. A safe house, perhaps? As she drew nearer, she realised this was not the case.
 
"—know you were there, tell me! Who was using the old magic!?" Crimson paused. The voice was low and harsh, dry and hoarse as if the speaker hadn't drank water for some time. She slowed her pace and moved cautiously to the door. The street only had one entrance now, but there could be a number of hidden egresses she might have missed that any number of enemies could emerge from. This was a changeling city, after all. She had to be careful.
 
"I don't care if you're afraid of them. You should be afraid of me!" Crimson narrowed her eyes. She pressed closer to the door, preparing a spell mentally before manifesting it, keen to keep the glow of her horn from giving her away. The room inside was dark, and she could not make out who was in there threatening Façade and Glimmer. No matter.
 
She barged through the partially opened door, and her horn lit up furiously, a spell prepared to neutralise the threat without an explosion this time.
 
She stopped dead in her tracks and almost fired her spell out of sheer shock.
 

--=--

 
Handy had two changelings pinned to the wall.
 
That was the thing about changelings. They were disturbingly light in comparison to ponies, even accounting for whatever physiological changes Handy's vampire shenanigans had made to him. They looked unusually thin for changelings too, meaning they were likely unwell. Both had the unshorn manes and tails of changelings who had been top side for a while, but hadn't been able to maintain their military cut, and both of them had the same shade of shell cover on their backs, much like Thorax did.
 
This revelation did not do anything for Handy's mood.
 
"I am going to ask you this one more time, changeling. I suggest you answer truthfully for your own sake," he whispered to the one whose neck was clamped in his right hand grip. He didn't even need to exert himself much to ensure they stayed in place. He was Handy the Milesian after all, the Heartless, the Pale One, the one who none of these little bastards could so much as sense an ethereal whiff of before it was too late. You could therefore understand their reasonable terror when he just fucking Predator'd them out of the darkness. They stayed right the fuck where they were, eyelids closed and facing away.
 
"Pl-Please, we d-don't know what you're talking about," one of them managed to whimper.
 
"Lying to me is unhealthy," Handy said evenly, no longer whispering, growing more confident. He tried reaching out with his auspex to do one more check of the surroundings, but a sharp pain from the brief stint he had spent hidden by glamour just getting to these two slapped that notion out of his mind right quick. "I know you were with them. I saw you running specifically from angry changeling guards. What is the Mistress doing here of all places? Tell me!"
 
"We don't know!" the other cried.
 
"Oh come now, I know you were there. Tell me! Who was using the old magic!?"
 
"We can't! She, she'll—!"
 
"I don't care if you're afraid of them. You should be afraid of me!" The door crashed open, and a bright red light bathed the room in colour and stark shadows. Handy cursed and dropped the changelings, reaching for his war hammer. Of all the times for his damned psychic radar to shit out on him...
 
He drew up the hammer to face the wide, green-eyed changeling staring up at him with stupid disbelief on its face. For some reason, it elected to not immediately fire its huge build-up of magical energy at the tip of its horn when it saw the tall abomination to all changeling kind before it. Handy elected to capitalise on it and immediately closed the distance between the two, raised his hammer an—
 
"Master!" Handy immediately stumbled.
 
"Wh-What!?" The magic dropped, the room suddenly dark again. There were after images in Handy's eyes. He swung in a daze but apparently missed horribly because something large, heavy, and furry ducked under his arc and crashed into his midsection. The next thing Handy knew, he was on the ground on his back.
 
Handy struggled and began flailing his arms in the darkness to dislodge the changeling from him. He had dropped his hammer and had to pry the creature away with his bare hands. Not an easy thing to do as it clearly had transformed into some kind of giant furry beetle and had his torso in a vice grip.
 
One of the changelings lit its horn up with magic, shedding some light on the shenanigans. Handy had pushed the creature off and backed up, kicking at the ground with his feet and scrambling with his free hand for a grip on his hammer as he blinked away the stars in his vision from the light that dazzled him.
 
It must have caused him to see things, because before him stood not a changeling with charcoal black psuedoskin, but a pony.
 
An extremely haggard looking mare to be precise, hooves dirty from the long trek of the desert above. Her mane, ruined and windswept from the unremitting wind, wide, happy looking green eyes, slightly marred by bags under them and a ragged black cloak. She looked at Handy disbelievingly. Her mane was a rich brown and her coat was the deepest red.
 
Crimson, one might say.
 
"…What," he said intelligently.
 
"I didn't think I'd find you this soon!" Crimson exclaimed happily, in a tone of voice Handy had literally never heard her use for as long as he knew her. He wasn't thinking about that, though. Priorities, you understand.
 
"Why… How…. When did… What?" he said out loud, gesturing in turn to Crimson, the world in general with both arms wide, the general direction of the palace and the explosion, and finally to the pair of very concerned looking changelings to his left. Well they both had the membranes over their eyes, but didn't bother to hide their emotions. He assumed those confused, roiling masses going on in their hearts meant concern, or fear, perhaps. Eh, fuck it, they're both the same depending on context.
 
"Wh-when I was released, I came straight here. Oh, and them," Crimson turned and gave the two changelings a level look, "they were the ones holding me prisoner until I was let go."
 
"…So she did keep up her end, interesting," Handy said as he digested the information slowly. He had been concerned Geas magic had a get out clause for fae creatures like the changelings; you were bound to your end to the bargain but the other side was not. He was glad this was not the case.
 
"Yes, it was explained to me that you were put under… their queen's service in order to set me free. I came here to teach her the error of her ways," she said haughtily.
 
"…So you literally crossed half a continent, to the most remote part of the Badlands, into a city full of changelings, to challenge a powerful magical queen for my freedom?"
 
"Yes!" Handy honestly did not know how to respond to that, so he moved on as quickly as he could.
 
"W-well, right, okay, ahem," Handy said, trying to regain his composure. Between the shock of the unexpected reunification and the absurdity of all of this he was coping pretty well. He pushed himself up off of the ground, "Not that this is all… Wait, why are they here?"
 
"Oh, I made them come," Crimson said.
 
"How?"
 
"I made them swear to serve me or I'd kill them."
 
"Why!?" Handy asked incredulously. Crimson blinked, ears splayed backwards.
 
"Isn't that what you'd do, Master?"
 
"…I am a terrible influence on you," Handy muttered imperceptibly through his hands as he rubbed down his face. "Okay neat, you two," Handy said, directly addressing the two changelings. One flinched at being addressed, he didn't care which it was. "Blue backs, you're Chrysalis' changelings, right?"
 
"Y-yes?"
 
"Good news, your queen is alive." Crimson frowned.
 
"I… Okay? We didn't know she was in danger."
 
"Bad news, she is imprisoned beneath the palace and will probably be executed or worse in a few hours." Crimson smiled.
 
"WHAT!?" they both yelled simultaneously.
 
"Good news, I gave her a… presumably really powerful artefact of some kind so that I could be free of her service, and she is trying her best to get out, reassert her authority in the city, and rescue her changelings. I passed on her messages after I snuck in to see her." Crimson frowned.
 
"Th-that’s good, right?" one of the lings asked.

The other continued, "You'll help, won’t you?" Handy cocked an eyebrow at her, "You helped with the dragon! Chrysalis paid you for it! Wouldn't you uh, help again?" They both seemed to shrink as they talked. Handy loomed over them. He was still the creature who not five minutes ago had leapt out of the darkness, grabbed them both and dragged them in here with him. It seems they nearly forgot what they were dealing with. Adorable.
 
"She asked me to." Their faces lit up. "I declined." Crimson smiled.
 
"Why!?"
 
"Because I am Handy the Milesian and I will not be treated like a slave," Handy said imperiously. "Your queen forgot that, so I left her there, in her cell. Left her alone with thoughts of being abandoned and left to rot for her follies and let her entire colony be damned for it. For I am weary and hungry and care not for the fate of changeling kind." The two changelings slowly wilted under that. Handy did not know what Crimson had done to them to crush their spirits like that. He didn't expect an outburst like he got from Thorax or Jacques but he expected an indignant hiss, or scowls, or something equally changelingey from them. He got nothing. He briefly wondered what, exactly, entailed when one changeling colony was subordinated to another by subjugating its ruler.
 
"So we can go now, Master?" Crimson asked simply, brushing down the front of her cloak. "It seems my journey was in vain, and Chrysalis shall be getting what is coming to her."
 
"No."
 
"…What?"
 
"You two, what are your names?" Handy asked the two changelings, the pair looked at eachother, then over to Crimson, who was Just as lost as them. "Come on."
 
"…Glimmer," said the mare.
 
"Façade," said the stallion.
 
"Well Glimmer and Façade, let's go and meet Thorax," Handy said, turning and walking to the other end of the room towards a door. He opened it a crack to see the streets outside. Some dark shapes buzzed above the buildings but the streets themselves were clear.
 
"Master, wait!" Crimson hurried over to him, tugging at his robes with a hoof. "Why are you doing this? She enslaved you!"
 
"You have a fair point, Crimson," Handy said, "and I was running short on ideas of what to do about all of this."
 
"Didn't you say you weren't going to help her?" Façade asked, the pair slowly moving from their corner of the room, uncertain over the current turn in the events.
 
"That I did. The grate of her cell through which I spoke to her was enchanted, or as enchanted as Changeling magic gets. Tampering with it would have been unhealthy, I imagine. She was herself far too… royal to fit through such a tiny space. She was also weighed down with magical chains that prevented shapeshifting. I had no means of helping her out of there even if I wanted to." Handy then looked sideways at Crimson, "But now I have options. Now come on, Changelings first."
 
Handy held the door open to let the changelings through. They hesitantly obeyed while Crimson stood there giving Handy the most dumbfounded look.
 
"Master… why are you doing this? You didn't answer that question." Handy looked down at Crimson for a moment, a calculating glimmer in his eyes.
 
"I have my reasons."

--=--

 
"I say we still lie low," Jacques said, pacing up and down.
 
"I can't just sit here! I have to go see what happened!"
 
"What do you think happened, Thorax?" Jacques snapped at her, causing her to start in surprise. "A big, flashy, green explosion and spooky magical after effects lingering in the atmosphere around it after the fact? Smells like Blackport again to me, and that connerie was Handy's business. Let him deal with it on his own, salaud hypocrite…"
 
"Jacques, I know you're upset, but I can't just ignore that," Thorax insisted. "My own changelings could be in danger!"
 
"I know!" Jacques practically shouted before rubbing his face with a hoof and calming himself down. "Sorry. Look, think about it, Thorax. No offence, but I know how changelings act when there's a lot of them in one place, and there is something dangerous going on.”
 
"How do you—"
 
"Details, details, I'll tell you later." Jacques waved off her concerns with a hoof. Quartz tried to use the distraction to slowly slink off. "You. Stay." Quartz sat on his ass, defeated. The door was only several feet away, too. Jacques turned back to Thorax. "Now… Thorax, despite what Handy thinks, I… am more familiar with how changelings think than even… Comment puis-je mettre ce délicatement...? "
 
"Vous pouvez essayer en Cour équestre pour un début." Thorax deadpanned. Jacques sighed, hung his head in defeat, and looked back at Thorax.
 
"You are a bunch of paranoid, hyper-suspicious, backstabbing, self-centred, secret-obsessed, compulsively disordered, tribal, backwards, amoral jackanapes," Jacques said in one breath, "to a ling."
 
"I love you too," Thorax said dryly. "So tell me how you really feel about changelings."
 
"No, you don't understand. I am basically describing your compulsions, like how ponies are overly prone to panicking en masse, while individually ponies can be as stalwart and as imposing as a mountain."
 
"For a given definition of mountain…" Thorax muttered under her breath but Jacques didn't seem to notice.
 
"I've used group mentality against the changelings of the Arconate many times in the past. That’s how I know that if the other rulers of the changelings are anything like that stallion, most of the changelings who have no business being outside will be inside and the streets will be swarming with warrior changelings loyal to whoever's in charge in that palace.
 
“You know, the one that was directly threatened,” he continued. “You surreptitiously breaking curfew will automatically mean that you have someone out there important enough for you to actually give enough of a damn to go out and fetch them, which makes you a suspect. And that would be terrible."
 
"There's no one ruler in charge," Thorax pointed out. "There are dozens of huge colonies here, and dozens more of independent sidhes in the lower cities."
 
Jacques blinked.
 
"There's a lower city?"
 
"Plural."
 
"…Well, in any case, that’s even worse. That means there's lots of changelings with pointy things out on the streets that hate each other almost as much as whoever had the stones to threaten their leaders."
 
"Maybe we could use that to our advantage?" Thorax pondered. There was a brief waft of air, but she didn't bother to turn around. "Sit back down, you. Noling's in the mood for your horseplay."
 
And so Quartz’ attempt to sneak out through the opening in the ceiling was thwarted. He sat back down on the ground in frustration, his wings twitching on occasion. One of the unconscious thugs stirred beside him, and he gave it a kick. It groaned and lay still once more.
 
"Normally I'd have a few ideas," Jacques said, levitating more of the broken junk around them out of the way. The streets outside had gotten noticeably quieter since the explosion. Thorax had initially flown out of the building to see what had happened before being called right back after relaying the description to Jacques. "Ah, but there is too much about this situation I don't know. There are too many variables, and now? Far too many angry changelings looking for an excuse to hurt something. I'm used to causing a panic like this after my mischief to cover my tracks."
 
"Wait," Thorax began, "what exactly did you get up to with the Archon's changelings back in the Enclave?"
 
"That's… not important right now.”
 
"Considering he's here right now, I'd say it’s pretty important."
 
"Wow, you guys are still here?" The three of them jumped at hearing the voice of an armoured changeling at the door. Jacques pulled out his sword, Thorax reached for the stiletto strapped to the back of her foreleg, and Quartz just stood stock-still in fright, thinking the presence of one guard meant more and that any escape would be thwarted by a sudden and painful run-in with heavily armoured changelings. The guard kicked a lump of broken wood. "You know, I would've thought after that little light show at the palace, you guys would have tried to find a more secure hole to dig under."
 
That was when they got over the initial shock and recognized the voice.
 
"Handy?" Jacques asked. The guard nodded.
 
"Yeah, it’s me." Handy turned to Quartz and blinked in surprise. "You're still here?"
 
"Uhh…"
 
"Go on, no sense keeping you here."
 
"Handy what—!" Thorax began.
 
"What are you doing back here!?" Jacques snarled. "You made it pretty clear you don't give a shit about any of us."
 
"Don't take it personally, Jacques, I don't give a shit about anyone. If it makes you feel better, you're not on my shit list."
 
"And that’s supposed to make everything you said go away?"
 
"No, it’s just my acknowledgement that I don't hate you, which is about as good as anyone can get. Now go on, get," Handy said, waving a hoof at Quartz. The changeling just looked at him, suspecting a trap. Handy sighed. "Look, mate, you can either go out that door, or I can upgrade your status from innocent bystander I'm taking pity on to trail rations."
 
"Y-You wouldn't really…?"
 
"I would, actually. Turns out I didn't end up chewing on the neck of that one poor bastard I slunk away with. Indigestion. It's cleared up now, however." The changeling whimpered, and Jacques gave Handy a look of disgust. "Oh knock it off, Jacky boy, I'm just messing around. Look, our fella, you can take a third option."
 
"W-Which is?"
 
"Go out into that alley and have a chat with the two other changelings I brought along while I clear up things with these two. They've been topside the last couple of months too. You'll get along swimmingly. It'll be great."
 
"Whu—"
 
"Out!" Handy shouted. Quartz hopped to it and leapt around Handy's changeling glamour and out into the backstreet. Handy turned back to the others. Both Thorax and Jacques were giving Handy mean looks. "Right... I know this isn't going to be easy…"
 
"Leave," Thorax commanded.
 
"…And I know hard words were said…."
 
"You made your point loud and clear, mon ami." The hurt was evident in Jacques’ voice. They were angry. Good, Handy wanted them to be.
 
"…But if you look deep in your hearts, you can find the words you need to say so I may deign to forgive you."
 
"WHAT!?" they both yelled. Jacques’ sword even drooped a few inches. It annoyed Handy that he still had that drawn.
 
"Now that I have your attention," Handy said, once their angry looks had a brief moment of confusion flash across their faces, and they finally looked up at him so that they could talk face to face rather than face to crotch. He could've just reminded them to shake their heads or something and try to pierce the glamour, but that was more entertaining. Glamour was awesome and all, but it was annoying how people still kept that image of him in their heads for a while even after he had dropped it. Maybe it was because they expected to see him as his disguise and as a result they did. Weird. "I have a proposition for you both."
 
"What do you want?" Thorax spat. "You wouldn't help us before.”
 
"True."
 
"And you made it quite clear you wouldn't put anyone before yourself."
 
"NNNNot strictly true, just true most of the time." Handy placed one hand on top of the other and gave the pair a small, tired smile.
 
"And what changed, hmm?" Jacques challenged, putting his sword away. "Finally feel guilty for once?"
 
"I'd like you two to meet Crimson." Handy reached out the door and waved Crimson over. The mare walked into the room, looking around and surveying the damaged interior and the assortment of unconscious changelings. Well, some of them were unconscious and appeared to have been bound. Others were left where they lay, untouched. Thorax blinked.
 
"Wh—"
 
"Thorax, Jacques, this is Crimson Shade, my servant, charge, and a journeymare in the dark arts of old magic, the school of magic I have been charged with hunting down this entire time." At the shout of alarm from Jacques and his raised sword, Crimson did nought but cock an eyebrow and give him a contemptuous look. "Crimson, this is Thorax and Jacques, my… ah, boon companions this entire time."
 
"Hello," Crimson monotoned.
 
"Oh, and Thorax was the one who knocked you out, and impersonated you for over a month, and was instrumental in my slavery. Have fun, just don't kill her."
 
"Wha—"
 
"Rargh!" Crimson practically leapt the distance between the two of them, her magic ripping Thorax's stiletto and flinging it away as she barrelled into her. The pair careened to the other side of the room in a whirling mass of flailing hooves and curses.
 
"Thorax!" Jacques was halted by a hand on his wither pulling him back.
 
"No no, let them have at it. You and I need to talk."
 
"Get off me, damn you!" Jacques ripped himself away from Handy and gave him an evil look. Handy backed off a step, holding his free hand aloft peaceably. The stallion looked over at the two fighting mares for a moment. Thorax was currently busy pinning Crimson to the ground with a hoof pulled behind her back, before the unicorn's magic bashed her in the face with what looked like a frying pan and the fight was renewed. "What do you mean ‘old magic’? What’s going on here, Handy!?"
 
"I did not tell you everything behind my servitude to Chrysalis, only that it involved her using something to coerce me into agreeing. Crimson was that something."
 
"She uses old magic. You made it very clear those mages were your enemies."
 
"Correct. They're also hers. Crimson is very important to my future plans regarding my enemies, Jacques. She is my only insight into the Mistress and how to combat her. My very life and the lives of many rely on her continued safety. All this time Chrysalis' machinations have been endangering us both."
 
Handy paused as there was a lull in the fighting and a fierce buzzing sound could be heard overhead. The three changeling hanger-ons who had been effectively rubbernecking around the doorframe to see what was going on had come inside. They all waited patiently while the flight of changeling guards passed overhead. The fight continued, the three changelings sat near the door and shifted awkwardly, and Handy turned back to Jacques.
 
"Maybe now you might understand my raw antipathy for Thorax and her brood, on top of everything else?"
 
"She caused an explosion in front of the palace!" Jacques hissed. Handy shrugged.
 
"She attacked me with an army of wraiths and a summoned storm elemental on the same night I became vampyr on a speeding train that was under attack by several squadrons of royal night guard thestrals. She's bad at the whole 'reasonable force' thing. Dark mages—what are you gonna do?"
 
"…What?"
 
"Not everything you hear about me on the grapevine is a lie, Jacques." Handy gave a wry smile.
 
"You’re avoiding the question," Jacques returned with a hard look. "Why have you come back?"

"If we get out of here alive and whole, I might just tell you. For now, you’re just going to have to trust me."
 
"Trust you!?"
 
"Yes."
 
"Why!?"
 
"Because, Jacques, I said so," Handy ignored Jacques staring at him at that simple explanation, "and because if you don't, we're all likely to die. I've been here before, and I'm… rather well known in this particular city. Because reasons. You're going to need to do exactly what I say if you want both you and Thorax to get out of this safely, and get Chrysalis out, and somehow achieve all that without having this entire cavern come down upon us all."
 
"Oh, and how are you going to do that? They have an army!"
 
"I have a Crimson."
 
"That is not a proper response to the problem," Jacques deadpanned.
 
"Too bad, it’s what we have to work with. Now…" Handy walked over to the fighting pair and began pulling Crimson away. She had a bruised eye and a trail of blood coming from her nose. Thorax was in similar shape, both of them cursing at each other. Thorax was a bit lost in the moment and made to swing at the flailing mage some more before Jacques pulled her back. "I think you two have had quite enough time getting to know one another."
 
"Flagrant rag witch!"
 
"Filthy stone dweller!"
 
"See? You're already such good friends," Handy remarked sarcastically. He pulled the struggling pony over and placed her on top of a crate. "Now sit. Both of you."
 
"Handy, I swear to God if you don't explain yourself right now—!"
 
"I am here to help you."
 
"How!? Why!?"
 
"Yeah, I'm not repeating myself. Just roll with it for now; Jacques will fill you in."
 
"You still haven't even told me why you're doing this," Jacques interjected.
 
"Yes, but I did say I will later. Now listen, Crimson's little distraction has bought us a window of opportunity. If I overheard Jacques correctly, all of their leaders should be in one place, correct?"
 
"That's generally what happens with the Archon's changelings from my experience, yes," Jacques confirmed. Handy looked to Thorax who was still giving Crimson a death glare but slowly nodded her head.
 
"And if all the leaders are in one place, that will also mean they'll bring Chrysalis into the same area. After all, no one wants to leave her unattended when there's a panic going on, right?"
 
"I… guess so," Thorax replied, grumbling. The three changelings basically sat there, more or less ignored apart from an occasional glance the human gave them over his shoulder. The three of them were commiserating their situation, with Quartz unwilling to leave due to the guard presence outside but unwilling to stay because the Heartless was present. Façade and Glimmer had no choice in the matter.
 
"Do you think they're gonna need us for anything?" Quartz whispered nervously. Façade shrugged.
 
"Don't know, probably."
 
"Feels weird being in the back here when our colony is at stake, like we're just accessories to what’s going on," Glimmer added.
 
"Isn't that how it’s always been?" Façade asked. "We've always been the ones who followed orders, not help make them."
 
"Maybe you two were. Me? I mattered," Quartz grumbled.
 
"Then why did you go rogue?"
 
"I'm sorry, but do you guys not remember the gigantic undead dragon that nearly roasted us all alive when our glorious queen brought us to this little pit?"
 
"And how well did you manage out there on your own without our queen's protection?" Façade sneered, poking Quartz in the side. The smaller changeling hissed, covering his exposed ribs with a foreleg.
 
"It was still better than being down here now!"
 
"Hey you three, pipe down!" Crimson barked at them. The three went quiet again, but Quartz still fumed silently. Handy looked at him curiously for a moment before turning back to the others and speaking.
 
"Then I think it’s time we pooled what we know and make a proper plan. If we're going to do this and save our hides at the same time, we're going to need to do this fast, and we're going to need to be very careful. We need to be subtle, tactful and most importantly of all, as inconspicuous as we can possibly be."
 

--=--

 
Chrysalis was led through the halls of the royal palace. Her halls. Her rightful dwelling. Her immaculately carved stone floors and vaulted ceilings. Her dark alcoves and endless rooms. This was her city, and she had reclaimed it for the good of all changelings, whether they were hers or otherwise.
 
Now she was a prisoner. Her chains rattled; the yoke around her neck weighed her down. Each step felt heavy and cumbersome, and strangers with spears marched beside her instead of her own honour guard.
 
'Woe to the vanquished indeed,' she thought bitterly. Had the ponies done this to her, it would have hurt, but it would have made sense to bring a defeated would-be conqueror low before the throne of the enemy.
 
Except there was no throne where she was going but a senate, or a mockery of one, full of the unworthy filth who dared to call themselves leaders of changelings. She was no conqueror—she ruled here, and she had been brought low and captured in the heart of her own fortress. That insult burned worse than any other. It took everything she had not to gnash her teeth, to grind her fanged maw and snarl at the pitiful wretches to her sides, baring her fangs and demanding their submission.
 
But no, she was old-blooded and royal. She refused to break her regal demeanour in the face of this travesty, and so she walked calmly and with her proud head held high as they marched through the interior of the palace.
 
She looked up to see the start of the calcification of the interior of the palace, a prospect she balked at. She knew some of the more militant colonies insisted on armouring the interior of their dwellings with the stone-skin, but for Chrysalis and her kin, the idea was repugnant. Dwellings were for living in, not for preparing to withstand a catapult assault from the inside. She liked to live in comfort when possible and liked her changelings to do so as well in their own homes. No doubt this was at the commune's insistence. Everything was a continuous war and endless fear with them.
 
Her thoughts were brought back to the moment when she heard the increased buzz of changeling wings as they approached the heavily guarded senate hall, the drone and shouts of the conversations going on inside barely perceptible through the great stone doors. The guards parted before her and the great doors opened wide to permit her entrance and, yet again, she was brought before the mocking menagerie of rulers.
 
However, this time she was not the centre of attention.
 
"—And I say we are betrayed!" yelled an elderly-looking changeling, dressed in the finest satin robes of the Breakaway Priesthood. Noling had any patience for the heretic theocracy he represented and their disgusting tendency to reveal the inner most secrets of the old Imperial Cult to anyling who'd care to ask. However, it appeared such disgust was not on the senate's mind since many seemed to be shouting in agreement with him.
 
"Oh sit down and shut up you old bat!" yelled the young queen who had so kindly visited Chrysalis earlier that day. She gave the disgraced queen a brief glance before turning her attention back to the gathered assembly. "Noling here would gain anything by drawing the others' ire!"
 
"Perhaps, perhaps not," crooned a voice that seemed to cut through the chattering cacophony from somewhere far above. Hacking and coughing, the mysterious veiled ruler of the Stormlings, as they were known, lay on her palanquin far above. It were as if she never left the senate hall. Her unmoving guards stood grimly to attention, unknowable under their all-encompassing, stark white armour. "What matters is that we are assailed."
 
"I say it was Chrysalis' doing," the Archon stated, trying to reclaim the initiative.
 
"Hah! Then you've just admitted you are terrible at keeping track of your prisoners," Jezeer, the merchant prince, sneered. "Perhaps you shouldn't be leading this coalition after all…"
 
"I am saying one of you helped!" the Archon snapped, receiving outraged cries in response. "Don’t think I haven't noticed. You've all been sneaking down to her cell, trying to weed her into submitting, claiming her and her resources for yourselves!"
 
"And what, we should just let you have her!?" shouted a different changeling from the crowd.
 
"How can we trust a changeling who can't even keep a secure hold on the palace, let alone the city!?" shouted another.
 
"Over a dozen guards, most of them belonging to MY changelings, were found dead and buried on the surface entrance! Crushed! We are invaded!"
 
Chrysalis stood there and watched the exchange impassively. Bored eyes drifted from one face to another as they wasted no time going from concerns over security to petty politicking. Just as they always had, just as they did six years ago when her most ambitious plot to secure a future for all changelings had failed. Just like with the wedding.
 
Jezeer and his rich colony of merchant changelings. No ling knew how they always had so much emotional essence on hoof at any one time. It was far more than any changeling could store at once. Typically, an industrious changeling would infiltrate a pony village and suck up enough love from a lover and those that cared for them in one day that could feed a sidhe of ten changelings for a week if it was rationed. That was on top of physical food. One of Jezeer's changelings could store enough to feed sixty. They made their business traveling across the continent, connecting the colonies and independent sidhes, trading, making them extraordinarily wealthy, influential… and dangerous. Jezeer's infiltrators were feared more than any others, precisely because it was foolish to turn away a willing merchant.
 
Fenswit, of the Commune, who constantly preached of the great sidhe republic, breaking down the traditional rulership structure and that of the sidhes, making all changelings one family… all under his hoof of course.
 
Gossamer the Glamourous, or the Whore if one were to be honest. Hers were a despicable breed of changeling, able to subsist off of the petty carnal feelings harvested in brothels and dens of vice the world over. Sustenance too stale and unpalatable for even the most starving of changelings her kin treated as a delicacy.
 
Blind Siery, King Obsidian, Hierophant Osweyrn, Anti-Hierophant Nesiris, Queen Amethyst the young, Archmagus Priosp, the Archon…
 
She could go on, mentally listing all the rulers, but what good would it do? Had this been any other circumstance, she would have manipulated their division to her advantage as she had always done. The loudmouths jockeying for position were nothing to be concerned about. The ones that concerned her were the ones wise enough to hold their tongues. She opened her eyes and glanced up at the palanquin far above on the concentric steps of the senate. Had she a future ahead of her, she'd keep an eye on that one, but as it were…
 
She allowed herself a sigh and closed her eyes again and waited for the crowd to die down, or until the weight of the argument fell upon the topic of her again, whichever came first. She was getting a headache.
 
And then the world seemed to flash an incredibly bright green and stung her eyes through their lids. Chrysalis let out a yelp and brought her foreleg over her face. She instinctively covered them with the nictitating membrane that slide out of the sides of her eyes to protect them. She did not want to be caught having that reaction, it was beneath her. She pulled them back and opened her eyes, blinking rapidly, ears twitching as the cacophonous noise of the senate floor erupted into a sudden crescendo of alarm.
 
Armour clanked and weapons were drawn. Numerous guards drew close to their respective lieges or took to the air. A number of crossbows were cocked and loaded, and Chrysalis blinked in sudden concern as they were all pointed at her.
 
Wait, no, that was not right. They were pointed to the left of her.
 
She turned around. Then she looked up.
 
Handy spared her a glance from under the hood of his robe. He didn't linger on her stupefied expression and her mouth which refused to form coherent words before he turned to face the crowd before him. She also didn't notice the strange green glow radiating from him either but, you know, details. He brushed some dirt from his shoulder while he waited for the gathered rulers to calm their respective tits.
 
"What is the meaning of this!?" one of them demanded, big and black with a strange iron face-hugging contraption.

Handy sighed. That would have to do for a foot in the door.
 
"Which of you is the Archon?" Handy demanded, his voice carrying across the hall. The question brought a few more panicking changelings, many of whom had thought the human nothing more than some myth Chrysalis had spun. They never expected to see him, or rather, they never expected to experience the eerie horror that his existence implied.
 
"No soul…" Hierophant Nesiris murmured fearfully, sinking back into his pillows. Amethyst was nearby, her left ear swiveling around to listen, unnerved by what the holy stallion was saying. "A tree without fruit can be made use of, but no tree at all is no good for the harvest. It has no soul!"
 
"I am the Archon of the Eastern lands!" cage face replied. Handy turned to address him directly and pointed at him.
 
"In that case, Princess Galaxia thanks you for all your hard work and compliance in sharing secrets!" Handy stated loudly and clearly, as the senate hall erupted in outrage and indignation. The Archon reeled, alarmed at the accusation and the suddenly hostile senate. Handy smirked and added. "And Jacques sends his regards."
 
The Archon turned, wide-eyed and furious at the human. Handy responded by shooting out his left hand and grabbing the very confused Chrysalis by the horn.
 
"Wha-H-Hey-! What are you- L-Let go of me!" she stammered as the greenish aura grew down the length of her horn to encompass her. Handy pointed to her with his free hand.
 
"I'm just gonna borrow this for a while. You guys don't mind, right? Right. Thanks."
 
With another flash and a thunderclap the human was gone, and Chrysalis along with him. All that remained was the magically infused chains that fell heavily to the floor, the smell of burnt ozone.
 
And the chaos left in their wake.