I.
It’s a lot like a hangover.
When I was on leave in Stalliongrad, the day I almost bought that hat, our class went and partied pretty hard. It’s tradition, and like most traditions, it is at least a little stupid. I threw up everything that night on the street and then my friends threw me onto a couch and propped my head up. The next morning, I felt like I had died, been dragged back to life… and then like I wanted to die again. Dying sounded awesome.
This is a little worse. Being hungover feels like every little bit of moisture has been wrung out of you. Your head hurts, your throat is raw. You feel weak, like you haven’t eaten in days. But when I open my eyes again, I feel less like I’ve been dried out and more like someone has slowly been peeling my skin off. It burns. It being everything. My veins feel like they carry little blades that stab underneath my skin.
I groan.
That’s when I see something over me. My sight is… strange. Wrong. Like what I imagine ponies who need glasses must see like. The world is fuzzy.
“Lily, she’s awake!” Oh. Ruby. Hello Ruby.
Another shape. “Thank Luna. She protects.” That would be Lily.
“She protects,” softer, a little afraid. Ruby.
“You are lucky, pup,” Lily says. I feel… I think she’s touching my face. It hurts. I whine. “You’re very lucky. It seems that the bitch goddess has not changed her children’s venom. You will recover.”
“Wha hap’n?” I say. Even in my awful state, I know it sounds stupid as hell.
“One of them jumped you and bit you,” Ruby says. “I… I thought you were dead. But Lily helped me pull you back towards the fire.”
“Go and tell the Commander,” Lily told her. I wanted her to stay. I tried to say so, but my words were all big and strange. “In a few hours you will be fine. Some of the refugees are going to help us move you until the venom wears off. You are more lucky than I said before: if Yuletide hadn’t found you and pulled the monster off, it would have gotten you with a double dose. You wouldn’t have woken up for another few days.”
I groan again, trying to talk. She makes shushing noises. “No. It’s alright. Just go back to sleep. You’ll sleep it off. It’s fine.”
And I do what she says. I can feel myself going. Not like when I fight. It’s gentler. It’s quieter. Like sinking into bed. I can almost feel the covers moving, and—
II.
The forward base of the Equestrian Guard in Manehattan is a place of blinding activity.
It’s to be expected—this is a momentous occasion. If tragedy can be called that without shame, at least. Equestria has not seen an actual war for well over a century. Pirates, bandits, the occasional monster… but not a war of maneuver. Her tacticians are at wit’s end. Her quartermasters are both the happiest and the most frustrated they have ever been and perhaps shall ever be, and her soldiers are nervous at best. Frightened, at worse.
But let it not be said that nothing is accomplished in the panic, for much is indeed done. Orders carried from one tent to another carry with them the force of thousands of hooves. Already, eight companies are crossing the border. Another four wait in Lunangrad for Luna and Celestia to lead personally. The combined levies of seven noble houses muster just north of Canterlot, late as always. A whole nation is moved to war. Or, in their hearts, is moved to the aid of a new friend.
In one of those tents, a small crowd is huddled around an outlaid map of the Crystal Empire. They are as one: furrowed brows, lines grim slashes, bodies still. None of them want to get right to the point, partially because they all already know the point. They know what’s going to be said and what it will mean. Instead, they talk about everything else.
“If her highness is sure of moving the Third Army group towards the Expanse,” began the one who was nominally leading this meeting, “than she… er, they, will need to maintain a rather tenuous line of supply. It’ll be easily cut. I have informed their Majesties of this, and have been told in no uncertain terms that we have days to figure it out.”
A general wave of discontent.
“I know,” said the first. He rubbed his temples. He could feel a headache beginning right under the root of his horn. He hadn’t slept in two days. Too busy crunching the numbers. How much bread and water feeds how many guardsponies? What is the correct amount of weight for a guard pony to carry when moving across unfamiliar but flat terrain in winter, possible snow becoming definite snow, so that he or she will be effective in combat several hundred miles after starting? It was all in the numbers, he’d been trained to believe. It’s all in the give and take of ratios. Sacrifice a sliver of combat readiness for speed or the weight of supply, sacrifice some speed or equipment for a fresher force. It was all in the numbers and in the charts.
“That’s not enough time—” one of the faceless crowd said, and the unicorn with a raging headache now continued to rub his temples. His name was Balanced Check and he had the absurd thought for perhaps the hundredth time that his name was incredibly stupid. Especially in light of the circumstances, wherein nothing was going to add up.
“I know,” he said again.
“If we had Rangers…”
“But the Rangers are in the theater already,” Check said. “Yes. Let’s just… skip the parts everyone knows because they are obvious, alright? Let’s skip to the part where we make it work.”
Carefully but swiftly, he began to mark the map. “Alright. We have nine ranger stations in the north. Six were deployed to the survey mission. That leaves us three, hypothetically, that would be perfect to keep marauders off of any resupply.”
“That’s an insanely small force.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” He sighed. “Look, I get that. Trust me, I’m aware. But the Rangers aren’t guards. They know this terrain. Rangers can cover ten times the ground with a tiny fraction of the ponypower. They’ve done it before. It’s what they do. I’m not saying its ideal. I’m saying it’s a start.”
One of the logistics staff pushed back his eyeglasses and leaned in. “Where are the currently deployed wings? You’re right, sir, that the Rangers are ideal for the situation at hoof…”
“But three wings isn’t enough, yes.” Check marked the positions of the remaining wings. He knew them all by heart. Most of this was going to be merely a rehearsal. “Stations Nine, Eleven, and Fourteen are our reserves. Stations Five, Seven, and Eighteen are here, currently attached to the Fourth Legion. Empire will hate to see them go, but I think the prospect of a few thousand Equestrian guards will make the loss more palatable. It’ll also be more up their alley. That would bring us to…” he blinked and desperately wished for an apothecary. “I believe it’s forty-six? That is assuming only the two casualties we’ve been informed of, obviously. That’s forty-six rangers covering a hundred miles of ground.”
“It’s a lot,” murmured one of the faceless officers, leaning in.
Check knew he wouldn’t find anything. “Yes, but there’s more to it than that. I’ve done some calculations regarding the Fifth and Seventh. Station Five has a unicorn whose dowsing ability is unreal and even with conservative estimates, worth an additional thirty ponies. Station Seven has another unicorn. Not as good, obviously, but still numerically their ability to lay out dowsing and detection spells should bolster the effective force estimate…” Is that even a term? He wonders. He is so tired. He had spent the last ten hours working the math, using formulas he hadn’t thought about at all in years. “It evens out a bit. A bit,” he stressed. Essentially, we end up with forty-six rangers who can do the work of eighty-five or more airborne batpony rangers. They can see in the dark, hear changelings coming long before anypony else can, and frankly they are frighteningly good at surviving. Now, if we can position them correctly, I believe we can keep the route from Lunangrad into the Expanse open long enough to move in elements of the First Army Group’s pegasus…”
And then a question he had not anticipated: “What about Station Nineteen? They seem close enough that they might be able to move back towards the border.”
Check hesitated.
“We… we aren’t sure if…” he coughed. “We aren’t sure if they’re even alive,” he admitted.
“You’re right about the survival bit, sir,” said the one who had spoken. Check honestly didn’t remember his name. “Surely they might have? We could at least try to contact them.”
“No go. No unicorn for communication. If they had a scrying globe at all it it's long gone—I was told in no uncertain terms that for all intents and purposes they are dead. I’m inclined to agree with you. They’re close to the initial invasion route, hell, right on top of it! But…” he shrugged and pointed. “See that? Amethyst City? It’s the only place in miles they could go. I want to believe that they rounded up some survivors from the border towns and moved their asses. Wouldn’t that be something? But the only place to go is Amethyst City, and if they go there… well. They’ll be in for a rude awakening.”
III.
In Lunangrad, a near-immortal returns to the city which hailed her in Rebellion, and which was the last to surrender her cause. She finds her return to be… Strange. Like a half-remembered dream, the kind you aren't sure of when you wake. Had you dreamed something pleasant? Was it a nightmare? And your feelings are mixed and your brain is hazy so you like back down again, but Luna could not shrug her feeling off so easily.
Luna blinked wearily at the sun. Already she was tired, and no fighting had been done. She was almost tempted to think—Ah, but I am old now—but knew better. It wasn’t age. When she had been a vagrant warrior, she and Celestia had roamed and quested and fought and she had not been weary. But that was before Ascension. It was before the Moon.
She had liked night before. Now she was Night.
Twilight Sparkle, horns and wings and all, accompanied her as she walked through the camp that had been set up in the city park. It was ad hoc. Faintly, Luna found it horrifying—Equestrian arms had rusted in her absence, it seemed. But at the same time, it was understandable. The arts of war had grown less needful. She supposed it was better this way. Maybe. The guards themselves were no lesser than the ones who she had fought in the long ago Schism.
“I’ve already checked our stores and the quartermaster says that the army’s last shipment of cold weather gear came in this morning from Vanhoover,” Twilight said, trotting beside her. Luna glanced over to see her levitating a checklist. How surreal. Checklists.
Checklists should not have a place in war, and Luna was certain of this. She found this new time strange at best, and wrongheaded at worst. As if the fury of the clash of arms could be made into a machine! How horrid.
“It is good to hear,” she said, solemnly. “Has thou—ah, forgive me. Celestia, is she here? I would speak to her if she has arrived.”
“I’m not sure that she’s here yet, Princess,” Twilight said. “She was supposed to be, but the schedules for everything are just…” she made the most adorable little sound of frustration. Luna wished she were in the mood to appreciate it.
“It is not your fault, and is not urgent,” Luna said, shaking her head. “Later will be as good as sooner. As for now… I would advise you, Twilight, on the eve of battle.”
“Y-you would… I mean, what?”
“Firstly, between us, let there be names and not titles,” Luna said. “I will not march into battle with a newlyborn sister alicorn who calls me princess and not my name!” She chuckled. “ ‘T would be ill-luck, I think.”
Twilight smiled. “Of course. I’m sorry, I’m a little on edge. This is… this is big.”
“Aye.” Luna looked about again. “I believe quarters were prepared for all three of us. Leave the checklist behind and let us retire for now. Celestia is the general here, not you or I. Let her be the one who is seen to take command.”
Luna had seen a hundred battles. She had fought in five times that many skirmishes. She knew just as her sister knew what war looked like. It could not change. Not really. She ignored the hollow feeling in her gut.
Twilight nodded reluctantly. “Alright… I mean, if you’re certain it would be better. The quartermaster was pretty organized, I suppose.”
“Let the good stallion do his job,” Luna said gently. “I am sure that he is capable, else he would not be assigned to the work.”
They left the camp behind slowly, and not for lack of progress. It was simply massive, and much like a maze.
But it did eventually end, and the city was all around it. Lunagrad had been a solemn city in her own time, and she found that it had not changed in that regard. Sadly, she thought it shone less brightly than it had. But perhaps at night it still was like a living sea of stars. She hoped so. Another thing that you killed or left crippled in your wake, she thought, but masked her disgust from Twilight. Twilight would not understand.
The Governor of Lunangrad had practically prostrated himself before Luna when he had offered accomodations. Frankly, she would have preferred to stay in a tent. But Celestia had suggested she accept—being cautious not to overstep, but implying that it would go a long way to restoring her old bond with the ponies of the Valley of the Moon.
The servants bowed deeply and formally as they passed. Luna acknowledged each with a nod. It was hard not to ogle at the old tapestries—she wondered if they had kept the old ones… no, surely not. But they looked as if they came from her old world. She saw herself in many of them. Her old self. The Luna before the nightmare of despair. The Luna who deserved their love.
As if from the Aether where she walked at night came unbidden an old, old bit of doggerel: Luna protects. Luna provides. Luna sees all. She snorted. What nonsense. She certainly did not see all. She had failed to protect. She had failed even more dramatically to provide.
IV.
Lily was right. By the time I woke, I was ready to be on my own hooves again.
Two of our civilians had offered to carry me between them. It was surprising, to say the least. When I woke up, I about near gave them a heart attack. Which was fair, because I was pretty freaked out at first too. But I thanked them profusely, and they didn’t seem afraid of me. Maybe seeing me completely fail at being useful took all of that away. Or maybe its just harder to avoid looking at the scary evil batpony when she’s right in front of you thanking you for carrying her.
I still feel a little woozy, but not enough to really be a problem. I can walk in a straight line and fly in a straight line, and as far as I’m concerned, that means I’m fine.
We’ve almost cleared the forest, or so the Pathfinders think. I’m glad to be rid of it.
As for the attack… Knight-Commander Yuletide himself filled me in. We lost Shadow. When he told me I just… sat. My legs simply gave out. Stopped taking orders. He never changed the tone of his voice. He simply continued. Shadow dead. Twenty-six civilians killed. Fourteen injured severely. A few dozen more with wounds minor enough to ignore. The fast movers got Shadow as he raised the alarm—he told me that they’re damn well near silent, and that’s bad for us. Changelings are hard to see in the dark, and we’ve been relying on our hearing to compensate for the difficulty. The ones with the stingers are the silent ones. Fucking monsters.
I walk alongside ‘Fang. We’re the rearguard now. Knight-Commander wanted me with somepony who had a level head, I guess. Because I’m a fuckup. I know I am. I went down after what, thirty seconds? Maybe? Damn near instantly.
What if somepony else had died? What if I had been able to get up and help Shadow? I was the closest. I know I was. Lily and Ruby and Swift all bunked on the other side of the column last night. Yuletide was on watch. Star Brand was on watch. I was the one who was supposed to be there for him. And I was just laying there, enjoying my warmth like a foal.
I haven’t seen Lily since I woke up. Or Ruby. Only Knight-Commander and ‘Fang. I wish I could have seen them, but I’m also afraid to. What if they blame me? They would be right, but I don’t want them to.
‘Fang says nothing, which doesn’t tell me much. He doesn’t usually say much unless there’s a need.
I just want to go home, now more than ever.
V.
Amethyst City, on our maps, is noted as being a walled settlement of moderate size. Estimates of the local population were tentative, but placed those within the walls at around six thousand. Our first breath of air after we’d put distance between the invasion force and ourselves, we had huddled around his flimsy parchment map, sheltering it and him from the cold, cutting winds, as he laid out our options. Or, well, option. Because we only had one.
Amethyst City was supposed to be our “base”, if you will. It was a nominal staging point where we could resupply when needed and rest or convalesce in the event of an accident or an unfortunate encounter with wildlife. It wasn’t because the place was special so much as it was the only place. There were small villages and towns, of course, but they were isolated and mostly consisted of subsistence farmers who had little to spare for a bunch of exploring Rangers.
This is the Expanse. Between the highlands around the capital city of the empire and the frozen eastern shore and another mountain range, you have a flat nothing. During the short but productive warmer months, the Expanse is a vast prairie full of flowers and grass and all that nice stuff. In the long cold months, the Expanse is a frozen wasteland that can and will kill you without having even noticed you were there to kill. There is nothing to eat, and its almost impossible to live off the land in what we would call Fall or Winter. Here it’s all winter.
So Amethyst City is the only place in our survey zone with food and shelter to spare that we won’t have to risk dying horribly in the snow to get to. And now it will be the same for the civilians we’ve picked up along the way. I hope.
Our first view of the city itself wasn’t promising, but wasn’t exactly damning. No movement, but with the way things are outside the walls, it makes sense. Don’t draw attention. Keep indoors and keep watchful. Yuletide’s ordered us all to keep visible from the ramparts when we leave the treeline, but to be ready for anything. We have to show we’re not a threat, but if they’re panicky… panicky guards are stupid guards.
We press on. I still haven’t see Lily or Ruby, but ‘Fang traded me off to Star Brand, and I moved up to the front again. We went ahead to spy out the city. So far, this has mostly entailed Knight Brand staring through his binoculars and grimacing while I scan the trees, feeling anxious.
“See anything?” I whisper, just loud enough for him to hear.
“No,” he says. “And I don’t like it. No guards on the walls that I can see.”
“They might just be hidden behind the crenulations,” I reply, but now I’m even more worried.
He grunts, as if to acknowledge that and simultaneously express what he feels the chances of that being true are. “Or they might all be dead,” he said simply.
“Do you think the city’s been taken?”
“It’s possible,” he allows.
“What would we even do? It’s the only place we can take them,” I say, a little louder now.
“We’ll just dislodge them.”
“You… wait, what?”
“Squeeze in and dislodge any occupiers,” he said and then glanced back at me. “Fight anything inside that isn’t friendly. I’m not sure how to say it more simply, Initiate.”
“Er, sorry, I just… if it was a force big enough to take the city, what can we do against it?”
“Sound thinking under other circumstances. But wrong in this one. There is no great army waiting for us inside. Amethyst City had at most perhaps two hundred guards, constabulary, and other auxiliaries. Perhaps at the utmost it could have fielded a force of a thousand, with a quarter of those being warm bodies more apt to soil themselves and run than anything else. They would not need a horde to take this place if the mind controlling it was competent. And I’m beginning to suspect that the mind controlling them is, in fact, a genius”
“I’m still not sure why there won’t be an army in there,” I grumble.
“A few things. Think of it as a lesson. Firstly, there would be patrols if it were a sizeable force. Secondly, so far the tactic of the invasion has been lightning fast maneuver across the length of the Expanse. Stopping in a city so west would bog down a significant portion of the overall force that could best be used to attack the flanks of the responding legions. Lastly, if there were a full army in there…” and now he looks back at me and grins so that bears his fangs. “They would have killed us all already.”
VI.
I’ve not been in many cities. Stalliongrad on leave. Vanhoover, once, on vacation. Manehattan on a school trip. That’s three, and only Vanhoover was more than a day or two. I know just enough to have a feel for how a city should be—namely, alive and full of ponies. There’s a constant background white noise humming in your ears. At first, it bothers you, but then you just… well, ignore it. It’s normal. I imagine that if you live long enough in a place with so much noise, you start to think that its comforting, being able to hear all that, all the time. Conversations on the street, the rolling of carts and carriages, the occasional slight thrumming of magic as some unicorn lifts something. The endless array of smells that is so maddening might one day become something to wake up to and smile, like my mother’s cooking wafting through my open bedroom door.
Amethyst City was absolutely none of the things that those cities were.
It was dead. There’s no other way to describe it. I could talk about the feeling of absolute stillness. I could describe the way the windows seemed like dull staring eyes with no ponies behind them. Empty streets where there should be crowds. Abandoned carriages with no ponies to ride them. Some broken windows. Dark patterns on snow-filled streets that are almost certainly old blood. The snow-filled streets themselves reinforce the death of this place. There isn’t anypony left to clear the way.
It’s like a whole city of that feeling I had when I saw the changeling die.
Soft Fang, Swift, and myself land on an old hotel, or what looks like an old hotel. From here, you can see all the way to the walls.
“If there are changelings, there can’t be that many of them,” I say, because talking is better than a dead city screaming silently at you about how fucking dead it is.
“Maybe,” Soft Fang says.
“Girl’s right,” said Swift. He spat. “Midnight, you see bodies?”
I swallow. “I saw a few.”
“Right. But not many.”
“No.”
“Yeah, I was wonderin’ about it to,” he says.
“Evacuation,” Soft Fang murmurs, looking over the side. “Coulda moved them.”
“Or maybe the mutated changeling fucktards eat ponies now. I mean, hell, they have stingers that shoot out of their mouths and shit.”
I shy away from Swift almost without noticing. He’s angry. I can feel how angry he is and there’s a part of me that is sure that any moment now he is going to turn all of that on me.
“I… I don’t know,” I say, sounding stupid. Feeling stupid.
He turns on me, and blinks, and then sighs and sits. I stare at him.
“Sorry,” he says. “Shadow.”
I look down. “I’m…”
“We’ll talk about it later, all of us,” he says. “We’ll remember him and we’ll say the words. I need to be calm.” He gives me a smirk like he did at the station. “Gotta show you the ropes, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright. Well, we can’t rule out pony-eating changelings, but I doubt it. I’m not seeing as much in the way of signs of struggle as you’d expect from that sort of thing anyway.”
“Is it safe? Will they be okay here? I mean…” I take a deep breath. “We could hide them, right? Or find food or something. Anything.”
“We’ll know soon,” Swift says, but the look on his face isn’t promising. “Sit for a bit and rest your hooves and wings. Back in the air in ten. Oh, and drink, kid.”
I nod and lie flat on my belly after retrieving my little canteen from beneath my duster. I gulp greedily at the water—when I filled up after waking, the water skin seemed uncomfortably light, and it made me even thirstier. My back aches and my wings feel heavy, but I can keep going for a few more hours without another break.
Absurdly, as I lie there, I can’t help but think about Ranger School. Grizlebrand was ruthless. He would fly right behind us, that hook-for-a-hoof watching you on long flights, just waiting for you to lag behind. You didn’t even have to stop and he didn’t have to actually catch you. You just saw that thing and shivered and knew you were definitely not going to slow down. Ever.
Soft Fang sees me, grins slowly, and lies flat on his stomach. I repress a grin. It’s not actually funny. We’re just tired and nervous.
“Think the others found anything?” I ask.
“Honestly? No,” Swift said, even though I didn’t specify who I was talking to. He’s always the first to talk. “And they’ll be going back before us, so they probably aren’t going to find anything after we get going again.”
I cross my hooves and lay my head across them. The snow is cold, but I’m starting to not notice as much. Either I have hypothermia, which I doubt, or I just… don’t care.
A few minutes later, we’re on the move again.
The three of us sweep over the empty, abandoned streets. All of those neighborhoods, bereft of children and old ponies and mothers and fathers and…
I couldn’t imagine the difference. I can’t see the ponies there. I try to imagine what Shady Vale would be like with just me and its just a darkness that goes on and on underground without any lights to show you the way. None of it means anything because there aren’t in ponies to name it and say what it means. This isn’t a city.
VII.
Swift is on the roof in front of me. Soft Fang is in the alley, ready to come howling into the courtyard. I am flat on my belly trying to be as small a batpony as possible.
I hear it again—we all hear it again. The faint scratching coming from inside. It sounds like chitin but Luna forgive me, how do you tell? You’d think I would know by now but I don’t.
We were right over this place when we all heard it, like nails on a chalkboard. We scattered, assuming they would come up from behind us and knock any close formation out of the sky, but nothing came. Just more scratching noises from the rectangular set of builds around a courtyard with a broken fountain.
My heart is racing. I can hear it beating wildly in my ears. I can feel it in my throat. Luna knows all. Then she can tell me what the hell is in there before I—
A changeling emerges. And then two more. Mutated. If it’s not small and normal looking it dies.
We don’t stop to see what they drag behind them. Swift falls on the one closest to him from his rooftop perch with a cry. I’m off my roof before I see Fang come out of the entranceway. No plan. I have no plan. I’m just in the air, wings flapping, mouth open. I’m screaming—it starts out normal and ascends to higher than ponies can hear and suddenly I’m even more aware of how wrong they are as the echo comes back, how wrong and awful and twisted and out of proportion. So close. The one in front of me turns and bears his fangs and I see the stinger beginning to rise in his throat. I don’t have time to go away. I don’t have—
I hit him with both forehooves right in the face and don’t follow him down. It’s like skipping. I just spring right off his face while I hear his chitin cracking and then I’m on the other side and I’m still screaming. I touch down but the snow trips me up, wasting precious seconds. I turn.
There’s more of them. Two more were behind the ones we hit. Fuck! Soft Fang is ducking under a darting stinger. Swift is in the air, trying to throw off a normal one. I charge on hooves, wishing I had hoofblades or anything at all but horsehoes.
The newcomer I head for meets me halfway and throws me back. I land on my hooves—Luna, I have to, if I stumble I’m dead I’m dead—and when he presses the attack I’m ready. I put both of my forehooves down, like I’m trying to drill them right through the stone, and then pivot my whole body, just like I was taught. I buck both hindlegs into its unholy, ugly body and send it literally flying. For once, I’m glad we’re heavier than pegasi. I’m going to enjoy having the advantage of weight.
Suddenly, everything shifts. Everything is just as frantic as before, just as awful, but I am no longer a quivering mass of reaction. My mind clicks, like a wheel find a groove, like teeth slicing through warm meat. I start grinning. Three of them are down. Two are up. No, four are down. All three of us are still up. The changelings use the fallen forms of their comrades as a barrier, hissing as they retreat back towards the door.
I don’t want them to leave. I want to see them cracked and broken against the stones. I bare my fangs at them almost out of blind instinct, copying them, mocking them, I see yours but here are mine, step off.
“Midnight! Go low!” Swift.
I don’t think. I act. I am all muscle and no heart, and so I think nothing of diving at the left one’s hooves, right over the body of its bleeding-out companion. I try to knock them aside but the thing is kicking at me. It’s hooves beat my back, the base of my wing. I flair my wings out so it can’t hit all of one of them at once, and then I just wrap my legs around its legs and cling and pull. It makes an unholy scratchy noise of panic, and then I feel one of the others hit the monster up high and I hear the crack. It falls and I fall with it, finishing it off with a hoof-ful of blows to its head and chest, my cold iron against unprotected chitin. Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack.
I jump off and turn quickly to find the next, but there is no next. There are just three panting batponies looking at each other in a quiet courtyard, blood pooling around them.
VIII.
Changelings feed in many ways. It’s not so hard to believe, really. Ponies eat and drink, but they have invented so many ways to do both of those things. In a crisis, you can even pump nutrients in through a needle, they tell me. I remember shuddering about that when I was little. I’ve always been afraid of needles.
Changelings feed on emotion, that’s the basic part. Some will say they feed on love, and that’s right. They do. But its emotional energy that they need in general. They can absorb and find some sustenance in a variety of feelings—romantic or filial love, lust, friendship, happiness—and you’ll be puzzled now and this is where ponies always ask the ultimate question: then why do what they do?
There are a lot of reasons. Love is like… it’s like steak for a lion. It’s fish for a pegasus or a batpony. It’s the pinnacle, full of life and rich in nutrients. It will keep them going. Lust is like chocolate, friendship and happiness and general communal feeling like bread or daisies for smiling dayponies. But the kinds of emotions we tend to call negative can also feed them. Anger, sadness, panic… after all, ponies can still eat grass if they really, really have to, so why couldn’t changelings do something similar? And they can live off of memories like we might live off of dried half-rations on a long road.
What ponies don’t understand about food is that it is scarce. They’re so used to everything being given them on a golden platter—the sun makes the flowers grow, the trees always have at least some apples, the wheat and corn are as high as a stallion’s eye, and all’s right under heaven.
But I understand it. We get it. We do.
When you live mostly below-ground, you become more aware of how precarious existence is. Cave-ins are rare these days, but every few years one happens and ponies get hurt. Or die. But not as often. The underground apple orchards work well, and are doing better all the time as our few unicorns get better at the magic that makes it all possible… but it wasn’t always that way. And sometimes there are kinks in the spell and the apples aren’t any good and you lose a quarter of the harvest and suddenly there are a lot less apples to go around and still the same number of ponies to feed. You have to get by sometimes on lichen-paste soup, fish stock and mushrooms and what’s left of the wheat from the daypony farms on the praries.
Now imagine that your daily bread was dependent on the mood of those around you.
So they lived in fear of the fear of others. They hid and fed in secret, and then I guess it was just never enough and they couldn’t take it anymore. They started to kidnap ponies, and like a chef stumbling on a miracle, they discovered something new: they didn’t feed on emotions exactly, but on the very spirit of a pony. When they skimmed off the surface, not taking the emotion they “fed” on, they merely touched and fondled and were warmed for a day. When they grabbed and took, they found purchase on the soul in an emotion and tore at it and devoured a part of it whole. And what if they could keep that pony in one place? Well, eventually, you would have all the pieces, wouldn’t you? And then what comes after? Isn’t it obvious? Do you have to spell it out? Shouldn’t you just… don’t you just see what it looks like? Isn’t it… I…
So I won’t think anymore about the pods and the body in the courtyard that wasn’t a changeling or the civilians with empty eyes in the bottom floor of the forum that I know Swift put out of their misery after he sent me topside.
I only know these things because when we were done and had brought them into the city I found Mozxil and I shook her until she told me why and how and she couldn’t hold on to her disguise and she cried and I know I scared her but I had to know. I had to. I said I was sorry and I don’t know if she believed me and I know a little bit of what the others feel when they see my fangs and think--you eat living things--and I felt it when she cowered before me and I thought--you eat the souls of the living--and I know it wasn’t true but I couldn’t see around the pods to see her I saw was them cutting open in the semi-darkness. I just kept seeing how the green oozed out and the bodies in stasis slumped to the floor and blinked at us and if you didn’t turn them over they suffocated to death, just blinking.