Chapter 11. - Into the Night
The stone bed of the Queen, and the quietly buzzing nymph in Lantern’s hooves provided him such comfort that even his cloud bed couldn’t match, back in Cloudsdale. Which was strange, he thought, because the bed was made of, well...stone.
When he got up, he noted with amusement how Archive stopped buzzing just as he retracted his wing from her sleeping form. He thought he would let her sleep in a little more, because the journey ahead of them would be just a tad shy of the pilgrim’s road around Equestria, and seeing as Archive’s wings haven’t sprouted yet, flying was not an option.
Lantern thought of wandering about the caves, but the lack of a proper light source deterred him from this idea as he poked his head out of the throne chamber.
Sure, he had the little glowing stones, but their light was way too miniscule to use in such a wide open cave, being only enough to penetrate the darkness ahead of him for about two steps, and even that was only if he piled them up, which made them less than adequate as a mobile light source.
That left him with few options for any kind of activity before Archive would wake up, so he decided to grab the rest of the moss from the previous day and eat.
Once he finished the meager breakfast, he started a trimmed down workout routine for his recently abused wings. He noted that the injured joint healed completely, and did not suffer any additional damage from their little stunt from before, but his neglected flight muscles were still kind of sore. Nevertheless, proper maintenance of wings was part of his life as a pegasus, and he couldn’t recall when was the last time he actually preened his wings.
He was just about done doing so, when Archive stirred and got to her hooves groggily.
“Good morning, Archive!” he called over to her, after spitting out a feather that came loose.
Just as she was about to answer, Archive gave out a weird noise and jumped off the bed, running over to the corner of the room. It would’ve been very disrespectful to be sick all over the Queen’s bed, even if she hasn’t used it in centuries.
Lantern grabbed his light stones and ran up to the hunched over nymph and started rubbing her carapace armor while she threw up in the corner.
“Whoa, are you okay?” he asked with worry clear in his voice.
By that time she was only panting and spitting the residue of clear liquid, that to Lantern’s relief, wasn’t glowing in the dark, which meant there wasn’t any of her blood mixed into the bile.
“Yeah.” she said wearily, “It’s probably only the leftover resin that got decomposed in my primary stomach. I should’ve spit it out before going to sleep, but this has never happened before. Well, it’s not like I make resin on the regular, being a nymph and all that, but still.”
“If you say it’s okay, that’s all that matters.” told her Lantern calmly, still patting her back gently.
“Thanks. It’s out now, and I’m already feeling better. I hope you’re done with your breakfast.”
“Yeah, but that little episode didn’t help.” laughed Lantern, surprisingly not actually feeling grossed out by Archive’s puke on the floor.
“Oh, that reminds me, do you know how we, pegasi callout before puking?” asked Lantern with a hint of mischief.
“Do you actually have a separate word for it?”
“Yep, exclusively used by us. Well, us and lunar pegasi, but they usually only fly after sundown, so for them it’s more like an inside joke.” proclaimed the pegasus proudly.
“What’s that?” asked Archive curiously.
“When we get sick in the air, we say ‘chunder’.”
“Ew, that sounds gross! Why chunder, though?”
“It’s short for ‘watch under’.” giggled Lantern.
“LANTERN! That’s disgusting!”
“I know, but hey, I didn’t make it up! Learned it from Granny.”
“Your grandmother sounds like an interesting character.”
“Yeah, she was.” said Lantern with a half smile on his face.
Archive picked up on his feelings even without her changeling senses.
“You’re missing her that badly?”
“It was hard to accept it. We were very close. She always said I reminded her of grandpa.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. She was very strong even at the very end, and wasn’t afraid of dying. She accepted it and when she went, she did so with a smile and told us that she would live on in all of us.”
Archive hugged Lantern for a long moment.
“I think we should get going.” said Archive after separating from the pegasus.
“Yeah, that would be for the best. Which reminds me, are you gonna walk around outside like that?” pointed Lantern to the black form of Archive’s outline in the dark.
Archive looked down at herself, the light of her eyes illuminating her holey limbs.
“Oh, now that you mention it, I should probably put on a disguise.”
“Try not to use a copy of somepony’s looks.”
“Don’t worry, I can come up with an original look without copying somepony.”
“That’s a relief. Let’s see it.”
“Okay. Get ready to be amazed!” said Archive with smug confidence.
Archive fired up her horn and the green flames lit up the room for a second before they faded away.
“So, how do I look?” asked Archive proudly.
“Like a changeling.” said Lantern flatly.
“That’s odd. Let me try again.”
And with that she did so, but again, she failed. Archive tried again and again.
“I think you should stop. You’ll tire yourself out, and you’ll need your energy.”
“That shouldn’t have happened. I’m not the best at changing, but I never failed to change before.”
“Whatever is wrong, you can’t just go out like this. Wait, I have an idea.”
Lantern trotted back to the bed and took the piece of black fabric from it. He laid it over the changeling, then he tore off a strip from the edge of it, and used it to fasten the thing around her neck.
“That should do it.”
“Cozy.” smiled Archive from under the makeshift hood of her new cloak.
Lantern returned to the bed to collect the rest of his glowstones, and stashed them under his wing with practiced ease.
Archive took a deep breath.
“It smells like Lantern.” muttered the nymph to herself with a light blush.
“What?”
“Nothing.” replied Archive a bit too quickly to be convincing.
“Okay then. Lead the way, please!”
Archive took her place beside the pegasus, and they headed for the exit of the hive.
After a few minutes of walking, the silence and the constant bodily contact made Archive a little flustered.
“Hey Lantern?”
“Hmm?”
“Would you tell me a little more about your family? You know, just to break the silence.”
“Well, sure. I wouldn’t mind, but it’s only fair if you tell me about yours in return.”
“Deal.”
They walked on in the darkness, Archive leading them around the pitch black tunnels, halls and various chambers of the hive, all the while talking about family stuff, like how all of Lantern’s siblings inherited better aspects of their lunar pegasus blood than his majestic blue-grey coat, or how Archive tried to change into one of her drone brother’s form to play a trick on her favoured siren sister and got immediately busted, and for her mischief she had to do the work of the drone she copied for the rest of the day.
After about an hour or so they reached a tunnel that had a gentle upwards curve to it, and at the end Lantern could see a faint glow.
“Is that what I think it is?”
Archive looked ahead and nodded.
At the entrance to the tunnel where they stood, they could feel a refreshing draft coming from the surface.
Lantern picked up his pace, urged on by the promise of freedom and the open sky.
When they got up to the mouth of the cave and parted the curtain of vines hiding the entrance, they were surprised that it wasn’t the light of the Sun that shone upon them, but Luna’s full Moon.
They stepped out into a clearing surrounded by mountain peaks. A sprawling valley was just barely visible to them in the moonlit night over the edge of the cliff beyond a sheer drop in the side of the mountain.
Lantern suddenly flared his wings, which made Archive blush under her hood; and the glow stones to drop to the ground beside him. He took off into the sky, flying above the deep valley to make a circle and then return to the surprised, but still blushing nymph.
He landed gracefully in front of Archive and flapped his wings a couple times before folding them up to his sides. He gathered up the stones again, tucked them back to their place under his wing and turned to Archive.
“Ah, that felt refreshing. Sorry about that. Being out of that cave made me so excited, I just had to stretch my wings for a bit.”
Archive just kept looking at him, before turning her eyes down to the ground. She felt sad because they would be parting ways from here on out, and a dull ache took hold of her.
When she felt ready to come to terms with being alone for the rest of the way, she steeled herself to say goodbye, but just as she opened her mouth to speak, Lantern beat her to it and stunned her into silence.
“So? Which way is it to your hive?” he asked.
For a full minute, she just stood there and was staring at him with wide eyes.
“What?” she asked, her mind still lagging behind and not comprehending Lantern’s implication.
“I mean, which way should we be heading, to get us to the hive?”
“We? US? No, no, no! You can’t come with me, you have to get back to Canterlot to your Princess, or more like Cloudsdale to your family. They must be worried sick about you. That, and I can’t just reveal where the hive is. We aren’t really fond of taking ponies, but you would never be able to leave with the location of the hive.”
“Look, Canterlot is that way,” he pointed with his resin encased hoof towards where the city lay, “about one and a half day of flight’s distance. I assume your hive is even farther, considering that Chrysalis’ original attack came from the south, and this old hive where we ended up is in the hills of Neighara Falls. You can’t fly, might I remind you!? Even reaching Canterlot would take about four days on hoof.”
“How do you know where we are?”
“I took a look at the stars when I flew up to check.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not a problem of how long it would take me, I just can’t take you there.”
The more she protested the more adamant he became about going with her.
“Archive. Time is exactly the problem here. You can’t fly, as I’ve mentioned before, which at least triples the time you would need to reach Canterlot. That’s four days, and that’s not even your destination. I don’t know where the hive is, but a changeling that can’t fly, and not to mention can’t change forms, which means it can only travel by night, lengthening the journey even more, WILL be caught and that’s probably the better outcome. You can’t disguise yourself, meaning you’d have to avoid populated areas, hence wouldn’t be able to feed. You would starve halfway home if our energy needs are even remotely comparable. Not to mention I’m indebted to you for saving my life on multiple occasions. You kept me fed, healed my wing and hooves and last but not least, gave me a chance to be able to see my loved ones again. Let me repay you.”
“But…”
Lantern continued heatedly, not giving her a chance to object.
“You’re not even sure if there’s anyling in the hive anymore. Just this once, please think about yourself. If you even get there, but find the hive empty, then what? I couldn’t live with the thought of you dying out there. I could never forgive myself for letting you go alone.”
Lantern panted heavily by the end of his monologue and his face was flushed.
Archive looked at the pegasus, now with a full green blush on her cheeks.
“So...what happens if there’s noling in the hive when we get there?”
Lantern thought for a moment. He almost said he would take her to Cloudsdale to his family to hide, but that would just cause them trouble he wouldn’t want to bring on his kin.
“I’ll...I’ll stay with you in the hive. Sooner or later the rest of the scattered changelings are bound to turn up there for sure.”
“The Badlands.” she said quietly.
“The...the BADLANDS?” Lantern’s face paled in an instant, the effect multiplied by the light of the moon, “You must be suicidal if you thought you could get there on hoof by yourself.”
“Not funny.” she started crying, which made Lantern falter a bit, but just as he was about to try to console her, she threw herself at him, hugging him tightly.
For minutes they stayed like that, the nymph slowly calming down. When her quiet sniffles died down, she pulled away from the pegasus and took a deep breath.
“You know if something happens to you, that would make me an outcast.”
“It takes more than a little walk across half of Equestria’s most dangerous parts to kill Their Majesties’ Guards.” said Lantern confidently.
Archive shoved his shoulder a little, giggling a bit and wiping her eyes, “Boaster.”
Lantern chuckled at her reaction, feeling glad that he could convince her.
Lantern looked into her eyes, his form radiating slightly in the reflection he could see there by being backlit from the light of the moon.
“Shall we then?” he offered.
Archive nodded once eagerly, and the two dark shapes started out into the night.