//------------------------------// // Chapter XI - Equipped // Story: The Roses of Success // by HypernovaBolts11 //------------------------------// Fangheart inhaled slowly, deeply, gathering the mental fortitude he'd need to maintain his act during the explanation he'd have to provide about how he knew what the weapon he needed was, and why he needed it. The tunnel that led to the tinkerer's workshop was damp, and Fangheart didn't appreciate the sensation of his bones chilling as he walked. He rounded a bend in the tunnel, and came to a very abrupt stop, before taking three steps back. He stood still for a moment, blinking blankly at the dark, yawning interior of the cave. The sunlight had faded away for the most part, and the only torch in sight was bolted to the wall on his right. He didn't remember this bend, and the torchlight only reached so far into the abyss of the cave. The cave had used to be a scant few meters into the ground. Perhaps more diamond dogs had moved in with the inventor, and he'd been forced to expand, but, no, he had always been an outcast. Maybe he'd escaped from the hive. Diamond dogs lived in caves, so maybe they dug them, rather than simply inhabiting any they stumbled across. Maybe the tunnel just spiraled down so far that all of the light that kept the workshop lit got choked out. Maybe if he just stumbled his way forward, he'd find the light eventually. He gulped at the blackness. He doubted that anyone in their right mind would ever design such a thing. His halfling form had a horn, so he could use that, but, in doing so, he'd expose a patch of chitin for the plague to infect. He wanted to keep such risks to a minimum. Besides, the diamond dogs didn't have magic, so they wouldn't design a home that required such powers to access. He considered the torch on the wall out of the corner of his eye, then stepped towards it. The inventor had always enjoyed adventure stories. Fangheart couldn't exactly remember what his favorite series had been called. Daring To Do, maybe. He had enjoyed going on rants about secret passages, hallways, and compartments. He lifted his hoof to the torch's metal sconce, and brushed it over the horizontal bar to which the wooden cone was bolted, pushing aside the dust that had accumulated over time. As he set his hoof back down on the floor, he smiled at the six cursive letters that had been engraved onto the sconce, and read aloud, "Diesel, you sly dog." He hooked his hoof around the back of the torch, and gently pulled it down an eighth turn. There was a loud click, and Fangheart stepped back from the wall as the sound echoed through the cave. Stones ground against one another, and a rectangular section of the wall to Fangheart's left receded, dropping dust and sand as it went. Similarly sized blocks did the same, sliding back into the wall, and then off from side to side. A few seconds later, Fangheart stood before a well lit passage, and smiled to himself as the sounds of machinery and stones died down. He stepped forward, and cautiously made his way down the tunnel. Barely had he taken five steps than the entrance closed behind him, prompting him to freeze where he stood, and glance over his withers. He gulped, and, slowly trotting forward, called out to through the tunnel, "Hello?" A gruff voice, one of a creature engrossed in its work, answered, "What do you want this time?" There was a clang, a hiss, and someone saying, "Shi-" A loud pop echoed throughout the caves. Fangheart stepped out of the narrow passageway, down a pair of steps, and into a —barely— more open cavern. He said, "Um... Is this a bad time?" The room was a mess, stray mismatched arrangements of wires and metal shapes strewn about the floor. A cloud of black smoke dissipated from one side of the room, leaving exposed the lumbering frame of a diamond dog, who, upon turning around, was revealed to have a thick layer of soot covering his front half, and a blackened ring of ash surrounding the middle of the desk he'd been hunched over. The canine's eyelids opened, bringing the soot away from his yellow and blue eyes with them. He dusted himself off with his heavy forepaws, and straightened his loose-fitting vest, which was seaweed green, and had pockets filled to the brim with tools of various sizes and functions. He was also wearing a black collar with emerald green characters and jewels on it; the equivalent to the shackles worn by pony prisoners. The diamond dog's head shook so rapidly that it became a blur for a moment, then pointed at the pony standing at the front of the room. Fangheart cleared his throat, and said, "Hello, Diesel. I'm Fangheart, and in need of a particular invention of yours. I've heard many things about your work, and um..." He trailed off as smoke began to rise from behind the diamond dog. "Your tail's on fire." Fangheart stood quietly behind a wall sized window, watching listlessly as the pony doctors instructed their first patient. The worker's stomach was heavily laden with a few of what would likely be the final clutch of eggs. It was still connected to the hive mind, but the pain was beginning to manifest in its expression. Its lips were curling back, eyelids twitching, ears pinning to the sides of its head. It had just managed to lay down on its back before the hive mind cut it off, when it began to whimper. Fangheart winced in sympathy, and turned his head to look away from the whole thing as one of the doctors inserted a needle into the incubator's leg. He glanced at his right foreleg, trying to imagine himself undergoing a similar experience. He'd spoken to a group of surgeons about installing Diesel's weapon, and knew that he wouldn't experience any pain during the actual procedure, but just couldn't work himself up to the idea of having something pierce his skin. His ears pricked up at the muffled sounds of kicking and hissing, and he gulped as his eyes focused on the now flailing incubator. He had always known that workers weren't capable of moving without the hive mind's aid, but, considering the worker he'd transported north, and this incubator, it appeared as though intense pain changed that. He spotted another pair of blue eyes in the periphery of his vision, and found himself beholding his employer of sorts. She wasn't moving. She wasn't reacting. She was barely breathing. She was simply staring at the scene before her. The Matriarch simply watched as the surgeons worked to calm their patient down. He stepped towards her. Her chest expanded for a moment, before expelling a long, heavy sigh, the kind only produced by sages, mares who've seen more of the world than most fillies ever want to, and her jaw alone moved to say, "You know, when I overthrew the Queen, I wanted to stop this from happening. I wanted to ensure that none of us would bear the pain of the Queen's malice. I wanted to erase the damage she'd done to the Hive." He blinked, suppressing a remark that the Queen was anything but malicious, and that anyone who espoused otherwise could say so to her dead body, the body of the Queen they had killed. He believed that anyone who said those things didn't actually think them true, but claimed to for the sake of assassinating her character. The Matriarch cleared her throat, shuffling where she stood, likely reading his emotions like an open book. She continued, "When I applied for my first assignment, the Queen told me that I was too weak to serve on the field. I had never been the most able bodied of my class, and an unfortunate accident had rendered my left hind leg useless." Fangheart approached her, very slowly, cautious of what his "queen" would do to him if she could pick up any more of his reactions. She didn't acknowledge him, but kept talking, "I went back after it'd healed, hoped that she'd give me another chance, but I... I was brash, and I suppose my temperament rubbed her the wrong way. She told me that I could still do the hive some good, provided I was willing to turn around and lift my tail up." He froze dead in his tracks, his left forehoof caught in midair, and he looked down at the floor, searching it for something to say. It wasn't an entirely new idea, using soldiers to incubate eggs, but it was rather unorthodox. "I wasn't too warm for this idea, but, knowing better than to disobey direct orders, did so," she told him, the frills on the back of her neck extending a bit. "Many months later, I wished that I'd told her off. There is no other pain, not after that, that can be considered traumatic. There was no such thing as escaping the pain. There were no medicines to make the experience any less horrible." He set his hoof down, and hung his head, genuinely empathetic towards his mother's usurper. He murmured, "I'm very sorry, your motherl-" He cut himself off, realizing that, if she had once gone into labor, it would make her a mother in more than just title. He couldn't understand why she'd chosen such a word as her name if the memory of childbirth was such a bad one for her. "What made it worse was that, after the whole thing was done, she said that I'd done a great service to the hive," she added, and huffed. "Said that this one was special. I don't know about that. The damn thing turned out to be reckless, backwards. The only things I called different were its eyes." His hoof traced circles above the ground idly, and he stammered, "Wha... What caste, if you don't mind me asking?" "To Tartarus if I know. It started walking before I could sit up," she spat, her voice loudening with the ever mounting pressure of her spite. "It just stood up, looked at the Queen, and sat back down. It knew that she was in charge, like the little bi-" The Matriarch bit back her words, and took a deep breath. Like a dam, she held back the wall of venomous emotions, none of which he could identify properly. Anger and pain were so often products of one another that he couldn't tell how she felt. Perhaps she was in a state of denial, convinced that she had no feelings at all, just as he had recently been. No matter what she felt, she scared him. Seeing the monarch all but stripped of regality and composure terrified him. The last time he had been in close proximity to such an event had been quite upsetting, when his mother had returned to hive after her defeat at Canterlot, and the ensuing pity party had ended with Pick spending a night in the Queen's bed to calm her down. She closed her eyes, and lifted a hoof to press on her forehead as she spoke, "She made a pet out of it, and I..." She paused, biting her lower lip with her fangs, but her expression was more akin to one of disappointment than anger this time. "I never got to say anything to him." Him? Who? What was she on about? Had she been hanging around the gardens all day, and simply getting high on oxygen? Was that even possible? Twilight had mentioned that plants gave off oxygen, and that it was necessary for all living things, but also that too much of it was bad. The Matriarch shook her head, and sighed, "I never saw him again. But it doesn't matter. The Queen is probably off somewhere starting a new hive with that stupid toy boy, who doesn't know any better. I suppose he wouldn't like me very much anyway, seeing as how I've spent more time in his wife's bed than he ever did." Was that an insult? Was she on to him? She turned her head to address him, and down to focus her gaze on his equal parts pitying and terrified eyes. "I want to thank you, now that you've made sure no one will ever live that pain again," she said. "You've done what I wished to do, and I hold no hope that you shall have reason to serve the hive again. You have done something nopony has done since I stepped onto the throne." He waited for a moment, trying to understand if he was allowed to relax yet. "You got the people's attention," she said, closing her eyes. He stood straight, and half faked a smile. She smiled to herself, and made a low, contented sound in the back of her throat. She turned around, and whispered into his ear as she strode past him, "Don't let them look away." He nodded, and looked over his shoulder as the Matriarch stepped through the stone door that separated the operating room from the rest of the Hive. None of the doctors were immediately happy with her, but none reprimanded her as she made her way to the wreck of an incubator. She placed a hoof on the worker's forehead, and all at once, the mindless changeling calmed down. Its kicking and spazzing limbs went still as the Matriarch spoke softly into its ear. Fangheart continued to watch from behind the glass wall. "I won't," he said. Fangheart awoke from the deepest sleep he'd ever experienced, though, experienced wasn't the right word. He'd had no dreams, no sense of time passing. He had simply closed his eyes, and then he was awake. Nothing had happened. For a moment he wondered if something had gone wrong, if he had mistaken blinking for going under, but then considered what his eyes were seeing. The ceiling was black, as the surgery room's had been, but this one was closer, and a nice little clock was located on the wall in front of him, just at the edge of his peripheral vision. When he tried to move his right leg, nothing happened, so he tried to move his eyes, and they too wouldn't respond. He couldn't blink, move, or feel his body. That wasn't normal. A low, raspy voice caught his attention, "Good, you're awake." He focused on trying to locate the source of the voice, anything to distract his otherwise panicking brain. "Don't worry. Your nervous system just doesn't realize that you're awake. You'll be able to move in a little bit, but since you aren't going anywhere, I figured this was the perfect time to have a little chat," the voice said, and a griffon's head moved into his field of view. Its feathers were mostly blue, but a few white patches made short lines against the sky colored background of its face. There were no white areas around its eyes, which were a delicate shade of lime green, and its slim, black beak shimmered in the cool bioluminescent glow given off by the beetles inside the ceiling, who climbed over one another as they traversed the one tunnel necessary to light the room. They had been domesticated long ago, and were responsible for illuminating most of the hive, though the prisoners' city was solely lit with magical torches in case some of the prisoners were creeped out by the bugs. Fangheart wondered, for a moment, what they felt like, to be simple, to understand exactly what they had to do, and how to do it. They were unconcerned with the meaning of life, the mystery and wonder that was love, and the paradox of their responsibility as masters of the world, capable of changing it, for better or worse. The griffon looked at his wrist, where a black watch rested, and, just as Fangheart emerged from his thoughts, said, "Okay, so, here's the thing. I know what you have to do, and how you have to do it. Listen to me, and everything will be fine." Fangheart wanted to ask if he was reading his thoughts, but couldn't move. "No, I'm not inside your head. You'd know if I were. You've received thoughts through psychic links before, and you know how being read feels," the griffon said, as though knowing exactly what he was thinking. Fangheart felt compelled to say something snarky. "Just to keep you entertained, I'll argue with myself from your perspective," the weird bluejay head said, and cleared his throat. He spoke in a voice that Fangheart recognized as his own, but wasn't quite as deep, "I know that this feather brain is using my voice, because I hear my own voice through my own skull, which makes it sound deeper to me." The griffon then spoke in his first voice, "You know that Pick isn't gonna risk losing her job for the sake of another revolution. You know that she isn't gonna get behind you. You know that she isn't gonna rat you out, but she's not so selfless that she'll throw away her cushy life for you." Going back to his Fangheart impression, the griffon asked, "What other choice do I have?" "Well, you could always toughen up, and spearhead this movement yourself. Stop modeling your political life after the Matriarch. She's all about democracy, and letting the peoples' voice be heard, so play her game. Do things her way, instead of what she had to do when the system was as inflexible as the Queen's ovipositor at a feast," he said in his own voice. "What ever do you mean, oh handsome and glorious one?" he asked in Fangheart's voice. "Propose that the plebeians make themselves heard. Write a law that says a vote shall be held on your migration plan, and campaign against anyone who stands in your way," the griffon told the paralyzed patient, now glaring down at his eyes. "Don't let anyone be left out. Let each of the workers cast their own vote. Let each soldier's vote count just as much as the council members'. Let the prisoners vote. Show them the power of the individual, and make sure you read each of these letters in order, and when you need them most," the griffon said, dropping three envelopes onto Fangheart's stomach, which he could now feel. Spots of purple magic began to coalesce around the griffon, and covered patches of his feathers. The griffon glanced at his watch, and cursed under his breath. He glanced up at Fangheart, and said, "Consider that your first hint." And with that, he vanished in a flash of purple light. Fangheart sat up, blinking at the air where his visitor had just stood, sparks of purple magic sizzling out on their way to the ground. He looked at the envelopes, and then at himself. His lower right foreleg was wrapped in gauze, and attached to the side of the bed by a telescoping metal pipe attached to a swiveling joint on a guide rail that allowed him to sit up and move his leg around within a reasonable distance of the bed, and would hold his hoof in the air where he had last left it until he moved it again. He couldn't really feel most of that leg, and only knew it was there because he could see it, and feel a light pressure on the parts he could feel whenever he applied pressure to the brace supporting it. He looked at the envelopes in his lap. They were plain, white, lacking stamps, addresses, names, and numbered one through three in thick black ink. The first one was laying open, and was completely empty, presumably the one the griffon had said was spent getting that suggestion.