To Cure Deception

by LegionPothIX

Act 1 | Pots and ToTS

Author's Note:

What is a mentor?

Sweet words of a simple filly could be heard through the trees that the path to Zecora’s home wound through. “Oh, hi Ms. Cheerilee! Ah didn't expect to see you here!” The gleeful ignorance in Applebloom’s voice was met by a subtle, false sincerity appropriate to the situation.

“Hello Applebloom. Hello Zecora." Habré Kadabré greeted the pair in the distance, while approaching them with the school teacher's form and voice, "I think it’s just wonderful how one of my most promising students is seeking out extracurricular education, but I just came by to remind Applebloom not to forget about her regular studies.”

“Applebloom, your teacher is very kind, the venture here would take much time!” remarked Zecora with underpinnings of suspicion that were not reflected in the filly's response.

“Ah, thanks Ms Cheerilee, you didn't have to do that. Ah’m all caught up on my homework. Honest!” Applebloom’s childish naiveté indicated their changeling conspiracy was not suspected.

Through the idle chatter, Lacus recognized the need not to make an overly hasty exit when being caught where you’re not supposed to be. After all, having failed to do so himself this morning had caused nothing but trouble, and her giving herself a good reason to be there lent credibility to his own presence. When their conversation drew to a close, he thought it odd to be protected by her, since he could scarcely trust her, and wondered if the hive was greater than the sum of its drones regardless.

While Habré Kadabré made her exit, Lacus retrieved the crumpled note and only briefly considered not reading it. From their previous encounter, however, one word stood out among all the rest. One word shaped how he understood what just happened, and teased meaning to the 'chance' encounter. That word was: again. With any luck this note may hold some clue to the volatile changeling's rapid change in disposition, provided it was not in some incomprehensible code. He grimaced after a cursory glance at the note that H.K. read several times just moments before. "Just be yourself," he mumbled in confusion.

"Yes. Sound advice indeed, some that everypony should heed," Zecora called over to him, while she and Applebloom walked up the path, and in each step the zebra carried herself with a subtle nervous edge. An edge that was carefully masked in her voice.

Embarrassed at being caught reading a note meant for someone else, and flustered for knowing full well how useless such advice was for him, Lacus crammed the note back into the book that it came from, and quickly bound it in the broken rope. As he flung the book over his shoulder, he caught an odd hesitation in the zebra’s demeanor, where she forced her body not to slow its pace.

The posturing only lasted for just a moment, but it was long enough for Lacus to become uncomfortable himself. It was a primal thing. A predator-prey relationship, and he couldn't be sure which side he was on. He imagined that he must have flinched, because the zebra's body language indicated total control.

He let the rope fall from his mouth, as to free it for introductions, but Zecora cut loose her own silver tongue. "What remedy do you seek, that to me you would speak?"

Surprised, Lacus checked his coat for the blue splotches that should render the question self-evident, while Applebloom raised an eyebrow to her mentor to voice the sentiment.

"Zecora, it looks like he's got Poison Joke," she said, and in-so-doing earned her captain’s stripes, before she continued with a laugh, "Though, Ah didn't think anypony was still fool enough to go messin' around with that stuff after last time."

The zebra met her pupil's questioning gaze with a grin, but did not speak until she was finished. "Yes dear filly, it is good, you see... but something more there may be. Though, perhaps the dangers he knew well, but could not help where he fell? Or, if he was pushed in, whose blame is it then?"

With a welcoming smile, Zecora motioned for the stallion to join them on their return trip to her cottage as to talk business on the way. Both her and the filly's saddle bags were filled to bursting with new ingredients, but the weight did not seem to bother either of them. Lacus chalked it up to the strength of a real earth pony. "Forgive me. Where are my manners?" he said as he fell in line with the mares, "My name is Lucas–"

"Greymane, yes we've met before, when your health was quite poor," Zecora interrupted while glancing to him over her shoulder. "How time flies! Do you not recall? I've known you since you were this tall."

Though such a statement was generally reserved for referencing fillies and colts, as well as hatchlings among the changelings, Zecora's hoof indicated only a mere half-a-hoof of difference in height.

Applebloom whispered to her mentor in the least offensive tone she could muster, "Ah didn't know you had friends, Zecora." While Lacus apologized again.

"Sorry, I seem to have amnesia," Lacus shrugged as he offered a weak explanation, which also addressed why he had come, "The doctor said it could be related to my Posion Joke, though he couldn't really say how."

In less than a whisper, Zecora offered her cajoling reassurances to Applebloom, "Put that worry out of your head, because that is not what I had said!" Then she turned to Lacus Sceleratus directly and added, "Mr. Greymane only came to me, for an escape from his misery."

The changeling could not help but feel a resurgence of the pack struggle, and again felt like prey while Zecora led on, this time not looking back to confirm her claims, though Applebloom was more than curious enough for the pair of them. He sheepishly smiled and admitted, "I can't honestly say that she's wrong, Applebloom. I can't exactly remember any other circumstances that we've met in."

The trio of groundlings stood at a crossroads, both metaphorical and literal, as the path diverged to two deep roads with one less traveled than the other. The admission disrupted Zecora's poise and for a moment, the mare who had demonstrated a pattern of letting others come to her of their own accord, uncharacteristically approached him. She spoke as plainly as a sphinx when she said: "The Poison Joke is simple enough to remove, but the other affliction more difficult will prove." She turned to Applebloom and motioned down the more favorable path, "Child, go mix the brew, for we still have more to do."

"Oh, alright then, Zecora." Applebloom nodded as she hoofed it down the path to the ancient and mighty oak that the zebra called home. Once on her way, Zecora motioned that Lacus should take the lead down the darker path.

"You were given a clean slate, but did it stay in that state? I would ask what's on you mind, if you don't think the question unkind."

The manner in which Zecora asked the question seemed innocent enough, but in that moment, with her behind him, Lacus would give anything to be being hounded by a timberwolf instead. This fear. This doubt. It wasn't him. It was something else. "No, it's fine," Lacus said whilst trying to get a grip. "I've been on edge lately, the not knowing has been getting to me."

Though the nod was out of sight, the clink of jewelry and the snap of the saddlebags caught Lacus's attention. He caught a look of preponderance and uncertainty from Zecora, as her head cocked up to meet the sky.

"I see. That sounds fair, I thought it was the other mare," she said with a sigh of relief, "But when I saw you I knew instantly, the one you were with was not Cheerilee."

With that statement, the last thing that went through Lacus's mind was the first letter of H.K.'s favorite word.

***

Pain, the kind of which no changeling should ever know, was what Lacus Sceleratus woke to. Not in severity, but permeation, as every cell in his body ached. Huddled in the embryonic position he would love nothing more than to be swallowed up in a cocoon at that instant, but that would require him to remain still– and he was moving.

After a few minutes of acclimating to this new sensation, he managed to open his eyes, and attempted to gather his bearings. The first thing he noticed was that his hooves—bound in rope—were black and had holes in them. He could feel his wings pressed against him similarly bound and, as he looked up to the zebra dragging him through the woods, he felt the movement of his mane be disrupted by his jagged horn. He had lost his form, so he reflexively tried to find himself in it again, but what should have been a gentle green shimmer burned through his whole being like wildfire.

In the last fleeting moments of consciousness he could hear Zecora chuckle, and chastise: "The pain will eventually subside, if you don't keep trying to hide."

***

There was a sharpness to the air that indicated it should be cold, but as the gentle breeze rolled across the changeling, it couldn't feel a thing. There was a stone floor beneath him, and the evening sun somewhere above him, but he could not feel it’s rough texture, nor the ray’s warming embrace. Nothing… nothing at first, anyway, because no matter how disconnected one is from their body, they can always feel when another is lording over them.

"So, this is the infamous Canterlot Black. We were expecting an earlier attack. What, with Twilight’s coronation, but who knows the mind of the Changeling Nation?" The dismissive missive was delivered shortly after Zecora dropped her rope. Wherever she had taken him, they had just arrived.

The changeling opened its eyes to an expansive view that the zebra dominated most of. "What? Where?" Lacus could only mutter the basics in his disoriented state, as several flights of stairs were beginning to catch up with his rattled soul.

After offering only a slight glance of acknowledgement, Zecora wandered up to a broken-down rampart, and leaned against its crumbling parapets. "I imagine there were more important things, than frustrating the newest pair of royal wings." With a sharp turn of her head, Zecora flung a flint knife to the changeling, "And so her claims were true, that event was not besmirched by you."

The knife slid to a stop near Lacus's pounding head. He cautiously accepted it, and began cutting at the ropes that bound his body. However, Zecora's behavior, and knowledge of his situation was quickly binding his mind at attention. "Who?" he asked through a mouth full of flint, to the pony with steel resolve, the pair of which sparked his interest.

The zebra cast her gaze across the sea of Everfree trees once more while Lacus fumbled with the knife. The pain had subsided, as Zecora had promised, but now he was completely numb. Through sheer force of will, and on muscle memory alone, he brought the blade to bare against his restraints.

While he did so, Zecora answered his question in her usual cryptic manner. "I guess it wouldn't hurt to say, since you will find out anyway. D. The mare who pulls your strings, a treacherous female changeling."

"D? That's the name of H.K.'s mentor..." said the changeling as he fought to keep the dagger in his mouth.

"Huh, is that so? Well, I guess you would know." The zebra's sad smile could be heard in her voiced contemplations. "Though, I did not drag you out here just so I could bend your ear... but I have had time to think, while resting at this brink. To wonder what had happened here, that would cause the elements to reappear? It must have been quite drastic, to turn the pale Moon's light chromatic."

"I'm sorry," the changeling found himself apologizing to his captor as he finally freed himself from her ropes, "I don't really know anything about that." The changeling found himself unable to stand on account of the effectiveness of the zebra's drugs. So he instead lay on the rough-hewn stone, on his belly, and ‘swam’ to the edge of the Tower of Two Sisters. "Why did you bring me here?" he asked, while hoping that if he could just see what she saw from the ledge, then maybe he could understand what he had gotten himself involved in. However, all he saw was genuine shock on Zecora's face as he approached her.

"So then, you really do not know? To introduce you to the devil down below." Zecora offered a swooping gesture with both forelegs as she added: "To throw you from this height, and bury your body out of sight."

What was the pony paddle quickly turned into the backstroke as Lacus frantically tried to distance himself from his captor. In his current state, there would be no way he could gain any lift out of his wings if she tossed him over the edge as she suggested.

Zecora sighed, "The war is long lost, to fight on is not worth the cost," and paused for a moment in which she pulled up the book she had confiscated from the changeling to flip through its pages. "To cause your life to now cease, would bring an end to my uncertain peace."

"So... you'll help me then?" The confounded changeling inquired as Zecora flipped through the bitter reminder of their species ancient war.

"The poison joke is no trouble, but anything extra will cost double," she said as her hoof came to rest on the recipe for the love poison.

The changeling could only manage to create an inquiring inference regarding a cure for his species’ addiction, as to say any more may be taboo, "So... Is it possible then?"

Zecora closed the book and shook her head. "No, the potion is not what you think, and is one no changeling would willingly drink." Her words effectively crushed all hope and she produced the recently un-crumpled note from the book's pages and inspected it. "But still, it is something she wants you to imbibe, so as to never again be a thorn in her side."

Speaking before thinking Lacus asked, "H.K.? Why didn't she just kill me then, like you were... going... to?" but Zecora just shook her head, and Lacus clarified his question. "The mentor? D."

"That she can not do, much suffering she has planned for you," and anticipation of his next question she continued on uninterrupted, "She approached me for a potion to inhibit volition, but has since worked around my refusing her commission. Now go, be on your way, I have nothing more to say."

With the buzzing of sleeping limbs leaving Lacus's system he resumed his earth stallion form that he simply felt naked without. "No. I don't buy it. Some crazy changeling is out to get me? You couldn't do better? Why'd you really bring me here?" Lacus barked with the return of his balls.

Zecora summarized, slid the book into her pack, and made her way to the stairs. "To kill you, yes, but I've had a change of heart, that you should accept and disembark. I don't expect you to trust the source, and doubt is a matter of due course; but one thing you need to know, is that there is no length to which she won't go."