Kindness and Calculation
"Shining, could you leave the room please? I'd like to speak to State in private," Cadence asked as tenderly as always.
Stately Writ didn't need his changeling sense to know that, however loving her tone, such a request made the Captain very uncomfortable. Shining visibly hesitated to respond.
"Yes, ma'am," he finally managed before trotting out of the throne room and closing the door.
The moment he was gone, Cadence's expression became very grave. "I told him not to hurt you. I thought he was above that."
State tilted his head in confusion, "Your highness?"
"I strictly forbade my husband from laying a hoof on you, and you come back with a gash on your snout," she seemed to get angrier as she declared her evidence.
"Oh! This?" State pointed to his cheek. "That was Damascus. He... uh... he wasn't very happy with me. I guess I deserved it."
The princess' expression softened immediately. "Oh. Well, that's understandable. Friends aren't too keen on being betrayed by friends," she said with a chuckle, as if remembering some past lesson learned.
State was still somewhat confused. The princess was much more relaxed and positive than he thought she'd be.
"If you don't mind me asking, your highness, why did you order the Captain not to harm me? For all you know, I could be an extremely dangerous spy."
"A few things," she said as she began to pace across the floor. "One, I'm usually good at knowing when someone is being sincere, or genuine. I felt you were. However, I also had a decent amount of evidence that proved you were innocent."
State was going to have to learn to not make his confused face as often. He felt he was wearing it too much. "Evidence?"
"When you entered for the briefing, you gave the proper report exactly the way we asked of you before. You were, in all ways, just the same as you had been over the weeks before with us. If you were an assassin, you'd have killed us already, but instead, you decided to reveal yourself and put yourself at our mercy. Such a changeling would either have to be really stupid, or really sincere."
"Or both."
"Or both," she nodded with a sly smile. "But in the end, I trusted you from the moment we took you to the dungeon. You're still the State I know, even though I now know you're also a changeling."
"So... all of this...?"
"...was for my husband. He needed to come to trust you on his own terms. And I trusted him to come to that conclusion without making too big a mistake."
"Like torturing me?"
She pursed her lips. "While he says it is sometimes necessary, I disagree for the most part. It never hurts to remind him of that." She smiled.
State nodded. So it seemed his plan had worked just as he had hoped, with the exception of making and then hurting new friends. That was something that he would need to take care of. As much as he knew he wasn't going to stay in the Crystal Empire long, he never liked leaving ponies hurt. Even when he was in Canterlot-...
State decided to distract himself before he got too far down that train of thought. "So, was there anything you wanted to talk about?"
Cadence looked pensively into the distance. "Yes, there's something about this whole thing that has me a bit concerned."
"And what is that?"
"How did Chrysalis know where to find you?"
State thought over what he had told the Captain. "Well, I have three theories, but I'm not sure which of them, if any, is correct."
"And they are?"
"Either a changeling spy, which I doubt seeing as I haven't detected any changelings beside myself in the castle, or Chrysalis herself was spying here, but I also doubt that because she doesn't do field work."
Cadence had stopped pacing and was now fixed on Stately Writ. "And the last?"
"The last is hypnotism. Basically, a pony who has been hypnotized by Chrysalis is being used as a spy to gather information. It would guarantee that I wouldn't be able to detect them unless they gave me direct access to their mind. They wouldn't even know they were doing it."
The princess stared unblinking. State could see the cogs turning in her head.
After a few moments of silence, Cadence spoke. "There is something I would like to make you privy to. There were only four ponies who knew about your whereabouts: Myself, Shining Armor, and the two guards that were standing guard outside the door. They helped transport you there. One of those guards was recently killed by Chrysalis."
It didn't take long for State to realize where this was going.
The princess continued. "So either Chrysalis killed her own spy, or-..."
"Damascus..."
It seemed that the amount of danger that State would put his friends in would never end. State prayed to whatever gods there might be that it wasn't Damascus. Regardless, ponies were now dead because of him and the rest were likely to be soon.
"State."
State looked up to see the princess had approached and had a hoof on his shoulder.
"I know that look. It's the look my husband gets when he dwells too long on past battles. Inevitably he is always weighing the same question: 'Was the victory worth the sacrifice?' While he always concludes the answer to be yes, he never stops asking. So I want to ask you." She looked him in the eyes, seemingly seeking an answer for herself. "Will this victory be worth the sacrifice?"
State thought back to his time at the hive, to the merciless slaughter he had seen. He thought back to the plan Chrysalis had presented to them after the wedding, and the blood thirst in her eyes not a few hours ago. He remembered talking with the others, realizing that they were rebelling against the most dangerous creature in Equestria. They knew that it was likely many of them would not survive, but they knew that if they didn't pull this off, many more innocent changelings and ponies would die.
It was the only shot they had.
"Yes... If we pull it off."
"Then that's all I need to know." She pulled away. State could detect no emotions from her, as if she too had abandoned all feeling for military calculation. He had never seen her this serious before. "Now, tell me everything you know about hypnotism."
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Pretty certain this should be "friends".
7804746
Thank you, sir! Fixed!
Has me a bit concerned.
7804810
Thankees!
There are strange unicode characters in the text. Annoyingly, you can't search for them with Ctrl-F, at least in Chrome.
Also, that last one should be 'with a sly smile'.
You've got an errant period in there.
Also AHHH NEW CHAPTER
7805427
Thanks! Also, I cannot see the unicode characters that you are talking about.
Hehehe, glad you liked it!
7805440
But if it was on the snout, what major artery could have possibly been hit ?
7805453
There is a facial artery that passes over the jaw just behind the cheek.
s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/c4/4d/42/c44d4202c572caeea6d10361e60d1c50.jpg
7805450
Huh, looks like Firefox and IE don't show them, but Chrome does. In Firefox, you should be able to see it by copy-pasting the text into your searchbar. Looks like a box with numbers in it. If it still doesn't show up, try going into the chapter editor and moving your cursor left and right over the text with the arrow keys. At the beginning of 'either' and 'sly' in the parts I linked, there should be a spot where the cursor won't move when you press the key. That's the invisible character.
7805499
Hmmm... I use chrome and I can't see it. My guess is it is a whitespace character that your computer doesn't have in its font system for some reason. I'll check out what character it is.
7805499
I found two of them and have removed them.
Looking it up it is what is called a Line Feed character. Basically New Line but for printers, and it only really works on Unix based systems. How it got there, I have no idea.
Well, that's a new one. I didn't expect to come to the comments to see a bug-fixing escapade in regards to a story. Also, super happy about the second update happening so soon after the first.
7805493
Ouch
7805856
Yep
7818742
Gotcha!
Umm, why do they just assume it was Damascus? The dead guard could have simply outlived his usefulness and Shining has already proved not to be immune...
7822582
Careful you clever reader, you. You'll spoil the surprise.
oh god good, I thought she was doing the "I know you love someone thing"
I know it's up to depate if she should use her power in certain situations, but I often think her help or the way she usually does it isn't needed.
I just hate to see characters getting pushed in a certain direction without really wanting it, she never let's them proceed in their own uugggmm time?
Might I suggest adding time stamps to when these chapters are taking place in relation to each other? It's very hard to keep track of what order chapter events take place and what has happened, hasn't happened yet and so on in relation to the current chapter being read.