The Prision
Lyra Heartstrings
I screamed as I suddenly fell down a hole made of pitch black fire. There was no up or down, there was no sound, there was only fire. A very abrupt stop which set me planted face first into something very hard.
“Owie...” I whimpered like a little foal and rubbed my horn. Any unicorn would, hitting your horn is extremely painful.
It wasn't the first time I had been in a mess this bad. I'd done a few less than legal things in search of a way to crack the conspiracy wide open. But I had never been casually teleported into what looked like a solid cage made of crystal before.
As I pushed myself up I couldn't help but notice there was plenty of light for me to see by. It didn't seem to have any apparent source but I could see every part of the jagged crystal walled box I was in. In the quietness of the cell I could hear water dripping in the distance, the air was dry but not stale. I had to be pretty far underground but not all that far.
A moment later the others arrived. Cole appeared on her left side all crumpled up, moaning about her head or something. The changeling appeared standing upright the little show off. I scarcely had time to notice Cole and whatever that changeling's name arrive before one of the larger crystals light up with an image of whomever was impersonating the princess on it.
As I looked into her gleeful eyes I decided to call her 'Shifty Jerkface' until she gave me a name that was more insulting. That way I could keep calling 'Shine' 'the changeling', because 'human knowledge concealing jerk' was just too long.
Shifty Jerkface laughed darkly, “You absolute fool! You intended to stop me, but revealed you know who I really am while I was merely a few yards down the hall way from you! Did you fail infiltration school or is the quality of Amber Hive's scout's slipping these days?”
“Who me?” I asked for the sake of irking my captor.
Jerkface ignored me. I stuck my tongue out at her in irritation.
“I actually never attended infiltration school.” the changeling commented. “I'm a worker, not a scout.”
“I see.” Jerkface giggled, “Well then, that explains everything. Oh and don't think you can dig yourself out. These caves are pure diamond, not even a worker can tunnel through them. It's a shame you had to tell your little meals here everything. Now I shall have to find new bridesmaids to keep the gambit running.”
Cole got her hooves under her, “The whole city is on high alert. Guards are everywhere. Whatever you try they will stop you. And Meep is my marefriend, I'm not just a 'meal' to her.”
Oh so that was its name. I resolved to never actually call her that. At least, not until I was done being mad that someone who claimed to be my friend had been keeping information about humans from me. The jerk.
Jerkface snickered her lips curling into that prefect evil overlord smile, “Oh that's simply rich! Are you sure you were never admitted to infiltration school? You have done a fine job wrapping this mare around your horn.”
She smiled cruelly at us, her image seeming to lean into our cell despite being stuck to the wall. “Oh and as for your point about the guards, why, I want them to be here! I was the one who planted the warning of my impending invasion. When the time comes most of your military will be here in response to the threat, with all of your protective assets in one place.
“I have thousands of soldiers ready to attack at the moment I break your warriors moral by defeating their greatest defense during their most important moment in centuries! I will slaughter the majority of your army tomorrow, making the rest of your nation something a nymph could snatch up for herself.”
I turned to Cole asking as incredulously as I possibly could, “Did she just do the whole 'villain reveals plan' thing to us?” I turned back at Jerkface, “You know this means when we break out of here we know your plan right? Don't you ever read fantasy books? You should never tell anypony your evil plans!”
The changeling groaned, “Lyra... She's won.”
“I have won.” Jerkface agreed, “You see, you are inside a box made of diamond. When I have found a role to play for you in my plans I will simply take control of your minds and force you to obey my bidding.”
The changeling yelped and shouted something in that chittering language of hers. All I could make out was it sounded vaguely fearful. Cole seemed to understand it though, she turned to her friend in a mixture of confusion and pain, “That was really loud... what was it?”
“She's a queen... We can't stop her. She has too much power.” the changeling announced.
“Yeah well somepony will notice we are missing, rescue us, then we simply tell Twilight what's going on she gets the Elements and then zap, Shifty Jerkface here's plans are all foiled.” I announced with a grin.
Cole moaned and facehooved.
“What?” I asked.
“So Twilight Sparkle is an actual threat to me? Good thing I have been destroying her credibility, it seems I will have to make her disappear. Thank you kindly for your services morsel. Enjoy rotting in there until I have a use for you.” Jerkface laughed one last time before her image winked out of existence.
“Lyra... I could punch you so hard right now...” Cole growled, “You accuse a villain of working by tropes, and then you go off and reveal her one weakness!”
The changeling nodded, “Yeah, now not only are we screwed, but if she teleports Twilight down here too the Elements can't be used!”
Oh. I frowned, “Oh... Great, something else I would have to fix.”
Cole rolled her eyes as she turned to look at her marefriend. “So... Since we're kinda screwed and everypony here knows... Can you change back Meep? I wanna snuggle a bit before... Well you know.”
The changeling sighed, sat down on the floor and stared at the ceiling. After a few moment's her body burst into green flames, revealing the surprisingly shiny bug she really was. “I'd always hoped to see the stars when I died.” She said in one of the saddest tones I had ever heard.
Good, she deserved that sadness for not telling me things!
Cole trotted over and lay down at her side, snuggling up as close as she could get. That didn't bother me. I mean a mare is free to like whomever. The fact that this was a bug and pony couple honestly didn't bother me. But couldn't help but gag a little as a thought popped into my head.
I took an entomology class in high school. The snuggle made me picture other things couples do, and the fact that female ants can reproduce with other female ants. Knowing how most insects reproduce well, I reserve the right to find things involving maggots gross. I couldn't help but go, “Ewww!”
Cole glared at me. “Seriously? Can you at least not be a prude long enough for me to be happy?”
“What?” I shook my head, “No! I mean, ok sure, you like insects-”
“Arthropods!” the changeling and Cole corrected in unison angrily.
“Whatever!” I glared back at them. “That's fine. I have a friend who likes griffons. I don't care. But seriously, Cole if...” I paused and pointed a hoof at the changeling, “whatever gender you are, gets you pregnant... Maggots, belly, just... ew.”
Cole blinked and looked up at her marefriend appropriately concerned, “That's actually well um... yeah pretty gross.”
The changeling rolled her eyes. I wished I could know what you see when you rolled compound eyes, it had to be trippy. “It's fine Cole.” she comforted, “We do live births so... Er... actually um... humm never mind Lyra has a point.”
Cole's face grew pale. The changeling quickly backpettled, “But I doubt we can have kids! Our species aren't even remotely related!” she finished looking at Cole sheepishly.
Then she turned to me, “For the record, changelings are shapeshifters. We are whatever gender we want to be at the time. Heck, back when I lived with my hive combinations of genders were all the rage. But since you are probably curious, I was born female. Currently I am a female male blend at eighty to twenty ratio because... Well I just like that combination.” She winked and looked down at Cole, “So does she.”
“Can we talk about more important things?” I begged. Weirdly sexy revelations aside there were things I had to know. I had things to plot, and the changeling had stuff to tell me! It was starting to get irritating, “You promised to tell me about a human city!”
The changeling nodded, “Sure. Might as well.”
“Er, sweetie since we don't have much time, can I also hear about well, you?” Cole asked.
She nodded, “I can do both. Right so Lyra, first thing you need to know is that all of my information is second hoof and very out of date. I'm actually pretty old.”
I raised an eyebrow, “How out of date could it be?”
“Er... Three-hundred and ninety-two years.” She gave me a feeble grin. Shine's feeble grin.
“Four hundred years? Damn!” I whistled, “You guys live forever! Lucky.”
The more I looked at the changeling the more I noticed small things about her appearance that matched Shine exactly. The way her eyes were just a little slanted, her nose shape, in fact all of her shape. It was like someone had simply spray painted Shine black then used some putty to give her skin tight armor. Kind of like the hard suits from the Mass Effect series Blue Bolt had shown me.
It clicked for me. She had been telling the truth. I understood wanting to be another species. This changeling had simply made herself look like a unicorn. If I had the ability to shapeshift I probably would want to live with the species I liked best too.
I couldn't blame her for not telling me anything a pony wouldn't know. If we had known what she was... Well maybe not our little circle, but if other ponies had known bad things would certainly happen.
“Right, so since Lyra probably will attack me if I drag this out I'll just get right to what she wants to know. Ok Cole?” the changeling... Shine asked.
“No problem Meepie.” Cole answered.
Shine gave her a horrified look, “No... just... no....”
Cole laughed, “Sorry! I had to see your face. Oh man I needed that!” She beamed a smile which I swear lit up the cave a bit more. I caught a brief glimpse of a spot on the wall behind me reflected in her teeth and grinned. There was the light source, a small hole between two larger crystals.
Shine rolled her eyes, at least I think that's what she did. It was hard to tell what her yellow glowing eyes were doing. “Right... So I lived in a place to the west of Equestria. It's called the Valley of the Winds, it's a rather hilly area and the hills force the wind to blow along certain patterns so the wind actually forms two 'walls' of constant gale force winds. My hive, the Shard of Amber is the nation which occupies the Valley and sometimes food could get pretty scares because the Deer who also live there are not exactly... promiscuous.
“So scouts frequently explore the neighboring areas to find more food, and then harvesters would go and collect the love. It's not like a raid, and we don't hurt anything. We sort of farm love. A random act of kindness can result in a chain of events which spawns more kind acts and therefore the amount of 'love' increases. Anyling can just absorb the ambient love for nourishment... Yes we can also forcefully extract it, but that's like chopping down the apple tree to get the apples. You won't ever get food from it again.”
“But you took some from me by force once.” Cole objected.
“Yeah. But I didn't drain you dry like most direct feeders do. So my analogy isn't perfect. Oh well. Anyways my father was a harvester. They are a special caste of changeling, imagine them like a food cart. They have the ability to absorb enough food for dozens of changelings and release that energy later. Their job is to bring food back to the hive and distribute it. My dad liked the role his body gave him, he got to travel a lot.
“He came back from a harvest once with some of the weirdest tasting love I have ever had. It was like... fruit pie with vegetables in it. Two things at the same time, yet each one occasionally popped to the fore front. Ever see somepony who is bipolar? Naturally I asked him where he got it. 'We found a new species,' he said, 'they are called humans. It was hard to get any love out of them, but once we did It's very filling.' That was certainly true. Weird flavor, but very nutritious.”
I held up a hoof and asked, “Hold on... do you eat just love?”
“Wait, I thought you were lying to make her listen to you. Humans actually are real?” Cole asked in shock slightly after I finished talking.
Shine nodded, “Yes and yes.”
How could anypony call a creature which needed love to survive a monster? That was so illogical it actually hurt. Of course, there was the little plot Shifty Jerkface was up to. I guess changelings just have had an abundance of dicks in charge.
Shine continued, “When in a pony form I have to eat enough pony food to keep that body running as well. But when I am just me, love is all I need. As for humans, as far as they know their city is the only one in the world, there are not many of them, and their legends say they are not native to our world. Now to continue, my father collected love from them a few times. I can tell you that their city is named Ark, and that they are well... nothing much like how fiction says they are. Ark was or is directly west from my hive three by weeks walk. You know, assuming it is still there.”
Nothing like fiction? That concept blew my mind. From how Cole and Shine stared at me I guess they saw how confused I was. “Well... what are humans like then?”
“Well, they are very industrious like the stories say. They build incredible things. But that's about it. Remember all the stuff which describes the intricate ways humans manipulate themselves and others, like in their politics and their complex social web?” Shine asked me.
I nodded. “Of course.”
“Well that's all fiction. Humans can't actually lie. At all. Ever.” Shine informed.
I swear my eyes literally bugged out of my head, “What!”
Shine laughed, “Oh my gods your face! That was amazing! Er- but seriously, they can't lie. According to my father they traded their ability to intentionally deceive others for their magic. The last thing I know is that their technology is entirely mundane, because human magic is basically only good for fighting. It's more like a martial art then arcane spellcasting apparently. That's all I know. Now, you need to take that with a grain of salt. My father was blind, so for all I know this was a species which just shares the name human.”
“Seriously?” I demanded.
She nodded. “Seriously.”
The witness being blind aside, this was worth writing down and letting everypony in a certain circle of mine know. “So humans, instead of being cunning masters of techno-arcane sciences who cannot be trusted, are actually entirely honest spell-warriors and engineers?” I asked.
She nodded, “As far as I know.”
I nodded slowly, “I'm... actually ok with that...”
I was almost ok with my conceptions of humans being entirely inverted. Probably because at last there was somepony who could give me an account of them which was better than a twenty-fourth hoof game of telephone's version. It would take me a while to become fully ok with the new information, but for now, I was happy with the best evidence I had so far. “If we get out of this... Could you show me how to get there?”
Shine nodded, “Yes... But well, you are the conspiracy theorist here.”
I winced. Shine had a point. “Right... If I contact them I will be vanished.”
Cole rolled her eyes, “Lyra, the government wont vanish you just for talking to a certain species.”
“It's not the government!” I shouted in irritation, “Seriously I have told you so many times that it's the mafia.”
“There isn't a mafia!” Cole objected.
“Girls! It seriously doesn't matter!” Shine exclaimed, “We're not going to get the chance to go anywhere.”
Cole frowned, “We'll be ok. The queen didn't say she was going to kill us. She said she would force us into service. When she does we can find the chance to escape.”
“This isn't one of Vi's adventures. There isn't always a way out.” Shine objected.
“Shine, like, eighty percent of the time we make our own way out. Vi actually is trying to kill our characters after all.” I pointed out, “Besides our characters don't have magic, we do... Oh... Um... What spells do you guys know? I can do ablative shields, fireballs, rays, and I have a spell which trips somepony.” That wasn't the whole toolbox, you never tell anypony all of what you can do.
Cole looked at me in amazement. Shine blinked in realization, maybe she was starting to understand how I got away with some of my little escapades.
“When did you learn how to do any of that?” Cole asked.
“Cole... I know you think it's fake, but if you believed that a shadowy organization was repressing the truth you would learn how to protect yourself too.” I said giving her a serious look.
“Point.” Cole admitted nodding in agreement.
“Another point,” Shine pointed out, “we do usually have to make our own escape. I taught Cole a changeling designed ray spell on the train over here. I can do that, my shapeshifting, basic shields, and well... I did invent the equations for the Von Brawn bubble. I can do a lot with a magically generated pegasus flight field.” Shine quipped.
“Um... no you didn't. That was invented by you know, Von Brawn.” I deadpanned, “Don't take credit for-”
Shine's body burst into green flames, when the fire died down a tall brown unicorn stallion with a simple black mane and green eyes was staring me in the face. I jumped back as she, no he, calmly informed in a thick Germane accent, “Frau Heartstrings, I can assure you that I indeed have created my own work. It would be highly remiss of me not to inform you that I have in fact been many of the great minds behind all things within the realm of Astrophysics.”
I took a half step back in surprise and was about to say something in response when Shine shapechanged again, this time to a black furred female pegasus I didn't recognize at all.
“Verily,” she announced, “the ageless state which I have obtained hath allowed myself to obtain a great sum of knowledge. As one who doth knowith my true self, young Lyra, ye would be wise to assume what I claim to have done, is indeed so. I relish greatly the opportunity, however short, to have the true scope of my accomplishments known to the ponies among whom I have labored most diligently.”
She grinned and returned to her normal buggy self, “By the gods I wish you were Twilight. I could have watched her head literately explode.”
“Why?” I asked, “Who were you just now?”
“Laughing Village. The identity I used when I invented the foundations of calculus.” Shine answered as she snuggled back up to Cole.
“Oh.” I replied before Cole and I exclaimed together in shock, “You invented calculus?”
“No, not all of it. At least not modern calculus. I did however work out the fundamentals back in the day. You're welcome.” she trotted back over to Cole and lay down.
I resolved then and there to take my revenge upon Shine for making me have to endure high school calculus. But that could come later. Right now it was time to be awesome.
“Right,” I began as I turned around to casually inspect the wall behind me, “So we have gone over what everyone here can do. We have a BBEG to stop from taking over all of Equestria, and I need to warn Twilight she's in danger.”
“So what, you have a radio hidden in your mane?” Cole asked mockingly.
I laughed. “Cole, please. I'm the party rogue.”
“How is that-” Shine began to ask.
I lit my horn, concentrated, allowed the energy to build and fired a beam right into the spot the light was coming from. There was a loud boom, cracks ran through the crystals, and a hole big enough for a pony to fit through appeared in the wall. “Trapfinding and Skill Focus in spot!” I announced triumphantly.
“Holy Sisters that was awesome!” Cole gasped.
“... You are never going to let us forget this are you?” Shine asked.
“Nope.” I grinned and stepped through the hole, “Now lets find a way out of this place.”
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Evil villain's always have to monologue.
Scarce, and does this account for all deer or just the deer in the Valley?
I'm guessing this is before the Admiral showed up?
Awesome now, revenge later (served cold).
--------
does
Dang, Lyra is really focused about this human knowledge issue. Multiple changeling impersonators revealing themselves and being trapped while the nation is overrun are apparently just lesser concerns.
But hey, she is pretty resourceful, so it's an acceptable quirk.
I confess to having had similar thoughts at that revelation.
Okay... I think I need to stop my marathon, sadly. This was fun, Lyra being fixated at the beginning before slowly focusing at the matter at hand... er hoof? horn? Anyway great chapter! ^^
I definitely learned to like Lyra more because of this chapter. Wonderful work.
How unseelie of them.
Lyra, want a human accomplice? Open a portal to my debased human realm and I shall join ye in thy just plot for vengeance!
9842238
Heh, yeah. lots of plotholes and wierd statements like that in this old fic.
9842290
Well, it's certainly entertaining.
I was about to fall asleep. Figured I'd read a couple chapters to get started and then doze off.
Nope. I'm almost finished with it now.
That sounds... nightmarish. The inability to practice the art of deception is worrying. Not that I particularly want to lie or be lied to, and I would love to be able to take my fellow man at their word, but we would never survive conflict. Warfare is older than civilization. In fact, it's quite impressive civilization was born, considering warfare predates it. There's an argument to be made that civilization exists because of warfare. Do we need cities to support our soldiers, or do we need soldiers to protect our cities? It's the original chicken or the egg debate.
As we all know, all warfare is based on deception. Without it, your plans will never be as dark and impenetrable as night, and your enemy will know you better than he knows himself. Without deception, we would succumb in every battle. Without deception, we would have long ago returned to nothing.
11006676
They can't tell a lie. Nothing said they can't be deceptive. Look at the Aes Sedai who swear on the Oath Rod "to speak no word that isn't true". It's said about Aes Sedai that "Aes Sedai never lie, but the truth you hear may not be what they said". Because of that Oath, they cannot outright lie. Phrasing sentences so as to lead the listener to conclusions the speaker desires without saying anything false are second nature to Aes Sedai, though. So they can deceive in warfare well.