Itinerant Kingdom

by Istaran

Chapter 17: Playing possom

"So, one of my roles as the 'king' of these changelings is that I can redistribute 'love' between them. So whether you only share your love with Mirage, or decide to take on a larger harem, either way I'll make sure they all get what they need," I told Stud Muffin between bites of stew.

"I believe 'herd' would be the correct term," Mr Muffin offered. "This stew is really great. I thought you said changelings don't eat normal food?"

"We can, but it doesn't fuel us the way it does ordinary ponies," Mirage said, snuggled up against his side.

"Okay, so why is a changeling so good at cooking then? I mean, this is really great, Dill," he complimented the chef.

"Ponies love a good cook," Dill answered simply. From his memories I had learned that Dill was a skilled and shockingly versatile cook. He had borrowed the identities of hundreds of cooks over the years, including dozens of masters. He had had to learn much of his skill the hard way, but he also benefitted from a few tricks of his own species, such as using his position to read the cookbooks and other notes of the masters. Also, whenever a changeling copies someone's form while in sight of the victim, they can copy their short term memories as part of the change. He had used that to learn a number of cooking secrets. Sometimes he would simply hide in the rafters of a kitchen and copy a master chef repeatedly to learn what they were thinking as they prepared a particularly challenging dish. But ultimately it was all to take a chef's place for a day and absorb the love of the customers enjoying his food. Even now I knew Stud and I were feeding him subconsciously; a fair trade for such excellent vegetable stew, hacked together from the local wild vegetation.

"I'm doing it right now, aren't I?" Stud realized after another deep sip of the broth. "Feeding you love, I mean? I think I'm starting to actually feel it a bit."

We all nodded before I answered, "it's easier to notice once you've been consciously aware of it a few times. As I said, there's no need for it to be a sexual thing if you don't want it to be. Sex does make it easier to get the flow going though. But don't let the horny changelings push you into doing what you don't want to do. For that matter, don't think you need to sit around and wait for invitations. Take charge of your own role. You won't face much rejection from the changelings, and definitely no hard feelings. They don't really view sex the same way normal ponies do."

"That makes a lot of sex but am I going to end up with a lot of foals if I sleep around with them? Or.. eggs, I guess? Still getting used to that bit."

I shook my head, "no, it takes more than a bit of love and sex to get a changeling pregnant. Queens get pregnant easily, but drones rarely do. This egg took some pretty extreme circumstances, but we're hoping to eventually be able to have more. But for now.. this is it."

"I guess that's a relief though.. a little disappointing in its way. I hope you get it figured out eventually," Stud commented. "It'll be really hard to live up to my new name properly if all of my mates are effectively barren," he chuckled.

I started into another sip of the broth when I heard an alarmed stream of thought coming from Midnight Oil, along with a message from Fog Dancer's Nimbus subnet declaring its host incapacitated. [King! It's the raiders from the train! They've found-]

The thought cut off, but Fossil took over reporting. [Midnight Oil has been incapacitated. We are being bodily removed from the house. With our low levels of love we were unable to mount an effective defense. Nimbus and I have judged that the best course of action is to feign unconsciousness. We do not believe our attackers realize the capabilities of the kingsblood within our hosts. Please be advised: only four members of the train crew, plus Oak Breaker were present in this raid. The majority of the raiding party is not accounted for.]

I spit out the broth in surprise and alarm, and then quickly scrambled to my feet. "Wind Chaser, with me. We'll make the cooking fire look like the center of our camp, and hopefully they won't think to look down here. Dill, Mirage, Stud Muffin: stay here and keep watch on the egg. Dopple, Carapace, and null, if we aren't ambushed instantly I want you out of here and scattering through the woods."

Stud Muffin was duly alarmed. In some ways less so than the rest of us, because he didn't have the Kingsblood and didn't know what was going on. So he asked, "what's going on?!"

"As the king, I know what is happening to my subjects, even at a great distance. Two of ours were just abducted by an old enemy, one we though had been taken care of. He shouldn't have been able to track them down, so I believe he probably had magic help finding them. And if that's the case, he'll likely be finding Wind Chaser and I by similar means. I don't think he knows I have any other followers, so I am hoping he can be convinced to take just us prison, giving us the chance to coordinate an effective rescue effort. Focus on staying safe, and sharing your love with these two, and I'll worry about the rest." Stud nodded wordless to me, with a mix of determination and fear before we made our hasty exit from the concealed cavern.

We had just enough time after getting outside to make the cooking fire area look like a proper encampment before a couple of sharp blows to the head triggered our play at being unconscious.

---

Mirror was at Midnight Oil's school in Canterlot, working as her avatar when the attack began. He struggled to avoid showing any visible shift as he suddenly went from being under Midnight's control to merely pretending, but it wasn't that hard to play a convincing school-filly, especially one that he knew better than any of her peers. I ordered him to stay there and keep the cover active for now.

null I ordered into hiding near the cave with our egg, serving as an extern guard to keep any dangers from reaching those within, as well as a strategic reserve. The other eight changelings I ordered to break from their current missions as discreetly as possible and converge on our destination. I guessed it to be Citrus Hills, where Oak Breaker had lived, and that proved to be almost correct.

We found ourselves descending below the ground a few kilometers east of town lowered into what appeared from the outside to be an old abandoned well. Beneath the surface, though, it lead into a network of rough hewn tunnels, lined with strange black crystals. There was something ominous about the crystals, something that filled our hearts with fear just to pass by them. Finally, we were tossed into a large ring of crystals with a dozen, half-starved ponies. A half hour later, Fog Dancer and Midnight Oil were tossed in after us. We waited for the abductors to leave before we all sat up and considered out surroundings.

[I'm sorry I failed you, my king,] Wind Chaser began. [I should not have been so merciful.]

Comments

[Amethyst Blade]

Only merciful to those who deserve it...playing white knight will get you killed in the real world.

[Istaran]

5938225
In all fairness though, the 'mercy' was sentancing him to life in a changeling feeding pod, never to see the light of day again until he died of old age.

It only became a problem because of the changeling invasion leaving the pods unattended and the king's own rescue missions setting others on the course of finding more lairs to set free the 'innocent' ponies.

Still, Wind Chaser learned a valuable lesson: make sure you see the corpse yourself.