• Published 19th May 2012
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The Rule of King Cocoon of the Changelings - Hooves Like Jagger



A human finds himself in Equestria as the monarch of a changeling swarm.

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14th: Worth Your Salt

The Rule of King Cocoon of the Changelings

"No, nobody wants to be no, no one's lover, no matter what they say."

Let me tell you something about playing a musical instrument without hands: it is not easy. In order to get this guitar a-strummin', I have to cheat a little with magic. I discovered I have a very limited use of magic when I'm an earth pony, but have to be touching the object I want to perform magic on. It works well for playing guitar, but it's still harder than it should be.

"Lovers know they are the ones who one day have to go."

I would say it's harder than robbing a museum in Equestria, but that wouldn't be saying much. As someone who has done both things, you can take my word to the bank an cash it. Don't go to Chedder & Dough Equestrian Bank because they do not have any money left in their vault. Me and my associates made sure of that.

"Trophy wives I know they wander."

We also stole this guitar from the Quarterholm Conservatory along with several other assorted instruments. That was the first job we ever pulled and probably the most disappointing illegal thing I've ever done in any world. There are a good number of guards in the city, but they aren't really guarding anything in particular. They just walk around and make sure there isn't anything crazy going down, and I mean truly crazy things going down. They've never even asked if I'm a licensed street performer, but they have thrown a bit or two in my hat.

"And find a young, young colt. Trophy wives, I know they wander."

I didn't steal the hat, strangely enough. I found it in a dumpster. Now the story of how I got into a dumpster is far more interesting than any of the robberies we pulled off. Heck, how I got in that dumpster is just about the only other interesting thing that's happened since I killed somepony. I still haven't told PC about that.

Anyway, a man only ends up in a dumpster when he's hit rock bottom. It's the same for ponies. Rock bottom is usually preceded by alcohol consumption, but lately I've been hitting a different poison pretty hard: salt. I've been eating lots and lots of salt.

Ponies do have alcohol, but in this universe salt works just as well on ponies. To put it in perspective, salt is to cider as beer is to hard liquor. I'm not much on the drinking scene, but the gist of it is that salt isn't as potent. It's a good thing too, considering it's a necessary part of everypony's diet. Only salt in obscene amounts will give ponies a buzz. I am not a doctor; I have no explanation as to why.

What I do know is that salt does not have that effect on me, which is how I ended up in that dumpster. You see, after we stole all those musical instruments, I spotted a salt bar called The Salt Shaker. Curious, and perhaps secretly craving more salt, I left my party and went inside. I didn't have a single bit on me, but the barkeep said I could lick for free if I was able to consume an entire block. Have you ever seen a salt block? It's pretty much just eight pounds of salt.

In order to sate my odd craving, I devoured the entire block right in front of everypony in the bar. The barkeep apparently wasn't serious about his little deal, so he booted me out the back door and into the dumpster. Before shutting the lid, he told me not to come back. Naturally, I spent the next day playing guitar for money and then returned to the bar in a different disguise in order to have more salt.

I think I might have some sort of problem, but being addicted to salt is the least of my worries right now. My biggest concern is currently whether or not there is a single human in the entirety of Quarterholm. On all three sites of our robberies, I painted the message "Meet Me In Quarterholm Park" in English. The last two times I even added "I'll be playing guitar." It's only noon on day three, so maybe I'm just too antsy.

"Mommy, can I put a coin in that stallion's hat?" a little filly asks her mother as the two trot by. I look up from the guitar and meet her big, glittering eyes. Her mother, on the other hoof, gives her daughter a tug on the tail and urges her to pay me no mind. I catch her saying something about wasting all my money on salt. I can't get angry because she's right.

Just then, another filly approaches me. Her eyes meet mine, but they do not glitter. She's levitating a newspaper in front of her, which is something most fillies her age wouldn't really do. I suppose there are a million more suspicious things she could be doing.

"Any good news?" I ask her. She takes a seat next to me and nods.

"We made the front page," she says. I look down at the strings and start playing some scales. Even the most basic parts of playing take a lot of concentration.

"Not a big surprise, considering we made it yesterday too," I remind her. Chrysalis shakes her head though. She folds the paper up and shows me the front page. I can't read it, but I do recognize the city pictured on the front. "Is that Ponyville?"

"Indeed it is."

"What's Ponyville got to do with us?" I ask her, but I can't take my eyes off the picture. The town looks exactly like the one in my memories. I always thought seeing it would be really weird, considering I've only ever seen it on television, but "weird" is not the sensation I'm getting. I feel more... nostalgic, as if I were seeing my hometown after a really long time away from it.

"That's what I want to know. Apparently, all of your good friends like that bandaged unicorn and Shining Armor have the city on lockdown. They're convinced we're going to attack," Chrysalis explained.

"Yeah, I guess that's because of the threat I made to Shining Armor." I look up from where my hooves are plucking the strings to see Chrysalis shaking her head.

"It says here they found a changeling in Ponyville."

"... Well gee, that kind of seems like something we should be concerned about!" I stop playing my guitar and look at Chrysalis. I would imagine that a changeling in Ponyville would be upsetting news for her, but she doesn't seem like she cares. "So... why aren't we concerned?"

"Doesn't it work in our favor?" Chrysalis says. "They think we're out to get Ponyville, not Quarterholm. That's what this whole theft plan is about, right? It's working so far. The guards have started sticking around places they think we'll hit next. When we issue that threat letter, they'll probably flock to it. The guards will be isolated in one area and we'll drop the whole swarm on them unannounced."

"Oh... right." I strum a little more on my guitar. "But why is there a changeling in Ponyville?"

"Who knows, who cares? Serves him right for going out and being stupid on his own," Chrysalis says. She uses her magic to turn to the next page. I decide to drop the subject of the Ponyville changeling when I see a picture that interests me.

"Is that a rhinoceros?" I point to the picture in question. Even though it's not on the front page, it's still a color photo of a rhino dressed in armor reminiscent of the royal guards.

"Keen observation there," Chrysalis responds.

"I didn't know there were rhinos in Equestria," I say, but Chrysalis gives me an odd look. "What?"

"If you didn't know there were rhinos here, how did you know what a rhino was?" she asks. This time it's me giving her a funny look.

"There are rhinos where I come from," I tell her.

"... So no unicorns, pegasi, or griffons... but you've got rhinos?" she asks. I nod, but at the same time I wonder what she's getting at.

"Is there... something about rhinos I don't know?"

"Look, all you need to know is that this rhino is coming to Quarterholm," Chrysalis says.

"Why would a rhino be coming here? Is he coming by himself? Does he... need a passport?"

"Shut up and listen!" Chrysalis rolls up the newspaper and bops me on the head with it. I focus on playing an arpeggio while she reads part of the article aloud.

"Due to the sudden and severe rash of thefts occurring in and around our fair city, we called upon Canterlot to help us bolster our security. Due to the recent changeling threats, the palace cannot spare many regular soldiers to be guards. The Princess has, however, has sent a battle rhino as compensation. We are not sure what merit a wild beast is in catching burglars, but in this reporter's opinion, it's better than nothing. Besides, it scares the feathers off me."

"So its cavalry?" I ask, getting a nod from Chrysalis. I can't bring myself to be concerned about a rhino showing up during the swarm. Chrysalis doesn't look worried either, which makes it easy to relax.

I'm glad the swarm looks like it's going to go well, but I'm pretty bugged by the fact that my search for a human hasn't turned up anyone yet. The messages have been in the newspapers, on warning fliers, and just out in the open for anypony to see. If no one has stepped up yet, maybe there aren't any people to step up at all.

"Chrysalis, go find Plundergrub and tell him to deliver a message to the rest of the swarm: we're invading tomorrow night."

"Giving up so soon?" Chrysalis asked, folding her paper up and setting it beside my half empty hat.

"We'll break into Town Hall tonight and leave our threat. I think we should tell them our target is the vineyard on the edge of town," I explain. I put a hoof over the frets and strum a quick chord, but it comes out dissonant. I focus and try again, this time producing the low, rich tone I wanted. "It's far enough away that it'll disperse the guards and seems important enough that they'd try and guard it."

"Sounds good to me," Chrysalis says while spreading a genuine smile across her mask. "When you use your brain, you actually come up with some good ideas."

"Yeah, yeah. Tell Bloodbuzz and Swerve to take the night off. It'll just be me and you busting into Town Hall," I tell her. "No need to kill mosquitoes with cannons."

"I think that could be said for every job we've done so far."

I consider what she's said, but it doesn't take long to realize she's right. I was about to tell her, but she'd already left before I got a chance. I shrug and turn back to my guitar, my mind drifting towards putting bits in my hat. I strum a few sober chords, starting up the first song that came into my head.


The guard even salutes to us while we waltz in the front door. It just goes to show you: if you trot with purpose while wearing any sort of uniform ponies will assume you're important. This applies to janitorial uniforms. Once we're through the front door, Chrysalis pokes her head out of the garbage can I'm wheeling in front of me. Other than herself, she's got her letter to the mayor ready to go once we get into his office.

"This is too easy," I grumble. Chrysalis turns her head just enough to let me see she's rolling her eyes.

"That isn't anything to complain about," she responds. I don't bother arguing with her. We just continue down the dark, deserted halls of Town Hall. We get to the main hall of the building, and I suddenly realize how quiet it is.

Something about the red carpet and the stone pillars just throws this place off from what it really is. In the waning moonlight, I may as well be walking deeper into the depths of a castle dungeon. I slow my trot down to a slow walk, making the wheels under the garbage can squeak as we slowly roll towards the oak doors at the end of the hallway. The lid on the can raises as Chrysalis looks ahead of us.

"Are you getting bad vibes too?" I ask her.

"No, just wondering why we're going so slow."

I ignore her and press onward, but as fate would have it Chrysalis was right not to worry. We arrived in the mayor’s office with the door shut behind us without incident. It’s not like I want anything bad to happen, but it would be nice to know these heebie jeebies are justified. Then again, I haven’t had any salt tonight. Maybe I’m suffering withdrawal.

“Alright, put the note on the desk so we can get out of here,” I tell Chrysalis. I don’t have to tell her twice as she emerges from the trash can and buzzes over to the desk in the center of the room. Aside from the large window behind the desk, the rest of the walls are covered in bookcases. There’s also a closet in the corner of the room, open far enough for me to see the myriad of offices supplies inside. It isn’t a very deep closet and a pony probably wouldn’t fit in there unless you flipped them vertical.

“What are you staring at?” Chrysalis asks me. She’s standing on the desk, illuminated by the moonlight. As much as I hate to justify her impatience, we really should be going. As I turn to face the door again, I hear the knob click. The door swings open, and I just stand there like a freshly cut ice sculpture. The guard at the door does little more than raise an eyebrow at me.

“You’re not supposed to be in here. It’s off limits fo-” The guard cuts off when he sees the only other being in the room: Chrysalis. It’s easy to tell what he’s thinking by the way his eyes grow wider than the moon outside. “Ch-changli-”

This time, I cut him off by reverting to my true form right before him. Faced with a much, much larger problem than he originally thought he had, the guard doesn’t say a single word. Just in case he gets any ideas, I extend my hand and slam the door behind him with my magic.

The guard doesn’t take to kindly to being trapped. His disbelief turns into determination as he readies his spear at his side, tucking it beneath his wing and pointing it right at me. He charges, but my leg has more reach than the shaft of his spear. With one swift kick to his exposed throat, the guard drops his weapon on the floor. Before he can uncover it, I throw both hands out and envelop him in magic. Under my power, he bicycles his legs as they involuntarily depart from the floor.

I sweep my hands to the side, sending him flying into the closet. With another swing of my hand, the door slams closed on him. I pick up his spear from the ground with my magic, and launch it like a torpedo into the door. The only indicator of how the guard fared after the attack is a muffled cry from behind the door.

We just stare at the shaft protruding from the door for a handful of seconds. What I’ve done, while sensible given the situation, was done without premeditation. The faint sound of approaching hooves outside the door is enough to distract me.

“Cocoon, we’ve got to get out of here!” Chrysalis says, stating the painfully obvious. The door we came in through isn’t an option, so my eyes dart to the only other exit: the window.

Now, throwing a fireball or a lightning bolt would have easily broken the glass, but for whatever reason I was in a different sort of mood tonight. I reached out with my magic and grabbed the window panes. Glass is inanimate, and therefore not capable of taking commands, but for whatever reason that’s exactly what I did. It was a very simple command: break.

The glass shattered and fell about the window sill in a way I wanted to assume was metaphorical. Chrysalis looked from the window, to me, to back at the window.

“How did you-?”

“Magic! Let’s go!” I vault over the desk, landing on the other side. I grab Chrysalis and leap out into the night. Flying isn’t an option in changeling form for me, so we land a ways away in some bushes. We use the cover to transform into some unassuming forms before tip-toeing… or tip-hoofing rather, across the street. We hasten away from city hall, but we don’t dare go faster than a slow canter. Once we’re comfortably far away, Chrysalis turns to me.

“You mind explaining how you did that?” Chrysalis asks once again.

“I just used magic to shatter the glass. You remember what magic is, right?” I ask. Chrysalis glares at me and I can tell she’s considering chewing me out over something. For whatever reason, her rage subsides a bit.

“You know how we changelings eat love, right?” she asks me. I nod, but I’m entirely unsure of where she’s going with this. “We convert love into energy. Energy we use to transform, levitate things, make shields, shoot lightning, and light things on fire. Energy can do those things.”

“Yes… yes it can.” The look on Chrysalis’s face tells me my comment was not appreciated. “Okay, yeah, but it can’t break windows?”

“Energy can break windows, but you didn’t use energy. You, somehow, used magic.”

“I… I don’t follow… at all.”

Chrysalis smacks her hoof into her forehead. She mutters something under her breath, something I can tell is laced with explitives. Eventually she sighs, and looks back up at me. I sit down on the pavement, showing her that I’m ready to listen if she’s ready to explain.

“Levitation, fireballs, beams of lighting and whatnot are technically magic, but that stuff is simple. The magic is just using energy to exert a force of some kind or cause a natural, explainable reaction with internal energies. More advanced magic involves unnatural uses for energy, like growing hair in strange places or conjuring objects out of thin air. Now, have you been able to do things like that in the past?”

“Well I haven’t tried,” I explain to her. “But I don’t see how breaking a window is magic.”

“Normally, it isn’t,” Chrysalis says. “But you didn’t break it with force, you forced it to break.”

“… Huh?”

“Instead of bashing it with energy, you used your own energy to make an unnatural change in its nature. It’s a very basic change, but a change nonetheless. That shouldn’t be possible for a changeling, even royalty,” Chrysalis says, but things still don’t quite add up for me. Then again, I’m not very well versed in magic. If even breaking a window is this complicated, Twilight Sparkle really is a super genius.

“So what about healing my body and fixing Sweet Tea’s nose? Also Mind Poisoning. If Changelings aren’t capable of complicated magic, how can I do that stuff?” I ask. Chrysalis titters and shakes her head.

“Really… this stuff is common knowledge around here. I guess there really is no magic where you come from.”

“There is, but we just call it science.”

“Anyway, back to your question,” Chrysalis says. “Healing yourself is an easy one: our bodies are sustained and changed by the energy we absorb, so it’s no big surprise that you can stimulate our exoskeletons and internal workings to repair themselves by adding energy. As for Sweet Tea, I doubt you could’ve restored an amputated limb or replaced a kidney, but a pony’s natural energy coupled with your magic could push bone and flesh back into place. Mind poisoning is a bit more complicated, but there’s an easy way to explain it: the soul and brain communicate with each other and the body through energy impulses, so all Mind Poison does is set up a way for us to control those impulses. The point we bind to manipulate minds is the same point that releases love, so we’re naturally attuned to find and exploit it. It’s almost real magic.”

“Okay, okay… so why can’t changelings do real magic? We can do all that other stuff with our energy, so why no magic?” I ask the looming question. This is all very complicated, but Chrysalis would probably feel overwhelmed too if I had to explain to her how a computer or a car worked.

“It’s not that changelings can’t, it’s just that unicorns can,” she said. “All the other… creatures that can release energy like we can also have another uniting factor: they don’t eat solid food.”

That’s when everything clicked for me.

“So, what? What does eating have to do with it?” I asked her, but Chrysalis scrunched up her mouth and averted her eyes.

“Nopony is really sure. Unicorns and alicorns have tired endlessly for the source of magic, but it eludes them. All they know is that a starving unicorn can’t use magic. As for magic itself, all they know is that through concentration and deliberate methods they can do just about anything.”

As much as I’d hoped for a definitive answer, I guess that’ll have to do. I can’t get blood from a stone, but I can experiment with what eating all this salt might do for me.

I hold out my hoof and focus my energy in my horn. Using a horn instead of my hands isn’t favorable, but it’ll have to do in public. I tune everything around me out and focus on my breathing. I take a breath in and fill my lungs from the bottom up. I take a breath out, pushing all the air out. Manipulating energy should be as natural as breathing. I pick an object at random and focus on its image. My goal is to bring it into existence. To achieve it, I must start from scratch and…

Without realizing what I’d done, I find a baseball in my hoof.

“C-conjuration? How did you…? You can actually?”

I barely hear Chrysalis. I feel weird all of a sudden. I managed that magic with such ease, but I did it only because I felt like I’d done it before. Not just once before, but a million times before. My brain is telling me there is experience of struggling to conjure, just barely conjuring, and perfection of conjuring. It tries to pull up the memories of those events, but it can’t.

It’s an odd feeling, as if I put a key in a hole, undid the lock, but the door still won’t open. I pull, I push, I kick, I yell, and I knock, but the door refuses to open. I didn’t even realize the door existed until just now, but here I am standing in front of it. I remember what should be on the other side, but I can’t get to it.

“Cocoon? Are you okay… C… oon? …o…n!”

The corridor of my mind is long and winding. I remember how to navigate this place. It isn’t hard. This is the place where my past memories should be and here is where the explanations for what is happening should be hung.

“C…oon, … …n’t funny! … …p! G… u…! Coc…n!”

Someone has been in here. They wrote lies on the wall while I was away, asleep, or not looking. They locked the doors from the inside. I just believed whatever was presented to me. There is so much of my own mind hidden from me. I remember that I can’t remember things. Questions I should have asked, but neglected to have answered. Things I should have noticed were missing, but I was blind and couldn’t even notice them.

“…oon! C……n! ……..! …………”

The machine finally ran a program that would be met with an error. The next step is shut down.


“Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was.”

My eyes opened up. There are very few things one wants to see when waking up, and high on that list for me is the Avatar of Chaos, Discord, staring right into my face.

“Oh good, you’ve retained some of your sanity,” Discord says. He flies up and away from me, giving me enough room to sit up. I feel fine, but my head is all over the place. I rub my forehead, in some attempt to physically reclaim mental clarity. Rubbing, though, makes my hand and my forehead feel… familiar. I bring my had down and take a good look at it.

It would appear I am among the human.

“What the?!” I jump up on my feet, my fleshy, human feet, and look myself all over. I’m me again. I’ve got flesh instead of chitin, red hair instead of blue, teeth instead of fangs, and… no pants.

“Here, monkey boy,” Discord says as he tosses me a pair of overalls. I don’t know why overalls, but I’m not about to look the gift pony in the mouth. Besides, this is Discord we’re talking about. I should be happy he didn’t give me a frilly, pink tutu. “Now, you’ve probably got a loooot of questions, don’t you?” I finish putting the overalls on.

“I’ve always had a lot of questions… but I guess I kind of want to know where we are.”

“We’re nowhere.”

Looking around at the inky, black, endless nothingness around us, I’d buy that.

“How did I get here?”

“Hmm, you’re right… you do have a lot of questions,” Discord said, scratching his beard idly with his talon. “If I can be perfectly concise, you’re not really ‘here’. You’re still in back in that body. Your mind has come here because the burden of consciousness is preventing it from… fixing itself. Your consciousness will hang out here until your mind is ready to agree with itself.”

“Yeah, about that.” I look down to see what I’m standing on. The expanse of darkness stretches on even below me. I realize I have a strange sensation for falling while being grounded. “Maybe you can shed some light on why I feel like I can’t remember some stuff about… well, me.”

“I could, but that would take the fun out of it.” Discord whipped himself up a Starbucks coffee cup. A pair of thick framed glasses appeared on his nose and a long, striped scarf wrapped itself around his neck. “I’m very picky when it comes to fun. Besides, you can’t remember because somepony edited your memories. That much should be obvious.”

“Yeah, but who and why? What aren’t I supposed to remember? Which of my memories are lies?” I ask. I don’t know why I’m bothering with this psychopath. He’s always… always...

There is static in my brain. The words almost form, but they just aren’t there. My mind says the conclusion should be there, and yet there isn’t. I get away from that line of thought, just in case my mind decides to push my consciousness into an even more obscure place. I shudder to think about what kind of place is worse than Nowhere, but at least I can think about it.

“Again, I don’t wanna go spilling all the beans. Somepony worked very hard to keep you from remembering, and quite frankly I prefer you better this way,” Discord explains. “It’s easier to… hurt you.”

“What is any of that supposed to mean?” My mind is already jumbled up enough without Discord being all cryptic.

“On the other hand, I want you to remember,” Discord admits, much to my surprise. “But only gradually and painfully. That is how you must remember everything because it will be all the more satisfying to end your existence once you’re writhing in the knowledge of the whole truth!”

“Again with the killing thing. If you want me gone so bad, just send me home! It’s as easy as that!” I tell him. Discord’s glasses become opaque, just so he can pull them down and leer at me over them.

“Just like you send Nathanial, or should I say Sparrow, home?”

I have to hand it to Discord: he really knows what buttons to press.

“Listen up, ape! This isn’t about you screwing with my plans a little or jumping some of my pawns!” Discord shouts. He winds his way through the air right up to me until I can feel hot breath coming out of his nostrils. “No, this is personal! You and I have a little game to finish, whether you like it or not!”

“… And what if I refuse to play?” I ask. Discord grins as he chuckles to himself. He draws himself up to his full height as he begins laughing just as loud as he can.

“Well, how can you play chess without a King? You need to play and, in fact, you’re going to play regardless of what you do because the only way to get home is to win. You’re already two moves behind and doomed to lose in the end.

“So hurry and remember, but no too fast! I want to see you squirm and wrestle with it a while longer. This game should have ended before it got to this stage, but since you somehow managed to prolong it I’ll indulge you.”

Suddenly, I feel like static. I’m leaving Nowhere and returning to my body. I can already feel waking thought returning to me as the darkness of Nowhere engulfs me.

“Ah yes… but our time here is short. We’ll meet again real soon. I know we will. I’m the only one who can answer all those burning questions you have, but to simply answer would be too easy. I hope you’re up for a bit of sport.”

Discord fades completely from my vision. I realize I’ve been numb this whole time as feeling returns to my body. Before I’m gone completely, Discord plants instructions into my brain. I can hear him in my head, mocking me with his rhyme:

“If you’re looking for answers to the reasons why

If you want to unscramble the truths and the lies

Then go where it’s never midnight nor noon

Stare into the mirror between the Sun and the Moon.”