Conduit

by Darkscout99

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The hive mind had been silent for the past few hours. Every time I tried to reach out to lisa I got nothing, and it was starting to worry me. Luckily, Shatter had decided to go to the spa today. She claimed that she hadn’t had a day to herself in weeks, so I shoved her out the door with a bag of bits and told her to relax. She had objected at first but I locked the doors and refused to let her in. after waiting for about an hour, I assumed that she would have actually left. Grabbing the transfer crystals I had slowly been making in my basement, I slipped out into the streets and made my way to the mountain. The whole way there I felt like I was being watched. I knew I wasn’t, as I had been feeling that way for years whenever I was alone, but it felt particularly strong this time.

I finally made my way into the cave where the hive was before burning away the mirage wall and stepping into my secondary home. The wall reformed itself as I dropped my human form and walked deeper into the cavernous hallways. I couldn’t find anyone so I decided to send out a mental ping over the hive mind.

<lisa? Where are you?>

<You’re actually here? In the hive? We’re in the library, all you have to do is take the left after the entrance and follow the tunnel to the end.>

<ok, i’ll be there as fast as possible.> Following the instructions it only took me a few minutes to get to the library. When I got there though, I noticed something big. All of the changelings I knew were there, and they looked different. The first thing is that they were taller. While most changelings were about four feet, they seemed somewhere around 4 and a half to five feet. They also seemed to be slightly lighter colored, as well as all of their holes seemingly slightly smaller.

Lisa spoke up first. “Hello there DJ,” the anger in her voice was evident. “Notice something different?”

I took a second to compose myself before answering. “Y-yeah. You’re all, taller?”

“Yes. do you wanna know why?”

“I have a feeling this is not good news for me.”

“You’re right. We only did the second most important thing behind crowning a new king-slash-queen.”

My eyes grew wide in shock. “Your joking right.” she shook her head. “I’m so sorry.” I got down on my knees and lowered my head. “Please forgive me. I didn’t know there was such a thing. Next time something like this happens please tell me.”

“Jeez, you didn’t have to start groveling. You are a baby afterall.”

I stood up. “Hey! In my world i’m a full grown adult!”

“And how old are you?”

“21.” she paused for a moment before replying.

“Assuming you only have half the lifespan since you weren’t born a king, you wouldn’t even be a baby. You’d have just hatched if you were lucky. If you changed your age to be equal to the age you should be, you would be a little over four thousand. And that’s at the low end of the scale. A king can live for hundreds of thousands of years if he’s careful. The oldest king is around four hundred thousand years.”

My jaw dropped. “You’re kidding me this time right. Please?”

“Yes I was.”

“Oh thank goodn-”

“The current king is five hundred thousand, and the oldest queen is seven hundred thousand years.”

“That- how- wha-”

That was when emily stepped in,“You broke him lisa.”

“I might have. Anyways, what brings you here sir?”

I snapped out of my daze when lisa spoke to me. “I wanted to bring you the transfer crystals. I finished them up recently but there was some… complications in getting here though.”

Emily was the one who spoke up. “Really? So how do they work?” I proceeded to spend the next hour explaining how to use the crystals. While in truth it should have only taken a few minutes, emily wanted to figure out how to everything worked, how it was made, and all of these other things that made the process twenty times longer.

“... and when the love is passed through the crystal it can be absorbed by any changeling close enough to absorb it.”

“This is amazing! I can’t imagine what we will be able to do with this. We need to mass produce these-” Emily was cut off when a gigantic explosion rocked through the hive.

“What was that!” I yelled. This wasn’t good. An explosion of that strength could only mean-

“We’re under attack! The drones at the front entrance have passed out and are floating in the hive mind. They saw a flash of yellow magic and then were knocked out!”

“I’m moving to the entrance, lisa get me all the warriors and tell them to meet me there.”

“The only thing that could have destroyed-”

“I don’t care! I’m going to go stop them. That entrance is a choke point. If I die or get hurt, then leave me and go find a spot to build a new hive!” with that I ran off ignoring lisa’s sputters of discouragement. Racing to the entrance I could hear a female shouting orders. I could also hear pained groans from some changelings that had been around the entrance. Rounding the corner I saw my worst fear.

Celestia. Standing next to Shatterfall. Along with a whole platoon of royal guards at the entrance. All in what I could only describe as full war armor. The first moment we made eye contact. The second moment a group of changeling guards rounded the corner. The third moment Celestia and I tensed up. I was the first to speak.

“Hello Celestia .”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “That voice, is that you DJ?”

I dissolved my disguise as I nodded. “Yes. Celestia , why have you come into my home like this? You shattered my door and knocked out two of my subjects at the same time. Now, I don’t care about the door too much, that could be replaced before you leave, but you harmed what are effectively my children. How would you feel if I walked into your throne room and knocked out those guards? Now let me ask you, how would you feel if you could feel everything they can?” I lowered my eyes and glared at her. “What would you do Celestia ?”

She seemed surprised by how angry I was. From what she had seen, I only got like this when there was a serious threat to somebody near to me. And seeing as she was the only pony that I could reasonably direct my anger at currently she knew it was directed at her. “DJ i’m sorry I didn-”

“Sorry? Celestia , do you have any idea how strong that blast was? If it was strong enough to destroy that door that blast could have incinerated a dragon! If that door had been any weaker then my subjects would have most likely died! It’s not like changelings are beasts that aren’t truly alive. Celestia , the only differences between ponies and us is how we look, and what basic skills we are given at birth. And that we absorb love, but that’s only a small thing.”

“A small thing?” Celestia shouted. “You’re saying that it’s only a small thing that you steal something that my ponies make within themselves-”

“Celestia love is generated passively by ponies. The only time it’s actively taken is only if a pony gives it willingly, and the worse we’ve seen when a pony gave too much of it was a migraine for a day and a slightly grumpy attitude. Do you have any idea how much love you’re radiating right now? Here’s a hint, just in the small time we’ve been talking you’ve given enough love to my hive that if we didn’t have our stores we could survive on it for the rest of the month, without collecting any more. Now, do you feel any worse for wear?”

Celestia stuttered before responding. “N-No, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that you’re taking something from my ponies without their permission.”

“I’m assuming that the second you heard about this hive you started forming an attack plan. I haven’t even been here half an hour, heck, I left my house just over an hour ago, and you’ve already got a whole battalion of soldiers mobilized, no doubt with re-enforcements on the way. Now what do you think you could have gotten if you had heard that there was a strange monster that was attacking a village. You would have come down on them full force, with a whole army and the elements of harmony.” I paused and waited for her response. When none came, I continued speaking,

“As long as it protects your precious little ponies you would commit genocide, wouldn’t you, Celestia ?”

Author's Note:

Well that took forever. Between the start of school and breaking my hand I just couldn't seem to get any work done. Plus the fact I didn't like the way that the initial draft was going. Sorry about any characters that might feel like they aren't the same, i have been cobbling this together for the past forever and yeah. so as always, tell me what grammar and stuff I've failed.

in my headcannon alicorns and changeling kings/queens are not truly immortal, just really really REALLY long lived.

Comments

[Brass Cogs]

Four hundred thousand years is a bit unreasonable for a biological creature.

[Darkscout99]

7668957 celestia is supposed to be immortal. That means that if she dies with he sun, which I'm assuming would be about the size of our sun if not smaller, she could have around 10 billion years from birth to death of a star. Even assuming that she was born half way through the life, she would be around 5 billion years old at her death.

Keep in mind that they can die due to poison, sickness, or being hurt.

[ponyheart07]

I NEED MOOOOORRRRREEEE!!!!!