Let's Try This Again

by HypernovaBolts11

Chapter XII - Drawn

Fangheart was standing at the base of a long stairway, so tall that it reached into the distant horizon of the setting sun, where the golden light met the blazing glory of the star. He saw a ticket booth next to the base of the stairs, and a ticket in his mouth.

He darted forward, about to present the booth with his ticket, but stopped. He took a few steps back, and looked to his right.

There was a pony, his eyes showing only jealousy. He was old, missing an eye, and the left side of his face had a great scar on it, running all the way from his missing eye to his lips. He made no sound to indicate that he'd seen Fangheart, but his eyes screamed regrets, so strong, and so great.

Fangheart glanced at the stairway, and saw the pony at the ticket booth sticking his head out to call, "I'm gonna need a decision soon, kid."

Fangheart held his ticket, thinner than paper, brilliant as gold, in his hoof. He glanced at the poor old pony, whose eyes made contact with his. He reached out a hoof to help the old stallion onto his feet, and he said, "Go, you need this more than I do." He gave the old pony his ticket, and, when the old pony looked him in the eyes, surprised, he added, "I have regrets yet to make."

He waved to the old stallion as he set down his ticket, and charged up the endless stairs, tears of joy streaming down his cheeks. He shouted to the old pony as he went, "Fly you high, sir!" He watched in awe as the old pony became a streak of golden light, which rushed up to join the setting sun as the staircase fell away behind him.

He smiled, a sensation of tingling warmth dancing across his face and chest. He watched as the very last sliver of the golden sun, slowly sank below the distant mountains. He saw, in the last day of sunlight, a pair of ponies, one waving down at him, the other crying.

He felt tears welling behind his eyes, a sure sign that he was sad. But he wasn't upset, not in the least. He was fine. He was proud to be himself. He was happy for the old stallion, whose beloved had been waiting for him, and for his beloved, who he had reunited.

The deep voice from his dream spoke again, "Oh... Boo hoo hoo! You can't go now, don't you get it. That was your only chance, you foal. You're not understanding what I'm trying to tell you."

He blinked one of his tears away, and found himself in a completely different, but all too familiar place. He was back in the throne room, watching from behind Celestia. He seemed like air, and deeply troubled. He could see himself, just sitting there in that stupid halter, and his mother, whose eyes were lit with horror.

Everything seemed black, slow, and heavy. He turned to look away, and found himself facing a completely different situation. He saw Twilight, pinned against the floor of the Golden Oak Library, with two big changelings holding her down, and a third marching towards her. Queen Chrysalis stood above Twilight Sparkle's helpless body, her horn glowing with a fury he'd never seen.

He turned around again, and the voice said, "This is a dilemma, isn't it, C? You can save one, but not the other. One must die, and one must live." He had a body again, and he was standing between the two scenes, bordering between them. The divide between the two situations grew shaky, and a crack formed below his feet.

A scythe appeared in his grip, and it began to swing down, ever so slowly, towards the library, right at Twilight's neck. He tried to pull the weapon back up, but it only went down, so he turned it to face the other way, this time, aimed right at Chrysalis's neck, while she was still in that halter, her eyes filled with endless fear for his life.

He tried to moved the scythe away from them both, and managed to hold it parallel to the crack between the two realities, which was widening by the second. His left hooves were placed on the throne room, and his right on the library. He strained to hold the scythe away from the two people, and a million of his mother's words flowed through his head.

"Blood is thicker than water... The changelings will go extinct without me... You will never understand your father's death quite as well as I do... Do not pretend to know who your father was... I hate alicorns... And your father too... Don't you dare forget who's in charge here... I'm so sorry, Love Bite..."

He pointed the scythe away from his mother, unable to lose her again. He wouldn't lose her again. He couldn't lose his mind all over again. The divide below him widened, and his legs were at right angles to the ones next to each other. He glanced at Twilight, and panicked when he saw the scythe so close to her neck. Her words slipped through him.

"Your family's actions have nothing to do with who you are... He's not evil... He's better than Chrysalis... It's a way of stabilizing one's place in the world... They know that they matter to each other... It feels warm, pleasant, nice... He wouldn't hurt me... Good night, Love Bite... He's my friend... Can changelings fall in love?"

He pushed the scythe away from Twilight, and recentered it between the two realities. He moved so that he was underneath the scythe, holding up the handle. The ground underneath him began to crack, then it completely disintegrated as the voice spoke again, "Now do you see it? You cannot have both. You will have to live with the decisions you make, and I cannot rewrite history... unlike some people I know."

Fangheart grit his teeth as the tip of the scythe's blade made contact with his back, sending shivers up his spine. "D-Discord! Don't give me that pile of roadapp-" The ground caved in beneath him, and he hit some sort of solid ground. He put a hoof down under himself, and pulled himself up, just as the scythe swung, and buried itself between his wings.

---

Fangheart snapped awake, panting for breath. He looked around frantically, checking that he still had all of his limbs. He checked for his wings, tail, mane, and found no cut in his back. He sighed in relief, and slumped against the wall. He let his eyes drift closed as he took deep breaths to calm himself.

He stood up, and yawned as he made his way down the staircase, deciding to see if a nice walk would do him any good.

Twilight was already downstairs, reading something aloud, "From one to another, another to one, a mark of one's destiny, singled out alone, fulfilled."

Something bright and colorful drew his attention, and he paused to further examine it. Inside a glass container, placed atop a purple pillow on a wooden pedestal, were six trinkets, five of which were necklaces, the one closest to the stairway being a crown of sorts. The five neck ornaments were golden, each with a different gem in the center.

One was shaped like a balloon, baby blue in color, in front of and to the left of the crown. The one in front of and to the left of that was a dark purple rhombus. The gem before and to the right of the crown was a red lightning bolt. Further in that direction sat a gem in the shape of an orange apple —despite the differences between those two fruits. Between the apple and the rhombus was a pink butterfly shaped gem.

The piece of lavish headgear was also golden, with one central gem, a purple six pointed star, shaped like the largest star on Twilight's cutie mark. As Twilight finished reading her terrible poem, the crown's jewel began to glow, and connected to the other five with beams of purple light.

When the light died down, the gems all took on their own white auras, and the colors they took shuffled back and forth, flowing between the shapes like different costumes.

It was then, that Fangheart decided that he wasn't interested in messing around with spirit gems, and darted back upstairs, wrapping the rug on the floor around himself like a blanket, and pretended that he was asleep.

Spirit gems, he knew, were not to be tampered with, unless in a life or death situation, out of other options, and willing to trade any and all use of magic for the sake of a slightly longer life.

A voice came from right next to him, and he jumped, casting aside the rug as he backed up against the wall. He stammered, "Wh-what'd ya want!?" He fixed his gaze on a copy of Twilight, but with eyes that he had hoped to never see again. He glared at Discord and said, "No more fun and games. What do you want?"

The false image of Twilight grinned widely, the corners of its lips mere millimeters from its ears. Its yellow eyes and oddly sized red pupils filling with what might have been pride. "Do you remember a deal your father made with me? Of course you wouldn't, we made it after he died. The point is that I am supposed to keep you from dying until your mother joined him," he said.

Fangheart's expression became one of reserved interest. He didn't look at Discord directly, deciding that the fewer of his reactions Discord saw, the better. He said, "And... You're only telling me this now because..." He held his hoof upturned, as though presenting a spot for the chaos god to place the rest of the sentence.

Discord said, "And now that your mother is dead, and has, therefore, joined your father in the afterlife, I am free to let you die. Now that I am no longer protecting you, I suggest you stop relying on luck to save you." The god of chaos dropped its smile and said, "But, from what I've seen of your decisions, you'll be dead in a few hours, maybe days, if you change your behavior."

Fangheart was about to ask more questions of the spirit, but it vanished in an instant of multicolored smoke and the sound of a sheep baaing. The stallion looked around, and sighed when he realized that he was still in the library, and that the sky was still dark and dotted with millions of stars.

He closed his eyes, and thought he heard someone calling his name. The hypnic jerk shook him awake, and he snapped open his eyes. He looked around and pinned back his ears, more in annoyance than alarm at that point. He sighed, and whispered to whomever might have remained to watch over him, "Please have mercy upon my mother's soul."

---

He looked up from his spot on the floor, and found Twilight looking down at him.

"Rise and shine," the unicorn told him. "Would now be a good time to let me get those drawings?"

Fangheart nodded, and let the unicorn lead him to the basement. He burst into flames, pinning his ears back, and blushing bright green as he nodded. He stood up and turned to his side, not taking his eyes off of Twilight, who was looking at him intently. He knew that she needed a rough outline of a changeling so she could better understand how to defeat one, but he still felt embarrassed about just standing still while she looked at him.

Twilight picked up her book, moved her quill and ink next to her, and dipped the quill into the ink. She traced several basic shapes onto the empty paper, making an outline of an equine creature. She said, "So, what's up? You were comfortable with staring yesterday, and now you're blushing just because I'm looking at you."

His black cheeks had been completely blocked out by the forest green blush on them. He tried not to move, though his wings didn't seem to understand that, and the chitinous membranes quivered excitedly as he though he were a pony asking their soulmate for marriage. He said, "Your brother assumed that we were partners, or that I was trying to make things that way."

Twilight glanced up from her book for only a moment, raising an eyebrow at the changeling, and looked back down. "And you bring this up because?" she asked him, carefully making elliptical outlines in the drawing's legs. She drew the ridges between his armor plates.

He said. "I just thought it was interesting. Everyone kept thinking I was romantically attached to you, and, if he didn't know at the time, Princess Cadance has probably told him what I am. I wonder if he'll take his blessing back, or if he's onboard with Cadance's underground railroad plan."

Twilight made a few clicking sounds with her tongue, shaking her head without looking up from her drawing.

Fangheart turned his head to look at her, and waited for her to stop clicking, before saying, "I had to tell Cadance that I had come from someplace south of Appleloosa, my mother had recently died, my family life was going bad, and I'd changed my name from Love Bite."

Twilight raised an eyebrow at him, and asked, "Why'd you have to tell her that?" Her quill made dozens of strokes, back and forth, angling itself so it traced careful arcs, deepening the holes in the drawing's legs.

"She kept pressuring me, and she was nice once we'd established what I was. She even said that she'd take in changelings on the run," he told her. He couldn't help but let a smile form on his lips, and he said, "How odd, that she is called Kortsanich', destroyer, and now she offers help to the very ones she defeated."

Twilight said, "Cadance has always been understanding. It's not surprising in the least that she'd be helping those she hurt; the changelings didn't have a choice in the matter. She can understand that." She looked down from him, and back at her drawing, which had been given its wings and horn.

He frowned. "The bulk of the invasion force were soldiers, not workers. They were... not really free to choose, but more than capable of rebelling if they hadn't liked it," he told the unicorn.

Twilight looked back up at him, carefully tracing his tail with her eyes. "You still haven't explained to me how the hive minds work," she said.

"The soldiers... aren't necessarily bound to anything. They can become spies, and if not, the queen forced them to become infiltrators. But, biologically speaking, they can do anything. They're... I don't want to say crazy, but the proper term for their condition doesn't have parallel in Equish," he said.

Twilight asked, "What condition?"

He pondered this question for a while, letting silence hang in the air.

Twilight documented their conversation, taking careful notes on his explanation, before returning to her drawing. She outlined the frills on the back of his neck, his eyes, the holes in his wings, his fangs, and his ears. She picked up a pencil, and began shading in the drawing.

He finally said, "They don't have changeling logic built into them. They aren't scared of ponies when they have no disguise. They don't take orders until they assimilate into a hive mind. They aren't required to follow any rules. They can reproduce, but not with the queen."

Twilight's eyes widened, and she asked, "So... They can..."

"They develop in much a similar way to ponies, from what I understand. They are rather tame in their early lives, but experience a long period of... rampant instinctual drive, often imploring the queen to let them mate with her, and if not her, then me. Most of them end up rutting one of the reserve workers, often more than one at a time," he told her.

Twilight thought for a moment, and said, "So... They experience a sort of puberty."

He then added, "Oh, and, before becoming a spy or infiltrator, they eat meat."

Twilight shuddered, and shook her head. "Okay, so they're carnivorous changelings, which have a rowdy teenager phase, and then have to decide between one of two jobs," she said. "And what exactly can they reproduce with?"

"Pretty much anything," he said flatly. "But their partners only bear one child at time, which aren't even changelings, so they can't make separate hives."

Twilight nodded, and resumed her shading. A question began surfacing in her mind, nagging at her until she finally asked, "Can you reproduce with ponies?"

Fangheart thought for a moment, and could only say, "As a changeling, almost definitely not. As a pony, perhaps." He let the unicorn return to her drawing, and only after she was done did he add, "I don't think I want to find out. The product of such a process would live a horrible life in pony society, and an even worse one in the hive." He transformed into his pony form, and stretched a bit, clearing away what sleepiness had persisted.

Twilight set her book down in a drawer, and turned to speak with him, but was interrupted by a grumbling sound. She glanced over her shoulder, taking a look at her stomach, as though it'd done something wrong. She looked back at her guest, and said, "I think I should have breakfast."

Fangheart yawned, and smacked his lips, before saying lazily, "Yeah, you go do that, and I'll see if I can't get some sleep without spirits trying to mess with me."

Comments

[HypernovaBolts11]

7298595 Thank you for reminding me. I had expected the story to go in a different direction, and I'll fix this.

[over01]

its a really good story