Chapter X - Enquired
After a short rest, Fangheart took to the street, conversing with anyone who identified as a doctor or surgeon. He didn't take notes, and he didn't ask about medicine, but asked if they could spare time and thought for the changelings who were dying en masse. Most of them agreed to support him, and others said things like, "I'm not that kind of doctor."
He then spoke to Pick about the revolution, who, again, said that she needed more time to think, whereupon he was left with a decision to make. He could either lead the movement himself, or find someone else to speak with the Matriarch and the high ranking officials he needed on his side.
He had drafted a bill with Honey Moon's aid, and sent it to the council of heroes and retired infiltrators, inscribed on a clay plate. He had everything planned, and needed only a trusted person to defend it before the senate.
In the end, he marched into the courtroom by himself. He had spent many a day at his mother's side, hearing the cases of many bills and patrons, but now, his mother's throne was occupied by her usurper, and he stood before the Matriarch, whilst the council of aging heroes sat at their large stone desks behind her.
And so, he stood before the old, acclaimed changelings who would hear his case out, and decide whether or not he should be taken seriously. He cleared his throat, and said to them, "I have witnessed the miracles of pony medicine firsthoof. I watched a worker, with stalks covering its stomach like fur, stand up after a day of rest and treatment, and it walked. It flew, it could disguise itself. I had deemed it mere hours from death, and watched it live.
"There is medicine without parallel, that can put creatures into a great sleep, from which they will emerge after a chosen period of time, and cannot awake from disturbance. One can open a patient's body with a blade, and they will not wake. They can take away all pain, prevent further infection, and bring the plague to its knees within its host.
"To deny your people this technology and salvation would be to deny the value of their very lives. To deny them this would be to spill the blood of thousands more who might yet be saved. To deny the potential possessed by this medicine would be inexcusable!" He stomped his hoof for emphasis.
"I do not espouse the notion of disregarding our ancient ways, nor do I demand that you pass sovereignty to the many doctors and nurses that I have assembled, but that the lives that pass as we stand here are worth more than any hubris and pride, or the traditions of many a millennia, for it can and will prevent the deaths of every other changeling who could otherwise be working, who could be doing you good, who could bring to you the finest love on a velvet pillow, decorated with silk and gold. The longer we wait and stall, the more lives are lost than need not be so!"
The court was stunned. This was more a pointed defense of a bill than had been seen since the days of the darkling epidemic. Not since the time of rampant and uncontrollable revolts had such fiery words been loosed upon the highest court. This was hardly legal rhetoric. This was an accusation of negligence on their part. They weren't about to let some prisoner guilt trip them into anything, much less overhauling the ways of old.
But the Matriarch simply smiled, and, when a noble sitting a few meters away from her shouted for the halfling's arrest, laughed. She laughed like this whole thing was some grand ruse, like the very gates of Elysium had been thrown open before her while she still lived.
Some noble behind her rose from its seat, and, lifting a hoof to the ceiling, which had a purple cloth wrapped around it, declared, "You come before us with the expectation that we will pass your legislation simply because you claim that it will solve all of our problems?"
He closed his eyes, slowly shaking his head, and said, "No. You have a plethora of problems, many of which are beyond the scope of anything one person can achieve."
Another noble stood as its coworker took its seat. This one had a purple gem hanging from a string around its neck. "Then why should we trust you?" it asked Fangheart.
The Matriarch was leaning forward on her throne now, all but stroking her chin at the halfling's proposal. She seemed engrossed in her own thoughts, though ones that likely bore meaning on the situation at hoof.
Fangheart still didn't open his eyes, though a smile began to form on his lips as he considered this last question.
Another changeling rose from its seat, but the Matriarch held up a hoof to silence it.
"Riddle me this: how do you plan to enjoy your opulent lifestyles when the lives lost to the plague begin to outweigh the dwindling ranks of the eggs that yet remain, or after you succumb to its effects?" he asked.
No one could really argue with that.
In the very back of his mind, he allowed himself a slight indulgence in pride, but a little voice told him, "And that's how you steal the spot(light) in the queen's bed."
The buzz of wings and clanging of metal rang out across the museum. Workers and able bodied volunteers flew up and down the mountains of junk, scanning their surfaces for gas canisters, medical supplies, and surgical masks.
Recorders stood at the bottom of these piles, tracking each of their designated searching parties in their field of view, marking down on a clay tablet how many of each item their groups collected as they were flown down.
A doctor named Florence Nightingallup ran back and forth between the gathered items. She put examples of each item they would need in a line for a focus group of workers, who would relay the patterns and shapes of these objects to the hive mind. That way the searching parties could get realtime updates on what to look for.
Florence sat down in front of the group, and began spouting off information on what each piece of equipment did and what she needed to be done with them.
Fangheart sat behind her for a moment, then, without interrupting her speech, made his way over to the first object, a large, white and green machine with small wheels underneath it, and gently rolled it away from the other items. He went back, and then did the same thing for all of the others, until each object had at least two meters between itself and its nearest neighbor.
Florence paused to look over at him, and then raised both of her eyebrows as he began to push the members of her audience into a circle around the objects, with her in the center.
When that was done, he looked his work over, and then took a seat behind one of the workers.
Florence asked, "What was that for?"
He leaned forward against the worker, which didn't react aside from applying its own weight to keep them from falling over, and said, "They were so close together that the hive mind might have mistaken the collective arrangement of objects for the shape we need to identify. If you don't let them see what the objects look like from several angles, they'll only recognize those objects in that configuration."
She blinked at him, then said, "Ah. I see. Is that all?"
He nodded, then traced the end of the worker's frills with the tip of his nose, allowing a small trickle of love energy to pass between them. He paid close attention to what the doctor had to say, then joined a searching party himself.
Fangheart's mind was slowed, dragged down by his exhausted body and the deficit in love energy he was running for a brief moment. Then, like water being poured from one half of a tub to another over a wall that had been lifted away, what excess energy the Matriarch didn't need bounced back to him, and so it went as the energy found equilibrium.
It lasted no more than a fraction of a second, but it left him drained, and he felt hunger gnawing at his stomach even after the connection through which he fed her snapped.
So he lay there, stunned, tired, used, but glad that he had gone through with the act despite the moral questionability. Circumstance was a temperamental beast, and he had to do what he could if he could preserve hope.
The Matriarch's blue eyes drifted closed, leaving him alone in the darkness of his mother's private quarters. It reached out a vile appendage to take hold of his mind, as fear and abandonment began to claw and scratch at his limited fortitude.
He was no stranger to fear, and, while he had never been so heartlessly mocked for his fear as some young ponies might have been, he knew that every soldier, every bedmate he'd ever had, even the queen herself had thought him lesser for his weakness.
And, though his mother's usurper lay less than a meter from his side, he could feel it creeping in, sinking through the fur and the skin of his lies, through the pony he tried to be. It knew him, and when it found its way to his bones, he was left alone, without light, without warmth, with nothing but the repeating sound of his client's breath and heartbeat.
His teeth began to chatter, a reflex he had never been told of, and thus, he failed to understand where the sound of bones clattering against one another was coming from.
He knew that there was nothing, nothing that could harm him. He had always been safe.
But he had only been safe because of his mother, because he was important, because he was necessary for the continued existence of the creatures that surrounded him. But now, as the cold and the dark assaulted his mind, he was just as vulnerable and just as weak as the pegasus who had collapsed in the street for Twilight to find.
Something moved, and he gulped, still not allowing his eyes to close, as if the instant he looked away from the plain black wall he knew to be there, some spectre, something would make itself a meal in him.
He missed having eyes that could glow. He had always used them for things like this. He had known that it was considered unhealthy for a drone to make separate uses of his features than to charm the queen, but he was the last drone, so who exactly was going to hold him to that standard?
A smooth, cold object touched his back, and the Matriarch's tender voice soothed his nerves, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you did some research on me."
He felt himself blush in the blackness. He had asked Pick for some advice about the Matriarch. He believed in making use of his resources, and this was a task of high importance to him. If he could gain more publicity through the reigning monarch, he'd have a much better chance of winning over the populace.
All he had to do was convince the court that he was just as viable an alternative to the Queen as the Matriarch. If she lost her backing, and he was better liked, he might be able to win a war before a first shot could be fired.
"I..." he said. He could have sworn she was smiling.
Her chest pressed against his back as she wrapped her forelegs around him, and she carefully trailed her pointed fangs down the back of his head, brushing his mane with her well sized incisors. "Don't worry. I like a meal that can play along with my games," she told him once her fangs had reached his shoulder blades.
"Only because I've played before. I'm sure that any of your guests would play if they just understood the game in question," he told her, trying not to let his wings speak for his awareness of where her fangs were headed, though he didn't worry for long, as she extended his right wing with the use of her horn.
He allowed himself to find solace in the soft blue glow of his mistress's aura, leaving his mind more focused on the way her fangs were tracing the leading edge of his now spread wing.
He must have let his relief show somehow, because she paused at the tip of his first primary feather to ask, "Do you not enjoy the dark?"
He shrugged, and said, "I don't dislike it. I am glad it exists, for light cannot show through a world of light."
Her frown was visible thanks to the shadows her forehead and other facial features cast on one another. "You're avoiding the question, dear. You can tell me anything," she told him.
He didn't dignify her with a physical reaction, and kept his eyes fixed on the wall that he could now see. "I am not content to spend my entire life without light," he said, which was as close to an admittance that anyone was ever going to get out of him. Even Pick had never been verbally informed of his fear, though she had probably inferred from his behavior that he wasn't as strong of will as his mother.
She nodded slowly, and a part of the wall behind the headboard glowed with blue light for an instant, before it was overpowered by a calm, warm flame. A candle was lit on the nightstand, and its small, timid flame flickered, wavering above the wick. "Thank you for being honest," she told him, and released the wing she'd been playing with, though it didn't move from where she'd left it.
After a few seconds, she chuckled, "Round two?"
He smiled to himself, and said, "I have no more love to give, your motherliness." Even now, that title left a bad taste in his mouth.
"That doesn't mean we can't play a bit more," she argued.
He knew that this wasn't as much an order as the last time she'd suggested he do something, but he got the sense that anything he did to please her was worth more that just a few brownie points.
Her hoof turned his head, and lifted his chin towards her. "Besides, I won't ask my closer companions to call me something they find so..." Her frills extended, and her wings hummed for a moment as she searched his eyes for the right word. "...narcissistic," she finished, and smiled coolly as his eyes widened in shock.
He was caught a bit off guard that the ruler would allow anything to be spoken of her that could denigrate her moral standing, even more so that she would call herself something like that. While making a joke at one's own expense could make one seem more appealing, it also allowed some to consider her a weak leader, whereas stifling any negative thoughts towards oneself could either extinguish rebels or harden their resolve to fight.
She was either a genius, or entirely unprepared for her job.
Maybe he was biting off more than he could chew by going against her. Maybe her familiarity with the plebeian class would prevent him from ever garnering the support he'd need to maintain supplies and logistics during a war.
He had to try.
Maybe if he at least pitched the idea of a massive relocation to the Matriarch, he could appear to those in court to be the more reasonable candidate, seem willing to use diplomacy before resorting to the extremities of violence.
But then, if he mentioned that he was in cahoots with Princess Cadance, his case would be thrown out without further consideration, maybe even branded as treasonous. Not to mention the fact that only so many changelings could make it so far north on their own. He'd have to explain how he'd met her on good terms, possibly even rat out the worker he'd escorted to The Crystal Empire.
He couldn't risk exposing his identity just for a low chance of an early advantage.
He'd have to gather followers the old fashioned way; hard work and transparency, combined with endorsements by popular public figures. Pick came to mind immediately, as did some of his other former bedmates —he was popular. He'd have to pay a few of them a visit —without being sniffed out, for a change.
Then there was the question of raw firepower. The closest things to weapons he'd ever seen a changeling use outside of biting was to sharpen the leading edge of their wings on rocks, and then using them as makeshift melee weapons. Some changelings had gained such conscious control of the holes in their legs that they could secrete a veritable arsenal of noxious substances.
But what about him? He'd never been trained for combat. He'd never touched a sword. And, heck, he still didn't know how to fly with the wings he'd lied his way into using for the entirety of his stay here.
His thoughts focused around one particularly ingenious diamond dog he'd spent a few nights with, and a blueprint he'd dismissed as unnecessary at the time. But, now that he had need of weapons, and a whole world of anesthetic available to him, he found its implementation feasible.
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Fangheart seems to zone out in the most inopportune times. The matriarch (whoops, forgot her name) definitely senses something is off. It appears to us that she's keeping alive the adage, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer".
It appears the Princess of Friendship has utterly failed to mount a search and rescue for him. You would think news like that would have circulated...
Keep going! ;)
7520586
There's a reason for that, I promise, not that I'll explain why just yet.
7529651 she's been stuck in Equestria Girls? :p
7577814 you probably live in the first world and the thought of raising and butchering your own food horrifies you :P
7578030
I have a genetic disorder that takes eating meat off the table. I've never eaten meat in my life, and I never will, because it would give me brain damage —I wish I was making that up.
On the bright side, said disorder makes me a changeling. There's an explanation of that on my user page.
So, in short; yes, butchering my own food horrifies me, because if I'm eating something that needs to be killed, something's gone terribly wrong.