Chapter IV - Freed
Fangheart presented a few coins to the ticket pony, and said, "Two please."
The pony didn't look up at him, and swept the bits off the counter with a hoof, replacing them with two pieces of paper.
He grabbed the tickets in his mouth, and passed one to his companion with a hoof.
The younger mare took it, her horn glowing an earthy green, and quickly shuffled out of the way for the next pony, following him. Her vibrant pink mane was a stark contrast to the unsaturated blue color she'd chosen for her coat. Her amber eyes still looked back at the ticket booth as she boarded the train alongside the relatively unattractive pegasus.
At least, he was unattractive by pony standards, from what she knew, most of which she had learned from him in the last few hours. He had specifically described his disguise as "intentionally boring" and "not very eye catching".
He had told her to craft her own body, and helped her through the process of picking a pseudonym. Blueberry Crisp, a name she didn't much understand, but thought fondly of, as he had given it to her. Royalty were only supposed to give names only to heroes, and she was no hero, which had made his next point of discussion particularly strange.
He had offered her a name, a real one, an honorary name. Such things were hardly even comparable to pony names, and better fit the description of titles. He had offered to make her a hero, and not only that, he had said that she was "very brave" for having dragged herself all the way from the hive.
She wouldn't call herself brave. She was just a worker.
She had noticed a few things changing about herself though. When had she decided to be a mare? Workers were genderless —unless having a place designed to carry another creature's eggs made her female— and she had simply decided to be female after a certain period of time.
Why, as well, had she stopped referring to herself as plural? That was just the way workers spoke, as they were indistinguishable from one another, until, as it appeared, they were released from the hive mind that tethered their beings together. She had begun thinking with words like "I" and "me". This frightened her, to some extent.
Was she already an individual? Was this what it felt like to be alone, to be contained within one's own body? When had she ever decided that this was her body? How could she tell if it was hers? Could she even own a body? Did she actually own this body?
As these questions flew around her head like an extremely irritated beehive, the scents, or tastes, or perhaps textures, of feeling, of nearby emotional energy, began to make themselves known to her. In the confined space of the train, she was surrounded by more ponies than she ever had —as far as she could remember.
She sat down next to Fangheart, and looked around. Ponies were simply everywhere. Every other booth filled with ponies as they waited for the train to set off. And they came in so many different colors, from blue to white, red, green, and everything in between.
A pegasus stallion, with a pearly white coat, blue eyes, and a blue mane, stopped walking when he came to their booth, and politely asked Fangheart, "It okay if I sit here?"
Fangheart looked at him, then nodded. "I don't see why not," he said.
The pegasus sat down across from them, and ruffled his wings for a moment, as though uncomfortable. He eventually settled for leaning back against the wall and the back of his seat, and said, "Sorry. I'm not used to being so... unprotected without my armor."
Fangheart looked directly into the pegasus's eyes, and asked, "You're a member of the guard?"
The pegasus nodded, as though he had intentionally said that for the purpose of bringing up this topic of conversation, and said, "Yeah, just got sent off on a forced vacation because one of my prisoners escaped without a fight."
Blueberry could smell Fangheart's interest peaking, and gently nuzzled against his side, letting her eyes close. She was tired despite the long, empty sleep she had just awoken from an hour or so earlier. She yawned, her mouth opening wide, and smiled as his wing gently wrapped around her, keeping her warm.
"That must suck. At least you're going somewhere as beautiful as The Crystal Empire," Fangheart said.
"I have a date, so that's nice," the guard told the grey pegasus, and sighed heavily as he relaxed against the wall.
The train's doors closed, and there was a distinct shout of, "All aboard!" The train proceeded to lurch forward, shaking the passengers inside, and snapping Blueberry awake. She sat bolt upright, then pressed closer to the more experienced pony beside her, closing her eyes as the train accelerated.
Fangheart tightened his wing around her, and reached a hoof to gently stroke her mane. "You'll get used to it. It just takes a while," he told her.
The guard opened one eye at the trembling filly, and asked Fangheart, "So, why are you guys going so far north?"
He responded immediately, "Taking my little cousin to her new family." He wrapped his forelegs around her, and hugged her closer to him for a moment.
"Oh," the guard said.
The train continued to go faster and faster, until it finally steadied, and Blueberry began to calm down as she became acclimated to it.
No one spoke, at least, that she could remember, because as the train continued to move, and the pegasus next to her held her, she fell asleep, safe, and, for the first time, happy. She had achieved something. She didn't know how significant her actions were, but she had still done it. She had survived, found the prince, and made it to something she had never known; freedom.
Fangheart sighed as he slumped into the booth, while ponies filed onto the train. He glanced at the window to his left, and considered the crystalline landscape beyond. It sparkled and glimmered in the warm sunlight, and reflected back to his tired eyes the strength of this place.
He had been glad to return to The Crystal Empire, if only for a short while. He had essentially marched north from the train station, dropped an unconscious changeling into Princess Cadance's lap, and said, "So... I know this could have been better arranged, but there may be more of these on the way."
Cadance had been more than welcoming of the unexpected visitor, and discussed with him a few policies regarding future transactions of changelings. She had spent the days since their first meeting formalizing a few laws regarding changeling citizenship, and was probably currently working to pass those laws.
Fangheart smiled as he thought about his options. While those laws weren't currently active, they would provide protections to changelings, so long as they remained in The Crystal Empire.
Maybe he would live there someday, safe.
A stallion sat down across from him, and said, "Hi again." He had a pearly white coat, deep blue eyes, and wavy blue mane. With such a fine build, neither bulky nor lean, neither short nor tall, but a good height and not without muscle, he was the kind of pony fit to feed the queen until he collapsed from exhaustion.
Fangheart decided to at least learn something about the guard. Perhaps he just wanted to understand him better, or was too bored to simply sit there all the way back to Ponyville. "So, how'd your date go?" he asked the white pegasus, and sat up straight on his side of the booth.
"It turned out to be a prank by some other guys in my platoon. They're gonna regret that," he answered, bashing his forehooves together.
"And you didn't stay to tour the city?" Fangheart asked him, raising an eyebrow.
The guard snorted, and said, "It's the same as the rest of the world; calm, quiet, and boring."
"I would argue that The Crystal Empire is much more interesting than you give it credit for," the false pegasus said. "The ground itself seems to simply flow with energy. Does the grass not glitter in the sunlight? Do the ponies not love their city? Does it not love them back?"
The guard raised an eyebrow at him, sitting upright, and said, "I suppose so."
And with that, the conductor's shout pierced the air, and the train began its long journey. A long silence fell between the two pegasi, though much of the train car was filled with other groups of ponies, who talked about their trips and their families.
Eventually, Fangheart asked him, "What's your name?"
"Stoic," he answered, and reached his hooves into the air as he yawned. "Stoic Saber. Yours?"
"Fangheart," the grey pegasus answered, and allowed the silence to resume its spell.
Princess Cadance guided the undisguised changeling towards the center of the city, and paused when she came to the place most vital to its existance. She stepped out of the worker's way, allowing her to see the Crystal Heart as it spun above its pedestal.
The changeling sat down, and stared at the crystalline artifact, tilting her head a bit in awe.
Cadance smiled at the worker, and said, "This is the Crystal Heart. Charged by the energy of the crystal ponies, it serves to protect the entire city and its citizens. It once fed an entire hive of changelings for many prosperous years, and now, it will allow you to live here without ever needing to harm anyone."
The changeling turned to look at her, and blinked. A crowd of ponies, each with a coat as brilliant as the heart that defended their city, and with eyes that held her in a reverent light, as though she had done something to deserve their respect. She glanced over her shoulder, and her eyes scanned over the crowd.
Cadance's soft hoof touched her shoulder, and her even softer voice said, "Go on."
The ponies all nodded, and collectively made quiet sounds of encouragement.
The worker blinked again, and looked down for a moment. Her mind wandered to the small deformation in her stomach, which was masked by the series of bandages that still surrounded her barrel, and the egg that the queen had given her, and the idea that she would never have to go through that horribly painful process ever again.
She would be free as soon as she touched the heart, which thickened the air with its love. She would be free forever, and neither she nor the egg she carried would ever suffer through the pain of losing one's identity to the hive mind, the endless blackness that consumed the mind as the hive took control.
But could she do it? Was she prepared to live as an individual forever, and what if the egg became a worker with no hive mind to guide it? What if it became an empty husk if a changeling with no mind or purpose? Just because she had managed thus far didn't mean that an infant worker could do so well.
She stood up, and began to walk towards the heart.
She was willing to take that chance.
Better to see a worker starve than to watch it become another mindless slave to the hive mind. Better to let it die without knowing than to force it into a world of endless pain. Better to know that a child was naïve than to teach it nothing but pain. Better to be a real mother, like so many of the tearful prisoners this body had been used to separate from their children, who had fought every single changeling that dared touch them in order to protect all that they had.
But then, those prisoners had still lost their children, and her body was the vehicle that the hive had used to do such a thing.
She froze, hoof lifted into the air, and hesitated.
Better to take a chance on freedom than to know nothing but slavery.
Her hoof thrust through the air, and collided with the now steady Crystal Heart. She forced her left eye open, and squinted against the blinding light that radiated away from the Crystal Heart.
Her blue eyes were replaced by two orbs of white light, and she drew her hoof back. She blinked at her surroundings, trying to understand what had just happened. The four roads leading to the Crystal Palace were all empty, and the crowd of ponies from just a moment ago had all vanished.
She looked to where Princess Cadance had just been, only to find a much less friendly face looking back at her, and yet, it seemed less aggressive than it always had. Almost nothing about it was familiar anymore. It lacked its gnarled horn, its ragged mane, and its vicious snarl.
It now had a long, smooth wand, with dozens of small ridges spiraling towards the tip, an ethereal cloud of green and cyan keratin, and a kind, warm smile.
Even its horrible tongue had changed, which had always spoken so softly of love, but lied too many a time to fool her again.
But it was the eyes that she suddenly found trustworthy, no longer with the concentric irises of moss and neon green, or the slitted pupils that hid the will of a tyrant, but a pair of soft, loving irises, with whites around the edges, and large, round pupils, which reflected hexagons of white light.
Everything about her had changed. Even her wings, her tattered wings of elytron, had been replaced, with a pair of beautiful, delicately made gossamer plates, that sang a gentle tune as soothing as the wind itself as they hummed. They were composed of geometric shapes, each a different color from its neighbors, to make a general shape of a butterfly's wing.
The queen looked different, very different.
Her legs had no holes, and it didn't seem to weigh her down in the slightest, because her chitin was also gone, replaced with a thin coat of black fur that shimmered like glass. Her head bore no crown, but a shimmering helmet of aquamarine, with a luster that reflected so finely the image of the Crystal Heart on its pedestal.
The reflection didn't show the worker though, and she blinked to be doubly sure. She was sitting right between the Crystal Heart and the queen's helmet. She should have appeared in the reflection.
Was she dead? Had she come all this way just to die?
She moved out of the queen's way as she walked towards the heart, and watched intently as she lifted her hoof to touch it. Sighing heavily, the queen placed the tip of her smooth horn to the crest of the heart, and staggered back after a spark of magic passed between the two entities.
The worker gulped, and gently tapped the queen's foreleg with a hoof. "Um... Your highness?" she hissed, and jumped as the queen's head turned towards her, only to realize that she had been looking at something else.
A small crystal pony was sitting where the worker had just been, and looking up at the queen with wide eyes. It was a filly, with a shimmering white coat, and purple eyes, with a matching mane. Her foreleg reached out to touch the queen's, and she asked, "Whew aw yoo going?"
The queen closed her eyes, and drew in a deep breath. She froze, holding the breath in, and only moved when her breath caught, a drop of clear fluid falling from her chin. The liquid broke against the shimmering ground, and burst into a dozen smaller drops, scattering themselves across the ground.
The filly's eyes filled with tears, and the queen allowed herself to sit down. Pulling the pony towards her, she said, "I don't know. I have to find a good home for them. They need my help, and I can't help them here." Her voice seemed choked, like her words themselves were suffocating.
The queen's breath came in short, pained sobs, and she hugged the pony to her chest.
A changeling soldier ran up to the queen, and its chest heaved as it recovered from the exertion of running so far. It hissed, but so softly and so nuanced was the sound that the observing worker couldn't understand more than a few words, "Have... solution... stay..."
The world began to spin, and the worker's eyelids grew too heavy for her to keep open.
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Huh, didn't know she was carrying. Maybe it could mature into a fertile drone?
Keep going! ;)
7423743 We'll just have to speculate until it happens.
7424863 predicting plot points used to be our favorite commenting activity on active Fics. Authors got annoyed though, so we're a bit quieted in that regard...
7425816 Why would anyone be annoyed? It's the most rewarding part of this process. That might just be me. I am, as my partner puts it, a strangeling. Speculate and guess all you like. It's fun to see what you guys think, and it indicates that I'm getting better at this. The more deeply my audience thinks, the better I'm doing my job as an author.
I have an important question for you guys. Please allow me to have some of your time. Click here to view the question.
7426405 well, in that case...
It seems that our reluctant Prince is certainly learning his infiltrator tactics (albeit slowly).
As the fungus appears to be unaffected by changeling transformation magic (or, perhaps more accurately, transformed changelings are not able to receive it) a potential way to extend defense against it is to have all remaining uninfected transform into pony form. However, it is likely that greater than 80 percent of the populace is already infected, so this of course isn't a solution, but having as many hooves available would be best.
We anticipate that whatever feeble government that managed to discard the Queen will still not accept help, so a great majority of the hive will be lost before cooperation is secured (due to time lost and the rapid rate of decay). Those that do remain may attempt to rejoin our unwilling Prince as a leader, but he will likely refuse, and instead attempt to dump them on the Crystal Empire.
After that the likelihood of the scenario drops to less than 26 percent chance, so I'll end my predictions there. That's one of approximately six ideas we have of how the next four chapters will play out.;)
7426788 This is the kind of thing that blows my mind. People have fan theories about something I'm writing. This is like... I'm not crying. I'm sweating through my eyes —and in need of a life.
7426798 Hehe you're talking to one who regularly reads ~12k words every day (despite 8k of those words being supplied every day by two authors, seriously, Damaged and David Silver are consistent at updates every day it's insane!). At least my fanaticism usually doesn't draw attention