The Age of Hunting

by SwordTune

The Princess

"This is all?"

Every drone in the hive lowered their gaze in the presence of the Queen. The main cavern of the hive was filled with heavy egg sacs from Majesta's work. They were numerous, enough to create three packs of drones. Or at least they would, were it not for one problem.

The Queen stomped. "Ill formed and malnourished worker-drones will not be the future of this hive!"

"I can't feed them magic and manage their nutrients at the same time," Majesta whined in protest of her mother's disapproval. "If I worked any faster, they'd grow to fast and starve before their internal organs formed."

Her mother's eyes shot a penetrating look that turned disappointment into rage. "Oh, so you are the expert on these things?" she asked. "You presume you can tell me how difficult it is to grow a few measly drones?"

Majesta immediately felt the urge to kneel down in front of her mother. The other drones did it without hesitation. But Majesta fought her influence, her willpower the only thing holding up her legs.

"Maybe I just do things differently," she said. "What's the point of this test? I can't create knowledge. If I'm going to be Queen, won't I have the secrets to creating drones anyway?"

The Queen snickered. "Little Changeling, asking for all the answers to her problems. Is that the fate of this hive? To grow stagnant with the impossible challenge of learning from our own experience?"

Majesta tensed but said nothing. After a final inspection of her eggs, Majesta fond herself crawling back into her hatching cave to start working again.

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The cavern was finally coming together into something mildly hospitable. Lunti grunted as she piled leaves from the surface to refill her sleeping space. She watched as worker-drones did their work, bringing fresh food, removing waste, and maintaining the thin hole they had bored into the mountain, the only lifeline of water and fresh air from the surface.

Chevron, a haggard old man, kept himself curled up in a corner. Inflexible. Lunti scoffed at him. With Spectra gone on whatever hunt she needed to do, there was no one to protect them in the Changeling hive. Rather than sit in their own waste and wait for a hungry Changeling to lose control and devour them, she kept herself busy.

The only helping hoof she got was from Orange. The chanter from Marblestop still refused to give her real name, but it didn't matter. Orange worked fine, even if her cloak had turned brown from days of hard work.

"It's warm," Orange said, taking her mouth off the trickle of water that came down their spout.

"The hive lives in a jungle," Lunti said. "It's always warm."

Orange shook her head and dragged Lunti over to feel it for herself. It really was warm, far more than usual. Her heart sank at that moment, realizing it meant that summer was here. It had probably been summer for a while if the water had managed to heat up.

"I keep telling you, we need a plan to escape," Orange told her firmly.

Lunti's eyes flicked over to the worker-drones, who were well within ear-shot of their whispers. But the unease passed. She had trouble feeling comfortable around them, but after months in the hive, Lunti learned how the hive and its drones worked. The smaller workers were as mindless as any other insect. They'd forget what they heard the moment they left the cavern.

"Not until Spectra comes back," she said tiredly. This was not their first conversation about escape. "The other princess won't think twice about killing us if we're caught. Spectra might punish us, but we'll live to try again."

The two mares argued over how they could free themselves, though being the only two ponies with their sanity still intact, they learned to bear with each other's differences.

They reviewed their options, while they tended to the few mushrooms that they discovered were edible. Orange suggested hiding in the waste that the worker drones threw out. It was a good plan, but even if they left the hive they'd be days or weeks from any other ponies. They'd be hunted down for sure.

They scraped away old mulch and fed their little mushrooms fresh, moist fertilizer as they talked. Rotting leaves and spoiled fruit didn't smell great, but also long as the mushrooms kept growing, they'd have food to eat whenever the drones forgot to harvest from the surface.

But however much they disagreed, both mares knew to shut their mouths once the entrance to their cavern opened. A tall figure among hunter-drones walked in.

Lunti's heart skipped a beat, believing it could be Spectra finally returning. But her hope was crushed when Majesta barked orders at her hunter-drones to hold down the guards.

"This'll be quick," she said, her voice slightly deeper than Spectra's, "I don't want those things interrupting me."

Orange scrambled for a place to hide, ducking behind a boulder matted in glowing mushrooms. Majesta spotted the movement with her enhanced vision, of course, but ignored it.

"You have to know something!" she bellowed, marching straight toward Lunti. "Spectra treated you like a pet more than her prey. You have to know something about where she went."

The princess didn't stop until she had Lunti pressed up against the wall, so close they could feel each other's breaths. Her chitin was black, smooth, and polished. Her body was outlined with the soft blue glow of the cavern's mushrooms. In the light, Lunti could see Majesta's eyes, blue compound orbs made from hundreds of reflective specks that made it difficult to know where to look.

"She hasn't been around for a long time, that's all I know," Lunti said carefully.

Majesta's eyes showed nothing, but Lunti saw the glint in her fangs as the princess snarled. "You know, we're not supposed to tamper with each other's pantries. The guard-drones outside your door wouldn't even let me in. It might be the only way our mother ever tried giving us a fair chance."

Lunti felt her legs give out under her, and in an instant Majesta was on top. "But I am the only princess in this hive now. I am its future. I will get what I want."

"Read my magic or whatever it is you do," Lunti spat defiantly. "You won't find anything! Killing me gets you nothing."

Majesta's lips betrayed her emotions, even while her eyes and posture maintained their controlled and measured demeanour. Her grin was hungry, teeth soaked in saliva at the scent of Lunti's panic. "Maybe I want to see you squirm, meat."

"Princess," one of her hunter-drones barked from outside the cavern. "You'll have to eat them quickly if you're feeling hungry."

Majesta whirled around, her legs suddenly widened, taking a defensive posture. "I said no interruptions! I don't smell the Queen anywhere near us, so keep it to yourself."

"But it's Princess Spectra, your Highness," the drone stuck his head into the cavern. "Drones from the patrols just returned. She has a swarm with her, Princess, and they're tearing a path straight for the hive."

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The guard-drone, specially built by the Queen to act as perfect sentinels, moved with staggered breaths as Spectra's drone pulled its horn from the guard's neck. It didn't have the capacity to gasp in anguish, but another drone covered the guard's mouth anyway. It would shriek an alarm in its final efforts to protect the hive and obey the Queen.

"Move faster," Spectra snapped, passing her children by in an unending march for her home. She let the youngest drones lead, children born from her own magic and eggs. Her packs grew day by day because it needed to. Majesta was the largest of her sisters and the strongest. The perfect princess that their mother wanted. If she was to not just win but dominate, she needed her packs to be strong.

The largest of her drones, the children who came out of their eggs overgrown, lumbered in the back, dragging the bodies of gators from the wetlands, caught by her veteran drones and kept alive to feed her young. Spectra wished she didn't have so many delegated to hauling supplies, but she couldn't help it without a complete understanding of the mutagens she used.

Instead, she had to deal with a dozen oversized hunter-drones. They were strong but too large and slow to do actually hunt with their brothers. Spectra looked ahead, catching a scent and wondering if her youngest drones had picked up on it too.

Three young brothers in the front dashed to the right. "There!" they shouted, snatching up a guard-drone silently waiting in the leafy undergrowth of the jungle. If it were one hunter-drone, the guard would have destroyed it without batting an eye. But the three brothers were hatched on the same day and fought viciously for each other.

Another weapon stolen from the ponies. Their willingness to cooperate. There was a time and place for culling the weaker drones, but for now, she needed even the weakest of her pack to rise up.

Her captain circled over the pack as a vulture, carrion-feeding birds that he had apparently encountered in a great desert hunting ground. He cawed, relaying messages from the other captains to Spectra.

"No groundskeepers yet," he passed on, "but we've killed two patrols of hunter-drones. Twenty died, while the other six broke under the commands of the captains."

Small patrols, then, Spectra thought to herself. She expected losses by now. She could smell the hive already, they couldn't be more than a few hours away. The hive was the heart of their species, even if the drones welcomed her back, they should've been seeing them.

"Any sign that Majesta has a trap?" Her captain received the message and cast it to all the other packs. She had her drones spread around, encircling the hive in a crescent. Keeping constant communication with them was crucial to knowing what was waiting for them.

And yet she like she was surrounded by unknowns. After a few minutes, her captain passed on the consensus from all the packs. Changeling activity in the jungle was nearly dead. The scent of Majesta's drones was scarce. If there was a trap, it didn't involve her forces.

Spectra wondered if Majesta had left the hive as well, scouring pony towns for her own solution to the problem of creating drones. But that didn't set her mind at ease. If that was true, where were her mother's drones? There was no chance Majesta had the hive to herself. The hive's Queen was still in control. Which meant her scent should have marked the jungle as well.

Spectra put herself in her mother's mind. As she thought about what the Queen could be thinking, she watched as her youngest drones marched forward, searching for guard-drones to hunt.

"Captain," she said, "I don't think it's a trap."

The vulture above her cocked its head down at Spectra. "No, not likely."

The answer wasn't hard to find. The Queen was doing to her daughters what Spectra was doing to her drones. Forcing them to fight the guards, seeing if they could be the stronger one.

She was walking into her mother's final test.

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"She can't do anything without the help of ponies!" Majesta shouted, demanding her mother listen to her cries. "Is that the daughter you want? A spineless coward who runs from a challenge?"

But the tunnel to the top of the hive, the Queen's private chamber, remained silent. Around the princess, her drones buzzed their wings and shifted their steps, waiting for the order to defend the hive. She had maybe a hundred hunter-drones, all veterans with powerful captains and lieutenants.

"Which one of you have seen Spectra's pack?"

The drones eyed each other, searching. Eventually, they all settled on the one who had alerted Majesta before. The drone shrimped away. "I heard the fighting and ran to warn you. I didn't see them, but they killed a whole patrol group without slowing down."

Majesta snarled. She had the bigger pack before Spectra left, and she was willing to bet that was still the case. But the gap between them had clearly shrunk. She cast her head up to the tunnel above. Her mother was watching. Queen Chrysalis was judging her.

She didn't care, she didn't even bother to calm her anger. She let it fill her more than ever. "I know you. I've been exactly what this hive needs. You don't get to judge me like Halfwing!"

There was no time to wait. A swarm of tunnel snakes could slither down the tunnel and transform back into Spectra's pack. For Changelings, the narrow passage was not a choke point, but the ideal battleground. Majesta turned away from her mother's chambers and stormed through her drones, crawling over the stalagmites jutting from the cavern floor. She hissed at one of her captains.

"Bring me Spectra's prey. I don't care if you have to kill the guards this time, but I want the one called Lunti alive." The hunter-drone nodded, signalling with clicks and hisses to his drones to follow him to the lower levels of the hive.

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The hive, from the outside, was nearly invisible to the world. The mouth of its massive cave was as green as the rest of the jungle. Shrubs, grass, moss, and wide-leaved trees sprouted from the dirt that had fallen in over hundreds of generations. It had no flapping sails or sturdy metal weaponry. But, after being away for months, there was no better sight for her eyes.

"They will be here soon," her captain said.

She stood with her pack, though behind two rows from hunter-drones. They had hatched no more than three days ago, but for those few days, they knew only killing and marching. Spectra expected most, if not all, of them to die. But after that, she'd have time to rebuild.

And prepare for Halfwing.

Cold dread crawled up her spine. The thought itched in the back of her mind, imagining if dragon fire burned her life's ambition in just seconds. Fire could flood the higher tunnels, never reaching the hive itself, but from her experience flying in the many forms of birds, she knew what hot air did. A current could form, rising and pulling all the air out from the hive, suffocating every guard, hunter, and worker drone until only the sleeping light-drones lived on in their egg-sac, illuminating a mass grave.

Spectra bit her own lip, drawing ichor from the shallow cut. It wasn't much, but the pain was enough to snap her out of her fear. Majesta wasn't a threat the way Halfwing would be if she really could be a dragon, but her larger sister was still an impossible challenge.

"Sound the order to prepare spells," Spectra told her captain. He quickly complied, jumping into the air and taking off with the wings of a parrot. The songbird's loud cries carried Spectra's orders to every pack surrounding the hive's entrance. A quiet hum of magic began to fill the air, sounding like a thousand cicadas slowly waking up and singing their little songs.

Below, packs of Changeling drones released warning groans, using low rumbling calls that would echo far down the tunnels. Majesta sat in the back of her swarm, but with her drone's calls, she knew exactly how to direct the battle.

Both sides bordered at the mouth of the cave, one swarm above, one swarm below. Spectra elicited a high-pitched order from the top of her throat, commanding her drones to wait back behind the jungle's trees, using cover to their advantage. Majesta waited as well, gathering her drones so they could rush out and pass the trap Spectra had laid out for them.

Caution hit its boiling point after minutes of rumblings and screeches, and both princesses ordered the charge.

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The first volley of magic transformed the first of Majesta's drones into ash. But more swarmed out, quickly flocking to the air as falcons or parrots. The drones flew up the mouth of the cave, winding behind the underground trees for cover until they emerged to face their brothers on level ground.

Spectra shot arcs of her own magic at the largest drones, captains who wore armour fashioned from the carapaces of defeated brothers. Two went down, despite their best efforts to evade Spectra's aim. But she alone wasn't enough. The difference between newborn and veteran drones became quickly apparent.

Majesta's frontline warped their flesh into the bodies of bears, manticores, jungle cats, and all other manners of vicious beasts. Compared to Spectra's children, most who were too young to turn into anything, they were unstoppable predators.

Drones one or two days old fell first, but they fought hard nevertheless. While one brother distracted a drone who had become a bear, another rammed its horn into the bear's neck. It roared with pain before tearing both drones apart with its massive claws.

"Captain!" Spectra yelled to her left, "cut them off!"

The hunter-drone, busy bringing down falcons circling above them, shifted his attention fast and issued an order to his lieutenants. At once, a pack of about twenty veteran drones flew out from the jungle trees, fly as a flock to stop the rest of Majesta's drones from joining the fray.

"No!" The larger sister yelled as she heard the dying wails of her drones. Majesta knew her frontline had been surrounded.

Behind her, and all the drones that remained as her guards, one pony looked slyly at her. Though she was tied in rope, Lunti still watched with some satisfaction at Majesta's frustration. The mare kept a close eye, crawling further back down the tunnels. It seemed crazy, going back into the hive, but one stray shot of magic could electrify or incinerate her, and she didn't feel like finding out which would happen.

She made it maybe ten or fifteen paces away before Majesta noticed her scent fading. The princess whirled her head around, rushing past her drones, and snapped up Lunti's ropes in her teeth.

"Oh-ho, you don't get to leave," she growled through her bite. "You're coming up there with us."

She threw Lunti toward her drones. "Take her up!" she barked, "make sure my sister knows her pet's here to play."

The drones, a small pack of six, each took hold of a part of Lunti and dragged her up the mouth of the cave. The ropes did little to stop her squirming, but it was all welcomed. The better the noise, the better the bait.

Majesta launched herself into a sky, piercing the air with the narrowed wings of a falcon before stooping down and crushing one of Spectra's drones with the legs of a massive wetlands gator. The sound of her roar, guttural booming from the throat of a gator, carried over the battlefield. Every Changeling there heard it, no doubt.

Lunti fought as much as she could, but the drones dropped her at Majesta's hooves easily. "Come on then!" she taunted, snapping the leg of another young drone and smashing its back against a tree. "Mother thinks you could beat me. Show her, then!"

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Majesta's scent spread across the battlefield, but the of a pony's fear was unmistakable. Spectra recognized Lunti's scent and locked on it the moment it was dragged out of the hive. "You see her?" she shouted to her captain.

A vulture in the air screeched a confirmation and then ordered drones all over the battlefield to change their target to the enemy princess. Spectra's own children responded to the call first. Those who were surviving the battle had the size advantage. Her hunter-drones were varied in their mutations, but a number of them were gifted with powerful limbs and faster growth.

Just a few days old, five brothers as big as Majesta herself charged, barring all their fangs. Spectra watched, unsurprised, as her sister slipped by their attacks, using control over her magic to quickly turn into a jungle cat and slash open their necks before returning to her true form.

Majesta sniffed the air, following the scent on the drones to find Spectra. She laughed. "This is what you brought?" Their eyes locked, Spectra challenging Majesta's taunt.

Hunter-drones jumped out of the battle and took their turn to charge on Spectra. They had become slender jungle cats with long claws, but she could still smell Majesta's aura on their fur. She stood her ground, launching arcs of electrifying magic at all four drones. They froze in place, their muscles seizing to the sudden rush of energy. It was a short pause, but enough for Spectra's captain to swoop down and claw out their eyes with his talons.

"I will take that throne!" Spectra shouted back, waving a horn charged with magic as if to prove she had more power. Her goading worked.

Majesta charged, leaping into the air and becoming a massive beast. She wasn't slender like the other drones, she had picked a heavy striped creature. The tiger clawed at Spectra, but she moved back and roared into the body of a bear. They clashed with fangs and claws, but Majesta clearly burst forward with more power.

Spectra felt her head fly forward as Majesta crashed into her stomach. She doubled over, shrinking her form into a hound to escape Majesta. Her nimble movements avoided Majesta's claws, but it made it impossible to strike back.

Frustrated, Majesta swung herself around, her tail growing and growing, until her body was a green viper coiling around Spectra's legs. Venomous fangs shot out at her, but Spectra kept her form changing. Her fur burned off from a huge surge of magic, stitching together muscle fibres into the form of a giant owl.

She beat her wings and dragged her sister into the sky by her neck. Majesta flailed, wildly whipping Specta's back with her tail, but nothing could unhook a bird of prey's vice-like grip.

"I'm a better princess and a better fighter," Spectra mocked, shaking her sister around in the air. They rode the wind, travelling further and further back from the battle until the only drones on the ground were Spectra's rearguard.

Majesta quickly countered, stretching herself larger and transforming into a constricting snake. The constrictor was far too long and heavy for her. As they fell, muscles like bars of iron bent around her. She tried transforming out of the crushing force, but the constrictor choked the magic out of Spectra. Each time she tried changing her form, a tightening coil cut off her concentration.

Spot danced around in Spectra's vision. With her owl form, she swivelled her head around and searched for her captain, but both sides' veteran hunter-drones were locked in their fight. Majesta's body continued to tighten around her, and quickly Spectra began to lose her vision.

She screeched out for help, but opening her mouth only made it easier to crush the air from her lungs. For what felt like an eternity, Spectra fought back in total darkness, struggling with all her willpower even when her own senses had lost their strength to fight.

But a cry peeled open a gap, and she felt her chest explode with life again. Spectra didn't hesitate and slipped out of her sister's coil in the form of a snake before reshaping into her own body.

"Hurry up you damn drones," she heard Lunti shout at the rearguard. Spectra watched, utterly confused. "Your captain says you have to fight!"

Spectra's shot over to her captain, who was fighting off two bears with the form of a manticore. He was cut off from Spectra, same as the rest of her pack, but at his feet, rope bindings were slashed apart. Spectra turned back to Lunti, who was already losing her fight against Majesta. Her own young children came to mind. Changelings always underestimated ponies.

Her rearguard, the oversized mutants almost too slow to do anything, lumbered to the rescue. The constrictor hissed and glowed bright, trying to transform, but just with Spectra before, Majesta lost her concentration at every attempt. One drone simply sat on her head, his weight more than enough to cut off the air she needed.

"Watch for her tail!" Spectra warned her drones. Immediately, one of the giants lumbered over and yanked down on the end of Majesta with his bite. The constrictor snake's muscles were as solid as stone, but the drone's thick neck fought back against the whipping and coiling motion. Despite the drones' help, it was still enough to throw Lunti off.

Spectra did not hesitate. She jumped on her sister, raining blow after blow. She used her magic not to send strikes of energy, but empower her muscles and thicken her chitin. Each strike was like a hammer beating metal, crushing it and warping it to the way Spectra wanted.

She didn't notice, but the pain on Majesta had an effect on her drones. They recoiled from their skirmishes, hardening their focus on their princess's pain. In the brief distraction, they fell one by one to their focused opponents. Spectra pushed away the giant drone sitting on Majesta's head and took its place.

She did not hesitate. Spectra jumped on her sister, raining blow after blow. Magic empowered her muscles and thickened her chitin, so that each strike was like a hammer beating metal, crushing it and warping it to the way Spectra wanted. And she did not stop until the constrictor stopped writhing.