Ocellus deposited the injured Marie along the only flat part of cave she could find, laying her down as close to all at once as she could manage. She might not be a doctor, and she didn’t know any healing spells, but she could still remember the basics she’d learned in Twilight’s school. But as engaging as it had been to hear Meadowbrook lecture on the subject, she couldn’t absorb enough to save lives in a few hours.
The others weren’t far behind her—Sandbar carrying the filly named Helen, and David walking on his own two feet in defiance of the wind. Had the circumstances been different, she might’ve remarked on just how easily Helen rode a pony, which wasn’t a skill that most bipeds bothered to learn. But either she was an expert, or Sandbar was. Something’s going on here.
Something that would have to wait.
“Your cave won’t be able to help her,” David said again, dropping to his knees beside the injured Marie. He didn’t actually touch her though, and kept looking down at the split running along her head. A few drops of blood turned the water dribbling down her hair bright red.
The other human remained on Sandbar’s back. Her skin had gone white, and she watched her friend, frozen. You’re not used to seeing blood like this. You humans are as sheltered as the ponies of Equestria.
“Ocellus is multi-talented,” Silverstream said, resting one of her claws on David’s shoulder. “She can be anything, including magic. She’ll use some magic to heal your friend. Right?”
Ocellus could feel the eyes of all the others on her. Smolder started tossing logs onto the dying fire, filling the air with warmth. From the desperately-cold look to the humans, they needed it. “I know… something I can do,” she said. “But it’s…” She glanced to Sandbar. He was the only one who might know about it. But considering some of his greatest memories of suffering involved almost losing a stuffed toy, he probably hadn’t followed the stories from the invasion very closely.
“What?” David asked. While the other human remained frozen, he still spoke with clarity. “I’ll accept you have magic—I know Marie believes it. So use it—she’s only here in this storm because of you.” He leaned to one side, dropping the huge bag he was carrying with a thump. “She didn’t want you going hungry out here alone. Help her.” His voice cracked more than once as he said it, and the area under his eyes hadn’t dried like the rest.
“No reason to wait,” Smolder said. “Do you need some space? Maybe you need help remembering?”
You’re talking to the wrong changeling if you think I memorized a bunch of unicorn healing spells. “Space, yeah,” she said. “Everyone back up. Humans, you too. You shouldn’t watch this.”
“Yona not understand. Is healing magic more delicate than Yona remembers?”
David slid back, so that he wasn’t within reach of Marie anymore. But he still remained close, close enough that he could’ve lunged forward to protect her if he needed to. He didn’t look away, didn’t do anything to cover his eyes. “I want to see,” he said. “I’m not afraid.”
Helen did look away, along with Sandbar and Silverstream. The others, if anything, were more fascinated.
“It’s not just a healing spell,” she began. “It’s… another thing. But I know it heals when it happens. It’s been used for that before. Or for… worse things. Queen Chrysalis showed me.”
The cave fell silent. Ocellus heard another crash of lightning outside, and the resulting rumble almost made her afraid the cave might collapse on them. It didn’t, though somewhere further in she could hear stone caving in.
“I’ve seen this before,” Gallus said. “Not… not what you’re saying, Ocellus. I’ve seen what happens after a nasty fall. She’s… not gonna make it much longer. Whatever you’re thinking of, you should do it soon.”
“Yes,” Smolder said. “The small one is right, she was here to help. We have to help her.”
Ocellus changed in a flash into a form she hadn’t used in a long, long time. It took enormous effort, and concentration to maintain even for a few moments. But she’d been mentally preparing for this the second she’d seen blood. She changed back into her old self—black, transparent wings, holes up and down her legs. She felt the cold now, fierce and biting. This body was terribly vulnerable to it, just as it was dependent on the love of others. But it also had what she needed.
David gasped, falling backward himself. Silverstream caught him, but she couldn’t stop him from shaking. Ocellus braced herself for his revulsion, fear, disgust—but she felt only confusion. Her friends, though—the ones watching, she could taste a few traces of their discomfort. There was an instinct about changelings that only their new bodies had cured.
Before she could lose concentration—or lose her spine—Ocellus leaned forward and bit Marie on the neck, bit her with all the venom she could muster. She tasted the human’s warm blood, a disgusting metallic burn like badly cooked meat. She held her fangs in until she felt wrung dry, then lifted up, cleared her throat, and spat.
She felt hot moisture rising up her throat, and saw the slime emerge from below. It shone green and translucent, exactly like she remembered.
She was dimly aware of David finally looking away, clutching his stomach with the disgust he hadn’t felt at first. Ocellus kept going—she couldn’t stop now, or Marie would die.
She covered every part of her head that looked even remotely hurt with transparent green. Only when she could see no more red did she finally stumble back, let her concentration break, and change back into herself.
Her real shape this time, soft blue with transparent pink frills. She probably wouldn’t be able to change again for hours, maybe not until tomorrow. But it didn’t matter.
On the ground in front of them, Marie started breathing again. Her eyes—now covered—wouldn’t be opening yet. But she coughed, spluttered, then rolled slightly to one side, apparently into sleep. Ocellus could feel her mind returning, sense it as she could feel no others. It was another mind, reaching blindly out into the world of smells and colors and tastes of emotion that it did not yet understand.
Where am I? It wasn’t words—but Ocellus had tended to grubs before, and so she knew what the confusion meant, knew what to expect from its subtle variations of fear and trust.
Safe, Ocellus responded, just as wordlessly. It could only sense feelings. She sent comfort, confidence, even love. Rest.
And Marie did.
Ocellus herself drifted in and out of consciousness for a bit. She felt the storm raging beyond the cave walls, but her friends and their human guests became only outlines vaguely vibrating to their emotions. Somepony moved her over to the fire, wrapped her in something warm, offered her a bowl of fresh-tasting grains. She ate them eagerly, relieved they hadn’t tried to give her any meat. She couldn’t imagine she would want any soon, not with the taste of human blood still on her tongue.
Then the world came back into focus. The two healthy human foals had removed all but their lowest layer of clothes, sitting close to the fire and huddling together. The fire was much larger now. Marie had been moved safely away from it—Ocellus looked about, and found her tucked into the back corner of the cave, where she lay on a pile of human clothes. Their jackets, maybe?
“I think she’s up,” Helen said, watching her. This close to the fire, her hair seemed as orange as any pony’s mane. “Eh, weird unicorn thing. You ‘ear me or not?”
She wasn’t making herself easy to understand. Through her throbbing headache, Ocellus nodded. “Y-yeah. I hear you… fine.”
“Good.” Helen stared past her, at the sleeping form of her friend. Green was increasingly covering Marie’s body, spreading and thickening from her head. Her clothes were peeling out around the edges, as the cocoon formed. It was a good thing Ocellus didn’t need to do anything else to make that work, because she didn’t even have enough spare love to light up her horn. “Mind explaining what the bloody hell you did?”
Gallus was sitting beside her—and from the look of it, he’d been the one to help feed her. He whispered into her ear. “It’s okay if you don’t want to say, Ocellus. We can see how worn-out that made you.
“It’s fine.” She stared across the fire at the humans. “I’m not really a unicorn, I’m a changeling.”
“I bloody knew it,” Helen exclaimed, rising to her feet in a start that nearly made her friend fall over. But with all her clothes drying by the fire except the thin white bits she was still wearing, she looked even more pathetic than before. Like a brightly-colored kitten was about to threaten her. “You ‘ent gonna fool us. Send us back with some imposter to put in her cradle, that it? Not on us. You can take your fairy magic right back Underhill where it came from and tell the Seelies or the Unseelies or whoever the hell sent you to feck right off.”
Ocellus blinked, watching her with growing confusion.
“I didn’t understand a word of what you just said,” Smolder muttered, tossing another log onto the fire.
“You heard me,” Helen said. “We’re not letting you run away with our friend. We ‘ent gonna help you send back some bloomin’ imposter made ‘a twigs and stardust.”
Now the other human was watching her with equal confusion. “Helen, look at her face.”
Ocellus wasn’t sure what he was noticing, other than her shock. But maybe that was enough.
“So what? Maybe she’s a good actor.”
“Maybe you should let her answer the question.” He turned back, and Ocellus tasted the sharp pang of his anger. Only some of it was for his friend—plenty of it was resting on her. “It looked to me like you were changing her into a vampire or something. Is that it?”
This time she didn’t need to understand all the words to make sense of what the human was implying. “Not quite, but… almost.” She glanced over her shoulder at the resting human. “I honestly… don’t know what will happen to her. I’ve seen it done to… ponies. I was really small when I saw, but… I remember. But Marie isn’t a pony, so I don’t know for sure.” She forced herself to look at Helen. “I don’t think I’m what you think. We aren’t going to ‘kidnap’ anyone. Whatever this does… we’ll know by morning. You can stay right there and watch. Probably you should… she’s gonna be terrified when she wakes up.”
Helen made a few more sounds Ocellus didn’t understand, then slumped back down beside her friend. “Whatever.”
But Ocellus was barely even watching her anymore. She could feel her friends’ attention on her, in a swirl of emotions she couldn’t clearly separate. Some seemed resolved, others horrified. Only Gallus beside her briefly leaned up close to her. “It’s okay, Ocellus. We know there wasn’t another way. All we had in our first aid kit were some bandages and fever pills, those weren’t going to help with a head wound that bad.”
“This whole thing sucks,” Smolder said, plopping down beside Ocellus on the other side and resting her feet up in the fire. She exhaled with apparent satisfaction, sighing deeply. “If the storm was that bad, little creatures like you three should’ve waited it out. We weren’t starving or anything.”
“Should’ve doesn’t help Marie,” David whispered. “She didn’t want to give up. And… I didn’t either. Finding you here, meeting you… she better get a chance to do it. She’s the only reason we’re here.”
“She will,” Ocellus said. “By sunrise, if I remember.”
“We’ll all be happy to meet her,” Sandbar said. But even Ocellus could detect the hesitation in his voice—like a doctor speaking to the family of a pony doomed to die.
She better not die, Ocellus thought. But could such a small creature even survive that much venom?
Damn. I wonder what kind of changeling she’ll turn into: the black ones or the changed ones...
Hopefully she wont turn into The Singing Changeling.
Is it just me, or does every story Starscribe write involve somebody growing hooves?
9315692
Not every, Equinox doesn't (could be 'yet', but still).
Huh. So the new changeling form doesn't have the same venom/mucus glands as the old one? Interesting. I'm definitely curious to see how this will turn out in the morning.
9315736
That said, I'm not against it (I'll read pretty much anything as long as it's well-enough written... though, for very dark/depressing/crapsack settings, "well enough" is a very high bar to reach.) but it does feel a bit forced or contrived here. (ie. It came out of left field rather abruptly for something so consequential.)
9315758
Not really, the storm was brewing for several chapters and the moment those kids decided to go to the cave in that weather, it was pretty much inevitable that they will need some sort of rescue.
9315599
More importantly, will it be the equinoid changeling, or will it be a humanoid one?
9315692
Starscribe Story Starter Pack?
9315771
Rescue, certainly. A serious injury they'll eventually heal from with no lasting changes? Certainly... even if they're in critical condition for a while.
However, a permanent species change is comparable to an amputation or other permanent injury as far as how it needs to be worked into the flow of a narrative... especially when it's done without informed consent in a setting where it was thought impossible and it's a change into an alien species never seen before.
9315780
You would've preferred Yona to be the healer?
9315786
No, I just think that the story's pacing and presentation could have been better structured to ease the reader into the idea that something so drastic is on the table, let alone necessary.
This is a perfect example of the principle underlying the saying "truth is stranger than fiction". We expect reality to be unpredictable and unfair, but we never forget that there's a storyteller behind each story, so we have additional expectations for how the events will flow in a story.
(Even for true stories. It's mostly to do with "how it's recounted" details rather than "how it occurred" ones. Stuff that, in film, would mostly be in the cinematography and editing.)
Yeah, kind of figured that was what Ocellus planned to do, but I'm right there defending her for doing it--as I said last chapter, they really didn't have much other choice. Given the conditions of the storm and the remoteness of their location, there was no way they could've gotten her to any human help in time, and even if they could, with as serious an injury as is being described, there wasn't necessarily any guarantees there either. At least this way, she gets to live.
Heck of a way to start off first contact, though. "Hey, hello, welcome, sorry you took a tumble, but now we're going to change you into a changeling-hybrid so to save your life! Won't that be fun?" Man, if the human politicians ever get ahold of this...let's just say the magic of friendship is hopefully just as strong in the human world as it is in Equestria.
9315758
A little, yes, but I've seen worse in high-brow big production Hollywood movies, so I'm not too hung up over it. At the very least, this does explain to me why the story has focused on specifically Ocellus's view point more than the other Young Six so much. I suspect she's going to be playing a very key role in future events proceeding from this point.
9315793
I'm pretty sure that the reader is supposed to be surprised by the nasty surprises about as much as the characters. As for necessary - they are in the middle of the forest with no medical supplies, no trained medics and no way to transport the injured to the hospital. Since dragons, griffons, yaks, earth ponies and hippogriffs are not known for their magical and healing skills, the only source of help is Ocellus, and since she's also not a doctor, most of the help that could come from her is not from she knows, but from what she is.
As for how serious things could get - we get people shooting in the very beginning. Pretty sure it's enough to hint that shit can hit the fan pretty hard pretty fast.
9315692
No promises on this one.
9315806
To be honest, I don't find "Professionals do stupid things, so let's be lazy about non-professional stuff" to be a very useful perspective.
I evaluate stories based on how much I enjoy the experience of reading/watching them, and fanfiction generally gets more relaxed standards, not because it's non-professional, but because, on an intuitive level, I treat each medium's expression of a genre as a genre unto itself, with its own metrics for evaluating quality. (ie. Fanfiction, "Western Adult" prose, "Western Young Adult" prose, modern web-published originals, web-published originals that grew out of the distinctive-feeling 80s/90s campus geek/nerd culture, and translations of Japanese light novels all have different feels to them, I read them for different reasons, and I judge them based on different metrics.)
The closest a fanfic comes to being judged on the same metrics as a professional work would be if I'm comparing to "official fanfiction" like the Star Trek novels and even those don't get the same metrics because I still seek them out for different reasons. (eg. You'll never see the kinds of focus I want in official crossovers because it's not financially viable to burn such a rare and hard-negotiated opportunity on anything less than chasing the largest demographic in the customer base or because I'm in the mood for stories which take the original and reinterpret away something I hated about canon which is quite fundamental to what real fans like. )
Likewise, I'd never try to authoritatively review a horror movie or book unless I was purely trying to review on the creativity of the elements, rather than the overall impact, because, the more effective a work is at evoking a sense of horror, the more points I take away.
That said, I'm actually looking forward to this quite a bit. "Human into changeling hybrid" in a setting that incorporates the sparkly transformation is about the best you can do for minimizing the potential psychological horror elements to something more like "Professor Xavier's gonna detect a new potential student soon" and "Familiar person + known worldview-shattering stimulus = ? (Watch as they reassemble the pieces into something new)" is my favourite way to drive a subplot. (Heck, while it's currently on hold, I run an index of gender-bending fanfiction specifically because gender-bending has such a strong correlation with that.)
9315816
There are different degrees and types of surprise. I hope you'd agree that George R. R. Martin-style killing off of main characters wouldn't feel appropriate in this story, as "surprised by the nasty surprises" as it would be.
(Though, as I mentioned, serious-but-non-permanent injury was always on the table.)
9315853
My point was more that I don't think this twist is as forced as you are making it out to be. It doesn't break the immersion for me at least. But, you know, differing viewpoints and all that, I suppose.
Regardless, the twist is here, and I am eager to see where it goes too.
9315860
Of course, but I don't see anything that breaks into that territory here. Especially if you remember that it's Starscribe story and while not all of them have the transformation subplot, the vast majority still does.
9315873
I agree on the "not immersion-breaking" front, but that's because my relationship with immersion is complicated and made moreso by the fact that I've been reading with the intent to give constructive criticism for the last 15 years.
Often, what I'm drawing attention to are things that more typical readers wouldn't notice, because they're not so much "things that make the story worse" as "papercuts which, taken together, prevent the story from being uncommonly good". (And it's always harder to notice things from their absence rather than their presence.)
9315897
Believe me. This isn't the first Starscribe story I've read by a long shot.
That said, when I'm giving feedback, I always evaluate stories in isolation, aside from any precursors in any series they might belong to. (Remember, every reader has to experience an author for the first time before they can become familiar with them.)
Well... we were all thinking it. And now its happening.
9315692
Thats probably part of the reason i read most of his stuff
I'm reserving judgment for now but there better be a very damned good reason for a prisoner pod to suddenly become a transformation device.
If it comes out that Ocellus just changed Marie into some sort of changeling like creature, Helen is not going to react well.
9315853
You speak of the very kind of stories that led me to this site, which itself led me to the show proper: transformation done right. I'm adding that index to my bookmarks, and hopefully it leads to more prime TF stories!
9315847
I find it amusing how so many comments are taking bets on the girl's transformation. Podding a pony doesn't change them and I'm fairly certain I've never seen a single instance where any being was turned into a changeling. Heck, if anything, podding a pony (or other species) helps them. Sustaining the host and possibly healing them in the forced semi-comatose state. Not a doctor but there are cases where a chemically forced coma is done for certain head/brain trauma.
But I can tell this will be terrifying for the girl when she wakes in there. Hope she's not claustrophobic... or seen too many alien movies...
9316325
Hopefully, I'll find time to get the rewrite of the site completed in the near future. Then, it'll get much better for that purpose.
(I've been accumulating TODOs since 2014 because the old codebase reached a point where it just wasn't feasible to add various features which would keep larger data sets from making it harder to find worthwhile stuff... then life happened and I had to put the rewrite on hold until recently. I also want to complete and integrate a link checker I wrote for another site.)
Ironically, MLP is the main fandom where I don't go looking for gender-bending as much because Ponyville seems like such a "Crazy crap happening? Must be Tuesday." sort of place in such a "magic is routine" setting that I find changelings tend to have a stronger correlation to interesting character exploration than gender-bending does. (Unfortunately, I neglected to produce a list of just that particular kind of changeling story, but the Changelings folder in my recs group is a good starting point.)
Still as interesting and exciting as ever. Keep it up!
Very ceurious to see where this goes. Xd
Human-shaped changling plz.
9315599
Seelie or Unseelie
Well now. Nothing like a desperate experimental procedure on the wrong species to make for a tense cliffhanger. Looking forward to more.
9317982
I hate how much that comparison works.
9316254
Well, maybe up until she finds out what she can with those holes in her arms and legs...
Well, Marie is going to get the magic she wanted. Lesson here is to never wish for magic when you're in a Starscribe fic. Gotta wonder how she reacts when she finds out the unicorn was fake after all, just not in the way anyone thought.