Blood Thicker Than Venom

by theOwtcast

Debating Discoveries

That same evening, the Canterlot team reported a possible breakthrough in our search.

“We think Thorax might have been here, Sir,” Hyena told me faster than I could ask her anything.

“Explain!”

“We were searching the city disguised as ponies, when suddenly we heard a battle horn in the distance, and at first we didn’t know what it was about, but all the ponies around us started acting worried or terrified, so we pretended to be too for the sake of maintaining our cover. Soon we realized something was happening on the other side of the city, with an insane number of Royal Guards flying around and blasting their horns, so we went there as quickly as we dared without looking suspicious, and it was all over by the time we got there so we didn’t really see anything happen, but we did overhear ponies mention a changeling.”

Thorax in Canterlot? It made no sense! Why would he have gone there, assuming it had really been him? He may be naive, but surely he couldn’t have been that stupid to try his luck in the city that in all likelihood had better anti-changeling defenses than the rest of Equestria combined after what our army had done there! He’d been there while it was happening, after all! He had to have known better!

“What makes you think it was Thorax? You know we have infiltrators in Canterlot! Couldn’t it have been one of them?”

“You’re right, we don’t know for sure it was him. I sent Crook and Nightmare to ask around and we didn’t find out anything useful aside from the rumor that the guards got him in the end, so it could indeed be one of the infiltrators, but you wanted us to report anything of interest and this has to qualify.”

“It does,” I agreed. “I’ll relay it to Chrysalis. In the meantime, until we know more or get new orders, assume it wasn’t Thorax and keep looking for him!” But don’t be too thorough because it might not have been Thorax. “The last thing we need is to let him slip past us while we think he’s locked away in a pony dungeon!”

“Understood, Sir!”

Thorax in a pony prison? An anticlimactic end for him - and for my task too - but arguably better than what Chrysalis would have had in store for him. For both of us, if she’d figured out that I was hoping to get Thorax out of it! Or maybe he wasn’t in the clear from her yet; she could easily order us to get him out of there any way we can and drag him to her as we would have had our teams been the first to capture him!

Could I just conveniently forget to mention this in my impending report?

It turned out that I couldn’t; Chrysalis had already found out.

“What’s this about a changeling having been captured in Canterlot today?” she hissed at me as soon as the communicator had established the link to her.

“I don’t know any details, Your Highness! My team has only just reported it!”

“How did they fail to get to Thorax first?”

“They were searching a different part of the city at the time and only got there after the fact. Do we have confirmation it’s Thorax?”

“Who else would it be? All of the infiltrators in Canterlot and nearby cities have reported in, in fact, every single infiltrator in Canterlot told me about this and requested instructions!”

“And why are we so sure that none of these infiltrators was actually Thorax in disguise?”

“Are you suggesting that pathetic little imbecile orchestrated the capture of one of my infiltrators so he could take their place and hide from me in plain sight? How would he have done that? He wouldn’t have even known where to find an infiltrator, let alone how to outsmart him in such a fantastic way!”

“Maybe he wasn’t looking for one. It could have just been a lucky coincidence for him. He may have stumbled upon an infiltrator or their hideout by pure chance, maybe revealed them to the Royal Guards somehow in the process… After the way he escaped from the hive, I’m starting to think he may have more cunning than we’ve ever realized!”

I was clutching at straws by now, but if any of this could help him in any way… Hopefully it wouldn’t bury him even deeper in trouble!

“Cunning?” She snorted. “I’d like to see some of that cunning when my infiltrators have gotten to him!”

“That could take a while if he’s locked up in a pony dungeon, and until they do, will you let my teams keep looking for him on the off-chance that it wasn’t him who got captured?”

“Eh, fine. It’s a futile pursuit, but you might as well have them remain in position in case I need more drones to break the containment spells and steal him from there,” she agreed indifferently.

But the next evening, when the time came for my next instance of nothing-to-report, the triumphant glint in her eyes had disappeared entirely, replaced by a venomous scowl.

“How did you know it wasn’t Thorax?” she started her offensive immediately.

“Wait, so it isn’t him after all?”

“Quit pretending! It was Rascal, the same one you claimed to have been eaten by timberwolves! What are you pulling?”

I was incredulous. Rascal?! Rascal of the Everfree team? How? Better to have another talk with Jackal and Brutus about their findings on that little excursion...

“He must have survived somehow,” I muttered, pondering the news. “We haven’t found their bodies… I suppose one of them could have survived and gotten away from there.”

“To Canterlot? What do you take me for? Not even a hatchling would be that gullible!”

“Maybe he was disoriented, left in such a state by the battle that he didn’t know what he was doing or where he was going until it was too late. It wouldn’t have been the first time such a thing has happened, and Canterlot is close enough to Everfree that he could have gotten there in the given timespan.”

Whether or not she liked it, she had to agree that it wasn’t impossible.

“So I take it we’re still in business?” I asked.

“You are. Find that traitor already, and enough with the false trails!”

---

The excitement had died down over the following few days. A team had picked up Jackal and Brutus’ find and taken it to Chrysalis; another team had been deployed to replace the lost one and had reported to me prior to tackling their assignment. I’d briefed them about everything I knew, which admittedly wasn’t as much as I would have liked, but they claimed it was going to be enough to keep them alert. So I had let them begin. I hadn’t had much choice in the matter, anyway.

Another week or so had passed by the time I heard any relevant news. Contrary to what this mission was supposed to look like, the said news had come from Chrysalis herself.

“You might want to know some preliminary results on that changeling revealer concoction you sent,” she told me after I’d recited yet another in the line of no-news-yet reports.

“You found something?”

“Only that it’s exactly what the labels on the jar said. It has no effect on undisguised changelings, but when we tried it on a disguised one, his disguise failed and he claimed he could feel it about to happen but was unable to prevent it. Then we tried it on a few more drones and got the same result. One of the drones was freshly injured in a training session and, sure enough, the wound healed like the label suggested it would.”

“Interesting. Any ideas how we might prevent or counter the effects?”

“We’re still working on that. But what I really want to know is how your zebra came to have such a thing!”

“If I see her, I’ll ask,” I muttered.

“Excuse me?!”

“How am I supposed to know what some zebra has in her possession and why?”

“Don’t you think it’s curious that such a thing exists? And even curiouser that we should find out about it at such an interesting time and place?”

Was she implying that Thorax might have been involved in the making of it?

“Maybe so, but just because we didn’t know about it until now doesn’t mean it didn’t exist until a week or two ago! For all we know, the darn thing could be years old! It could be something the zebra brought from her homeland! Do we have any infiltrators in Zebrica at the moment?”

“There may be one or two,” she shrugged.

“Then ask them about it! See if they can find anything in zebra villages that matches the description of this or hear any stories about the existence of such a thing!”

“You think I haven’t thought of that, you idiot? They found exactly nothing!”

“Then maybe this zebra invented the thing, or discovered unexpected properties of a healing potion she already had.”

“My thoughts exactly. Now, I wonder how that might have happened?”

“Your Highness, if you’re suggesting that Thorax had something to do with it, I can’t deny that that’s a possibility, but only a slight one in my opinion. We don’t know how long the zebra has had this thing, or how long it might have taken her to figure out how to brew it! For example, it could have come into existence right after the Canterlot invasion! Have you forgotten that some of our soldiers have never returned or been heard from since? Wouldn’t it be possible that she had discovered the potion while dealing with them? Or that she had begun working on it in Zebrica and travelled here because she couldn’t find the herbs to get the recipe right? For all we know, the sole reason for her living here could be that the Everfree Forest is the only place where she could find some ingredient essential for the changeling revealer to work! In fact, the healing properties might have been the accidental find!”

She stared at me half suspiciously, half incredulously, as if trying to decide whether I was an accomplice to a traitor or merely a gullible idiot.

“Look, Your Highness, I’m not saying it’s impossible that Thorax might have been involved in this in one way or another - he might have been for all we know - but what do you want me to do? I already have teams searching for him literally everywhere, and they’re as bent on finding the traitor as you are! If I deploy any more teams out there, we might as well call it a full-scale invasion of Equestria!”

“An intriguing idea, I must admit,” she mused. “But wouldn’t you at least deploy more teams to Everfree under the assumption he’s there?”

“That’s just it,” I said. “I don’t think he is there. He may have gone in at some point, but if he’s managed to somehow survive one or two contacts with the beasts living there, and he would have had to run into them sooner or later, then I can bet you whatever you want that he got out of there the first chance he got and never returned.”

“You don’t think he could be hiding there disguised as one of the beasts?”

Were we talking about the same changeling?

“Your Highness, he simply doesn’t have it in him to even try to mimic the ferocious behavior of such beasts! The disguise would never work without it! A meek and timid timberwolf would be one step short of putting up a flashing billboard that says ‘Thorax the Changeling Traitor is over there, come and get him!’”

She burst out laughing.

“Oh, you have such wonderful ideas sometimes, Pharynx,” she said, trying to compose herself. “Very well. Do what you think needs to be done, but find him already!”

Comments

[Black--Soul]

Holy Royal Jelly! What a chapter! Im in awe!

[Teraunce]

Wow. I can't wait to keep reading this.

[Luckysweep]

Pharynx has all the mannerisms of a frustrated commander trying to report to a slightly incompetent general. I love it!

[redmar]

Of course Thorax was involved in the discovery of the changeling revealer when Zecora used it to heal his injuries.