• Published 16th Mar 2020
  • 9,150 Views, 653 Comments

Prey - Kkat



Ocellus is trapped in a palace infested with a brood of love-starved changelings and their queen who are intent on using her only way home as a means to invade her world.

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Chapter 5: Not a Cupcake

"This can't even go in the fine print."

"Seriously?" Gallus grumps. "We have to go all the way back? I've spent the last few hours getting away from that weird gemstone... Dammit, I knew I should have grabbed that thing! I figured if this was another puzzle, it might be, like, a key or something."

"Why didn't you?" Ocellus asks curiously. She definitely is not upset. Yes, that would have saved them a trip, but the special lining in her saddlebags tells her that Gallus grabbing Envy could have been bad.

Gallus is oddly quiet.

"Gallus?"

With a heavy sigh, the griffon says, "Because I didn't like the way it made me feel. Just being around it felt like... like all those Blue Moon Festivals spent looking in the window at people who... weren't alone and completely miserable."

Gallus looks at her, and Ocellus can see the dark place just being in the anti-Element's vicinity had taken him.

"I looked at it and it was like the first day of winter break all over again, and I was pouring goo powder into the fire of friendship. I just... if it felt like that to just look at it, I didn't want to know how it would feel to touch it."

Gallus sighs, slumping a little. Ocellus hates seeing him that way. She wonders if another hug would be appropriate.

"So what is it anyway?" Gallus finally asks.

Ocellus frowns. Gallus is strong. All of her friends are. But this is like a kick in the stomach. The first in a long series of kicks. "It's like an Element of Harmony, only for a vice. We need it to power a portal..."

"The vice of what?" Gallus spits. "Loneliness and destitution and feeling like you got the shortest stick in a whole world of short sticks?"

Actually, Ocellus thinks, he's taking it pretty well. "Envy."

Gallus raises a talon, pausing in thought. "Oh. I guess that makes sense. Kinda." Another pause. "Envy sucks."

The stained-glass double-doors swing open, and the pair of friends peek through, Ocellus looking left and Gallus looking right. They look back at each other and Ocellus nods. They slip out of the drawing room and into the new hallway.

Gallus walks alongside Ocellus, watching the changeling as she eyes furniture with caution and stops to listen at every door and intersection. When she looks back at him, she can almost see the gears turning in his mind. She wishes she knew what he was thinking. There are some things she hopes he isn't.

"Ocellus?" Gallus whispers as she stops, setting down her lantern to prod an oil painting of batponies, then lift it up to check behind it for hidden plans. Not that she expects to find any that way. "The Elements of Harmony weren't intelligent, right?"

Ocellus' ears twitch. "No, just the Tree," she answers quietly as she rehangs the painting. "And the Treehouse," she adds, just to be thorough.

Gallus nods. "That's what I thought."

Ocellus moves forward again, then stops as a thought shoots through her. Could she have it all wrong? If the anti-Elements are intelligent, could they be behind all of this? The notion is alarming, sinister... and almost immediately begins to fall apart.

Gallus watches her and comments dryly, "Yeah, been down that road. It starts scary and ends stupid. But now I'm thinking something that's not so stupid."

Ocellus cocks her head, curious. "What is that?" she asks, remembering to drop her voice to a whisper halfway through the question.

Gallus' expression sours. "I'm thinking I woke up in that room with Envy because I'm an orphan."

Ocellus' jaw drops. She immediately yearns to tell him how ridiculous that is. But she stops herself because the moment he says it, the idea seems familiar. Like she's been thinking the same thing in the back of her head. Instead, she asks, "What makes you say that?"

The briefest of smiles on the griffon's beak tells Ocellus that it was the right call to take his thoughts seriously rather than dismissing them. "You said the anti-Elements call to creatures who have a connection or weakness to their vice, right?"

Ocellus nods. She had used the word "resonate", but that really wasn't a Gallus word. He was close enough.

"As an orphan, I have a personal relationship with envy," Gallus states bluntly. "So I'm thinking when we got sucked into this palace, Envy pulled me to it."

Ocellus blinks. That is a really fascinating idea. But with a huge flaw. "You weren't drawn to Envy though." She looks into her dear friend's eyes. "You may be an orphan, but with everything you've learned and all the ways you have changed, your resonance with Envy is entirely negative. You were repulsed by it!"

Gallus nods. "Which is where the 'not intelligent' comes in," he tells her. "I don't think it pulled me to it out of a master plan. More..." He twirls a talon. "Instinctual."

Ocellus turns back, holding her lantern high as they approach a suspiciously innocuous credenza. With a trio of innocent-looking goblets sitting on a moonsilver platter. Ocellus thinks better of poking, and instead gives the credenza a wide berth.

"You're making me paranoid," Gallus whispers dourly.

Ocellus considers her friend's logic. She recalls again the words of the changeling now trapped in resin in the Grand Hall: "You're not where you're ssssssupposed to be! Everyone's in the Conservatory waiting for you."

"I think you're right," Ocellus says abruptly, turning to face Gallus (and get in a parting glare at the credenza and goblets). "I was supposed to end up in the Conservatory. That's one room away from where one of the other anti-Elements is."

Gallus raises his eyebrows.

"Changeling queens wield powerful and esoteric magic," Ocellus reasons. "I think Queen Elytra cast a spell to corrupt the mirror portal so that it brought creatures here and deposited them near the anti-Elements that they resonate with."

Gallus considers that a moment. "Okay, that makes sense with Envy. But what about you? What anti-Element is in the... what was it called where you were supposed to show up?"

"The Conservatory. It's a giant greenhouse," she explains, not bothering to clarify that the anti-Element is supposed to be in a room off of the greenhouse. "And Wrath."

"Wrath?" Gallus repeats, his eyes widening in disbelief. "Yeah, because when I think rage, I think Ocellus," he scoffs.

Ocellus wonders if the spell didn't pull through the creatures it was supposed to. Or maybe the queen didn't have any idea who was on the other side and just hoped for the best.

"Which might be why it didn't work," Ocellus suggests. "I don't resonate enough with Wrath, so I ended up in a random hallway."

Gallus absorbs that and nods. "If this is the evil queen's plan, she's scoring zero for two." He stops. "Which makes me think maybe getting Envy is a bad idea."

Ocellus purses her lips, her ears folding back. She'd thought the same thing. Unfortunately, the only way to destroy the portal is to open it, doing exactly what Queen Elytra apparently wants.

And now she can't just smash it the moment the portal manifests. She has to keep it open long enough for Gallus to go through.

They approach the door into the room where Envy resides.

Gallus has described the room beyond as long and narrow, barren of other furniture. Almost a hall except there are no rooms connected to it. At the end is a pedestal with a green, circular stone that, in Gallus' words, "floats and radiates awful".

Ocellus chose not to tell him she was proud of his correct usage of "radiates".

The blue griffon stops at the sight of the door. "For the record, I would rather be spending today getting my talons done with Cozy Glow."

Putting down her lantern, Ocellus snickers at her friend's snark. "Oh? What color?" His stare is the perfect answer.

Ocellus stares at the extravagantly carved slab of blue slate. Engravings depict the battle between Nightmare Moon and Celestia, their figures repeating over and over across nightscapes of clouds and moons shining with crepuscular rays. The doorknob is an amethyst set over the first normal keyhole she has seen.

"It's locked," Gallus tells her. "Trust me. I wouldn't have crawled out through that suffocatingly narrow vinenest if I could have just opened the door."

Ocellus nods. Then blinks. "Wait, what kind of lock?"

"How should I know? I'm not a locksmith."

"I mean, is it magical?" Ocellus asks as she peers at the keyhole. "Like Chancellor Neighsay's locks?" It clearly isn't one requiring Nightmare Moon's Seal.

"No, I think it's just a lock," Gallus says. "There wasn't a keyhole on the inside. But since there is one on this side, I might be able to pick it with my talons." At Ocellus' look, he shrugs. "Yona picked a lock with one of her horns, so how hard could it be?"

Ocellus looks around. Then up. "Or we could crawl back in from above," Ocellus offers, spotting a grated vent.

Gallus gives her a return stare. "Yeeeeah, not for all the bits in the Canterlot treasury. Be my guest. I'm sticking with Plan: Lockpick." The blue griffon sits himself down in front of the door and begins experimentally sticking his talons into the keyhole.

Ocellus flies up to inspect the vent. It looks like it goes into the same duct Gallus crawled through. The light from her lantern barely catches on the vines beyond it. Crawling through would be claustrophobic even for someone without Gallus' phobia. But she doesn't have to be her full size.

Her bat form wouldn't work. She needs to be able to carry her saddlebags. Same with the bunny form. Puckwudgie would work, but it might be good to fly too. Easier than transforming while falling out of the vent inside the room. Bite-acuda?

Ocellus clops her forehooves together. She's got it! Cockatrice.

"Gallus, keep facing the door," she instructs. The changeling nymph has never become a cockatrice before, and there are always some risks when taking on the form of a magical creature for the first time.

Turning into Professor Rarity or Princess Twilight doesn't give her magical telekinesis, much less their full range of spells. But transformed changelings do get a lot of the innate supernatural abilities of the forms they take as well as the physical ones. Her bugbear form not only has the strength of a bugbear but also the ability to fly with wings that cannot support a creature that size without magic. Her dragon form can breathe fire.

Cockatrices have a petrifying gaze. Ocellus has no idea if she will gain that. Or if she will be able to control it if she does. Better to play things safe.

Ocellus concentrates. She's only seen a cockatrice once. They aren't exactly a creature you go looking for in the wild. But Professor Fluttershy had persuaded Silverstream to bring her friend Edith to class...

Thump!

"Ocellus?" Gallus calls, carefully not looking away from the door. "Are you okay?"

"Yes," Ocellus whimpers as she pulls her muzzle up from the carpet. "I just realized what Silverstream was doing back at the Treehouse."

Cockatrice-Ocellus snakes her way through the tangled vines filling the duct. The passage is more spacious than she expected, but the vines cut that in half. No wonder it took Gallus hours to make it down one hallway. Ocellus' heart hurts for her friend.

The vines are like an infestation, she thinks. But that's not right. She has seen the purple-leafed ones connecting to the wall sconces. After the flamethrower performance, it is clear they carry some sort of flammable smoke. A specific variation of the same blue smoke that the three onyx pillars conjure in their crafting ritual. Dark essence.

Ocellus pushes between clusters of dark, rough-barked vines. Half of them snake down through a hole in the duct. The design is elegant. Torches fueled by vines which are concealed behind the walls, not marring the aesthetics of the palace. More hidden vines provide water for the fountains and bathrooms and other necessities.

Only more than half the sconces do not work, and this duct is choked with overgrowth. Nightmare Moon has been gone for years. Most of the servants who cared for the place were put to rest. The Palace of Nightmare Moon is deteriorating.

A faint jade glow ahead -- not the blue fire of the wall sconces nor the lime green of changeling pods -- emanating from the hole of another ceiling vent, this one half-open. The one Gallus must have climbed in through.

With a few flaps of her wings, Cockatrice-Ocellus' undulating flight taking her over the last bramble of vines.

And brings her face to face with a drone.

The black-carapaced drone's ocelli open wide in shock. She hisses predatorily at Ocellus...

...and her face freezes that way as she turns to stone.

The unopened half of the vent groans under the weight of the changeling-sized statue.

NO! Ocellus screams, or at least tries to. What comes out is a shrieking squawk.

Jade light illuminates the drone statue from below. Ocellus hears one of the screws pop out of the vent, falling to the floor below. She immediately envisions the vent breaking, the drone falling to the floor and shattering into stone chucks. In her mind's eye, the chunks transform back into gobbets of bloody flesh and chitin upon her death.

Ocellus swoops forward, staring the statue in the cold stone eyes. REVERT! She thinks the word as hard as she can. Cockatrices can turn their victims back. She knows this. Silverstream is living proof. REVERT! REVERT! REVERT!

Ocellus' talons grip the grating below her. She wraps her wings about the statue's neck, her eyes nearly pressed against it. TURN BACK! Another screw pops loose as Ocellus' weight adds to the mass on the breaking vent.

She wraps the statue's torso in her tail, pulling with all her form's strength. But a changeling-sized chunk of stone is more than she can move. She keeps her eyes locked on the statues', terrified that her foolishness is about to murder the drone.

TURN BACK! REVERT! TURN BACK!

Stone cracks with a flash of light. The drone stumbles forward. The shift is too much for the vent. With a sheering metallic snap, the grating holding them plunges to the floor below. The drone attempts to spread her wings, but Ocellus' tail is wrapped tightly around them. She falls, dragging Cockatrice-Ocellus out of the duct with her.

Ocellus groans, dazed from the fall. She feels pain running through her side and her left forehoof, telling her she has reverted form. The first thing she hears is the click of a lock. The first thing she sees is the jade glow filling the room. Coming from an emerald, ring-shaped stone hovering above a column similar to the black onyx ones.

It's not a ring, she thinks muddily as the shock of the fall fades. The Elements of Harmony shaped themselves into the cutie marks of her professors. It's a new moon.

A dark form steps between her and the light.

"Nice trick," the drone hisses venomously at Ocellus, standing between her and Envy. "I've got a better one!"

The drone pulls out a long, moonsilver needle, identical to the one in Ocellus took from the closet children. Dark blue smoke swirls malevolently in the bulb.

The door opens behind her.

The drone lifts the needle and turns it so the sharp point is aimed at her own face.

No. Ocellus' body freezes, her ocelli refusing to look away, her legs refusing to move. She's not!

A strange feeling of violation wells up in her, like a filth pit in her soul. A memory of an early class with Professor Pie bubbles up from the depths of her mind. Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.

That was not a cupcake.

From behind her comes the almost jovial voice of her friend. "That was so easy it's a wonder creatures even bother with locks." Gallus' tone is the very essence of unimpressed. "Any unicorn with a bobby pin and a screwdriver..."

The griffon steps into the room and stops abruptly, his snark dropping away at the sight before him.

The love-starved changeling jabs the needle into her own eye!

Ocellus screams in horror!
The drone screams in pain.
Gallus lets out a yelp.

The drone stumbles back, hissing in agony, the moonsilver needle sticking out of her. The blue smoke broils as the bulb empties into her brain.

"Gah! No-no-no-no-no-no!" Gallus' voice is saturated with revulsion. His wings flap in dismay. "That is not okay!"

Ocellus wants to clutch her own eye in sympathetic pain. Her stomach churns, a hollow flushing washing over her body. The feeling of frost ants crawling through her muscles. Her wings beat in a frenzy beneath her elytra.

Emerald fire flickers around the changeling's body in truncated arcs. Transformation energy repeatedly breaking and aborting like a thousand arcs of static electricity dancing over the changeling's chitin. She collapses on the floor, twitching in agony.

Ocellus' paralysis breaks. She launches to her hooves and gallops towards the suffering drone.

A flash of electric lime arcs from the drone, slamming into Ocellus' breast, throwing her back. She hits the floor, her muscles spasming, her heart beating arrhythmically.

The drone stands up, wobbling, the arcs cascading over her body intensifying. The needle still in her eye. Her face is a rictus of anguish drawn into a clown's grin.

Gallus rushes to his friend's side, holding Ocellus as she stops twitching from the vicious shock. He helps her onto her hooves.

The drone's smile becomes more natural as the crackling and zapping of green across her body diminishes. Ocellus can hear her let out a breath. It sounds like static.

The drone collapses again, her body bursting into a hundred electric-green lights that wash across the floor.

Ocellus' heart and lungs seize, preventing her body from releasing the shriek of horror her soul wants to unleash.

Gallus squawks loudly in alarm, backpedaling until he hits the door, slamming it shut.

The small lights begin to cluster, rising off the floor. Electricity arcs within the clusters in mounting ferocity.

Ocellus hears Gallus gasping. "Since when... can changelings... change into multiple creatures?!!"

Ocellus doesn't believe her eyes could open any wider, but they do. She wants to insist it is impossible, but she is seeing what Gallus is seeing.

Clusters of electric-lime twittermites rise together, forming a vague image of the drone's former face. The swarm-face hisses at her, blasting Ocellus with another bolt of lightning.

"Ocellus!"

It burns! Ocellus falls back to the floor, her body's movements completely out of her control, her mind filled with a storm of white.

Gallus swoops over, grabbing her convulsing body off the floor. Green lightning lashes above and beneath them, barely missing the two friends, filling their nostrils with ozone.

The swarm head crumples, breaking into clusters again. Spreading out as much as the narrow room allows. Shooting lightning between them. Building up power.

Gallus sets Ocellus down next to the door and pulls the handle. It is locked again. "Oh you have got to be kidding me!" he shouts at it in frustration.

Ocellus whimpers, feeling her body obey her again. The feeling comes with pain.

"Got any more of those splork balls?" Gallus asks in desperation.

Ocellus hates shaking her head. It was a good plan. The resin would trap and insulate the twittermites. But they didn't have any more of Queen Elytra's weaponized royal jelly.

Pure dread slams down on the changeling nymph. She goes pale, her ears pasting back, her wings buzzing under her elytra so hard they feel like they will snap off. The realization is but the first boulder in an avalanche of horror:

She has the next best thing.

"Gallus." Ocellus' voice is dead. She sounds like she has gone into shock. "Use your wings. Corral them."

Ocellus closes her eyes, the avalanche pounding down on her. Hatred. Disgust. Abhorrence. Her body quakes as she forces herself to transform.

Chrysalis opens her eyes.

The twittermite swarm launches another blast at her. Chrysalis-Ocellus grunts, bracing herself, shuddering. But she stands. Changeling queens possess more resilient chitin than love-starved drones, drastically more so than love-filled changelings.

Pharynx is right, Chrysalis-Ocellus thinks. We have become soft.

She looks to her side.

Gallus is staring at her, beak agape. At her look, he shuts it. "Right. On it!"

Lime lightning flashes.

She turns her glare back to the twittermites. She can feel prickles in the back of her skull, sharp needles of aversion. A crawling beneath her chitin. Her very soul is rejecting the form in a shriek of antipathy. She needs to make this fast.

Gallus flies above her, flapping his wings forward as hard as he can, creating gusts too strong for the twittermites to fly against. Washing them into a corner.

They unleash lightning at him. Gallus squawks loudly in pain, his feathers and fur poofing. It takes him a moment to recover, but fortunately the lightning bolt seemed weaker than those which had struck her. The swarm was generating less power when forced together.

With a furious beating of her horrid wings, Chrysalis-Ocellus lifts her repugnant form into the air and begins to spit.

The twittermites lash at her with lightning. Each attack feels weaker than the last.

Chrysalis-Ocellus flies ahead of Gallus. Her chitin will protect her better than his fur. But beneath the courage is a rotten humor. She doesn't mind if this body gets hurt.

She aims where the clusters are largest. Globules of royal jelly form in the back of her throat to be expelled at the electrical insects. The texture is slimy; the taste fills her mouth. Sickly sweet, phlegmy, with a bitter saccharin undertone. Ocellus wants to vomit.

Below and behind her, Gallus keeps the swarm pushed back.

Chrysalis-Ocellus spits again. The electric insects try to scatter as the lime-green mass invades their space. The nucleus of the cluster is enveloped by viscous green, the gobbet dragging them to its rendezvous with the wall. The sticky mass splatters grotesquely, over a score of twittermites spreading across the surface violently, mired in a prison of quickly hardening resin.

I'm looming over them. Ocellus wants to concentrate, get this done and over, but the voice in her head won't stop. Like she used to loom over us. Threatening. Ready to punish.

Another splatter of Chrysalis-spit. The taste is cloying, burrowing up her sinuses. Digging into her brain.

She is a drone, just like me...

No. Was. But not anymore.

Ocellus gives a hiss worthy of a changeling queen. She might wear the form of her worst nightmare, but she is not the true horror here. Whatever this abomination is, it is no longer a changeling.

Chrysalis-Ocellus spits again.

With a flash of turquoise fire, Ocellus is herself again.

Ocellus breathes in short puffs, shaking a bit from the exertion. Her mouth curls in a frown, her eyes clinching in disgust. She wants a bath. She wants to scrub so hard her chitin cracks, as if that could scrub the Chrysalis off of her.

Instead, she takes a deep breath, focusing, trying to steady herself. She let's the breath out. And with that breath, she visualizes exhaling the wretched association. Breathe in. Breathe out. And with each exhalation, the stink of having taken her old queen's form is blown farther away.

It is a technique the councilor of the Feelings Forum taught her not long after she and her friends encountered the Tree of Harmony. You chose what you saw in my roots, not me, the Tree had told them. What she had seen was herself as Chrysalis, and the idea that she had brought that into the caves with her had been the source of more than one nightmare afterwards. She never imagined she would take that form willingly.

Another breath. In. Out. So far away now that the taint of it has disappeared. Ocellus opens her eyes and looks around for where Envy has been knocked to. The room is filled with scorch marks and splatters of bioluminescent resin. The sight of the latter sickens her, knowing this royal jelly came from her mouth.

Her eyes catch on a sliver of silver.

Laying on the floor is another of those... things. A long needle of silvery metal, almost as long as her foreleg. The far end expands into a bulb, like some horrible syringe. Blue smoke swirls within, twisting and dancing hypnotically.

Not far lays a pencil. A little farther, one of her notebooks. Objects spilled from her saddlebags in the fight. Or possibly in the fall. Her gaze is pulled back to the needle.

Ocellus steps closer, examining it.

Changelings can transform into nearly any creature they have studied or interacted with -- the latter producing a more accurate result. Her own repertoire was significant thanks to her time in Equestria, particularly with her trips through the Everfree Forest to the Treehouse. But there are things that changelings simply cannot do. Or, at least, couldn't. This thing changed that.

Ocellus feels an unfamiliar stab in her heart as she realizes her repertoire is no longer that impressive. As a changeling, she has been outclassed. Ocellus' frown deepens, her brow etching in worry. She doesn't know why she should feel that. She's never been competitive about her shapeshifting abilities before. To the contrary, she disliked being known primarily for them. She had joined the Cheer Squad specifically to make herself known for something else.

She steps closer, her eyes fixed on the long, slender needle. The bulb at the end swirls with green smoke (wait, wasn't it blue?), and with it promises of being a better changeling.

"Ocellus?" She hears her friend behind her. Close, but he sounds strangely distant. Hesitant.

Ocellus swallows. Things had changed. Her enemies were other changelings. They outnumbered her. The only chance of destroying the portal, or maybe getting home... the only chance of Gallus getting home!... was to be a better changeling. She needed to do this.

Ocellus reaches out for the smoke needle. It is cold and hard to the touch. The metal looks moonsilver. Shiny and pure, reflecting the green light.

"Ocellus!"

To become a better changeling, all she has to do...

"Ocellus!" Gallus grabs her shoulder. His voice sounds cross.

Ocellus' mind flashes to the horrible sight of the changeling injecting the smoke directly into her brain.

...is stick it into her eye!

NOPE!

Ocellus backpedals, dropping the needle. It lets out a musical ting as it hits the marble floor. The blue smoke swirls inside its bulb.

She blinks, then looks past it to where Envy lays, the green gemstone glowing, casting light down on where the needle had been. The changeling buzzes her wings, shaking off a shiver.

Then she unslings her saddlebag and scoops up both the needle and the anti-Element, closing the bag's flap and snugging it tightly shut without touching either of its new contents.

Ocellus sways on her hooves. A sense of relief and rationality blows over her like a calming spring wind. There is absolutely no sane reason for her to feel envious of what the drone just did to herself.

Ocellus looks down at the piles of resin, forcing back revulsion and focusing on the twittermites inside. They are alive, of course. Just like the drone in the Grand Hall, and like any creature trapped in a changeling pod. Just like Luna. But are they still a changeling? Did she kill someone when she trapped different parts of the swarm in different ejaculations of royal jelly?

Her heart worries. The rational part of her mind says the changeling ceased to be the moment she became they.

The swarm face suggests otherwise.

Ocellus tries not to think about it.

"Okay, I have to ask, why the eye?!"

Ocellus pauses. How should she know? She is certain that she was at least as freaked out by that as he was. Probably more! Does Gallus just expect her to know why strange changelings from a love-starved hive would do insane things? Just because she's a changeling?

Ocellus loads a look and then shoots it in a direction that isn't her friend. Then does her best to sort out an answer to the question. Not because she knows, but because she is curious -- morbidly curious -- as well.

"Well, the metal looks like moonsilver," she offers. "And we learned in Rarity's class that moonsilver is a soft metal that is good for making jewelry and accessories. So it probably wouldn't go through our chitin."

Her mind flashes back to the fight in the Grand Hall. Firing puckwudgie needles at the love-starved drone, knowing they couldn't pierce his chitin. "And if the stuff inside the bulb has to be injected directly into the brain, there aren't many options. Eyes, roof of the mouth... ears, maybe?" She shudders. "Nostrils?"

Gallus stares. "If those are all options, why would anyone not choose mouth?"

Ocellus feels a surge of frustration. She understands why Gallus is hung up on this. Her own mind is screaming. Her thoughts are fighting against a non-coherent background chorus of eye-eye-eye-eye with layers of ow and ew and a dozen other cringing declarations.

She bites back I don't know! and instead offers, "Well, I guess that would depend on the taste?"

"No. It really wouldn't."

Ocellus sighs and shrugs, simply admitting, "I really have no idea." Gallus nods, accepting that. Ocellus has no doubt this will come up again. But she is happy for the respite.

She looks around. Then over at the blue slate door. Which is still locked. "Looks like we have to head up."

Gallus pales. "How about you head up and unlock the door from the other side for me?" There is a tone of desperation that makes Ocellus feel bad for having even suggested otherwise. "It is really easy. I promise."

Ocellus sighs again, but this time the sigh comes with a smile. "Sure. Don't go anywhere while I'm gone."

Gallus smiles back, chuckling.

She spreads her wings and flies up, climbing into the hole where the vent grating used to be. No more expeditions as a cockatrice. She is sticking to her natural form.

From below, she hears Gallus say, "For the sake of my sanity, I'm going to assume that whatever our friend here doped herself with worked as advertised."

Ocellus turns and looks down from the hole of the broken vent. Gallus sits firmly on the floor, looking back up at her. "What do you mean?"

"I mean what I saw was creepy enough. I don't want to think about her sticking that needle in her eye with no idea what it would do," Gallus says. "Or imagine it did something completely unrelated... and you guys all have the ability to turn into swarms of creatures."

Ocellus blinks. Then smiles brightly. "You mean you didn't know? I'm not only able to turn into a rock, I'm actually all the rocks in Ponyville."

"Ha ha." Gallus leans back on the floor, preparing to wait. "Why not all the rocks in Equestria?"

"Oh, I wouldn't want to invade another 'ling's personal space," Ocellus says as she turns to face the way out, waving her tail membrane at him. "Most of the other cities are already taken. The changeling who is all the rocks in Griffinstone is named Tenna."

Gallus' laugh is golden joy to her ears.