Werewolves of Knicknik

by Atuhor Name

CH. 18 I Always Thought You Were

I Always Thought You Were

Twilight met up with Naudia back where they started, Naudia was already looking at her very strangely when she showed up. Twilight realized that she was in such a hurry that she’d ran the entire way back, ironically after saying “gotta fly”. So now she was covered in sticky birch sap, leaves, sticky seeds, even twigs in her fur and mane, and she was still wearing the lichen wolf pelt as well.

“Uhh, excuse me a moment okay?” Twilight said her face a beet red of embarrassment.

Twilight went behind a bush to try and figure out how to make herself presentable again. After going through various scrubbing spells in her head she decided to try something else. Summoning in a mirror, Twilight focused on her reflection, looking at all the little bits that were in her fur.

Suddenly all the little chunks rose up into the air away from her fur almost seamlessly. The sensation was strange, but it lacked the hurt that would have come from yanking the twigs out of the tangles in her hair. Then Twilight concentrated on what she knew about this kind of shielding magic to turn it inside out like she was pulling off a piece of clothing, so she could just leave all the detritus on the ground. Incidentally this is where an advanced mathematics background(among others) in an environment without computers really helped her out. Not that she could do that sort of advanced math in her head, she was just used to having to visualize topological problems in her head.

Now visibly more clean than before, however there was a distinct sticky sensation told her that this was not a substitute for bathing, she at least looked presentable. The sticks and stinging nettle on the ground told her that this was however a fantastic substitute for pulling them out of her hair by hoof.

It was strange, she noticed the stinging nettle but it never hurt because it could never pierce her skin. But that was a thought for later.

Coming back around to Naudia sheepishly, especially considering how dirty she still was, Twilight finally, properly met back up with Naudia.

“Did they chase you out of town Twilight? I mean I thought things were bad in Knicknik but I didn’t expect things to be worse over there.”

“No things are doing all right in the Werewolf settlement. It’s just I didn’t want to be late meeting back up with you, so I ran the whole way.”

“There are two things wrong with that.” Naudia said coming up to Twilight.

“The first is this.” Naudia poked one of Twilight’s wings.

“Oh. Yeah, I didn’t think about that.” Twilight reddened with embarrassment.

“The second is why aren’t you at all winded from springing all that way so fast you had twigs embedded into your fur?”

Twilight didn’t have a good answer to that.

“That’s a great question, whenever we get a spare moment I think that calls for an experiment!”

“When. You have time for something like that.” Came Gwynn’s voice from up above.

Twilight and Naudia looked up to see Gwynn standing on a branch above them, in what was probably supposed to be a cool pose. Gwynn was still wearing the same loincloth and chestwrap as before with the body paint, that seemed to be the default outfit.

The problem was that they could see right up Gwynn’s-

“Oh dear,” Twilight said. “I just always assumed you were female.”

“What do you-” Gwynn realized what just happened. “Oh. Oh, damn it!”

“We really didn’t know Gwynn, I’m sorry.” Naudia said.

“No, no, no, things are more complicated than that,” Gwynn then muttered. “We were supposed to have a lecture about this when we go back to camp, but I just barely managed to blunder in just under that.”

Gwynn jumped down from the tree and walked over to them sulkily.

“Congrats, because I screwed up I have to explain some of the birds and the bees to two grown women today, huzzah. Please try not to make this any more awkward than it’s already going to be all right?”

“Okay?” Twilight said.

Gwynn started without her, attempting to talk like a bored lecturer reviewing the last semester after winter break.

“The first thing you need to do is throw out a lot of the concepts you have because you evolved. Everything about my, and your bodies now, was specifically designed from the ground up.”

“Does that mean you gave yourself-”

“Yes.” Gwynn said, she didn’t seem angry just impatient to get this out of the way.

“Moving on,” Gwynn drew an infinity symbol in the air. “There are four designed genders, Andro, Male, Gyno, Female, and they are on a spectrum that looks like this, if it looks arbitrary, it is, it was literally designed.”

The corners of the infinity symbol lit up with the labels, male on the corner of the line across from gyno, female below gyno and across from andro.

“Am I correct in assuming that Andro is for male secondary sexual traits and female primary and gyno is the opposite of that?” Twilight asked.

“Yes, but that’s not the whole story. Every yunguaq is a hermaphrodite and where you land on the spectrum is about how you emphasize those traits, it means we always have both.”

“Isn’t that just a bit arbitrary?” Twilight asked, “Ponies just kinda decide?”

“The whole thing is arbitrary, there isn’t a single natural thing about us, every surface level thing about my body was something I decided to have.”

“When you say ‘us’.” Naudia stated.

“Yeah, that includes both of you too.”

“Well how come I’m the last to find out about this then?” Twilight was angry.

“We… had it turned off for you so you wouldn’t… get up to anything.”

“How is that your business at all if two grown mares get up to anything?” Twilight demanded.

Gwynn began tapping her foot nervously.

“We know you want to have kids, and we gave you the opportunity to have kids, but, remember Walden? Nobody is going to let you inflict something like that on somebody not even born yet.”

That killed the conversation dead. But Gwynn had to keep going.

“Not only all of that but you basically have to throw out a lot of what you know about normal biology, pregnancy for us is designed to be entirely voluntary, no menstrual periods, nothing like that, you have to want to get pregnant. I think you can understand our reluctance to dump you into that situation when you would think you understand what’s going on.”

“So where are you on this whole spectrum thing then?” Twilight asked.

“Mid-gyno, to be honest I thought you might be able to tell because I’m, well… flat.”

Twilight and Naudia looked at each other in confusion, then they craned their heads around to look at Gwynn’s butt.

“Nope.”

“Definitely doesn’t look flat to me.”

It took Gwynn a minute to figure out what was going on before she facepalmed. It took another couple minutes to explain secondary sexual traits to the ponies.

“Strange, I guess it works?” Naudia said politely.

“Is it like a second butt?” Twilight asked.

Gwynn stared at them across the gulf separating their upbringings.

“I don’t know if I should laugh at you or cry because I have to explain this to you for a test.”

The unfortunate choice of words set Twilight off and it was a couple minutes before they got her calmed down enough for Gwynn to finish explaining.

“Does mid-gyno have any specific meaning here or is that just where you’re at, kinda in the middle there?” Naudia pointed at the point in the middle where the infinity symbol crossed.

“Not really, it’s just there because stuff like ‘tomboy’ and the like started to make a lot less sense.” Gwynn explained. “It’s something that’s displayed on the broadcast system, that’s how you know things about yunguaq by looking at them, they broadcast it to you.”

Gwynn went on to explain that was what was missing from their “broadcast” the parts Twilight didn’t understand. It was there so that people could be whatever crazy creature they wanted to be without having to constantly say “No, sorry I’m a guy” or similar.

It was strange moving over to understanding the parts that had been broadcast to them, just looking at Gwynn she understood now “mid-gyno”. But there were also other things like that she was an Amirlu Lion, and her combat class was just “werewolf”, as well as her preferences. All of this was just kinda there, Twilight understood just by looking at Gwynn without even thinking about it.

“Was the lion’s mane supposed to be some sort of indication?” Naudia asked, it was easy to forget sometimes that Gwynn was a bipedal rabbit creature that looked like a lion.

“Huh?”

“Your lion’s mane, was that supposed to be a hint that you’re gyno?”

“Do lions not generally have these here?”

“Only male lions have manes.”

“Not where I’m from, where I’m from a lion without a mane would basically just be a cougar.”

“But why?” Twilight asked.

“I guess people want their pets to look distinct, nobody would want a lion somebody could mistake for a mountain lion. If you’re getting a lion you want the whole lion experience and that includes ‘big fluffy mane’.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“Like I said you have to divorce yourself from thinking in normal biological terms for our society.”

That was a conversation that really gave them something to chew on for the trip back to base, which went noticeably slow because of that. Twilight mulling over the thought about how serious today had actually been, regardless of how smoothly it went.

Naudia on the other hand was thinking about something different.

Changelings were always mono-gender, female by default because they were just magical beings modeled after ponies that lived in a hive. There was no real need for a male or a female biologically, not with the way they were designed. There was only a need only if somebody wanted to be something else.

This all was a new thought into her head, she’d never thought about her friends like Mattar and the like. Ponies had this, but ponies were ponies, she was raised to think of them as “dangerous but necessary food” sources. A thought that not even her time with Twilight could completely dismiss, it still hid in lingering corners of her mind, parts of herself she had not re-evaluated yet.

“Twilight how do you think of me?”

“You’re my girlfriend but, we’re basically married, it’s just never been official. Might as well be, fireplace book date night weekly isn’t something you’d do with just anypony.”

“No I don’t mean that, I mean me, what I am.”

“Well, you’ve got a very tall figure, a…” Twilight paused embarrassed to be complimenting her girlfriend like this. “Cute little crown thing, and while you look intimidating with the holes and such once you get closer you’re a much softer person than you look.”

Twilight looked over at Naudia, who still seemed to be rolling something over in her head.

“Why do you ask? Has this whole situation got you thinking about yourself?”

“It has.” Naudia put out, and just kinda left hanging there.

“Well what are you thinking about it then?”

“I’ve just never really considered where I stand on all this, changelings are by default female and I’ve never questioned that, anything for a disguise was just that, for a disguise, an act. It feels like I’ve never really looked in a mirror before.”

“Well I can think of a simple solution to this, you’re a changeling. Change into a changeling.”

Naudia stared at Twilight for a long moment, before laughing out loud.

“It’s been so long since I’ve had to disguise myself that I honestly forgot. And what it’s only been a year or so now, how could I forget so quickly.”

As they walked back Twilight put up a mirror spell(one of the new summoning spells) and Naudia posed around looking like various different variations of herself. The interesting thing was that these were harder than a normal disguise for Naudia to come up with as there wasn’t any precedent for a changeling king or a mid-male changeling king, and it was basically impossible to figure out what could be tweaked for an andro/gyno build.

There was really only one thing they both agreed on though, none of them really fit as well as her default. Naudia felt most like herself, as herself.

-------------------

When they got back to camp one of the officials told them that it was time to “learn about the birds and the bees”. To which Gwynn stepped forward.

“Sorry, I just barely manged to squeak under for this and I had to explain it to them already.”

“Oh, then we can just move onto the test then, that’s nice.”

Twilight raised her hoof.

“Umm yes?” The official(a goat looking person with long floppy ears) said.

“I think we would like to review for the test anyways.”

Gwynn put her head in her hands and groaned.

This turned out to be much, much worse than a talk with Gwynn. It wasn’t that they didn’t learn anything, there were things Gwynn left out, minor things she obviously didn’t think about. The problem was that it was the ultimate “show that your teacher brings out because they don’t want to explain anything” the supreme embodiment of that concept.

Twilight and Naudia’s faces unbeknownst to them scrunched up in embarrassment, scrunching so much that their muzzles began to sink into their heads from cringing backwards. Their slime anatomy allowing them to do a decent job of hiding their faces without moving their hooves.

There was one advantage to this though, it was extremely memorable. They were not going to forget that anytime soon.

Naturally Twilight and Naudia aced the test, it was short, only 5 pages front and back and Twilight and Naudia as a couple were allowed to collaborate answering questions, but the last page was strange. It was a contract, about having kids.

“Excuse me, what is this?” Twilight asked Gwynn holding out the contract.

“That is a contract, you have to sign it.”

“But why?”

“Every single person in the future is biologically immortal, populations do not naturally age or die, ever.” Gwynn said. “It’s an unfortunate reality of that we need population control.”

“But with all those stars on the Chattler Anomaly there should be enough resources for-” Twilight was cut off.

“Every single one of those stars is at carrying capacity for life hundreds of quadrillions if not quintillions, there are multiple layers of habitations living off of waste heat from one another all the way out until they trade in hydrogen rather than potatoes. The only reason you’re allowed to have kids is because we’re actively building more stars.”

“I want to know, but I don’t think I have the mental energy for it.” Naudia said. “I want to save that for discussing what to do next with Twilight about what is happening down here.”

“I’m starved, I think we’re going to have to talk about it over lunch.”

“Yeah, when is it time for lunch anyways?” Naudia asked.

The goat man looked at his tablet.

“Eh, I’d say in about twenty seconds.”

“What-” Twilight was cut off as a fireball came screaming out of the sky.

Twilight barely had time to react as something at a very high velocity used some very angry blue-glowing thrusters to land significantly closer than something like that was comfortable to land. The whole thing looked angry, like somebody had rage taped the thing together out of garbage and hate during a drunken rant about the price of more cheerful paint colors.

One side of the boxy structure flipped down to reveal a restaurant that matched the outside. It looked like it was made out of junk, the place inside didn’t have any place to sit, it was all cooking area, instead chairs and tables were brought out to sit on the wall that had just flipped down.

Twilight thought she recognized Carla, Gwynn’s wife, in there, but it was hard to tell. All of the cooks were wearing what Twilight could only call “a necromancer’s cooking robes”. It was the kind of thing that would have been described as “metal” what with the flames and whatnot. It’s just that they were all pasta chefs, there was one using eldrich and dark powers to boil water, over there one of them was making a red sauce with some kind of terrible shadow monster from beyond time and space on their shoulder. The monster was peering into the pot like it could see things mere mortals could not.

It was all just normal cooking done in what could be described as an “evil” looking manner. It confused Twilight and Naudia to no end.

Sitting down Twilight and Naudia were served spaghetti, not evil spaghetti, it had meat in it but they knew where that came from. Just normal spaghetti, it tasted good, great even, but that just begged the question as to why even more. This wasn’t spaghetti that you would have to sell your soul to get a hold of or something like that it was just “spaghetti that was good”. They didn’t even think about how the noodles were shaped into cute things like bows and stuff, that was over their limit for strange today.

As the area turned into a cafeteria Twilight and Naudia got down to business.

“Okay so how are things going in the werewolf village?” Naudia asked.

“Things there are… interesting, I think it’s going to be trivial to bring them over to help us figure this out, but the whole place seems loose. There are too many entrances, too many places where it would be easy to just slip out if somebody wanted to coordinate against us.”

“So they’re on our side, but they might not all be on our side?” Naudia asked spraying food everywhere.

“Yeah, the whole place is too big, I think they dig for just something to do in the winter, that’s why it’s so easy for somebody to just go off somewhere.”

“Sounds good to me, being able to trust their leadership-”

“Naudia, please don’t talk with your mouth full of food.”

Naudia blinked, chewed and swallowed her food.

“I’m sorry… I really never thought about that.”

“Really?”

“I knew it was rude for ponies to talk with their mouth full but, well changelings eat love. That’s either a liquid or a gas, at the very best it’s a gel that just dissolves in your mouth.” Naudia explained. “Talking with my mouth full has never been something I had to think about before outside of a disguise.”

“Outside of a disguise? How would that change anything.”

“Well, when you’re in a disguise you’re a pony, we’re trained to think like a pony. It’s always separated in our minds, it has to be, Naudia needs to be separate from whoever.” Naudia said. “Because I might do this, but, I dunno, Rainbow Dash might not do that.”

“I guess you’d have to do something like that, I never thought the division would be that steep.”

“That’s why I’ve been having to take remedial lessons on it while you’re in your lab with Starlight, the whole stunt I pulled off while impersonating Luna kiiinda made Mattar a bit angry.”

“What? You’re kidding.”

“Everything turned out great, better than that, amazing, eventually, but it was an extreme risk, that wasn’t the kind of thing I should have been doing with all those changelings depending on me.”

After that Naudia explained what she saw in Knicknik, and the inkling of a suspicion began to form in Twilight’s head, nothing concrete, nothing she was going to say out loud, but a seed of doubt was planted in her head.

“So you’re pretty sure we aren’t getting any support from the town leadership over there then?”

“Yeah, and just so I don’t have to go back there I think we should investigate outside of town tomorrow, try and track down a lair or two to see what’s up.”

“So who do you think is operating outside of town? Cultists or some greedy corporation?” Twilight asked.

“Can’t it be both? I wouldn’t put it past some underhanded scumbag trying to starve a town out like that to work with anybody.”

“Even those weird guards?”

Naudia’s mouth opened and close a couple times, she really wasn’t sure about that at all.

“I’ll be honest with you Twilight, I really don’t know.”

“Are they THAT bad?”

“I think I can say without a shadow of a doubt that they are that bad.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“It’s difficult to describe, the best thing I’ve had to say about it is that they feel… unalive.”

“How would you say that they compared to the First Administrator?” Twilight asked.

“Terrible comparison, he’s a hateful bugger, just looking at him you can feel it rolling off him.”

Naudia thought for a moment.

“Quick diversion for a second Twilight, do you remember what the First Administrator looked like? At all? Because I don’t.”

“Sure, he’s got that stupid fedora, those glasses, and that trenchcoat he probably thinks looks cool.”

“No I mean what did his face look like? What did his hands look like? What did HE look like?”

Twilight tried to think about that but was completely drawing a blank.

“I honestly couldn’t tell you.”

They honestly couldn’t think of anything else to say about that.

“So those guards would you say they’re like a puppet or a robot?”

“No, that’s not it, I don’t want to say ‘unnatural’, it was like…” Naudia paused, it was hard to remember and exactly express how she felt. “The best I can give you is that I couldn’t detect any kind of emotions in them at all but they were…” Naudia was searching for a word other than alive. “animated, you could see them breathing but there was nobody there. Just looking at them made you feel uncomfortable.”

“That sounds nasty.” Gwynn said from her table next to them.

“Do you think that’s our indication of soul magic here Gwynn?” Twilight asked.

“I wish it was that simple but looking into Equestria’s records it could just be necromancy of some kind. And then Nerteln’s and their soul magic is... different depending on the individual it depends on how they see the world with their addled minds. It gives them immense power but it needs some kind of outlet, something about them inside their minds to pool against and burst.”

“So we’ll be able to find out who is behind this by figuring out who might be able to create these things?”

“I guess, there tends to be some line of logic behind them, but in my experience it always seems to be backwards, you look at the effects after finding the cause and that’s the link. But most of my work on this has been in high population areas.” Gwynn thought for a second. “One thing you need to keep in mind is never assume it’s just one mastermind behind all this. Nerteln like to fight, but once they’re done they form into a firm, absolutely controlled pecking order of mind control.”

“So can we get them to betray one another?” Naudia asked.

“Why would you ask that?” Gwynn was a bit taken aback, “It doesn’t matter how many there are, they all have to die.”

“Well changelings have… ways to control certain ponies, even if I don’t know them, couldn’t we pit them against one another then attack whoever is left over?”

“There is something you need to understand about nerteln Naudia.” Gwynn was dead serious right now. “Nerteln magic is by normal Equestrian standards absolute. If they get their hooks into you that’s it, they would literally rather die than betray their new master.”

“So that’s why we have to use yunguaq magic against it then?” Twilight asked.

“Yep.” Gwynn said. “And good news for both of you, you’re going to be learning more yunguaq magic today!”

Twilight and Naudia looked excited at that.

“For combat.”

Twilight deflated a bit and Naudia looked even more excited.