A Changing Perspective

by Dragrace

Chapter 17 - Return to Sender

Waking up in a dark place never was a good feeling for Jack. Then again, he had never awoken in such a dark place before. It was almost an unnatural darkness, he knew changelings had strong vision in dim light, but his nocturnal eyes could not visualize any of his surroundings. He felt a tingling sensation coursing over his body, and he couldn’t tell if he had maintained his disguise as a pony. By this point a few minutes had passed in the complete darkness, and Jack began to wonder if he was even awake. He was lying on the ground; he hadn’t risen in fear of hitting his head against something. The option to simply feel around to determine his surroundings had passed through his mind, although he felt it would be best not to know of his surroundings. The air didn’t have a particular scent, which was quite strange seeing as there is almost always some sort of smell emitting from objects. Sure, it was creepy waking up in an unfamiliar place, maybe a bit creepier not remembering how you got there, but it didn’t get much creepier then when he couldn’t tell where he was through his senses. The only feeling Jack got was his body lying against rock, and more than likely the rock would have been cold had he not been resting upon it. Then again, it may have been warm the entire time, not knowing how long he had been out cold further distorted his poor sense of time. The silence was also difficult for Jack to bear; absolutely no sounds could be heard apart from his own breathing and heartbeat. The situation seemed familiar, the lack of sounds at least, not so much the lack of vision. Despite that, Jack continued scanning his eyes across the darkened room, in hopes of eventually catching something in his sight. When he failed to detect anything with his eyes or ears, he released a small sigh and rested his head back on the ground.

>---<

Jack’s quiet breathing seemed to make the air vibrate slightly around him. He was scared in the given situation, but not completely paralyzed in fear. He was also relatively bored, although he may have been a little too scared to notice how bored he really was. Hours passed as he rested on the floor, or minutes, perhaps mere seconds, it was difficult to tell without anything occurring around him. That is, until he heard a noise similar to that of a rock bouncing off another rock. The rock must have been small, the noise would have barely been audible in any standard environment, but without much use from any senses everything seemed to impact Jack. The pebble bounced twice more before eventually skidding to a halt and Jack felt the air just in front of his face vibrate slightly in front of him.

‘That can’t be more than an inch away.’ Jack thought. ‘And what could have caused that?’

His question was quickly answered by a feint glowing light. It was a dark green transparent circle-like shape, enveloping what looked like a moderate sized boulder. The glow emitted absolutely no light, which made Jack assumed that the glow was caused by some sort of magic. A grinding sound began, and a few smaller stones could be heard shifting around with the boulder. Once the boulder had been moving for roughly 3 seconds, a sliver of light pierced through the darkness. It wasn’t an actual ray of light, however. The ray of ‘light’ was dark as well, but Jack could at least see where he was. As the ray grew, more of the tight space became visible. He was in some sort of small cave; there were very few rocks apart from the small chippings falling from the boulder and the surrounding walls. Jack was glad he hadn’t risen; the ceiling was no more than a foot above his head. Despite this, the small ceiling escalated upwards as the distance between the entrance and himself grew smaller. The boulder had shifted away from Jack by about a foot, and then began moving to the left. The small sliver of vision that was available for Jack grew at an alarming rate, filling up the small cove swiftly. Crawling towards the entrance while slowly rising to ensure not to harm his skull, Jack eventually rose to all fours and peered out into the new cave. But the cave wasn’t new, and Jack new it, a lot of the things beyond the rock were familiar. Not the kind of familiar where you appreciate it, but more the familiarity where you didn’t want to recognize it. He was back in the Hive.

>---<

It was scary, and Jack’s calm breathing had escalated slightly. Analyzing his surroundings, he found multiple changelings glaring towards him, each of the expressionless faces increasing Jack’s insecurity. Jack inhaled, and prepared to speak, but no words came out. He didn’t even know what he planned to say, he had no idea why he had been brought back so soon, or why he had been trapped in a cave to begin with. Staring at the surrounding changelings for a little longer, Jack found himself calming down; there was something strangely comforting about them. Their eyes were glowing a deep green, and Jack was hypnotized by the strange glare of one particular changeling. This changeling was significantly smaller than the rest; Jack’s head was looking down at a great angle in order for their eyes to meet. Also, its wings were small, extremely small, as if they weren’t proper proportion to the small changeling. Then there was the chitin, which was a bone chilling greyish blue color, not the normal dark blue that the other changelings had. He couldn’t help but continue to stare, his thoughts and feelings slowly escaping his body. Without any sort of notice, there was a sudden blast of green energy which travelled in a wave towards the changelings. Every changeling around Jack had been hit, and Jack was shaking slightly. Not from the blast, but mostly realizing the changelings had been sapping his energy and he was already feeling extremely weak. With the changelings nearby knocked about, moving slowly in pain while groaning, Jack noticed a familiar face approaching him.

“Hello once more, my dearest student.” Said the Queen.

‘Sounds like something Celestia would say to Twilight…’ Jack thought.

“Interesting that you should mention those two, I see you have been getting quite a decent amount of work done around your target location.” Chrysalis said, leaving Jack slightly shocked.

“Mention them? I didn’t say anything at all.” Jack said, a puzzled look on his face.

“Dear, I am the Queen, I have the most powerful magic of ALL the changelings.” Chrysalis responded.

‘The emphasis of the word ‘all’ was EXACTLY the same as the wedding. I never knew it would be that familiar to me…’

“Hmm… I’m just as curious as to why you would wonder something so specific as well.” Chrysalis said.

“Oh yeah, you can read minds.” Jack said.

“Mind reading? That magic drains energy like there’s no tomorrow. Quite literally, actually, doing that usually kills changelings within seconds.” She said, her expression becoming serious upon the mentioning death.

“Then how do you know what I’m going to think?”

“I don’t completely know, dear, I only can only sense emotions, but your thoughts seem to be filled with emotions. Still, I find strange is how your thoughts have so many… Feelings in them.”

“I’ve gotten good at what I do, nopony knows I’m a changeling.

“That’s good information to know,” The Queen said. “And please don’t say ‘nopony’, that irritates me greatly.”

“Sorry” Jack said, noticing the Queen had broken her eye contact and was staring over his shoulder.

She looked over his shoulder for another moment before her eyes flashed a bright green before returning to the normal darker green and looking back towards Jack.

“I apologize. Sometimes the young ones don’t understand when to feed.” Chrysalis said.

Jack quickly peered over his shoulder to take a quick glimpse of what had happened. On the floor there was the same small changeling that he had been entranced with moments before the Queen’s arrival.

“Why did you want me to return so soon?” Jack asked.

“My dear, I found something you may find quite… Interesting. Recently, I discovered a few changelings that had not returned to the Hive after the wedding incident…”

>---<

“So you want me to ‘take care’ of the rogue changelings?” Jack asked, shocked at what had just been explained to him.

“Yes. You seem to fit in quite well, and when one of the changelings brought you back here I assumed this would be an appropriate chance to inform you.” Chrysalis responded.

“Wait, you didn’t bring me back then?” Jack asked.

“Those emotions inside you are getting the best of you.” The Queen responded, shaking her head. “You had best not to feed too much off those ponies.”

“Wait what?”

“Your emotions are clouding your thoughts. Normal changelings can sense the needs of mine, you appear to be immune. This case only occurs in cases of Extreme Emotional Overflow, a rare disease amongst changelings.” Chrysalis said.

“Oh, umm, alright then.” Jack said.

Things were getting a little confusing. By this point, Jack had been told some changelings had been able to escape the call of the Hive through emotions, or in this case Extreme Emotional Overflow, a changeling illness of some sort. EEO was common amongst changelings that managed to receive large amounts of love from living creatures, and he assumed his emotions had been preventing the Hive’s calls the entire time.

“I believe you understand what you need to do.” The Queen said, as her twisted horn began to glow.

“Wait, but how do I… ‘take care’ of them? And how do I know where any of the other changelings are?” Jack asked nervously, not knowing what to expect.

“That’s for you to figure out. I have many of my own problems, this burden can be yours now.”

“Wait what if…”

The room was filled with a green flash, and Jack found himself back along the edges of the Everfree forest.

“…I fail.” He finished.

>---<

He looked around his surroundings; he was quite close to the path that leads into the forest towards Zecora’s hut. Looking around, he found there wasn’t a single pony in the area. In a slight state of panic, Jack rested carefully against a nearby tree, rubbing his forehead with one of his hooves. He had a headache, more than likely as a result from the recent emotional drain he had experienced.

‘Oh man… What am I supposed to do now?’ Jack thought.

You lay low, find out who those changelings are. Came the response.

‘Yeah, but what do I do about them after that? I can’t just do something to one of the residents of Ponyville, that would freak everypony out and leave them suspicious.’

Don’t do anything. Just wait until you are summoned by the Queen again and tell her about the changelings.

‘But that leaves me without having ‘taken care’ of them. I still don’t know what the punishment would be.’ Jack thought, shuddering at what may happen.

Oh come on, it can’t be THAT bad… Oh wait, yes it can. That’s right, I remember why we didn’t want to mess with her last time…

Jack’s mind remained silent after that. He didn’t want to think about potential punishments once more, so he found himself thinking about Twilight and Biggs. More than likely Biggs would still be with Twilight, and with the sun about three quarters done its cycle, Jack assumed he had been gone a few hours.

‘I really shouldn’t worry about them, they do get along quite well. Then again, I should still head back to the Tree-brary…’

Settling down once more, he relieved his weight from the tree and looked to his left towards the small dirt path. He began walking towards the path before hearing a heart stopping scream, followed by the sound of galloping. He looked up towards the direction of the scream and saw a young grey mare with a yellow mane galloping away. For a moment, Jack was curious to why she was running. Remembering he had just been in the changeling Hive, he knew he must have forgotten his disguise. Looking down at his dark black hooves, filled with holes, he entered a state of panic. In a matter of minutes, Ponyville would hear about another changeling, and something terrible was going to happen as a result. Ensuring there were no more ponies around to see him, Jack quickly transformed back into his grey stallion, and began casually walking back to Ponyville. There was no need for panic quite yet, he’d have time to figure things out, right?

Or would he…

Comments

[Nickedbrass]

You work fast and write well do I know you?

[Mard93]

(singing) cliffhanger, cliffhanger, we're hanging from a cliff, that's why we're called cliffhangers,.. Cliffhangers!

[Dragrace]

1292998

Cliffhangers, all day e'rry day.

[theRedBrony]

Goddammit Derpy.

[Fuse]

1221777
And this, right here, is exactly why I never start reading anything (with few exceptions) until all is said and done, and the story is complete.

[Darkwhip]

This was hard to find but definitely worth it, the groups don't seem to hold a human turned changeling categories, I just scroll through changeling+human tag and see what picks my interest.