The Many Lives Of Twilight Sparkle

by Shitbewackyo

Twilight's life as a newborn changeling 1: A day in the Everfree

The wind blew softly through the small riverside clearing, where droplets fell from the green grass and sun spilled over the exposed rock face of a tall cliff. The peace was interrupted by a vibration-laced scream coming from a body quickly falling from above.

Twilight desperately flapped her chitinous wings but all it did was destabilize her even more. She knew for a fact that changelings were much more durable than a pony but she did not want to stress test the exact limit for how much her exoskeleton could tolerate before breaking and spilling her insides over the forest floor.

As her body fell under the trees everything seemed to slow down as she remembered something. She wasn’t a pegasus. Immediately Twilight quickened the tempo of her wings and her body started to finally slow down. But it was too little too late and a loud thud softened by the wet grass went through the clearing.

“Note, Changeling wings need to be flapped much more often in order to generate lift.” she muttered while pulling her body up. She had been too careless, she had flown before, but back then she used different wings. She chastised herself for making such a stupid mistake. Luckily it didn’t seem as if she had suffered any injuries.

As the pain subsided she finally glanced around the clearing, and despite her very well knowing what sort of dangers dwelled inside the forest she couldn’t help but relax and take in the fresh air. It was beautiful, the crown of vibrant leaves, the soft rises and falls of the forest ground, and the myriad types of flowers that grew. Sure, most of them were poisonous to some extent, sure she had been here before, but it didn’t matter. It was so lush, so grand, so different.

And thus, even with some pain still coursing through her new body Twilight laughed a soft laugh. Although if anypony else had heard it they’d have called it bone-chilling instead.
She knew that she couldn’t stay in that clearing forever, she had decided to not bring anything with her. A fresh start meant a fresh start, and it shouldn’t be a problem anyway as she had read several books about wilderness survival in preparation.

And thus, with an excited energy Twilight took flight once more, shortly after casting a magical anchor, and this time she didn’t even flinch as she calmly flew over the small river. Even after she landed she kept moving her wings, relishing in the alien sensation. When she was finally satisfied she sighed and moved deeper into the forest.

As the clearing gave way to thick growths Twilight once again met the most common monster within the forest, not any magical creature, but the uneven and overgrown ground. Usually, it wouldn’t be a problem for her, but her new body sometimes didn’t respond quite right, and she found herself tripping over the roots repeatedly.

Still, the forest didn’t give her much trouble beyond that. And she quietly continued to gather the pink passion fruits. They grew in abundant amounts this deep in the Everfree, and despite their prickly shells made for a nutritious meal. It also helped that dismantling the shells got Twilight slowly used to the intricacies of casting magic with a changeling body. It did have a lot of similarities but the displaced organ here and there added up and gave it a unique sort of feeling.

Twilight noted each difference and stored them in her mind with a methodical zeal, trying to center herself on one task and to keep the myriad of questions under control until her living situation had been somewhat stabilized. She still couldn’t believe it, really, each time she looked into a pond, or saw her own hooves, or said something aloud she flinched in shock. It didn’t feel real, almost like she was watching a movie somewhere back in her own library.

As the sun traveled over the sky the levitating pile of passion fruit grew in size. When the sun was steadily approaching the horizon but the day was still bright Twilight felt satisfied and set out to fly back to the clearing. With a determined push she shoved off the ground. She screamed and lost grip on the fruits as her body was hit by a wave of fatigue and fell to the ground.

“Huh, I must be, I must be hungrier than I thought,” Twilight said, just now noticing how her voice had grown weaker. She willed a fruit to her and bit into it, hoping that her worries were unfounded. She sighed in relief as the nutritious juices flowed out of the pink core and washed off the numb feeling in her muscles. She had been right, there was no cause for concern.

She took off from the ground again, and this time kept herself under control. The branches over her parted, gripped in a green aura and letting her emerge from the dim forest. She stared in awe at the view of the Everfree. Kilometers upon kilometers of untamed wilderness, where not even pegasi flew, capped by wild and misshapen clouds. If she stared into the distance, past the green roof and the few lonely hills she could make out the faint outline of Ponyville. It was at moments like this that she understood why Rainbow Dash was so obsessed with flying, but when before she could only see this on the rare airship ride, she could now take to the skies whenever it pleased her.

Twilight smiled, her fangs baring, thinking of all the possibilities this gave her. So many experiments and expeditions she before thought impractical could now be done, so many frontiers were opened to her. The cumulonimbus heights, the ancient capital of the pegasi could now be explored, and the secrets of the storm mages revealed. She could visit the troposphere and document the mysterious sprites first hand. The possibilities were endless and for just a moment all of her worries and doubts: her friends, her body double, Spike, Celestia, her parents, the old life that she risked were all forgotten as her mind was filled with wonder and excitement.

“Watch out world! Twilight Sparkle is coming for you. AHAHAH” She broke out into giddy laughter, throwing herself back onto her bed to stare at her ceiling as she calmed down. Too late did she realize that she was a hundred meters over the ground.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” she screamed as she started to fall and the ball of fruit loosened once more.

Twilight grumbled as she threw out yet another failed attempt at making a saddlebag out of the leaves of a primordial Anazea out of the mouth of the cave. The leaves, while surprisingly strong, tended to solidify its wounds and trap the grass rope she made that then couldn’t be moved without destroying the brittle surface. She couldn’t even melt the leaves together with magic, no, she had to rely on her crafts skills. Skills that she found sorely lacking, much to her surprise. If not for her clenched teeth and steeled concentration she would have cursed Filled Paper for that ridiculously awful survival guide, but still she promised that she’d send her body double an anonymous letter requesting that book to be removed from the library.

‘It has no business being anywhere near a library.’ she thought, angrily discarding yet another failed attempt.

She shot a look to the masterfully enchanted saddlebag containing her notes, but no matter how much she wanted to repurpose it she knew that preserving the book within took precedence.

Finally Twilight gave up, she was hungry and she could always improve her design later. She made a few loops to connect the disjointed leaves and tied them with a simple knot, doubling the design for each side and tying them together with a thick grass-rope. She tried to wear it and to her irritation she felt it chafe against her back, even with her carapace, and the bags on each side held several holes which weren’t held shut by the admittedly few points of contact. There was also the fact that she couldn’t really use her wings with it on.

“Good enough...ugh!” Twilight grunted in frustration as those words left her mouth. Usually, she would have ignored her hunger and worked until she got the design just right, she even wanted to do it now! But the hunger was hitting her much more intensely than as a pony, while before it had been a feeling of weakness, now it was a ball of acid that ate at her from the inside.

The juice of the passion fruits felt like cream against her insides, calming irritated flesh and her intensifying frustration. Despite common misconception Changelings did eat, in fact, they were omnivores. But unlike most other species, emotions were an additional, separate source of food for them, or rather, the lifeforce behind emotions, which they could even steal from each other. However, as Twilight learned from her experiments, love freely given was MUCH more nutritious as the soul of the creature couldn’t fight back against a changeling's attempt to feed. Fascinating stuff, even if Twilight found it deeply disgusting. To break a creature's soul, to invade someone on that fundamental level, even Sombra, the tyrant of the crystal empire didn’t resort to that. She shuddered as she recalled forcing the Changeling's body to extract love out of her. It had been worse than having her entire body violently reshaped.

As Twilight looked at the setting sun she couldn’t help but worry. One of the requirements for this whole plan was that she would never let herself fall into such depravities. She knew ponies, and thanks to Celestia she also knew about friendship, and she knew that she could make genuine friends that could help her live. And yet, there was that small part of her brain that was asking her: “What if?”.

“No!” She shook her head, putting the thoughts out of her head. She sighed. All of those worries could wait, she had spent plenty of time with her friends over the course of the last few days, and according to her calculations, the lifeforce still stored around her soul would hold for fifteen days, plenty of time to…

The fatigue hit her again, much stronger than it did before. Her eyes widened as her mind was silenced. A few painfully silent seconds passed as the feeling grew within her. Twilight shook herself out of her shock and with zeal-like desperation threw a fruit into her mouth, swallowing it whole, but this time it didn’t even remotely help her.

“No, no, no, no! Not now!” She brought forth the changeling's copied memories and searched through them, asking them what she was feeling right now. Her thoughts were interrupted over and over again with panicked shouts and questions of what she had done wrong, before her mind settled back into periods of lucidity. She collapsed onto the hard stone floor as memories played through her mind. Dark corridors, trapped victims, the desolate stretches of the badlands, all coalescing into a stream of consciousness that pulsed through her mind. Then it hit her, the changeling she had captured had been no stranger to this condition, in fact, it had lived nearly its whole life in that state.

Her other hunger

Twilight opened her eyes as she felt her very being start to vibrate. She couldn’t deny it anymore, she knew what this meant, what it would lead to.

“No...” She said, unaware that a fog had started to slowly descend onto her mind.

Comments

[Nightmare_Me]

Fantasic!

[ZeroMonkey]

It's always great to see a story that hasn't updated in a while pop up. I'm very much interested in this story. I really hope you see it through!

[Ali della Morte]

Oof... Already on the verge of insanity.

[Cyana Flame]

[DarknessHusarz]

pinkiecrazy:

[Rakdar]

I TURNED MYSELF INTO A CHANGELING SPIKE! A CHANGEIING, I'M 'LING SPARKLE!