The Light Within Us

by theOwtcast

Rampaging Beast

The night hours ticked slowly by as I lay awake in bed, trying in vain to fall asleep. It hadn’t looked at first like I’d have that problem again; the day’s events had worn me out, and as Spike and I had settled in a guest room to hang out a little after what seemed like forever, I’d even had to stifle a few yawns! Spike had been notably more energetic at the time but not for long: he’d started to teach me the basics of Ogres and Oubliettes, only to fall soundly asleep within minutes! So I’d taken him to his room and laid him gently in his basket, then gone to bed myself… except, now that I could finally sleep, well… I couldn’t. My mind kept producing one scenario after another, all of them in the context of the renegades I had to confront, and no matter how things went in each scenario, it constantly felt like I was failing or setting myself up for a delayed failure… Was I being too strict? Too gentle? Was I coming up with wrong incentives to get them to listen? And which of those scenarios was the closest to what was going to happen when I finally returned to the hive?

For once, I was jealous of Spike. Even with all the burdens and responsibilities he had to carry, he somehow managed to pull through every time!

He also didn’t seem to have any difficulties falling asleep. Probably staying asleep, too. I had dozed off a few times, only to wake up soon thereafter with a new troubling what-if scenario or five. Whatever his trick was, I wished I could copy it! As it was, the only thing I could do was to struggle against myself.

Dawn found me at last, still in that tormented state, with nothing to show for my struggles but a messy tangle of blankets and probably bags under my eyes, and I came to the gloomy realization that any further attempts to catch at least a short nap were doomed to fail. Besides, I really needed to get on my way; the hive needed me!

Actually, did it? Or was that just a pathetic attempt to delude myself into thinking I was making any difference in the world?

I got out of bed and tidied up the warzone of blankets, then snuck out of the guest room and into the hallway. The castle was quiet and peaceful as I trod along, with a steady aura of ponies dreaming of happy things, beautiful things, untormented by nightmares or worries of their kingdoms crumbling before their eyes while being powerless to stop it… Luna wouldn’t need to save them from their inner demons tonight; she could focus her efforts elsewhere.

Could she have helped me tonight? Or would I have had to be fully asleep for her to do anything? At least I wasn’t distracting her from her own subjects tonight, and she had helped me several times before… I didn’t want to impose such high expectations on her, whether or not she was aware of them!

A flicker of an aura suddenly stirred on the other side of a door I was passing by; hoofsteps sounded beyond the same door and it opened to reveal a half-awake Twilight with a somewhat messy mane.

“Thorax?” she mumbled. “What’s happening?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said hurriedly, before she could get worried. “It’s just dawn, and I couldn’t sleep, so…” I shrugged.

“I think I might have some lavender extract around here somewhere… Luna says it helps with insomnia…”

“Thanks, but… I was thinking… the night’s pretty much over anyway, and I’ve really been away from the hive long enough so… I hope I’m not being too rude, but would you mind if I leave?”

“Now?”

“Well… if it’s okay with you… Nothing personal, just… you know…”

She nodded. “Royal duties, of course, I understand. Spike and Starlight won’t wake up for a while anyway, and they’ll understand too. I’ll tell them.”

“Thank you,” I said, embracing her in an awkward hug. “I’ll do my best to find time for a purely casual visit one of these days, I promise! If you’ll have me, that is…”

“What are you talking about? Of course we’ll have you! Safe journey, and say hi to those lovely drones I met earlier!”

---

Nothing much happened on my journey back, save for a quick nap on the outskirts of Appleloosa and another on a branch in the jungle when fatigue had finally gotten to me, and I was safely home again. Things had gotten no better in my absence: the red-hot aura was blazing so furiously that I could easily sense it from almost beyond the border of the badlands! I hurried closer, feeling my heart rise into my throat again. What were they up to this time? Did I even want to know?

In the throne room, I found a lot of them arguing, once again oblivious to my arrival. I must have expected a bloodbath, and though their auras and venomous glares screamed that they were all this close to turning my fears into reality, they were only arguing! I couldn’t believe it! Had they finally learned some self-control? It felt almost too good to be true, but if this was to prove to be even the slightest bit of an improvement, I could hug them all and put up a celebration! Could it be? Maybe I wouldn’t even have to resort to doing it Ember’s way, at least for the time being!

Oh, who was I fooling? That collective aura looked hopeless enough regardless of the outward manifestations; this couldn’t go smoothly yet!

But what were they arguing about? I couldn’t make any sense of the cacophony! Try as I might, the best I managed to make out of it was ‘we have to fight it, you idiots!’ and something that sounded vaguely like ‘Thorax would never allow it!’, but that narrowed things down about as much as if they hadn’t said anything. I tried getting any nearby drone’s attention, but that didn’t work either. I was pretty sure Pharynx noticed my attempts but he seemed to be deliberately ignoring me. Surprise, surprise, I reminded myself with an eye roll.

Okay, the nice approach wasn’t working, again. I decided to try Ember’s advice, or at least as close to it as I could bring myself to get.

“Can you stop arguing for a moment?” I shouted with what I hoped was enough force. It wasn’t.

If you need a trigger, imagine you’re trying to save Spike, Twilight had said. Maybe it was time to put that theory to the test! I tried to picture my friend in the heat of that red-hot aura, and actually felt something stirring in me! If I could get it to wake up and take over-

“SHUT UP!” my brother suddenly bellowed to the top of his lungs, louder than I’d ever heard him, loud enough that his voice must have reached the Crystal Empire! More importantly than blowing my mind as well as eardrums, it had worked! The throne room was completely silent save for the shuffling of hooves and all eyes were on the two of us.

“Ahem. Thank you, Pharynx,” I said, and he snorted and turned away. Oookay… first things first, and Pharynx was a mystery all by himself anyway… “What is going on here? Why are you all arguing?”

“Congratulations, Your Highness, you only now noticed not everything has been sunshine and rainbows in this ridiculous little fantasy you’re trying to create?” one of the renegades sneered.

“I know what’s been going on,” I said firmly; though Pharynx’s deafening command for silence had deflated some of that spirit of righteous anger that had begun to rise within me, some of it still remained, and against my deepest instincts, I encouraged it to grow stronger, fed it the contempt and venom in the renegade’s words to help it grow faster; it was starting to look like I was going to need every bit of it! “And it stops right now. I don’t know whether you have a problem with me, the way I want to run the hive, or both, but it doesn’t matter. I should have never allowed it to get this far out of control but that’s a mistake I don’t intend to repeat!”

“Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it, oh mighty one?”

Uh-oh. I had no idea! But I couldn’t let him see it! Think, Thorax, think!

“What are you gonna do, huh?” the guy taunted me as he flew up above the others so he could get in my face. “Beg us into submission?”

A drop of venom on the tip of his fangs snapped me out of it. If they come at you with fierceness at level ten, you have to crank yours up to eleven and no backing off, Ember had said. This had to be a ten!

I transformed into a manticore of twice the normal size and swatted the renegade into the distance just like I’d done with Ember, only this guy careened off so far that he became a mere speck on the horizon. The red-hot aura all around me dissolved instantly and was replaced with something jumbled but with a considerable component of murky chill that I’d never expected, let alone wanted, to produce in anyone.

Surprise and fear, if I could read an aura at all.

Had I crossed the line?! Goodness, I hoped not! This could just be a reaction to the kind of behavior everyling had grown accustomed to not expect from me… but what if it wasn’t? What if they would have responded the same if Pharynx or Chrysalis had done the deed?

I’m sorry, uh… whatever your name is… please don’t be mad at me! I’m new to all this assertiveness thing! Just tell me if I’ve gone too far and I promise I’ll never do it again!

“Well, look who finally decided to climb out of the gutter,” Pharynx quipped. Psycho smirked and Grim attempted to hide a chuckle.

I reverted into myself and looked at them incredulously. At them, and at the renegades, who had all mysteriously calmed down in the meantime, and were looking like they might stay that way, at least for now.

“Wait a minute, guys… you’re okay with me acting like that?!”

“Yeah, we are,” Grim said. “Those guys really had it coming, if I may say so.”

“And I’m glad someone finally succeeded where I kept failing all these years,” Pharynx muttered. “Assuming you don’t relapse into stupidity again…”

“...oookay,” I said after a moment of awkward silence. “Anyling care to tell me what you were arguing about this time?”

They all started talking over one another again. I rubbed my temple as a mild headache was starting to form. So much for getting them to behave for more than a few seconds… Now what? Surely I wasn’t supposed to turn into a manticore again and start hitting everyling in sight?

“Guys, please!” I moaned. “One at a time!”

By some unexplained miracle, the throne room went relatively silent again. Could it be an aftereffect of what I’d done to that brazen renegade a minute ago? I didn’t want to put too much hope in seeing it last longer, but… if only it would! It would make things a whole lot easier for me until I came up with a less violent way to calm them down!

Hornet stepped forward.

“A maulwurf was sighted in the badlands shortly after you left for Ponyville,” she said. “It hasn’t yet come so close to the hive to trigger a full alert, assuming you haven’t done away with the alert protocols at some point when I wasn’t paying attention, but it does seem to be getting closer and it’s probably only a matter of time until it decides to invite itself here.”

“We’ve been worried,” another drone continued. “And with you away for the time being, we weren’t sure how to proceed.”

“I told you how to proceed a thousand times, but you wouldn’t listen!” Pharynx barked.

“That’s because Thorax probably wouldn’t approve!”

“So what? We could have gotten rid of the pest several times over before he came back, and then he could disapprove all he wants!”

“But there has to be another way!”

“Then why didn’t you think of one if you’re so smart?”

“It’s hard to think with all this arguing!”

“So hard that you couldn’t think of finding a quiet little corner where your brilliant mind wouldn’t get distracted?”

“There aren’t any! You think I haven’t tried?”

“Guys,” I interjected, “can we please calm down for one minute?! Pharynx, please tell me your plan wasn’t to kill the maulwurf…”

“Well, it wasn’t a mandatory outcome, at any rate,” he shrugged.

I buried my face in my hooves and groaned.

“Told you!” the drone exclaimed, and a red-hot surge flashed in Pharynx’s aura.

“So? As if I didn’t know he wouldn’t let us force the thing away!”

“Can’t you even consider a non-violent approach first?” I asked him.

“Would a maulwurf?”

“You can’t know until you try!”

He groaned and rolled his eyes. “...and here we go. Congratulations Thorax, you’ve plunged so deep into stupidity that you’ve set a new record!”

“Do you have a suggestion on what to do about it? Other than killing it or beating it up, I mean.”

“That depends on whether you’re merely suicidal or trying to get everyling killed.”

“...I’ll take it as a no, then.” I sighed. “Anyling else have any suggestions?”

Save for half the renegades rolling their eyes and a few reformed ones whispering among themselves, I got no reply.

“Well…” Zygoma said eventually. “...if you don’t want to kill it, the next best thing would be to get it to go away…”

Finally something! “Anything specific in mind?”

“I’m not sure… maybe if we could lure it away somehow… except there’s not much we could do it with. Food could work, or maybe a suitable mate-”

“If you’re suggesting we bring in another maulwurf…” Pharynx growled.

“I’m not! I wasn’t even gonna suggest that one of us pretends to be the other maulwurf! Though that might actually work…” she mused.

“Whether or not it might, I’m not comfortable with sending any of us to do it,” I said. “So that leaves the food, I guess.”

“Are you crazy?” Pharynx interjected. “The hive is the biggest buffet table in the entire wasteland even with all the plants you had us sprouting around! How in the name of eggshells do you propose to make something else more attractive?”

“Uh, there’s a jungle up north-” Sleuth said.

“And it’s way over there, and we’re right here under the thing’s snout!”

“Didn’t you just say they eat plants?”

“They’re omnivores, Mister Paid-Attention-In-Training, so don’t get it in your head that it’ll shrug us off just because there’s a moss salad sitting around everywhere!”

I considered this. “What if we rearranged the vegetation in such a way that there’s less of it in the hive itself and more of it in the wasteland?”

“I don’t think we have enough plants to make that much of a difference,” Antenna said. “I did plant a lot, but we’d probably have to use it all up to get the maulwurf interested enough to draw its attention away from the hive.”

“And if we set up a trail of plants leading to the jungle?”

“Eh, maybe… but it would still sacrifice most of what we’ve grown, and we’d have to rearrange the plants already growing in the wasteland if we don’t want the maulwurf to stray from the path we lay out for it…”

“It’s a lot of work, but I think it’s worth a try. Can you do it?”

She let out a sigh. “I won’t lie, Thorax, I’ve grown really attached to my plants. I’d hate to see them go… but if it’s for the good of the hive… I’ll do it.”

“Thanks-”

“Don’t either of you see the flaw in that strategy?” Pharynx exclaimed.

“What flaw?”

“Flaws, actually. Plural. One, you have no guarantee it’ll work. What’s your backup plan if it doesn’t? I’ll bet my fangs you have no idea! Two, you can’t do that in the span of a few seconds, and I don’t think Sparkle the Pony Princess herself could either, even with all that fancy magic! The maulwurf could get to you before you’ve even started, and what then? And what is the hive supposed to do in the meantime? Be a sitting duck and pray the beast doesn’t show up?”

“The drones could hide inside-”

“Third, even assuming that nothing goes wrong and the maulwurf falls for it, what’s stopping it from coming back later? And what’s stopping other maulwurfs from dropping by at any time? It could happen two days from now and you’ll have nothing left to lure them away with!”

“How likely is that?!”

He groaned and rubbed his forehead. “I’m wasting my time here…” With that, he buzzed his wings and was gone from the throne room.

I stared after him, confused. Why did he always have to be so paranoid?

“How often do we usually get maulwurfs?” I asked noling in particular. Noling saw it fit to answer, either. Did they even know?

I was about to ask that when Hornet blurted out that same question at me.

“How would I? I wasn’t authorized to know anything and hardly ever had an excuse to get out into the open. The only way I could have known a maulwurf was attacking was if it had breached the section of the hive I happened to be in-”

“Okay, yeah, I get it. Sorry. I keep forgetting you were, uh…”

“Insignificant and disposable,” I suggested.

“...well, if you want to call it that… anyway, you’re right, you wouldn’t have known. There isn’t really a pattern, to be honest. I remember a sequence of several within a month, and there was a period when we didn’t get any for over a year, but most of the time there’s a few months’ peace between sightings and that’s as close an estimate as I can give you. I should also point out that we never allowed them the time to get anywhere close to the hive. A team always got deployed immediately upon sighting and the whole thing was usually over in about an hour, sometimes even less.”

“Were you… killing them?”

“Sometimes, if they were especially stubborn. But it wasn’t always necessary; it was possible to chase them off, or even to catch one for advanced combat training… okay, you’re probably not interested in that…”

“So, bottom like, Pharynx could be overreacting?”

“...that depends on the maulwurf,” she shrugged.

“Okay, but, uh… how do I put it? If I were to tell you to rearrange our plants to lure the maulwurf away, given your overall experience with them, would you urge me to reconsider or would you trust your chances to not have to rely on force as the backup plan?”

She considered this. “So, I would be allowed to fight if the luring away fails?”

“Yes.” I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t expect anyling to agree to go get eaten…

“Then what the heck, I’d give it a try and keep my eyes open.”

“Would anyling disagree?” I spoke to the whole crowd.

Half of them raised a hoof, mostly renegades.

“Which of you are not disagreeing on the grounds that you’d rather fight?”

There were many groans and grumbles but all of the renegades and some of the reformed drones lowered their hooves, and only a dozen or so reformed hooves remained in the air.

“Okay, that settles it,” I declared. “Antenna, Grim, start uprooting the plants or picking leaves or whatever you think would work best. Hornet, Psycho, plan a route along which to position the plants and select a team to help move them. If you need anything, you know where to find me!”

Comments

[Screw]

It is awesome to finally see Thorax breaking his insecurities! He really is a natural at problem solving and leading.

I hope we get a war room set up, too. If not for war, it'd be an awesome planning room with a huge map table, complete with an evidence board about the problem, the mind maps you see in detective media!

[origami]

And the drone is going...

Going...

Going...

GONE!

[Green-Venom]

He’s finally growing into the crown.

Overall once again a well written chapter.

[Melody Song]

And into To Change A Changeling we go! Way to go Thorax, you're being assertive!

[tayxanthem]

hey out of curiosity
are you ever finishing this?
plz do I love it its amazing fr

[theOwtcast]

11724683
It will finish eventually, but not for at least a couple of more years at the current rate of updating. We haven't even reached the halfway point yet