The Light Within Us

by theOwtcast

Threats Old and New

A couple of days later, I was discussing some maintenance issue with Proboscis when Pharynx flew into the throne room with a large bag in tow, interrupting the conversation. Unfazed by the effect his arrival had had on us, he turned the bag over and two unicorns dropped out.

“Trespassers,” he declared.

“Hey! We were just-”

“Starlight, Sunburst?! What are you guys doing here?”

“Visiting you… at least we were attempting a visit when this guy ambushed us. What’s going on? The advice Ember gave you didn’t work?”

“It gave me a start but it’ll probably be a while until I get some solid results. Please excuse Pharynx, he-”

“Wait a minute…” Sunburst took a closer look at his captor and got a snarl in return. “You’re Pharynx?!”

“What’s it to you?”

“Thorax told us so much about you-”

He rolled his eyes. “Well ain’t that wonderful.”

“-and I was hoping to meet you one day-”

“We met already.”

Sunburst stared blankly from one of us to the other, then adjusted his glasses. “I’m sorry, I don’t seem to remember-”

“Good.”

“Huh?”

“He bit you,” I explained. “I don’t know the details, but you stumbled upon each other soon after I’d left for Ponyville to get Twilight’s help against the impostors, and you must have done something to make him think you were a threat. The venom wiped your memory of the incident.”

“Did I meet him too?” Starlight interjected.

“Not that I know of…”

“What does it matter? You gonna deal with them already or what?”

“Why would I? They’re my friends!”

“How do we know they weren’t the ones to unleash the maulwurf?”

Sunburst opened his eyes wide. “There’s a maulwurf here?”

“What’s a maulwurf?” Starlight asked.

“Pharynx, they’ve been helping me ever since I started living with the ponies. They still are. Why would they send us a maulwurf?”

“Because they’re enemies of the Changeling Kingdom!”

“Former enemies, maybe, but let me remind you that I forged a peace treaty with Equestria-”

“-and a whole lot that’ll do when they stop trusting Celestia blindly and start rioting against us, maybe even organize an invasion in spite of what their precious princesses say! How do you think we’ll fare then? You disbanded our army, your subjects are at each others’ throats so much that they won’t even notice an incoming threat, and we don’t even have the throne suppression field anymore because some genius had to destroy it!”

“Hey!” Starlight protested. “He was trying to save us!”

“Why should I care about you?”

“Pharynx…” I warned.

“Maybe because we took care of him while you weren’t around to do it yourself?”

The reply came in the form of a violent hiss and bared fangs leaking venom.

“Pharynx, stop!” I cried, getting between him and the two ponies. “Leave them alone! It’s not your fault that I was out of your reach! It’s not their fault, either!”

“Fine,” he spat after a moment of tense glaring. “I have better things to do than watch you not get rid of them anyway!”

He stormed off to the edge of the throne room and flew off, though not before hissing at a drone uprooting some vines for the maulwurf lure, who winced in response and turned into a shovel, then tipped over and fell out of sight. A thud and a muffled ‘ow’ mixed with the hum of transformation magic sounded a moment later, and Proboscis was already descending the hive’s outer wall to the unfortunate drone and returned carrying him a moment later.

“I’ll take him to the infirmary,” she said. “Go ahead and talk to your friends. We can finish that discussion later, it’s not urgent.”

“I’m sorry about this,” I said to them when Proboscis and the injured drone were gone.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sunburst said. “Starlight told me about your renegade problem so we expected some friction here, but if I’d know you were dealing with a maulwurf too-”

“Yeah, about that,” Starlight interjected. “What the hay is a maulwurf?”

“It’s an ill-tempered mole-like beast about the size of a fully-grown timberwolf,” he explained. “It’s not native to Equestria but it still somehow managed to develop complete resistance to magic, at least unicorn magic… not sure about changeling magic, though…” He looked at me inquiringly.

“I’m not sure either, though based on some conversations I’ve overheard, I’m guessing changeling magic wouldn’t be of much help.”

Starlight grimaced. “Sounds bad… Why didn’t you tell us about the maulwurf?”

“Because I didn’t know it was here until I came back from Ponyville. But we’re working on luring it away, so it shouldn’t be a problem for much longer. I think… Anyway, what’s new?”

“We do have some news for you, actually.” Sunburst reached for a saddlebag that had fallen out of Pharynx’s bag along with the two of them, rummaged through it, and pulled out a couple of scrolls and a notebook. “Remember those scrolls you brought me a little while ago and asked if I could take a look?”

“Yes… you did, then?”

“I did, and whoa boy, that was…” he said. “That was quite something, to put it mildly! Never in my wildest fantasies have I imagined I might one day get my hooves on anything remotely as fascinating… I mean, I doubt I’d find anything of the kind in the darkest corner of the restricted section of the Canterlot Archives! Can you imagine such a beautifully and challengingly complex- uh, well, you brought it, after all, so I’m guessing you at least might have a vague idea…”

“I don’t. I told you, I can’t even read any of them. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Oh. Um, maybe you did and I forgot…” He chuckled sheepishly. “Where did you find them, anyway?”

“In an annex of Chrysalis’ bedchamber.”

He exchanged glances with Starlight. “That…”

“That explains so much,” she said what Sunburst must have been thinking too. Their auras turned murky and chilly for a moment.

“Guys, you’re worrying me. What’s on the scrolls?”

“Dark magic,” Sunburst said eventually. “Eldritch dark magic, written in a kind of runic ritual script usually associated with dark magic, except this was a variant I’m not completely familiar with so some guesswork was involved, but anyway, it’s not much of a surprise that you couldn’t read it. The runes are one layer of keeping the meaning of the text behind them unknown to undeserving eyes, and as such, you won’t find them routinely taught anywhere, not even in magic schools without strict supervision and prior assessments of mental state and motives for learning such a thing, even regular reassessments depending on how deeply you delve into the matter… Anyway, I was deemed mentally stable enough and without ulterior motives and allowed to learn as much about dark magic and dark runes as anypony in Celestia’s magic school was able to teach me, but still hit a snag with these even though I thought I knew everything there was to know about dark runes. On a theoretical level, of course.”

“Of course,” I said.

“I had to ask Twilight and Starlight for help translating the parts where I hit a snag, and though they don’t know much more about dark magic than I do, we were still able to guess our way through most of the tricky parts.”

“So… what do the spells do?”

“Several things. A few seem relatively benign but others are… disturbing, to say the least.”

“Let’s start with the benign ones, maybe?”

“I figured as much. Now, I can’t guarantee everything is one hundred percent accurate because of the assumptions we had to make, so excuse us if something sounds weird.”

I nodded.

“For example,” he continued, “one of them seems to induce a state akin to hibernation, except it looks to be designed to keep the target conscious for the duration of the spell. I thought at first it had something to do with cocoons, either the prey or the healing variant, but the consciousness part doesn’t fit, and I’m missing any references to a receptacle-like structure for the target. Does that ring any bells to you?”

“No, not really, and the slime we fill the cocoons with causes unconsciousness, so that part doesn’t fit either.”

“Okay, nevermind, we can put that down as a misinterpretation and get back to it later,” Starlight suggested. “There’s no ticking clock on any of this.”

“Right. Okay, the next one…” He skimmed through his notebook. “This one is incomplete… this one too… Then there’s one that transforms rocks? Or is it earth? We had to guess that part.”

“Oh, I think I know that one!” I focused my magic and extended a part of a nearby wall, then returned it to the way it had been. “Is that it?”

Their mouths hung open. Sunburst blinked and Starlight checked one of the scrolls.

“It fits pretty well,” she mused, staring at the text. “And you can do that?! Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Because I only just learned it recently! It was on a scroll on the same pile where I found the ones I brought to you, only written in normal Ponish.”

“I see,” she said. “May I see that scroll too?”

“Uh-huh! It’s, uh, in my bedchamber… or what used to be Chrysalis’ bedchamber… I would have probably repurposed it for something else, but the drones assumed I’d claim it and proceeded to set it up for me without asking first, and my old sleeping burrow turned out to have already been repurposed a while before, so I kind of just rolled with it… Would you like to see it?”

“Yeah, sure,” Starlight said. Sunburst nodded.

I led them there. “It’s not much by pony standards, and you’ll probably find it weird, but it serves its purpose, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I haven’t had much time to redecorate. Pharynx tore down Chrysalis’ bed and built another because I kept tossing and turning on hers - the slime retained some of her aura - and then he couldn’t sleep as a result, but the rest of it is almost exactly the way it was when I first saw it. Except for one thing.” I took down the walls I’d built at the entrance to the hidden annex. “Psycho said he’d removed some trophies she used to keep here, but that was before I got to see the room for the first time, he didn’t specify what the trophies were, and I decided I’d rather not know. Anyway, this is where the scrolls were.” Only two were left on the table and I grabbed one and sat down with my friends. “This is the construction spell, or at least that’s how I call it.”

They read it together and compared it with the version written in runes and with their own notes, hardly saying a word in the process, which was surprisingly quick.

“Interesting,” Sunburst stated. “The version in Ponish seems to be a pretty stripped-down and simplified one.”

“Either that, or the other one is a more complex derivative,” Starlight said.

“Yes. I wonder now…” He stroked his goatee. “Can you thaumic-date the two?”

I had no idea what that meant but apparently Starlight did. She took both scrolls in her magic and hit them with a spell that looked impressive to my untrained eyes.

“The complex spell is thousands of years old,” she said after the fact. “The simple one, a little over a century but not by much.”

“Okay, so Chrysalis - I’m going to assume it was her - needed two versions of the same spell,” I mused. “But why? What does one spell do that the other doesn’t?”

“From what I can tell, the complex spell is supposed to last longer, though now that we’ve seen what the simple one does, I’m not sure how that would work…”

Starlight’s ears perked up, and this time, I thought I knew what idea struck her.

“That’s because you didn’t get to see much of the hive.”

“...you’ve lost me,” he said.

“The hive used to shift and change randomly,” I explained. “It doesn’t anymore, at least as far as I’m aware of. The throne room and a few other areas were the only permanently static parts. I never thought much of it and assumed it was simply the hive’s default state and that the throne room was kept static through some kind of spell, but if it was actually the other way around…”

“When did the hive stop shifting?”

“A couple of weeks after we transformed, or thereabouts. I thought that was what triggered the change in the hive’s behavior, but it could have been just the spell wearing off… How often would it need refreshing?”

“About two or three times a month, I think. Hmm… it fits… but I’d recommend against refreshing it again. It’s dark magic, and that thing’s risky.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. I’m only just grasping the basics, and all that shifting was complicating things unnecessarily even in the old days, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who thinks so. But wait, what about the simplified spell? Is that dangerous, too?”

“It doesn’t appear to be at first glance, but I’ll have to deconstruct the matrix to be sure. Not even those other spells were obvious as dark magic at first glance. Only the matrix syntax looked a bit unconventional until we dug deeper. That’s what fascinated me so much about it all; most dark magic users don’t bother to hide the nature of their spells and sometimes even take it as a badge of honor. I thought the intention here was to fool a casual observer, but now that we’ve confirmed Chrysalis was using the things, it’s possible she had to do it in order to fool the throne’s suppression field. I guess we’ll never know now that you’ve destroyed the only known object on which we can test that theory.”

“Maybe we can learn something from analyzing the throne fragments,” Starlight suggested. “They may not be active anymore but the magic they contained had to have left a trace! If we can-”

“I’m afraid it’s a little late for that,” I said. “We threw them all away. I didn’t think we’d need them so I said it was okay… If only you’d asked sooner!”

“Oh well, don’t beat yourself about it. It’s not the first unsolved mystery in the world and it won’t be the last. Besides, it’s probably of purely academic interest by now.”

“If you say so… And the other spells?”

“One looks like mind control, possibly what she used on Shining Armor during the invasion of Canterlot.”

“She actually has that?! Why didn’t she use it on me just after I ran off? It would have saved her the trouble of sending out all those hunters… Not that I’m complaining that she didn’t…”

“She couldn’t. The spell is crude and requires physical proximity to initiate, and even that only makes the target docile and obedient. There’s no way to mentally command the target into an action. Plus, for all the little practical use, casting and maintaining it takes an insane amount of energy, so it was more like a last resort than something one can base the whole strategy around.”

“It also looks like a work in progress,” Starlight added. “A couple of scrolls are full of stuff that looks like dead-ended upgrades to the spell. She probably would have polished it into something terrifying given enough time. Good thing you stopped her!”

“Or at least postponed the inevitable,” I said.

“Thorax is right, Starlight. If Chrysalis is skilled enough to invent complex spells and mask their dark-magic origin, then she’ll be able to pick up from memory and finish it sooner or later, depending on what else she has to deal with wherever she is right now.”

We needed a moment to let that sink in.

“Any more spells I don’t want to know about?” I asked, wishing them to say no.

“Yes, several… though they kind of form a set of similar spells…” He bit his lip and looked at the ground. “Though you actually know about them already first-hoof so I’m not exactly telling you anything new…”

“What are you talking about?”

He sighed. “There’s a couple dozen of torture spells in there-”

“More?!” I gasped.

He looked at me blankly. I told him about the scroll of the readable versions of such spells and described them as best as I could, adding a mention of Pharynx taking them away somewhere in spite of my protests.

“...oh.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Starlight muttered, and I wasn’t sure whether she was referring to the spells’ existence, Pharynx’s act, or both. “Got any other scrolls in normal Ponish?”

“No, these were the only ones.”

“First good news today, and I can’t believe I’m saying it.” She joined Sunburst in analyzing what I’d told them about the missing spells and comparing it to the other ones.

“Okay, it looks like there’s dark magic in both versions,” Sunburst stated and was interrupted by my gasp. “You… didn’t use it, did you?”

“I didn’t realize what they were so I tried one a few times… why are you looking at me like that?”

“A few times?”

“Nothing happened when I hit a wall and that table with it so Pharynx suggested I try it on him.” I winced at the memory. “If his behavior all this time is to punish me for what followed, I can’t blame him…”

“But weren’t you subjected to those spells yourself? Couldn’t you have recognized them on the scroll?”

“It’s hard to think straight when you’re on the receiving end, and I don’t have enough experience with magic to guess the purpose of a spell just by reading it. Though, to be honest, I could have paid more attention to that scribbled text at the margins… I don’t speak Olde Equin but it’s not that hard to guess what ‘crucio’ means…”

They nodded solemnly and kept reading.

“Will I have consequences? For using dark magic?”

“Probably not from that one instance, and I doubt you’re in the least inclined to keep using it, so no worries.”

“And Pharynx?”

“Has he used the spells too?”

“Not as far as I know… I meant for getting hit with it…”

“You were hit with them more times than he was, and you don’t seem to have suffered any corruption because of it, therefore it’s unlikely that he’ll be affected, unless he’s developed a habit of casting those spells.”

They continued their analysis. I decided to wait before asking any further questions.

“Like I said, it’s dark magic alright,” Sunburst said in the end, “and the version you brought to me is designed to elicit a stronger response than the one you just described, provided your description is accurate.”

“Either that, or your version is the watered-down one,” Starlight added, “depending on which existed first. Let me thaumic-date this one.” She did that spell again. “It’s… less than a year old…”

“Well, Chrysalis could have written it down at any time-”

“You don’t understand. Thaumic dating reveals when the spell in question was first conceived in its usable form, not when a particular copy of it was scribbled down somewhere. The spells you described just now must be accurate enough as they came back as centuries old, which we could have guessed since you were getting blasted with them all your life. So, something in the past year must have ticked off every nerve in Chrysalis’ body if she decided her preexisting torture spells weren’t painful enough and she needed a stronger set…”

“...and I’m pretty sure I know what that is, or better said, who that is.” I took the scroll in my magic and stared at it as if in trance. Was this the dark-magic corruption that Sunburst had mentioned? Was no amount of pain enough to satisfy her lust for vengeance? “The spells she already had were unbearable enough,” I muttered. “Nevermind that I’m the wimp. Pharynx is the toughest guy I’ve ever known, and to say that the spell I cast on him was too much for him to take…” My face distorted in a pained grimace. “I’d never heard him scream so desperately and I wasn’t even trying to hurt him… If he couldn’t take it, no one can… and I don’t want to find out how much worse these new spells are… I don’t want anyone to find out, ever…”

Something dark and ominous welled up inside me along with the tears I didn’t much care to suppress. Had Chrysalis already used those spells on someone? Had she completed them and committed them to memory, ready to be unleashed at a moment’s notice, or were they still unfinished? The scroll was no longer with her, but did she remember enough of it that it wouldn’t matter? It probably didn’t matter, as she knew every nuance of the spells’ ancestors… but if anyone else came in possession of that dreadful knowledge… The scroll was in my reach; I could make sure only one being could still unleash its abominable power, even if I could do nothing to take it from that one being herself…

I allowed that ominous, painful dread inside me to burst out and fuel my magic; my horn and antlers lit up and engulfed the cursed scroll in flames and kept at it until the parchment dissolved into ashes at my hooves and mixed with the tears dripping down my face. Only then did I feel some semblance of relief, though I knew that as long as Chrysalis drew breath, that relief could never fully blossom.

Starlight and Sunburst understood, apparently. I’d just destroyed a figment of something that was their passion, something they’d never get a chance to study in closer detail, but they hadn’t tried to stop me. I could see in their eyes a flicker of regret for the lost knowledge, but that flicker died out quickly, quenched by a silent realization that no good could be gained by keeping the scroll in existence.

We sat there in silence a while longer. I was grateful for that; I needed a moment to process everything they’d told me, and they probably needed a moment for the implications of what I’d told them to sink in.

“That scroll was meant for me,” I mused. “There’s no other explanation. She’d already made a habit of blasting me with those other spells and had nothing more to throw at me for betraying her. She needed something worse than her worst.”

Starlight touched my hoof. “I’m glad you ousted her, for you and for the rest of the world,” she said. “If she can do that to her own subject simply because he’s trying to find a better way for his kind…”

“...then no one in the world is safe,” I agreed. “I know. I must have known all along, I just… didn’t want to believe it… even though it was staring me in the face… but I always thought I was the problem…”

“The only way in which you were ‘a problem’ is that you didn’t give in to a monster,” Sunburst said, “and that’s only a problem if you have to endure that monster. You weren’t truly a problem and you never will be!”

I nodded in gratitude. We shared another moment of silence.

“So what’s on that other scroll?” Starlight asked.

“Huh?”

“There’s another scroll on the table and you haven’t touched it. What is it? Another spell?”

“Oh! No, it’s, uh…” I levitated the scroll to her. “It’s Chrysalis’ hit list, if I understood it correctly.”

She skimmed through it. “It seems to be spanning for centuries, judging by the names… I’m surprised it doesn’t reach as far as Starswirl or Clover the Clever… and the amount of exclamation marks next to your name is as impressive as the rest of the list… But why is Pharynx on the list too and why with a question mark? Didn’t you say he was her second-in-command?”

“He was until I escaped. Then she started doubting his loyalty but didn’t have proof of anything even though he was by then making plans and improvising ways to keep me in the safe zone as long as possible without anyling finding out. He seems to have succeeded because we managed to sneak into the hive on a rescue mission and she still-”

“Hey, Thorax?” Blade interrupted me. When had he arrived, and how had none of us noticed? “Can I talk to you for a moment?” He pointed towards the exit.

“Uh, yeah, sure.” I glanced back at my friends. “Sorry, I’ll be right back.”

I sensed a hint of murkiness in Blade’s aura as I followed him into the hallway, not enough to think he was afraid in the full sense of the word, but something had definitely gotten him concerned at least.

“What’s wrong?” I asked when we were out of my friends’ earshot, though I wasn’t sure why they couldn’t be trusted to know what had happened. Oh well, I was about to find out.

“The maulwurf’s already at the hive,” he said. “We haven’t even begun laying down the lure and it’s too late now!”

“Whoa, hold on… By ‘at the hive’, do you mean approaching too quickly to make any use of the lure, or-”

A muffled thud sounded from somewhere below. Judging by Blade’s wince, only one thing was likely to have caused it!

“No, I mean it’s… at the hive… as in, trying to breach in as of a second ago…”

I fought the urge to scream and hyperventilate. Now what?!

“How didn’t it get noticed sooner?” I squeaked.

“It kind of was… Psycho rounded everyling up and ordered them back into the hive, and the maulwurf got close while we were retreating. He and Hornet are looking for volunteers to fight it but we need your permission first-”

Another thud interrupted him.

“Um, yes, uh, good idea…” I agreed hurriedly so he wouldn’t notice just how hard I was panicking. “Uh, put the hive on full alert, and send out a defense team when they’re ready… and in the meantime, noling is leaving the hive… um, see if you can transfer the eggs and nymphs somewhere safe, or at least as safe as possible under the circumstances?”

He nodded and galloped off. I hurried back to my bedchamber. I wanted to ask him why I hadn’t been told about the maulwurf any sooner - this was an emergency, and my discussion with Starlight and Sunburst could have waited until a little later - but answering those could wait until later too! I had to tell my friends what was going on! Maybe they could offer some advice?

“Thorax, what’s going on?” Sunburst asked as soon as I was stepping through the gate of the annex. “We heard banging-”

“The maulwurf is here!”

“What?!”

“Come on!” I motioned them to follow and we galloped out into the hallway. “I put the hive on alert and no one is to get out into the open until a defense team chases the maulwurf away, but I could use your help-”

“You have a defense team now?” Starlight interjected.

“Psycho and Hornet are assembling one. Sunburst, do you know any-”

“Why not Pharynx?” Starlight insisted.

Her question caught me off guard and I slowed down to a near-halt, staring at her blankly.

“He used to be a First Commander, right? Why not put him on the job?”

“Starlight, he’s been acting unpredictably ever since I took the throne. I’m not even sure he cares anymore-”

“Yeah he does!”

“I don’t know… if I had to guess, I’d say he doesn’t…”

“Did you ask him?”

“What’s the point? He never gives a straight answer anyway unless it’s to berate me…”

“Then why is he still sticking around?”

“Uh…”

“And not only sticking around, but from what I’ve seen of him, it kind of looks like he’s still trying to do his old job. You know, defending the hive, telling you how to do it better than what you’ve been doing… I don’t think he’s doing it out of pure spite. In fact, I bet he’s trying to get to you and is only grumpy because he keeps failing to be heard. You know, feeling left out and unappreciated…?”

That… I had to admit it made so much more sense than petty rebellion… How had I not seen it myself?

“Starlight does have a point,” Sunburst added. “You guys have different opinions on how things should be done, opinions that stem from your personalities, and each of you is right in some aspects, but you’re at one end of the extreme and he’s at the other and, frankly, what the hive needs is somewhere halfway.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“You guys should cooperate. You should handle the stuff you’re good at when the situation demands it and take the others’ advice for the rest. The maulwurf is Pharynx’s area of expertise and you should have agreed to the strategy he proposed from the beginning. I’m not saying Psycho and Hornet would do a bad job - they probably wouldn’t if they were soldiers - but having Pharynx handle it would have helped with his attitude and gotten the two of you closer.”

“Hmm… it makes sense, but… isn’t there another way to deal with a maulwurf? Something you would do?”

“This is how I’d do it. Maulwurfs may be a rare occurrence in Equestria but they’ve been studied to a reasonable extent nevertheless, enough to know that reasoning with them is unlikely to succeed. You’ve got a maulwurf, you have to use force.” He chuckled at my stupefied glare. “Sorry, Thorax. Not even ponies can do everything without resorting to violence sometimes, and this does call for violence.”

I sighed gravely. “Then let’s get Pharynx if he isn’t already at it!”

The throne room was just up ahead and in a state of chaos with all the drones running about. I saw Hornet and rushed to her.

“How are we standing?” I asked.

“Not good. Psycho and I barely have half a dozen volunteers to go against the thing and even they are reluctant.”

“I would have thought, with all the renegades looking for fights-”

“Nope, they’re just sitting back watching us struggle and mocking us.”

Wonderful. “Even Pharynx can’t knock some sense into them?”

“...isn’t he one of them?”

“What?! He- I- well, he’s still unreformed, but I don’t think he’s truly a renegade…”

“Then why is he always somewhere on his own, rampaging about and sabotaging half the things everyling’s been trying to do around here?”

“I don’t- Look, can we talk about that later? Just tell me where he is and-”

“How am I supposed to know where he is?!”

“You don’t know?!” Calm down, it’s not her fault! “Has anyling else seen him?”

She shrugged and went after her business. I posed the question to several other drones but none could help me. Starlight and Sunburst were close enough the whole time to not need explaining so I just waved a hoof in a random direction.

“Come on!” I urged them. “We gotta find him!”

Comments

[origami]

This isn't taking the place of To Change A Changeling, is it? The way it started kinda gave those vibes.

[theOwtcast]

11569385
It is. You sound disappointed?

[Melody Song]

I think I know where this is going...and I like it!

Also, nice nod to HP there with the "crucio" bit-

[Green-Venom]

Great chapter. I like how you’re resolving this…

PS: One thing I always liked about Pharynx‘s reformed appearance was that it was bulkier and of a darker color, giving him a more aggressive and combat oriented look.

I was wondering if you would do something similar to the renegades if you were to decide to reform them…

[origami]

11569424
Kind of. To me it was one of the better episodes with how it addressed Pharynx's feelings about the changelings how things turned out with Thorax becoming leader, plus the attempts by Starlight and Trixie to get him to come around to reformation were worth a chuckle (granted this story is told from Thorax's perspective so that wouldn't have worked too well).

However, the direction this seems to be going in could makes things pretty interesting, depending on where you actually take it.

[theOwtcast]

11569680
I liked that episode too, but didn't want to basically copypaste it into the story, therefore changes had to be made

[Screw]

This new, alternate take is really good! I do believe I saw some hesitance from changing some of show canon's part Like that Triple Take episode for example: Ember and Thorax taught each other their skills differently than the show, specifically Thorax's drive.

Wordsmith, you got what it takes to rewrite what is set in stone and still produce really strong canon, fan that is. Heck, I might take this as a strong contenter against show canon. Your whole series (definitely not trilogy) seriously shows off your awesome writing skill. I would know, I have accrued years of reading and note taking, and until recently started writing again, but I still find writing down some personalities hard

Ps. I had to write this because your reply to origami feels like you have doubts about this new, and frankly better, direction that is very cohessive. You're doing awesome Owtcast!

[theOwtcast]

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awww thanks