The Light Within Us

by theOwtcast

Missing in Action

Dear Thorax,

Sorry for making you wait for my letter for this long! Things have been pretty hectic over here and I just couldn’t catch a free moment to write to you. It all started with Sunburst’s visit to an antique shop where he bought a bunch of random stuff among which turned out to be the journal of Starswirl the Bearded! You’ve heard of him, right? The most famous wizard who ever lived? Anyway, Twilight has always been obsessed with Starswirl, and Sunburst isn’t far behind, so you can probably imagine their reaction to finding out what they’ve got. Like, I’ve never seen Twi so maniacally inseparable from a piece of paper with words on it, and that’s saying something! They even roped the rest of us into researching it, and not only did they (we?) find out that Starswirl and five other ‘pillars of old Equestria’ planted the seed that grew into the Tree of Harmony and the Elements of Harmony, but they also figured out how to bring them back from limbo where they ended up while fighting the Pony of Shadows! Things went south almost immediately because the Pony of Shadows returned with them (surprise, surprise - I mean, why would these things ever go without complications?) and we had to defeat him… actually, reform him, as it turned out the guy used to be their assistant before embracing darkness due to the Pillars slighting him. Normally, that would be the end of it, but Twilight then decided to organize a Friendship Festival. It’s something she’d been considering on and off for a couple of years, but this thing with Stygian (aka Pony of Shadows) threw her into a fit of panic because who knows how many more ponies could be in a similar situation and on the verge of embracing darkness unless shown how many friends they have and how much those friends care about them, yadda yadda yadda (I’ll spare you the details of her overthinking spree or this letter will be longer than Encyclopaedia Canterlotica), so she put us to work, and now we have a Friendship Festival due to happen in Canterlot on 28th June, if you’re interested to have some fun. All creatures are welcome! Hey, maybe it’ll help Pharynx unwind, too? Don’t worry about him coming in contact with Shining. His legs haven’t healed yet so he politely excused himself.

Whew. I think that’s everything, at least the gist of it. I can go into more detail at the Festival if you’re interested. Anything new in the hive?

Uh-oh, Twi needs my help with something… again… I dunno when I’ll catch a break again so I’ll wrap this up for now. See you at the Festival?

Your friend,

Spike

P.S. Almost forgot. The hardest materials in existence are diamonds and dragon teeth, though I’m not sure if that’s of any help to Pharynx. Something that comes pretty close to those is the metal the changeling helmets are made of (at least, the helmets found on killed changelings after the Canterlot invasion). Starlight couldn’t think of any indestructibility spells but she said to tell you she’ll pass them on if she remembers any.

“Why is it that when something interesting happens, it’s always them who end up dealing with it?” Pharynx grumbled as he read Spike’s letter over my shoulder.

I chuckled. “Are you jealous?”

“That’s not the point. The point is, how come do the same half-dozen individuals end up being the heroes over and over again? I get it that the assaulting entities would want to wipe out the strongest opponents first, but these six weren’t always the strongest, and they even went looking for trouble this time! And no one called them out on recklessness?!”

“I’m sure they prepared for every outcome they could think of,” I shrugged. “Something must have surprised them.”

“Still reckless. They should have given it more thought.”

“You mean, like you and Chrysalis should have given more thought to the Canterlot invasion?”

“That was different! How were we supposed to know Sparkle was going to get suspicious?”

“Isn’t that the same as ‘something surprised them’? Or you in this case?”

“And she went poking at what she should have left alone!”

“Would her leaving things alone have prevented the invasion?”

“...we would have won if she hadn’t interfered.”

“But she did interfere, and the world is a better place now!”

He stared into the distance. “Hm. Maybe you’re right. But it would be nice to get some action every once in a while. We went from being a force to be reckoned with to sitting on the sidelines and watching life pass by and put everyone else in the spotlight.”

“You feel left out.”

“Is that what you want to call it?”

“Maybe we can attend this Friendship Festival they’re organizing. I know partying isn’t your thing, but it’ll do you good to get a change of scenery-”

“Have you forgotten that the yak delegation is scheduled to show up on that same day?”

“Oh. Right.” How could I have forgotten? Their letter had arrived less than a week ago! “Um, we can probably do both, we’ll just have to reschedule the yaks-”

Pharynx facehoofed. “No. You don’t reschedule yaks, ever, under any condition! Just because I may be bored with nothing to do doesn’t mean we have to provoke a war with them!”

“I don’t get it. Why would rescheduling be a problem?”

“Because yaks are notoriously stubborn and easy to offend, and if you want a chance of peaceful relations with them, you’d better hope they never find out you wanted to dismiss them so you could go partying of all things.”

“Okay then… Do you think Spike will be offended if we don’t show up?”

“You’re the one he’s really inviting. I’m just baggage.”

“What?! I’m sure he wants to give you a chance!”

“After Crystal Empire?”

“Yes!”

“Whatever.”

“So, do you think he’ll be offended much?”

“He can grin and bear it. You’ve got royal duties, you can’t go off frolicking whenever you feel like it!”

So that was probably a yes, but Pharynx didn’t care to invest any more time and energy into the matter. I had to agree with him, though; I couldn’t abandon my duties in favor of something that sounded like leisure time! Spike would understand, right? So I wrote an apology letter to him, explaining the situation, and his reply a few days later stated it was alright, and that they’d reschedule the festival if they could so I’d manage to show up.

That didn’t make me feel much better. It was like the Crystal Faire all over again! Would we ever come to the point when one of us could invite the other for any random thing without worrying about complications?

---

“They’re coming!” Tarantula announced on the day in question, overlooking the wasteland from the edge of the throne room.

“Is Savage with them?”

“Yes, he seems unharmed for now.”

“Good,” Pharynx and I said in unison.

“Are you sure the food will be alright?” Psycho asked her. “The last thing we need is a fiasco like the one the ponies had with them a while ago!”

“Relax, they never complained while I cooked for them over there!”

“Just asking…”

“Would they really go to war over an imperfect breakfast?”

Pharynx rolled his eyes. “You asked that a hundred times already! Yes they would!”

Wonderful… How was I supposed to pull this off without infuriating them? They sounded worse than Pharynx, and that was an achievement in itself! Would he be able to handle them if the peaceful approach failed?

“Relax, Thorax,” Tarantula interjected. “They’re not that easily triggered! There’d have to be more than just breakfast, like disrespecting their mannerisms and customs-”

“-which we can’t guarantee won’t happen anyway no matter how much we’ve coached Thorax on the matter! No need to test those limits!”

“They’ve had their share of contact with other lands since opening their borders,” Tarantula insisted. I’m sure they’ve figured out how to behave!”

“Yeah, now that you mention it, Princess Cadance did mention at some point that yak delegates are usually reasonable enough…”

“To ponies, maybe,” Pharynx retorted. “They have no reason to be considerate to us after we spied on them! Why do you think they closed their borders in the first place?”

“You know we weren’t the only reason!” Psycho protested.

“Maybe not, but we made enough of a contribution. I don’t know why they decided to bother to talk to us instead of just plain attacking.”

“Must you always be so pessimistic?”

“The word is ‘cautious’, Psycho!”

“Um… shouldn’t we go down there and meet them?”

They both glared at me.

“I mean,” I continued, shuffling awkwardly, “as far as I know, it’s usually seen as a gesture of hospitality… Unless yaks see it differently and you guys forgot to mention?”

“No, they’re okay with it.”

“Okay, then…” I took in a breath and let it out slowly in a vain attempt to steady my nerves. “Let’s do this…”

Pharynx approached me as we flew down to the hive’s base. “You sure you can handle this?”

“Um… I think so…” That was a lie and we both knew it.

“I’ve got disguised soldiers posted everywhere. Do what you think will work, but if they start yelling ‘Yak smash!’, run away as fast as you can and let us deal with it.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat. “You really think that’ll happen?”

“Beats me. Our history doesn’t bode well, but then again, maybe Tarantula is right and the yaks have mellowed from exposure to ponies.”

We were at ground level by then and the yak delegation was only a couple of dozen steps away. It was an impressive sight; though Pharynx had briefly turned into one while helping me get ready for the meeting, I’d never before seen a real yak in person, let alone a herd of them! Every single one of them was a bit taller than me and much bulkier and with bigger horns… Yep, not intimidating at all…

Hadn’t Pharynx’s disguise been smaller than a real yak? Or was I imagining it?

Okay, relax, Thorax, it’ll be fine… they probably won’t stomp you to death for the slightest excuse-

“Changelings!” the biggest and most decorated of them exclaimed. That would be Prince Rutherford, right? The letter had said he was coming… “Yak want to speak to King Thorax!”

“Um. I am King Thorax.” I stepped forward, feeling self-conscious about using that title. “Welcome to the Changeling Kingdom!”

“Yak confused. Changelings not evil anymore? Changelings always evil!”

“Please accept my apologies in the name of all the changelings that wronged your kind! We are reformed now!”

“How yak know changeling not become evil again?”

“Um… I guess you’ll have to trust us… I can’t show you what goes on in every changeling’s head, but everyling has shared love and, in doing so, abandoned their hostile ways.” Mostly true, anyway… I hoped I could count on Pharynx not to undermine what I’d just said! “Refusing to share love is what made changelings evil, and blind loyalty to our former queen is what kept us from realizing it. We understand now.”

“And how changeling decide to share love?”

Did he mean me personally or all of us? “Um, I showed the rest of them how. I’ve always been pacifistic, but it took being deployed to invade Canterlot to make me realize there was a world in which I could thrive as I was, assuming I could get the ponies to accept me, which I later did. I lived in the Crystal Empire for a few months until Chrysalis abducted the pony princesses and Element Bearers, and coming to their rescue put me in the position to teach my kind the benefits of sharing love. Okay, I didn’t have much of a choice by then, as I was captured and about to be executed and it looked like the last opportunity I was ever going to get to help undo the damage my kind has caused-”

Turning his back on me, Prince Rutherford joined his entourage for a hushed debate. I just stood there, shifting nervously on my hooves, unsure how to proceed.

“Kjetil and Hallbjorg say pony princess and pink pony say same thing,” Rutherford finally announced. “Yak give chance to changelings now to show they good.”

“Thank you! May I introduce my brother Pharynx, also the head of security, my aide Psycho - don’t let the name deceive you, he’s quite normal - and my subjects Savage and Tarantula, who helped prepare the hive for your visit!”

“This Kjetil, Horwitz, Yakmina, Hallbjorg, Yngve, Asbjorn, and Jorunn.”

“It’s an honor to know you all! Would you like to see the hive, or would you rather eat first? Tarantula cooked some traditional yak dishes!”

“Changeling know cooking? Yak thought changeling not cook! Pony cook, and pony cook yak dishes bad!”

“Uh…”

“It’s okay, Thorax,” Tarantula interjected. “We agreed they have the right to know. Prince Rutherford, I know you won’t like to hear this, but please don’t hold it against Thorax! He has nothing to do with it! You see, I used to be an infiltrator deployed to Yakyakistan.”

“Why changeling not say?!” Rutherford lashed out at me. “Yak not want changeling spy!”

In the corner of my eye, I saw Pharynx tense up in anticipation of a fight. “She isn’t there anymore! I pulled every infiltrator back to the hive as soon as I took command!”

Rutherford glared at us for a moment, then turned to her. “What your yak name?”

“Britta.” She put on a disguise I assumed she’d used during deployment.

“Yak think changeling speak truth,” Asbjorn said. “Britta disappear one day, never found. Yak remember hear rumor Chrysalis defeated next day.”

Rutherford nodded. “Yak apologize. Yaks hungry, food sound good.”

We led them to a table full of peculiar meals that had been set up at the hive’s ground level. Rutherford took a bite of… something… and munched at it for a moment.

“This good,” he said eventually. “Not perfect, but good for changeling cooking. Yaks eat!”

The rest of them swarmed the table with more enthusiasm than a starved changeling hunting a pony in the old days, and all the plates were cleared within seconds!

“Are you sure you cooked enough of that?” I whispered to Tarantula.

“I thought I did, but now I’m starting to wonder,” she whispered back, watching wide-eyed as her hard work got rapidly chomped out of existence. “I’ve never seen them so hungry!”

Having let out a loud belch, Rutherford then announced he was ready for the tour. I led the whole herd around, much like I’d done with the buffalo, while Pharynx and the other drones kept close but not so close that they’d interfere. This went smoothly, except for the yaks stopping in their tracks upon stumbling into a hallway that echoed with the choir rehearsal, and swinging in silence to the music for a full hour until the rehearsal was done. The drones hadn’t even sung anything yak-related! Savage had mentioned that yaks were very serious about music, but I hadn’t realized how far it could go!

Eventually, we ended up in the throne room.

“Throne room not have roof,” Rutherford mused. “Weird.”

“It used to have one, but it collapsed during my… uh, showdown with Chrysalis.”

“Changeling that powerful?!”

“Not really… there were many of us there, and the force of everyling’s love energy combined did it. Not on purpose, though… I don’t think any of us realized it would happen!”

“Yaks strong,” he chuckled, “but changelings stronger.”

“I’m not sure that’s entirely true,” I said, partly to him, and partly to Pharynx, hoping to get him to suppress that triumphant grin that really had no place here!

“Not muscle strong, yak mean. Changeling strength turn evil to good! Yak see now! Yak want announce truce, if changeling agree.”

Changeling agreed, wholeheartedly, upon which Yngve and Jorunn pulled out their yovidaphones and started blasting away, and less than a minute later, a swarm of drones including some of Pharynx’s now-undisguised soldiers rushed to the throne room to see what all the stomping was about!

“Do you think we can still make it to Canterlot for that festival?” I asked Pharynx several hours later, after the yaks had left and he’d dismissed the soldiers and sent Savage and Tarantula to clean up.

“No,” he retorted. “Unless you want to help them sweep the streets and put away the decorations.”

“Aww…”

“Hey, you told them you weren’t coming. Why would they prolong the thing to wait for someone who has no intention of showing up?”

---

Dear Thorax,

You will not believe what happened. Unless you read it in a newspaper? (Do you even get newspapers in the hive?) Okay, given our track record, it’s not really a surprise in and of itself, as we’ve gotten used to villains messing with us by now, maybe even to the point that Twi would panic if another doesn’t pop out of somewhere for long enough because she’d be stuck between ‘is something wrong with us, things aren’t normally this peaceful’ and ‘things are too quiet, am I missing a disaster going on somewhere’ as soon as she comes to the realization or someone makes the mistake of mentioning in front of her that ‘it’s nice to have some peace and quiet after all this time’ and she’d go crazy trying to figure out where the catch is…

Where was I? Oh, right, the festival! It looked like everything was going fine - the decorations were set up, the food was there, the musicians just arrived, the ponies were starting to mingle - and then a bunch of these huge airships surrounded Canterlot and the whole city was attacked and this unicorn in charge of them said she was preparing the grounds for the Storm King and Celestia and Luna refused to surrender so she petrified them and Cadance, and almost Twilight too but we managed to escape! This unicorn - Tempest - chased us to the other end of the world! We managed to lose her in some dump named Klugetown and moved on to Mount Aris and accidentally ended up in Seaquestria, and the seaponies refused to help at first but we almost convinced them, except that Twi blew it and we got kicked out, and the other girls were angry at her so they argued and Twi left on her own and Tempest captured her, and we went after them, and by then the seaponies changed their minds and decided to help too so they turned back into hippogriffs, which they originally were before the Storm King invaded Mount Aris and they had to flee, so now we fought the Storm King and his armies together, and he got petrified and shattered in the end and his army scattered and Tempest changed her mind and decided to help the ponies after all! Did I mention she was with him only because he promised to restore her broken horn?

Whew. Some day, huh? The festival was still held, only three days after the intended date, and it was pretty good even though we had no time to fix the decorations and bake more cookies. No, not even Pinkie, even though she did her best! Anyway, I’m beat. Going to bed now. Just wanted to let you know I’m fine. I’ll tell you all about it in detail later.

How did the meeting with the yaks go? Hope they didn’t smash your throne!

Spike

“We could have still made it to Canterlot, Pharynx!” I exclaimed, showing him the letter. “We could have helped them!”

“What…” He took the letter and read it; his aura was insanely red-hot by the time he shoved it back to me. “Argh… I vowed to Storm King I’d defeat him the next time we battled, whether or not I had the advantage of Chrysalis’ magic-suppressing throne, and now these ponies went ahead and killed him! I was supposed to do that, darn it!”

“Hold on… you know him?”

“Knew him, Thorax. He’s dead, if this dragon of yours is telling the truth. He attacked the hive years ago, or tried to, anyway. Chrysalis’ throne messed up his airships’ engines and they crash-landed. It wasn’t hard to chase him and his goons off, especially since they’d just finished pillaging the abandoned Mount Aris and looking for the missing hippogriffs. I learned that part later from the infiltrators deployed there at the time. The squad spent over a week sweeping the island and Storm King didn’t even let them sleep during the ordeal! Maybe that exhaustion was part of the reason why they failed to steer the airships out of the suppression field and restart the engines, too… Nevermind. The point is, they were easy pickings, but we basically let most of them go because their weak love wasn’t worth straining the slime glands to cocoon them. The few we did catch was just to prove a point. We basically showed them mercy and the Storm King was livid, as if fighting on unsuppressed turf would have made much of a difference! So I vowed that, if we ever crossed paths again, I’d teach him a lesson I was too lazy to teach him right away.” He sighed. “Didn’t expect to be missing in action when lecture time came…”

“I… don’t exactly condone killing but… you couldn’t have known he was there…”

“I might have! Your pals got all the way from Canterlot to Klugetown! They had to have passed near the hive! Why didn’t we see them, and why didn’t they ask us for help instead of venturing twice as far?”

“Maybe they thought we were still entertaining the yaks and didn’t want to intrude…”

“...maybe. Sounds like them.” He was silent for a moment. “You think we failed to notice them because we were entertaining the yaks?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible, especially since the yaks were here for a while, but… maybe they got lost and didn’t actually go near enough to the hive? Or maybe they teleported and simply skipped over us?”

“Again, we were closer and they’re already friends with you, and there hasn’t been much contact between ponies and hippogriffs for a while before Storm King, or our infiltrators would have reported it. Why go to complete strangers?”

“Maybe they didn’t realize you had experience with Storm King and somehow know the hippogriffs did?”

“Eh, it’s possible. We didn’t exactly share our military history with them.”

“Then maybe it’s time to change that, at least to cover the basics if you’re not okay with revealing everything. They’re our allies and deserve to know what kind of threats we can help with. Not so you can kill them to prove a point, though.”

He huffed. “I’ll think about it.”

“Thanks.” I started to leave.

“Hey, Thorax?”

“Yes?”

“If these ponies have such a knack for attracting trouble… maybe I should tag along every time you visit them.”

Comments

[CorporateColonel]

Well that's one explanation for why they weren't there XD

[KaylaBlues]

“If these ponies have such a knack for attracting trouble… maybe I should tag along every time you visit them.”

This would be quite interesting (or for me, atleast) if Tempest Shadow or Rainbow Dash (preferably Tempest, cuz I personally ship Tempynx) were there

[Screw]

I think the main take away from the Yak episode was that the ponies tried imitating Yak tradition and the Yaks saw it as offensive if it is different.

I would have thought Ratherford would give a better remark since their infiltrator made it. But I guess actions speak louder than words since they didn't get offended by the cooking.

I guess Pharynx overlooked that the Storm King's army could have went around the badlands. They were probably planning on surrounding the Hive after Equestria is down, else they're going to attract the Royal Guards and the princesses.

I really want to see how much Pharynx can tolerate the ponies constantly. His likes, dislikes, wants, and duties are always influx. You'll never know what he'll be like even with the same crowd.