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A Beginning635 words
Bynn The Breaker2,051 words
The Crystal Shard1,743 words
The Beginning, Somewhere Else.1,581 words
Who Knows Where?1,154 words
The Queen & The Stranger4,172 words
And Her Alliance1,318 words
Organization2,235 words
A Day In The Life2,258 words
Somewhere Else1,729 words

Organization

The Queen had left via the sky-way in the night the other day, having gone out presumably to return with the other changelings she had mentioned, more accurately the ones Rucks had alluded to needing as helpers for the project.

The Kid had made himself useful and Rucks useless since not long after waking up, he decided to put up the guardrails Rucks had always talked about putting up. It'd been months since he'd said that, much more since he's ever lifted a hammer.
A bit of physical work and some spirits from the distillery made him full of vitality just like he ought to be while he tried to build some of the lost muscle.
Zia had once been in a mood during the beginning of all this, but it wore off quickly enough. The girl seemed happy to just have someone new to talk to, maybe even sing to. The mundane familiarity that had grown among the four survivors seemed to have made her anxious, for some reason. Possibly just the worry of no other survivors out there.

Next up was Zulf, the snow-skinned gentleman, dressed in a menagerie of colorful stripes on a flared suit. Once an ambassador for Ura-Cael relations, now a warmongering pacifist.

Contradictory, isn't it?

He'd felt varying degrees of shame and anger to himself and others after he sent his people after the Bastion, but it didn't matter much in the present. Finally being able to speak up for once, Zulf had quickly come to rationalize with Rucks about how reckless it was to bargain the value of life with a core, not to mention being excluded from the relations during their initial dealings.
Either he actually started caring again, or he was just embittered by not being able to do his previous job when a diplomatic situation had suddenly shown up, that could be solved without violence. After that, he locked himself up in his precious shrine.

That man made no sense sometimes.

...

It was midday when Chrysalis returned, with three squadrons of changelings trailing closely behind her. She was confused to be met with the sight of a single survivor playing a melody in a foreign tongue accompanied by the trill of strings. She hadn't had the faintest idea what was being said, but something in it stirred her up, made her crawl with the anxiety of adrenalin coursing in her flesh, invoking the same feelings she felt before her successful take-over of Canterlot. The other changelings seemed to fair a little worse in controlling themselves, subtly feeding on emotion in the air as their wings buzzed faintly.

The singer's voice trailed off, and opened her eyes to the sight of the Changeling queen, and with more changelings behind her than what people the Ura had sent in the initial siege of the bastion. The shock wore off and was filled with respect as she gave a silent bow in her puffy blue dress.
There was little to be said between the two if there was anything to be said at all. All she asked for was where Rucks might be, and left shortly after, leaving the twelve changelings in the presence of the singer.

Zia didn't exactly try to ignore the changelings, but she also didn't want to be rude and just gawk at them, so she tried to fine-tune her harp a little bit by playing something short, strumming it idly for a while in a warm tune. What was being talked about with Rucks and Queen Chrysalis probably wasn't going to involve her for a while, assuming Rucks decides to make it an open discussion with everyone instead of leaving them all in the dark.
Her fingers drifted across the strings as she felt a hum form up, and shortly die out when she couldn't shake a strange nagging feeling, that nagging feeling being the realization that she was being watched.

As much as she thought them to be strange, thinking on it, they probably thought she was just as weird.
It was a mildly comforting thought, but the staring was making her fingers lock up, especially when she realized she had been encircled in a crowd of the black-shelled beings. The lack of a pupil and instead the sapphire-blue insectoid eyes made her shrink a little. When she thought of new tenants she was expecting something that looked a little less cold.
Considering she'd reared far more frightening creatures, she wasn't scared because of their appearance, she was just nervous because none of them had spoken a word, instead just stared at her expectantly, completely oblivious to her inner turmoil.

"Could you maybe..." Zia rested the harp on her legs as she gestured with her freed hands in front of her. The crowd behind her formed up into a bigger one in front of her, now sitting down. "Ah. Thank you." She said awkwardly.

No response, just an expectant stare.

What what was she supposed to do? Sing?

Wait. Did she leave me here thinking me of some type of entertainer?

Taking a deep breath, she resisted the urge to think about punching something. She'd grown just a smidgen more violent over her time surviving the great big mess the new world was.

She started humming again, closing her eyes trying to lose herself again in her natural rhythm, the opening to an Ura war song, this time around translated to something her audience could understand.

"I dig my hole, you build a wall..."

"I'll dig my hole, you build a wall."

"One day that wall is gonna fall."

...

" Gon' build that city on a hill."

" Gon' build that city on a hill~"

" One day those tears are gonna spill~!"

Rucks sat somewhere in a room underneath the Bastion, surrounded by four oaken walls he'd been busy scrawling something on paper with nary a thought considering anything outside his work, or until the door was opened up by the Kid, the Queen stepping in shortly behind him. The Queen had originally been expecting him top-side, so naturally, she had to go looking for him.

Now was the time for a more proper discussion, just as soon as he had all the others with him. There likely wasn't going to be a way to change any details, by this point it was just to clarify with the four surviving humans.

"Guess it's time to find Zulf too, isn't it?"

"Correct," Chrysalis replied. Not wanting to keep everyone waiting the trio would walk through the halls, mainly being led around by Kid, until Rucks had taken lead to knock on another door. It was circular, fashioned similarly to the traditional hatches on Ura dens before they'd all been ripped up. He knocked three times and waited.
"So, while we wait, is it just you? Or have you brought others along?" Rucks asked calmly, his eyes glancing to the Kid.
The Kid was always unreadable, it was hard to say if any of this affected him, maybe he was just built too tough to fall to anything, or just too tough to fall on the outside only.
"I recall you needing a larger workforce, so I brought some." Was the swift reply. "Really now?" Rucks cocked a brow, and Kid just darted his eyes to focus on the queen. Then the door opened from the inside and out stumbled Zulf, dressed in puffy striped clothing in an arrangement of blues and yellows all striped and layered atop each other, with the only solid being the brown vest he wore, any evidence of his legs were erased by how much the coat dropped down and flared out, like a strange dress. Zulf blinked and took a step back.

"...You must be Queen Chrysalis." Zulf gave an effortless and shallow bow, "Rucks mentioned you."
The Changeling Queen gave a side-ways glance to Rucks before the Kid tapped the bottom of his hammer on the wooden floor. "We need to find Zia." The kid spoke, quiet, yet firm and loud.
The queen's wings buzzed slightly, but nothing else came from her. Rucks was the first to speak up again. "She's probably upstairs, which reminds me, you didn't tell me where you dropped off the workforce you were talking about." Rucks' tone hardly strayed from his usual baritone rhythm, if just a little more pointy and a tad lighter.

"Of course," She swayed a bit of green mane off to the side dismissively. "They're with..."

"But now you've got nowhere to run."

"So build that wall, and build it, strong cause-"

"-We'll be there, be-fore too long~"

"Zia?" Zulf said quietly, surprised. Though it was hard to tell what he was supposed to be surprised by, the number of bug-ponies on the bastions doorstep, or the fact Zia had probably been singing to them this whole time. She seemed to be handling the whole strangeness of the situation well enough though.
Chrysalis on the other hand seemed to have something similar to a proud and curiously calculating look smeared on her face, though to what, nobody knew. "That is correct, and it would seem she handled them well." Queen Chrysalis flew off towards the swarm, while the humans had dispersed to find a more open area to handle the talking in.

Zia had kept her eyes shut, only daring to crack them open once she heard the sound of dozens of hooves trotting off somewhere previously unseen. "I suppose I should thank you, but we'll have time for that later." Chrysalis gave a mockingly saccharine grin, and flew off, only pausing halfway to gesture to them to come, in a less than patient manner.

All of them had made their way to a long table made from a simple oak, with benches and round bar seats all around. If there was anything to make the meeting even slightly royal, it would be the purple patterned cloth that lay onto the length of the table, giving it a homely feel. Rucks glanced up to look around, noticing that all of the new tenants had grouped up around each of them in fours.

A homely meeting with some severely extended family.

"I am trusting Rucks told most of you of our deal, but I will repeat for everyone here. I am only here because I caught wind of your plight before the ponies discovered you. The result of which brings that one" A hoof was raised towards the younger white-haired human- "back up on their feet. In exchange, I require you to quarter the ones I've brought here as the necessary workforce for assisting Rucks with his development, protection, and the child's excursion to recover another 'Core'."

"Protection?" Zia was the first to speak up. "So. The ponies then, they're hostile?"

"Correct. Even if you hadn't taken that Crystal Heart, they would have attacked you. The only reason you stand here and not petrified would be as a result of the so-called 'Kid's swift action and the casting of a perception spell that has hidden you from their pegasi scouts."

"No chance of peace?" Zulf said briskly.

"They'd offer the hoof of friendship after a siege, just to indoctrinate you." The Queen said venomously. "That is if you're still standing by the end of it."

Zulf was thoughtful, Zia was merely being attentive, same as the kid, and Rucks... Rucks was at another end of the table, quietly waiting.
"If there's nothing else to ask about the ponies for now, I'll talk about the development that Chrysalis brought up." Withdrawing from a pouch was a teal schematic drawn in glimmering emerald green inks and the stark white contrast of lunar caustic. Illegible to the changelings, to Zia, to the Kid. Rucks and Zulf though got the basic understanding of what was being shown with all the fancy drawings.

"Chrysalis wants her own vaunted safe-haven, as well as a core. It's why the Kid's being sent out again. See, the ponies decided to shake things up in her land some long time ago, drank up their waters and dried their forests. She want's to see if it can be brought back, and a hope for her people." Rucks sighed, and Zulf glowered at him. "Alongside that, we'll all be getting some material to work with in expanding our own Bastion, as well as the construction of another."

Chrysalis abruptly butted in shortly after Rucks ended his piece. "I have brought several groups of changelings to work alongside all of you. While I am away attending to matters in my own hive, I am appointing a single group to some of you, and leaving four strictly under my command, for protection of this place, that is not to leave unless absolutely necessary."

All four humans at the table nodded their head. "Good. Four drones will work for you, Rucks. As for you child, I am placing partial command of the four sentinels garrisoned here in the event of a siege, while giving you your own group to bring with you on Excursions. I trust you will not disappoint." Four sets of wings buzzed and settled near Rucks, while another eight changelings fell in line behind the Kid. "As for you, tell me your name."

"Zia, Miss Chrysalis."

"Good. As of now, I leave the remaining four under your guidance with reparation's in your home. Do with them as you wish."

Author's Note:

Whoops! You weren't supposed to see this chapter yet! At the time of re-release this chapter should be 100% done!

On a side-note, here are images for all of the survivors in case my descriptions weren't enough. All Artwork is part of Supergiant, and tumblr user Chancekey,

Zia & The Anklegator