Chapter 6
The soldiers were all full of questions when I returned from dinner with the Hive Marshal: ‘what is she like?’, ‘how do Changelings eat?’, ‘did they tell you what they’ll do with us?’, and ‘how do we know you’re the real Prince Blueblood?’. The opportunity for some rest and some real food, in comparison to the weeds and biscuits that made up most of our diet on Hill 70, during the intervening time between my departure and my return appeared to have buoyed their spirits somewhat, or at least made them more inquisitive. I was tired beyond all measure, but I did my best to answer their questions, and proved the latter by describing in considerable detail my preferred recipe for a dry martini, which I don’t think the common soldiers quite followed but it seemed to assuage their fears that I might have been replaced.
Square Basher, however, continued to sulk silently in the corner of the tent, and though I thought that I ought to check on her, I knew that the tough old battle-axe would be more insulted by the insinuation that she required the help of another pony, especially from an officer, and could generally be trusted to get over this damned funk on her own merits. As callous as it seems, and though I held an appropriate amount of respect for a mare who could likely crush my skull between her hooves like an apple if she so desired, she was welcome to throw her life away in a ridiculous and foalish show of defiance against an enemy that held us entirely at their mercy, just so long as I didn’t have to be involved in it beyond writing the obligatory letter of condolence to her next of kin. If she had any, that is, as I and most other stallions in the regiment had long suspected that she somehow materialised out of thin air one day as some sort of avatar of blind militarism. The problem, however, was the prospect of any escape attempt reflecting badly on the rest of us, and our hosts deciding that we were undeserving of preferential treatment and we were better off languishing in those horrid green capsules.
We were all kept there overnight, where I had the first night of mostly restful sleep since I was last in Canterlot. Primitive bedrolls and blankets were provided, but for all they were worth we might as well have been sleeping on the bare ground instead. The night was punctuated, however, by intermittent sounds of distant artillery fire, which served as a continual reminder that the war was never too far away. Other than that, and the faint sounds of other activity unseen beyond the tent, it felt unusually and unsettlingly quiet for the amount of Changelings I had seen outside. I recall lying awake between moments of sleep, and staring out at the dark, shadowy shapes in the tent and trying to count them to ensure that nopony had taken complete leave of their senses and decided that Square Basher’s mad schemes might be worth a try. It kept my mind off contemplating my fate, at least.
The next morning came, as it always did thanks to my dear old Aunt. No sooner had the sun peeked through the gaps in the tent cloth and the flap when a Changeling in some position of authority, their equivalent of an officer I’d imagine, blundered in with his two guards and nearly stepped on a sleeping pony. He announced, in a bored tone that implied that he had drawn the shortest straw, if their kind even had straws, and earned the unwanted duty of speaking to us, that we were to be evacuated immediately and taken ‘south’. All sundry questions from my fellow prisoners, each more than a little upset at having been woken up so early, were ignored as he then stormed out with such a speed that his guards struggled to keep up with him.
Following that odd display, we were given a quick breakfast of more hay, of such quantity that I was starting to get a little curious of where it was coming from and why a race that lives off love had quite so much. As I shovelled the hay into my mouth, using my hooves as I still lacked the use of my horn, I made a quick headcount of our small party of prisoners, and was relieved to find that nopony had escaped, successfully or otherwise, in the night. There was no tea to be had, despite the loud demands of the soldiers who, having survived Hill 70, appeared to have become emboldened to the point where they felt they could tease their heavily armed and armoured keepers like unruly schoolfoals with teachers. Without their customary tea, these ponies from Trottingham were bound to get even more bolshie. The water that was provided, however, was clear, cool, and refreshing, at least.
We were not given very long to enjoy our breakfast, as basic as it was, for the unhappy little officer and his two guards returned shortly and demanded in rather petulant terms that we leave and follow him immediately. I supposed that all of the manners in their kind had been unfairly concentrated in the form of Hive Marshal Chela, and it wasn’t much, as I stumbled out of the tent and into the early morning sun.
Now outside, I could see that the drones were hard at work dismantling the camp for transport, and true to their names they were rather industrious at it. I watched, while we were left to mill about aimlessly under the careful watch of our guards, as they worked with precise coordination to bring down the tents and pile up wagons with supplies and ammunition; it was enough to make one wonder if there was truly something to that old, long-discredited ‘hive mind’ theory that still occasionally resurfaces even to this day. The comparison to those sorts of social insects is intended as a compliment, and I’m certain that the average drone would have taken it as such.
“Prince Blueblood!” I heard Chela’s voice before I saw her. She emerged from the scurrying mass of working drones, effortlessly slipping past individuals darting this way and that to attend to whatever tasks were required of them. “I trust you slept well? Good. I’d have offered you and your ponies proper beds, but… well, there is still a war on. Come along, we need to be out of here before your Market Garden catches us!”
There was very little chance of that, given Market Garden’s previous reluctance to advance with any particular sense of urgency. I was ambivalent about that, as while there remained the possibility of a heroic rescue and hopefully another extended convalescence to deal with the physical and emotional trauma of capture, equally probable scenarios in which I’d be accidentally killed or if Chela decided that if she couldn’t have me then nopony else could still presented themselves. Besides, I had a tolerable holiday in the Changeling lands to look forward to, assuming that their word was to be trusted, that is.
Our guards directed us to follow. The sea of drones parted to allow Chela and her entourage, we prisoners included, easy passage. The Hive Marshal seemed to want me by her side for whatever reason, presumably to show off to the common soldiery that she had captured the infamous Black Prince, Equestrian hero and scourge of the Hives and what not. Cannon Fodder adopted his usual space just behind and to the side of my shoulder, and the drones gave him a suitably wide berth - I assumed that his aroma was just as offensive to the Changelings as it was to ponies.
As for my aide, he seemed rather more ‘clingy’ than usual; though he remained his typically phlegmatic self, taking the entire ordeal on Hill 70 and his capture with an enviable sense of sangfroid that would have astonished the Iron Duke, after my peculiar dinner with Hive Marshal Chela he seemed even more reluctant to leave my side. Though he didn’t say it, and indeed he said precious little even by his own standards, he seemed to be telling me in his own way that whatever happened I could still rely on him. It was a great comfort, for despite everything that was going on, the madness of the war and the uncertain future that lay before me, there was at least one singular constant that I could rely upon in this world in the form of a devoted, unflappable, smelly little unicorn whose horn didn’t work the way it should.
Square Basher, too, decided to stay close by my side, but seemingly out of a desire to keep an eye on me than to lend me any sort of physical or moral support. I would catch her staring at me when she thought that I wasn’t looking, and then instantly snap her head away when the itchy sensation of being watched proved too much for me and I had to glance in her direction. She kept her expression deliberately neutral, and her vocalisations seemed to consist mainly of approving or disapproving grunts, but I would imagine that she resented me for being quite so ready to give in and start chumming up with Chela.
Well, it was for her own good, and she would just have to get over it if she wanted to survive her time in Changeling captivity until the end of the war, which didn’t seem that far off now that we had a Field Marshal who might motivate Market Garden to hurry up. I certainly was not about to let her get in the way of at least a tolerable stay with this Dorylus fellow Chela had told me about, though I’d have to pay the appropriate amount of lip service to keep her from doing something stupid to spoil it for everypony.
We moved on through the camp with our escort, and passed by another field hospital. There, the wounded were arrayed outside the large tent in much the same manner as the other one we were dragged past the day before. Rows upon rows of them, lying on the ground and stacked together with little space between each of them. Some were bandaged with stained rags, while others had their grievous wounds still laid open and exposed to all manner of vermin to infest the ruined flesh. A few were still conscious, but only barely, rolling their heads limply from side to side or grasping their hooves up at nothing before them. These ones made odd little chirruping noises, like a cat at a bird it can’t reach, as we walked on past.
The sight was appalling enough already, even after the first time, but what made it more awful now was the presence of those drones wearing ichor-stained aprons. I had initially taken them to be doctors, medics, nurses, or some other equivalent medical-type professional whose remit lay firmly within saving lives. Yet, morbid curiosity, with its emphasis firmly on the ‘morbid’, directed me to observe the proceedings. These aproned drones moved in pairs, one carrying an array of fearsome-looking equipment in a threadbare canvas bag by his teeth, and this one followed the other up and down the lines. At each ‘patient’, they would stop, and the lead drone would cast his scrutinising compound eye over them. I am not sure why he bothered checking, as the result was always the same each time: the doctor would take what looked like a large hammer from the tool bag and use it to drive a spike directly through the patient’s chest with an appropriate splatter of ichor added to their aprons, then the poor thing let out a sharp, pained gasp and his body shuddered and fell limp. The doctor would then move onto the next wounded drone and repeat the process, over and over. Those who were still somehow conscious must have known what was coming, for I saw the fear evident even in their alien, compound eyes. Some tried to resist, but due to their injuries their weakly flailing hooves were easily subdued and they were thus dispatched like the rest.
I managed to keep my revulsion to myself, albeit barely, just to ease these next few uncomfortable moments, but my fellow prisoners were not so tactful. They exchanged shocked and horrified mutters with one another, and though the guards and Chela had managed to ignore the increasingly angry comments, there was finally one that they could not ignore.
“Monsters,” spat one of the soldiers, a young chap no older than seventeen years old. Chela shot him a look over her shoulder, but otherwise ignored him, until he spoke again: “You heard me, monster.”
Chela stopped in her tracks and then rounded on the young stallion. There was a bit of a commotion as our escorts weren’t expecting this and collided with one another. She glared at him, but there seemed to be little malice in her expression, only what looked like disappointment. To his credit, the spotty little stallion, barely taller than her breast, met the Purestrain’s stare with one of his own.
“You disagree with destroying drains on our society?” she asked, quite plainly.
“It’s wrong,” said the stallion, with the sort of smug flippancy that only a teenager could muster. He didn’t look at her, and it was a gesture not out of fear but of contempt.
“A crippled drone who cannot work or fight is a burden on the Hive, taking what is already scarce and giving nothing in return.”
The stallion shrugged, but otherwise said nothing. He looked away from Chela, apparently finding something else happening off in the far distance much more interesting. This was already feeling rather tense and awkward, and I saw our accompanying guards tightening their hooves around their bayonet-tipped muskets, so I decided to chime in with an equally flippant, “It’s still wrong.”
Chela aimed an arched eyebrow at me. “I’m surprised, sir. We are at war, and your side has devised increasingly deadly weapons and magic to do this to our loyal drones.” She pointed at the sea of dead and soon-to-be-dead drones; another one, gasping for air and babbling what sounded strangely like a prayer, let out a chilling death rattle and fell silent. “And you would show compassion to those same drones you have mutilated and maimed. I don’t understand it.”
“And that’s why you’ll lose,” I said. “Because you don’t understand what Equestria’s fighting for.”
To be fair, I struggled to understand this irrational feeling of compassion to these wretches myself at times, but Chela didn’t need to know that. As my fellow ponies voiced their approval with jeers at their bewildered Changeling captors, her gaze narrowed into a squint, then she shook her head and muttered something about how strange ponies are and carried on walking. A few menacing jabs in our direction with bayonet tips from our ever-watchful guards encouraged us to follow along, and so we did.
Much of the camp from this point on had already been cleared away by the industrious drones, though they left a great deal of detritus behind. The tents, stores, supplies, and so on had been packed up and loaded onto a series of crude wagons pulled by the larger and stronger-looking individuals, but anything that they did not deem essential, including their own wounded and cripplied drones, had to be discarded and disposed of. They had decided that the most effective way to dispose of such things, be they piles of rubbish or fresh corpses, was by burning them. We passed a series of large pits that had been hastily dug into the hard, dry earth, each filled to the rim with twisted, still-bleeding bodies of drones and all manner of assorted bits and pieces. These were then doused in oil and set alight. Hot white and yellow flames licked over the contorted bodies, and great plumes of roiling black smoke rose into the sky, no doubt visible to our forces atop the hills they had just spent the last week squabbling over. My skin smarted from the heat as we walked by.
The smell of burning flesh, regardless of the species, is not something easily forgotten; it is a distinct and striking stench that will linger within the back of one’s own mind, and will sit there until it is once again disturbed by even the slightest whiff of smoke and instantly evoke the memories associated with it. I’d more than had my fill by that point, and forced myself to look away. However, that could not stop the images of burning drones from flaring in my mind as we passed.
A few tents and stores still remained amidst the desolation, however, and I observed the drones busying themselves around them. One fiddled with a few boxes of grain, and I soon worked out that he was filling one box with gunpowder, while another drone set up a crude trip-wire around it. Traps, of course; it was just like their cowardly kind to resort to such measures when they’re losing.
Our procession carried on slowly downhill, away from the camp and on into Natalensis Hive. Chela was rather quiet after our brief conversation, except for issuing orders to the swarms of staff officers who each trotted up and demanded direction, and whom I identified by a series of strange markings branded onto their chest chitin. My fellow prisoners had become rather more subdued after what they had witnessed, compared with earlier this morning, and any conversation between them was quiet, blunt, and stilted. The fellow with the hoof in a sling struggled a little with the amount of walking that he was expected to do, but he soldiered on, limping along and doggedly insisting that he didn’t need the help offered by his friends.
As for Natalensis Hive, it resembled how I would imagine Virion Hive would look if the formidable city walls had been removed and the densely contained hovels within were allowed to spill out into the surrounding countryside. A great sprawling mass of these lop-sided homes made out of pale grey mud bricks, all arranged in a mad road system that I suspected was designed to thoroughly confuse any attacking army, but was really due to a lack of concern from their Changeling overlords for the niceties of proper city planning. The tallest structure was merely a few storeys high, and it looked as though actual care and attention went into its construction. It was a square, squat tower, though it could only be called such by comparing it to the meagre structures around it, and from a flagpole on its roof the black flag with the green flame fluttered in the early morning breeze.
There were native ponies lining the streets, watching us, and when we Equestrians passed them by they stared at us as though we were of an entirely different species. They were of much the same stock as those I had briefly ruled over in Virion Hive; having lived under the cruel hoof of Changeling oppression, reduced to the status of mere crops for their uncaring overlords, they were thin, emaciated little wretches, on average a hoof shorter than most of us. Their expressions were blank and hollow, as though they lacked the energy to convey emotion, if they still had any. And there were hundreds of them, filling the gaps between their filthy hovels.
As we neared the tower I began to hear Scarabeus’ voice amplified and made tinny by a loud hailer. The street, if the narrow gap between two lines of those crumbling little homes could be called that, opened up into a square which was sparsely filled with the native ponies. Their gaze was focused up at the roof of the tower, and following them I could see Scarabeus himself standing atop it and shouting through a hollow cone:
“...are not your friends! Do not believe their lies! The Equestrians bring nothing but chaos, violence, and terror! They will make you all into slaves for Celestia, that immortal monster in the form of a pony who grows even fatter on the plunder of this unjust war! But do not fear, my little ponies, for we, your guardians and protectors, will soon return! Resist the invaders! Offer them no aid, but defy them with all your might! Those of you who hold true to the Queen shall be generously rewarded, and traitors will be punished severely. For the Queen is the Hive and the Hive is the Queen, and she will lead us to final victory!”
The applause that followed was loud, and I could feel the earth tremble beneath my hooves, but truly it was half-hearted and forced. I can tell when such things are insincere; Faust knows I’ve had to develop that keen sense over the years with my disastrous early royal public appearances, and this was the most forced that I had ever seen. The armed Changeling drones interspersed within the small crowd of ponies, whom I noticed to be watching the ponies more than the speaker, likely had something to do with it. How many more were hidden in plain sight amongst them I had no way of knowing, though I wished for the use of my horn back so I might reveal them with one of the few spells I’ve truly mastered.
The comment about my dear old Auntie ‘Tia confused me slightly, but I’d spotted a faded propaganda poster pasted on the side of a crumbling mud brick wall. It portrayed a crude caricature of said alicorn, with her flanks drawn overly large to a grotesquely exaggerated degree, even by her own generous proportions, shovelling a mountain of cake into her mouth while starving foals, Changelings and ponies alike, looked on and wept. On the other side of the picture was Queen Chrysalis, made to look so kind and beneficent that I almost did not recognise her, offering to share her cake, while a very angry Princess Luna, clad in the same rainment as Nightmare Moon, emerged directly out of Celestia’s shadow to slap her cake out of her hooves. As propaganda went, it was not particularly subtle, but the amount of care and attention the ‘artist’, as if propaganda can ever be considered an artform, had put into drawing Princess Celestia’s oversized rear end made one consider if he was trying to express a desire that his society strongly disapproved of.
[That infamous poster is not the most flattering portrait of me, but neither is it the least.]
The applause went on for far longer than any natural and spontaneous outburst of praise ought to, and Scarabeus stood there at the top of the tower basking in what he must have thought was the genuine adoration of the crowd. He puffed his chest, tilted his head back far back, and thrust out his lower lip, nodding appreciatively with a smugness so intense it was a wonder his skull hadn’t cracked open trying to contain it. Then, however, he spotted me moving with our small group through the square, and pointed his ungainly slab of a hoof in my direction.
“Behold the Black Prince!” he continued, and all eyes turned to me. “Their so-called Prince of Blood, nephew to the hated tyrant Princess Celestia. See that he is merely a pony, as mortal as the rest of them! See that we have captured the butcher of Virion Hive, and will bring him in chains to our Queen to face true Changeling justice!”
The ponies didn’t react, besides looking around at each other and their Changeling handlers as though waiting for some sort of instruction of just what to do. The sight of hundreds of pairs of eyes, mostly sunken and hollow, devoid of life and vitality, was rather unsettling, so I merely slipped back on that old default standby that any royal pony relies upon in any awkward situation. I smiled politely, waved with a slow and slight motion of my hoof, and said cheerfully, “Hello.”
A visible ripple went through the crowd, like a stone dropped into a still lake. There was some quiet murmuring, though I couldn’t quite make it out given their debased language. I don’t know what kind of propaganda they had been force-fed about me, likely terribly unflattering but I’m certain that I’ve been called far worse by better creatures in my time, but I imagined that it bore about as much resemblance to reality as, well, the Equestrian propaganda about me. At least pretending to be a ‘normal’ pony, as far as one of my regal stature could possibly stoop to, might help to at least call into question whatever nefarious pictures they had painted.
I turned to the nearest native pony, an older mare who was probably a decade or two younger than her wizened, wrinkled, grey face would otherwise imply, and employed that classic cliche that served me so well through awkward and uncomfortable conversations with overawed common ponies: “And what do you do?”
I never found out, even if she could understand basic Ponish (which further begged the question of whether they could understand Scarabeus’ hateful screed in the first place), as the guards saw fit to spoil my moment by seizing me by my upper forelegs and dragging me away on my limp hindlegs. Upon reaching the end of the ‘street’, they decided that I could walk under my own power after all and unceremoniously dropped me back on all-fours. The rest of Scarabaeus' speech seemed a little more stilted after that, though I did not hear the end of it as we were all hurried along rather quickly behind Chela. Still, I had my harmless fun at their expense and I felt considerably happier as a result; the Changelings took themselves far too seriously, I thought, especially Purestrains like Scarabeus, which merely opened themselves up to even more ridicule.
We were ferried through more nameless streets, some so cramped that we could only slip through in single file while others so wide that we could have all walked side-by-side if the mood took us. I could smell burning in the air, but mercifully not that of flesh; another dark pillar of black smoke rose into the air somewhere in the distance, obscured by the buildings all around us.
“That would be the food stores,” said Chela, when I pointed out with some concern that part of the city was on fire. “Hay, grain, oats - everything needed to keep our ponies fed. We can’t let any of that fall into the hands of the enemy, can we?”
“What about the ponies still in the city?” I asked. “I’m surprised you’re just going to let us waltz in and liberate them.”
Chela smiled, and I didn’t much like that expression. “Equestria can feed them, then, if Market Garden can get here in time. Two-and-a-half thousand ponies live here, aside from the few we can afford to take with us, and I know that you’ll drop everything just to take care of them because you did precisely that at Virion Hive. Meanwhile, I’ll regroup for a counter-attack while your soldiers are too busy handing out candy bars to little foals instead of fighting a war.”
[The scorched earth policy instituted by Queen Chrysalis after the fall of Virion Hive was only partially followed by officers in the field during this point of the war, where it was commonly believed that decisive counter-attacks would quickly reclaim the land lost to the Equestrians and thus make the policy a waste. As the war worsened and more fanatical elements replaced more sensible officers, the policy was followed with increasing fervour. Parts of the Badlands are still uninhabitable by sapient creatures to this day as a result.]
“This is hardly selling me on the idea that your Queen has our best interests at heart,” I said, passing a small family huddled together in the misshapen doorway of their crumbling hovel. I stopped to look at them, and to peer past the bewildered, vacant faces to see their squalid living room. I couldn’t imagine ponies living under such conditions, even after having lived in a hole in the ground for a week.
“I can understand your trepidation,” said Chela, pausing in her stride to watch me in the manner of somepony waiting for their dog to stop sniffing around a lamppost, “but you have my word as an officer and a lady that you will be treated well, and your fellow soldiers too.”
An adage about ladies not needing to self-declare as such immediately sprang to my mind, but I managed to hold it back. “I mean the common ponies.”
“Your concern for them is touching, but prey animals are much better off under servitude. It is their natural place, after all.” There was a hint, and only a hint, of irritation in her refined voice; I was wasting time with these inane questions, which could have been better spent on military matters that were of far more vital importance. While I would be the first to correct other ponies who seem to imagine that the entire course of the war and indeed Equestrian history was down to my own actions and not those of the ponies I happened to be around, I do like to think that, in some small way, these delays that I was inflicting upon Chela’s tight schedule contributed to our final victory in this campaign. “Besides, they already serve your Princesses, but they will find greater meaning in serving us.”
“They don’t look happy,” noted Cannon Fodder, once more bludgeoning down pretentious nonsense with the hammer of his habitual bluntness.
“They’re just sad that we’re leaving,” snapped Chela. “We’ll be back soon. Now come along, we don’t want to keep Dorylus waiting.”
I had to wonder if Chela truly believed in the absurd things she said and if she had ever allowed herself to question those rigid doctrines, or indeed if any of the other Purestrains and ideologues of the Changeling Hives paid anything more than mere lip service to this sort of patently wrong idiocy. However, looking back with long decades to have considered this problem, and indeed the problems that arose following the end of that miserable conflict, it hardly mattered whether she or any other Changeling felt it in their heart-of-hearts. The overall effect in terms of the lives of the ponies and indeed the drones who suffered under this regime was very much the same either way, and the difference therefore purely of academic interest.
The sights had put something of a downer on the earlier upbeat mood of the morning, and we trudged on through the winding city streets and back out into the open plains of the northern Badlands. We were greeted by four wagons, merely large, covered boxes on wheels, pulled by four chained earth ponies each, all under the watch of Changeling guards, of course. There were more Changelings milling about the place, scattered across the plains in a sort of disorganised mob as they presumably carried out the age-old military practice of ‘hurry up and wait’. They still regarded us with some measure of curiosity, but it appeared that the novelty of having captured the fearsome Black Prince had either worn off rather too quickly for my liking or the sting of yet another ignominious retreat in the face of overwhelming Equestrian forces had rather dampened their spirits somewhat. Still, the sight of them sulking cheered up a few of my fellow prisoners, who made a variety of rude hoof gestures at the drones.
“I’m afraid this is where I must take my leave of you,” said Hive Marshal Chela. “It’s been an honour and a pleasure to have you as my guest, and I only hope that we’ll get a chance to converse properly once this war is won.”
“Yes, of course,” I said in the verbal equivalent of a shrug.
Chela bowed with a stiff lowering of her head, then turned back and trotted away with her staff officers behind her. Things didn’t quite pan out the way she planned, as history tells us, but that’s not important for me to discuss now. I was full of trepidation again as we were herded onto the wagons; I with Cannon Fodder, Square Basher, and one other plucky little stallion who looked as though he was perpetually on the verge of tears at all times. There we sat upon hard wooden benches that made one’s rear numb within moments, and the leashed earth ponies dragged us away into an uncertain future.
There’s not much to say about the journey to wherever we were supposed to spend the rest of the war; when one has seen one part of the Badlands, one has seen it all, at least before the fall of Queen Chrysalis that is. There were no windows, but I could peer through the gaps between the planks of wood clumsily nailed together and the back of the wagon was wide open for us to see what we had just travelled through. I caught Square Basher eyeing the wide open plains beyond, clearly considering simply leaping out and making a dash for freedom, but it had appeared that my words and the fact that our journey seemingly took us quite far from hospitable civilisation dissuaded her. And it was the very definition of bleak; vast plains, rocky hills, and valleys as far as the eye could see, and all lifeless except for clusters of cacti and hardy, un-nourishing grasses. There was nothing else to do except sleep, the course of conversation having run dry very quickly since our incarceration, or peer out and strain to see something, anything, out there that might provide even a moment of interest. Yet there was very little of that, and glimpses of isolated hamlets out in the distance only seemed to punctuate the desperate emptiness and loneliness of this place -- only sun-scorched earth, empty sky above, and a dim haze separating the two.
That’s not to say that our journey was entirely uneventful. Though our going was rather slow, with our earth pony pullers merely walking, even taskmasters as cruel and uncaring as the Changelings understood that ponypower is not unlimited, so we stopped off every few hours in a day to exchange earth ponies at tiny, miserable villages. Quite how these exhausted wretches were supposed to get home after being exchanged was never explained to me. At each of these stops we were allowed outside to stretch our stiff legs and try to get some feeling back into our backsides, albeit under continual supervision from the drones.
I observed with some curiosity how these drones treated the ponies, and I can categorically state that the term ‘poorly’ is simply not strong enough. At the first tiny hamlet, a drone was beating a unicorn almost twice his size with a stick, and said pony simply stood there and took it until the cane snapped in half. He then received a kick for his troubles and the drone stormed off to find somepony else to abuse. The others around him, who probably could have overpowered the drone quite easily, I thought, likewise merely watched the display with a certain sense of passive despair, as though this sort of thing was merely accepted and normal. One of our number had to be restrained from intervening, and only a reminder that there would be a reckoning once the banner bearing our Princesses flew from Chrysalis’ tower could stop him.
That drone was revealed to be what the Changelings called an ‘overseer’, which was some grade of civil servant or bureaucrat. The Changelings had an awful lot of ranks with a variety of different roles that alternated between the very precisely defined to the incredibly vague, and a lot of them overlapped. Along our journey we encountered overseers, proctors, attendants, registrars, secretaries, assistant secretaries, directors, sub-directors, and wardens, to name a few. Watching our escorts, who had hitherto avoided all but the most basic and necessary conversation with us, engage in bickering arguments with these low-level and petty functionaries of the apparatus of the Hives’ government demonstrated all that I really needed to know about them; sometimes lazy, sometimes ambitious, but always pompous and with a grotesquely inflated sense of their own self-worth. It did not matter that our drones were on direct orders from the Hive Marshal to escort a captured Prince of Equestria, our arrival on their little fiefdom constituted a challenge to what little authority they’d seized for themselves, or an imposition on their very busy schedule of lording over a broken and dispirited population of malnourished ponies. A little bribery eased our passage somewhat, but invariably our escorts were not quite willing to waste too much of whatever currency they were paid in just on our behalf. It seemed to me that our journey time could have been halved were it not for these obstructive apparatchiks, not that I was in any particular rush.
These breaks allowed me the rare opportunity to get to know the ponies I’d be sharing an extended incarceration with; we had been through Tartarus together on Hill 70, so while I’m sure ponies reading this will like to imagine that the experience had made us all blood brothers or some other such rot, the reality is that the conditions there were hardly conducive to small talk. There were fifteen survivors left, not counting the wounded who were taken away, and I thought it best to get them on my side. Whatever sort of prison camp we were about to be held in, I thought that we ought to present some sort of united front to our captors.
Most common ponies are rather guarded around their superiors, and it usually comes from one of two places -- they are either too intimidated to truly open up or they think I’m up to something sinister. However, quite often a few inoffensive questions about family, as all ponies invariably have them, and some encouraging comments are usually enough to get most ponies to open up, and though some take a little longer than others, they will usually succumb to peer pressure once they see everypony else joining in. A few joked that I must be a Changeling if I was asking so many personal questions, but nevertheless they eventually came around too, and the spot of dry gallows humour earned at least one or two welcome chuckles.
The stallion I shared a wagon with was named Light Roast, who had been a barista in civilian life. He and his brother volunteered for Twilight’s new model army, and though he’d ended up in the prestigious Night Guards and his brother in the 17th East Trottingham, he assured me that there was no sibling rivalry at all involved. The spotty teenager who had stood up to Hive Marshal Chela was Switch Blade, a juvenile delinquent from the slums of East Trottingham who’d upset the wrong gang by innocently selling salt on the wrong turf and joined up to escape having his kneecaps broken with sledgehammers, or so he told me. There were others, of course: Ploughshare, the farmer, who’d signed up after Changeling infiltrators had burned his fields; Golden Ticket, a chocolatier; Stitch In Time, a tailor; and more whose names and faces escape me for the moment.
We stayed one night in a decrepit hamlet. My fellow prisoners and I were confined to our wagons, again under a less-than-watchful guard, while the officer apparently in charge of our escort, who never said a word to us, was off spending time with the local administrator. Now, the interesting thing about ponies in positions of power over others, and I must admit that I am guilty of this too, is that they will often forget about the presence of those that are lesser than them. Many secrets have been revealed, reputations destroyed, and scandals broken when discussions between powerful ponies were overheard by a disregarded but public-spirited servant in the corner of the room, quietly dusting away at a shelf of antique porcelain cups. In my incarceration I discovered that this was just as true, if not more so, with the Changelings; they thought of us as ‘livestock’, things like inanimate furniture, and apparently incapable of listening and understanding. As I lay on my front on the filthy floor of the wagon, Cannon Fodder’s snoring sounding like an ursa major being slowly strangled, I could see and hear two guards conversing just outside.
“You lot just came from the front, right?” asked one. It was dark out, so I could only see the outlines of their heads silhouetted against the flickering light of a campfire just beyond.
“Yeah,” said the other.
“I heard we’re pulling back, but the Hive Marshal’s luring the Tin Cans into a trap.”
“Beats me. I only do what I’m told, like a good drone.” Her voice took a flippant, sarcastic tone that the other didn’t seem to pick up on. “Whatever it is, I might miss it if I’m escorting this lot to wherever.”
“I bet they’re full of love,” said the first. “Hives, I’m so hungry. There’s hardly any left for us from this lot once the tithe’s been collected from this stupid village.”
“We’re under orders not to touch them.” The silhouette shrugged. “The Hive Marshal said to take them someplace special.”
“Where’s that?”
“Dunno.” There was a short pause. “Doing as I’m told, again. All I know is the male unicorn in there is the Black Prince himself -- I always imagined him taller -- so we’re taking them to some fancy prison camp. They don’t tell us anything, remember? Anyway, we’ll get there tomorrow, then it’s back to the front for me again.”
“Rather you than me. The partisans are getting bolder out here, attacking wagons on the road from here to Opuntia. [A small town that served as a supply hub for Hive Marshal Chela’s war-swarms.] We lost three caravans in the last week, and we don’t have enough drones to patrol the entire road.”
“Why not?”
“No idea, only the Purestrains are allowed to think. There’s three of them, and they’re all pegasi from Equestria.”
“Only three? You’re struggling with only three pegasi?”
“They’re tough bastards, comrade -- elite, Equestrian special forces, not your usual band of escaped slaves. They lay ambushes on the road with explosives and lightning, then they kill any drone left standing, nick all the supplies, and disappear back into the hills before any of us can react. You never know if they’re hiding behind the nearest cloud. There were only three ponies to start with, except the livestock started getting riled up by Tin Can propaganda too, so now we’re stretched thin putting down more little uprisings all over the damned province. The ones that get away from us end up joining the partisans, and the Equestrians are helping train them. It seems like however many we recapture or kill, more and more of them end up escaping.”
A third voice, from a drone who had apparently just joined the conversation whom I could not see from where I lay in the wagon, chimed in. “That, maggots, sounds an awful lot like defeatist talk.”
“No, sir,” said the drone, this time with an undercurrent of fear in his voice. “Just giving my comrade here an accurate appraisal of the tactical situation in this province, sir.”
“I see, and when did the Queen finalise your promotion to Purestrain? I must have missed the ceremony, what with all the shit I have to deal with from you stupid lot on a daily basis.”
“Sir?”
“Idiot. You don’t serve the Queen by giving unsolicited, pony-shit ‘tactical advice’ to strangers, you serve her by shutting up and doing what you’re told. Stupid, damned maggots.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
Some things never change, I thought, as I watched the third silhouetted shape storm off into the darkness. Our two guards were much less talkative after that, and spent most of the rest of their shift in an almost contemplative silence. However, as I lay there, finding it rather difficult to get off while lying atop these hard wooden planks, I spotted Square Basher in the corner. She looked out of the wagon, her ears pricked forwards attentively and her dark eyes glinting in the dim light. The moon shone its cold, white glow through the open back of the wagon, and illuminated the uncharacteristic little smile that had formed on her face. I remembered that she’d mentioned the partisans before, and I couldn’t think of a worse turn of events for me than to be ‘rescued’ by a band of would-be freedom fighters and having to camp out in the hills and be hunted like a rabbit whose warren happens to be too close to Griffonstone. ‘Conventional’ warfare was bad enough already without adding the miseries of itinerant, outdoor lifestyle to it.
Still, it was another uneventful night devoid of valiant escape attempts, and everypony was present and accounted for in the following morning. We set off at first light, no doubt our escorts wishing to finally be rid of us. The remainder of the journey proceeded much in the same manner as the preceding day, with mercifully no daring raids by partisans to spoil the mood of dull tedium and utter boredom. We stopped encountering any more villages since, though we continued to stop to allow our earth ponies, still rather scrawny fellows by our standards but most likely the biggest and strongest that they could find amongst their subdued slave populations, to rest for a bit. After a while, I cannot possibly say how long with any real accuracy, the open plain through which we had been dragged through turned into a winding path carved into the side of a steep hill, which gave me hope that we were finally nearing our destination.
The road then levelled out, and soon the wagons stopped and we were herded out once again. I’d fully expected this merely to be another break to rest our pullers, but when I stumbled out and landed with a little less dignity than those foalhood lessons in decorum should have instilled in me, I was rather taken aback by what I saw. We appeared to have been dropped off at a quaint but rather large country manor house just outside Trottingham with double wings, a variety of sprawling outbuildings, a neatly tended lawn and garden, and a gravel driveway. The only thing that testified to its apparent primary use as a prisoner-of-war camp only became apparent to me when I looked behind me to see the tall wooden fence topped with knots of thorny vines that surrounded the entire grounds, and a heavy iron gate that was being slammed shut behind us. I could only spot a few Changelings around, and they all seemed to be idly milling about the place; they were all clad in some variety of formalwear, albeit with a few details off like black neckties worn with stiff standing collars and the wrong sort of tailcoat for this time of the day, which marked them as servants, but by the way they watched us I could tell that they were, in fact, guards. As is always the case with their sort, there are often more than one can directly see.
As the others disembarked behind me and the remaining three wagons were likewise emptied of ponies, who all stretched their aching legs and complained in no uncertain terms about the unpleasantness of the journey here, a tall, thin, sinewy Purestrain stepped out and approached. Rather peculiarly, he wore a smoking jacket tailored out of a lush burgundy velvet, topped off with a paisley cravat tied louchely around his swan-like neck. He smiled and bowed low and obsequiously.
“Prince Blueblood!” he exclaimed, full of giddy excitement. “Enchante! I am Commandant Dorylus. Allow me to welcome you to Camp Joy. For you, the war is over.”
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Sounds like the the special British prisons of WW2 masquerading as a country club, with all manor of where they put German rank officers lolled into a false sense of complacency and gradually started to let split out strategic secrets or small logistical issues or information on other German commanders. I am sure Blueblood will be aware that they are constantly monitored and are prodded for any little bits information that could prove to be useful. Damn I love drawing ponies in sissy fancy outfits, I would love to guess how the servant changeling look like.
https://www.deviantart.com/amalgamzaku/art/Fancy-pony-not-there-Vid-895179496
https://www.deviantart.com/amalgamzaku/art/Clean-Corner-Butler-Video-874162065
Does Dorylus and Camp Joy have any reference to Fort Joy from Divinity Original Sins 2 or am I seeing connections that don't exist.
11309363
Not intentionally - I'd played Divinity Original Sin 2 years ago, and that name must have buried itself in my subconscious.
Oh, I think I hate him already.
Quite an interesting look into the ennemy side of things.
Jeez what did they do to make the land that inhabitable decades later?
That mansion stick out like sore thumb in the Badlands. Quite the 'wtf' moment for the ponies. Now... how will they escape it is the question. I guess the aforementioned Partisan will be implicated in the process. I wonder if they are actual commandos sent by Equestria to weaken ennemies positions?
I like it. As stated by my two reader compatriots, this is a common enough tactic that it makes sense, and given his prominence within the war effort, they'd do everything they could do break Blueblood without resorting to torture, as that works, but only to a point. With bald-faced torture, you gain a sweet spot, between the point where they resist and are completely broken where they provide credible, reliable info, whereas the stuff before it naught but lies, and the stuff after is only what you want to hear repeated back to you. Doing it like this, it makes sense.
Curious if they have any mind reading magics. Loose Brains Lose Campaigns and all that rubbish, right?
My reply to that would be
"Thank goodness! So, now that the war's over when is the prisoner exchange?"
Why am I getting Colonel Klink vibes from this guy?
How much of that formalwear is actual clothes and not disguised changelings, I wonder?
In WW2, the British took German officers, put them in a fancy mansion, treated them like royalty and eavesdropped on everything they said. Surprise surprise, they willingly dropped all the secrets they knew, and the British received troves of incredibly valuable intelligence.
Truly a fascinating story, read about it here: https://www.historynet.com/secret-luxury-prison-trent-park-helped-the-brits-spy-on-nazi-generals/
The big question now is if Blueblood's time as a captive will be closer to Hogan's Heroes or The Great Escape.
11309413
I still remember Fort Joy for what it represented about the game: "yeah, this is dark, depressing and merely a taste of what comes next". Coming from DOS1´s silliness I didn´t expect the sequel to be so gritty.
11309780
I know nothink, NOTHINK!
Ah, the good Sergeant certainly knew how to make a man smile in those bleak places.
I mean, assuming this is a maggot situation where the infestation only eats necrotic tissue, it is a technically viable treatment.
Blueblood's response to the screed is exactly what I hoped it would be. Nothing worse for a propagandist than a demonized person failing to accommodate with sulfur and hellfire. Most inconsiderate.
I get the sense that Chrysalis rearranges the hierarchy whenever the mood takes her. And if not her, then some of her more direct subordinates.
Who'd be traumatizing greedy foals with magical confections in happier times, I'm sure.
Hmm. I may have an idea on who could be foolhardy enough to pull this kind of thing.
Fascinating how some Purestrains seem so enchanted with Equestrian gentility. I imagine Dorylus will find Blueblood a far worse guest than he anticipates. Looking forward to seeing how this develops.
11313463
I'm certain that Blueblood has every intention of being an ideal guest, so as to avoid eviction. It's those honest ponies like Square Basher you have to look out for.
Best I ain’t there, I’d not be able to hold myself back from just looking at it and saying “kinky” and questioning the artist
Seems Blueblood Agrees
Ahh yes, the stereotypical kraut Commander posted on command of all prisoner of war camps. You’d think they’d learn from the history books.
Also, I have the immediate desire to start whistling a tune whilst digging tunnels for some reason.
11319663
You got to go dig them holes
I had a theory regarding changeling transformation and hacked off limbs from the previous chapter, but I remembered that there are native ponies there too.
Bring out the oompa-loompas.
Probably as joyful as Joy Division.