Chapter 7
I don’t think anypony expected that. ‘Flabbergasted’ is probably the word that Square Basher might have used to describe my reaction, at least if she wasn’t too busy sulking like a teenager whose advances upon the opposite sex had just been very publically spurned. As a recreation of a country manor, ostensibly in the Trottingham style as for whatever reason that rainy little island was regarded as the benchmark for such things, the ‘camp’ seemed to be an acceptable imitation of one, if not totally accurate. I should know, as I have one such manor on the Griffish Isles and a few others dotted over Equestria in the same style, though really one never ‘owns’ such a property, one is merely a caretaker until it is time for the next generation to take charge of it.
Though their original purposes as the central hubs for vast rural communities ruled over by a feudal lord have diminished somewhat over the years, becoming merely ways for we disenfranchised nobles to make up for lost earnings by opening up our homes to the loathsome vampires known as tourists, they are still invariably surrounded by farms and quaint little villages whose ponies are usually employed by the master of the house. As such, they are designed to be large enough to house and entertain not only a gentlecolt and much of his family when he is not engaged in business in town, and a small army of staff who keep the place running, but also a variety of distant family, friends, and other guests and whatever staff they might bring with them. This imitation, while superficially accurate in terms of the early modern styling and classical touches, nevertheless felt wrong; a home that should have belonged on a certain grey, wind-swept island, surrounded by green fields, dense forests, and farms worked by productive earth ponies, was now perched atop a barren hill amidst a hot, dry, and inhospitable landscape inhabited by swarms of Changelings and the brutalised population of ponies they oppressed. It gave one a sense of architectural whiplash.
Still, despite the subtle sense of unease that all of this roused within me, I nevertheless found myself rather cheered by the sight. It might not have been exactly the same as what I was used to, but it still represented at least an attempt at carving out an oasis of civilisation amidst the barbarity of their kind. They had clearly made an effort, especially in the thoroughly unsuitable climate of the Badlands, and assuming that they had made the same effort not only in the interior but in the service provided, then perhaps the next few weeks, months, years or however long I was to stay would be rather enjoyable. Quite why they would go through all of this effort when our valiant forces were ever encroaching upon their Heartlands still puzzled me; the Changelings rarely did anything without some sort of sinister purpose behind it, and one would receive no prizes for assuming that they had something distinctly unpleasant in store for us all later.
Then there was Commandant Dorylus himself. I’d only heard his name mentioned a few times by Hive Marshal Chela, and I hadn’t thought to ask more questions about the chap I was about to entrust with my life and well-being. The long and boring journey had given me more than ample time to imagine the sort of creature who oversaw a prisoner-of-war camp for a government that regarded the Convocation of Creatures and its rules on war as merely polite suggestions. None of them were particularly encouraging, despite Chela’s repeated assurances that I would be treated well. As he stood there, smiling politely in his velvet smoking jacket and paisley cravat, it occured to me that he looked much like a poor pony’s caricature of what a rich pony looks like, albeit as a Changeling Purestrain. Though really, in order to truly sell the illusion he ought to have been swirling a glass of brandy, puffing away at a cigar, and beating a servant with an antique cane for failing to shine his horseshoes to an acceptably high standard. Distantly, I remembered that I owned a very similar smoking jacket at the time, and wondered if my staff had been compromised as well as my tailors.
“You must have had a long journey from the front,” said Dorylus, after a full minute of us staring in dumb, slack-jawed amazement at him and his ‘camp’. “Come, I’ll show you where you’ll be staying for the duration of this war. If I do my job correctly, I’m sure you won’t want to leave!”
With that, he turned on his hooves and trotted merrily up the gravel driveway to the front door of the manor. I was still trying to get over the shock, so I was rather slow in moving. The staff, or the prison camp guards I should say, moved to try and ‘politely’ encourage us to follow along. Still, my fellow prisoners appeared to be waiting for me to make the first move, as ever, and so despite the trepidation I was feeling of what might be beyond this quaintly hokey and somewhat pandering facade of civilised life and behaviour, I followed him.
The gravel crunched noisily under my hooves as I trudged up the driveway, and after a few moments of hesitation I heard that distinctive sound echoed behind me as my comrades eventually followed. My limbs were still quite numb after the long journey, so I stumbled awkwardly a few times and almost slipped on the looser collections of small stones. Ahead, Dorylus stood by the great wooden doors to the manor, and he smiled as though he was eager to show off something to us. As we approached, he applied his slim, slender hoof to the highly polished surface and pushed it open, and the distinct lack of an aged creaking noise felt like a worrying absence of something that should, by rights, be there.
We were led, or coerced, rather, into a hall. Again, the details were all present and correct, as far as I could see, from the highly-polished marble floor to the ornate rugs to the wood panelled walls and comfortable furnishings, but it simply felt far too new for my liking. It certainly impressed some of my fellow prisoners, and indeed Switch Blade commented on just how many bits it must have cost to build and furnish this place. However, the lack of centuries of wear and tear, with no scuff marks on the floor tiles or chips carved out of the wooden panels where centuries ago a distant ancestor drunkenly headbutted the walls, felt disconcerting to me. It is difficult to describe, perhaps, but it felt soulless, and much in the same manner as when the nouveau riche attempted to imitate the trappings of the old aristocratic power of Equestria, only more so. Nevertheless, I reminded myself that it could have been a damned sight worse, and at least I was not being held in chains in an awful, cramped barracks. Therefore, I made a facile comment about how nice it all looked, which earned a beaming smile from Dorylus.
There was a set of stairs leading up to a mezzanine between the ground floor and the first floor, and there about halfway down, was a small group of mares and stallions. Their beauty was striking, and so very unexpected that I must have stopped and boggled at the delightful collection of fillies like Rarity in the presence of Yours Truly at that ill-fated Grand Galloping Gala. However, they were much too perfect in appearance, in the same way that this manor house and its grounds were; young, narrow in the waist but generously apportioned in the flanks, and with slim, long, shapely limbs. Their faces seemed to be quite excessively made up too, with garishly red lips that seemed overly plump, long eyelashes, and smokey eye shadow. Their expressions were those dumb little smiles that mares pull when posing for the sorts of photographs that take up the bulk of specialist gentlecolts’ literature, except seemingly permanent on their faces.
As for the stallions, I am hardly the one to provide an expert appraisal of their attractiveness, but judging by the similar hungry looks on the mares in our merry band of prisoners, like pugs when they hear the click of a can opener, they certainly had the same effect on them as those pretty fillies up there did on me. Even the ever-frigid Company Sergeant Major Square Basher looked as though she was moments away from charging up the stairs, putting the two closest stallions into a headlock each, and dragging them both to the nearest bunk while warning the others not to wander too far. These stallions were each tall and well-muscled, albeit in that chiselled sense that is purely for show instead of a by-product of actual hard work, and their faces each bore a slightly frowny, disapproving pout that mares for some reason found attractive.
They were Changelings, of course, if whoever reads this had yet to work out the bleeding obvious by now. Only they, apparently still quite ignorant of the finer points of equine sexuality, would present such utterly flawless examples apparently lifted straight out of the pages of Playcolt magazine and the self-indulgent fantasies of whomever else they’ve captured. Faust knows I’ve had, perhaps still have even to this day in my old age, rather the deserved reputation for philandering, and I could well imagine that this Dorylus fellow had read my file, saw the near-success Odonata had with the oldest ploy in the book, and thought that where she had one wrong was being much too restrained in her disguise. To what end all of this served, however, I didn’t know, and though I had already seized and mounted each mare in turn in my mind’s eye already, it could only have been a trap of some sort. We fifteen ponies, myself very much included, were unfortunately falling for it, and who could blame us after what we had each been through? After a week on Hill 70, we all felt we deserved a little comfort in the hooves of another, even if they were ultimately Changelings.
Still, I felt I had to resist, if only out of spite for the enemy. Far be it for me to suddenly become an exemplar of temperance, mind you. My reputation for sleeping with any attractive mare capable of saying ‘yes’ of her own free will had to be put aside for that of the noble hero, who was supposed to be above such petty lusts.
“Commandant Dorylus,” I began.
“Please, just call me Dorylus,” he said, smiling politely. “We’re all friends here.”
I very much doubted that; friends don’t keep friends behind locked gates, after all. “Dorylus, then,” I continued. “What’s the game here? This isn’t prison camp-y at all.”
“Ah, you were expecting cages, iron bars, cold showers, chains, and back-breaking labour?” He chuckled, as if at some private joke. A brief wave of his hoof dismissed the pretty ‘ponies’ atop the staircase, much to the vocal disappointment of Switch Blade. “Come, let me show you to your rooms and I shall explain everything.”
We followed him up the staircase, which had a disconcerting lack of creeks beneath our hooves, past the mezzanine, and onto the first floor, where we were greeted with a long gallery which commanded spectacular views of the grounds and the paradoxically beautiful desolation of the Badlands on one side, and on the other were an array of doors which I presumed led to our rooms. Along the way, Dorylus delivered his explanation with the air of a creature who had spent a great deal of time thinking about this moment.
“It may be treasonous of me to admit it,” he began, and already it was a very promising start, “but we Changelings have encountered a problem. Our slaves keep trying to run away.”
“Gee, I wonder why,” said Golden Ticket, with his voice not so much dripping in sarcasm as drowning in a vat of the stuff.
“It is indeed a conundrum,” continued Dorylus, either purposefully ignoring or genuinely ignorant of the snide comment’s meaning. “We Changelings provide our livestock with food, shelter, water, and all of the other basic amenities of life in this barren and hostile land. We also provide them with a greater purpose in life, which is to work for the superior species and provide the love we need to survive. Yet, despite the kindness and generosity shown by our Queen, you all continue to resist the natural order of things. We traditionally suppress revolts with violence and terror, but it simply does not work anymore; an escaped slave killed in an escape attempt or in reprisals by the Blackhorns can be of no practical use to the Hives, and rather than instil fear, his martyrdom only serves to inflame more thoughts of rebellion in his fellows. It’s like a virus, spread by Equestrian propaganda.”
[The Blackhorns were a Changeling paramilitary organisation with wide and far-reaching powers across the Hives and occupied territories. Their principal concern was the detection and destruction of any threats to Queen Chrysalis, the neutralisation of any domestic opposition to her rule, the enforcement of drones’ ideological commitment to the Queen’s cause, the management of the system of correction camps, and the violent suppression of slave revolts.]
“It seems like the more you push ponies, the more we’ll push back,” I remarked. We passed by a framed portrait of an austere-looking mare in crimson military dress uniform, but on closer inspection of its surface I found no telltale evidence of brush marks, and deduced that it was merely a poster. “Hive Marshal Chela mentioned that you have some theories on- how did she put it? -‘equine care’ you’ve wanted to test.”
“And how is dear Chela?” asked Dorylus. “I haven’t seen her in a while, but it’s nice to know she thought of me by sending you.”
“The last I saw her, she was running away.” That comment brought a few enthusiastic cheers from my fellow prisoners and a pat on the back from Ploughshare that nearly knocked me over; showing a bare minimum of resistance through the occasional snide comment allowed me to prove my continued loyalty to the Twin Crowns of Equestria without actually having to put my own life in danger, though that still depended upon on how thin-skinned Dorylus and our caretakers were. If he knew anything about me, I imagine he expected it.
He simply smirked in response, but otherwise disregarded the comment. I expect that he didn’t feel the need to confront it, having me completely at his power.
“Once we conquer Equestria” -that comment brought a couple of jeers from the ponies that were still ignored- “the problem will be magnified a thousandfold; we will have millions of new livestock, yes, and finally enough love that no drone will ever go hungry again, but until the population of Equestria has been subdued so that it can be of productive use to the Hives, we will have slave uprisings the likes of which the Blackhorns have never seen before. It will be nothing more than a continuation of this war, potentially without end, and we may lose more than we stand to gain.”
It had occurred to me, during the rare periods where I have no choice but to stop and think about the increasingly absurd set of circumstances that led to this war, that the Changelings, or perhaps merely Queen Chrysalis herself, lacked the capacity to think and plan in the long term. Assuming, for instance, that her initial attack on Canterlot had succeeded, with two out of the then three Princesses out of action and our capital occupied, that still left not only a densely populated city to occupy, but also the rest of Equestria, including the major cities of Manehattan, Trottingham, and Los Alicornios, to name a few, left to conquer. They seemed to be under the foalish delusion that Princess Luna, for whom Equestria’s warlike past was a very recent memory, and would quietly submit the remainder of the realm to its new mistress. This fellow, at least, appeared to have identified that very obvious problem, that winning the war was one thing but winning the peace was quite another, but I’m not sure that his posited solution was particularly inspired either.
We’d reached the row of doors that presumably led to our rooms, and most of the ponies, myself included, were getting quite bored of this lengthy and tedious explanation, but I had a suspicion that refusing to listen was one luxury this 'idyllic' place did not afford. "I have a theory," he carried on. “If we treat our livestock well by giving them a quality of life far greater than what your Princesses already provide, then revolts will be a thing of the past! We can give you the life of comfort you clearly desire, and all that it’ll cost you is the love you hold in abundance.”
The awkward hush that descended after his little speech, combined with the furtive glances between each pony, probably told him all that he needed to know about what we all thought about his pet theory. Nevertheless, Square Basher, who had hitherto been sullen and quiet this entire time since her dressing down in that tent, decided to make everypony’s feelings on the matter quite plain and obvious:
“That sounds like bollocks, mate.” She shot me an apologetic look, and mumbled a quiet, “Sorry, sir.”
Dorylus chuckled, though it was a dry, emotionless kind of laughter. “I expected as much, mon amis, but all I ask is that you give me a fair chance. The alternative for you would be… well, having seen the ponies of Virion and Natalensis Hives I think you already know. For now, anything you desire can be yours if you merely ask my staff. They are ready and willing to provide you with any service you want.” Then, with a lascivious smile that made even my skin crawl, “And I do mean any.”
Light Roast, surprisingly, raised his right hoof in the air. “I’d like my freedom, please,” he said meekly.
“But you will have freedom,” answered Dorylus. “A different sort of freedom to what you’re used to. Freedom from want, freedom from boredom, freedom from work, and the freedom to pursue your own interests and hobbies without any of the pesky unpleasantness of your old lives to get in the way. You can all live as your Prince Blueblood does, in his palace with his servants who cater to his every whim.”
“The Commissar still serves,” said Cannon Fodder, and to my continued surprise his fellow soldiers proclaimed their agreement on the subject. “He might be a prince, but he’s still a soldier like the rest of us.”
“A royal title and its privileges comes with immense responsibility,” I said, lying through my damned teeth as usual; they were excuses to drink and indulge in carnal delights on the hard work of ordinary ponies, deserved only because certain distant ancestors of mine happened to perform favours, often unpleasant, for Princess Celestia. Still, I did my best to look as modest as possible with all of the attention now suddenly heaped upon me. “As Private Cannon Fodder said, despite my wealth, I remain first and foremost a servant of the Equestrian Herd. I’m afraid your little theory is doomed to fail, Dorylus; ponies won’t turn their flanks on the Princesses in exchange for the promise of some light pampering. Harmony, peace, and friendship are worth fighting for.”
But not necessarily dying for, I mentally added, unless it was somepony else doing that on my behest.
An amused smirk formed on Dorylus’ face. “I certainly don’t expect your enthusiasm right away, my little ponies, but I hope that you’ll give me a fair chance,” he said, as he began to circle around our small group back to the top of the stairs behind us. “This is a big change for you all, and livestock-”
“Stop bloody calling us that!” snapped Switch Blade with a petulant stomp of his hoof. The ‘servants’ revealed their true purposes as guards when they darted forwards with the sort of alacrity that only came with hours upon hours of relentless drilling, to form a protective, well-dressed phalanx between their master and the threat of a rather bolshie little teen thug. I quickly moved to Switch Blade’s side, held his shoulder gently but firmly, and silently shook my head.
“Apologies.” Dorylus nodded his head in an insincere bow, and with a wave of his hoof he silently dismissed his ‘staff’ back to their previous positions in the corridor. “Ponies, then, like all herd creatures, prefer the stability of routine and institutions. I would prefer it if we didn’t have to resort to sending you to a forced labour camp to work until your body breaks and you must spend the rest of your short life in a cocoon, but from this moment on that will depend entirely upon your behaviour and that of your ponies, Prince Blueblood.”
He looked at each of the captured Night Guards in turn, his mouth smiling but his eyes studying us carefully. Only Switch Blade and Square Basher seemed capable of meeting his gaze. “I trust that won’t be a problem, Prince?”
“No, of course not,” I said.
It certainly rankled for a pony of my esteemed regal stature to submit like that, but never let it be said that I am not willing to debase myself in order to save my worthless hide; if he asked me to kiss his hole-ridden hooves or else face the remainder of this war performing back-breaking manual labour as he had threatened, then I would have done so with only perhaps a minute or two of thinking very hard about it.
“Ah, tres bien!” he exclaimed. “These are your rooms, and I hope that they’re to your liking. I shall leave you all in the capable hooves of our head butler, Solenopsis; if there’s anything you would like, just ask him and he’ll do his best to get it for you. Au revoir!”
He bowed so low that I thought he might do us all a favour and smack his horn into the floor, thus knocking himself out. Nevertheless, with that absurd flourish, complete with an unnecessary obsequious scrape of his right rear hoof, he trotted merrily away down the stairs. A few drones followed him, but we were still left under the supervision of five others in servants’ attire and one who I’d deduced was the ‘butler’ by the false handlebar moustache affixed to his upper lip and his practised expression of subtle disdain. There were more of them hidden away, I was sure of it, perhaps disguised as the rather cheap-looking vase standing atop a small table or those potted plants in the corner of the long gallery. Aside from that we were left there, standing about aimlessly, and each quite overwhelmed and at a loss as to what we were supposed to do now.
“Finally,” I said with a grin, “I never thought he would shut up.”
That brought a few chuckles from the ponies, as a little joke to ease the growing tension in the room. Even one of the Changelings standing guard snickered to himself, though he was quickly silenced by a kick and a stern look from his closest colleague. I made a quick note to remember him, as he seemed as though he might be that rare sort of drone with an identifiable personality; chumming up with as many of my captors, in particular the much-abused common drones, would certainly help make my stay here a damned sight easier. However, most of their sort look terribly similar, and though they might say the exact same thing about we ponies, it was almost impossible to find distinguishing features between them, being of much the same shape and colouration as each other. He seemed a little smaller than the others, perhaps their equivalent of an adolescent, and I noticed a spot like a birthmark on the left side of his forehead roughly in the shape of a kidney bean.
“And that’s it then, sir?” said Square Basher. She managed to keep herself from sneering, but I could hear it in her voice. “It’s all over for us?”
“No, of course not,” I said, lying as ever. “As soldiers of Equestria, it’s our duty to escape from captivity, and I fully intend to.”
Were I wearing pants, they would have been ablaze by now, but without such an obvious indication of the web of falsehoods I was weaving before their eyes, the soldiers, and indeed the Changelings, seemed to buy it. Square Basher smiled to herself, as though a deeply-held belief had just been vindicated; Light Roast looked terrified; Switch Blade grinned to the drones staring agog at me and dragged his right forehoof in a horizontal line along his neck; and Cannon Fodder shrugged and stared vacantly into space.
“But,” I said quickly, to bring everypony back from their daring escape fantasies and firmly back into the realm of reality, “it is not our duty to throw away our lives wastefully. The Princesses still have need of good soldiers like us, and we’ll be of no use to them dead. Trust in our comrades still fighting, and we’ll be liberated and back on the field in no time.”
Hopefully, not too soon, I thought, but that little speech seemed to mollify them a little. The question, however, would be of how long I could possibly keep this going before the soldiers finally worked out that I never intended upon escaping at all. Nevertheless, I had bought myself a little time at least, and who knows, perhaps the inexorable ‘sledgehammer’ that was General Market Garden, as wielded by Field Marshal Hardscrabble, would come battering down the gates of this prison camp before that would become an issue. After Virion Hive and Hill 70, anything seemed possible.
For now, Solenopsis showed us to our chambers. I had been given the use of a ‘state room’, which disappointingly turned out to be a small, sparsely furnished bedroom consisting of little more than a double bed, a rug, a wardrobe, and a writing desk. It was about the same size as one of my wardrobes.
“It will do,” I said to him, and for those ponies reading this who might be of the common stock and therefore unaware of the peculiarities of upper class speech, when a prince says that something ‘will do’, it most certainly will not. The bed, when I tested it by throwing myself upon it, was a little too hard and rather lumpy, but it was a bed at least, and that really would do.
Well, Blue, thought I as I stretched out on the bed and looked up at the plaster ceiling, this was a fine state of affairs that I had gotten myself into, and once again it was my own damn fault for doing a favour for a, well, I hesitate to call Square Basher a friend, so the term ‘colleague’ would have to suffice. I was left alone, as far as I could tell, and that left me with little else to do but ruminate on the grim situation I found myself in. It was, however, as far from the worst possible outcome to being captured by the enemy as could be reasonably expected; in fact, I would go as far as saying that things had finally gone my way, for once. Certainly, I would still have to be very careful, but if I could walk that tightrope well enough then I could fully expect to sit out the rest of this awful war in relative comfort, however it might end.
I was still wearing my uniform, and though the Changelings had cleaned and repaired it for me, after two days on the road it was starting to get wrinkled and dusty again. Though I wanted to remove the damned thing and see if I can acquire a more suitable set of clothes for the climate, a collar and a bow tie perhaps, it still served as a symbol to my fellow prisoners, so I thought it best to leave it on. I unbuttoned the coat and reached under it, and was reassured to find that the star spider silk undershirt was still there and hadn’t mysteriously disappeared; retaining the uniform would at least cover this ace up my sleeve.
As for Commandant Dorylus, I have an instant dislike for any creature who sprinkles his conversation with gratuitous Prench, for it is the sign of the sort of grasping bourgeois parvenu who, insecure about his low birth, seeks to over-compensate by adopting the surface elements of aristocratic refinement. It is a peculiar little paradox that flummoxes some of the lower orders that we nobles, already secure in our power and privileges, will often be quite plain in our speaking. Everything about him, from his appearance to his manners and his speech, seemed to scream artifice, and that immediately set my paranoid instincts on edge. Then again, the Changelings in general are nothing if not consummate actors, imitators all and seemingly incapable of doing anything at all that a pony or even a griffon has not already done before, and often in a rather shallow way.
For now, I decided to test the boundaries a little by exploring as much of Camp Joy as I could without getting into trouble, and found that I was given a surprising degree of liberty to wander as I saw fit. My fellow prisoners had been allocated a room each on the first floor, all along the long gallery, and seemed to be mostly enjoying the novelty of a modest amount of privacy for the first time since they joined my Aunties’ service. Cannon Fodder had insisted on the room next to mine, which was quite reassuring, and as soon as he’d heard my door shut behind me as I left he sprang out into the corridor to follow me. Further along, I stumbled across a well-stocked library filled with paperback copies of popular novels, including most of the Daring Do books, and were seemingly all brand new. On the ground floor I found the entrance hall through which we had, well, entered, a drawing room, a parlour, and a dining room. There were also the servants’ halls and quarters, but I left those for my aide to explore on my behalf; I might be a prisoner and thus my social standing lowered somewhat, but I still daren’t venture into the sacred kingdom that is the servants’ rooms.
While Cannon Fodder investigated the staff, I decided to take in the grounds outside. Country manors typically presided over vast tracts of countryside, with carefully tended gardens and orchards where one can engage in the traditional unicorn gentlecolt’s pastimes of croquet and clay pigeon shooting, in addition to maintaining the rare portions of wildlands within Equestria for hiking, birdwatching, and fishing by invitation of the owner. That key part of the country manor style that our captors had been valiantly attempting to imitate was largely missing here, though they certainly gave it a solid go, at least. To start with, there was not enough space encased within the tall wooden fence that surrounded it; as I wandered around outside I found that our little camp was built atop a modest hill with a wide flat top, and one of many in a landscape that resembled a sheet of parchment that a Griffon had balled up and then attempted to smooth flat with his sharp claws. The greatest constraint, however, remained the distinct shortage of water characteristic of this part of the world with which to sustain neatly trimmed lawns and ornamental hedges, and so the Changelings had to resort to crude substitutes. The ‘grass’, I found when I dared to violate my old groundskeeper’s edicts by stepping on it, turned out merely to be the dusty ground painted green, which my hooves disturbed. The topiary in the shape of birds and dogs were statues carved out of a rather brittle sandstone and likewise painted green. Some of the flowers, however, were real, and were likely the sort of hardy and rare plants that somehow flourished in this harsh environment.
There were a few squat, square buildings dotted around the grounds. One appeared to be a barracks, judging by the short glimpse inside through the window of rows of bunks and Changelings snoozing on them, before I was politely urged away by a drone in a tailcoat. Others were used for storing a variety of peculiar games, presumably for the amusement of the ‘guests’, but the rest were merely empty and apparently only for show.
My brief exploration of the grounds told me much more than the enemy’s commitment to keeping up appearances, as while I pretended to be admiring the architecture and ‘horticulture’ of this place, I took in a quick summary of their outside security arrangements. While it seemed that we had more or less complete freedom of this place, the outer perimeter was more heavily guarded. Changelings armed with muskets patrolled the fence, and a small detachment of them stood guard over the only gate. Assuming that we managed to either overpower or slip past them undetected, that still left us out in the middle of a terribly hostile environment that seemed to resent pony habitation with a passion, with Faust-knows how many miles between us and the nearest pony settlement, likewise absolutely crawling with enemy patrols on the lookout for their very important prisoner. Escape, I decided then and there as I looked out at the desolate landscape beyond, was simply suicide; I already knew that, of course, but it was reassuring to have that confirmed beyond all reasonable doubt.
I noticed during my wanderings that not all of the ‘staff’ were Changelings. There were ponies serving as maids, quite attractive young mares and stallions of native stock, both in Prench maid outfits, who, while each rather pretty, did not resemble the unsettlingly perfect living dolls presented to us before. When I returned to the library, I found the rather saucy little thing dusting away at the bookshelves with a feather duster in the library to be all the more alluring for her imperfections when compared to those idealised caricatures of pure sexual fantasy come to life. They could well have been drones with a better sense of what real ponies look like, and without the use of my horn I had no way of knowing for certain, but her wide-eyed terror when I tried to strike up a halting conversation seemed genuine.
“They’re not allowed to speak with the guests,” said the drone watching over the library. “If they’re caught, they get punished.”
“That seems a little excessive,” I said, stepping away from the cowering mare. In truth, I felt rather sorry for her, no doubt sent here against her will like me. “I like to get on with my servants, back home.”
“It’s the rules, sir.”
“Very well.”
I left her to get on with her task then, meaninglessly dusting the bookshelves too new to have acquired a patina of dust in the first place, and grabbed a Daring Do book at random to while away the hours until dinner time. As I sat in the armchair close to the window for light, I noticed that the drone, who stood in the corner, hadn’t moved and was staring at me. It was getting quite distracting after a while of this. I was about to tell him to go away and leave me to my escapist adventure story, when I noticed the odd kidney bean-shaped mark over his left brow and recognised him as the snickering drone from before. Perhaps he had been following me.
“Do you read these books?” I asked, holding up the novel with its striking cover of our heroine swinging on a vine away from a hydra.
The drone pulled a queer look, and for a moment I wondered if they could actually read at all; I would not have put it past the likes of Chrysalis and her Purestrains to think that the act of reading could inspire dangerous thoughts of rebellion in the drones. “Those are for the guests,” he said.
“That’s not what I asked,” I said. “Can you read?”
“I can read,” he answered, nodding enthusiastically. “But those ones are for the guests.”
“Let me guess, it’s the ‘rules’?”
“Yes, sir.” He looked this way and that, and then, apparently happy that there were no other drones around, said with a hushed, conspiratorial voice, as though he was admitting to a great crime, “But I’ve read that one, and the others.”
Well, that was a start, thought I; it paid to get on well with the staff at any institution, especially if I was being held against my will, and no doubt once I’d ingratiate myself enough I could use that to gain a few favours. “Did you enjoy them?”
The drone looked around again. “They are examples of a weak and decadent society that drugs its subjects with foalish escapism,” he said, apparently reciting propaganda by rote. “Yes, I enjoyed them, sir.”
[There was an extensive black market in the Hives for Equestrian media, of which adventure stories and comic books were especially popular. The Ministry of Information and Princess Luna’s Ministry of Unladylike Warfare had tried to flood the market with overt Equestrian propaganda, but this proved to be ineffectual. More stories were then written to appeal directly to drones, to be as entertaining and with messages of rebellion against autocratic authority. Daring Do and the Slavers of the South was one such example, and proved to be extremely popular among the drones. Daring Do became a symbol of the small but determined drone resistance groups within the Hives.]
If somepony had told me two years prior that I would be discussing Daring Do stories with a Changeling drone, I’d have thought them insane for even suggesting that their sort were capable of reading and appreciating fine literature, but there we are. The young chap’s name was Musca, as he told me when I eventually asked, and he was merely an adolescent by their own terms. He’d joined the Chrysalis Scouts, which I gathered was a youth organisation rather like our own Scouts, except that the songs sung around the campfires were less about helping those in need and more about grinding them underhoof for the glory of the Hives.
“Have you met her?” he asked, after a while of idle conversation about the possible identity of a suspiciously familiar blue pegasus in the latest book.
“Sadly, no,” I said. “I’ve tried, but A. K. Yearling is reclusive even by the standards of reclusive authors; even my fan letters have gone unanswered.”
“I meant Daring Do, sir.”
I looked at him, wondering if I was being mocked, but though their expressions are quite alien with all that chitin and those strange compound eyes, he looked quite earnest.
“Daring Do isn’t… She’s a work of fic-” I gave up; I was not prepared that afternoon to try and explain the concept of fiction to a Changeling who had spent his entire life swallowing whatever propaganda the Hives shoved before his eyes. Besides, he looked so damned hopeful and innocent that even I felt bad about crushing the dreams of a drone. “Not yet. We’ve both been very busy.”
Nevertheless, we carried on quite amicably for a little while longer, discussing Daring Do and other such trite but entertaining adventure stories. Indeed, for a time I almost forgot that I was speaking with a Changeling drone, not much different in appearance from all of the others who have tried to kill me on the battlefield. Peculiarly, he seemed to lack that inherent awkwardness common ponies have when speaking with me, their social superior; Celestia, Cadance, Shining Armour, and Twilight Sparkle all had that knack of making commoners feel at ease with them to varying degrees of success, whereas I simply struggled with most whom I hadn’t known for any particular length of time. Musca, however, was quite perfectly comfortable chatting away, and were he a pony and were we back in Canterlot I might have been offended at this over-familiarity being shown. However, here, it served my purposes precisely well.
There was a peculiar sense of innocence about this particular Changeling, for he seemed to lack much of the sense of casual cruelty that was so prevalent in their society. Oh, there were a few glimpses of it, such as when he expressed surprise at a scene in Daring Do and the Eye of Argon where our titular heroine chose to spare a defeated and helpless Caballeron, instead of feeding him to a writhing colony of pukwudgies and ridding herself of her nemesis once and for all. I almost agreed with him there.
It was then, however, that Cannon Fodder, having completed his survey of the servants’ quarters as much as he could before being kicked out, blundered in. I made my excuses, left Musca alone in the library, and followed my aide outside into the corridor again. There, on our way back up to the bedrooms on the first floor, he explained what he found.
“Ponies, sir,” he said, confirming my suspicions. “Maids and cooks, sir.”
“I would suspect the Changelings are adverse to doing servants’ work themselves,” I said.
“Seems like it, sir.” He shrugged. “But there is one other thing.”
Cannon Fodder followed me into my room and shut the door behind him. He waited for a moment, listening at the door, until, apparently satisfied that nopony and no drones were lingering outside to hear us, trotted on over to the corner of the room opposite the door. I watched with some faint amusement as his hooves left grubby little prints on the rug as he crossed it. There, he looked over at what seemed like a blank wall, running his hooves over its surface until, and I’m not quite sure exactly how he found it, I heard the click of some sort of catch being activated, and a square portion of the wall was pushed inwards to reveal a narrow, cramped corridor in the walls.
“Well, now,” I remarked. “That’s very interesting.”
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Changelings can sense emotions. He could doubtless tell how sincere (or not) you were.
Ah good, now they are being groomed by the Changeling to be sustainable food source. So now it is proper time to teach them how to do that in a way that is actually sustainable and long-term.
Then there can be peace.
I wonder if this was inspired by a similar situation with the British setting up a manor for German POWs in World War II.
https://www.historynet.com/secret-luxury-prison-trent-park-helped-the-brits-spy-on-nazi-generals/
Looks like I was right, it is a nest of spy's, thought I would wonder why they kept privet soldiers along with Blueblood, there too as they don't know any particular inelegance that field drones couldn't get it themselves. I like the mark changeling so far.
that changeling kid is 100% a plant, set up for the ponies to feel camaraderie with and become friends with, spilling delicious secrets. it's the only way i could see chrissy allowing such a camp, changelings would never lower themselves to catering to the pony population. a changeling would not do the hard servant labor when they consider themselves the superior race, so the idea that ponies would never work a day in their life and be pampered is hilarious
I find myself wondering which sympathetic characters are legit, and which are just very good spies.
Already a good start to their confinement.
Ooh, reference to one of the better comic storylines. Nice.
Well, that's not at all concerning.
"Los Alicornios" may be the best ponification I've seen of LA. Well done there.
He's on the right track (kind of) but there are certain issues of scale involved. How Dorylus expects to shower this much luxury on all of Equestria, or even the pony population of the Badlands, I don't know.
"I'd like the sort of freedom I'm used to, please."
I have to love the Ministry of Unladylike Warfare. Which has to be headed by a princess, for the foremost expertise in what a lady oughtn't do and how best to do it.
Ah yes, Daring Do and the Eye of Argon. Grignr was a daring experiment of a character given Yearling's usual stable.
Fascinating setup, especially with that intriguing development at the end. Looking forward to seeing where both the story and the hallway go.
11333091
Changelings should know very well how to manipulate Ponies since they have infiltrated the society, it is just that their leadership is not effective. The staff who are not allowed to talk to are the plants, the 'too perfect ponies' and the embodiment of the new money nobility are the hate bait for ponies.
This would be a good set up, they show them a common enemy, institute sympathetic underclass and then let the herding take its course. Then again i could be over-estimating how crafty the lings really are.
11334375
damn i didn't even consider the pony servants are actually loyalists to the changelings used as plants
Am I the only one who never receive a notification for this story on their FIM inbox? I always miss the release.
Anyway, thanks for the chapter, this is quite the predicament Blueblood and the rest find themselves into. The mind game the Changeling could do... study a soldier mannerisms and replacing him to mess with the others head, replacing some of the furniture and objects with Changelings from time to time to spy on them, etc.
Did comics took a rise in popularity as well? With figures like Captain Equestria, the Iron Pegasus or the Sea Pony Submariner?
And considering that Daring Do novels are usually retelling of her real adventures, does that mean this one mentioned here actually happened?
And a Daring Do X Blueblood Indiana Jones-esq adventure to find a mysterious Artifacts of power before the ennemy does when? Since this is a 40K cross over, there is potential there to find another faction as well.
11332805
You mean, by making friends and treating other species as equals? Yeah, that could take a while...
11336835
I am absolutely down for Daring Do crashing this story and blowing Blueblood's mind. Make it so, author!
11337059
No that would be silly, i mean deceiving them in thinking that they need to give you what you need so you can survive and then making long-term planning and fortifying your position as reliable long-term ally who they can always trust and rely on.
Then enforcing the said policy while squashing internal dissent, while making certain your societies are entwined in manner which neither can be pulled apart in for-see able future. Then slowly fading into the back-round while making deals and pacts with powers that be for the enforcement of the new status-quo.
Gotta say, the dirt painted green is sad. But also feels like the type of 'solution' the goons of a supremacist regime could come with to save appearances and face. While failing to do so.
Cannon Fodder is sharper than most ponies (or changelings) give him credit for.
Loved the bit about a black market for comics and adventure books.
always a pleasant surprise to have an update on this series.
Small quibble
"Dorylus chuckled, though it was a dry, emotionless kind of laughter. “I expected as much, mon amis, but all I ask is that you give me a fair chance. "
here if Dorylus spoke to Square Basher it should be "mon amie" if he only regarded her comment and talked to Blueblood it would be "mon ami" if he adressed the both of them it should be " mes amis".
11347068
Oops, well spotted! Though I think I might keep that, as it's in-character for Dorylus to get his Prench wrong.
You know, I just realized. Blueblood reminds me of Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones. He's got the whole issue with ladies, although perhaps not Tyrion's issues with "only whores would ever like me anyway." He's got his smarts for politics and his acumen, if not moreso. But he's actually almost universally respected, unlike Tyrion. One thing Blueblood's been missing is a "dear sister" Cersei Lannister who positively hates him and wants to ruin his life. Although, I have a fair bit of fun imagining Chrysalis being that for him. XD Imagine if Chrysalis were to suddenly and unexpectedly show up at the camp, just to see how dear Blueblood's doing, maybe torture him a liiiiiittle bit, or just make him fear her, just for shits and giggles.
My paranoia tells me their beds are changelings. The poor chap who once was Blueblood's and Twilight's bed now got a "better" job and he's Cannon Fodder's bed (at least until Cannon Fodder messes up with his magic).
Also, Blueblood may be surprised when he meets A.K. Yearling...
11344024
Oddly, "painting the grass green" is a Polish idiom for overt preparations before someone important shows up for a visit.