A Song Of Silk And Steel

by SilverNotes

Phlox

The new pegasus had smoothed out the layer of clouds, and Fluttershy was doing her best to help.

All the while, Rarity stared at her.

She had to be the mare who'd escaped from Applewood. Everypony had seen her make a break for it that day, and then light up the sky with that strange rainbow. A splash of colour that had stretched across the sky, arresting the attention of all who could see it. Of all the places that that mare could have ended up, however, Rarity wouldn't have predicted that she'd end up bunkering down with rock farmers.

Then again, she hadn't seen herself in this situation either.

Big Macintosh had placed himself near one of the piles of stones--he'd said that, whether it was an apple or a rock, he was certain he could kick it with the same accuracy and force--and so had she. Six stones were already circling above her head, and she was ready to strike at the first target that made itself seen.

They'd heard it, before long. The air full of buzzing wings as the changelings from the town converged on the homestead.

The overwhelming tide of the swarming bodies, descending on the city. Blocking out the sun with a swarm filled with hunger.

And a mare lost among the streets, confused and afraid.

And then it'd stopped.

The rainbow mare's ears twitched this way and that. "Why aren't they--"

"They know it's a trap." When the pegasus looked at her, Rarity continued. "They're not mindless. They're just as intelligent as a pony, otherwise they wouldn't be able to infiltrate or lay traps of their own." She looked up at the layer of cloud; she was curious as to what its function was, if it had one beyond obscuring sight. "They saw us disappear over the wall, so they likely know that we're prepared for them to follow us."

The rainbow mare huffed. "Then I'll go shoot more lightning at them."

Rarity shook her head slightly. "And if they shot lighting at you, would you follow them into an obvious trap?"

"...Yes?" At the incredulous look, she huffed again. "They'd be asking for it, and it's not like some changelings could hold the Dash. I've already escaped from them once."

Well, that confirmed it. Rarity shook her head again. "Well, be that as it may, they're likely more cautious than that. They might be waiting for reinforcements, or looking for another--"

Thump.

Rarity froze, her ears rotating.

Thump.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

Oh no.

The wall closest to them was starting to shake, and she watched the mare who looked to be a eldest of Igneous's offspring approach, face blank and strides as smooth and steady as if she didn't see what all the hurry and fuss was and she'd investigate when she was good and ready. She placed her hoof against the stone, gave two small blinks, and reported, "They aren't using magic."

Rarity also left her defensive position, but the rocks already in her grasp bobbed along behind her like ducklings after their mother. "They don't have that kind of magic. They'd be ramming it, with their bodies." When the mare turned to look at her, she continued. "They did it whenever somepony tried to block them, either with something physical or magical. Their bodies are armoured, and so they can just keep hitting themselves against something until it breaks."

The mare blinked one more time, turned fully around, and kicked the stone with her hind hooves. Small chunks casually flew from impact. "I can hit things too."

The sounds from the other side stopped.

Then they started up again.

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump.

Rarity sighed. "Which lets them know we're still here. So long as they get a reaction, they'll keep trying. They want their prey on the other side, trapped, while they call for reinforcements and close in. They might try going over the top once they have the numbers that they're confident that no defense we count mount would be enough, but..." She dug at the earth with her hoof in frustration. "They were also probably hoping in the first place that they could starve you all out. Wait until you ran out of supplies."

High-pitched giggles erupted from one of the young mares, the alarmingly pink one among the duller hues. "Run out of supplies? That's silly! We have enough rocks to eat for months!"

Eat... rocks?

Rarity fought the urge to shudder. "Re...gardless, there's more than food to run out of. Medical supplies, for example. One of you becomes ill or injured and need medicine, bandages, disinfectant..."

The stoic mare struck the wall again, this time with a front hoof. Again the sounds temporarily ceased, only to resume with gusto. "So what do we do?"

"Preferably? If they can't be baited into fighting us now, then we get reinforcements before any of theirs can arrive." She nodded upward. "Fluttershy, do you think you can slip away to one of the other homesteads?"

She squeaked. "M-me? Well..." She looked around at the other ponies now staring at her. "Yes, I think I can. I'm good at being quiet and unassuming. That... possibly would help with being stealthy too?"

"Oh! Oh!" The pink mare spoke up again, springing straight up in the air not unlike how Big Mac had previously done, only waving her front legs in the air instead of finding a rock to ricochet off of. "I can go with you! Our closest neighbours are the Cookie family, and I haven't seen Tough Cookie in ages."

Rarity blinked, then smiled. "A local presence would be appreciated. They may distrust us otherwise, rightfully so." She glanced at the parents. "Speaking of, my thanks for letting us in."

"Thou art with one of our kin." Igneous nodded toward Big Mac. "His magic be known to us, and we trust that he hath not been deceived."

"Their necklaces detect changelings," Big Mac piped up, not straying from his own stone pile, just in case. "No one'd be able t' get close enough t' replace 'em."

The other pegasus' eyes widened, and Fluttershy squeaked as she was suddenly in her personal space. "Awesome! How do I get one of those?"

"W-well. I. U-um."

Rarity almost saw the family patriarch's eyebrows rise in his own reaction. "Truly? Then we shall trust thee gladly."

A nod, and Rarity looked up. "Then the both of you, seek out anypony you can find, and Fluttershy will be able to make sure they're who they say they are. And as for us... Dash, was it?"

"The one and only Rainbow Dash!" She pulled herself away from Fluttershy, pointing at herself with a front leg.

"A pleasure." Rarity's smile then widened. "How would you like to ensure that these changelings have great difficulty focusing on battering the stone, Rainbow Dash?"

"Now you're speaking my language, uhhh..."

"Rarity." The smile widened further. "Just Rarity."

---

Fluttershy didn't know anything about rock farmers.

At first, she'd thought it was the byproduct of her Cloudsdale upbringing. She'd known very little about what'd gone on below the clouds, in general, before she'd seen it all for the first time. She'd known what soil was, and flowers, because her foalhood home had had a garden, and she remembered spending time outside with the imported earth, helping her mother plant and grow each individual plant. It'd sparked her curiosity like nothing else, and eventually, her parents had taken her to the land below, and let her see the grass, the trees, and everything else.

Everything had included animals, especially butterflies. And with a flare of light and a new mark, she'd known that she would make the ground her home from then on.

Even years into her adult life, however, some things about living on land instead of in the clouds tripped her up. So, when she'd been left confused by the term rock farmer, she'd assumed that it was just a gap in her education, something that everypony else knew. Then Big Macintosh openly struggled to explain it to her, and it became clear to her that almost nopony knew what rock farming was, even if they might have heard the term before.

She'd gotten the gist, eventually. Rock farmers used their magic to modify stone into useful forms, though when Big Mac had started listing off technical terms and methods of rock formation, the pegasus who understood rock to mean the part of the land too hard to plant flowers in and little more had been left completely lost. But getting the very basic idea of what they were hadn't prepared her for how they might react to visitors in a time like this.

And it definitely hadn't prepared her for Pinkamena Diane Pie.

It especially hadn't prepared her for the pink mare being milimetres from her butterfly necklace, staring into her reflection in the jewel's surface, and making faces.

They were in the Pie family living room, the matriarch of the family--Cloudy Quartz, she thought she remembered her introducing herself as--was grabbing up things to place in her saddlebags. Supplies that their neighbours may need, in case they were having a harder time holding out. And all the while, Pinkamena was talking...

"So how'd you get them? Did you go down in a super old castle that nopony has been to in a thousand years? Did an old wizard come out of limbo and give you them? Oh! Oh! Maybe a magical kingdom out of space and time reappeared and you had to fight your worst fears to--"

"N-no, it's nothing like that..." Fluttershy said, the tentative words forming a reluctant interruption. "There was a tree--"

"That was gonna be my next guess! That they grew on a magic tree and you--"

"Pinkamena..." The single stern word from Cloudy Quartz was enough to stem the tide.

There was a sheepish smile. "Sorry! Sometimes I get a teensy bit carried away." She bounced on her hooves. "It's just not every day that I get to meet new friends! First Dashie shows up all zoom, and then you all, and I'm just so excited."

A gentle smile bloomed across Fluttershy's own muzzle. "Then maybe, once it's not so dangerous here, we can take you to meet all our other friends in Ponyville. There's ponies, deer, a zebra, and even my friend Manny, the manticore."

Pinkamena's eyes widened with overwhelming foalish delight. "A manticore?" She was no longer just bouncing on her hooves, but actively pronking in place, her legs being held far too rigidly to be able to spring up that high. "Are they as fluffy as they look like in pictures? Is it true that they're big enough to gobble a pony up?"

"Gobble? Oh, no no no. Well... I suppose a pony could fit in his mouth... b-but he'd spit them right back out! He'd never hurt anypony. He's just a little baby kitty at heart."

The chatter kept going, and Fluttershy could barely keep up with the breakneck pace. Before she knew it, she'd rattled off the names, birthdays, favourite colours, favourite sweets, and favourite music for as many of her neighbours as she could manage, and been bombarded with endless speculation on what the best possible parties for each individual creature would be. Even when she admitted that she didn't know or couldn't remember a detail, it didn't dampen the enthusiasm for more than a moment. It was a force of words stronger than any hurricane she'd ever been in, and she had no idea how to navigate the winds.

Then the final object was placed in now much heavier saddlebags, and it was time to go.

---

Every changeling remembered the siege of Canterlot, but not all with fondness.

Yes, it had been a major triumph for the swarm. Yes, it would go down in the history books as their greatest conquest. Yes, it had led to the finest feast the changeling species had ever seen. All of those were good reasons to be thankful that the plan had worked and their glorious queen had handed them Canterlot on a silver platter.

However, said plan had also involved the entirety of the army bashing their heads against a magical barrier, nonstop, until it broke, and while that was a strategy they could pull off, it was not one any of them found enjoyable. Reproducing said strategy with stone walls was even less of a fun passtime, especially when they had much fewer numbers. Along with the occasional kick from the other side that made hoof-sized chunks of rock suddenly jut out where they'd been bashing, turning it into a makeshift game of whack-a-mole with them as the moles.

Thankfully this wasn't their true Plan A. That was in the drone who'd taken off for the Canterlot, to relay the situation. Right now, they just had to keep the ponies on their hooves. Restless and paranoid. The more they felt the weight of the changelings closing in, the more likely they'd slip up and make a mistake.

They were prey. Herd animals. If just one of them spooked...

"Hey, ugly! Up here!"

Compound eyes went up. A very much not spooked pegasus was above them, holding a cloud, and wearing one of the widest grins they'd even seen. Several wings instinctively opened, right before the mare tapped the cloud with a hoof, and a sheet of chilling rain came down. Hisses of distress had them scrambling back out of the downpour, and cusses in several different languages were hurled up toward the pegasus.

Then they saw of the glow of the rising unicorn. And that was when the rocks started.

---

Fluttershy was, in many ways, an atypical pegasus. She was one who had chosen the ground, with all of its grass, trees, and animals. Even those who liked aspects of the land below, like flowers, tried to tame it and control it like they could the weather. They tended to be like her mother, bringing those portions up to the sky. Claiming it as their own. The one who went to the ground, lived on the ground, let it claim them as part of its ecosystem, were rare, even those who lived in what were technically land-bound communities doing so in cloud homes above their neighbours.

She'd met a few, in Ponyville. Mostly those who'd fallen in love with unicorns or earth ponies and so coming to the ground was the only sensible choice. None had had it written in their mark, like her.

Fluttershy had seen herself as unique, in having chosen the ground. But she was still a pegasus, and so there was a distinct difference between on the ground and under.

Pinkie was next to her--she'd insisted on "Pinkie" after a while, stating that only her parents called her "Pinkamena"--and she was merrily trotting next to her, humming a bouncing tune. The mare leading the way was the exact opposite, with a completely flat expression and a gait that exuded power in each planting of her hoof. Together, they where making their way through a wide, rocky tunnel, and Fluttershy was trying not to think too hard about the weight now above her head, when she was supposed to be above it instead.

One tentative thought later, that talking may take her mind off of thoughts of the ceiling collasping, and her voice piped up softly, "Um... I-if it's not rude to ask... Why haven't you gone looking for others sooner?"

"We didn't know there was anypony to find," came the monotone response from the front, "Our Dad tried going to town, and it was empty. We didn't know what was happening, and we thought that if we went out again, what got everypony else may get one of us next."

"And... Rainbow Dash?" It seemed like an obvious question.

"She dropped in." The deadpan tone was the thing of legends. "Literally."

"She's why we know about the changelings now!" Pinkie added, "She helped us setting up the defenses! Because there was still a chance that they'd come for us, and we couldn't help anypony we found if we didn't have a safe place to bring them back to."

Fluttershy nodded a little. "I guess the changelings didn't start living in the town until they'd finished rounding up everypony they first caught and bringing them back. And that's why it was empty when he first looked."

She thought about the changelings-turned-sheep, huddling in the destroyed town library in Ponyville. A trap set to catch ponies who wandered in, looking for survivors. If they hadn't had the salve to unravel the disguise, it may have worked, too. Yet there had also been real survivors, like the deer, or Rarity and Sweetie Belle. It was just like their hidden village in the Everfree, needing a safe home base, and a way to make sure it wasn't infiltrated.

And now that the Pie family had all of that, it was time to push out and save who they could.

The mare ahead stopped in her tracks, and Fluttershy stopped with her. Pinkie bounded ahead a couple of body lengths and halted just short of slamming into her. "We're here."

Fluttershy stared at the end of the tunnel. If she'd known much about rocks, she might have been able to pick out the individual types, and seen it for the buffet of minerals that it was, the kind of that would make a dragon salivate. As it was, she could see a number of very interesting colours and patterns, some of which she tried to remember if she'd ever seen flowers with similar hues, but with all of it overshadowed by the fact that what was in front of her was a solid wall of rock.

"But... um... how do we...?"

"Like this." She waltzed forward, reared up, and in the instant her front hooves launched forward, Fluttershy became acutely aware of the fact that she had been holding back when kicking the wall. Her front hooves moved with such rapidfire strikes that it was difficult to track the motions in the blur, and what could be clearly seen was chunks of rocks flying as the new tunnel formed before her eyes.

Pinkie bounded forward with a giggle, reared up, and joined her, her hooves moving even faster, to the point that it occasionally looked like there were more than two of the pink hooves striking at the rocks. Each individual strike dislodged less stone, but she was more than making up for it with the speed.

Fluttershy looked up at the cave ceiling above her, and instantly regretted it as claustrophobia closed in again.

Is this how they dug out all of--

They were getting too far ahead of her, and Fluttershy hurried to catch up, nearly snagging her tail on one of the more jagged hunks of rock in her haste.

It wasn't long before they met sunlight.

Comments

[new55]

That was a good chapter.

[FanOfMostEverything]

I always love to see applied earth pony magic, and the surreality of it from a Cloudsdaler perspective. Great stuff, especially the building tension with the message runner sent to Canterlot. Looking forward to more.