Chapter 3: Contact
Chapter 3: Contact
When I woke up, it wasn’t to the cave ceiling I’d gotten used to in the last couple of days. For a moment I was confused. Then I tried to move and found myself bound by some sort of hardened muck and subsequently panicked.
“What the fu—” I choked back the rest of my words as I spotted six of those bug-horse things not fifteen paces away. They looked like they had been sleeping and my yelling had startled them awake.
God, I hope I’m not about to be eaten alive… or tortured.
“Three, can you feel that?” To my utter amazement, one of the bug-horses talked.
“Yeah,” the one on its right said, “Even I can sense the sheer terror this thing is experiencing. Are we really that scary?”
Yes. And the fact that you we can communicate with each other in English makes this all the more nightmarish. I’m looking at sentient, intelligent, war-machine little monsters that have captured me. My heart rate is probably spiking to a dangerous level right about now.
“Calm down, would you?” The one called “Three,” told said to me. “Can it even understand me?” it asked itself in exasperation.
“I can,” I responded despite the hammering I still felt in my chest.
“Oh? Uh, good, then…” the bug-horse stammered. “Why are you so afraid of us in the first place? I mean, our race has never come into contact with yours, so we should be neutral to each other, don’t you think?”
“Wh— You— There’s so many things wrong with that statement, I don’t even know where to begin!” I nearly cursed. “I’m alone, captured, and defenseless against a group of intelligent armored aliens, dude! In what universe would I not be scared out of my god-damn mind?!” This was the moment I learned I could even get fear-angry.
“Whoa there, buddy. You’re the freaking alien here! What the hell are you even supposed to be, huh? Some sort of cross between a Minotaur and an ape?!” Three hissed at me.
“Minotaur? What the hell are you on about?” I had half a mind to yell at the thing that I was “a goddamn human,” when I realized that if it didn’t already know that, then there probably weren’t any on the planet. Like, obviously we’d be one of the first things spotted by an alien race given we’d conquered the world as the apex species for centuries… Unless of course, I wasn’t on Earth to begin with.
At this point, where I’d come to understand that I was a living RPG character with a backstory involving getting teleported around by a God, it really shouldn’t be surprising that I got teleported to another planet or even dimension. I mean, Magic was supposedly a thing here too, so why not?
“You know what? Nevermind. Just tell me what you’re going to do with me already,” I slumped limply on my bindings. In the grand scheme of things, there was no point in getting into an argument with one of my captors.
“That really honestly depends on you,” a different bug-horse said. They all kind of looked the same to me, but this one was slightly larger; bulkier too. “You see, Five over there—” it pointed at one of the other bug-horses, which actually waved at me with one of its deformed hooves, “—reported that you have an interesting ability we could use.”
“Proficiency in Alchemical Magic is extremely hard to come by, even for those pretentious Unicorns, so I will offer you the choice to follow us back to our hive and work for us in exchange for safety, guaranteed food, water, and shelter as well.”
I didn’t need to hear the “or else,” so I immediately accepted. A moment later, the same bug-horse that was speaking spat at the binding muck around me and it started to melt.
“You’re… Just going to free me, now?” I asked, shocked that they would do this now a not after I’d been transported and confined to their hive. It may have been six-on-one, but if someone more desperate or irrational had been in my place, they might have acted out and tried to at least take some of the creatures down with them.
“Not only would it be much more convenient for you to walk yourself back to the hive with us, but if you already didn’t know, I used to be an infiltrator.” My confusion remaining must have been noticed as it the went on to add, “Meaning that I can literally smell your intentions. You so much as think about harming me or anyone in my squad and I’ll cut you down before you know it.”
“Right…” And they wonder why I’m scared of them. “So, what are you, anyway? Like as a species. Oh, and also where am I? I’m probably on a foreign planet,” My questions to the bug-horses devolved into mutterings quickly enough; it was a hard habit to get rid of.
“We are Changelings and we’re all on Planet Equus,” Three said as we walked out of… the tent. I just realized we’d been inside a tent this whole time.
“Damn, I guess that you were right. I am the alien here,” I sighed. “Anyway, I hope you don’t intend for me to Magic up some potions or something. My “magic” only works on things I’ve manually made.” It would have been pointless to ask, since the only I could do that others would think of as magic was use “Automation.”
“Would your magic work on making potions after we instructed you on how to make them and gave you all the necessary ingredients?” Three asked back.
“I guess. Though, I’ve never made any potions before, so if the first potion I successfully make turns out to work terribly all the potions I make with my magic will be equally bad until I manage to manually make a better one.”
“...And then all your new magic potions will be made to the better standard?” The bug-horse leader asked.
“Yeah. That’s how my magic works. Also, I won’t be able to just poof out a thousand potions even if you gave me all the materials that would make them. Part of the cost of using my magic is that my body will be subjected to the same amount of effort that would have gone into making whatever it is I’m trying to make with magic.”
“Very interesting…” it replied, “And very convenient to boot. The process of making potions is time-consuming more than anything, so if I’m understanding the process of your magic correctly, you probably won’t have much trouble using it to make dozens, if not hundreds, of potions after making one of a certain standard.”
“Hmm,” I hummed. “How far are we from wherever we’re going?”
“We’re three kilos away from the Hive proper and you can safely add another to get to the Core where we'll have to bring you to our queen to decide where you’ll be stationed.”
“Can I… keep asking you questions on the way?”
“I’ll let you know if you ask about something you shouldn’t have.”
…
Thus, the three-kilometer walk passed faster than I thought possible. Time would always come to pass when you were doing something stimulating, and there was nothing more stimulating than actually being able to talk to someone after being cooped up by myself… without the internet. It was all the more intriguing to be talking to honest-to-god intelligent life that didn’t share 99.9% of my DNA sequence.
During our short walk, I learned a lot. I learned mostly about the changeling Race, but I also learned enough to know that I was probably in a completely different universe. Changelings weren’t the only sentient lifeforms excluding myself and the world supposedly housed living gods that moved the sun and the moon.
I learned most Changelings didn’t actually have definite names, only the most important or powerful. They usually went by a number ascribed by the leader of whatever force they were a part of. “Two,” one of the drones of the squad that was transporting me, provided very insightful information on the political landscape of the world at the mention of the “Alicorn Princesses.”
Apparently, all but the triumvirate Pony Race were locked in a cold war of sorts against each other for thousands of years. While the Ponies lived in a pseudo-utopia of sorts due to their all-mighty princesses, all the leaders of the various factions of the world were in fierce competition with each other to get whatever resources were left over.
The closest thing to the current political landscape that I could imagine would be like if the United States took over the world immediately after developing the Atom bomb post World War 2 while allowing foreign countries to be countries in name only and then maintained absolute authority of the world under duress of imminent death by nukes. At least that was the picture painted by Two’s words, which all the other changelings silently agreed by way of nodding along to his tirade.
By the time Two was finished, we’d come up to the base of the Hive Colony. It was a massive structure that spanned for nearly a hundred meters underground and almost a three kilometers in diameter. It looked like a cave system from the inside, only much more organized and without random tunneling in vertical directions.
As we passed further in to reach the Core, I must have been stared at by every single changeling we came across, yet we probably didn’t run into more than a few dozen by the time we reached our destination. I could understand why so few crossed our path as the Changelings Race were only a few thousand strong and almost half were infiltrators or spies for the crown; the rest were probably busy behind closed doors or in other parts of the Hive’s territory at work.
I was brought to the throne room at the very center of the Core, where I first saw the Changeling Queen perched upon her throne.
[Identified Status]
[Level: ???]
[Name: Chrysalis]
[Race: Changeling
[Class: Hive Mother]
[Details: Appears to be bigger, better, and overall stronger than most, if not all, Changelings. She is the only Changeling thus far to have thin scale-like protrusions similar to changeling Wings flowing down her head in a manner reminiscent of a horse’s mane. There’s no telling how dangerous she is without more information or personal observations of capable feats.]
“Human,” her voice was deep, husky, and naturally seemed to be underlined by a resonating vibrato, “I’ve heard many things about you. I’d welcome you to the Hive… But first, you must prove to me your worth.”
Chrysalis stomped a hoof and a large box was brought before me by one of her retainers. As she gave me the go-ahead to open the box she said, “Inside the box are a set of instructions on how to prepare a special ointment that’s used by my troops to recover from physical training and minor wounds. You have an hour to read through the instructions and make at least five kilograms worth of medicine starting now.”
With a nod, I sat down and started by reading through the instructions. Rather quickly, it became apparent why the task at hand had been given to test my ability. There were dozens of ingredients that needed to be carefully measured and then prepared with a variety of methods to reach precisely defined consistencies before being emulsified together into the ointment.
All I had to work with was a mortar and pestle, a cutting board, a knife, and my hands. It took me twenty minutes for me to make my first batch and I could only make about half a kilogram of product all at once.
“...So how do you test if it’s good enough?” I asked as I put a few dozen ounces worth of ointment into one of the many empty containers that took up most of the space of the box.
“Bring me a sample,” Chrysalis demanded.
When I walked up to her, she swiped the container out of my hand… and then sliced a shallow cut on the back of my hand with her horn. Frozen in shock at her actions, I didn’t resist when she spread some of the ointment I’d made on the fresh wound.
After a few seconds passed she rubbed away the excess ointment on my hand and miraculously the cut was just a barely noticeable line that was just the slightest bit lighter than the rest of my skin.
“Impressive,” She actually sounded genuine as she said, “That’s a premium grade result. And to think that you only took half as long as I imagined to make it.” She grinned, “Even if that specialty of yours fails to prove valuable, just the precision granted to you from those hands of yours will welcome you into my ranks.”
“...” I stayed quiet even as she shoved me back and made a gesture to get on with what was left of my given task.
From all I’d seen of her thus far, I couldn’t tell if her behavior towards me was simply to due me being of a different Race than her or if she was just that tyrannical towards everyone under her. Honestly, I couldn’t tell which possible verion of the truth I preferred. In any case, for the sake of my continued existence in the world of the living, I hurried back over to box and used Automation to quickly process as much ointment as I could with the time I had remaining.
With a look, I converted several bags of herbs into their prepared states. Some were as chopped up as fine as dust while others were far less processed. Some herbs were left in strips and ribbons, while others were mostly left whole. In a few seconds, I’d completed what would have otherwise taken hours of processing as many bundles as I could handle with the size of the cutting board.
All the remaining steps that would go into making the ointment would be completed with the mortar and pestle but it took a considerable amount of effort to get through even a tenth of the total amount of ingredients I could work with.
I needed to take a few minutes of rest before continuing on as I’d just done the equivalent of fully making several dozen batches of ointment up to the point of packaging them away into nearly thirty containers. It wasn’t even that my arms were tired from the process, so much as it was the mental fatigue of going through nearly a whole day’s worth of work in mere moments.
It was a good thing I had already gotten used to overcoming mental fatigue. Whether it was from running my business back on Earth or spending way too much time browsing the internet, I could recover from using Automation faster than I probably should have otherwise.
Naturally, I couldn’t fully recover in just a couple of minutes, so the next time I used Automation I could only manage to make twenty-six containers of ointment. Then it was twenty-two, then nineteen, sixteen…
“Stop,” Chrysalis said. “It’s been an hour and you’ve made much more ointment than I’d been hoping for.” She paused for a second and looked at me with an unreadable expression before she continued, “I will have your work properly appraised. In the meantime, you may follow this one—” She gestured to a Changeling that took a few steps forward, “—and retire to your new home. He will see to it that all your needs are met and will act as a line of communication to me directly.”
“Thank you,” I said, aiming to say as little as possible to lower the risk of antagonizing her. After she grunted in acknowledgement, I was led out of the room with only a single thought left permeating my mind.
I wonder what’s going to happen to me next…
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Hope he doesn't stay with the changelings for too long... Don't get me wrong I like the changelings just can't stand Chrysalis!
11685923
A changeling hive as his base of operations, or the 'my base' option for rpgs, could be a good way to keep them on the picture when he has to go to other places.
11685923
I hope the opposite.
If he can improve changelings' life with his production, and thus make them better self-sustainable. I think it is a good thing.
Considering Celestia holds the fireball that keeps everything alive in her hands/hooves, that is a pretty apt comparison.
It would be the case if it weren't for the fact that humans are stubborn and irrational, literally some countries armed their own bombs, and the problem with using them is that it is practically A suicide on a planetary level... The earth would become Mars two but green... Or whatever color the radiation has, literally a forest in Chernobyl is red despite how radioactive it is
11694526
Yes, in both cases it could potentially be global suicide...
11691103
I wish they no longer needed others to get their food... But considering Chrissy... Although...
11685923
Ehhh 50/50
(Changelings must have a crawfish flavor.) But seriously though bugs are simple creatures and u should look into real life analogs to see and understand how Hives work and function Also thinking Hives are the worst.(Xenomorphs, starship troops Bugs, and the flood are as close as u can get too horror scenario or refrinses.