Changelings Are-A Changing

by ScarlettDaze

Chapter 5

When she emerges, the first thing she sees is a crooked column of light crashing down on one of the Mother Tree's nearby metallic branches. Immediately after is a thunderous explosion that might have burst the eardrums of a less specialized pony species, but she only hears a symphony of voltage and arcing current, electricity snapping and crackling closer as it travels along the nearby branches and into the trunk.

As the electricity passes over her where she's still half inside of her emergence hollow, it plays across her exoskeleton like playful minnows, the fibers her kind have in place of hair for their manes and tails frizzing up into a permanent 'standing on end' look. In that moment, as she tries-and fails-to blink the streak of light from her eyes, she knows her name.

Storm Rider.

Of course, the moment can't last forever, and the hive link lights up in the back of her mind in reaction to the bolt of lightning. The link is a hard thing to describe, because it isn't like you're just thinking words at others. Instead, it's more like Storm's mind is just a little piece of a much, much bigger brain, mostly independent but able to send and receive pure information across the link. Within only moments, she's 'downloaded' the hive's General Knowledge packet as of a few minutes ago, as well as sending her own opinions of where she'd be best used on the currents. Soon enough she gets a favorable reply back; she's on storm management duty!

With several hundred hours-worth of Brightling flight data to guide her, she jumps out of her hollow with zero fear, her four wings humming into motion until they're flapping so fast they look more like blurry streaks over her back than anything. After some quick physical flight tests-it definitely wasn't just her messing around!-Storm Rider darts up to where her new crew reported their last positions, soon enough merging into their flight formation with a smoothness that can only come from knowing where they all are as well as she knows what way her legs are folded under her.

With the constant rumbling booms and snap-crackling of lightning and thunder in the boiling black clouds around them, verbal communication is less than useful. Instead, her crew introduce themselves over the link; Call Sign is the crew leader by dint of being one of the oldest Brightlings, as well as her particular knack for manipulating the link with ease. Do Re and Mi all emerged from the same hollow one after another, and have decided that makes them 'triplets', a pony term picked up by some of the older Brightlings. Flight Feather is the last of their crew-besides Storm Rider herself-to already have their name, but the other three are hopeful that they'll find them soon. Until then, they can still be differentiated through the link, it'd just be an issue for verbal communication.

As for their job though, they need to work a careful balance with the storm clouds that constantly build around the Mother Tree. She constantly radiates a mix of dark and weather magic, which is why the storm clouds constantly form, the lightning produced refining that energy and sending it back into the Mother Tree as food, both for herself and for Brightlings like them. However, the storm clouds need to be managed, contained close enough to the Mother Tree that the lightning is drawn towards her, while also breaking them up enough that huge lightning bolts like the one Storm Rider saw don't form. The intensity of those are too strong for even the Mother Tree, superheating her metallic wood until it glows cherry-red, taking more energy to heal from than what she gets from absorbing them.

Working the storm is simple, but that doesn't mean that it's easy. In terms of the physical work, the clouds roil and boil under Storm Rider's hooves, but otherwise are pretty predictable in their behavior. A query to the hive about how clouds normally work gives her some info on the Queen's experience with clouds; as it turns out, usually storm clouds should be a less tame under their hands. Her best guess is that it's some kind of species-based specialization that makes them so easy to work with. Though now she can't help but wonder if regular clouds would be easy to hard to work with-wait, no, back on track!

After some time, the hive comes to the collective decision-after some small scale experiments-to coax the storm into more of a hurricane around the Mother Tree, with the idea being that the active flow will absorb any storm clouds as they form, rather than needing to be constantly re-gathered as they drift away. Though, as Storm's crew gets into formation with all the others to start whipping up the necessary winds, she can't help but query the hive again about why they need to do so. She gets two answers, one that seems logical and reasonable, and one that confuses her a bit.

The first is that, this way, all of the Mother Tree's storm is condensed into one area, and they don't have to go through the effort of flying out to gather the ones that have drifted far away. The other is that the Queen, even in her sleep, feels an obligation to keep the skies above Ponyville as clear as possible, considering the circumstances. And, well, even if it seems odd, who is Storm Rider to question the Queen?

A third answer reveals itself as they get the condensed hurricane structured and spinning around the Mother Tree; it looks bucking cool! The black clouds form a circular wall surrounding the Mother Tree, constantly in flux as jagged arcs of lightning snap into place within the walls. What Storm didn't expect, however, is that the forces involved would pull the clouds away from the Mother Tree itself, creating a massive skylight, the 'Eye of the Storm', shining light down over the Mother Tree and creating curling, twisty rainbows.

The Queen stirs a little in her gestation pod at the heart of the Mother Tree, and Storm Rider can feel the magic that pulses out, somehow causing the rainbows to crystalize. Floating bridges of multicolored light form, leading to and from the Mother Tree and into the Stormwall (so named by an enterprising Brightling somewhere in the hive link), acting as further lightning rods that absorb forming lightning bolts to draw back to the Mother Tree. It's an awe-inspiring sight, and Storm Rider can't help but feel pity for anyone without wings. All they can see from the ground is a dark black ball of clouds in the sky, but inside is a beauty like no other. It seems almost poetic, though she's not all that familiar with the concept, just seems like an appropriate label.

More importantly, Storm is hungry! If Brightlings were capable of sweating outside of a transformation, she'd have definitely worked one up, and she was literally born not more than a few hours ago. It's a good thing that there's so much electricity available, though as much as she loves lightning she'd much prefer some Loyalty. The hive had only been able to gather a little bit of it so far, it's even harder to get their hands on than Love, but even the sense memory shared over the link makes her mouth water...

Comments

[Richer19]

Hmmm...if the Brightlings favorite emotion is Loyalty then that would mean the Bravelings would have Honesty and the Joylings would have Laughter. Interesting that the Queens had that kind of effect on them.

[Ralanost]

Welp, you've got me interested so far. I'm curious how the mane 6 will be mentally when they emerge. Will they be mostly unchanged? Will they be normal but have new changeling instincts? Or will their previous selves be more like an echo in their new Queen psyches? Then if the story continues far enough there is how the alicorns and Chrysalis will react. I like the possibilities.