Chapter 13: Into the Rain
The stairs, roughly cut stone from the look of it, lead us to what I assumed to be the first floor. A solid wooden door stood in our way. At eyeheight, there were bars inlaid into it, letting me get a look into another hallway. It seemed to be devoid of gryphons, so I carefully nudged the door open, hoping that the hinges were oiled.
It opened with minimal noise, and the two of us slipped into the hallway, the changeling’s new claws clicking against the floor. I noticed that a ring of keys were hanging from the other side, presumably from the, hopefully, unconscious gryphon downstairs.
“Sloppy…” My companion growled, the noise sending shivers up my spine. It sounded leonine, a reminder of the chilling roar Chrysalis had used to scare away the ravens.
“Yeah. You’d think they’d teach them better than this.” I replied. “I mean, it’s convenient, very convenient.”
“Almost too convenient.” He said, peering at the closed door in the middle of the hallway. “It could be a trap.”
“Or just a lazy servant.” I shrugged, but held the chains tighter even so.
It seemed that we were in luck, nobody stopped us on our somewhat aimless trek through the dungeons. They consisted mostly of hallway upon hallway of cells, some with better conditions, some with worse. From what I could gather we had been placed in the deepest part of the dungeon, as the air was getting fresher by the minute.
“Damn, how big is this place?” I muttered as we carefully opened a door into another nearly identical hallway.
My companion scowled down the hall, scanning it as he had done with all the previous ones. “We should be nearing the interrogation cells.” Was his only reply, he was obviously not much of a talker, which was somewhat of a jarring shift from Chrysalis’ nearly endless talking. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, I’d probably enjoy his somewhat stoic silence and directness. However, right now it only made me feel tense.
“How fa…” I was stopped by a punch to the leg, not hard, but enough to make me fall silent. The changeling-turned-gryphon pointed at the door at the other end. It was rustling, as if someone was working the lock. I would never have heard the keys rustle due to the thick door, but he obviously did.
We weren’t far from the other side, and with a quick glance at each other we took up position on both sides of the door, me holding the chain to keep it quiet, and him walking on his ‘palms’.
The door opened, and out walked two golden-armored gryphons. “... been down there a while. Think she’s seducing one of’em again?” The one on the right said with a grin.
“No telling with that one.” The other replied with a chuckle. “She’d do anything that’s willing.”
They both laughed as they moved down the hallway, not looking back and leaving the door open. My friend and I held our breaths until they were far enough away that we could sneak through the door while they laughed about the gryphoness doing it with the ‘monkey’.
“Damn…” I whispered, letting my breath out on the other side of the door. “That was close.”
Chrysalis was unconscious. A particularly vicious attempt at making her drop the disguise had finally pushed her into her own mind.
Luckily enough for her, being unconscious didn’t mean that her disguise would evaporate, countless years of experience and ‘training’ had made sure she’d be able to hold it until she took her last breath if she so wished.
“This is degrading…” She muttered to herself as she sat in the darkness. She didn’t usually dream, but she treasured the few times she did. It was also unusual that she was aware of herself dreaming. Normally Chrysalis would just know of the dream like a fond memory when she awoke.
The darkness around her was constant, nothing but shadows in every direction. Yet she could see herself when she lifted a hoof to her face. In her dream she was whole, all hooves present and her wings buzzed on command when she flexed them.
When she looked down she saw that she sat on a barely lit piece of hardwood flooring, which was strange, but it was a dream after all.
With a sigh, the Queen rose and began walking. It wasn’t often she dreamt, and even though the circumstances dictated that she should do her best to wake up, she couldn’t help but feel curious as to what this one would offer her.
It appeared that her dreamscape was a relatively small room, and when she neared a wall, the faint luminescence surrounding her would crawl slightly up it. The soft light revealed that the walls were stone, rough hewn yet reflective.
The distorted image they showed her of herself revealed that she was whole and healthy, no sign of her scars or damages were shown. Not that she could get a proper look, as the image was faceted in the stone and the darkness didn’t really allow for much.
She sighed again and followed the walls around, looking for an exit, a door, or anything she could use to move out of the room.
There were none. Chrysalis looked upwards into the darkness, there was no roof as far as she could see, and with her restored wings she reasoned that maybe up was a way to go.
Her guess was right, but she nevertheless regretted her decision to leave the ground. The darkness around her was absolute, and it was with a growing sense of trepidation that she noticed that her sense of up and down had gone out the metaphorical window.
There was no wind, no air resistance, no light. Nothing to tell her whether she was rising or falling, only the sense that she had to keep flapping her wings or fall.
Tentatively she tried to stop flapping, and her body immediately told her that she was going to fall to her death, yet nothing really happened. She opened her eyes, not realizing that she had closed them in the first place, to find that everything around her had changed.
Chrysalis looked in awe at the sprawling city around her, ponies bustling in the streets going wherever it was ponies went at a time like this.
“Hello?” She tried to stop one of the ponies, a yellow earth pony with a peculiar hat on his head, yet he didn’t give any sign of having seen her. He just continued on as if nothing had happened, as if there hadn’t been a hoof in front of him.
She tried again, and again, yet none of them noticed her at all. They just passed straight through her, as if she was a ghost.
It was eerily quiet as well, there was no sound except for the wind and the rushed clopping of hooves on pavement.
“There you are.”
Chrysalis nearly screamed in fright when two figures landed in front of her. One was a white pegasus mare with a pink mane, clasped tightly in her legs was a smaller blue unicorn. Both were scowling at her, but they quickly broke into grins when they saw her state.
The Queen’s heart was pounding wildly, and she couldn’t help but stare at the new arrivals with her jaw hanging.
“Y-you!” She screamed and bolted in the other direction, bowling over ponies left and right as she ran for her life. The sudden solidity of them not quite registering in her panicked mind.
Her mad scramble was interrupted when a red hoof shot out in front of her, sending her tumbling head over hooves into a fruit cart filled to the brim with fresh produce.
“Now now.” The red pony said as she stepped out from the alleyway. “No need to run? It’s just a dream, nobody can hurt you but yourself here.”
Chrysalis stared up at the pony from beneath a cabbage that had impaled itself on her horn. The voice was smooth, almost like a purr as the red alicorn stepped into the light. There was something inherently wrong with the pony, like her visage was merely a poorly constructed disguise.
“We just want a… friendly chat, is all.” The red pony purred. Her eyes were slitted, Chrysalis noticed, and her horn curved unnaturally away from her forehead.
The two ponies from before came running hurriedly to the scene, the white pony obviously trying not to laugh at the changeling that was half buried in a pile of produce.
“Ate…” The blue pony said with a scowl. “You know that visage was not what we agreed upon.”
In response the Alicorn shrugged and looked down her nose at the unicorn. “What do I care. What is done is done.”
“You…” Chrysalis said, her voice quivering and her eyes wide with fear. “Don’t kill me!” She squeaked and tried to hide behind… nothing. The cart was gone, so was the city. Instead they were in a sitting room oddly reminiscent of one she had been in before…
“Why would we kill you?” The white one said calmly. “If we wanted you dead, you would be.”
Chrysalis shivered at her tone, it was conversational, yet… assuring and threatening at the same time.
“We merely thought it was time we had a talk.”
With a thump the last of the guards went down in a heap. We had stumbled upon a storage room where I had found my staff and Chrysalis’ harness, and immediately after we had been set upon by a trio of armed gryphons.
“Whoo…” I exclaimed and wiped some sweat from my brow. “That was awesome! Where did you learn to fight like that?”
My friend leveled his gaze on me and my grin fell. “Where do you think.” He answered shortly as he wiped his talons on one of the guard’s jerkin. “All changelings receive combat training before we’re allowed out of the hive.”
I admittedly felt a bit foolish, not about the combat training stuff, more that he had taken down two of the gryphons on his own, and I only got one that he already held in a headlock. It was very satisfying to thump the guard on the head with my stick, but I wished I could have done more.
“Right. And I need to figure out how to use this… sooner rather than later.” I said and balanced the staff on a finger. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to… you know… train me?”
“No.” He said as he pushed the bodies into the storage room and closed the door.
“Why not?”
He rolled his eyes and looked me up and down. “You’re bipedal, I am not. No training I could give would help you.”
“Sure it would!” I said and pointed the stick at him. “I just need someone to partner with. To figure out how to fight someone on four legs.”
“Fine.” He grumbled and continued on down the hallway.
It didn’t take long before he stopped me and signed for me to stay silent. He pressed an ear to the door we were standing in front of, and I could hear voices from behind it. I quietly joined him and listened.
“...wake up?!” A shrill female voice cried and something hit the floor. “What do you mean you can’t wake her up?”
“She’s out cold, ma’am.” Another voice answered, this one male. “We need to let her be for now. When they reach this state it is no use trying to continue.”
The woman grumbled something I couldn’t hear before she spoke up. “Fine. Take her to a cell and make sure the chains are tight. We don’t want her comfortable yet.”
Before we could react, the door opened inwards, making me stumble into the room like an idiot.
The smell hit me first. There was an irony scent to the air, and something I couldn’t quite identify… until I saw the scene.
On a table, Chrysalis lay sprawled, her legs tied into a position that surely would have broken the legs of any normal equine. Her body was riddled with scars, and one last wound was slowly closing before my eyes.
Two gryphons were in the room. One was immaculately clean and dressed in what I assumed was officer’s garb. The other was naked but for an apron that was more green than white with blood.
For a moment all of us stood frozen, and luckily the changeling reacted first. With a shrill cry he launched himself into the room at the female officer, claws ready to tear her to pieces.
I barely reacted in time as the other one reached for me, and I managed to slap his claws away before they reached me. With a quick, hard, hit to the head he went down in a heap.
The fight between the changeling and the officer was not going too well. She was obviously better trained than the guards, and even my friend who had seemed so confident was having a hard time fighting back.
There was little I could do to help, instead I hurried over to the table and began to unstrap the unconscious Chrysalis. How she had managed to hold her disguise for so long was beyond me, but she had, and that was what mattered.
I carefully lifted her into my arms and looked over to the two gryphons still fighting. Feathers and blood was flying everywhere, and yet it seemed like my friend was slowly gaining the upper hand.
With quick steps I walked over to the other door in the room and glanced out. Another hallway, but I could see doors to the outside on the end, the only hindrance was the two guards holding a sour-looking minotaur in chains while another was filling out paperwork by a desk.
They didn’t react to the sound we were making, and seemed completely oblivious to the racket going on inside.
I looked back, and saw that the officer was finally out cold on the floor, blood seeping from long gashes in her uniform. My friend wasn’t in a much better state, his disguise seemed to burn where the cuts were, and it seemed close to failing.
He was breathing hard when he sidled up to me and glanced at the Queen cradled in my arms with some pity. “Let’s go.”
I stopped him with a hand and gestured to the door. “There’s an exit there, but also more guards.” He slumped slightly. “They have a prisoner, a minotaur.”
The disguised changeling suddenly lit up with a grin. “A minotaur? Oh, this is going to be fun.”
He steeled himself, and with a whoosh of flame his wounds disappeared and a uniform materialized on his body. “Stay here for a moment. Let’s let this one handle itself.”
With that he stepped into the hallway and pointed at the minotaur. “Hey you!” He yelled before pointing at the gryphon by the desk. “He told me last night that your mother was an ork and your father smells like he likes it!”
The other gryphons’ eyes widened as the minotaur’s face became red. “WHAT?!” He turned to the one by the desk “YOU DARE INSULT MY FATHER?!”
The resulting brawl was… rather swift. The minotaur flexed and ripped the chains off himself and charged the gryphon by the desk that had gotten a rather perplexed expression on his face. The minotaur’s giant fist connected with the side of his head, and the gryphon went sailing through a window and out into the street. The two others tried to restrain him with obvious trouble, and he grabbed their heads and smashed them together with a crash before he ran into the street.
With the successful diversion in motion the three of us carefully sneaked out into the dusk and away from the streets.
We didn’t stop before we were well outside the city limits. It wasn’t a very big city, but we didn’t stop to rest before we found a dilapidated barn not too far out of town.
The barn smelled like rotten wood and moldy hay, but it was shelter, and it didn’t look like anyone had been there for years. Either that, or the gryphons didn’t care much about the state of their buildings. Nevertheless, the roof was whole.
I laid Chrysalis carefully down on a dry, mostly whole bale and sat down heavily. It had began to rain not too long after our escape, which helped us get away unnoticed, but ended up with us being soaked to the bone in freezing water.
Luckily it didn’t bother me too much, but both the unconscious Chrysalis and the changeling were shivering, even though he had changed into a pony to be less conspicuous.. With a sigh I lifted the Queen into my lap and cradled her against myself, trying to get some heat into her soaked fur.
“W-what now…” The changeling that had helped me escape asked. “They’re bound to find us once the r-rain lets up.” His teeth clattered as he hugged himself tightly.
“Hopefully we’ll be far away by then…” I answered while stroking Chrysalis’ wet mane. “I think I saw a forest somewhere to the east, we can probably hide in there.”
The changeling’s eyes widened. “But that’s… that’s the Everfree! We’ll have better luck with the gryphons!”
I beckoned him over, and he hesitantly approached me. “We’ll be fine. Now come here, you’re freezing.” I wrapped an arm about him and pulled him close. He was cold alright, I could feel him shivering against me as he hesitantly leaned against me while carefully avoiding Chrysalis.
“If you say so…” He said and yawned. “But I don’t trust her.” He was looking down on Chrysalis with a frown, she had began to breathe more evenly after the escape, and it seemed like she was sleeping instead of being unconscious. “Why hasn’t she awakened yet? She should be hardier than this.”
“I don’t know.” I answered while feeling her pulse. “She seems fine. Her scars are nearly gone, except those around her stump.”
“What happened to her leg?”
“She lost it when she fell out of the sky.” I ran a hand over the stump, remembering the mangled leg still in my cave somewhere far to the west. “She was in pretty bad shape for a while. I’ve had to carry her for the last… I don’t know, it’s been a while.”
The changeling snorted and rolled his eyes. “That’s crap. She should have been able to regrow it within a week, provided enough nutrition.”
I glanced down at the tri-legged pegasus in my lap with a frown. “Well, she hasn’t. And I don’t mind carrying her really.” I snickered. “She’s like a big, snarky backpack that doesn’t know when to shut up.”
“That doesn’t sound much like her…” The changeling said softly. “She has always been an insufferable bitch.” I raised an eyebrow. “Never knew when to call it quits. If she wasn’t the queen…” He grimaced.
“Maybe the fall knocked some sense into her.” I murmured and ran a hand through her mane. “She might be brash, but she’s not bad.”
“Not bad? She single-hoofedly managed to screw up a mission that should have gone smoothly, simply because she got greedy!” He snarled, then he sighed and looked down. “If she’d been willing to negotiate with the ponies, nothing of this would have happened in the first place. Our race wouldn’t be extinct, or close to it, and I…” He snorted. “I could have stayed where I was.”
“Where was that?” I asked.
His eyes dimmed slightly and he looked away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Alright.”
It was getting late, and we were both tired. He was beginning to warm up slightly and about to fall asleep when I remembered something.
“Hey.” I addressed him with a nudge.
“Yes?”
“What’s your name?”
“Name?” For a moment he seemed somewhat confused.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t… You can call me Rift.”
“Nice to meet you, Rift. I’m Walker.”
“I know.”
“Huh…”
Then we both drifted off into slumber, lulled to sleep by the sound of rain against the old barn.
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Rift... and walker... The human was transported between dimensions.... Rift walker...
Are you toying with us?
4207638
I don't know what you're...
Oh, I uh. Of course! Yes, totally toying with you. Just you wait and see! Mwuahaha.
That was no coincidence! At all! Because I thought of that, yes!
good to know dude ^^
I missed you~ *laugh*
4207678 Your poker face is so bad.
Still good chapter and hence forth any thirds party must say their names in the same order.
Glad to see this is back.
>Insert obligatory ``IT'S ALIVE!`` photo here.
sourballpython.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ItsAlive.jpg
Glad to have this back. Looking forward to more.
Keep up the good work. Deus tecum.
Dat author's note...
It LIVES!!!
Bring out the Dancing Lobsters!
It is happy to see this story finally taking a breath.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xos2MnVxe-c
sweet
fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/363/1/e/clapping_pony_icon___twilight_sparkle_by_taritoons-d5pkpl8.gif
yay
YES! IT'S BACK!
Dis be gud.
Woo! Good to see an update from the ever-talented Sixpence.
An update!
Awesomeness.
This story really is pretty good, looking forward to more.
4207728 4207834 4208134 4208249 4208619 4208822 4210282 4212869
Well, yes, yes it is. It was never truly... dead. Just dormant. I've had a lot of stuff to do lately and a lot on my mind, so getting this out was a relief. More will come, in a hopefully short time. I've got the next chapter planned out, and I might have some time during easter. No promises.
4211280
You flatterer you
4213057
Whoop!!! Banished has returned!!!!
Is the changeling Bon Bon? I think the changeling might be Bon Bon.
4215895
I'm... not very certain as to how you came to that conclusion.
Yet... who knows?
4216585
there are a lot of Changeling!Bon Bon fics around. they usually make her out to be a renegade 'ling actually in love with Lyra etc. etc. or a deep deep cover spy. It makes sense here to me, cause the changeling mentioned how it had a good thing going for it.
Oh god the image of Chrysalis in panties is so hot!
4226976
derpicdn.net/img/download/2012/6/5/4333__questionable_queen+chrysalis_panties_socks_stockings_sweater_artist-colon-junglepony.png
ALSO,
IT'S FUCKING ALIVE!!
4227099 Oh god!!! Nnnnnngh!
4226976
4227099
You guys are weird.
And I like it.
Oh boy...
oh boy!
OH BOY!!!
it's back...
Ok. So all we need now is like 30 more chapters of this stuff
you are doing a great job and need to write more often (if that's ok with you)
but bring on the chapters 
Good to see you back!
.
Though they got out of that prison rather quick
I was at least hoping for a little bit of bafflement from the griffons on their inability to Really harm Walker, but there was no torture of him whatsoever!
Hope to see more soon!
4321094
Yeah, they did get out rather easily didn't they.
It's almost suspicious.
4321332 MY INSINUATION SENSES ARE TINGLING!
4322804
My insulation senses are tingling!
Shouldn't have torn up all that asbestos...
4323749 Yay, but think of all the asbestosis and mesothelioma your not getting
All I have to say about this story is: SSSCHCHSCHFFHFPSHCFFFFPPPPBBPBFRLGDHGDGSGFGFHFD 10/10 WHen nExt UPdaTe?
I'm gonna call it
>Inb4 rage
The griffins have allowed the group to escape, just so they can find more changeling's. This would give them a bargaining chip with Equestria.
very good story so far, and I can't wait to read more.
4227099
I patiently await more.POST MORE CHAPTERS NOW!!!Can't wait for more...
THAT MEANS HURRY YOUR ASS UP AND POST MORE CHAPTERS!
~Crystalline Electrostatic~
~poke~
Are you still alive, dear author?
4985945
Yep. But right now I'm working on Heaven Sent. I'll be back on this very soon.
4986077
Great! Thank you!
4986077 HE LIVES!
4986077 Dude... It's November. I haven't read this yet, but it looks good, so I'm hoping an update will notify me of the state of things on this front.
5235218 And I was right.
...so its been about a year.....yeah.
5869535
Holy shit, it's been a year D: I should probably have put my stuff on hiatus... about eleven months ago. Last blog-post still counts, but things are looking up.