Chapter 14
It was only a matter of time before one of Tarsus' scouts found the entrance to the hive. Though Tegula's accomplices had an excess of enthusiasm, they were not certain precisely what they were searching for. One of Tarsus' scouts in the D squad had uncovered the hatch near the base of an ironstone formation about three hundred yards from the falls basin. The thundering roar of the crashing water could be heard throughout the tunnels as his team made their way inside.
Cadence and Shining Armor stayed towards the back of the party, along with Tegula, whose limp slowed her pace. Tegula was looking for any indications of struggle, evacuation, conflict, evidence. The stone hallways leading to the dock provided none.
"So, what is this place exactly?" Cadence asked.
"That's what we're here to find out," Tegula lied.
Tarsus, at the head of the column, found an intersection that led deeper into the hive. Tegula could hear him issuing orders to the haulers to locate a wider loading dock for their carts and to begin searching the upper floors. She took the initiative.
"So, since you two are here to help, Professor Cavate assigned me no diggers. I hope you don't mind getting a little dirty," she said.
"I love getting dirty," Shining Armor said.
Cadence rolled her eyes. "Sure, just point the way - and don't even think about digging yourself."
Tegula grimaced. "I told you, I'm fine."
"You get an infection in those wounds, and you won't be," Cadence replied.
Tarsus waved off the hauler and security groups, standing himself at the intersection to wait for Tegula to hobble over. He gave her one last look as she approached: disgust. Something else was mixed with it, but disgust was the main message he broadcast.
"What was that all about?" Shining Armor asked.
"Nothing. He's probably just worried about me," Tegula said.
Tegula could intuit fairly well where they were going, so long as it was down. Worker barracks were always on the lowest floors of the hive structures for some reason. While she had never had the occasion to visit another hive, the architectural books from Informational Requisition Services had specified that was how the other hives worked.
Evidence for the disappearances hadn't been forthcoming as they traveled down the smoothed stone corridors. Cadence's horn had lit up the interior of the rooms they passed, but every single one was empty. They had marched right through what had been the mess hall at one point, but nearly everything had been removed. Not even a spare tray was found. The only way Tegula could tell it had been the mess hall was a single marking near the doorway, which, fortunately, Cadence and Shining Armor had passed off as ancient writing they could not translate.
"So, we've seen a whole lot of nothing so far," Shining Armor remarked.
"Sorry it's not so exciting. I was hoping there'd be more here, too," Tegula said.
"Do you have any idea what was in this big empty room? Was it always empty?"
"Probably not. I'm not even sure how old this ruin is, since I don't have anything to sample. We can't carbon-date stone, so we'd need something biodegradable - and I think that's all rotted or been stolen. Unfortunately, we archaeologists are competing with more than just time in recovering artifacts."
"Okay, so which way do we go? There's a bunch of exits here," Cadence said. She wandered over towards one of the other entrances to the mess hall, which had a marking on it as well. Tegula approached to better make it out.
Vats Room. Authorized personnel only.
Tegula tried to formulate a reason why they should go down a different passage when Cadence found a reason herself.
"This one is collapsed," she said, advancing her light to reveal a number of boulders in the passage way.
"Figures," Tegula muttered.
"We can try to find a way around, how about this way?" Shining Armor asked.
This entrance to this passage was unmarked, meaning it was a transit hallway. As they made their way down it, Tegula kept her eyes on the markings on the walls. A number of them had been scratched at with something sharp and not quite hard enough to remove the markings, but at least render them illegible. Fortunately, Tegula could measure how long the passages were, and intuited which one led to the vats room as they passed.
Shining Armor had wanted to turn down the second vats room passage they found, and Tegula had stopped him. It was unnecessary to lie here, as that passage was also blocked. So far, only those two had been collapsed, the other tunnels were in decent condition.
Barracks. No wide loads.
"Oh, turn here!" Tegula burst out suddenly.
"Huh? Why?" Cadence asked.
Tegula weakly held up a hoof to the writing. It was in a cipher she could read, as most changeling directories were. They read and spoke Low Equestrian just like the ponies, but in case of invasion, not telling the attackers where to go had long been considered an advantage.
"See this writing? It means 'place of living', so this will probably lead us to where everypony slept."
"Oh, cool. Why would we want to go see that, again?"
"You can tell a lot about somepony's life by what they kept in their homes. Hopefully there will be something useful down there."
The passage went about twenty yards before turning into a stairwell. Tegula took note of the total dearth of drop-shafts in the Marmalade Falls hive. The stone here was of a different kind than her own hive, perhaps it could not structurally support them? That seemed far fetched, but Tegula knew nothing of geology.
The trio descended the staircase, pushing back the gloom with their glowing horns. Behind a twist and a turn, a long singular hallway opened up, with dozens, hundreds, of smaller rooms branching off from it. Tegula gasped. The entire floor was covered in a thin layer of black ash.
"Huh. Is this normal in a dig site?" Shining Armor asked.
"I've never seen anything like this before," Tegula muttered. She had instinctively pulled out a vial from her toolkit and reached down to take a sample. A sudden shot of pain caused her to snap back up.
"Here, I'll get it," Shining Armor offered. He let his magic hold the vial but Tegula stopped him.
"No magic. Don't contaminate it, you need to scoop it the old fashioned way."
He nodded and held the vial with his mouth. Cadence unsheathed her sword and used its edge to delicately push some ash into the vial.
"So, what's a bit of ash going to tell you?" she asked.
"We'll find out when I get it back to the lab. Thanks," Tegula replied.
Tegula stuck her head into one of the barracks rooms, but the story was the same as the hallway. No furniture, not even a door, just a scrubbed room with ash all over the floor. Some char had touched the walls as well. What to make of it?
There were several options, though each would be difficult to prove. It was quite unlikely that the ash was from anything other than a fire. All the doors and furniture would have been destroyed, obviously. The problem being: How would a fire get started in a rock tunnel, and consume everything in it? A dragon attack? Oil leak? A deliberate attack by a military force? Tegula could only hope getting the sample analyzed would provide the answer.
"Huh. I guess there's nothing else in this place. Crud," Tegula said. She stuck her head in another barracks room to find it, and every other room, were just as burnt as the first one.
Tegula insisted on being thorough, but after checking ten rooms, relented. They had all been burnt to a crisp and not a single clue was to be found anywhere. She hoped Tarsus was having better luck.
"Hey, I've been meaning to ask," Shining Armor said, "just who would build this place? I admit I didn't study history that closely..."
"My guess is miners," Tegula said, "this area has a lot of iron in the hills. The floor plan suggests second era, post-fall. I'm guessing though, the professor would kill me if he heard me speculating."
"We won't tell anypony," Cadence chuckled.
Tegula smiled. "Promise?"
"Promise," the Princess replied.
"I'll check the rest of these rooms later when I'm feeling up to it. I want to check something else while we're on the bottom floor," Tegula said. There were four things on the lower floors of the hive at Dusty Dries: The barracks for the worker classes, the mess hall, the vats room which fed into it, and the mausoleum. She hoped the graves would have been untouched by the fire.
"Lead on," Cadence said.
Tarsus had indeed been having better luck than Tegula, and he didn't even know whether or not she was having good luck! With the exception of the fuel supply for the coal-fired generators, nearly everything in the industrial quarter was intact. Some of the machines looked rusted, but could be easily salvaged and scrapped. There was probably over ten-thousand bits worth of equipment, and the big challenge would be carrying it all. Selling some of it to the ponies was no longer an option, it was a necessity. He briefly wondered if that lunatic minotaur who bought everything still lived in town...
"Sir!" the scout from A said, with a crisp salute.
"Report," Tarsus said.
"Sir! All the spare parts rooms are empty, just racks. Not sure if they were put into any of the machines, or were stolen."
"Hrmpf. Doesn't matter, anything usable?"
"No, sir. We did find two-dozen cans of red paint, all opened. They were sitting in the hall outside the woodworker's area."
"And?" Tarsus grunted.
"Well, that's it. They hadn't been used to paint anything, we just found them. Didn't the Queen - "
"Mind your purpose, soldier! Your job is to report, not theorize," Tarsus spat.
"Yes, sir!" the scout said, offering another salute.
"We can sell the paint, I suppose. If it can't fit in the carts, we leave it. Speaking of - "
"Squad C reports they found a suitable access point for the carts, sir!"
"Good. Trolleys?"
"Six service trolleys in good condition. All the other ones had their wheels ripped off, and we can't find them anywhere."
Tarsus paused to reflect. His report to the Queen was going to have a lot of missing details. It was her problem, yes, but his as well. Perhaps he ought to do some of his own investigating.
"Good, you all know what to do. I want everything in order of value on those carts. Anything we can't carry, we destroy. Get me?"
"Yes, sir!" the scout said. A final salute, and he charged off to inform the other squads of their standing orders.
Tarsus was left to do some number-crunching in his head. Twelve-thousand bits if he could barter it right, and maybe more if he broke down the machines and sold the parts individually. Quite a find. It almost made up for the complete disappearance of every single inhabitant of the hive. Almost.
"Hey, over here!" Tegula shouted. As they had left the barracks, the char marks had abated. Whatever had caused the fire had stopped once they were out of the living quarters area. The mausoleum had fortunately been left untouched.
"What, what is - oh," Cadence said.
Before them, in the pale light of their horns, lay the entrance to the mausoleum. The tunnel widened out considerably, so far that their light did not cast back from the edges. The room was ringed with stone columns, and in the middle, a carved pathway of red sandstone brick led towards a narrow opening. On either side of this pathway were finely carved statues of likewise red sandstone. Each statue was of a different race, the first and closest to them was that of a changeling. Its legs had been filled in, the holes in their forelegs would have proved difficult to balance with a heavy stone statue above. Behind it, a pony in a galloping pose looked on. Further behind that were a mule, a griffon, a buffalo, some other wild animals, and a few forms that Tegula did not recognize.
"What is this place?" Cadence asked. Her gaze drifted between each of the statues, lingering longest on the changeling.
"I think this may be more than a mining shaft," Tegula said, and for once, she was not lying. The mausoleum at Dusty Dries was a rather spartan affair. A long series of stone holes where the remains of a fallen changeling were interred, and stone plaques in front detailing their name and serial number. Some of the higher-ranked changelings got descriptions of their lives, and former royalty got their own rooms. Dusty Dries was a relatively new hive. Marmalade Falls, it seemed, was rather old.
"Look at this - the crafting is exquisite," Shining Armor said. He too was looking at the changeling, noticing the impeccable details etched onto its face. Up close, it was evident this changeling depicted was very old. Wrinkles were evident beneath its eyes, it fangs were dulled on purpose. It gave a tired look as it stood in front of the other species, each of whom were facing it or looking at it. Their poses, though noble in their own right, were still deferential to that of the changeling's.
"I don't think I've ever seen a changeling statue before," Cadence said. "We certainly don't have these in Canterlot's museum, and they've got everything!"
"Hmm," Tegula muttered. The records in the mausoleum could wait, she had truly not expected to find anything like this here. She summoned up what little knowledge she had of ancient changeling history from her younger days perusing books at the IRS department. Most of it had been considered classified and only available to the Queen back then, and Chrysalis' rise to power had not changed that.
"I'd have to ask the Professor," she lied, "but I'd be willing to guess that this was carved at a time when changelings weren't the enemies of Equestria."
Cadence grumbled, but said nothing audible.
"Definitely late second era," Tegula said, having no idea what that meant. Her guests didn't either, but appearing knowledgeable would keep them from asking uncomfortable questions.
The book-keeper's office had been completely cleaned out. Tegula could find no evidence of where the records had gone, but they had definitely been moved. She told her accomplices that whatever had been in the room had likely decayed or been ransacked, as the desk and filing drawers containing the records had likewise been removed. While she had found a fascinating window into the past, she had found very little actual evidence. This was rather unfortunate for Queen Chrysalis.
Dejected, Tegula was about to call it quits and head to the surface. Her wounds had begun to sting again in the heavy air, and a rest would help immensely. Her guests had acceded, when -
"Hey. Hey hold on. Look at that," Shining Armor said. Without waiting, he trotted off towards the changeling statue near the entrance. His light spell shot a silhouette of the other statues all around as he disappeared behind the pedastal. By the time Tegula had limped over, he was already digging.
"What? What are you digging for?" she asked.
"This dirt doesn't match the flooring, look," he said.
He was right, the flooring was smoothed stone, while the dirt here was the same color but had recently been disturbed. It didn't fit the rest of the architecture of the room, that was for sure. Tegula had not even noticed it, having been transfixed by the statues instead.
"Let me help," Cadence said. She quickly knotted her mane into a pony-tail and began digging.
"Wait!" Tegula shouted. The two stopped.
"Go slower. Don't break anything."
Tegula wasn't sure she wanted them to find anything. There was no stopping them now, and all she could do was wait.
A few breaks, a lot of sweating, and half an hour later, they heard a thump. Tegula had tried to help and been forced back by the royals. Even the pain wouldn't have deterred her, but they insisted and outnumbered her. She had had to patiently watch and wait, and spring forward as soon as the thump was heard.
"Paydirt!" she shouted.
"Or a rock. Gimme a minute," Shining Armor said.
Cadence and Tegula huddled close as Shining Armor dug delicately around the object. What slowly emerged did not alarm the royals, but made Tegula sick to her stomach. It was a bone, definitely a changeling bone due to the hollow structure. It was likely a recent addition, and there was char and ash stuck to it, as well as a red substance. Not blood or meat, paint.
"Oh dear," she muttered.
"We found something big! Is this a grave maybe?" Cadence asked.
Yes, and that's the problem, Tegula thought. She forced herself to smile.
"The professor's gonna be so happy! Good eyes, Shining Armor."
He flashed a smile and resumed his digging, Cadence following just behind. Tegula took the time to examine the bone more closely.
It was an upper leg of a changeling, left side. Young, showed fewer signs of labour than most. That suggested, but did not prove, that this was an officer. The red paint had been applied after the ash had, as there were spots left where ash had peeled off and took paint with it. It also was not applied to the entire bone, but rather to spots seemingly at random.
As the royals kept digging, they were quickly finding lots and lots of bones. There was far more than just one body buried here, and more curiously, not a single skull. Tegula would need more time to reassemble and catalogue all the skeletons, probably time she would not get, since Tarsus wanted to move out tomorrow night.
As more bones emerged, she found it harder to feign enthusiasm. A sickening picture was forming, as the ash spread was uniform on the bones and there were no impacts or cuts. Not a single bone had been struck by an object, indicating that these young changelings had somehow died of old age, or had been burned alive and buried. Tegula swallowed hard at the implications.
The total body count reached thirty five by the time the royals said they could dig no further. They had reached rock bottom, and had moved five cubic meters of earth. Tegula was busy rearranging and cataloging the parts as they came up, and found herself needing to use lots of space to get them all laid out. She had carefully marked and notated each body, and matched up bones with linking bones as best she could. Lost in her work, time and endurance had ceased to have meaning.
"Oh crud! Shining Armor, what time is it!?" Cadence shouted.
"What? I don't know, I don't have a watch."
"Neither do I! We might miss our train!"
Tegula managed to tear herself away from sorting the bones long enough to answer.
"Sorry, I forgot all about that," she said.
"It's no problem, we just might have to take a later one," Cadence said.
"The bones won't be going anywhere. I better take you back up to the surface."
Tegula stood up too quickly, and another burst of pain rocked through her crusting bandages.
"You mean, we can take you back up to the surface," Cadence mused. Tegula nodded reluctantly.
Tegula waved at her departing friends as they angled towards Marmalade Falls. The thundering waterfall was too close to make shouting after them any good, so she settled simply watching them go. She had "promised" to send them a copy of her research paper when it was published, which had about as much a chance of happening as a pony being beaten up by an aardvark.
Despite being officially enemies, she had a new respect for the royals, and the ponies in general. There was still an inherent animosity, and Tegula knew they would have left her for dead if they had known who she really was. Still, she felt herself feeling less uncomfortable with the idea of being friends with them if they met again. Perhaps they would see each other, under different terms. But that was for later, and her job now still needed doing.
Tarsus had approached from behind her, unnoticed. The falls had made sure he had not been heard, and he observed Tegula waving. As she turned, she nearly jumped in shock to see him standing behind her. He pulled her towards the hatch and shut it, blocking out the waterfall.
"Well, did your gamble pay off, or am I going to be putting you on latrine duty for four weeks?"
The question brought back all she had seen underground, briefly forgotten by flights of fancy of befriending her mortal enemies.
"It did. In fact, I'm going to need a few workers if you can spare them. We found something big."
"And the royals?"
"They don't suspect a thing. Uh, sir."
With the help of her fellow changelings working through the night and some of the next day, Tegula had managed to unearth all the remaining bones which the royals had missed, and correctly sort them. The red paint lines had ran at random across the bodies, and no pattern emerged. As she had pawed around the pit, she found that there was paint on the floor as well, covered by loose dirt when they had been digging.
Tarsus sent down a scout to tell her to hurry up, as the group was packing to depart and would be leaving in an hour. Tegula dismissed him without looking at him, her eyes transfixed on the floor. She began sweeping off the spare dust, revealing more red paint. Tegula swept more quickly, paying scant attention as the rest of the workers went back to the surface. More paint was revealed with each swipe of her hoof, in a series of small lines and spots.
Feeling a burst of inspiration, Tegula grabbed the bones that had red paint on them, and began filling in the pieces. Something or someone had painted the floor with the bones still on it, using a very careless and broad brush. Piece by piece, she began to assemble letters.
"X - Q - N - A"
The text was not literally written, but made sense if using a cipher. XQNA translated to "Your".
"P - R - P - I"
The next letter had either been cut off, or had one of its bones missing. It was close to the edge and the writer may have ran out of space. Tegula guessed it based on its shape, that it was an H.
"XQNAPRPIH", translated to "YOURENEXT" in changeling cipher.
A wave of triumph flooded Tegula's mind. She thrust her hooves skyward and shouted out into the darkness, "I did it! I solved it! You're next! You're next!"
The hollow echo of her own words came back to her from the gloom. "You're next!"
"You're next?" she asked herself. A single bead of cold sweat formed and glided down her neck, and she put her hooves back to the earth. She ran over the message again and again, praying it was an error. It was not, it was plainly written there for anyone to see.
You're next.
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Please do continue this gem!!! It's a really good story that just needs just a little bit more time to become popular.
MOAR!!!
Woah, things got serious.. And it was incredibly well-done! This chapter was riveting, as much as I love the comedy and hapless Thorax. Win-win!
First of, this is a great chapter. Almost nothing springs to mind as odd grammar and a lot of mystery appears here and I get really drawn in.
However, with the risk of drawing your ire again, I have to say the complete seriousness of this chapter is completely at odds with Thorax' plotline. This feels like neither comedy nor slice of life. It feels like a chapter from a completely different story, one with adventure and drama tags and possibly the dark tag. That would obviously be a great mysterious, tense story. But the story you advertise and begin is ostensibly about the bumbling Thorax, so the high seriousness chapters feel horribly jarring, particularly this one.
Specific nitpicks:
"Tegula wasn't sure she wanted them to find anything. There was no stopping them now, and all she could do was wait." You have one too many spaces between "anything." and "There. I also suggest a "though" after "now" or a "But" before "there".
" The red paint lines had ran at random across the bodies, and no pattern emerged." Again, a space too many before "The" and it should either be "paint lines had run at random" or "paint lines ran at random". When you use a "had" the next word should be in the form that is usually preceded by "to". So it is "had run" as where run is from the type that would be "to run".
Still, bear in mind, despite my criticism, your writin ability is still excellent. The pieces of the whole just have jarring differences in tone.
Still looking forward to reading the rest.
2938890
Yeah, I completely agree. I still love this story, but the tone shift is just so...contrary to the initial premise. It's a little unnerving.
2938890
Not that it's my 'ire' but I was kinda hoping you'd pick up on the fact that there are two very different narratives with two very different tones. The serious stuff happens on Cadence, Tegula, and Chrysalis' threads, and the unserious stuff happens on Thorax and Spiracle's threads.
Since Thorax is the main character, he gets most of the attention and the serious is overshadowed. I can only pick a finite number of categories to post this story in, mind you, that's a rule on fimfiction. Some stories don't fit neatly into the categories made for them.
2943374
Oh, I have picked up the very different tones and they are consistent in tone within each narrative.
That's kinda my point, that the part with Tegula in particular is so serious and, honestly, dark, that it feels like something out of a completely different story. A shift in tone as wild as it is between Thorax and Tegula is something that is very noticable and very, very, very hard to pull off and as it is now, there just seems to be nothing but the most tenous connection between the two main plots; "serious, apparent eradication of changelings" and "worst spy in the world bumbles his way through romance".
I'm hoping that the plot threads will somehow come together beautifully at some point in the future but as it is now, it looks like you wanted to write two different stories and just put them both in the same fic for some reason. Of course I expect that that isn't what you did and that you have some kind of plan, but that's how it looks to me at the moment.
And just for clarity's sake, ire was a joke, I expected you to be pretty reasonable and you were. And to soften my blow, let me repeat that your writing is still excellent. Good characters, good narrative and few mistakes. It's just the parts that don't quite fit together, at least yet.
Terribly sorry to anyone who got spooked thinking a new chapter was up. I clicked the wrong button.
3008194
Drat! And I was so eager, too
3008194 thats so disappointing
Creepy. As much as I dislike changelings in general, that's just... creepy.
So many hints. Missing spare parts, wheels, the paint, fire... Did a changeling hive dig too deep, and too greedily?
3336305 This is not Moiria...or is it?
Gotta admit, this chapter gave me a few chills, and that's not easy.
Good work
3336305
I Actually have a large respect for changelings. The ones I've met and seen (long story, could tell you if you want), are mostly nice. There're a few bad grubs here and there, but it's the same everywhere.
Oh god, poor changelings! D: *hugs as many as he can protectively *
Cya
Raziel-chan