The Monster that is Me

by Terrahex

Prologue: Fallen Stars

o----[ Prologue: Fallen Stars ]-----------------------o

I've come to terms that the invasion of Canterlot on the day of the royal wedding between Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and Shining Armor will end up as nothing more than an insignificant bullet point in the history of Equestria, despite the fact that an estimated %65 of the Everfree changeling hive perished because of our attack. To be fair, most of them didn't actually die in Canterlot, instead strewn about a hostile country to die of injuries, hostile wild animals, starvation, or the locals themselves. It was simultaneously one of the most and least successful invasions of Equestria in recorded history.

Despite those statistics, I can't bring myself to truly regret that day, not that I could've done anything to stop it at the time, and there isn't anything I can do about it now because crossing my own timeline would be really bad, I'm told. Besides, with all the events that our mad queen set in motion when she decided to march on Canterlot, it may very well be one of the most important days in Equestrian history since the first fall of Nightmare Moon. And it'll still end up as nothing more than a bullet point in a text book.

Of course, my opinion is probably biased, especially since I consider it the day that defined the rest of my life. As far as I'm concerned, my life started as a comet coated in green fire sailing across the skies of Equestria, recently launched from the capital by an explosive forcefield of magic and love. My fellow changelings that happened to be launched in the same general direction as me were blazing beside me in comets of their own, fiery tails tracing lines across the sky.

After what felt like forever, my arc finally took me below the cloud cover to expose a sprawling pony city beneath me. Fillydelphia. Most worker drones like me never left the hive for any reason, and seeing urban equestria open up before me was the first time I realized that the world I knew was really just a tiny part of a much bigger and stranger whole. Well, I put that into thought later; mostly I was just terrified.

Then the fireballs started landing or, more appropriately, crashing. They slammed into the sides of buildings, shattering windows and raining glass down upon panicking ponies. They crashed into trees and brush, kindling magical green bonfires. Several simply hit pavement, skidding along while leaving what I hoped was a line of blackened ash instead of the black chitin of our exoskeletons.

My descent was far less graceful. I cried out as a building rose up before me, and, unable to move or otherwise maneuver myself, my right foreleg clipped it's roof. My yelp of pain was lost as I immediately went into a tumbling descent like a broken pinwheel, my world turning into a rush of blurred images. My flight path was cut off by slamming, hard, into the concrete face of a ten-story building. My shroud of fire dissipated instantly. I'm not sure whether the sharp cracking sound I heard was my exoskeleton buckling under the pressure or if I imagined it completely.

Regardless, I was only dimly aware as my body separated from the wall, letting me fall a few stories into a wide decorative fountain. My world was dark and numb as I sloshed around in the shallow water unable to swim or tell which way was up. A hoof struck stone and I forced myself above the water, throwing my upper half onto the wall that ringed the fountain. My lungs struggled to come back to life, after the breath was forced from them, either from the impact with the wall or the surface of the water, and I couldn't force myself to move now that I was out of immediate danger.

Then, slightly distorted by my inebriated state, I heard a shaking voice ask: "I-is it dead?"

I blearily became aware of a mass of shifting hooves and voices over the sound of a gurgling water fixture.

"Mommy, what is it?" A foalish voice asked.

"Shush, honey. Stay away from that, it could be dangerous."

"It can't possibly be alive after that."

"Damn this thing is ugly."

"What should we do?"

"Someone go make sure it's dead..."

My lungs jump-started suddenly, spastically inhaling sweet oxygen. A chorus of gasps met my ears as my body suddenly came to life, flailing in the water. My head tipped briefly as I panicked, making me panic even more. I thrashed, twisting and turning my body around in the water until I found that the pool was shallow, hardly deeper than two feet. Planting my hooves, I jerked my head above the water to take another sorely needed breath.

There was never a need to learn how to swim in the hive. We hardly had a use for water when distilled love provided all the nutrition we needed, and I was not a fan of water as things stood. After catching my breath, I glanced around at my alien surroundings, jumping to a standing position when I saw at least a dozen ponies on the other side of the fountain's concrete partition.

Ponies were the enemy. They stood gaping at me in shock and horror, a filly clinging desperately to her mother's leg while looking at me with wide eyes. My opaque blue eyes jumped from one to the next.

I was just a courier drone plucked from the hive and chucked into the ranks of soldiers to bolster our numbers. I wasn't built or properly trained for fighting. My meager training was hardly enough to fight with numbers on my side let alone when they were against me.

"What are you?" One of them asked.

I bit my chitinous lip, unprepared for negotiations.

"Does it matter?" A stallion with a pair of wings stepped up. "These things just start falling from the sky causing trouble. If you ask me, we should get rid of it now."

"I guess that's why we're not asking you." Another stallion, this one with a horn, spoke up. "Just look at it. Sure, it may be ugly, but it certainly doesn't look threatening."

I took a step back, my insectoid wings flicking off water. They were prepared for flight, but I'd have to get out of the water if I wanted to have room to take off.

"Are you kidding?" The winged stallion gestured toward me. "Look at the size of those fangs," I clamped my mouth shut, "there is no way that thing is even remotely safe."

A murmur ran through the assembled ponies, not the least of which being, "Mommy, can I go pet it?" I uneasily took another step back.

"I..." I started in my warbling changeling voice. I didn't know what to say.

"Oh just look at the poor thing." The mother said. "It's just as scared of us as we are of it."

Scared? I was way past that. I was terrified.

"Scared! That thing is a monster!" The pegasus stallion countered.

"Yeah, if we don't kill it now, it could hurt somepony." Another pony in the group agreed. Several others muttered their agreement.

My breathing started to get erratic with panic. I whipped around, scrambling in the unyielding water toward the far end of the fountain.

"Quick, it's trying to get away!" I looked back to see several ponies break away from the group, one unfurling wings and taking to the air. My eyes widened, and my efforts redoubled as I sloshed through the chlorinated water, contaminating it with my greenish blood. Absolute terror prevented me from realizing how much pain I should've been in.

"Hold on," The pegasus stallion called out. "I never said we should kill it!"

I heard a splash behind me, feeling an insistent tug on my tail. I looked back to find a unicorn quickly gaining on me, the midsection of my tail gripped with magic.

"RAAAAAH!" I jerked my head back to my front to see a pegasus mare a split second before her hooves pummelled into me, forcing me under the water with a living weight on top of me. I shouted in surprise and pain, a pillar of bubbles erupting from my snout with nothing but water to replace the air. I pushed and shoved frantically at the pony, but she remained resolute. Panicking, I reached out to my horn, only realizing something was wrong a fraction of a second before it forcefully exploded, sending the pegasus flying through the air.

I thrust my head back above water, greedily gulping air. Throwing myself forward through the water, I hoisted myself up and over the concrete partition. Falling, gasping, off the wall to the dry land below, I hardly missed a beat before making a break for it, the sound of pursuing hooves hot in my ears. I spread my wings, jumping into the air as an earth pony snatched my tail in his mouth. I beat my wings furiously, producing a low hum that permeated the air, pulling the stallion forward even as he firmly planted his hooves. The rest of my pursuers were quickly approaching, and I needed to be airborne now.

"Just leave me alone!" I cried, lashing out with my back hoof as hard as I could. He yelped when I hoof made contact with his nose, and I jerked free, pulling up and out of the range of my land bound opponents before shooting down the street.

Nervously, after a few seconds I looked back, dreading what I would find. Fortunately, nopony seemed to be on my tail. I let out a sigh of relief, a tremor running through my body. I had to fight back blurry tears. I didn’t know how far away from home I was, and I just had a very near death experience, escaping only by the skin of my teeth. I was scared, alone, and injured. Then I caught a glance of my appearance in a glassy skyscraper.

My breath caught in my throat, and I had to slow to a hover, only now discovering the true extent of my injuries and then the dulled pain behind them. My carapace was cracked in a webbed fashion all across my body, in many places leaking my pale green blood. But by far the worst damage of all was my right foreleg. The exoskeleton was completely shattered, small bits of it barely hanging onto my skin, or even gone entirely, revealing an ugly gash in the skin below. Now that I knew about it, I couldn't ignore the dully throbbing pain welling up deep inside. The damage was so bad I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn I had several fractures on my internal skeleton.

Misty eyed, I realized my fate. I was already dead.

The changeling hive was cutthroat efficient. If I returned with a broken leg, I'd no doubt be driven away. It was more convenient to replace me than it was to heal me. I felt my energy start to wane, hopelessness a stone in my heart. It only got worse.

"My horn!" I noticed, tears coming to my eyes. As if a broken leg wasn't enough, my forehead was now occupied by a jagged, broken-off stump. Most changelings, myself included, seldom used their magic at all, but it was still an integral part of a changeling’s identity. A drone’s horn wouldn't grow back like a unicorn's would, either. Any hope I had left of returning to the hive immediately abandoned me.

I was lost and badly injured in a city full of ponies who wanted to kill me. I knew I couldn't stay here, but at the same time, I had no where left to go. Everything that I've ever known in my life was suddenly gone, and I had no hope of ever getting it back. Even if I did somehow make it out of Fillydelphia alive, I’d still be in a hostile country with no friends or family, not that I ever did have any of either.

I briefly caught a reflection in the reflective window before something managed to ram into me from behind, plowing me forward to slam bodily into my reflection. My vision immediately fuzzed from the pain of my disturbed wounds.

"Dirty bug." A mare's voice whispered into my ear as she pressed me against the glass.

I fought to push back against her, seeing stars as I took the brunt of the pain from using a broken limb. "Why are you doing this?" I choked out.

"You're a monster." She replied coldly. "This is what happens to monsters." She pulled me away from the glass momentarily before slamming me into it again. My breath caught in my throat. She could obviously tell I was in bad shape, and at this rate, I wouldn’t last much longer either.

"I wonder," She said with a dangerous tone, "how easy it would be to take one of these off." She took my right wing in my mouth, biting down. I tried to flick it away, but she held it firmly in her jaw, giving it a good yank, not enough to tear anything, but enough to send another intense jolt of pain up my spine.

I couldn't lose my wings. Breaking a leg or losing my horn were two terrible things, but my wings were who I was. My job, the thing I was meant to do since before birth, had me on them all day. I was not going to let her have them, too.

I called on my magic, and despite my horn being being broken, it lit up with burning, green fire. I needed fire. I fed it juice, letting it spread to the entirety of my body, engulfing it in flames, flames that licked and burned at the hooves pressed against my back but didn't bother me. Changelings loved fire.

My attacker immediately yelped in pain, releasing my wing and pushing off of me. Not giving her a chance to recover, I shoved off the side of the building, slamming my flaming body into hers. She screamed, hooves scrabbling on my back before she managed to fall away from me. Taking the opening, I made a snap decision and flew in that direction as fast as I could, my fire quickly dissipating as I put everything I had left in my wings.

Soaring quickly over panicking, rioting ponies and guards too busy dealing with the tumultuous crowds to deal with another changeling, I continued pumping my wings until the buildings fell around me and I burst into open skies. stunned by the sudden freedom, I faltered a beat before darting forward. I flew further and further until it was impossible for me to fly any longer and was forced to descend below the canopy of a forest.

I hit the ground hard, an unexpected jolt of pain rushing madly through my whole body. I fell, rolling as momentum carried me. Unable to stop myself, I screamed, cried even after my tumble ceased, and I lay there crying for eternity, broken as I was.

When I finally stumbled to my legs, a variety of sensation I’d never felt before wracked my fragile frame, not the least of which being complete exhaustion from my adrenaline fueled sprint out of Fillydelphia or the sharp migraine from accute magical overexertion. The tooth and hoof fight in the sky had briefly restored my appreciation for life, but now that I had finally ceased running, everything inside and outside hurt so, so much. I wanted to stop feeling, even if it meant I’d never feel again. What use was living when I wanted nothing more than for everything to stop? Yet neither was there a use in standing there like a crumbling statue. With nothing left to do, I lurched forward to begin a lilting limp. Hardly half a dozen hoofsteps after I started moving, I froze mid step as a cry rang out through the quiet woods.

“Hello? Is anypony out here?” An effeminate voice called out with no particular focus. Slowly, dread clawing my insides, I turned my head on my rusty neck to see a brash grey unicorn a dozen feet from me, the only thing separating us being inconsequential underbrush.

As if by fate, her gaze slowly turned on me, widening grey eyes locking on mine. her surprise evident, she opened and closed her mouth as if set on mute. I was obviously the thing she least expected to see.

I took a step backward, prepared to flee, but before I could make the monumental mistake of putting any weight on my broken foreleg, I stopped myself.

I was in no shape to flee again. My wings were literally exhausted, and I wouldn’t be getting very far on a broken leg. To top things off, though most of my wounds had closed up, I was starting to get dizzy from loss of blood.

It was an inevitability in my condition. I might as well be fighting when it happened. I wheeled back around to face the unicorn, lowering my front end closer to the ground while baring my fangs.

Much to my shock, the unicorn stumbled backwards, falling to her haunches. “I-I heard crying.” Her voice cracked. My face showed my confusion, not knowing how to respond. For this moment I had the advantage over her. I might just be able to beat her if I attacked now before she could restructure her defense.

But I didn't want to. I was just a courier, a simple drone in a hive of thousands. I shouldn’t be here. This shouldn’t have happened to me. I shouldn’t-

A sob slipped past my lips even after I made an effort to suppress it. My body and mind couldn’t take this anymore. I deflated, falling back to the ground and dryly sobbing. I didn't care anymore. Caring became such a burden.

“A-are you okay?”

“Just leave me alone.” I sobbed. “I just want everything to stop.”

I heard her come cautiously come closer. She was just a fool, approaching a monster like me. Then she let out a loud gasp. “You’re hurt!”

“I SAID LEAVE ME ALONE!!!” I shouted as loud as I could, attempting to light up my horn only to experience the unique feeling of what I’d imagine sticking a needle into my eye would feel like. Everything lost its luster, and I fell into a deep, dark hole. The last I saw was the concerned, silver face of the unicorn I now know as "Mom".

Author's Note:

Achievement get: a New Start

Due to this prologue getting dangerously off topic, I had to cut off the end. if you want to read it in it's unedited glory. look at this blog post. Note, this blog post has no relevance to the plot. Come back and read this blog post later if you prefer, or don't even read it at all. And with this prologue, all proto-chapters are declared non-canon.

Thanks to a revelation that I can't name, Equestrian Ninja's plot is going to be restructured once more before I begin working on it in full. in the mean time, this story is off of hiatus.

Comments

[Unknownlight]

Hold on, what just happened? Are you rewriting the story?

[Savant Sentral]

DAFUQ IS THIS?