A year after The Usurper undergoes his transformation and begins turning his kin into "The Mangled," some of the last surviving members of a once-great people must protect the sum of their race's knowledge, and find a way to survive.
It has been a year since the end of Season Five, and by no coincidence a year since the onset of the Usurper's invasion. He has destroyed everything in the path of his mistresses, leading their forces into battle to kill the last members of his former race, or transform them into twisted hunks of swollen, discolored body parts called the Mangled. Now, he has all but succeeded.
It is up to Unit SSEMA-2, Adept Pondering, and the friends he makes along the way to escort the culmination of all his race's knowledge and protocols to some sort of refuge. Along the way, he makes several friends. A former squadmate, who fought side-by-side with him for his whole life and won't stop now. A young Sister of Symphony who is hiding more than she knows. A suicidal pony whose dreams have been crushed. And even a wanderer from the East who cannot find a purpose. Together, they form a tightly-knit band of rogues who won't give up on one another- but can they survive in the hostile nation of Equestria?
The Encyclopedia was one of the most advanced wonders that any race on the planet had ever created. Stretching across several large rooms, each data bank within it was filled with everything its creators had ever learned, experienced, remembered, felt, or thought. Everything that went through the minds of any one of them, from the wonder of the youngest baby to the inexplicable light seen by the elders in the final moments before dismantling was chronicled in one of the hexagonal receptacles in one of the rooms of this great marvel. This was the final destination for any small bit of information that passed through the Great Mind, where it would sit for eternity in stagnation, waiting to be studied and maintained by the Apex Forms.
The Apex forms themselves were not much to behold, resembling long millipedes covered in a black exoskeleton. Their beady green eyes seemed to always glance upward, no matter the actual angle in which their sight was focused. At first glance, these Forms would not appear in any way significant, nor would they seem to fit any sort of function within or without their Home, as the other Forms do. However, the physical forms of these creatures were nearly unrelated to the function they served. These were not workers of the body, but workers of the mind. Whenever the Great Mind, the master and amalgam of their civilization, directed them to seek out information that could only be found within the Encyclopedia, they would scurry as fast as they could with their little legs to whatever receptacle within which that information was stored, use their oddly shaped jaws to interface with it, and immediately relay whatever information they found back into the Great Mind. Then, the use of the information, as well as how well the mind who requested it proceeded with the implementation of its contents, was relayed back and stored in the Encyclopedia, like everything else.
It was ironic, then, that the entire race of the Encyclopedia’s creators had followed the same path as what was logged into it. They had come from all over the world, or at least those parts which were known to them. They had not come of volition, and one could argue that they had not come of necessity either. No, they had come from instinct, triggered by one, single purpose, relayed to them from the very heart of the Great Mind. The Great Usurper, the Sole Deserter, the one who would bring down their civilization and transform their noble race into puerile slaves for his masters, had established a foothold within their very Home, the vast complex that held not only the Encyclopedia, but everything this race held dear. Ergo, there was a call not unlike the call for information just before any interval of transfer into the Encyclopedia. Every Form outside the Home, no matter what type, had to enter in. There was no question. The Home had to be defended.
At first, the beckoned had come hoping to fight. The Usurper had only the forces of a few dozen, surely? But they could not. Any of them that wandered into the Home was walking into a death trap, for the Slave had brought his Masters. Hordes of gold would rush and overwhelm any glimmer of hope in minutes, or even seconds, and the survivors would be taken and tortured in some way so horrible and twisted that they would turn into abominable, mutilated facsimiles of their former selves, slaves to the Great Usurper, and therefore to his masters.
Few ever actually made it to safety, and that safety was found in the rooms of the Encyclopedia. It was fortified with the best defenses their race could have ever created, even despite the destruction of the superstructure necessary for the Great Mind that supplied it with information. The defenses were indeed great, so much so that the Usurper could not breach it before the remaining members of his former race had managed to reach safety within.
There, like the thoughts stored within, they entered stagnation. They had come prepared for a swift battle, not the long guerrilla campaign which they found themselves forced into. Forced to stick to the alleys and backstreets of their own once-great city, they had found the stores of food either substantially finite or destroyed by their enemy, and so they scavenged on scraps or, if they could, the minds of whichever of the Usurper’s masters they managed to bring down in battle.
One would think the survivors would be culled and enslaved within days, but they did have three distinct advantages. First of all, many of the remaining survivors were either Elite or Rasa Forms, who could easily adopt the appearance of the forces of their enemy. Extensive precautions by both sides had prevented any major espionage, but this ability could be put to use in such a way that the enemy could not tell friend from foe before approaching them and engaging in conversation.
Their second advantage was their leader. Although their Queen, as fearless as she was ruthless, had abandoned them shortly before the destruction of the Great Mind prevented any further communication with her, a member of her Military Advisory by the name of Uncommon Mobility had taken up the mantle of leadership. Uncommon Mobility had led their scavengers personally and with great success, gathering countless resources in the name of survival, and putting many of his former brethren out of their torment. This was not nearly enough to win back the Home, nor was it enough to even cause permanent damage to his enemies. However, it was enough to buy time.
The final advantage was the Home itself. This was not a simple matter of “home field advantage,” though that certainly came into play during the early days of the conflict, but instead it is a matter of the mind within the Home, a sentient intelligence that would qualify as a Form were it not for its method of creation. This intelligence was capable of altering the internal passages of the Home at will, and it was no secret that it did everything it could to support the survivors, from opening convenient escape routes to occasionally even crushing the Usurper’s forces, as well as their masters, within closing corridors. Eventually, the invaders had resorted to using mining equipment to make their own passages, which undoubtedly caused the mind a great amount of pain, but it never surrendered or changed allegiances. In such a way, the center of this once-great race’s power was also one of its most admirable members, never giving way to constant stabbing or hacking from within its very body.
But now, that would matter no more. After almost a year of fighting for their very survival, this race was about to lose. There was never any question that the Encyclopedia could only hold out the invaders for so long, especially after their mining equipment was turned on the gate.
If one were to watch the events just outside that gate from a perspective within it, one would see a great tunnel with an inside coated in the clotting blood of the Home, with a line of green and gold shapes stretching infinitely into the corner of one’s eyes. One would also see two shapes directly ahead.
The one on the right could seem diminutive at first, but make no mistake, this was a great entity, come for the sake of an obsessive compulsion to plunder as much knowledge as she could. And at this very moment, the only thing on her mind was the riches of the Encyclopedia. This was, indeed, one of the goddesses before which the Usurper prostrated himself, and all she cared about was getting through that door.
At her right side was a shape much larger than she, a shape that, at first, would seem quite elegant, until it stepped into the light of the excavation beams.
Were you to gaze upon the face of this figure, you would see an abnormally long, distorted snout on a raw, seemingly peeled face covered in a green pus that had formed after the figure’s exoskeleton had been torn off. To gaze into the eyes would be to gaze into throbbing sacs filled with purple blood that jiggled with the movement of the legs, which had been swollen and bent as if a drunk surgeon had thought he was another species and was willing to twist and swell and break until the legs looked similar. Gazing upon the long neck, one would see three chunks of protruding bone, remnants of a skeleton far too solid to fully pry into shape. There was also a much bigger chunk of bone just below them, likely remnants of the ribcage, but this did not protrude through the pus-covered skin, instead applying just enough pressure to generate a huge red sore, mostly covered up by the more easily hardening pus on the figure’s underbelly. The back of the figure was covered in a sac of purple blood akin to the ones which the eyes had become, both likely being the result of internal bleeding. One would be hard-pressed to gaze upon this particular bruise and find the swollen slits from which the wings would emerge. The wings themselves were abnormally large, as if spurred on in their growth by another twisted surgeon with no regard for collateral damage. The green film had rotted away, leaving only small chunks of cartilage connected by thin, transparent veins so numerous as to generate a sort of woven film. The most sickening part about the wings, though, was that there was a third one growing in place of the tail. The most prominent feature of the figure, despite all this, would be the horn. Or rather, horns. The original horn was strangely intact, albeit with the outer layer rotted away, but still in sharp contrast to the rest of the distorted body. Behind this horn were two other inexplicable, bony growths that resembled antlers. There was no ready explanation behind them, but their resemblance to the sore at the bottom of the neck indicated that these were protrusions from the skull itself, and that they, despite their apparently sharp edges, had not in fact breached the skin.
So then, one would see that this is a monster. But do not attribute his presence to chance, or his previous effects on the situation at hand to be nil. This was no ordinary beast. This was the Great Usurper, the Sole Deserter, the Tyrant Slave. This was a former Changeling, with an interesting former name.
The remnants of the city’s makers took notice of the pending intrusion. As soon as the first crack appeared in the gate, a cry went out from the last node of the Great Mind, desperately beckoning its defenders to it.
It was here that a young Changeling mage named Adept Pondering came into play.
Adept Pondering had not known much of life before the Usurper’s revolt. He was, after all, little more than a hatchling at the time. He was one of the few Elite Form infants to escape the early days of the revolt, when the Usurper sought to have any vulnerable threats extinguished. His first memory happened to be a sight over the withers of one of the Sisters of Mercy, as he was carried swiftly away from the burning nursery. That same Sister would have her skull pierced just outside the gates of the Encyclopedia by a bloodthirsty invader. Now, he was hoping to repay her through combat. In a sad sense, he couldn’t wait for the gate to be burst and his fate to be fully defined as that of a carcass, or worse, one of the Mangled, as they were called. No, he would not become a slave to the Equestrians. He had seen to that himself.
The gate burst, revealing a cloud of ash and airborne biomass. On both sides, you could see the tension as the mind within the Home slowly, laboriously opened holes in the tunnel to allow the cloud to escape and the battle to commence. Both sides had their own reasons not to fire or charge into the cloud, after all. The Usurper’s goddess had, after all come to plunder the knowledge in the Encyclopedia, and so could not risk damaging it, and the Changelings knew that if the Home took any more damage, it may have perished.
When the cloud cleared, Adept Pondering’s first sight was encouraging. He saw unprotected Pony construction workers fleeing towards a line of unexpectedly distant soldiers, and the goddess muttered something that none could hear to the Usurper. The Usurper responded with a simple “Yes, mistress.” before the goddess teleported away. Now, the Changelings could not only strike the fleeing workers before the invading forces could come into play, but they could also strike the Usurper as well.
After a short but noticeable silence, the battle commenced.
If there was one thing that Adept Pondering would ever expend regret upon, it was his decision to become a mage. He was an Elite Form, the pinnacle of his race, and he had chosen the role of a support unit, rapidly casting and rotating enchantments on his fellow soldiers as they fought and he hid. Part of him would point out that his comrades could not even form weapons from their carapaces without him, but another, bigger part would counter with the thought that another would have simply taken his place. Regardless of his attitude towards his role, he followed it without question, taking refuge behind a shelf of Encyclopedia interface nodes and poking his head out to get a better view of the action.
He was the mage assigned to Squadron… Squadron… [FILE DAMAGED]. The Encyclopedia interface containing that information had already been dislodged from its position by the rumbling of the invaders’ mining equipment. So much for the purple goddess taking everything. Make no mistake, it is not as if he did not know his squadmates, but instead that he simply did not know the squadron’s designation. The identities of his squadmates were stored in his internal interface, a program similar to, what do the Ponies call it, memory? Yeah, that.
The Changelings began to attack the construction workers, and the battle began.
As his squadron began to attack the workers, who could not be left alive to breach the re-formed gate should this battle be won, he cast his first spell. No, to call it a spell would be quite misleading; Changeling magic consisted solely of enchanting one’s surroundings, so it was an enchantment, yes.
The enchantment was the one most standard for beginning a conflict. It was a simple enchantment, the first learned by young scholars looking to become mages. Its effect was to mold and harden the carapace on the end of the enchanted Changeling’s forehoof, fashioning it into a weapon. Which weapon it was to be fashioned into was recommended by the subjects before the battle, but since the weapons’ creation was artisanal in nature, and since the subjects knew nothing of its nuance, the mage was often allowed to take quite a few liberties within the design. Adept Pondering elected to give his squad’s leader the tip of a halberd on her left forehoof, his squad’s heavy a large shield with barbed edges on his right forehoof, and the squadron’s spotter a simple focusing lens on each forehoof, since he would be fighting primarily above the entrance’s floor.
Now came the enchantments to put onto the newly created weapons. The first weapon to be enchanted was the pair of focusing lenses, as they would be useless by themselves. The enchantment was a simple one, a beam emitter that interfaced directly with the spotter’s central processor. Whenever the wielder willed it, a cutting beam would be emitted and focused through the lenses, slicing apart whatever it hit. Since it was normally used for demolition of unneeded infrastructure, it was only natural that Adept Pondering would add his own personal touch to increase combat effectiveness to rival that of actual combat enchantments.
The leader’s halberd blade was next to be enchanted, seeing as the heavy could normally handle himself just fine, and could therefore wait for his supplemental enchantment. Besides, none of the squadmates had even hit the encroaching enemy line yet; the enchantment process so far had taken about two seconds, and Adept Pondering had at least three more to go. Plenty of time to finish enchanting the weapons, and then move on to the rest of the carapace.
The halberd was expected to don quite a bit of blood, and so it got a steaming enchantment. It became hot enough that any blood it came upon would mostly, if not completely, evaporate and cloud up the hall, upping the temperature considerably. Even though the first line of invaders were members of the Mangled, the Equestrians would present the greatest threat, and heat significantly weakened them when combined with their own body heat and stuffy armor. That is why he was focusing on heat enchantments for this battle, although the heavy would not be granted one.
Instead, he got an enchantment of ease. His shield was barbed, so it would be hard to pull out of his targets, so his enchantment granted greater ease in removing the weapon from the bodies for further use. The funny thing is, no one actually had any idea how that enchantment achieved its effect.
Now that the weapons had been enchanted, he simply enchanted the squadron’s exoskeletons with a hardening technique and watched with the other mages, who by now had already sent out their own enchantments to their own squadrons as well.
The spotter darted about in the air above the fray, sending red streak after red streak down on the Usurper, who had charged to meet the Changeling line. The monster did not take much damage, however, and was firing blast after blast of his own twisted, foreign magic at the heavy, who was standing in to open with his shield out, trying his absolute best to survive against the onslaught to serve as a distraction. His shield held out for a bit, but the the Usurper brought down his horns upon it and broke it, quickly following up by scattering the heavy’s head all across the hall with another blast.
The line of invaders reached the defenders.
Being surrounded by fighting already, the Usurper attempted to fly ahead in order to move forward, unsheathing the veiny cartilage of his wings. However, this procedure was abruptly aborted when a black shape emerged from underneath the body of the heavy and attacked the first part of the Usurper it could with its familiar halberd. As the leader swung her weapon, she took aim for the wings of the Usurper. She managed to strike the left one, which, having already begun decomposition, was easily severed.
There was a cry of pain, and everything within three meters of the newly crippled tyrant was turned to stone and shattered by his magical field blast.
Now, all that was left of the squadron was Adept Pondering and the spotter, who was, according to the Great Mind’s Battlenet, having way too fun of a time burning everything. All Adept Pondering had to do was rotate the tertiary modifications of the spotter’s lenses second by second according to the changes in the situation until he went down as well, and then he would run to the second checkpoint to begin enchanting the next squad he was assigned to.
Suddenly, his left ear twitched. That was a sign that there was a message on the Battlenet specifically directed at him. He opened his HUD interface and searched for his designation within the category of most recent messages.
He saw reports of damage to the Usurper, and casualty reports as well, and a couple requests for enchantment alterations for the other mages, but he didn’t see- there! His designation!
SSEMA-2 and SSESF-4, report to the Central Control Node for immediate reassignment.
`He hated this idea, absolutely hated it. It was his purpose to fight and die for brethren and Queen, to enhance the dying throes of his civilization to kill as much of the enemy as possible, so that his kind may leave behind a world and people as devastated by their vengeful spite as he could make them. He was not here to run away to satisfy the snapping of his leader’s mind in the face of death! What orders could there be left to give? This was outrageous!
But to disobey would be unthinkable, and so he left the front.
The rest of the Encyclopedia had been darkened, and the Changelings there had set up many barricades and ramparts from whatever junk they could find under the enchantment of night vision. Adept Pondering went deep into thought as he navigated the fortifications. If the Home could not keep constant the light from its fixtures, then the mind within it was dying, and if the others could not communicate the location of obstacles to him through the Great Mind for lack of spare processing power to utilize, then that meant the final node to connect with the Great Mind was dying with it. He began to walk faster.
As he passed group after group of his people, they would always ask him questions. How many invaders there were, how well things were going, et cetera. He didn’t always know the answers, as it head been a matter of minutes since he was in the theatre of combat, but he tried his best. Often, after answering their questions and departing from the checkpoint, he would hear smashes and cries and the orchestra of war enter the room just as he left. It was tempting him. Tempting him to disobey, to join in, to fulfill his vengeful fantasies. But he could not.
This continued for about ten to twenty minutes, with Adept Pondering walking through a checkpoint, answering questions from the guards, who could be annoyingly chatty, especially the younglings. It was a pity they had to fight, but the only alternative for them was to let themselves be killed. Mangling could only be performed once maturation was complete, and the Usurper wouldn’t want to wait that long.
Eventually, he neared a glowing circle on the far end of the final checkpoint. The invaders were a few minutes behind him at this point, so he slowed down to a trot, noticing the other Changeling that had been called there with him. It was his squadron’s spotter, from the first checkpoint. He had presumed from his designation that he was another member of his squad, but seeing as they were the only survivors he thought that the other one was one of the dead ones.
There was no conversation between the two until they entered the glowing circle, pushing aside the curtains of the webbing of Worker Forms to enter the Central Control Node. This room was still lit up, so that meant the mind of the Home was not completely dead yet. The light allowed the two Changelings to gaze upon the entirety of the room they were in for the first time in what felt like the exact amount of time that it had been, that being slightly over twenty minutes.
The room was rectangular in shape, and the webbed passage through which the two Elite Forms had entered was attached to one of the short sides. There were two levels to the room, as well. The first level was the one they were currently on, covered in the same shelf-like memory drives covered in Apex Form receptacles that filled the entire Encyclopedia. The upper level was more of a balcony, attached all around the walls, but not expanding very far towards the center at all. The function of these balconies was to provide the Apex and Worker Forms with a maintenance path up to the most important parts of the room: the green, glowing computation clusters growing on the ceiling. Strangely, everything was covered in a thick coating of dust. But none of that was important at the moment. What was important was what was at the other end of the room.
It was the last remaining node of the Great Mind, complete with a projected interface accessible by all forms of Changeling, from Worker Forms to Broodmothers. This interface oversaw all functions of the Changeling civilization. Or it would, if the mind of the Home could take the strain. Now, it was reduced to the feeds from a few optical sensors.
Standing within the interface was the one who had summoned them there with the Great Mind, Regent Uncommon Mobility. He was an Elite Form, like the other two, but considerably more infirm. If the necessary infrastructure was accessible, along with a viable replacement, his biomass would have been recycled about a week prior. But that was beside the point.
The Regent exited the interface, and turned toward the two newcomers. His grey-circled eyes opened further than they had been, indicating a heightened alertness. Whatever this meeting was about, it was more important to him than watching some of the last members of his race get slaughtered. Suddenly, Adept Pondering began to perceive his role, whatever it was, as considerably more important, although it still mattered little ultimately. They would all join their comrades soon anyway.
The distance between the two parties was closed due to efforts of all three of the Changelings.
Uncommon Mobility opened his mouth.
“SSEMA-2 Adept Pondering. SSESF-4 Easily Aerial. The Great Mind is dying, and has no energy for relay. We communicate through vocal binary.”
Adept Pondering answered, speaking just as the Regent had, using a speedy rhythm of small clicks and pauses to communicate his message.
“Query: Purpose of encounter?”
The Regent responded quickly.
“Explanatory sequence: Sensation: Redirect vision to complete addition of 89.20° to y-axis.”
The two soldiers complied with the imperative content of this message, examining the computation clusters on the ceiling to find that they were merging at a central point, around small black shape slightly shorter than one of their forelegs. Uncommon Mobility spoke once again.
“Re-formatting conversation to communicative dialect arrangement designation PIC-1… There we go. Come on down, Switchboard.”
The two subordinates altered their communicative functions to comply with the new format, with Adept Pondering noticing that the only one he could access was a slightly older variant. He attempted to update to a modern version, but the Great Mind did not have enough strength to comply with the request. Easily Aerial, on the other hand, had updated months ago, and not no problems with the alteration.
As they did this, the small black shape began to uncurl, revealing a large tube about as long as a foreleg with an oddly shaped head on one end and hundreds of millipede-like legs. It was an Apex Form. As it dropped to the floor, Adept Pondering noticed that there were several key differences from the standard model. The frills behind the head had been replaced by heavy, thick exoskeletal plating, which actually had some miniature computational clusters apparently growing out from under them, and the interface had, instead of a locking mechanism on the front of the head, more of a stinger, covered in soft strings of neural lace. Similar neural lace, albeit glowing white, extended from the opposite end of the body, forming a spherical cluster where the body would normally taper off.
“This,” said the Regent, “is Switchboard. She was breedcrafted seven hundred years ago as the magnum opus of the Gene Forgers, just before they were disbanded in favor of the reference procedure. As you can see, instead of a standard Encyclopedia interface, she has a set of neural laces completely exposed attached to a piercing mechanism, as well as highly adapted computation clusters growing underneath her frills. She was intended to be a portable Encyclopedia for the Queen, crawling into her ear and using the piercing mechanism to interface directly with her brain. At the time, there was no use for her whatsoever due to the Encyclopedia’s connection to the Great Mind. It was actually pretty awkward. Anyway, she ended up just crawling up there, to the computation clusters, and absorbing everything that went through them, even breedcrafting herself constantly to have better and better memory. You know what this means.”
Adept Pondering spoke up.
“Indeed. You would have us safeguard this odd being. However, what shall be the use? Our kind has fallen, and knowledge cannot reside within a severed skull, nor one Mangled by the Usurper. Will he not hunt us? And what shall our counter be to this ineluctable measure?”
“You are the last squadron in an operation consisting of three dispatched to ensure the survival of our kind. The second squadron will deal with the Usurper and the vessels of his corruption.”
Easily Aerial spoke up.
“Wait, couldn’t we just drop her off at one of the Eastern Nations and go help them out?”
“You know as well as anyone that the fledgling republics to the east will crumble without our kind to assist their traders and travellers, and that no one, especially not you two, should ever take the chance of crossing the Badlands without extensive support that simply cannot be provided anymore to even get word to them that help is required. No, the only place you even can go is directly into Equestria. That’s the only place close enough for the journey to be survivable. There you will proceed with your other two objectives once you reach a certain abandoned infiltration center, one that was prepared for your arrival before the off-site units were recalled. That will be your base of operations. Your only further orders are to ensure the survival of the Changeling race, by any means at your disposal.”
Adept Pondering understood the message, though he would need some time to process exactly how important it really was. For now, though, he resolved to simply comply until he could wrap his head around it. But first, he needed details on exactly how to comply.
“Where is this operations center? And how do we even get out of the Home?”
The Regent was quick to answer these queries.
“An escape route has already been formed. There wasn’t enough strength left in the Home to form one that lead all the way to the outside, but it does lead to the hatchery, which should put you far enough away from the invaders to find a way out.”
There was a series of resounding crashes from outside the Central Control Node. The battle drew closer. The Regent, however, continued without pause.
“The infiltration center is at the northeastern edge of a town called Ponyville, about the length of three city blocks away from the home of one of the Equestrian goddesses, the one you saw before, to be more specific.”
“Into the belly of the beast…” Adept Pondering heard Easily Aerial mutter under his proverbial, biologically impossible breath.
The Regent overheard as well.
“Indeed. Not the ideal placement, but it will have to do. Now, I believe the echoes of war outside are your cue, units. Exeunt operatives, stage left. Just beside the ventilation terminal, to be more specific.”
Adept Pondering attempted a response, but communication suddenly proved unfeasible. The weight of his responsibility had finally hit him. Even so, he moved towards the exit with his partner.
Uncommon Mobility recognized this, and made one final statement.
“I understand. Goodbye, and good luck.”
With that, the operatives entered the passage.
Adept Pondering overheard from behind him a muffled thump and a venomously warm hello.
The tunnel was slippery. Exceedingly slippery. In fact, so slippery that they neared the bottom of the tunnel in considerably less time than they expected, and so had not prepared for the landing early enough. The result was two crumpled massed squashed against one another on the hatchery floor.
Easily Aerial popped up and immediately looked around. The hatchery lights had all but gone out, and the result was the sight of nothing but shadowy hexagons everywhere the Spotter looked. He let out a tiny chirp to signal to his comrade.
Hearing the whispered signal, Adept Pondering ceased his state as a heap of chitin on the floor, and stood up. He did not detect any injuries on himself, and so the next step was to continue. He stepped forward, and onto something squishy and wet. There was a squelch. His horn lit up, and he cast an enchantment.
This particular enchantment was an area-of-effect Status Relay enchantment, which diffused in all directions, affecting everything with a direct line of sight to the caster. Once the enchantment reached all the objects it could, it would scan those objects from within and relay the information it discovered straight back to Adept Pondering. As a result, he would gain intimate knowledge of the composition, shape, and even short-term history of said objects. It was no substitute for sight, but at least he had temporarily memorized what his surroundings were at at least that moment.
What he found was a cavernous space more or less vertically ovular in shape lined with a damaged and non-functional incubation honeycomb consisting of hexagons that ranged from the size of an egg to the size of a house. They had all been damaged by crude tools with shapes that matched those of Equestrian weapons, save a few that were attacked with horns. Their contents, namely the wounded and unhatched, had been ripped out and thrown into a central pile at the bottom of the chamber, where some of the Equestrians and Mangled had tried to burn them. However, this had occurred three days prior to the scan, when the Home was still mentally active, and the mind within it had hermetically sealed the entire chamber. The fire consumed the breathable air inside, and as a result the ponies within had died desperately stabbing the wall in the vain hope of allowing more air in.
Adept Pondering supposed it was quite ironic that they had landed on top of the pile of bodies. The Equestrians had done quite a bit of work constructing this little monument, and in the end it had been used to help the Changelings by cushioning their fall.
So where were the Mangled that had accompanied them? They didn’t show up on scans like these as separate from the background perceptions from the Home’s structures, so he decided to sort through the operative coding that he had received from the Changeling remains.
Funnily enough, a previous operations team had also used this passage to exit the Home, killed them, and piled their corpses on top of the pile. He decided to store the Mangled coding he received in his internal interface to analyze later.
“So what did you find?” Easily Aerial chirped a bit too loudly.
“We’re in the middle of the hatchery. Facing north-northwest on the top of a slope. Exit was formed two days ago, 140 degrees to your right.”
“On it. What’s the rest of our route?”
“We go down the tunnel through an auxiliary silo station, where we resupply. Then we jump down a few balconies in a lift shaft. After that comes the hard part.”
“I get the feeling I’m not gonna like this.”
“We skirt the outsides of Biomass Recycling.”
“That’s bad? We’re not being recycled.”
“Let’s just head to the silo station. We’ll talk as we go.”
They set out for the chamber exit, and down a narrow passage about half a horizon long.
“So, you gonna tell me why that’s so bad?”
“Have you not examined the order of battle, unit? That’s the only place that the Mangled could possibly be being manufactured at.”
There was a pause. Manufactured. That word was more comforting than anything. It seemed as if it had been carefully chosen, but both Changelings knew it hadn’t. Nevertheless, it was at once heretical and a tribute to the lost. On one hand, it was a glorification of whatever sick torture the ponies had devised, to use such a sacred term. On the other hand, it was the equivalent of saying the Mangled were in a better place, and termed their loss as more peaceful, surrounded by the emotionless industry that Changelings so loved. Because of this, the units instinctively pondered the double-meaning of the word, making them think more about their kin, and the tragedy that surrounded them. Their spirits fell.
A moderately short silence later, they had arrived at a small silo station that had already been smashed. The silos had already been punctured, and flooded the room with different types of nectar that had fortunately not mixed. There had been a short skirmish here, and there was a small, almost quaint assortment of bodies floating in the liquids.
The Changelings’ legs gave way voluntarily and they began floating in the nectars as well, drifting from type to type, absorbing the nutrients and resources they needed for the coming journey. For a moment, it was almost a sort of forgetful bliss, and they had forgotten that their entire civilization was crumbling around them.
Then they heard a voice.
“Star? Star, you here?”
The two Changelings had been immobile, but now they were frozen in place. The voice was speaking Equestrian, and was soon joined by the click of metal hoofguards on the sclerodermic floor unique to the compromised areas that now pervaded the entire Home. This was coming from the next passage on the Changelings’ evacuation route.
“Star, c’mon. We gotta help with the final sweep. But I guess I already am, looking for you, huh? Is this an elaborate trick to get me to do both our jobs?”
Looking down the passage in question even in their immobility, the pair of units saw a lance of energy rush out from the wall towards a dimly lit shape in the distance, which fell to the ground as the voice let out a shout that sounded a lot more like a cry of frustration about forgotten luggage than your usual cry of mortal wounding. A second lance of energy arced out and flung the body against the wall opposite for good measure, lighting the passage red once again.
Having absorbed all the nectar of all the best selections that they could, and desperately wanting to know if there were any other survivors of the battle at the Encyclopedia besides them and the already-departed other squadrons, as well as recognizing the lances of energy as coming from Changeling focusing lenses akin to those on the hooves of Easily Aerial, the pair rushed forward with abandon to examine the situation.
What they found was a Mark VI focus turret, set up there on the wall as an automated defense years ago. Normally, it would have two barrels for the attached conduit’s energy to be focused through, one on either side of the turret, but the left barrel, the one closest to the ceiling when the turret was pointing away from the pair, had been torn off by what looked like a three-pronged gardening cultivator. Gardening tools? How desperate were they to field soldiers for this? Anyway, the tunnel was only on a slight incline as a precaution against nectar spills like the one behind the two Changelings, and so there was a thin layer of healing nectar even there, which Adept Pondering splashed onto the turret using his wings as a small gesture of thanks.
As they moved on, the two Changelings had a bit more pep in their step. There were still other units, and they were still fighting, and that was good to know.