It was preordained that we should part
The stone here was old. She could tell that just by looking at it. You didn't need a course in ancient artisanal stonework to look at a crumbling piece of masonry and determine it had not been used by the bulk of Equestrian society in general for quite some time. Perhaps it hadn't been used by anypony. And yet here they were.
The changeling was one of the old ones too. She recognized that mottling—the pictures of what looked like hundred-year-old half-digested cheese, given four legs and a set of insect wings. She didn't know why she'd trusted her in the first place.
The Princess requires your assistance, was probably all that had to do with it.
For one thing, she didn't like to talk about it. Anypony or anything would have given a lot to help the absolute ruler of Equestria. Any griffon she knew would have clipped their wings if Princess Twilight had requested it, and mail them off in a box with a bow on top. And a card. A fancy one.
That wasn't blind devotion. It was... what was something else? Friendship. It was a servitude required when you didn't even know what somepony looked like, really, because you had never seen them, personally, off in Griffonstone, you know, official business didn't bring her around that often, and the one time you were so little and your mother had said there were more important things to do than waste time going to a silly parade, and what did you need all that cotton candy and junk food for anyway, it was just going to go straight to your wingspan, and then you'd be left behind in gym class even worse and the other griffons would go from name-calling to hurtling rocks at you, first little ones, then big ones that would crumple your wings and knock your beak sideways and leave you lying in a bleeding hump in a cloudy ditch somewhere, and was that any way to show respect for your mom and dad?
Princess Twilight was her friend. She knew that because Princess Twilight was everyone's friend. And she didn't have any other friends, so...
This was right, then. Right?
"This way, please." The changeling's voice vibrated slightly in the dim corridor of stone and barely-lit torches. A hiss underlined its every word, as though a separate tongue altogether was vibrating each time it opened its mouth. "Every moment you linger is... more painful for the Princess." It narrowed its beady green eyes and scowled reproachfully at the griffon.
"No, no, I'm sorry! I'll hurry up, I promise." She didn't want to hurt the Princess. Make her mad. She was already sorry for everything. She just wanted to see her, to talk to her, to know why she felt so lonely she hated every second as though it were a living thing, fighting against the horde of them every day as they spilled down and out of her clock and into the stupid pile of reality that seemed to sit on her chest like a thousand pounds of cloud stacked up to space and then some. It was hard to breathe, now, for some reason.
"I'm sorry," she muttered quietly under her breath.
The changeling shrugged, and shook its head with a 'tsk-tsk' noise. It raised one hoof and gestured down the hall to an open set of stone doors, with bars covering the small windows inset at the top.
"Your services... required in here," the changeling said, pointing again to the open doors.
The griffon nodded.
"I understand. I'll go inside... but then what do I—"
The doors shut behind her before she could finish her sentence.
"You have been chosen under very specific circumstance. Please do not disappoint us." The changeling hissed its directive at her through the black iron bars, then slipped away, leaving her seemingly alone in the cold, almost completely dark room. A single torch flickered in the corner, lighting up a lone corner of the stone room. The walls were as dark as the iron bars that covered the window. The floor was slightly slick, as though a thin layer of moss or fungus had grown over-top.
She could feel the cold starting to creep past her feathers. It was very, very cold. She wanted a blanket. She wanted to go back outside. She wanted to know what was she doing here anyway—
No. Stop.
Someone needs you.
Your friend.
Your first friend.
Your only friend.
When we meet... what will happen then?
She'll be so happy that you did this for her.
She'll be overjoyed that you worked so hard.
She'll understand how hard it was, how every second...
She'll understand.
She will understand you.
Finally.
Where had the heat come from? Her cheeks were warm. She wiped away the stream of tears that had started soundlessly and began to trickle down her face, into her chest-feathers.
"I'll do it," she said, out loud, to the rebounding stone of the empty room. "I'll do whatever you want me to do. Please. I promise." She sniffled, and wiped a claw across her snuffly beak.
"Oh." The voice was small, timid, and came from the side of the room just outside the corner of almost ethereal light cast by the single torch. "Hello?" it said. "Is someone there?"
They hadn't told her what to do. No one ever did. She had to make up everything as she went along.
"I'm... I'm here to help you," she said, confidently swelling her chest. "I mean... no, I'm here to... I'm here because the Princess sent me. So you have no need to fear."
"Oh my. That sounds like quite a lot of... something. Of help, I guess." The unseen creature's voice drifted out of the darkness like a coy, ethereal snake, wiggling sound vibrations like chimes in a set of bells, but somehow low to the ground, reptilian, as though the thing in question was watching from its coil in the unseen corner, waiting for the perfect second to pounce on its newfound prey.
"Tell us, though," the thing said, slinking closer and at last revealing itself—a set of eyes, one light pastel pink, the other a turquoise sea-green. It blinked through the darkness, hiding away the nature of its true form. "Who is this 'Princess' you speak of?"
It was, at once, obvious and unnecessary.
"Oh," the griffon said. "You don't... you don't know who the Princess is?"
The thing shook its head, eyes moving in the outline of darkness.
"Then... do you know why I'm here?"
Again, the thing shook its head. Then tilted it upwards, curious.
"That is... I know why I might have dreamed you were here. Did one of them really bring you to... to help me?"
The griffon felt a hot, sick fire in her stomach. A determination mixed with the uncertainty of every step she was about to take. To decide to believe something in spite of the evidence, instead of because of it. Where was her friend, waiting for her, watching her, needing her to be strong, to move forward, to open her eyes and complete the task ahead of her. What was a friend to do?
"Yes," she said, hurried-sounding, after a lengthy pause. "I mean... yes. Yes. I am here to help you."
"Oh my. I don't know how to... I don't really know how to respond. It's been a... well. It's been a very... it's been a long time, I mean. Since... since someone has come to 'help' me."
"I am here to help you," she said, repeating it like a mantra. "That is why I am here. To... to help you." She took a deep breathe, and let it out slowly, though it hitched in her chest halfway through. "Please... won't you come out so I can see you?"
The eyes nodded.
"I will. But you must close your eyes first."
She nodded back. Closed her eyes.
Let the silver come, steel in a switch at her throat—
"Alright. You may open your eyes now."
There she was. The changeling—most of it.
She'd never seen one like this before. Well... she hadn't seen many in the first place. They all looked like fireflies now, or dragonflies, or fairy-winged butterfly-pony things, and it felt so far away from the falling apart insectoid vampires they looked like in pictures. This one wasn't exactly like that—she was whitish pink instead of black, for one thing. And instead of holes, she had—
What were they?
"They're my spots," the thing said simply, pointing to one of the areas in question. Standing out brightly on her pale, almost cream-coloured coat, was an angry, red sore—and connected, or rather as part of the same process, there was what appeared to be a wound in the process of healing. Just in the process of healing. A scab. A collection of platelets and dead blood cells. Interstitial tissue. Mushy, peeling flesh, surrounding the outside of an interlocking crater in the skin. Black, red, and festering.
The griffon felt her stomach turn. She fought to hold in her heaving, but still tasted the collection of white fluid in her mouth, the start of her stomach begin to gather its bile and upchuck. The beginning mouthful of vomit that she had to choke back and swallow.
"Your... spots?" she asked, putting a claw on her stomach and pushing so roughly her vision flickered with the pain. Spots. Spots in her vision now too.
The thing nodded. "Please," it said, "call me my name."
The griffon waited. Her stomach acid had time to settle before she could collect the courage to open her beak again.
"Aren't you going to tell me what your name is?"
The thing (should she call it a changeling now?) shook its head. A lithe mane made of interwoven colors the same shade as its eyes draped down over its forehead, leaving just the hetero-chromatic pair poking out underneath.
"Oh... no. I don't know what it is. I was hoping you might." The changeling (?) was on all fours at first, but as it finished its sentence, it sat down on the cold, slimy stone and began to rub one of its hooves at the spot it had procured earlier. Prodding it. Chafing it. Maddeningly failing to move or disrupt it in any significant way.
"Please," the changeling said. "Your claws... that's why they sent you to help me."
The griffon looked down at her claws.
They were sharp, she supposed.
So were a lot of things.
What had she used hers for?
The had done a lot of being sharp. Sharp on the pieces holding up her bedroom. Sharp on the pages of her journal when her dad had found it and read the whole thing. Sharp on the soft parts of her chest and stomach that she could hide from anyone at school if they for some stupid reason decided to look in her direction.
Was that really all the Princess needed her for?
"Come here," the changeling said. It held out one of its hooves, and gestured meekly towards its spot next to the torch.
The griffon swallowed slowly, then made her way forward. She took a seat on the slimy stone next to the changeling.
The two of them sat for a moment, neither speaking. A moment was variable to everything. To every factor and every detail yet to be determined. How long would it take to breathe, to speak, or to think, alone in that cold room, nameless next to a wounded thing, asking for your help?
"Please let me have one of your claws," the changeling said. It was sudden, but barely broke the silence. No start or startling gasp followed. The changeling simply reached for a claw, and, with no resistance, pulled it towards her foreleg. Let it rest on her there—over-top the first spot she had shown under the light.
"Please," she said simply, and pressed the griffon's claw down into her coat.
It was a simple, familiar motion. It was muscle memory for waking up out of the womb. She just had to find a hold, feel the difference in texture—here, it changed, here, you could feel the crumble and the hardness next to the soft, pale fur—then she had to arch, get ready to press, dig, find whatever hold was there and push harder, yes, she was certain that was the start of it, sawing through now, finding the part it was deepest—no more than half an inch, but still what felt like almost her entire arm—and then grasp, tightly, and yank upwards, not all at once, but slowly, peeling, pulling this cap of a thing off its geyser, hearing the sick sound like Velcro being ripped apart and at last the size of this thing, pulling it free, the final tug, snip, and now it was in her hand, her claw, her palm, and not there on this thing anymore.
There was a lot of blood.
On her claws. The white fur, stained with it—green, not red. Green and red? A muddy brown? She couldn't tell, under the dim light. It was slick, like oil, pouring out in a circle around the epicenter her claw had left behind. In her nails, bits of the piece she had ripped free. She threw it to the ground.
The changeling collapsed into a pile beside it, gasping as though she had been punched in the stomach.
"Yes," she whispered quietly, her face pressing into the stone floor. "Yes. Finally. It feels so much better..." Her blood, smearing into the stone. Her body, thrashing backwards and forwards, her hind-legs clenched tightly, achingly together.
The scab, sinuous and slick with pus and blood, lying inches away on the floor.
"More," the changeling said.
It was the first chance to get a good look at her. All of her.
Latticework, the first word that came to mind. Little hubs on a map of Equestria. Anthills growing on a mound outside the city. A nest for bugs.
The changeling part was clear enough—four legs, a head, mane, everything you'd expect in a standard biology textbooks. But the marks—the spots? What we she to call them.
Differences. The one she'd ripped clean—it was bulbous, offensive, like a mountain grown out the grown made entirely of burning rubber. It was black and hissing and ugly and needed to be ripped clean. And it had cousins, and sisters and brothers and multiples attaching to it in little underground nerve networks that seemed to connect invisibly. Mountains bulging out, like the surface of a red planet, and craters dug in, hinting to their escape, spots that were just as sore but slightly less red, not as scabby, receding into flesh and coat to hide away under the protection of a hoof incapable of prying them loose.
"...more?" the griffon said. She had been staring, transfixed, at the new fountain of gore that was leaking slowly onto the stone floor. She didn't want to look anymore, but couldn't tear her eyes away from the neighbouring marks. Little pockets of soreness. Landmines, undetonated over an overgrown field of grass and mud.
"I can't get them by myself," the changeling said matter-of-factly. "These ones are too far in, see, and..." she pointed at a small cluster of scabs sitting on her shoulder, bundled together like a small family of rats clustered in a sewer. "When I push them, it feels a bit better, but then they itch, and they hurt, and they want scratches and prickles and pulling and ripping and out. And I can't do it by myself," she said, casting her eyes down at the ground. "And I thought they sent you to help me."
The griffon eyed their used claw, bits of scab and dead flesh hanging out from underneath her nails.
"Please," the changeling said, and pressed another leg into the griffon's claw. A smaller one this time, bulging a little, seeping out, begging to be scoured and cleaned inch-by-oozing-inch. The griffon felt around a little this time. Ran her claw over the texture, like sandpaper. Could feel the shift in texture, from soft, pliable fur, to crunchy, unyielding scab. She poked it a little around the edges, looking for a hold. Pried a bit with one nail, seeing if she could lift a little to see what was underneath.
The tiny lift of the scab made a noise like sticky taffy being peeled from the floor of a movie theater. The changeling shuddered, and tears began to collect at the corner of her eyes. She turned her head immediately, and shook it, her eyes wide, pleading. "Please," she said, tiny tears trickling down her nose. "Don't stop. Please. I need it."
She paused, and looked into the changeling's eyes. Heavy and drooping low, half-closed, like she was tired from a very, very long dream that refused to end.
The griffon hooked a claw in, and began to peel.
The scab came apart in her talons, ripping half and a little extra pieces out, and leaving a half-open pool of rapidly accumulating blood to collect in the fractured pool.
"Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't—"
"No, no, please," the changeling said. She was panting, her body shuddering softly with each breath. She was holding one foreleg around her body, wrapped at her stomach, hugging herself and rocking. "I can't do it by myself. It doesn't matter. Please... just keep going."
Bracing herself. It was an exercise that took place in the span of a breath. She remembered finish lines, last places, the way the shower had glowed and ran red the first time talons had burrowed under flesh...
Her claw returned. It found the pieces it had missed and began to dig for them, sinking talon deep into flesh to find the little bits of scab still remaining. Her talons were for rending. She rended.
It was half an inch deep, at least. She removed her claw, slick with dark, shimmering blood, and flicked it sideways once or twice, throwing the bits of congealed flesh and a spatter of new blood somewhere in a line along the unforeseen stone.
"The edges," the changeling gasped. She was struggling to keep upright now, her legs shaking, threatening to send her back to the blood-and-slime ground. "You have to feel the edges, where it touches the skin..."
She didn't find herself thinking anymore. Claw simply moved. Action took itself through her body. Thought was getting in the way of doing. Remembering was getting in the way of being. There was only one way forward now.
The edges. She felt around, tracing a single claw along the misshapen circle. An oval, dug out, and the hardening of the ridges, the rim, really and truly like a crater that had sunken into a fleshy moon.
"Under it," the changeling gasped. She pressed her foreleg harder into the griffon's grasp.
She could find it, just a little... let her nails dig under, slip, and there was resistance, the rest of the skin trying to harden and isolate the wound. She prodded, picked, pushed her nail, and felt the thin ring of hard tissue began to give, she could rip at it further, tear the circle off like a live-saver bandage grown from platelets. There was much more blood now, the whole thing seemed to be oozing it, a pillow sponging up life-fluid and then oozing it out. Little shapes of cells and ventricles and open veins trying in vain to seal up the new entry point. One of several.
The griffon wiped her claws on her feathers. Everything was stained now, rust-tinted, where did the gold of her talons begin and the dark copper red and green end? Her stomach turned, but on no food, only let a wretching cough out her throat, and then remembered there was no way forward but to help.
"Help," she said out loud, to no one, the word rebounding helplessly off the stone.
The changeling didn't seem to notice at first, cradling her oozing legs chest-height and rocking. She was whispering little things under her breath, too quiet even this close, or maybe an ancient language only learned by surrendering skin forever.
There were so many more.
She wanted to do the finding now, and the changeling opened up to her like an empty field, stretching out to the horizon and drowning in the sun.
Here. Small, barely the size of a bit. Hardest, sunken in, barely a protrusion at all. If she could just slip one claw in...
"Ahh!" The changeling let out a sound between dying and being born. Her voice trembled as the griffon's claws began to dance between her wounds.
Faster now, this could—yes, yank, and take a whole chunk of skin with you—
"Tell me what it feels like," she said.
The changeling was shuddering, weeping from her eyes and all of the new portals carved out of her angry skin. She tried to raise her head, but it faltered, her neck collapsing her head down and her body into a heap on the floor, twitching in a pile of her own excretions.
"I... can't... don't have... right words..."
"Use any words."
She wasn't angry. It was something older—protecting her, inside her head. The same voice that screamed when the bottle was too deep, or the end of the night buried in blood clots and open alleyways and an inability to forget what was supposed to just leak out of her head like water. And no matter how much she took. It just. Stayed there.
Helping her. F o r t h e P r i n c e s s . . .
"Open," the changeling gasped, her head thrashing suddenly upwards.
The griffon's claws were skittering between marks now. Find one, push, grasp, pull, sometimes tear, and scrape out each little circle-marking with the edge of your nails. One. Push, open. Tear, pull, scrape. Pools of. Blood. Deep into. Skin.
"Like there... like I'm breathing again!" She was almost howling, from deep in her chest, trying to speak some language beyond the muscle of knowing or learning and only from feeling, to turn color and pain and freedom all in a single sensation into whatever weak substitution words could suffice for.
"More."
"Like the crawling has stopped!" Gasping still, head jerking up with each breath.
Rip. Tear. A patch of skin along her back that she trimmed like a landslide of razors, wrenching free a layer of thin pseudo-skin almost the length of the changeling's entire body. Leaving it a new pair of wings, blossoming like flowers inside the remnants of its weeping crater.
"They can see me again!" the changeling screamed. Her legs thrashed, her wings sputtered and flickered and ached to come to life, but fell damply under the weight of the accumulated blood and tissue. "They're outside, they're hearing me, they're going to come in and let me out..."
A cluster of five. Wrench, wrench. Each pull a hiss, seething, deeply clenched breaths, her talons were dripping with it. Two more, evenly spaced, but thick, and deep, full with fluid she could drain lustily. Push, puncture, and let all the tissue underneath come up, feel how thick it was, thicker still, you could hold it in your claw, you could tighten your grip and cluster every last bit of dead thing and dying thing and thing to bring back to life any hope of the softness of skin that was nothing like this tar patched over a gravel road, she had the whole thing now, and it was off like a cover over a window in night-time the moon was bright and searing the entire sky, pouring out on every side, growing wider than the clouds could even hope to dream.
"Out, out, out, coming out, all of it out, the itching, no more itching, no more shaking, no more looking for them, everywhere, off, off, out out..." Words beginning to blur into each other, the changeling was only shuddering limply now, each pull of a remaining sore spot causing her body to jolt involuntarily. Otherwise, only her chest, wracking for its final sips of the stale dungeon air. The last tired hisses of the torch as it began to die.
This one, so large, it must have been a rash, a chafing, so shallow, we can just shred, we can scratch like a matte surface, tear up little flecks each time until the whole thing is a carpet of blood and weeping sores—
This one, the back of her neck, big, bulbous, protruding, need to crunch it tight together like a ball so we can push it out from the skin, then find a hold, then crush as you yank, take the whole thing in one go—
Digging around in the already open spots, finding how far the skin can stretch, how wide will the whole open, how much surface area is left that is not yet weeping—
"They said... they said once I'm better... I can..." Each word was raspy, hissed through clenched teeth and searing lightning along the veins. "Only a few more, please..."
It was an endless shuffle. Every time she checked one wound, two more would neighbour it. Every time she added a pile of gunk to the scab heap, another, bigger patch was around the corner. Her talons were becoming filthy with black and red gunk. The floor was so slick with blood it was beginning to spatter up onto her feathers, to make a small layer over-top the stone, like water in a pool-room shower.
The changeling couldn't stand up anymore. Her legs had long ago given out, newborn foal, shivering as she lay helpless on the ground. Her eyes closed, her mouth open, chewing helplessly at the air. Her nostrils flared, leading her closer to the stone. The bits of flesh, chunks of scab, flecks of wound, collected on the floor, right next to her mouth, moving her lips, they would come this way.
She couldn't help—a talon in her own chest now. The feathers there, they needed out, the feel of skin was so sore, so strange, so much better to peel it free from the bone...
"This one!" the changeling gasped. She pointed wildly to the largest remaining wound yet to receive attention: a head-sized hole in the center of her chest, that had begun to film over with newly-grown skin and black and brown chunky bits. "It... goes all the way through," she said, panting. "Please, if you just—"
The griffon's claw hit her chest like a shot out of a cannon. She was already on the ground, nowhere to go, to be knocked too, but the little breaths she'd had were gone, and there was only the sensation of digging. There was her little heartbeat, approximated somewhere below the skin, and then there was a griffon's claw, plunging through this thick of organic detritus, popping the whole thing like a swollen boil and tearing out every last bit that had been left sunken into flesh.
It was deeper now. Skin to flesh to bone to chest. Her claws were swimming, floating through the gore, taking a hold of this last big, flimsy, falling apart suture and tearing it all away, the size of her whole talon that it took in, yanked free with the tear of Velcro and pouring of blood.
Straight through. You could see the stone on the other side.
Tiny, demure gasps of breath, burbling with the blood that was collecting in her lungs, pooling over her whole body. Twitching slightly, sending a spatter of liquid up into the air, where it settled as a spray over the grimy floor. She was barely there now, flickering at the edge of an empty dream.
"Th... thank... you..." the changeling murmured. Her breaths were raspier, more shallow, as she clutched her chest and writhed limply in her pool of blood. "I can... feel it... working..."
Feathers. She took out as many as she could, yanking them lightning surge from her chest. The hissing sting of a thousand hornets, and the extra lacquer of blood her nails were already wearing. She could feel her own pain. She could touch it and move it and make it alive.
With a shudder, the changeling let out a quiet breath and closed her eyes, laying her head down in the pool of blood.
The griffon threw away her handful of feathers and fell to the floor, turning away from the changeling, the source of the ground's slick texture, the still flickering lone torch in the corner of the room.
Would she finally get to have a friend now?