Chapter 1
Caramel the stallion awoke to a sticky situation. He was sleeping and, when he noticed he couldn’t move his legs or his neck, he jerked awake only to find himself in a place he didn’t at all recognize. He was in a cave, not dimly lit, and the periphery of his vision matched the green slime he saw coating the walls and parts of the ceiling. The room appeared to be circular, although he couldn’t look around to check, with only one simple entrance directly in front of him, a hole in the wall with no door or anything attached.
He could swear that he heard approaching steps, and held his breath in fear at what he would see, but nothing came through the doorway, and eventually he passed out.
Something was there, he knew it, and so he pretended to be asleep, but whatever it was had to know he knew; his shaking made certain of that. His eyelids were forced open with magic, and he saw a changeling for the first time in his life, in particular Queen of the changelings, Chrysalis; but he wasn’t quite certain of what he saw other than a monster. His knowledge of changelings was limited to drawings that had been distributed after the attack on Canterlot, and her physiology was different enough to make that knowledge useless in the moment.
She didn’t speak, and moments later he felt the pressure on his eyes disappearing. She opened her mouth wide and turned her head. She was going to eat him, he was going to die. Magic opened his mouth and she connected them; all of this in no longer than one second. Nervousness or cunning, had she sent her tongue into his mouth, he would’ve bitten it as hard as he could, but she knew this and instead sucked his tongue into hers; he felt the sensation of a worm coiling around his tongue like a snake, and he gagged as it continued to coil around and encrouch on the back of his mouth. Soon enough, her tongue loosened around his and it was over; he was dry heaving; she was smiling at him. He didn’t notice her crooked horn glow again.
He felt a horrible pressure on his bladder, and involuntarily pissed on the floor. Her green magic grabbed him and shook off what remained; then she bent her legs to stare eyes-to-eye with him. He was erect by now, and ashamed. He watched as she closed her eyes, and her open mouth with tongue hanging out in the center began to swallow him. He looked away and shut his eyes tight. His future wife was supposed to have his virginity, not this monster, but he was too racked to cry, instead blubbering with shaky breath. He hated that his anguish turned to equine excitement as she swallowed him whole and began bobbing her head; the worm that was her tongue coiled around and past him, coating his testicles in spit and pushing him further to climax.
A cry, in a mix of sorrow and ecstasy, unevenly left him as he emptied himself into her mouth. Her tongue ran back over him repeatedly to drain all that he’d given to her, and her mouth soon left him without fanfare. She was still before him, he could hear her, and he opened his eyes to see her swishing her tongue in her closed mouth; she opened it, showing white, and then made a show of tilting her head back and swallowing; he watched the bulge in her throat move down until it met her main body. She then looked back at him again, and spoke for the first time.
“Now I’ve eaten you. Now you’re in my stomach.” Her voice was like two ponies speaking at once, but not quite ponies. She burped in his face, turned around, and left.
Caramel didn’t move even the little he could for quite a while, and started crying when he did.
He was left alone until he passed out again. He had no way to track the time, but the fact that he’d gone unfed meant it couldn’t be too long. The realization that they may never feed him left a pit in his stomach almost as painful as the hunger. Surely by now, ponies had realized he was missing, and were searching for him.
Then he remembered the primary characteristic of the changelings was shapeshifting, and so probably nopony knew he’d been foalnapped, replaced, at all.
He felt himself awaken, but not naturally. A waking spell had been cast on him; he knew how it felt. Standing in the doorway, leaning in it, was Queen Chrysalis again, smiling at him, but with an unnaturally large grin that served to show all of her white pointed teeth.
“Today’s a special day, and not just because I’m going to rape you again.” That was all she said before sauntering over to him seductively, still grinning as she was, but she passed him by and continued walking for quite a while before he heard some new horrible sound she was making. It sounded like she was drinking very greedily from a pond. He heard her take breaks to breathe a few times before stopping; he tried to look at her, but even forcing his neck and eyes as far as they would go gave him almost no better view; still, he could tell she was breathing heavily, and moving more slowly than she had earlier. He was horrified as she slowly entered his vision.
She was bloated with whatever she’d drank, but most of her black, hardened anatomy was hardly different. He didn’t understand how the black coating of her body worked, but it wasn’t like a pony’s skin. He would’ve noticed the holes in her legs were smaller, but her horrifying face and primarily its orifices took all of his attention. Pink liquid ran out down her neck from her mouth and perhaps even her nose. She nearly looked as if she were crying blood with the way it seeped from her eyes. The most noticeable difference after that was her clear midsection, now dark purple and swollen to the point it nearly scraped the ground, bulged from her sides, and pushed against her legs.
She reared, somehow, and planted both hooves on both sides of his head, shoving her abdomen against him. It knocked his breath away, but soon shaped around him, making it difficult to breathe. She was rubbing it back and forth over his body just a little.
“Tell me, little colt, what’s this big beautiful part of me pressed into you right now called?” It was large enough to fit him inside several times over. She was really going to eat him this time. “Y-Your stomach?” She laughed.
“No, it’s my womb, and once you’re dead and gone, all that’s left of you in this world will have originated from it.” She stepped back before slowly rotating herself in place, to face her rear at him. Her butt was slightly bigger, he now noticed. She slowly backed into him, and rubbed herself over him to the extent possible, and they both felt him harden.
He shut his eyes again as he felt her grab him in her magic and slam her hips against his, her lower throat engulfing his second head in one motion before constricting around it to a very tight fit. Even with no outside movement from her, he could feel whatever anatomy she possessed grabbing and wildly sliding over him, moreso even than her mouth and tongue had. He accidentally opened his eyes, hating the sight of himself in this monster.
She was mostly content to shift her weight from side-to-side, and only occasionally lift herself from him before slamming back down; each time she did this started to pull him from the wall, just a little, due entirely to her grip on him. He almost hoped she’d unintentionally free him from the wall somehow, but those hopes were dashed as he felt himself approach the rubicon and then pass it. All he could do was cry out as he emptied himself into the monster again, and the physical pain he had felt from the sex and dragging was outmatched by the anguish caused by his body betraying his mind in this way.
They were still for a time, sans their heavy breathing. She turned her head around almost completely when she spoke to him. “Did you like consummating our union, honey?”
He wanted to spew bile at her, to spit in her face, to throw any and all insults he could imagine at her, but he was simply too tired. He couldn’t respond. He felt like he could barely breathe. He couldn’t tell if his vision were growing black and narrow, if she were truly sucking out all of his vim before leaving him a dead husk, or if it were merely the malaise at the situation and monster in which he found himself.
She rocked her hips back-and-forth as she walked forward and dislodged him from herself. She turned to display her wide side at him, and pointed at something with her hoof. “See that inside me? That’s you.”
Had he been able to see better, he would’ve noticed his ejaculation was just barely visible inside her from the outside as it interacted with the fluid she was carrying, but he couldn’t and she didn’t care anyway. She continued. “I’m going to convert you into changelings. You ponies have your destinies, and that’s my destiny. You’ll make a wonderful father to our children.”
After that, she turned again and slowly left the room with a very different gait than beforehoof. Her steps were now slow and more deliberate, with legs spread apart twice as much, and every step had her bloated transparent belly move from side-to-side; it was odd to get a distorted view of what was on the other side of her massive gut, almost making her look as if she weren’t hugely bloated at all, if one weren’t paying careful attention to that fact. Caramel felt his penis stir at his view of her exit, and he was disgusted to feel some small amount of arousal build at the thought of being raped again, somehow. She had to have done something more to him to have this effect, surely.
He still couldn’t tell how much time was passing, or for how long he was sleeping. Some time later, other changelings entered the room and tore away the green mass that held him to the wall. As he looked around for the first time, he was less interested in the architecture of his prison than the soreness in his neck, and everywhere else, but he still noted that he’d been attached to a pillar close to the center of a room shaped roughly like an oval; behind the pillar was a freestanding pool of some pink liquid constantly giving off fog that occasionally took the shape of hearts. He tried to escape, but found he had no strength to run away and barely enough to stand with the changelings’ assistance.
They escorted him down a hallway to a smaller room with a stone table jutting up from the ground. The doorway to the room that had contained him so far was connected to a passage, and they’d taken a left; he wondered what lay to the right. Any thought of escaping was taken out of his mind by his nose, and what he realized the table held: food and water. The changelings sat him down and let him eat; he didn’t care that the bread was a little stale, that the carrots and lettuce weren’t crisp, that the water was murky; he only cared that he wasn’t going to starve to death, at least not right now. He ate until there was nothing left but the jar that had held the water. He rested his head on the table, and soon enough passed out again.
He awoke to the changelings prodding him with a hoof. He was happy to see that he could stand and even slowly walk without their help, but they stood on either side of him regardless. He noticed he wasn’t being led back to the same room as beforehoof. He could swear he was being led in circles sometimes, but reminded himself that cave systems and tunnels could be made to inhabit space that followed different physical rules than were normal, with the right magical incantations; it was more likely that the underground hive was merely enchanted to appear this way. It occurred to him he didn’t know whether he were truly underground or not. In the narrow hallways, it was impossible to not see everypony a ways away, and he noticed his changeling escorts were walking in front and behind him rather than at his sides, so it occurred to his tired mind to see what lay ahead, and his blood ran cold. Queen Chrysalis waddled towards them, alone.
His gaze naturally went to her midsection, which by now was less purple and more blue or green. He didn’t dare move his neck, only his eyes, in looking at her, but he knew it was pointless. It wasn’t as if she could possibly avoid noticing him. He hugged the far wall when she came close, still only missing her side’s touch by a hoof’s width, if that. At this closest view he noticed the transparent view through her was murkier than last time; an uncountable amount of what looked like little black marbles freely floated within her. It was such an odd sight he turned his head to get a better view before realizing what he was doing, but a quick glance at the queen’s head showed her to be paying him no attention whatsoever. He noticed her rear looked bigger than before, and he also noticed she had no teats whatsoever. He watched her slow walking for a while more before turning his head back to face in front of himself. Had he been a more clever pony, and one less exhausted, Caramel perhaps would’ve questioned the coincidence of seeing the queen and mother of these monsters seemingly by chance, in a way that encouraged him to look at her, if only for curiosity’s sake, rather than ignore her.
He expected to be led through a large chamber at some point, to see hundreds or thousands of changelings moving around the hive but, curiously, that never happened; instead, after walking through however many passages for however long he was dropped off in a small room that had a pillow and a blanket on the floor, and left alone. He waited, with his breath mostly held, as he heard the two changelings leave, and he looked down both sides of the passage to see nopony else; he wasn’t being guarded, and there was no locked door for the entrance to the room. They, clearly, didn’t expect him to leave, or be able to leave and, as he thought about the dizzying maze that had led him here and the failure that could result from even one changeling coming across him alone, he figured they were right. He grabbed the blanket in his mouth and shook it clean, followed by the pillow, and was relieved to not notice any fleas or other pests; he laughed at the absurdity of the thought. His blanket and pillow didn’t have lesser parasites, but he was surrounded by greater parasites. It made perfect sense that there wouldn’t be any here. He’d never heard of parasites having parasites.
The blanket was large enough for him to lay it flat on the ground, lie down on it, and then bring it over himself. He was still scared, but now he wasn’t so hungry or cold, so he counted his blessings before letting sleep take him.
Every time he awoke there was a changeling in the room, or the hallway, and occasionally there was food and water on the ground for him. Caramel once had a nightmare in which all of his teeth fell out from malnourishment. Every time he looked at his reflection in the water, or felt his teeth with his tongue or hooves, he seemed to be in adequate health, and he was thankful for that much.
One time after he woke and ate, the changeling in the room motioned for him to follow, and he did without much choice. He tried in vain to recognize the walls of the hive’s halls or any other characteristic that would permit him to learn the layout of his prison, but he noticed nothing. For all he knew, they were constantly changing things specifically to prevent that for him and anypony else trapped in their web, although he’d yet to see any other pony during his imprisonment. He was broken out of his reverie by the changeling leading him performing an about-face and motioning with a turn of the head for him to enter the room they’d nearly passed. The changeling left before he’d entered his room. Caramel couldn’t move even if he’d wanted it, after all.
The queen was lying on her back, on what was probably the one and only genuine bed in the entire hive, and on the other side of her gargantuan gut, at her rear, were two changelings wearing outfits for some reason. The outfits appeared to be military gear, and as he continued to stare he realized they were damaged and mismatched; he recognized the helmet of one to be from the Canterlot royal guard, which left the next of many pits to form in his stomach. She was reading a book, with her body twisted to allow her to rest the book beside herself; they were discussing something, and had measuring tapes and a protractor resting on her.
“Well, get over here.” She didn’t look up from her book when commanding him so. He found himself unable to move his legs for a few moments. He slowly put one hoof after the other in a slow walk towards her, and noticed something was amiss. The purple colour of her pregnancy had entirely disappeared, replaced by a dark blue or green, and it had become entirely opaque. As he got closer, the hue became more clear and he saw the details therein. His fear was replaced by curiosity in the moment, and he was getting closer purely to get a better look. He saw a pair of blue eyes attached to a little black body staring back at him, and then noticed at least a dozen more all doing the same. He was standing at the edge of the bed now. He leaned over to one side to see if their little eyes would follow him, and they did.
“You may get on my bed.” His neck turned towards hers so quickly he could swear he’d given himself whiplash. It was phrased as an offer, but spoken as a command, and he felt no option but to obey. He swallowed. The bed sunk in more than a little upon his first slow and tenuous hoofstep, so much that her gut began to lean towards him and didn’t stop. It tilted until it met his head and rested against the leg he’d placed on the bed. All three changelings were now staring at him, along with many of the changelings inside Chrysalis, and he coughed to make the situation more tolerable, but it didn’t work. He could feel several of the little changelings pressed against him at every point his body met hers. He’d never shown much of an interest in pregnant mares, but he knew that wasn’t normal. His other foreleg was placed against the translucent membrane and slowly pushed forward to right her, but he found it mostly sunk into her body and strained his strength. He pushed from his hindlegs and that finally pushed her back to the position she’d had upon his entrance, and finally got him most of the way onto the bed; he scurried into a sitting position beside her.
He faced the other two changelings, who had immediately returned to their chitter, chatter, poking, and prodding. “S-So, uh, what are you doing?” Before being interrupted he was about to ask how they were doing as well.
“Ignore him.” His head turned to face her, because her magic grabbed and roughly turned it on his behalf. “You are here only to shower our children, and me, with love and affection, and for no other reason. Now, next to you is some oil; I suggest you rub me down with it until you can see your reflection in me.” She paused for a moment before adding “More than you already see yourself in me, that is.”
She returned to reading her book. He sat there for a moment, staring past her skin, or whatever a pony would call it, his eyes shifting from one changeling curled up within to the next; he noticed he could no longer see what was on the other side through her, that was how tightly-packed inside the foals were. Some still stared back at him. If he hadn’t been told he’d sired them, he wouldn’t believe it; they looked like him in not one way, and instead looked like miniature forms of every other changeling he’d ever seen, with their mother the one exception. It made him grimace and unable to breathe, for just a few seconds before he calmed down; he’d be rescued soon enough, and this would just be a nightmare after he’s back home.
He noted their horns were just little stubs for now, their wings very faint, and their limbs seemed to lack any holes, although he could swear he saw the beginnings of holes forming on some of their legs; there were so many legs he couldn’t even see all of their owners. There were a lot of little butts haphazardly shoved in there as well, with many of their owners otherwise invisible on account of being surrounded and squeezed on all sides by their siblings. He tried to make a game of telling the fillies from the colts but, curiously, realized they looked identically smooth; he struggled to remember if he’d seen any changeling with genitals besides Chrysalis, and couldn’t think of a single instance. He was lucky to be too confused in the moment to realize that made her threat of a changeling legacy even worse than it already sounded, but he’d notice it eventually. Besides that, every little face, staring back at him or not, looked uncomfortable; each was either shoved against the tight and clear membrane, or contorted by the mass of limbs and other body parts hitting them at several points. He was also listening in to the conversation happening right next to him between the other two, something about caretakers and soldiers and other job descriptions. He had no real reason to care why they were measuring her belly and peering inside, but curiosity gripped him, and then her voice grabbed him next.
“If you won’t use your legs for something useful, we can remove them. You’d certainly eat less without them.” She didn’t look up from her book when telling him this, and her voice wasn’t mean when she said it, but he believed her and glanced around for the oil, which he found in a bowl on the floor at his right side. He lay flat on the bed to dip in his right forehoof, and his left pushed him back to a sitting position so he could begin massaging her gravidity.
He didn’t really know how to begin but put his hoof to her and moved it back-and-forth a little, to avoid giving her a reason to threaten him again. He soon started rubbing a little circle that glistened, and so he made the circle bigger. The little changelings closed their eyes as he went over them. She seemed to want the oil only on her membrane, but it was hardly difficult to avoid the black anatomy flanking it at her front and back. He continued to listen to the other two changelings talk; now they were arguing about something. He heard them speak of quarters for soldiers, caretakers, spies, and miscellaneous, even a lawyer; there had to be quarters here for all of the changelings, although he wasn’t certain how small the quarters here were. Glancing around, without obviously glancing around, showed that the queen had a room a little bigger than the room in which he’d first found himself. He felt utterly stupid when he finally realized they were talking about dividing the brood of changelings in their queen into quarters by purpose; the entire argument had to have been about the exact distributions.
One of the little changelings stood out to Caramel, somehow, and he kept track of which until he’d finished rubbing the oil over her swell. He wasn’t quite certain if he were expected to get her other side, having rubbed the entirety of her he could without standing on the bed, and was quite certain that he wasn’t going to volunteer for it. His attention returned to the little changeling he somehow still recognized from the rest. The little changeling looked like he wanted something from him, and Caramel leaned in to get a closer look. The world seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of them. Was the little changeling a prisoner of a different kind? Perhaps a kiss would work to make him feel better? He couldn’t notice the magic flowing from Chrysalis’ jagged horn straight into his head which suggested all of this. Caramel planted a kiss on her belly about where his little head was, or a bit lower; his lips curled when he tasted the oil, but it hardly mattered at that point, so he kept his head close and waited for the reaction. It looked like the little changeling smiled, and then pursed his lips, leaving Caramel feeling more lightheaded than what was now usual to him. He saw some pink fog in front of his vision collide with her belly before taking a vague heart shape and disappearing into nothing but the membrane as it was absorbed. It took him a moment to understand what had just happened.
The foal he’d sired just sucked some of the love out of him, like a parasite would. His skin crawled. His fur stood on edge.
It apparently didn’t get any of the love, because the next thing it did was scowl and start thrashing as hard as its little legs would allow, colliding with every other changeling nearby, and they did the same. In a minute or less, Chrysalis’ womb rocked back-and-forth from the force, and its curved shape was constantly disrupted by little hooves pushing out as well as they could. Some hooves were owned by angry little faces, whereas others were hindhooves bucking out without particular reason. He heard a groan, and turned his head before she turned it for him again. Well, it seemed like every changeling in the room had a scowl by now.
“Calm them down, now.” Unlike every other time she’d spoken to him, every word was interrupted by grunting.
He wasn’t certain what exactly he was supposed to do, but figured the appearance of helping was better than nothing and leaned against her to rub around with both hooves and his forebody. All it achieved was coating himself in a thin layer of the oil, and getting a few of them to stop at a time, but every time some stopped others would provoke them again. It looked uncomfortable for her, and he realized how ghastly it was that he’d actually thought about the comfort of the monster in bed with him.
Eventually she got tired of waiting on him to fix the problem and took a deep breath before sucking in her abdomen, waiting several seconds, and loudly exhaling as she released her muscles. Vague bands became apparent at its tightest, those lines which sunk in noticeably deeper than the rest. The writhing mass of changelings inside could only approximate a grimace as their world tightened even further, some of them bent into contortions even more bizarre than the previous. Caramel figured they weren’t dead, since they were still reacting like the others, but a pony shaped that way would’ve been killed. Without umbilical cords, and without any breathing motions, it seemed to him to be the liquid giving them life and nutrition, which seemed to be for the best; it looked too tight even to breathe if they’d needed it. When she released her hold, they were scattered in a way that reminded Caramel of snowglobes. It was odd to see them moving so freely that Caramel was no longer certain how many changelings had been hidden or revealed by others. Then she spoke.
“Get off the bed now.” He cleanly slid off, heading for the exit, but froze mid trot when she spoke again. “You may not leave.” She turned towards the other two changelings in the room, dismissed them, and they immediately left without any words. Caramel opportunistically glanced at their rears to see what they had back there only to find them covered by more tattered garments, before the bulbous brooding bully behind him grabbed his attention once more. “We’re going to make love.”
“Come.” He came to stand at her rear, and could no longer see any part of her besides an oversized pregnancy and hindlegs. She wiggled her rear while adjusting herself on the bed, but he didn’t notice much different in her pose.
“Rear.” He gulped and obeyed. He walked a step closer and shakily pushed from the ground to stand on only his hindlegs, and rested them somewhat harshly against the massive pregnancy before him; he felt her magic grab him to force an erection, which audibly slapped against it. He gulped again and looked down at it. One of the little changelings had nearly been struck by him, and was now staring at it.
“Well?” He adjusted himself to stab her, but halted and started crying instead moments later. He couldn’t be worried about the consequences of disobeying in the moment, overwhelmed by it. He shut his eyes tight when her magic enveloped and lifted him into the air above her.
“Oh, you poor little pony.” Her voice was sweet when she spoke; the haunting echo was gone, and it was as if she were using somepony else’s voice to talk to him. He felt himself lowered onto his left side, in the bed, and his right eye cracked open to see her before him, wearing a face of pure compassion and gentleness. He eased himself, just a little, and then she spoke again. “Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”
“Y-You could let me go.” Caramel coughed several times before he found the bravery to say it. She turned her head, and made some sweet noise with pursed lips before responding. “Oh, you know I can’t do that. I need you, and our children need you.” She gently rubbed a leg against his shoulder, and he flinched for a moment before relaxing. “I meant is there anything I can do to make our lovemaking easier for you? You have to do it, but I can give you whatever fantasy you want.” Her horn glowed, and she got her answer. Everypony loved that cow Princess Celestia, so mimicking her was always reasonably simple. She gently cupped Caramel’s head with a hoof and turned it to have him look her in the eyes, and his eyes stayed fixed where she wanted them as green fire erupted and spread from around her eyes, from the holes in her legs, and from every other orifice on her body. Black was replaced with white as the lines of fire passed over her and joined together along the way, making many small regions of truth that became ever smaller until disappearing underneath the verisimilitude; her thin blue mane looked and waved just as Celestia’s, after the fire ate away at it; and every hole in her legs was filled. Her clear barrel was replaced with tight skin covered in white fur, leaving those inside to darkness and more cramped conditions; try as she might, her belly could be made only a little bit smaller. She never could change her green eyes, or her green magical glow, but besides those two details, and she supposed the unnaturally large belly, she was comfortably shrouded entirely with lies. Still, he knew she wasn’t really Princess Celestia, and so a final touch of magic from her horn into his skull fixed that problem for the moment. Caramel was convinced completely.
“Make love to me, Caramel. I want you.” Caramel loved the princess, and how big she was with their children. He smiled, and gladly kissed her when she closed her eyes, puckered her lips, and leaned in for one. She had a long tongue, but that came with long legs and everything else, so he not only didn’t mind but he liked it. With a smile, he jumped off the bed and ran around to meet her. He only had eyes for her, not the stone floor nor the cave. Her legs were spread apart, pointing at the ceiling in a V shape joined with her rear, which had a vague heart shape to it. She smiled at him from across the fertile expanse of her body, and he smiled back. First, he bent down to run his tongue over her and, without lifting his head, he ran his tongue up to her swollen teats before swirling it over a nipple and sucking on it; curiously, no milk entered his mouth, so she must have had some blockage, but that could be resolved later. He lifted his head, stepped back, and reared to mount her; she moved her legs close together so that he may take hold of them and gently lower himself onto her. He moved his hooves in little circles while he aimed himself and covered her soft tummy in kisses.
Still, he was having trouble aiming, so she ever so gently took hold of him in her green magical glow and guided him in. Her legs hooked around his back and he couldn’t escape, not that he would ever want to leave her maternal and gravid embrace. She encouraged him with sweet words and moans as his hips plowed back-and-forth, with ever faster breath, until he called out her name, Celestia, and left more of himself inside her. He rested his head next to her navel and closed his eyes, smiling. Soon enough he was asleep like this. Celestia chuckled at him in her gentle way while listening to his snores. “I’m not raping you, my little pony. We’re making love, I can feel it.”
Caramel later awoke in bed with the princess, and they cuddled and kissed until sleeping again. When it was time for him to leave, she had one of the royal guard escort him back to his room. He entered his apartment with a happy trot and fell into bed. The illusion shattered for him when he nearly broke his jaw on the cold floor in doing so.
One day, or night, a changeling woke him from sleep and beckoned him. Slowly, but not so slowly to receive punishment, he dutifully followed the monster through the halls and passageways of the hive. At first, he’d thought Chrysalis’ room to be the destination, but then they passed it by and he realized he’d never gone so far in this direction before now. He wondered if there were only one room in this direction, but in fact saw two as they reached the end of the hallway, and the grunting he heard let him know the room to the right was his destination before the changeling entered. What he saw was almost horrifying to him, but he was desensitized by this point.
Chrysalis stood in not quite the center of the room, waddling around slowly with an entourage of yet more changelings at her behind; they formed a line, and he followed it with his eyes to see another entry or exit from the room. Chrysalis was giving birth and, while she didn’t look to be in pain, she was gritting her teeth and grimacing; every noise in the room that didn’t leave her mouth left her second pair of lips. The head of a changeling foal was just outside her birth canal with his chin resting on her clitoris, hugged tightly on every side and with open eyes looking around at the world outside his mother. Chrysalis grunted again; her back arched just enough to be noticeable as she spread her legs a little and a contraction squeezed down on her womb, leaving the poor changelings inside unable to do anything but close their eyes as their world became even more cramped and they were compressed into even tighter forms. Her second lips loosened, and the newest changeling shot outwards, leaving only his hips lodged inside hers. The fully-grown changeling just before him grabbed both his sides and pulled him out the rest of the way; that changeling closed its eyes before the gush of fluid followed the little one out, soaking its head and face; it opened its eyes without even wiping off its face. The grown changeling then put the new in its mouth, by what seemed to be the scruff of his neck, and walked away to allow the next changeling to have its place in line.
Chrysalis adjusted her stance, and now her belly rested directly against the floor; her hindlegs were spread so far apart they nearly met either side of her gut, and her forelegs were so close together one was almost on top of the other. Her back was bent to the point it would look broken on a pony. She grunted again and this time a pair of hindlegs poured forth from her rather than a head. That little changeling was grabbed and dragged out even more quickly than the previous had been. Caramel wondered how long she’d been in labour, because her size was still massive, despite each little changeling taking no more than a few seconds to leave her. He couldn’t look away as it kept happening again and again. One unfortunate little changeling came out back first, its head and limbs crushed inside her passageway for about a minute while his changeling worked with Chrysalis to free him. Caramel had thought he was going to see the first dead changeling since his stay, and didn’t know how to feel about that, but the little changeling looked just as alive as any other once free; Caramel supposed it made sense that they’d be so resilient against being crushed so early on in life, after he took another glance at those still unborn and shoved against each other to the point their faces were pressed against the outer layer of her womb.
Chrysalis noticed him, and smiled before beckoning him over. “Are you excited to be a father, sweetie?” He didn’t answer, and fear swept over him when she glared at him, but he let out a breath he’d been holding upon realizing she never expected a response from him, and the nasty look on her face was just from the labour.
He couldn’t walk away from her, and eventually curiosity took hold of him, so he looked at the other side of the birthing. There were by now enough changelings let out that he could see some of her organs again, and her hips were rather bare; besides the inner side of her spine, or what looked vaguely like a spine, there was only a valve-like hole. He couldn’t look away as changeling after changeling were moved closer to it, to have some part of their little body swallowed up by it before being wholly ejected. It was still so odd to see unborn, almost-pony life so active before birth; usually, it took a foal at least a few minutes to start walking around, but these changelings, his children he reminded himself, were occasionally fighting against the very process birthing them. He watched one with his head sucked into her birth canal plant both of his little hooves on each side and attempt to pull it out, before another contraction forced his forebody in, leaving his hindlegs to thrash against his siblings. Another went in hindlegs first, and fought to pull himself out in a similar way. It was bizarre.
Eventually, there was only one little changeling left in her, and they made him sit at her rear to catch him. He gagged when she bent over and deposited the newest little changeling directly into his hooves, along with the last of the fluid that had surrounded them. His hindlegs were soaked, and the smell was surprisingly tolerable, but still disgusting. He was still careful not to drop the little changeling, and the absurdity of not wanting to drop the little monster took the forefront in his mind for just a moment before he discarded it; he couldn’t help being a changeling, and he didn’t want to imagine the punishment for dropping him anyway. He was almost cute, staring at him with those big blue eyes.
Chrysalis still stood before him, now facing him, and a chill ran up his back when she spoke to remind him of her presence. “This foal is your responsibility. We won’t be feeding him anything. Don’t worry, you won’t be punished if you let him die.” She leaned down to look into his eyes before she added “We’ll soon be making more, anyway.”
Then she left, and the same changeling that escorted him to the room escorted him back to his; he thought it to be the same changeling, anyway. He carried the foal on his back.
He set the little changeling on the floor next to his bed and lay down before covering himself with the tattered blanket allotted to him. They stared at each other for a few moments, and then the foal clumsily stood and began walking over to him. He had no patience for this, and reached a hoof to knock the changeling down on his rear. The little changeling began to cry loudly before him. Caramel wasn’t ready to sleep yet, and this ensured he wouldn’t be sleeping any time soon. He so wanted to neglect this monster, his child that looked nothing at all like him, his child that would only grow up to abuse him alongside his siblings; the thought crossed his mind that he even wanted to kill it, to stand and kick it to death as prehistoric stallions once did, but the thought mocked and sickened him; he knew himself to lack any will to do that, he felt bad enough making him cry. He wasn’t evil like changelings were, and that’s why they predate on ponies.
He reached a hoof to bring him to his hooves and hesitated before scooting him underneath the blanket. The crying had stopped, and the little changeling, his son, made sweet little noises as he buried his head between his father’s forelegs. Caramel took a deep breath and then covered his son with the blanket so that he could try to ignore what he felt in his heart. It felt like his heart had been broken, like his cutie-mark no longer mattered, and he didn’t want to know if his son was causing this feeling of a pit into which his hopes and dreams were draining.
Now only he was crying, but it was quiet, and eventually he went to sleep without realizing it.