The Only Chapter
The creature tucked its huge, leathery wings in tight as it poked its head into the chamber, its alien senses laying out a mess of blurry, indistinct shapes. Even weeks since it had been born, it still struggled to see clearly. It had memories of a time before it was born, memories from somepony with senses that provided proper vision, a clear-cut picture that one could then break down into distance, depth, hardness, and whatever other casual estimations one needed to navigate. Its own senses, on the other hand, just fed it a confusing cacophony of sound and heat and humidity and then left its mind to piece all that disparate information into a diagram of its surroundings accurate enough to use for navigation. It made it wish it was born with actual eyes.
Seeing nothing dangerous, Twili-
The creature froze, catching itself, and shook its head. It was not Twilight Sparkle, never had been.
Sometimes, it could be hard to remember that.
The creature slipped into the small chamber, before turning around and sealing the only entrance back up with its resinous saliva. With that done, it turned towards the only thing truly of note in the chamber; a pony-shaped blob of heat and motion curled in an alcove near the back, penned in by a resinous wall that also served to hide the chamber from view, trembling in fear as her heart raced.
The creature came to a stop right in front of the improvised holding pen, its barbed tail moving forward and piercing the barrier’s surface, deftly slipping past the layer of resin and into the space inside. Its occupant let loose a sharp cry of fear, scrambling away from the bladed tip, trying to put as much distance between her and it as she could… which wasn’t much. Even if the alcove was deep enough to let her flee beyond the tail’s reach, the creature always kept a cord of resin wrapped around her neck and hooked into the wall, an improvised ‘leash’ of sorts that was long enough to let her move around but short enough that she couldn’t leave the alcove, given the chance.
The mare inside let loose a soft, barely stifled wail of terror as the creature’s tail coiled around her legs, the sound prompting memories to surface in the creature's mind. Memories of cold, dripping claws curled around her small, scrawny form, of the disgusting sensation of smooth, slimy carapace against her furry coat, of struggling and screaming and pure, unfettered, mortal terror. The creature may not have experienced what she’d suffered, but it had her memories. It knew exactly what she was feeling at the moment.
It shook its head, pushing the intrusive memories aside as it continued hog-tying the mare‘s hooves together with it’s tail, its tip slipping up and around her withers so she didn’t lose her balance and topple over. She was sobbing now, tears dripping onto the tail as they streamed freely down the sides of her face, but she didn’t try to break free. She’d been through this routine enough times to know that struggling would just drag the whole terrifying process out all the more, that all she could do was try to hold still and wait for it to be over.
Dear Celestia, the creature hated this. It hated the terror and helplessness it inspired in her, hated how it had to keep her collared and penned up like some kind of pet, hated how it had to keep her horn wrapped up in webbing woven into a magic-suppressing pattern and something so essential to her identity locked away and unusable, hated how it had to tie her up like this every time it wanted to get into the pen. But if it didn’t do these things, then she’d try to escape, try to dive past it, tear through the entrance, and flee into the rest of the hive, to find a way out of the massive, unnatural structure.
If the creature could choose, it would let her go free, would even take her to one of the exits itself. But She would never allow anypony to compromise the location of Her hive like that, would do everything in Her very considerable power to ensure that nopony escaped Her hive alive. And thus, if the mare wanted to live, then she’d have to live here, in the hive, for the foreseeable future… preferably someplace in the hive without others of the creature’s kind that wouldn’t be so inclined to let her live, or facehuggers that would latch onto her face and pump their vile seed down her throat. Again.
Unfortunately, Ponish wasn’t designed to be spoken by beings with vocal cords like the creature’s, it had neither quill, ink, nor paper with which to write, and even if it had the means to communicate with her, She had forbidden it from doing so, and had made it clear to the creature that violating Her will would end badly for its charge. Hence the restraints, the pen, and the tail. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it helped mitigate escape attempts, kept the terrified alicorn in and anything that might hurt her out.
With that done, the creature sliced into the resinous curtain with its claws, slipping through and into the alcove, into its nest. And standing in the corner of it, hogtied and held upright by the creature’s tail, staring up at her captor with wide, tear-filled eyes, was its mother, the one who had proved everything it thought it knew about itself wrong, the real Twilight Sparkle.
The creature tore its eyeless gaze away from the expression of pure, mortal terror on Twilight’s face, turning back to the resinous wall and setting about sealing the alcove back up, ensuring that Twilight wouldn’t suddenly slip her leash and flee into the rest of the hive. A little excessive, yes, but the creature had learned through hard-earned experience that its charge didn’t understand that this was the safest place she could be, that she would take any chance to escape, no matter how slim. Better safe than spending another afternoon struggling to track Twilight through the hive, praying to Celestia that it would find her before she suffered a fate best not thought about.
She’d come frighteningly close, at times. Usually, following an escape attempt, the creature would find her squirming desperately in the clutches of one of the many non-lethal ponytraps scattered throughout the hive, but sometimes she wasn’t so lucky. Sometimes, the creature would find her snared by one of the ponytraps that had been designed to kill, and would have to administer first aid. Sometimes, it would find her cornered, carried, or being secured to a wall by a Worker or Warrior, and would have to convince it to release her.
And once, during a particularly alarming incident, it had found her shrieking and screaming, desperately wrestling with a loose facehugger, and had to scramble to pry the thing off of her before it secured itself to her face and subjected her to a repeat of the incident that had brought it into existence. She may have survived that ordeal the first time around, but the creature didn’t want to find out whether or not she’d be able to say the same for a repeat of it.
Soon, the wall of resin was back in place. Assured that Twilight wouldn’t be able to escape if she slipped free of her leash and its tail, the creature turned back to the trembling alicorn, releasing her legs while still keeping its tail wrapped around her withers as it settled down in front of her, leaving its claws free for the tasks to come. Twilight, for her part, just curled up into a ball, waiting for all this to be over.
First, the check-up. Twilight flinched away from the creature’s claws, squeezing her eyes shut and whimpering quietly to herself as it ran them through her fur and mane, doing its best to be gentle as it checked her over for any signs of injuries or health problems. It wasn’t Fluttershy, and its memories of the few animal care tricks Twilight had picked up from her friend were blurry and indistinct, but those memories were all it had. It wasn’t like it could just bring in a doctor or veterinarian from Ponyville, after all.
Fortunately, it didn’t find any injuries. At least, not any new ones. There were a few cuts and puncture wounds from some of the more lethal snares scattered around the Hive, hidden beneath improvised bandages made from the creature’s own resinous saliva. And, of course, there was the gaping, circular scar from when the creature had burst out of Twilight’s chrest. It honestly had no idea how she’d managed to survive that.
Next, stretching and preening. The creature cut away the black webbing pinning her wings to her sides, tugging gently with one of its claws on the freed appendage. Twilight obediently spread her wings in response, stretching them out and ensuring they didn’t cramp up. The creature took the opportunity to use its claws to preen her wings for her, trying its best to ignore the way she squirmed and whined at its touch. Once done, it secured her wings to her side again with a helping of webbing.
Third, replacing bandages. The creature carefully peeled away the improvised bandages covering Twilight’s various wounds, swapping out the sheets of sticky black webbing while doing its level best to block out all thoughts of cross-species contaminants and diseases spread by bodily fluid contact. It would use a proper first-aid kit, but She had decreed that nothing that might aid a pony’s escape be brought into the hive unless it was absolutely necessary, and a first-aid kit designed for creatures whose blood didn’t consist of an acid potent enough to melt damn near anything wasn’t considered necessary. The creature would disagree, but it wasn’t the one in charge here.
Fourth, feeding. The creature reached up and set down a small bag of resinous fabric in front of Twilight, slicing it open and revealing a small collection of berries, grasses, and other edibles. She barely even hesitated, pausing in scarfing down the berries only to check if they were edible. The creature wasn’t offended; letting its charge ingest something poisonous wasn’t the absolute last thing it wanted, but it was pretty close.
And finally, water. The creature pulled out another bag, the webbing it was made of compressed to the point that it was water-tight. It removed the thin cap at the top of the thing’s neck, before offering the improvised waterskin to its charge. Twilight shuddered, evidently reminded of that time she’d found a far less desirable fluid sliding down her throat, but opened her mouth anyway, gulping the water down as the creature poured it onto her tongue.
And then, the creature was done. Its tail unwound itself from around Twilight’s withers, leaving the still-leashed alicorn to scurry over to the small basin of soft, spongy webbing the creature had provided her in a vague imitation of a proper bed, bundling herself up in the makeshift blanket of silky black webbing the creature had made for her. A part of it wanted to try and comfort her, but another, smarter part knew that further physical contact would just stress her out all the more. Instead, it trotted over to its own bed in the small alcove, opposite Twilight’s, and started settling down for the night, doing its best to ignore Twilight’s soft, barely-audible sobs.