//------------------------------//
// Chapter 39 - Chains of Blood 
// Story: Bad Mondays 
// by Handyman 
//------------------------------//

The door slammed shut behind them as Jacques stumbled back to his hooves, raising a foreleg pleadingly.
 
“N-Now just give me a moment to explain, Thorax.”
 
“Explain what?” Thorax asked, venom in her voice as she walked purposefully towards the retreating stallion. Funny how it was the one who was actually armed who was on the back hoof. The room was sparse: a bed, a mirror, plenty of space to just simply dump whatever you were carrying, and a glorified closet that housed an aging metal toilet. Used at one’s own risk.
 
“It isn’t what you think!”
 
“What isn’t what I think?” She narrowed her eyes dangerously. Her horn glowed, causing the curtains to shut tightly and the lock of the door to be heard clicking. Green fire washed over her body as she returned to her true form. Tufts of her azure mane had regrown after weeks of neglecting to maintain her military shave.
 
“Sea Crest, she is… just a friend! We’ve known each other for a long time!”
 
“Uh huh.”
 
“Business! It’s just a business relationship.”

“Sure.” He felt himself fall to his haunches against a wall. She pressed her face right up to his, their muzzles scrunching. “Anything else I should know?”
 
“You… You’re very pretty when you are angry?” Two hooves slammed into the wall on either side of his head.
 
“No more games!” she growled. “How are you doing that?”

Jacques bore an absolutely stupid expression as her question registered.
 
“...Que?”
 
“Your emotions.” She jabbed him in the chest. “You know what I am talking about.”
 
“Ohhhh…” Jacques took a few seconds to process what she said. “Well, I figured you’d be used to that sort of thing. What is it you call Handy? Heartless?”
 
“I can still feel you. The human is different; he doesn’t have anything I can feed off of.”
 
“That’s a little harsh. I know he isn’t the cuddliest but… wait, you’re serious?” Thorax simply held his gaze. “...Huh. Weird.”
 
“There are changelings in this city.”
 
“Is that really something you should be telling me, chére?” Jacques asked, managing a small smirk despite the direness of his situation. She bared her fangs and pressed her muzzle against his even harder.
 
“You know damn well there is more of my kind here. Somehow, someway, you learned how to guard your emotions like that, coiling them up into a little ball of iron that I can’t get at. How?”
 
“Surely you don’t expect me to simply tell you?”
 
“Yes. I do.” He raised a hoof to caress her face before she slammed it against the wall. “No more games.”
 
“But it is ever so much fun.”
 
“Answers. Now,” she demanded. He grimaced before sighing.
 
“Is it so wrong I take care of myself? As you say, there are changelings in this city.” He tried to sidle out of her grasp. Unfortunately, she wasn’t going to be moved, so he resigned himself and fixed his hat with a free hoof. “It isn’t public knowledge. I doubt the mayor knows, and it’s little more than a rumour in the underground. But I’ve had more than my fair share of run ins, hmhm, but none as enjoyable as you, ch—”

“Call me dear one more time and you’ll regret it!” Thorax snarled. Jacques frowned.
 
“Why are you so mad? It never seemed to bother you much before. Annoying, yes, part of the charm really.”
 
“It’s annoying me now.” Thorax spat. “Go on, how did you do it?”
 
“A little experimenting here and there. Me and the local changelings here have… an understanding,” he said with a light smile. Thorax’s frown grew into a scowl. “Careful, you’ll develop wrinkles if you keep letting your feelings get the better of you like that.”
 
“I— Wh-What?” Thorax stammered, blinking, Jacques immediately removed his forehoof from her grasp and managed to slip out from under her in her brief confusion. Thorax fell to her forehooves before getting up and scowling at Jacques. She took herself to task, unaware she had been so amateur as to let anger get the better of her. She must be tired. “An understanding.”
 
“Oh yes. I don’t go after their little hideaways, and they’ll only try to kill me every now and again.”
 
“What.”
 
“It’s a bit of a game, though their hearts have gone out of it. You can only try to kill somepony so much before it gets old.”
 
“This is a terrible arrangement.”
 
“I know!”
 
“You aren’t telling me everything.”
 
“I thought we already got over that bit?” He walked to the other side of the room and moved the full length mirror around. He spotted her perpetual scowl in the reflection and smiled gently. “Oh, be sporting about this, Thorax. I don’t know why you are so upset.”
 
“This whole time, you’ve been having me on. Telling me that sparring me back there in the forest was just repaying the favour.”
 
“And was I lying, chére?”
 
“I don’t know, are you!?” she snarled, “I can’t read all of your intentions, I cannot be sure you didn’t just lead both me and the human here to sell us both out. How do I know you haven’t sold me out to the changelings in this city already?”
 
“Because they haven’t given me my customary murder-welcome yet.” Jacques turned around to face her, catching the blank look she was giving him. “What? I’m serious! Every time I come home after a long sojourn, I always have the most delightfully inventive death traps I need to avoid. One time, they even decided to just stop being subtle about it and just lit a keg of gunpowder under my bed. Have to give them credit though, that one almost got me. But… you can be sure I had absolutely no intention of turning you over to the local soul-suckers.”
 
“Oh, and how so?” she asked, sarcasm dripping from every word as he walked towards her, leaning in close to her ear.
 
“Because until now…” he whispered softly, “I didn’t know all changelings weren’t on the same side. You’re slipping, chére.” Thorax recoiled at the words, scrambling back from him. He chuckled lightly. “Oh, I had my suspicions, sure: the way you acted, your complete ambivalence to certain references to ‘the fishery’, which always gets a rise out of the local ‘lings without fail, even the accent of your true voice. But now I have some confirmation. No wonder I have no idea why you’re tagging along with Handy. My entire reference pool is unreliable when it comes to you. All the more fascinating, of course.”
 
“So that’s what all that was about! You’re just letting me in to get closer, to get a hoof over the Autarch!”
 
“Never met the stallion, but I hear he has said the most unflattering things about me. Kind of a point of pride really.”
 
“Stop avoiding the issue!”

“Why, does it remind you too much of yourself?” She yelled and leapt at him. He sidestepped out of the way. “Now now, calm do—”
 
“Raarrrgh!” She flailed at him. If there was one thing Thorax had as an advantage over Jacques, it was speed. Pity he was far more experienced in handling an opponent in a direct fight than she was. In a short number of moves, Jacques had managed to dodge one thrown hoof, rolled with two kicks he received, before manoeuvring behind Thorax and getting her into a lock. He locked his forehooves up under her own and across her chest before pulling tightly, holding them in place. He pulled up, forcing her to her rear hooves before allowing himself to fall back onto the ground, kicking out her rear hooves from under her. “Let go of me!”
 
“Calm. Down,” Jacques commanded, Thorax struggling against him, kicking her rear legs fruitlessly and pulling against his grip. “Just calm down. Tartarus, you’re worse off than I thought. What is wrong with you!?”
 
“What the buck do you think is wrong with me!?”
 
“How about you tell me rather than just attacking me? I am not your enemy here, chére.”
 
“Do not call me that,” she hissed. She contemplated morphing her forehooves into griffon claws to give her a way to grip his legs more effectively. “Feeding me, earning my trust just enough to lull me into a trap – I should’ve have known no pony could possibly—”
 
“I meant every word.”
 
“Wh-What?”
 
“Every word. I meant every one,” Jacques said softly, his words causing her to slow her struggling. He didn’t let up his grip however. “Back there in the ruins, I meant everything. You saved me, even when you were hurt and too hungry to use your magic. I did what I thought was right so that you wouldn’t be discovered in order to pay you back. Is that so wrong?”
 
“I… I don’t believe you.” Thorax sat still and looked back at him. He just looked past her and into the mirror facing them to better see her face. He was quiet for a time.
 
“Truly? Did you think I was insincere?”
 
“I think you had other reasons.”
 
“...I was curious,” he admitted. She felt him lean against her neck.
 
“About what?”
 
“About you. Too many questions went through my head when I found out about you. It was too much to just brush away and ignore. I… thought about it.”
 
“What?”
 
“About what it would be like to be with a changeling. Openly, not as unwitting food. I never contemplated the possibility before. It was… strange. And exciting.” His eyes closed, and she felt the heat of his breath on her dermis. She looked up to see the pair of them reflected in the mirror across the room. She saw her own chartreuse eyes staring back at her, the thin locks of mane beginning to grow back, the stallion behind her resting on her withers as they were seated there, his arms wrapped around her. She closed the covers over her eyes.
 
“Don’t,” she heard him whisper. She looked at him in the mirror, his eyes barely open as he looked right back into her own. “Don’t hide them. Please don’t.”
 
“...Why?”
 
“Because I love to look into them, to see the real you. They’re beautiful.” She didn’t remove the covers, and he exhaled heavily in disappointment. And then she felt it. The tiny ball of iron in his heart opened up once again, unravelling like a blooming flower and the trickle of glowing warmth pouring forth from it, as gentle as a stream running over smooth rock. Her breath caught in her throat at the sudden, welcome proximity of emotion, willingly given. It was tempting, for the taste was the familiar coppery tinge she had gotten used to from him. The accent of his emotions, confusion, a hint of joy, comfort, fear, it didn’t stop. He revealed more and more of himself until he was as open to her as any other pony would have been. Regret, hesitation, passion, an inkling of lust… admiration? She didn’t dare feed, fearing a trap. Whatever he said to her now, she would be able to tell if he was lying or telling the truth.

And for some reason, that scared her.
 
“Wait,” she said suddenly. “J-Just wait.”
 
“I will not reveal you. To anypony,” he said softly, and she immediately knew the truth of it. “I hide my feelings for my own safety, and because I thought you’d like the challenge.”

Again the temptation rose as she felt surrounded by his warmth. Her wings, trapped as they were against his chest, buzzed in agitation and ruffled the fur of his chest and barrel. She felt his grip loosen, and she watched in fearful anticipation as he reached to her right hoof with his own and brought it out holding it before them, contemplating her black leg as it lay atop his own forehoof.

“You fascinate me, mon secrète joie. The feel of your skin, the look in your eyes, hmhm, even the sound of your voice. Un secret, et seule mine de savoir.” His muzzle raised to the back of her ear where he kissed it, making her flinch with a slight gasp.
 
“I-I… I can’t,” she managed. “I can’t be what you want.”

He was quiet for a few more minutes after that, studying her face in the mirror, letting her hoof go and bringing his free leg back across her chest in an embrace.
 
“I know.”
 
“No, you don’t understand,” she continued, trying not to let the pain show in her voice. “Changelings, we can’t… I can pretend but… It’ll be easier in a disguise.”
 
“No.”
 
“But—”
 
“No. Thorax, please. Let me see your eyes,” he pleaded. Slowly, she relented, and the sky-blue covers so emblematic of changelings slid back into the flesh of her head, revealing the fearful look she was giving him.

“There.” He smiled, planting a light kiss on the back of her neck. He squeezed her just so. “There you are. Don’t look so afraid.”
 
“... I can’t,” she repeated. For the life of her, she couldn’t understand why she was finding it so difficult to control herself, her voice shuddering. “I just… I can’t.”
 
“I know.” Jacques sighed, resting his head against her once more. “But fate has put us together for but a short time. It cannot last – we both know that. But it does not have to. We can just sit here, the two of us, and enjoy one another’s company for however long life lets us, hmm? What do you say?”
 
She didn’t answer him. She didn’t have to. The sun was slowly setting outside, the dying light turning a dusky amber through the thick curtains. She looked at herself in the mirror, her eyes then falling upon Jacques’ own, revelling in their intensity, shivering at the sincerity of his words, dreading the reality of what they meant. She couldn’t love him in return, no matter how much she wanted to. It would be too painful to explain why no changeling truly could. But the idea that he somehow knew this, or otherwise expected the brevity of their time together… She didn’t know how to feel about that. She didn’t know, could not know, how to deal with this, to know how to deal with somepony who she could not look upon as food no matter how hard she tried. Here he was, as open to her as any book, and still he confounded her, wrapped up in his loving embrace and giving his very heart to her, for however long she needed it.
 
She sat there with him for a long time.
 

--=--

 
He could not be seen. He could not afford to be. He could not remember why.
 
His vision swam, the world blurring together as he turned, objects swirling and becoming one with each other. The endless flagstone streets, slick with sea spray and rainwater, slipped by underneath him. He did not know where he was or where he was going. He did not care, for he was too hungry to care. All that mattered was sight, smell, hearing, and taste. The taste, the scents, too much. It was too much! He had to push through it, to find it, to feed off of it, but he could not be seen. He simply could not.
 
It was dark. Yes, the dark was his friend. The wretched light was a curse, the curse that would make him seen, make him burn. It hid in the curse. It hid in the light. The food hid where he did not wish to go.

A train at night, the thestral underneath him, his neck savaged in vengeance by the spawn of the night daemon.
 
He could hear it, all around them, the voices, the noises, the shouting; walls with mouths that spoke with the voices of those that hid behind them. Dark windows, blind to the light, ever watchful of the occupants who slept within. Easy, easy, but too risky, too noisy. He would be heard; he would be found, then he could not feed. Too many candles, too many lanterns, too much cursed fire-light.
 
Ba-thump, ba-thump, ba-thump, a thousand heartbeats a minute. All around him, every home, every house, every soul that slept in the darkness of the night. Taunting him, daring him, tempting him. Maddening.
 
A usurper, a murderer, a degenerate, a meal upon the battlements.
 
There, two of them, in the darkness, stumbling, laughing, drunk with their own joy, hiding from the world. Lovers that turned away from the light on the streets, a moment in the darkness between a bakery and a shipwright, the crash of the tide against the harbour walls masking his footsteps. A fool’s words and sweet nothings said in earnest, a laugh and a purring response, warm and low, unaware, unknowing and unseeing.
 
A wall of fire, a ring of death, the reaper’s shadow darkening his vision, a sacrifice willingly given.
 
His breath caught in his throat. So close, he dared not be heard even now. Darting eyes took in every facet of his surroundings. He could not be seen; he was sure of it. The accursed moon belonging to that wretched mare would not shine upon him. Drunken, their senses dulled, their hearing muffled, their focus upon one another and not upon the threat closing upon them in the night. Their heartbeats were deafening to his ears, drowning out everything, for nothing else mattered. His teeth bared.
 
Mist amidst the trees, mockery and condemnation, a queen humbled, her hubris her weakness.
 
“Stop it.” She chuckled into his ear, playfully batting him on the withers. The stallion just laughed and kissed her, the pair uncaring of the damp and the cold, the alcohol in their blood warming them against the bite of the night.
 
They were food.
 
“I’m sorry, heh, I thought this was your idea,” he said, fumbling drunkenly in the darkness and faceplanting on the wall behind her, much to her delight and amusement.
 
“Go home, Storm, you’re drunk,” the mare replied, before hiccupping adorably.
 
He took one cautious step after another, not daring to allow the lightest of noises to betray him now.
 
They were power.

“S-So are you, S-S-Sunshine,” he accused with what might have been a look of feigned drunken indignation. She just booped him on the nose in response.
 
“I didn’t say I wasn’t,” she said, pulling the drunken sop in to another embrace with a giggle. “And I didn’t say I wasn’t coming with you~”
 
His hands outstretched, ready to grasp, unknowing of which was closer to him in the utter darkness, and not caring. Not when he was so close. Ba-thump, Ba-thump, Ba-thump.
 
They were his to take.
 
“Aheh, fine, l-let’s go home,” he conceded.
 
Mouth wide, salivating, the temptation to simply lunge increasing.
 
“Thata boy. Come on now, I think we embarrassed ourselves enough tonight without the pair of us waking up in some alley tomorrow.”
 
He was upon them, a tall slice of black against the dark, bearing down upon the pair, a second away from draining them of their life’s blood.
 
“Y-Yeah, sorry about that.
 
‘I'm so sorry.’
 
He stopped, a jolt shooting through his mind. His heart missed a beat, his muscles paralyzed, like a sleeper awakening from a dream-state with a shock. The sole thought thundered through his intellect with the speed of lightning and the force of raging storm, shattering the fugue that had taken control of him. It was a terrifying clarity that was slowly dimming, slowly giving way once more as the terrible hunger would not be silenced. His senses would not obey him fully, demanding to be seen to, to be assuaged.
 
But it was enough, enough to hear himself screaming at the back of his mind.
 
He stood there, still as a rock. They never did notice him as he looked off into space, his face a mask of revulsion and terror as the happy couple stumbled their way happily on home in the night, the hooves echoing in the empty streets, unaware of what they had almost fallen prey to. Unaware of how incapable Handy would have been to stop himself before their very lives were snuffed out from this Earth.
 
He stood there, vaguely aware that he had started shivering from the cold as the sea wind picked up and the waves crashed against the harbour with greater force. The clouds that cloaked the moon were pulled away, letting the celestial body shine its paltry light this night, but not enough to illuminate the darkness of where he stood.
 
He didn’t know where in the city he was. He didn’t know how he got there. He could barely remember. He was in his room before, there for most of the evening as the sun descended. He had been thinking, thinking about something, something he could not recall right now, and then… and then… he didn’t know.
 
He had no idea.
 

--=--

 
She awoke with a snort, then roused her magic, her horn glowing brightly as she jumped to her hooves on her bed in alarm. She calmed when she recognised her surroundings as the dingy room Jacques had secured for her, having returned there after… after having that talk. However, all was not well. Something had awakened her. She checked the mirror, ensuring her disguise was still in place before checking on her room. Everything seemed fine; nothing was tampered with. Door locked and bolted, window tightly secured, every available nook and cranny double-checked. The one false wall she discovered definitely led nowhere.
 
Her ear twitched, and she could just about make out the distinctive noise of footsteps below. The human… What was he doing up this late? She quietly made her way out of her room and into the corridor, her hooves silent and hardly making a noise. She changed her form just enough to replace the hardened hooves of a pony with the softer, gentler ones of a changeling, testing each floor board before committing her weight to lessen the chance of causing too much noise. There were plenty of questionable characters staying here for one reason or another, and she did not want to be the one to cause a paranoid sneak thief to reach for a dagger in the night because they heard somepony creeping outside their door in the dead of night.
 
She went downstairs to the second floor. He wasn’t there; just more dark rooms housing equally shady characters. She moved on, straining her ears. He stopped moving, but there was just enough noise to make out somepony was downstairs. She reached the ground floor. The door leading outside was triple bolted. The way it had been explained to her was that nopony left the apartments without somepony else locking the door behind them, and they had to be let back in. She looked down, allowing her eyes to shift back to their true form to allow her to see better in the dark. There were small puddles on the ground by the door and tell-tale prints left by Handy in his wake.
 
So that was what awoke her. It was the door being bolted back into place. ‘Now where have you been off to, I wonder?’ she thought to herself as she followed the wet prints. She found him in the cluttered common room. A dozen crates, barrels, tools, and god knew what else took up the majority of the room, little enough space for a few low tables and the mismatched stools. He sat on one of them, one leg crossed beneath the other which was spread out beneath the table that was much too low for him normally. His hood was up and his head rested on a fist. His other hand had a sharp-looking sliver of metal in it, twisting it into the table as he studied its reflection in the moonlight through the curtains of the lone window. She paused for a second to consider the oddity of this particularly ominous sight. He hadn’t seemed to notice her there.
 
“Handy?” He didn’t answer, still looking at the crude blade before him. She allowed her horn to glow, the green light illuminating the room, causing Handy to blink as the light was reflected into his eyes.
 
“What?” He turned, surprise evident on his face. That was not the only thing that she noticed, however.
 
“Where… Where have you been?”
 
“...Nothing. I mean nowhere,” he said quickly, shaking his head briefly, placing the crude dagger down on the table. “Did you need something?”
 
“No.” Thorax studied Handy with a quizzical expression. “...Have you been feeling alright?”
 
“What? I’m fine.”
 
“You don’t look fine.” She noted the unhealthy pallor of his face. It hadn’t been too obvious before back in the darkness of the train car, only taking note of the increasing greyness of his flesh back in the tavern. He was also sweating rather badly. “Handy, are you sick?”
 
“I’m fine,” he repeated. “Go back to bed.”

“Where did you go? Just now, I heard you come back in. Why did you leave in the dead of night? We’re not supposed—”

“I was getting some air,” Handy interrupted her. “It’s just a bit too warm.”
 
“...Right,” Thorax said disbelievingly. “Sure you did, and I’m Princess Celestia. If you’re so insistent on getting yourself killed, who am I to stop you? Good night.” 

She turned to leave. Handy just watched her go for a moment longer, glancing back at the dagger on the table. He bounced his heel on the ground rapidly as he thought. It needed to be done. One way or another, it was going to happen. Whether or not he was willing to do it was irrelevant. His new nature only proved it was all too capable of supplanting his reason and forcing the matter.
 
He would not be a slave to some blind force. If he was going to have to put up with it, he would do so on his own terms.
 
“Fine…” he muttered under his breath. Teeth clenched, he took a shuddering breath and wiped down his face.

“Wait. Thorax.” Thorax stopped in her ascent of the stairs, ear cocked towards the common room. “I need… a favour.”
 
“...A favour?” he heard her say. Her arrested ascent soon turned into a descent as a smiling Thorax walked back down into the room. “I’m listening.”
 
“I need your help with something. Just this once, and then I can… I can handle it from there.”
 
“Oh, certainly.” She felt little need to hide the smug grin she was wearing. Here it was, her hoof in the door, even after that clever little attempt at deflection he had tried back on the train, and a way to get Handy to agree to help out with a little work involving causing trouble for the local changelings loyal to the Autarch. He had to know what asking a favour meant, so it’d only be more insulting if she didn’t act a little too happy with the situation. “How ever can I help?”
 
Handy looked away for a minute, his knee bouncing as he thought before he turned back to her.
 
“Can you turn into a thestral?”
 

--=--

 
It had taken four hours.
 
Not to find somepony, you understand, for there were plenty of wastrels in a city like this that you could find down any street in the dead of night with dawn well on its way to breaking. No no, it had to be somepony who would come along willingly. Handy had been quite specific, but for the life of her, she couldn’t understand why. It was not like he fed like a changeling.
 
She had found the mare happily humming her way down a rather auspicious looking street, if you defined auspicious as meaning seedier than the underbelly of Mos Eisley. She carried herself with a dangerous swagger and a confidence born of believing one owned the very ground they walked upon. For all Thorax knew, she probably did. This was a gang run area of town if ever she saw one, and the earth pony mare, cream-coated with a voluminous, exaggerated, dark brown mane, certainly didn’t look like somepony of ill-repute.

That was, of course, until you took in the belt around her haunches and the many questionable implements that hung from it, along with the pouches heavy with gold that hadn’t been there a few hours before. Then there were the subtle lines along the fur on her flanks where it was discoloured slightly, hiding certain scars.

It had not been easy to convince her to go along with Thorax in her disguise, especially not when she seemed distinctly displeased to find a pony she had never seen before loitering around her turf. Fortunately, the mare had a thing for taller stallions, which Thorax was currently in the guise of. Unfortunately, she insisted that they go back to one of her places. It had taken nearly everything Thorax had to undo some of the mare’s precautions and unlock the door behind them when they had entered without being noticed. She had a sharp eye, this one.

It was difficult stalling her long enough until Thorax was certain Handy had managed to sneak in. Not being able to sense him and still being able to sense a great many other ponies in the nearby vicinity did wonders for her nerves, as you could imagine.  It was like taking a youngling on their first outing to learn how to feed on their own, only you had no idea where the kid went, the kid hated you, and the target was particularly dangerous. Oh, and to make things better, the kid may or may not accidentally kill the target and you had to hang around to ensure that didn’t happen.
 
Dragging that little titbit out of Handy had been an unwelcome surprise.
 
When she had seen Handy skulking about in the corridor, she decided to stop fooling around. With a surge of magic, she dazed the mare in mid-conversation, her eyes’ sclera turning green from the glamour Thorax had just shoved into her receptive mind. She felt light-headed and dizzy, and would be feeling headaches for weeks, but it got the job done. She was entranced, a brute force tactic if ever there was one and one that would need to be constantly maintained so the prey wouldn’t suspect anything once it wore off. Still, it would serve their purposes for now. The thestral she posed as smiled gently, before covering the mare’s eyes with a makeshift blindfold. She trotted out into the corridor, leaving the entranced pony in the room, smiling stupidly.

“You weren’t followed?” Thorax asked. Handy shook his head, standing in the darkened corridor, the only light coming from a small candle by the bedside drawer.

“No. No one saw me.”

“You’re sure?” He just stared down at her, and she rolled her eyes.

“She’ll be like that for a few minutes tops. That’s not an easy spell and even harder to maintain. Do what you need to do so we can get out of here.” The human leaned to look through the door.

“She won’t remember? I mean, I wanted you to be a thestral just in case.”

“She will, but it’ll be fuzzy. Don’t talk, don’t let her see you, and just get it done as quickly as possible. I’ll wait outside.”

“Wait, you can’t.”

“Heartless, I’ve been on the receiving end of one of your bites. I have no intention of watching another one.”

“I need you to stop me if I go too far.”

“Why!?” Thorax hissed.

“Because tonight, when you found me downstairs, I almost killed someone because of my hunger,” Handy snapped, his voice suddenly venomous. Thorax recoiled.

“I had… been trying to ignore the hunger, thinking I’d only get hungrier and hungrier, maybe get a little malnourished or something at worst until I could find, I dunno, a pig or something and drain it. But no, of course it wouldn’t be simply that easy. No animals in this town, none that I found, not even a mangey fucking alleycat nobody would miss.” He gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes at her.

“Happy now?” he continued, taking a step forward. “You want to know what was wrong with me back in the forest, what has been such a major issue to the mission? I’m not natural, Thorax. Humans aren’t like me, and your queen is wrong. I’m not like your kind either. If you get hungry, you what, wither away, die in a corner maybe? If you feed on someone excessively, they’ll feel depressed and emotional dead for a couple months at worst? If I get hungry, someone else might fucking die... and the worst thing is that deep down, there is some part of me that enjoys that fact. Like how I very much enjoyed the thought of going back and killing you for the rest of your blood that night.”

Thorax’s eyes were wide, and though her new face was unfamiliar to him, it was easy enough to tell that her mind was racing a mile a minute at the information he was giving her, likely calculating how best to use it to her advantage. Handy didn’t care, he was done dancing around the issue, she wanted to know so he let her.

“It has not been easy to adjust to being a monster. So I need you to stay here and be ready kick me in the face in case I lose control of myself and accidently kill her. Do you understand what you need to do?” She didn’t reply, pausing only for a few seconds to look down, before back up and nodding once. “Good, now wait here. If it takes me longer than a minute, stop me.”

“How?”

“Just hit me as hard as you can or something. Figure it out. After this, I’ll be able to take it,” Handy said, entering the room.

She was standing there, a dumb smile on her muzzle, wobbling slightly on her hooves, still entranced by whatever changeling magic Thorax had put on her. There was nothing right about this scenario, no real way he could justify it in his head that he felt comfortable with. There was only a grim acknowledgement things would be a lot worse if he didn’t take the bull by the horns now and his vampiric nature took affairs into its own hands.

He thought back to that night in the forest, that crushingly empty despair he felt, that realization of what had been going through his mind, knowing what he was now truly capable of. There really was no going back from this. All he could do was limit the damage, to himself and to others. He wanted to apologize, as if somehow that would make amends for what he was about to do, but he held his tongue.

He knelt down on one knee facing her. She was mumbling something, tittering lightly at some joke in her own, bewitched mind. He heard it, her heartbeat. He could practically feel it as close as he was. He felt the overwhelming urge to savage her neck, to tear into it like a wild animal well up within him. The desperate need warred with his self control, the feel of Thorax’s eyes on his back a firm reminder to help him focus, to keep him from just devouring her.

And despite all that, he still found himself latched onto her neck in a blink of an eye, no careful meandering to ensure he found her arteries. It was just his fangs forcefully punching through her skin, a desperate gasp of shock and a muffled cry of pain. His arms around the mare, pulling her close as he buried his face into the side of her neck. He drank deeply, greedily, more forcefully than he had before, a man dying of thirst throwing himself to water.

There was no smell this time, no unique sense pouring across his intellect, no time for his mind to process the flavour, the taste, to contemplate what he was taking in. Just a blindness, a whiteness that obscured the mind’s eye with its brilliance, to such a point that it hurt. No taste, just the texture of the blood flowing over his tongue. Later he would learn that when he was hungry for too long, the more beneficial aspects of the vampiric act itself became more muted, subdued. If he abstained, gone would be the enjoyment he would take from the act as one would enjoy a fine meal. It would be as simple and as mundane as the starving beggar taking the stale piece of bread and being grateful for it, regardless of who or what he fed from.

And that it was also worse for the victim.

He was only aware something was wrong when he found himself on the floor, blinking, his head surrounded by pieces of a broken stool. He shook his head, hearing strange sounds coming from behind him. A welling anger within him, incensed at being denied… something, was slowly dissipating as he came to his senses. He looked up to see Thorax standing over him in her true form, wide-eyed and breathing heavily, a small clothes chest hanging overhead, grasped in her magic. 

He blinked.

“What?”

“Are you... you?” she asked.

“What are y—”

“Handy, Handy the Milesian, is that really you!?” she demanded, taking a step closer. Handy raised a hand.

“Thorax. Just calm—”

“Answer the damn question!”

“Yes! Yes, Thorax, it’s me! Put down the crate, for God’s… sakes…” Handy looked around. The room was a mess. The bed was broken, the door ripped off its frame. There were a lot of broken objects lying around him. He was covered in pieces of wood from head to toe.

"Where is she?" he started, hurrying to his knees. Thorax darted back, her already wide eyes growing just a bit more, the chest in her magical grasp almost brought down on him. He paused as he noted the fear in her eyes. "Is she alive?"
 
"Are you really you?" Thorax asked quietly. "I have to be sure, Heartless."
 
"I keep telling you yes. Now what happened? Why is the room destroyed? What… oh God… what did I do?"
 
"Stay!" she ordered as Handy shifted to get back to his knees again, managing to get one leg under him. "Stay right there!"
 
"Okay!" Handy raised his hands placatingly, his voice shaky. "Okay, just… just what happened?"

He felt strange, very strange, numb almost. Just as he thought that, he felt a creeping sensation of pins and needles roll over his skin like a wave, starting from his chest and cascading across his body. The numbness vanished and he felt heavier somehow. He felt… He felt like the world was made out of cardboard, becoming intensely aware of the fragility of everything around him. The weak points in the wall, which floorboards were loose and brittle just by looking, the right point to knock on a window pane to make the glass shatter… although, oddly enough, he couldn't tell the weak points of a living body the same way as he turned to look at Thorax. The thought was shaken from his head as soon as it entered. He did not want to know where that came from.
 
"You lost control. It… It was bad."
 
"Thorax, listen to me. Is she alive?"
 
"Yes... I think so. I don't know."
 
"What do you mean you don't know!?"
 
"She's breathing but I don't… I can barely feel her, Handy," Thorax admitted, stepping back a bit more, never once blinking or taking her eyes off of him, the chest still held in her magical grasp. "What you did… It was different."
 
"What?"
 
"When you bit her, it was… it was very very different than when you bit me."
 
"What are you talking about?"
 
"She was screaming the whole time." Handy was stunned by the quiet admission. "It was pure agony for her, way more than any neck wound should have been. I felt every bit of it. She was wide awake and conscious every second. You didn't put her to sleep; your bite didn't gently dull her senses like it did mine. It didn't feel remotely good in any way."
 
He quietly fell back onto the floor, his eyes distant. He had opted to do this, thinking it would be the right thing, thinking he would be less of a danger to others if he controlled his hunger, even if it meant feeding on people. Was this what happened as a result? He became bestial and, even in his best efforts to control the problem, ended up not only nearly killing someone, but practically torturing them while he was at it?
 
"I didn't even wait," she confessed, lowering the chest. "I had to stop you before her screams brought somepony. I kicked you, but you didn't even budge... latched on to her like a limpet. Then… Then I started throwing things at you." Handy eyed the destroyed furniture, looking over to the bed that was perched up sideways against the far wall. The entire side of its frame was collapsed. "Tried lifting you to throw you against the wall; forgot you were wearing your mail. Threw the bed at you instead."
 
"You what?"
 
"You were crazy! Snarling and… and I don't know. The look on your face, it was nightmarish. After the bed, I had you knocked out just long enough to grab this." She shook the chest. "I was running out of options."
 
"You said you can barely feel her. Are you sure she isn't…"
 
"I had to treat her neck when it wouldn't stop. I know how to treat wounds and have had more experience than I care to remember. She's lucky it was mostly clean, although I don't know how that was the case with a mouth sucking on it." She paused and glanced back out the hallway. "She'll live. I… I think. I don’t know how much you took in the few seconds, but she didn't lose much otherwise. She's in another room. We need to get out of here."
 
"No, I have to. I mean—"
 
"We are leaving, Handy," Thorax hissed, taking a few steps forward. "Now. And when I call in your favour, I don't want a god-damned word of objection, not a single bucking question, do you hear me?"

Handy didn't answer. She snarled, raising the chest in her magic again.

"I said, do you hear me, human?" Handy would normally have been offended by her temerity, incensed she'd dare speak to him in that demanding tone of voice. But for once, all he could do was nod weakly, still processing the magnitude of his failure. "And do not ever let yourself get that way again, not while I have to travel with you. Now let's go. Move!"
 

--=--

 
The next few days were spent in isolation. He utterly refused to leave his room, trapping himself inside with his thoughts. The pittance of blood he had taken from the mare was enough to take the bite of his bloodlust and to allow his body to ignore the need for physical food for a short time. However, it was not enough to truly sate it. He felt an inkling of the hunger returning on the third day, whatever relief it had given him deeply overshadowed by the shock and horror of that night that haunted him still.  And the power it gave him, correspondingly, waned over the days, having found no expenditure immediately after the act.
 
Oh yes, it did give him power. It gave him a level of strength and endurance far and beyond what he enjoyed from thestral blood. He accidentally crushed a hardened metal cup that was probably older than he was with a twitch of his thumb and forefinger. He became keenly aware of everything around him, afraid of stepping on the ground too hard and punching right through the floor with his boots. He also saw green flashes whenever he touched a wall or the floor with his bare skin, shrouds of cloudy, bright, green light that he could see beyond the walls and floors of the building.
 
It took him a while to realize he was seeing people through solid objects.
 
Had this been nearly any other circumstance, he would have been fascinated and would draw comparisons between it and the other advances in perception he had experienced from other blood types. The strange things he saw from unicorns, as well as super heightened sense of sight, hearing, and smell to an insane degree. The night vision and processing ability thestrals gave him, allowing him to think and react much faster, as well as make sense of the tremendous amounts of information he took in. The changelings had given him the ability to sense people's locations and even their state of ease and distress from a distance, without even looking. On some level, he was pretty sure it wasn’t the same as their ability to sense emotions, but he wouldn’t be able to know for sure with just one bite. With the ability earth pony blood gave him, it would have made a fascinating combination of abilities.
 
As one might imagine, he could not possibly have cared less at that moment in time.
 
"Go ndéantar do thoil ar an talamh…" he breathed, his throat dry as he repeated the well-threaded words for what must easily have been his hundredth time. Sleep never came. His mind was wracked, and he had no answers. He thought he had been doing the right thing but only ended up causing more harm. "…mar a dhéantar ar neamh."
 
He sat on the cot, head in hands, going over his situation again and again. What overcame him, why it was so different than normal, how it was his fault that it was made worse for his reluctance to feed. Another damnation to pile upon his mountain of worries and concerns and troubles, weighing down his mind as he struggled to come to terms with himself and the world around him. When one new and strange thing sundered his world, another quickly replaced it just as he was getting used to it. All the while, the shadows and malevolence of his adversaries and targets darkened his thoughts.
 
The Voice, the Mistress, Chrysalis, the ponies, the deer, the griffons, the spirits, magic, sorcery, witchcraft, curses.
 
"I just want to go home."
 
Fire, death, fear, hunger, rage, hatred, grief, murder.
 
"Please… make it stop..."
 
Murderer.
 
"Anything, just—" He was startled by a knock on the door, looking up in shock. He sat stock still, staring at it and breathing hard, not daring to move. The knock came again. "... Yes?"
 
"Mon ami, are you coming out of there at all, or do I have to spend all this money myself?" Handy blinked.
 
"What?"
 
"Oh, that’s fine then. Was just thinking you'd be interesting in this giant pile of money I happened to stumble across. Oh, and a lead on this Thunder character you're after, but if you'd rather not, then that’s fine too. I'm sure half the Fisher Mare would be all too happy to drink my money away. Adieu pour l'instant!" He trotted away from the door. It was such a bizarre and brief interruption of his thoughts that Handy had to mentally play it over his head in fast-forward several times before he processed what he heard.
 
Then he realised what he had said regarding finding Thunder, and when he did, he found himself hesitating, if only for a moment. Then he jumped at the opportunity to once more put all of this to the back of his mind where it could damn well stay until he was stable and calm enough to reflect on it properly. He ran across the room and threw open the door.
 
"Wait, hold on—!" He stopped mid-sentence. There before him, grinning like the sly bastard he was, stood Jacques, who hadn't moved an inch, thick black cloak worn about his withers and over his flanks with light grey trim, and a new wide-brimmed hat that perched on his head. Man loved his hats, sans any fancy feathered plume for a change. Beside him hovered a rather heavy-looking bag that clinked as he shook it.
 
"Morning," he said happily. "Sleep well?"
 
Handy's unamused eyes levelled at him.
 
"Hello, Jacques. What… was that bit about getting a lead?" he replied, pausing a bit to shake his head and take in a breath.
 
"My friends in the underground got back to me about that thing we got them to look into, and so fast too! Come on, walk with me."
 
"Why?"
 
"So we can go get something done. And to get you out of that room. Maybe go get something to eat and or get drunk. Oh, and to make a few apologies. Not necessarily in that order. Come along!"
 
"What are you even talking about?" Handy asked, about to follow before pausing and running back in to put his boots on and throw the cloak over his shoulders. He had no time for any of the armour, so his rags would have to do.
 
"Vous verrez!" he called back in French as he began to descend the stairs.
 
The walk back to the Fisher Mare was shorter than he remembered. All the hairs were closed for the fast approaching winter. Whatever ships had been in for refitting and restocking had left with the last of the Black Fleet, so all the bridges were down. The only harbours now open were the commercial ones at the port. Thankfully, they didn't have to exit their apartments via the brothel, but that was small comfort to Handy in the biting chill of the morning wind. He still drew a lot of looks, even without his intimidating armour on, although now they were more of curiosity than caution. It was like seeing a particularly odd out-of-towner walking down your street rather than some dangerous foreigner or some mythological monster who decided to come back from the dead. Despite any sane person finding this change of attitude to be desirable, Handy found it unnerving, especially considering he didn't actually take any action to change their minds. His suspicion began to stir. Sure, maybe it was because people here were just reasonable folk, or they were just jaded and cynical and got used to the idea of him hanging around their little stretch of coastline a lot faster than most would. There were certainly enough shady characters here to make the latter possibility more likely. Still…
 
They managed to make it to the Fishermare’s Hook, the sign hanging out front depicting a stylised pony fishing. Deep furrows in the stone road from uncounted years of wagon traffic caused him to trip up every now and again. His thoughts were still jumbled and his mind distracted, making concentrating on his surroundings a bit difficult. Fortunately, or not depending on how you look at it, he was brought sharply back down to earth when Jacques opened the door to the tavern, and the very woman he had attacked days before stood on the other side, evidently trying to leave just as they arrived.
 
He let out a strangulated noise as his breath caught in his throat.
 
"Shocks! Ma belle ami, ho—"
 
"One more word out of your mouth, Jacques, and I swear by every god in heaven and earth that I will break your face."
 
"…Éloquent que jamais je vois. I see your eyebrows have recovered." She simply fumed at him, not even noticing Handy. He was trying very hard not to stare at her. She was alive. Holy shit, she was alive! The cream-coated mare stood there, no worse for wear, although her dark brown hair was messy and flat, the colour of the fur of her face more... subdued, ashen somehow.  Her grey eyes had heavy bags under them, and she wore a conspicuous green scarf around her neck, reminding Handy that the bite he had given her hadn't healed the way it should have. "How are you feeling?"
 
"Like hammered cow droppings. Move, I need to go do my rounds."
 
"Shouldn't you be resting?" Handy asked, trying to not sound too concerned. She looked up at him, giving him the same baleful glare she gave Jacques. “I mean, you’re uh… looking a bit peckish.”
 
"Shouldn't you be minding your own damned business, stalk legs? Now move it, you two." She passed them and trotted off down the street. They watched her leave, several of the early morning traders, their backs heavy with goods and tarps for their market stalls, stumbling out of her way. Handy wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that she didn't seem to recognise him.
 
"Pleasant mare when you get to know her, wouldn't you agree?" Jacques asked with a light chuckle.
 
"I wouldn't know." Jacques hummed at that, leading the human into the bar. He saluted the tavern keeper who responded with a grunt, not even bothering to look up as he wrote into some ledger behind the counter, the quill gripped curiously in his mouth. The bar was surprisingly empty apart from one or two of its apparently mercenary clientele, who appeared to be wearing dirty traveling gear. One was slumped over a table idly counting change, the other leant against the back of his chair comically, snoring his head off. He led him to the upstairs portion, to a table near its centre.
 
"Silver, chére, two cups of pitch if you'd please," Jacques shouted down. 

Silver eventually came clip-clopping down below them and shouted back up. "Isn't it a bit early for you?"
 
"Oh, it's never too early to have an excuse to see you again," he teased. Soon enough, she came back, a tray balanced near perfectly on her back with two pint cups of, sure enough, pitch black… stuff. Handy wasn't able to place the make of the alcohol even after drinking it. It was thick, biting, heavy, and clung to the oesophagus on the way down, but not in an unpleasant way.
 
"Now," Jacques began, placing his hat on the table, his forehooves crossed before him as the mare took her leave, though not before caressing under his stomach. "Let’s have a chat, you and I. Regarding your little dalliance with Shocks and why it left her in such a state for the past day or so."
 
Handy went wide eyed and Jacques' smile shrank just a little.
 
"Oh, you should know I hear things, Handy. And I keep an eye on my friends, even the ones that don't particularly like me. Shocks is a friend, and from little birdies telling me little things about little thestrals and big shadows and strange sights and sounds… well. It didn't take long before I stuck my muzzle where it doesn't belong. Tell me, Handy, tell me what you did that scared a changeling so. And why you simply insisted on bringing Thorax along with you when you did it."
 
Jacques’ face became a stony mask, and Handy found himself unable to meet his eyes. So much for being distracted. Seemed he had to jump this hurdle before Jacques indulged him with the information he was hoping to get. He thought about it for a while, mulling it over the drink which warmed him. "How did you know about Thorax?"
 
"I pressed her about it until she told me." Handy raised an eyebrow. "I am not saying it was easy. Talk, Handy."
 
And he did.
 
He did not go into any unnecessary detail; he did not allow himself to get side-tracked or digress. He didn't even want to talk about it all that much. He wanted to not think about it, and to that end, he resigned himself to confessing one part of the story after another, trying to speed his way through it. He opted to skip over the moments of weakness and doubt, for the sake of his own pride if nothing else. Jacques was silent for some time after Handy had finished. His silence made Handy's quiet voice sound deafening by comparison in the dead empty bar, the only other patrons having left earlier. He wore one of those light, easy-going smiles as he looked off to the side in that manner he did that made people not take him seriously.
 
"And all that time in the forest too. I wonder what Whirls would think."
 
"He knew."
 
"…What?"
 
"Yeah, he knew ever since the tournament."
 
"…Why does nopony tell me things!? Why do I always have to drag it out of ponies?"
 
"Well, in Thorax's case—"
 
"Yes, yes, but still!" Jacques threw his hooves up into the air. Seemed that little revelation broke whatever cool façade he had been putting up. "Really, why didn't he tell me!?"
 
"Why didn't you tell him Thorax was what she is when you found out?"
 
"That's completely beside the point!" he hurriedly deflected and looked at Handy for a long moment, thinking. "Right, let me get this straight. You're like a thestral."
 
"No, not exactly."
 
"I know it’s not exactly the same! I have friends who are thestrals. I know what they're like when they stupidly go without food for too long. It certainly isn't how Thorax described you." He grumbled and muttered in French and rubbed down his face. "Do you know how lucky you are she thinks it was a thestral? Shocks is big in this city. A lot of friends, a lot of influence. More specifically, she's one of my friends. You couldn't have known, but that still— I mean it doesn't— Stars damn it, Handy! Right, next time you get hungry in my city, tell me, and I'll point you in the direction of ponies you're not supposed to cross. Now I have to send missives to every thestral friend I have to stay away from the city for the next, oh I don't know, forever, because of the stunt you pulled."
 
"I… Right." Handy wanted to be angry, but just couldn't muster it. "I… may need to do it again soon."
 
"What?"
 
"I didn't actually get that much from her."
 
"Merde."
 
"I can hold out for a while. It’s just—"
 
"Hey." Both of them jumped. Jacques, who had been holding his face in his forehooves, and Handy far too engrossed in trying to justify himself out of this misery pit he was in, didn't notice Thorax coming up the stairs in her guise as Charity Bell. "How are you both doing?"
 
"Uhm, fine, chére. Just telling Handy I have a lead."
 
"Fascinating. I need to borrow him."
 
"What? Why?" Jacques asked. She looked at Handy out of the corner of her eye.
 
"Calling in that favour he owes me." Handy met her gaze for a moment before looking back down at his drink. "Come on, you'll need your armour."
 
"Hold on, what favour is this?" Thorax didn't answer him, gesturing for Handy to follow. Reluctantly, he pushed back his seat and got up, looking between her and Jacques. He was too defeated to summon up any emotion about the situation beyond passing guilt and an inkling of indignation. "Wait damn it, I was going to be take him to the merchant's quarter harbour master! We finally have that lead we were looking for."
 
Thorax simply looked back and smiled brightly at him.
 
"Oh what a coincidence." She said, "That's right about where we're headed."
 

--=--

 
Logistics was a bitch.
 
Know what else was a bitch?
 
Being the subject of said logistics. You see, Thorax wanted to use Handy first for her thing in the merchant quarter, but this thing would apparently draw a lot of attention because, you know, large and terribly obvious human doing said thing, and it might interrupt or otherwise upset the thing Jacques wanted him to do. The thing Jacques wanted him to do, because for some bizarre reason he couldn't tell Handy what he would be doing before they got there either, required him to expose himself in such a way that whatever sneaky shenanigans Thorax was up to would be irrevocably ruined for the time being.
 
Thus the two of them bickered like a married couple all the way to the merchant quarter about how to arrange things in such a way that neither interrupted the others' plans while at the same time not actually sharing any details of either's plans in order to reach some kind of reconciliation. More often than not, they ended up talking past one another, leaving Handy feeling like the child in the back seat of the car as his parents started bickering over shit related to him that he was pretty sure he neither understood nor cared about. All the while, he drew curious looks and whispers from the city folk they passed, and Handy tried his best not to feel too awkward about it all.
 
Nothing like a massive dose of surrealism to go with his heaping helping of grimdark. All part of a balanced sanity breakfast.
 
"Look, how long will yours take?" Thorax asked.
 
"About twenty minutes."
 
"Is that where you're going?"
 
"Huh? Oh, oh right, yeah, we're heading to the harbour master's cabin," Jacques said, pointing to the rather massive wooden building that stood in the middle of the boardwalk, slightly below the level of the stone street.
 
"Right, fine, twenty minutes. Good. I’ll have things arranged by then. Handy.” Thorax turned on the spot, and Handy almost ran over her before catching himself. “See that warehouse ovvvverrrr, there!” She pointed with her hoof to a particular building she chose at random. “Be there when you’re done. Find somewhere to hide and just wait inside. You’ll know what to do when the time comes.”
 
“I will?” She didn’t answer and practically galloped off down a street before darting down an alleyway, presumably to do changeling things. He looked around. The harbour of the merchant’s quarter was surprisingly empty this early in the morning, a few ships lying docked, with ponies, griffons, an odd minotaur or two ambling about their decks making ready to leave. Most of the ships he had spied on his first day in the city had already left, with none coming in since. Looked like nobody wanted to be trading here when the Black Fleet pulled out.
 
“Last minute scramble,” Jacques said, drawing his attention away from the ships. The stallion leant against an unlit metal lamp post as he surveyed the various roads and streets of the merchant’s quarter. The chill in the air was brisk, and there was the faintest hint of fog on the horizon out seawards. Seagulls called far above them. “Most of those houses are empty. The merchants that don’t already live here with their families use them as quarters for themselves and their crew. Most that are lollygagging are hoping to score a few last minute deals with their more desperate competitors who don’t want to leave this far north empty-handed.”
 
“This far north? Last I checked, Griffonia was on the other side of the Greenwoods. Why is being this far north so prohibitive to trade?”
 
“Because Griffonia is on the other side of the Greenwoods. Their navies have no business this far south when their merchants don’t. And Equestria’s excuse for a navy doesn’t have any reason to patrol these seas, so merchants either skedaddle or get stuck here when winter comes.”
 
“Why?”
 
“Because that’s when the pirates come. And usually when the deer do their raids on Pier’s End.”
 
“The deer? I thought the deer don’t bother going beyond the borders of the forest.”
 
“The coastal deer tribes do. Their ships slink out from amidst their trees and try their best to grab whatever loot they can get away with. Good regular training for the enclave militias when you think about it.”
 
“Why doesn’t the fleet just burn their ports and raid right back, teach them a lesson?”
 
“Can’t find their ports, nor their coastal towns.” Jacques tipped his hat up and squinted, looking for something in one of the streets facing them. The boats gently rocked on the waves in the harbour just below them. “That and it would count as trespassing the Greenwoods, provoking a greater reaction from the interior tribes.”
 
“Surely it can’t be that hard. Just sail the coast, pick your targets, and bombard them with cannons. Send a couple of shore parties and burn a few houses, put the fear of God into them. Thou doth not need to conquer them.” Jacques snorted.
 
“Didn’t realise you were that bloodthirsty.” Handy glowered at him, and Jacques waved a hoof. “Kidding. No, I know what you mean. By that point, negotiation is a bit beyond reason. The coastal tribes are… different from the Whisperwoods and the more reasonable tribes who have outer castes. And I think you underestimate the Greenwoods. Those trees extend out beyond the coast. We can’t raid their ports and harbours because our ships can’t get through the damn trees.”
 
“Those trees can survive in seawater?”
 
“Now you see the problem, and to get past those, we’d need to start destroying those massive trees, and well, then we’d be provoking a major war. So we put up with the raids and give the deer a good drubbing when they’re stupid enough to leave the forest where their magic doesn’t work.”
 
“Whirlwind’s worked just fine.”
 
“Whirlwind wasn’t using Hartsight. Surely you picked up that it’s kind of taboo for deer to use any other kind of magic. Or any magic if you’re a stag.”
 
“I got that impression yes,” Handy admitted, looking around. “What are we waiting for, Jacques? I thought we were going to see the harbour master.”
 
“In time, mon frére,” Jacques began, smiling as he saw two figures approaching from around one corner, their voices carrying over the distance. “I just need to catch up with a pair of old friends.”
 
“You have a lot of questionable friends, Jacques.” The pony turned to give him a sardonic smile.
 
“Like you for example?” He chuckled and turned back at the pair of stallions approaching. Both were grey, one a pegasi, the other an earth pony. Their manes were neatly trimmed and short, with tiny braids along their terminus tied with gold bands, one black, the other white. One wore a small black hat with an ostentatious white-feathered plume. The other simply wore a hood that ran from his half cloaks, black in colour, running from a metal ring worn around the upper left foreleg, near the withers, up over the small of their backs and down their right foreleg to a corresponding wing at the ‘wrist’ of the right leg. The odd clothing depicted a shield, dark purple in hue. Only reason he didn’t think it was black in colour was due to the darker shade of the cloak itself. Upon the shield was a bright blue stylised spear, solid in colour without detail. Six more spears, three either side of the central aperture, extended out and upwards, curving to face the same direction of the central spear. It was eerily reminiscent of squid legs once the thought came to him. One cutie mark was a simple white quill, drawing a squiggly line in acidic green colour. The other showed wind blowing a cloud. Harmless enough.
 
“Jacques,” the first of them began, the hat-wearing earth pony it seemed. His voice was oddly accented, a strange lilt causing him to pronounce his words in a curious manner. “We were unaware you would be accompanied.”
 
“Oh, do not mind him.” Jacques waved a hoof back to Handy. the human noticed that the stallion’s sheathed sword clicked against the flagstones as he moved. That had to be deliberate. Never since he knew the pony had he known to be careless with his blade. “We have other business together. Uhm, what was that delightful title your king gave you, good baron?”
 
“...I am his Sword,” Handy answered carefully, not sure what game was being played here. These ponies looked official, and this conversation was too stilted, too politicked.
 
“Yes, now I remember. I am just showing this ambassador from the griffons a good time here in Black Port. I do hope you understand, Ghost,” Jacques said, speaking to the earth pony. The pegasi remained hooded and did not speak, his eyes never leaving Jacques. The earth pony, Ghost, apparently eyed Handy with cold blue eyes for a moment.
 
“So I see. Do you have the mail from Treeview?” Jacques smiled and his horn glowed. The cloak lifted up, revealing a thin travel pack strapped to his flank. The flap unfurled, and a number of packages, covered in yellow stained oilskin, thin and long, lifted out.
 
“Oui, of course. Quite a substantial review it seems. Your brother had a lot to say apparently.”
 
“I should hope so. He has certainly been gone long enough,” Ghost responded. The pegasi held out a wing as Jacques levitated the packages over. The wing enclosed around them, feathers delaminating and then tightening around them, like gripping sheets of paper between your fingers, before the wing enclosed them to the side of his body. Jacques said nothing, and the four of them stood silently for a minute longer before the strange pair of ponies turned and left without another word.
 
“So what was that about?” Handy asked. Jacques just gently shook his head as the two stallions disappeared around the corner they had come from.

“Maybe I’ll tell you that story another day. Now come, the harbour master has the news we need about Thunder.” And with that, Jacques turned from the road and descended the stone steps onto the boardwalk, navigating the maze of crates, ropes, and the occasional anchor that was bigger than Handy was. Distant bells sounded from the harbour walls, signalling the tide and a change of the guard at the harbour gates. He followed after the stallion at a more sedate pace, taking in the harbour through the familiar T slit of his helm. The nose guard still protruded down its center, and the annoying cross stitching of ordinary cloth across the enchanted weave that obscured his face from the world were all that restricted his vision further. He was well used to them by now and compensated almost without a thought, but he couldn't help but wonder if a more practical, visored helmet wouldn't be easier to work with.

Then he remembered such an item would lack the qualities that made him put up with the dregs of armour he wore in the first place and dismissed the thought, coming back to the curious meeting they just had with those ponies.

'Government types, clerks or some other kind of flunky,' he reasoned. 'Should have known Jacques would have some kind of dealings with the local government. He seems to have connections with everyone else. But why bring me there, specifically? He didn't use my reputation, mentioned nothing about the tournament, the Greenwoods, nothing of our history together, not any of my rumours. Instead, he used my political position. But to no end, just to… show me off. What game are you playing, Frenchman?' Jacques rapped the harbour master's door as they came to a stop. Someone shouted something from within, which was muffled and difficult to hear. The window, little more than a wooden board on a hinge really, blew open and a voice shouted from within.

"It's open, you useless clarts! And shut the door after you. It’s cold out!" Jacques entered, pausing to hold a hoof up, stopping Handy's advance.

"Wait in the anteroom. Wait till I call you in."

"Why?"

"Old Foamy doesn't get out much, and I want to do a thing."

"A thing?"

"Yes."

"What kind of thing?"

"You'll see, and you'll like it. I promise! Now just do as I say." He trotted happily into the harbour master's cabin. It was a tall wooden construction that creaked and groaned much like a ship would, but blessedly didn't have to put up with the rocking motions vessels do. The sound of the waves shifting amidst the wooden pillars holding up the floor beneath him were muted through the ruddy carpet. The ceiling was tall, easily twice Handy's height before you got to the upper floor. The square building dissected into sections, with thin wooden boards designating 'rooms', but without any visible doors. The walls just extended and then stopped before reaching the far wall, leaving an open gap from ceiling to floor, reminiscent of a maze almost. The walls were strewn with various paraphernalia: fishing nets, plaques with trophy catches, and the jaws of a sea beast that was ossified and opened wide hung from the ceiling, threatening to fall and gobble up all that was foolish enough to stand beneath it. There were desks, stools, chests that seemed to be filled with clam shells, along with wine and other stains on the carpet he couldn't readily identify.

All of that, however, paled in comparison to what immediately caught his attention. There, on the wall separating the antechamber from the room Jacques had just entered to speak with the harbourmaster, hung a frame. Made of simple wood, worn and tattered, its paint flaking, the glass protecting what it contained cracked, showed Handy what was, for all the world, a photograph. Sepia-toned and faded with age, it showed a surly-looking bastard of a pony, mutton chops and a frazzled mane, jaded, cynical eyes staring out at him, a crooked smoking pipe jutting out one side of his mouth, held up a net in one hoof. A small ship could be seen in the background, clouds, and birds in the air. All in all, pretty unremarkable.
 
Except Handy had never actually seen a photograph since he had arrived in this world. For some reason, the thought had never crossed his mind, but now that it did, he could not help but feel oddly taken with the concept. It seemed bizarre, wrong somehow. Here was a world that was still trudging through the shot and pike era of warfare, and these assholes were trotting around with the technology capable of capturing photographic evidence of history as it passed. Logically, he knew by now that this shouldn’t faze him, but somehow it did. Between steam-powered trains, zeppelins, and heart monitors that operated on some kind of expensive magic crystal system, cameras should be blasé.
 
He didn't know much about photography, or the technology behind it, but he couldn't help but feel a hint of jealousy of it all. These guys had no idea how fortunate they were to have something like this centuries in advance before their own modern age as Handy was familiar with it. He imagined what it'd be like if they could have had archived images of the Diet of Worms, any of the Synods of the Church, the coronation of this or that ruler. A definitive answer as to whether or not that famous portrait of Oliver Cromwell was really, truly an accurate reflection of him, 'warts and all'. What was the daily life of people throughout the ages? What did it look like? How did they dress? How did it change as time marched on? What was it like to sit behind the walls at the siege of Vienna during the Ottoman Wars, to look out on the vast expanse of a gathered enemy? What did the Polish Hussars look like on the march en masse? Images that proved that they were living, breathing people, who laughed and sung, fought and died and not some unfeeling, mindless words in a history book, to be disparaged or heralded for this or that reason, as if they were things to be bartered and sold, ideas more than people. How long have they had this technology? Could they preserve early photographs over the centuries? Surely they had to have some means. Magic could very well help with that, couldn't it? Did they have archives of their own, taking advantage of the priceless opportunity this represented?
 
'Did they even think of it?' he ruminated, oddly taken with the concept. It was a welcome distraction from everything else that had been going on, and it was wildly, if strangely effective, at enrapturing his thoughts. Too effective, it seemed.
 
"…I said, I have your solution right here. Isn't that right, Handy?" Handy blinked, realizing he’d been called, and stepped away from the image, turning to walk around the wall, his boots heavy on the ground.
 
“This is patently ridiculous. That bounty had nothing to do wi—” The harsh voice of the sea-green pony seated behind the desk before him cut off abruptly, his wrinkled face going slack as his eyes widened and his mouth gawped, head tilted up as Handy calmly walked in right up to the desk before him. The pony was identical to the one in the photograph, if only a little older. His mane was brilliantly white, and the smoking pipe lay upon a holder on the wooden desk, a flat cap perched between his ears.
 
“Sir Handy here has come an awfully long way, looking for a certain pony wielding certain magic,” Jacques continued, walking over and climbing up upon a chair, sitting on his haunches upon it for a change. “Isn’t that right, mon ami?”
 
‘So this is the thing he was talking about? This guy looks scared out of his wits.’
 
“It is,” Handy said, his voice sounding oddly loud in the small room. The pitter-patter of rain began assaulting the sides of the building, their staccato rhythm adding to the atmosphere nicely.
 
“W-What is he doing here?”
 
“Why, I brought him here!” Jacques said simply. “He’s been in town for a few days now.”
 
“W-What? The guards— You should be— Somepony should get the guards!” The harbour master backpedalled, and the chair he was perched upon wobbled dangerously before the earth pony caught himself. Handy raised an eyebrow. Had he really not heard he was in town? If nothing else he could say about himself, he knew he got talked about.
 
‘So when Jacques said he didn’t get out much, he wasn’t kidding.’
 
“It’s quite alright. I assure you, Handy means you no harm.” Jacques turned to look at Handy meaningfully. “Right, Handy?” He met Jacques’ gaze for a moment before simply nodding.
 
“You’re not real. W-What do you want?” the pony asked. Jacques simply hummed away. Apparently this was Handy’s show now. He leaned forward, resting his knuckled on the hardwood desk, looming over the harbour pony.
 
“You’ve seen signs of a pony with strange magic going about?”
 
“S-Strange magic? Hehe, how… how do you mean?” Old Foamy stuttered.
 
“Green, usually. You can hear strange whispers when it’s being used. Feels wrong to be around. Can be used by earth ponies as if they were unicorns, casting spells like it was nothing. No staff, no focus, no training.”
 
“E-Earth ponies you say?” Foamy swallowed.
 
“Blue fur; specifically a stallion. Have you seen anyone around like that? Any kind of magic like what I have described?”
 
“D-Don’t know much about m-magic, sir! Jus’ a humble pony of the ocean I am, yessir!”
 
“Harbour Master,” Handy said, the words heavy and meaningful, causing the quivering pony to freeze as he was addressed directly. “It is absolutely imperative I find this pony. I am only here because I am led to believe that you have information that will lead me to him. Now, I will ask you very simply. Have you seen any such magic being used recently? Any pony fitting the description I gave you?”

Foamy glanced over to Jacques, who seemed to be waving his hoof in the air to the tune of whatever he was humming, his hat covering his eyes. He’d get no rescue from there. He turned back up to the implacable face of the human bearing down on him.
 
“I… I have seen something along those lines… yes,” he admitted, closing his eyes shut.
 
“Where? When?” Handy demanded.
 
“T-There was a book—”
 
“Leather bound, strange letters, looked like squiggly lines within squiggly lines, has a simple spiral design on the cover?”
 
“I-I dunno, yes!? I saw the cover?”
 
“Where!?”
 
“I think that’s enough, Handy.” He rounded on Jacques, who imposed himself into the conversation. The unicorn turned to Foamy. “As you can see, my friend is quite zealous in his pursuit of this individual. Enough to come back from the dead if you’d believe everything ponies tell you.” Jacques chuckled. “And word has it that you know of some such pony doing strange magic in the harbour area and the merchant’s quarter. Handy is very interested.”
 
"I… I don't know, m-maybe I didn't see anything!" Foamy jumped as Handy slammed his fist into the table.
 
"Easy, mon frère, easy," he cautioned. "Now, Foamy, be reasonable here. You wouldn't lie to our friendly human, would you? This is a dangerous individual he is after."
 
"I… no, no, I w-wouldn't dream of it."
 
"Good, because I get the distinct impression Sir Handy will be hanging around this part of Blackport for some time in light of this. Now how about you start at the beginning, oui?"
 

--=--

 
It was over in less than twenty minutes, but it felt like an hour.
 
He had no idea who this Mistress was, but the human's first-hand experience with old magic was startling. He knew what it looked like, what it felt like, what it smelled like. He even knew what it looked like when a pony was using it up close and in detail. He told him enough, just enough so as to not arouse suspicion. He thought over the times he had personally used it and when, then thinking about what that would look like had he witnessed such things from his home on the boardwalk or at other parts of the harbour. He tried to conserve as much detail as he could so that he'd not make it seem like he had too much familiarity with the magic.
 
The human, what was he even doing here? Did his deal with the Voice in the mirror bring this down upon his head? Was this the price of his ambitions? He was little more than a story! A blown up minstrel's tale to scare foals! Tall and dark, ate dragons, and shat lightning if the more exaggerated tavern stories were to be believed. Last he had heard, he was supposed to have died in some fuss or other in Griffonia. He didn't know, and he didn't care to mingle with the blighters who infested this town more than he had to. But still, it was not every day a storybook monster walked into your home and made demands of you.
 
He had been tempted, so very tempted to just panic and blast the creature, a good vortex to crumple him up into little more than a bloody ball of metal and flesh the size of his hoof. That'd set things right. Easy to dispose of as well, if he could get the mess out of the carpet.
 
Still, if he had faced the ilk of such magic before, he likely knew how to deal with that. No, he would have to be careful dealing with this Handy. He sat there at his desk, one forehoof rubbing the other's fetlock nervously, his pipe lit and smoking. The rain, heavier now, battered against the outside of his home. He opened up the desk drawer, moving sheets of parchment out of the way to see his book, spiral design and leather cover. He felt a desire well up within him, the power, the temptation.
 
But he had to be careful.
 
Somepony had talked. Somepony had seen him as he made his way in the night to one house of merchants after another, using his newfound power to make contacts, to twist their legs into working for him now, to trade as he wanted to his advantages, to make native merchants take leave of Black Port for the winter, leaving their families in his capable hooves to ensure… compliance. They were to establish his little network in other ports before he moved on to bigger and better things. Perhaps have his hoof in the northern Griffon ports, or the merchant city states of the Dagger Coast in the far south. Perhaps even muscle his way into the Apodian honey trade.
 
He'd need to sort those ponies out, and silence them, but before he could even do that, he needed this human gone.
 
But how?
 
A curse and the sound of a crate filled with something heavy breaking drew his attention to the window behind his desk. He unfastened the catch and pushed the wooden flap open, looking down at the boardwalk. A young stallion, an earth pony, was flinching under the abuse of an older dock worker, chastising him for his negligence that resulted in a crate full of nail bags crashing down from its place and spilling the contents on the boardwalk. He was left to pick it all up alone in the rain.
 
Foamy puffed on his pipe a few times in contemplation.
 
He closed the window.
 

--=--

 
"Catch." And Handy did thusly catch the thrown bag of bits.
 
"And this is for…?"
 
"Oh, something completely unrelated. Got paid to do a thing. It’s now your share of the job to find this magical earth pony."
 
“...Share.”
 
“Yep.”
 
“I’m getting paid for this.”
 
“We’re getting paid for this. You for doing, me for finding out about it.”
 
"And Foamy is paying?"
 
"Somepony was paying. My guess is that it’s a spooked merchant. Don't know, he kept his identity quiet."
 
"Prithee, where exactly did you hear about this?" Jacques gave him a flat look. "Never mind then. So what was that little song and dance about? Foamy seemed particularly scared of me."
 
"The old crotchety wretch of a pony hardly ever leaves that sty of his and, to be perfectly honest, I thought it would be funny." Handy hummed at that. He couldn't deny it was amusing.
 
"Speaking of things, Jacques, what was the real pur—"


"So this is where you have to wait for Charity Bell?" Jacques asked, smirk present and accounted for, amused at having to call her that while in public. The pair of them had trudged up from the harbour back into the merchant district, heading towards the particular warehouse. It was a functional wooden construction, with what appeared to be a corrugated metal roof slanted to one side. The rain sloughed off of it and into a gutter that ran down into a drain to take the water into the sea. It loomed over them, dark and foreboding, more so in the sickeningly dreary weather that had suddenly came upon them. At least there was no wind to make it worse. "Hmhm, I am free for the rest of the day. Perhaps I could—"

"No." Handy didn’t look down at him, instead carefully checking around the surrounding streets. He was grateful for the clouds. Last thing he wanted was to shine like a beacon right now. "'Charity' wanted me here alone. There's probably a good reason for it."

“Oh? So you trust her now?”

“Do you?” Jacques didn’t reply for a long time before simply sighing and walking off.

“Good luck then,” he called back before stopping. “And do try to not to harm any more of my friends, Handy." He turned to look at Jacques but couldn't make out his expression through the heavy rain, the water running off the brim of his hat. He watched as he disappeared into the gloom. If there was anybody still outside at this hour, or even on the few remaining ships in the harbour, they couldn't see more than a foot or so in front of him. Handy certainly couldn't. A faint tremor of pain, familiar to him now, arced up his arm, and he winced, reminding him of yet another little problem he was pretending didn't exist. On a whim, he reached out with his left hand, placing it against the wall of the warehouse, slick as it was with rainwater. Nothing, no little clouds of light signifying life inside that he could see. No subtle indentations or stress lines or other almost imperceptible weaknesses he could see and exploit. The power was gone, the pitiful amount of blood he had consumed used up, despite having never actually used its power. He'd hold out for maybe another day before the hunger bit again, and he scowled at the thought.

He walked down the side of the warehouse, trying to keep out of the waterfall that ran the length of the building that fell from the sloped roof. He searched for a side entrance in the dark, just to be doubly sure nobody saw him enter this particular building. Of course, trying to be subtle while weighed down in heavy armour was like trying to sing opera with lung cancer, but Handy was long practiced with the familiar weight. He took off his helmet, and his head was immediately drenched. He placed a hand over his forehead and looked around. The alley was empty. He went for the side door and found it locked.

"Bollocks." He slowly pressed himself against the door, listening intently. It should be empty, for the merchants were practically abandoning the port for winter. Still, it was early in the day, and there was always the chance some dockworker would be hanging about, or some other hapless bastard whose job it was to haul shit all day to make another man very rich for very little pay. It was padlocked, and he contemplated just breaking the damn thing with his hammer, seeing as he didn't know the first thing about picking locks. Funny what you picked up. He knew how to make explosives out of fertilizer, but he never once tried breaking into a locked room when he was younger. Guess that was what he got for growing up in the country.

He scrutinized it and found the catch was rusty. If nothing else, that might give. He took the haft of his hammer and tried to place it through the loop of the padlock and pressed down on the hammer. Eventually, and not without a little effort, the catch gave, popping off noisily as the heavy padlock splashed in the puddle below. The lock was utterly ruined now, but at least he could open the bolt on the door. He entered the building. The din of the torrential downpour hitting the metal roof above was nearly deafening inside. The acoustics was surprisingly excellent for what was essentially a wooden shell of a building. Thorax wasn't here as far as he could tell, and it was dark. What the hell was he supposed to do? There was nothing here but endless barrels of… blackberry wine. Huh.

Well, if nothing else, he knew where he could get a decent buzz on the cheap. Although he never knew you could store wine in casks that large. Whiskey, sure, but wasn't there something about the size of a barrel that affected fermentation or something? He really hoped he didn't pop one of the corks and end up drinking a mouthful of vinegar. The smell was certainly strong in any case.

His mind drifted as he waited, Thorax taking much longer than twenty minutes to show up, now closer to a full hour. Thunder was here, somewhere in this very city! Unbelievable! And what was worse, there was no way in hell he didn't know Handy was here now too. He even had a few days to prepare and leave, either by cart or by boat before the human caught up with him. He couldn't believe his luck, only to have it undermined by the possibility that he got away. But the latest use of ild magic, according to the harbour master at least, was only the other night, and none of the ships had left. He had to still be here. He was just… hiding or something.

It was a good thing to focus on, putting a great many worries to the back of his mind as he now had a problem he could solve. A problem whose solution might go on to help solve other problems, not least of which was his geas. The only problem was how. There he was, hopped up on a blood high, fresh from slaying an honest to God dragon, and Thunder slapped his shit. How in the hell was he going to subdue the bastard long enough to get what he wanted out of him for the changelings? Never mind getting more information on old magic and the Mistress. Going blindly at him with violence had proved to be of no help before. Jacques wouldn't be much help either, considering he was as defeated as Handy was before Whirlwind whisked them away to that delightful forest of his. He'd need to be clever about this.
 
'And I'll need more blood.' The thought lingered, and despite his revulsion, he held on to it deliberately. Fighting his vampirism was getting him nowhere, finding alternatives to the blood of the living was increasingly harder the farther away from Griffonia he was, and starving himself only made him more unstable and dangerous to everyone around him anyway. That all made his attempt to go cold turkey wildly irresponsible. Of course, giving into it was dangerous too. He did not want to turn into the person he had been in the dark of the forest, but he was left with a choice between willingly and unwillingly becoming a monster, and there was only so long you could ignore a problem before you no longer had a choice in the matter. He remembered the look on Jacques’ face when he warned him not to hurt any more friends, and for all that he did not care for the swordsman's threats, he could not deny the guilt that came with the cause behind them. A decision was made. 'Then I will get more. But I will not let this rule me.'
 
The main doors to the warehouse were flung open, light poured in, and the sound of the rain increased. Handy immediately stepped back into the dark of the surrounding casks of wine. Five quads of hooves thundered into the warehouse before the door was shut with a slam. There was a green glow of magic, and he heard a bar slide into place, locking the door. Hushed, harsh whispering ensued.
 
He pressed himself up against the wall, placing a pyramid stack of barrels between him and the central space of the warehouse. The hoofsteps got closer.
 
 "What do you mean you were spotted!?"
 
"I am saying we have an infiltrator!" a second voice replied.
 
"Whose!?" A third.
 
"I don't know. We didn't stop to ask!" The fourth.
 
"How many?" The fifth. Five voices, five sets of hooves.
 
"I don't know. We only saw the one, bold as brass. She transformed right in front of us!"
 
"Out in the open!?"
 
"No, right on top of us! Barged right into the house, transformed, and attacked us!"
 
"Does she know!?" the first voice demanded. It was met with silence, a snarl, angry hoofsteps, and a quieter, but sterner tone. "Does. She. Know!?"
 
"I don't know! We came to you first! We didn't reveal anything!"
 
"God damn it! Darkness take the lot of you for fools!" the first exclaimed. Handy could hear him pacing. There was a flash of green fire, and he briefly glimpsed the form of a changeling through the gaps in the barrels. None of them had their horns lit otherwise. Changelings must have good low light vision or some such nonsense. Wouldn't be surprising. "We cannot allow this sidhe to be compromised. The Archon will have our hides!"
 
Five changelings.
 
"Well I didn't bring her here! I have no idea where she came from!"
 
No mention of Chrysalis. Likely not her subjects.
 
"Well, maybe if you were doing your rounds like you were supposed to instead of wasting your time with that fish flipper, we wouldn't be caught so unawares!"
 
A warehouse that wasn't currently in use.
 
"Big talk coming from a jumped up youngling who couldn't even pass higher than 10th rate!"
 
And it was the first place these changelings went to after she herded them here.
 
"That's enough, all of you!" the first voice demanded. "Fan out, keep yourselves suppressed, and be cautious. I want this place secure before we go below."
 
Thorax said he'd know what to do.
 
It was when one of them, still in the guise of a brown pegasus, drew near to the side door with which he had used to enter the warehouse that he first acted. He was the closest to him, as the others had spread out around the building. It was fortunate Handy had stuck close to the general area since he entered. Unfortunately for the changeling, however, the human had just made a very important decision before it entered.
 
The changeling struggled in the iron grip as he was lifted bodily off of the ground. An iron clad hand clamped over its muzzle, unable to call out its discovery of the open side door, or its distress and alarm as something it couldn't even sense was currently lifting it up off the ground. An explosion of pain blossomed in its neck before it slowly went slack, mind increasingly foggy and senses dulled. The last thing it remembered before darkness took him was a voice in his ear.
 
"Queen Chrysalis sends her regards."