In Sheep's Clothing

by Kydois

Chapter 30 — Tastes of Wolves

Nymph

My head whipped around towards the source of the bolt, and I cursed as four undisguised changelings emerged from the darkness, their horns alight and casting a poisonous green glow on the walls of the cave.

Too many to fight.

My magic latched onto the fallen minecart, surrounding it in a vibrant red aura before I flung it straight at the group with a savage scream. Once it was airborne, I sprinted along the rails leading down a nearby tunnel as a cacophony of shouts erupted from behind me. Lily stormed after me, her heavy hooves carving deep divots in the ground.

I peeked over my shoulder. One of the ambushers had managed to avoid the minecart, charging after us as he prepared a spell. I was faster on the draw. I tossed out a blindingly fast bola shot at his legs, and he tumbled face-first into a pile of crystals. Hopefully, that would slow down the group behind me for a good amount of time.

A ping over their hivemind. “She hit me, I’m down!”

“Tartarus. Everyling alright?”

“We’re fine, now come on! If we split up, we can corner them in the southeastern tunnels!”

“Careful, the unicorn’s a lot more powerful than she looks!”

Shoot. The tunnel we were in sloped downwards in a straight line. Not many places to try and lose our pursuers, and it was hard to run at full speed in the darkness with the abundance of tripping hazards in our path. The ground wasn’t completely smoothed out either, leaving plenty of patches of uneven ground in addition to the abandoned mining tools and wayward crystals.

And not only that, it seemed like there was always someone just out of sight up ahead. A tail bobbed up and down just on the edge of the darkness, barely visible only because it was a brighter color than the pony it was attached to.

The tunnel opened up into a larger cavern, the ceiling indiscernible save for the faint twinkling of the crystals high above. Deep chasms split the ground, and the tracks we followed were soon suspended by nothing but aged wood, rusted nails, and the barest of magic over pits of blackness. The creaking and groaning of the tracks beneath us were extremely alarming, but it was already too late to turn back.

I furrowed my brow. It was clear that this area hadn’t seen use in ages, but this was the only path downwards. Was I going in the wrong direction, or had I missed something?

The bobbing tail up ahead swerved to the left, and I soon realized why. “Hard left, hard left!”

“Ahh, bugger!”

The track split into two, but the support beams for the rails going to the right had collapsed into the abyss. If it weren’t for the pony in front of me, I would’ve been taken off guard by the sudden turn.

My eyes widened in realization, and I looked behind me. Lily had just reached the bend, but she thankfully caught the rails with her hooves and made the pivot successfully, though not without deforming the metallic rail where she landed to change her direction. The wooden structure below us let out another groan, but it held together until we finally made it back to solid ground.

The cavern funneled back into a smaller tunnel, the crystals sprouting from the walls giving the corridor a claustrophobic feeling. The tail still bounced sporadically up ahead, but I caught a glimpse of the pony’s shape from the soft glow of the crystals. It was small, perhaps not much smaller than my undisguised form.

We passed one of the glowing clusters when I noticed something. A ping from one of the crystals beside me.

The hivemind chimed in again. “They’re in the southeast branch, checkpoint 1A!”

“We’re on them. They’re just a little ahead of us.”

Curses. I couldn’t lose them if they can track me by which crystals I passed, and there were too many crystals to avoid them without leaving the cave entirely, let alone stop and check which ones were trapped. Not to mention, there was nowhere to even hide in a straight corridor.

I loosened one of the pouches on my holster, preparing myself to toss out a fume at the first sign of danger. I focused on the tail in front of me, watching as it weaved through the tunnel effortlessly.

The tail stopped, and in the briefest of moments, I got a look at who I had been chasing all this time. It was a filly, barely out of her foal years. She didn’t even have a cutie mark. Her fur was a charcoal black, and her mane was a shimmering light gold. She skidded to a stop, looked back at me with her deep amber eyes, and, with a roguish grin, stuck her tongue out at me and winked before disappearing straight into the cavern wall.

I drove my hooves into the dirt, digging deep furrows as I ground to a speedy halt. Lily nearly bowled me over before she could stop herself, but I managed to hold my ground. I didn’t know what possessed me at that moment, but I thrust a hoof out at the wall just where the filly had disappeared.

My hoof phased through as if there was nothing there.

I knew my grasp of reality was already tenuous at best, but I was finding it really hard to justify how my hallucination found a false wall before I did.

Lily let out a short whistle. “Cor, that’s a good find!”

“Lucky guess,” I muttered before jumping straight through the rock.

We emerged in a much larger cavern, winding its way farther into the mountain. The crystals were even more plentiful here, some even as large around as my foreleg. Unlike some of the caves I had traversed earlier, this one was much brighter, courtesy of the free magic within its crystalline walls. The filly was nowhere to be seen, though that wasn’t surprising given that she was little more than a figment of my imagination.

There was a ping from one of the crystals, and I let out a frustrated groan.

“South exit! South exit!”

“Shoot, how’d they find it?”

“We will be there soon! Join us when you can!”

“Just stall them!”

I focused on my empathy sense. There was still that fog, obscuring much of what I could make out, though it seemed even thicker down here. Even so, I could tell that the large echo I felt earlier down here was much closer, and if I focused even more, I could make out a little disturbance in the direction we had just come from.

The fume came completely out of its pouch, my magic already twisting and depressing the knob on the end of it as I tossed it back at the entrance.

The cylinder smacked straight into the face of one of the two changeling guards charging through, and he let out a surprised yelp as the cylinder spewed out its dark payload and obscured all vision.

At this range, my empathy sense was much clearer, and I could easily make out where they were even through the pitch black cloud. While one of them had been stopped momentarily by my impromptu gift, the other continued to charge forward at me. A few bolts whizzed past me, one of them catching a glancing blow across my side and numbing my flank.

I saw red. With a flick of my magic, I unholstered my axe. Through the adrenaline, a bloodthirst rose within my breast, the urge to simply sink my axe into his fleshy neck blooming like a weed in my mind, yet another part of me was so repulsed by this feeling that in my horror, I nearly missed my opportunity to retaliate. Dodging to the side just as he passed by, I reached out with my weapon and hooked his front leg with the axe head, pulling him off balance.

He fell heavily into the dirt, but I wasn’t going to give him any time to recover. I advanced quickly, but he twisted to face me, kicking out a back leg at me. Rather than go for the death blow, I vented my bloodlust into an animalistic bellow and a vicious jab with my axe, banging his hoof with the top of the axe head and smacking it to the side like a pool cue sending a billiard ball across the table. He let out a dazed howl of pain and surprise, and I landed heavily on him while his guard was down, knocking out his breath as I charged up my memory spell.

A victorious predatory grin spread across my mouth, and I couldn’t help but let out a triumphant laugh. I held him down by the throat with a foreleg before I brought my horn to his and released my spell. His expression slowly changed to horror as the crimson flames ran over me, leaving him staring back into his own visage for just a moment before he slumped back on the ground in unconsciousness.

That’s one. The other guard had seemingly recovered and was rushing towards where he had heard his compatriot cry out. I pushed myself up, bringing my axe up in a ready position as I turned to face him. He emerged from the dark clouds, and it wouldn’t be long before he was on top of—

Lilywater slammed into his side like a freight train and completely drove out whatever air he still had left in his lungs as her weight finished plowing him halfway into the ground. She stayed on top of him, and from the light from my horn, I caught her piercing red eyes and her rows of serrated, shark-like teeth. The partially undisguised merpony took a deep breath.

She let out a horrifying ear-piercing shriek, like an unholy chorus of Tartarus-damned banshees. I clapped my hooves over my ears in self-defense as she laid into the poor changeling, who was flailing around like a rabid animal, his cries unheard over a bloodcurdling screech I was certain even Princess Celestia could hear. Red flames flickered over her form, and Lily slowly transformed into a changeling herself, a copy of the guard pinned under her.

She finally rose, leaving her victim completely limp. Though her transformation was not as speedy as my own spell, taking perhaps twice as long as mine, she had unmistakably cast the memory spell. I even felt her on the other hive’s link.

Lily whistled as she examined one of her forelegs. “Yer right, Crystal!” she said, her voice unchanged. “Worked like a charm, it did.”

Crystal let out a wicked cackle, just like I had heard her make in her memory. “Of course it worked,” she purred. “I am a genius, after all.”

The hivemind was abuzz with activity. “By the queen, what was that?!”

“Report, are you two alright? What’s going on?”

Questions for later. I tried to calm my breathing, even as my heart threatened to explode from my chest. “T-they hit us hard and escaped,” I sent over their hivemind. “Lost track of them in the smoke.”

“Curses. We’ll be there shortly. Just hold on.”

The two bodies. I frowned as I sheathed my bloodless axe, allowing the magic from my disguise to conceal it from view. Once the smoke cleared, there was no way they were going to miss two of their own just lying there, especially with their doppelgangers standing right over them. There had to be a way to hide them.

I must have stood there for a second too long. “The barrier,” Crystal said. “You can use it to hide the bodies. Remember what Celestia said yesterday about how the memory spell copies the magical signature of your target? Tag the barrier, hold it, and then release it before it can affect your own magic.”

I exhaled. Right. Here goes nothing.

I lifted the two unconscious changelings off the floor and trotted to the side of the room, tossing them both into a small open space between two large clusters of crystals. I knew about where the barrier was, so I flung my spell into the clouds before reeling it back to my horn like a yo-yo.

My magical aura felt wrong, tingling all over my body like an electrical field as if it were ready to jump off or discharge at any moment. It was highly volatile and unstable, and it was all I could do to channel the strange energy through my horn. With a little help from Crystal, I redirected the spell to form a wire net barrier right over the bodies. Just as I released the spell, it adopted the appearance of some of the nearby crystals and rock, completely hiding the two changelings.

I felt four more echoes on my empathy sense arriving through the tunnels, but there was still enough smoke to obscure vision beyond a meter or two. Double checking that my aura wasn’t suppressed, I made my way back to Lily, who was laid out on the ground in the furrow she had made with the other guard’s body. I had to blend in. Be one of them. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

I brought a hoof to the base of my horn, putting on a pained expression and falling to a sitting position beside Lily as they approached through the smoke.

The one in front trotted up as soon as he caught sight of me. “Hey. Doing alright there? C’mon, stay with me here. What’s the quickest way to the city?”

I groaned, rubbing a hoof over my face. “It was uhh… two hours due east, with lots of hiking.”

He nodded. “Time to take a break then. By her crown, what happened here?” he said, looking between Lily and me.

“They threw something at us just as we crossed the barrier. Blew up into this dark cloud thing.” I winced and brought my hoof back up to my horn. “They ambushed us while our vision was compromised. Damned demon did something to my horn. Hurts to Tartarus. I don’t think I can cast anything.”

The guard frowned. “Noted. And what about him?” he said, motioning to my partner. Two of the other changelings spread out across the area, clearing out the cloud. The last guard had knelt down beside Lily, who continued to be comatose.

I sighed heavily. “You heard the shriek just as well as I did. I think he’s still shocked from being at ground zero.”

He stomped a hoof into the ground. “Damn, and we can’t detect them at all either. We’ll have to wait to see if they trigger any more perimeter alarms. In the meantime though, get yourselves to the infirmary,” he said, before addressing the guard right next to Lily. “Chaeta, help them back. It’ll be safer for them to have someling who can still cast magic, and we don’t want them setting off alarms on the way back.”

“Yes sir,” Chaeta replied before nudging the prone Lily with a hoof. “C’mon, are you alright? Can you stand?”

I stood up, slowly and laboriously. “Here, let me help him up,” I said, trotting around and lowering my head to Lily. She brought a hoof up and rested it around my shoulders, letting me pull her up to a standing position. Thankfully, she wasn’t leaning her whole weight into me. “We’ll be fine. Just escort us home and I can help this guy keep going the right direction.”

He nodded. “Will do.”

The apparent leader of this group seemed appeased, and he went back into the tunnels with the other two changelings, leaving us three alone to make the trek deeper into the mountain, hopefully straight to the main hive if his words were any indication.

That was one challenge down. Once we got in, we were going to have to worry about another set of problems, but we could take a second to gather ourselves before we arrived. Our escort was quiet as we progressed, likely remaining attentive for any sign of an ambush, especially with two “injured” teammates.

I took a deep breath, keeping an eye on my surroundings, but still going over a few details of the last couple minutes. The bloodlust that had erupted in me just before enemy contact was more than a little concerning. It was the same type of feeling I had when I first picked up the axe, back in the guard armory when I was considering whether I could really end someone’s life, and I nearly followed through on that feeling before I could catch myself.

It was a good thing I didn’t just murder that guard. I have severe doubts about my ability to cast a memory spell on a corpse, and the added bloodstains and evidence left behind from such a messy butchering would only cast further suspicion on us. Thinking logically, it made sense to go for a more controlled takedown.

But that was still after-the-fact and most certainly hadn’t crossed my mind at all in the heat of the moment. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was something that had originally come from Overwatch. Perhaps over the years, the same motivation that had driven her to the Royal Guard, something that had become so deep-seated in her personality, had become something a little less… moral, and who was to say that it wouldn’t make more sporadic appearances in more tenuous situations?

Still, now that I knew what to watch for, maybe it would be a little easier to keep control over.

Or maybe it would just come out to play more often.

A matter for later. I had a few other things I was curious about. “Crystal, what did you do back there? You know, to transform Lily as well?”

“Ahh yes. That.” She seemed particularly smug. “Remember when I said that I changed some of her magic to simulate yours? I was wondering if it would also allow some of the same spells that work on you work for her as well, and it looks like it did, though I had to strip off a lot of pieces of the memory spell that were much more questionable. The transformation itself and the hive link were fairly easy since she had already proven herself compatible with both of those aspects.”

I frowned. “So wait. The spell kinda works on her, but how did she cast the spell in the first place?”

“I repurposed the magic in her voice. How did you think I gave her four legs in the first place?” she replied, and I had to take a moment to process what she was saying. “I have very limited spellcasting ability on my own, but I find changing the magic of others much more straightforward, so long as I am given access.”

“So she… sang the memory spell?” I blinked. “Wait, she sang herself legs?” I had never really put that much thought into how Lily was able to walk around as an earth pony before, but now that Crystal mentioned it, it made a lot of sense in a horrifying sort of way. She could alter my spells easily, especially now that we shared our magic so readily. Why not the spells of others?

Sure, it needed the combined efforts of a talented songstress and a changeling queen, but it was still kinda scary how versatile Lily could be without a horn, even if she had to break a few eardrums to do it.

“Well, to put it bluntly, yes to both of those, though our first attempts on legs were a story on their own.”

The tunnels had broadened a little, though the crystals were no less plentiful. Large pillars stretched from ceiling to floor, glistening in the dim lighting. Our escort—Seta…? Chaeta?—lit his horn, sending out a small ping as he passed one of the crystals on the walls.

So they did require a specific spell to disarm. Good to know.

“Ahh, one other thing. Nymph, while it is still quiet…” Crystal said.

“Hmm?”

“How did you know there was a hidden passage back there?”

My hoof slipped, though I was able to regain my balance by widening my stance a little. The changeling guard turned back to us with concern, but I waved him off. “We’re fine. Just lost my hoofing there for a second.”

He simply nodded and turned back ahead. It looked like he was headed straight for a dead end, though by this time, it was clear that not all walls were as they appeared.

“I… well…” I pursed my lips. “Call it… mare’s intuition?”

“Uh huh. Sure.”

Even Lily raised an eyebrow at me, giving me a knowing grin. “Muses talkin’ to you too?”

Our escort walked straight through the wall, confirming my suspicions that it was yet another illusioned barrier. We followed right after, ready for anything to happen. The magic on this new barrier was much stronger than the ones we had encountered previously, but we managed to get through despite the increased resistance.

It was immediately clear that this was the main hive. The cavern had ballooned out in size, lined with so much crystal that the underlying rock was barely visible. The entire area was bathed in soft blue light, combined with a multitude of bioluminescent flowers and mushrooms providing extra spots of shimmering beauty to the underground hive. It was breathtaking, like living among the stars. The most prominent building was a large spire-like tower in the middle, stretching out on two sides into a multitude of buildings in a circle surrounding a central plaza. Even in the dead of night, there was a bustle of sound as changelings crisscrossed the area like a thriving ant colony.

Amazing that such a place could exist right next to Canterlot.

“Alright, you know where to go from here,” Chaeta said, and I had to reign in my wonder just before our escort could turn around to look at us. “I need to get back out there with the captain. Make sure the intruders don’t get through. Don’t make too much noise about what happened tonight though. The queen’s getting really nervous about impending invasion, and we want to avoid undue panic while she’s still out. Word still hasn’t gotten around to everyling about what happened yesterday, you know.”

I gave him a salute. “Will do. We’ll be fine from here. Good luck out there against those monsters,” I replied.

He nodded before departing back through the wall. Lily pulled her arm out from around my shoulders, still feigning a bit of unsteadiness.

I took a deep breath as I turned back to the rest of the hive. This was it. We made it.

Now we just had to figure out how to get to the queen when she wasn’t even here.

I looked up at the crystals lining the cave. My empathy sense was all but dead outside the perimeter of the crystalline walls, and I knew from personal experience that it was a two-way interaction, a potent solution to avoiding detection by other changeling hives, especially combined with the illusioned barriers that only their changelings could pass.

I scanned the area, nodding to some of the guards around the entrance before trotting inwards. I remembered enough of the map that I had seen back in Lotus Veil’s mansion to map out where everything was, and I knew that most everything was in the central towering spire. It was the infiltration center of the hive, naturally the largest building in the area and housing everything from pods to magic collection sacs and even the training center and infirmary, where we were supposed to head to.

“Hmm, quite a collection of spells on these crystals here.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

“Anti-teleportation wards, for one. There is also a defensive barrier against outside attack or explosive entry as well as attack wards littered around the dome. Quite old and still very, very powerful,” she said thoughtfully. “Oh, here is one I have not seen before. It looks like an… imaging spell of some sort.”

I shuddered, feeling eyes on my back. “Maybe it’s a surveillance system, to make sure they can see everything that goes on in here.”

“It does not seem active at the moment, but we should be careful regardless. I would rather not be caught in a compromising position when we are surrounded by the enemy.”

I stared up at the crystals in thought. “Hmm, crystals are good magical conduits, right? Maybe we can use them.”

“Maybe,” she said, and I heard a little maniacal excitement creep into her voice. “Maybe we can even make them work with Lily’s voice. Lily, can you see if you can do anything with them?”

Lily let out a small hum, her ears perking about to-and-fro as she scrunched up her face in concentration. “Hmm… ‘Ard to tell,” she said after a long wait, “but I think I can make somethin’ ‘appen. Will need me a good vantage point though.”

I looked up at the central tower where we were headed. “As good a spot as any to start.” I approached the large, open, doorless entrance, an archway to what appeared like a smaller plaza. Activity in here was a little more subdued compared to the outside, but there were still plenty of changelings going in and out of the various exits around the plaza. Opposite the entrance I came in through was a similarly large archway to the rear of the enormous cavern, and I realized that the layout of the city was mirrored and that I had only seen one half of it.

The ceiling here was high, about four stories above the ground compared to the buildings in Canterlot. Four thick pillars extended up to support it, and upon closer inspection, I realized that the pillars also housed spiraling staircases within them. It was as good a route as any to get higher, especially since I couldn’t rely on Lily using those wings on her back.

We strode towards one of the pillars through some of the other changelings, moving naturally and with purpose and praying that it would be enough to let us blend in. Thankfully, they seemed to be concentrated on their own business, and we weren’t stopped by anyling on our way up.

Though the stairs went farther than the second floor, I couldn’t help but take a peek inside out of sheer curiosity. There was an enormous globe, nearly five meters in diameter, floating over a large crystalline pedestal right in the center, lit up with small dots of light and lines of text that I couldn’t read from my current location. Papers and record books packed the tables and shelves lining the walls on the outside perimeter of the tower, which also featured several large holes through which airborne changelings were able to make their way in and out. I noticed one of the lings hovering over the map prodded at a location with his magic and waited as several of the books flew over from the shelves to him.

It was the most enchantments in a single room that I had ever seen, but I couldn’t stick around for too long. Even so, just a glance at the tip of the iceberg helped to explain how a hive that only occupied a single city could possibly coordinate around the entire nation. I pushed it to the back of my mind as I went further up, bumping into a few changelings coming back down.

The third floor was similar to that of the second floor, though there were multiple smaller tables here rather than just one large globe, each one featuring detailed maps of each of the larger cities within Equestria. Though there were shelves on the outside, there were also tomes sitting in crystalline shelves under each table. Some of the cities were connected with arcs of light with brighter motes traveling slowly along each arc.

I continued moving upwards, taking a moment to also pull Lily along as she gazed in wide wonder at all the pretty lights. The stairs ended at a fourth floor, but since all the other floors beneath it were so tall, this was more like eight or nine pony floors off the ground. The tower had narrowed to the point that the stairs would be shooting up into empty space if they continued any further.

This particular area was more like a small memorial building than an intelligence center. Paintings lined the walls of notable changelings and a few stands were scattered around the floor with various aging relics displayed upon them. The floor was completely vacant, so I took a moment to wander around the edge, looking up at all the artwork shown of the hive’s leaders and contributors.

“Hold on. I think I recognize that one,” Crystal said suddenly.

I stopped at the largest painting, which showed an imperial changeling queen in a solemn, statuesque posture. Her eyes were hard and intense. Determined, or perhaps just stubborn. The label for her painting was in a language I couldn’t understand, unlike most of the other labels.

“Hmm, tis ancient Zebrican,” she murmured.

I raised an eyebrow. “You can read that?”

“It has certainly been a while, but I can still recognize the simplistic lines of their script. This one here means something like… Spirit, though the extra character here changes the definition a little. Phantom? Or maybe Specter…” Crystal let out a contemplative hum. “Ahh, to think this was where she had left her hive…” she muttered.

I moved on. An amusing diversion, though I had no real interest in long-dead changelings I didn’t recognize. There were two balconies, one on each side of the tower, and I stepped out onto one of them, facing away from the entrance we had arrived in.

Lily trotted over to the railing, leaning over it in wide wonder. “Cor, what a sight! Yeah, I think this place’ll work jus’ fine for what you need, luv. Golly, this place is huge.”

I walked up next to her. It presented a commanding view of one half of the underground hive and really highlighted just how large this place was. Perhaps not a true city, but it wouldn’t be completely wrong to call it almost a third district of Canterlot. “Amazing how big this place is,” I said wistfully. “I wonder if it’d be called. Does it even have a name?”

“Who is to say. There might not be a name for it at all.”

I sighed. “Such a place really should have some sort of name besides just ‘main hive.’ It would be such a disservice.” I shook my head. “Well, now that we’ve gotten Lily to a good spot, we just need to find the queen.”

“No need. We just need to make her come to us. Spark some sort of emergency.”

Lily snapped up a sharp salute. “Y’can count on me for that, luv! I can get a show started, no problem.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Enough to cause mass panic and widespread hysteria?”

She only smirked back at me. “You need to ask, mum?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not your mom, but that’ll work as long as you can do it without putting yourself in harm’s way.”

“I trust Lily to think of a way, though we will have to find somewhere we can isolate the queen once she arrives. The binding ritual may have granted you access to a greater suite of power, but it would be best if we did not burn our strength and efforts fending off the chaff.”

“Agreed, but where would she go in times of emergency?” I leaned on the balcony, supporting my head with my hoof on my cheek. I suppressed our auras in the meantime. Though the evening’s traffic was limited to the floors below us, it wouldn’t do for a random changeling to sense us two up here at this stage in our mission.

“Hard to tell when we cannot be certain of the layout, but I may have a clue. Do you remember the enchantments on the crystals?”

I nodded. “I do.”

“I have been taking a look at some of the enchantments, and there is a much better view from up here, so close to them. The surveillance spell and the attack wards both seem to be connected to an underlying network, which would allow them to be controlled from a remote location. If the hive were under attack, it would make sense for someling to direct the hive’s defenses from a secure command center, would it not?”

I rubbed my chin with a hoof. “Do we even know where that place could be?”

“Right in front of us. Do you see that entrance in the back?”

I squinted at the far end of the cavern. Just as there was a tunnel at the entrance that we came through, there was a moderately sized tunnel there as well, though this one had an elaborately decorated circular frame around the opening carved directly from the crystals. “You think it’s back there?”

“That is where the network seems to be originating from.”

I took a deep breath. “Right. There next,” I said as I continued to scan the area down below. “Hmm, I don’t see any guards down there. It seems like a pretty important place, so why is it unguarded?”

“You are thinking of it too much like a pony. Keep in mind that changelings have likely been the only ones with access to that chamber, and all of them work for the good of the hive. Putting guards on a location this deep in the hive is a waste of hooves.” She paused, thinking. “So long as the hive is unified, that is.”

“But they never counted on encountering an outsider, have they,” I mused, bringing my gaze over the hive’s denizens. “A pony would find this kind of security almost comical.”

“They never needed better. Ponies were forced to create strong security measures because it was difficult to tell who to trust. They do not have the link that binds a changeling hive together, yet as they adapt to overcome it, they become stronger.”

I nodded. “And that’s why we can’t give them time to adapt.” I gave a quick nod to Lily, who gave me a wide grin and saluted me, and trotted back to the stairs.

---

I trotted downwards after passing through the circular archway, unimpeded in my path. I wasn’t even sure anyling had even noticed me heading down this way.

The tunnel was mostly the same as many of the other tunnels I had headed down, though this one had much smoother and featureless ground, notably easier to walk over. I would have thought I was walking down a red carpet if the floor were made of anything except well… rock.

When I reached the end, there was something I hadn’t seen at all during my entire time underground, and I had to rub my eyes to see if it wasn’t just a trick of the light.

It was a door. This particular one was a set of large double doors, ornately decorated with carvings of mythical beasts and beautiful landscapes. Featuring prominently in multiple places were carvings of a changeling queen, the same one in the largest painting on the memorial floor of the tower.

I pressed a hoof on it, feeling some of the old features. “Well… this is new.”

“No keyhole either. Hmm…”

There had to be a way past it. If there was no keyhole, there had to be another way through, but what?

I pulled out my knife and tried to pry it in between the two doors, but the gap between them was nearly nonexistent. I resheathed it and braced my shoulder against the door.

Alright. One.

Two.

Three…

I nearly put all my weight into trying to open the door when I caught something moving out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look, and I found the little filly again trotting over to me from down the passageway. She gave me a little wave before stopping right next to me in front of the door.

The filly simply looked at me for a few moments, raising an eyebrow as if amused by my antics, before she raised her hoof and simply thrust it through the door. She stuck her tongue out at me and then simply walked through the door as if it wasn’t there.

The last time she did this, she had walked straight through a barrier I didn’t know was there, so maybe…

I checked my magic. It was still changed at the moment and I still had the other hive’s link, so if it was a barrier, it wasn’t a conventional one, which made sense for a room this important, but then I needed some other way of getting through it.

I blinked. “Crystal.”

“No, I have not thought of a way past it yet.”

I rolled my eyes. “Crystal, the memory spell changes my aura to whatever magic or spell thing I hit with it, right?”

“...Yes, it does. It does not appear as if you could hold a spell for very long before you had to release it, but yes.”

Breathe in. Breathe out. I didn’t need to hold it for very long. Just long enough.

I charged up my memory spell and tagged the door with it. Instantly, it caught on something, and I reeled it back quickly. Just like before, my aura shifted, tingling over my body like electricity, but I held it in.

I took a step forward and merged into the door. My magical aura mixed with that of the door, but it wasn’t complete—more like oil with water—but it was enough to let me travel straight through the door and pop out on the other side, albeit not necessarily in the same orientation I had going into the door.

I picked myself up off of the floor, rubbing my aching snout as I wearily opened my eyes. My aura gave one final shudder before snapping back into its original form, as if I had never cast the memory spell to begin with. Thankfully, I still had the other hive’s link at the back of my mind, so it didn’t snap all the way back, but it was good to know that even if I didn’t cast whatever I picked up on my memory spell, it wouldn’t horribly disfigure my magic, unlike when I cast the spell on a pony. Ugh.

The chamber I was in was about the size of an amphitheatre. The top of the cavern was a near-perfect dome, lined with crystals even more thickly than the main city I had just left, and I could feel the magic lying dormant within its crystalline shell. At the center was a circular pedestal, atop which sat a single, elaborate throne. I peeked around the throne and saw that there was another double door at the other end, though this one was smaller than the door I had just come out of.

“This layout… it is similar to the structure of some of the older hives. Those doors likely lead to the Queen’s Quarters. It is a bit curious that she would use her throne room as a center for command, but the crystals do make such an idea very simple to implement. Still, that means that this room is a dead end. Only one way in and out.”

I looked back at the door. It was clearly a different sort of barrier. I wasn’t sure if it would hold the queen as well, but there were other methods of blocking off that entrance. Just needed to draw the prey back home.

I bared my teeth in a wide, wolfish grin. “Lily, make some noise.”

Comments

[Georg]

"Cry 'Chaos!' and let loose the sirens of war!"

[WARGAMES]

9552588
Water raid siren

[MARS]

Oh man I can't wait

Overwatch has a muse now. Neat!

[TheStratovarian]

And so was a fury unleashed upon the heart. And hrm, the odd echo im trying to place..

[Misdirection]

Great chapter!

[Liqwidice]

Nice

[Kryssi]

I had to blend in. Be one of them. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

That title drop!

[Bugsydor]

Huh. Hadn't expected the bloodlust to come from Pony Overwatch, but it does make a kind of sense.

And what the hay are these helpful hallucinations coming from?

Well, looking forward to things heating up next chapter. Stuff's about to get real.

[TartarusFire]

Nail biter, and more Overwatch/Nymph development. TitleDrop™
I do wonder if the filly "hallucination" is Overwatch somehow, or someone she had chased at one point, but it doesn't seem like it, so I'm left wondering.

[Razzy]

*Sabotage intensifies*

[Teraunce]

9565865
I suspect it's Overwatch's soul manifesting. I mean it did say she was inordinately good at finding secret entrances.

[TartarusFire]

11231015
Well, reconsidering it, I feel like it's probably just the situation combined with the consumed memories. I imagine young/impressionable, or nearly forgotten memories sort of act differently here. Chock it up to some adrenaline and bam, pure hallucination juice for not dying
I also think I can discount the ghost concept as well since realistically, if it were Overwatch, she'd older than that. Though who knows how appearance works when ghosts are involved