King and I - 17

You collapse back onto the soft covers of your queen sized bed. Your heart is still banging against your chest after telling him off like that, it’s rare you ever get the opportunity to get him back. Maybe you should test the limits of his patience so you can do it more often. You roll over onto your stomach and inhale the flowery smell of the freshly cleaned sheets.

Your tail flicks in agitation, he has a lot of nerve trying to get you back into his good graces after something like that, you could have died! A meek cough pulled you from your anger, you looked over to the door to find Warm stood there in apparent shock.

“Oh my goodness! You’re back!” she exclaims, running over and wrapping herself around your sensitive middle. “I thought he’d left you out there with them!” You wince slightly as your still tenderized stomach throbs in pain, but you humor her and return the embrace.

“I’m still okay Warm, you aren’t getting rid of me that easily,” you jest, but from the look on her face the joke falls short.

“Don’t go saying things like that,” she scolds like a mother telling off a child wailing in a supermarket. She releases you and hops onto the bed next to you. Silence descends onto the room as she scuffs a hoof against the floor.

“Sorry, just trying to lighten the mood.” She nods slightly. Her eyes slip back down onto your bandaged body every so often.

“Does it hurt?”

“A little, I’ll live.”

“I can’t help but feel like it’s partly my fault you got captured.”

“Why?”

“If I wasn’t hiding in the corner during the fight, you wouldn’t have had to come find me. You could have run back into the palace… but you didn’t.” She’s right, you didn’t. You stuck your neck out for one of the few friends you have in this hellhole.

“Don’t blame yourself Warm. I chose to come find you, and it was ultimately my actions that got me caught. They wouldn’t have touched you anyway.” Well, at least some of that was true. If Sombra had actually kept his damn security in line neither of you would be having this conversation.  She remains silent, before deciding to change the subject.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she smiles softly.

“Me too,” you nudge her with a leg. You actually manage to get a small giggle out of her this time. Her mood lifted you relax, it wasn’t a good feeling to have such an emotional conversation with a close friend after something like that; it felt good to get it off your chest now rather than later.

You fall back onto the bed, bringing her with you. She chirps in surprise as you pull her down leaving you both staring at the ceiling

“Hey!”

“You need to relax; we’ve both had a stressful few days.”

“Because of the attack?” She sighs, letting herself sink into the soft mattress.

“Worse, Sombra tried to wine and dine me,” you shudder with mock dread in your voice.

“Really?” Warm looks at you in disbelief, “right after getting you captured? I don’t understand that stallion sometimes.”

“I don’t think we ever will, just between you and me, he’s a bit crazy.” You shake your head, before twisting to look at Warm. “I bet he thinks I’ll sleep with him.”

“No…” She scoffs.

“Yeah! Why else would he set up a little romantic dinner?”

“He has a good sense of humor?”

“The stallion who just a few hours ago was about to hang somepony in front of the public, has a good sense of humor?”

“Good point.”

You found your way back onto the sofa, continuing your small talk. With Warm’s appointment as your personal assistant it means she can spend much more time with you, a fact she seems very pleased with. The excitement and dread of the fight from earlier seems to fade away as you both talk about nothing important. It’s a welcome break from espionage and conflict.

You don’t have anything else to do today, but your conversation falls dreadfully short. Without divulging details about your past life you don’t have much to say. “Still reading into the paranormal?”

“Yep! I’ve moved on to the more advanced stuff too. Did you know it’s possible for spirits to affect the real world, rumor has it that wendigoes are actually vengeful dead, looking for those who wronged them.”

“I guess those things are pretty common around here in the north?” You ask, suddenly conscious of being frozen to death.

“There’s a lot of snow and a lot of hatred running through this city, it’s only natural they’d come here. The shield keeps them out, so some good does come from it. We used to learn emergency drills for when they came rampaging through back in school,” a ghost of a smile touches her lips, “I never knew we had it so good back then.”

“Before this war?”

Her smiles droops into a frown, her eyes drift to the floor. “Yeah… before the war. I wish those rebels would just give it up already, things were fine before they started stirring things up. Then me and my brother could go back to our old home and not have to stay in this castle.”

Your ears perk up, “You have a brother?”

“Did I not mention him before? He works in the guard, but he used to be a barkeeper. I wish he could go back to doing that, but the shield stopped him from importing his best beer and his bar had to close. He was drafted into the guard when this thing started.”

“They must draft a lot of ponies.”

“They have to, it’s dangerous work and ponies die all the time. They pin a list of mortalities outside of the barracks. Every day I wake up and hope he won’t be one of them, I even check the list every morning just to be sure.”

Wow, this took a real turn for the morbid. You wrap a hoof around her shoulder as she becomes misty eyed. “I looked up to him as a filly. Our family has a long history of catering and tending to others, and he managed to open his own business, serving all of his customers with a smile. I followed after him, working in the family hotel as one of our best maids.”

“I want to go back to then, when we could stay together as a family. If these bucking rebels didn’t show up I’d still be with them.”

“Is that why you support him?”

She nods, a tear rolling down her cheek. “I know he’ll win one day, he always does. Those rebels don’t really have a chance. So that’s why I’m here, pitching in, in all the little ways I can; so we can go back home.”

You don’t really like having the mare sobbing on your shoulder. Maybe telling her something about yourself will help her calm down.

“That’s a good reason, Warm. More than you think.”

“Really?”

“Family is important, they should be your priority. I didn’t have any family myself, and I was miserable to say the least.” Well it’s not exactly right, you did have family. But at the age you reached and your interactions with them, they were more like acquaintances than beloved family members you could rely on in times of need. Hell, you’re actually kind of jealous.

“I sat at home all day, occasionally going out to work at my boring job for next to no pay. I came back home, slept and did it all over again. But then… then Sombra got me and brought me here.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, he’s going every direction but straight. He could change his mind overnight for all I know. He just kidnapped me and here I am.”

“…Weren’t you miserable though? How is this place so much worse? You get a fancy new room and a place next to the King, all kinds of excitement…”

“-but it’s the wrong kind of excitement!” You interrupt. “I don’t want to be at risk all day; I want to go to bed at night knowing that I’ll be safe from some assassin trying to murder me. I don’t want to be tossed into the middle of all this!”

You catch yourself, you were getting louder there. Warm stays silent as you measure your breath. “I want to go home,” you shake your head, “that’s all.”

“Some ponies would kill to be in your place, you have the power to change this entire-“

“And I’m not one of them. I’m no hero, I’m not some messiah who’s going to fix everyone’s problems; I’m just an idiot with no idea where to go next. I’m just a normal pony, like you and your brother.”

With that you turn away in a huff, unwilling to continue this angle any longer; Warm shuffles in her seat as she thinks of something to rectify the situation.

“Sorry.” She whispers, “I got ahead of myself. I shouldn’t put so much pressure on you.”

You turn back to face her. “It’s alright, I understand why’d you want me to be that pony, but I’m not. I don’t think that’s ever going to change. Don’t make me your only hope in this, you’ll end up disappointed.” Warm nods along solemnly.

Damn it, you’ve made her sad now. “You know what? Let’s go visit the library for a while, don’t have anything better to do.”

“Are you trying make up with me now?”

“Maybe?” You say unsure of her intention.

Warm chuckles under her breath. “Alright, let’s go down and read for a while.”

You have to admit coming to the library was a little mistake. Warm was more than happy to pour through every book in the paranormal section for the third time, but you are much less enthusiastic about the “History of Specters: a Retrospective Guide”. Warm was blissfully unaware of your self-inflicted boredom, instead tossing over the occasional fact about wendigoes to be stored in your mind and forgotten.

Better than being imprisoned, at least.

You decide to break off for a moment and look through some of the nearby categories yourself. Who knows you might find something useful. To the left of the paranormal collection is the history shelves, jam packed with large, dusty books. You need something a bit lighter than that.

To the right is a small collection of books of different species. These are noticeably smaller and less dusty showing that they still receive some use. Your eyes scan from side to side until you come across a black book with green threading. It seems to have a good middle ground between length and brevity. You pull it away from the shelf and attempt to hobble back to the reading table on three legs before you remember that you have magic. With an embarrassed glance around the empty room you wrap it in your red aura and gently place it onto the wooden table where Warm is buried in a large book about the occult.

They really do have a book for everything.

You look at your own choice, “A beginners guide to changelings” is written in green cursive with little other decoration. Good choice, changelings were always a fascinating idea in the show and you can’t wait to find out about them in more detail.

You skip past the index, assuming that the book runs in chronological order. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case, despite being advertised as a beginner’s book it seems to skip the formalities and delves straight into methods of spotting changeling spies.

Still, it might be useful information to have with your new introduction into the world of political intrigue. You never know if a changeling spy is following you disguised as a guard after all. “Pick up that fork” is the first subheading to draw your attention, what an odd title.

“Pick up that fork is a commonly used trick by the equestrian military, which uses communal mess halls in order to feed troops. Pegasi and Earth pony soldiers are often targeted by changelings due to their relative vulnerability in comparison to their unicorn companions, as they cannot use magic to call for help or fight of their attacker. As a result they are often first call for a changeling spy.

The idea behind pick up that fork is to bring out a reaction from the changeling’s magic. Despite their appearance changelings retain the ability to use magic when in the form of a hornless race. The compulsion to use magic as a fast reaction leads to them revealing their true nature.

A common usage of this is for a soldier to drop a fork or other piece of cutlery onto the floor away from themselves, before asking the suspected spy to pick it up. This is where this practice earned its distinct and humorous title. In some battalions it has evolved into a common joke or prank to play on others.

This method is not widely adopted or recognized by any modern military force. Several shortcomings limit the viability of this trick, not counting the numerous other tests or spells which can be used to dispel a disguise. Changelings also became readily aware of this, and trained themselves to avoid it; some going so far as to use magic restricting rings to stop the reflex

Historically the majority of changelings actually discovered via this method were done completely by accident. The most infamous of which being the discovery that Chancellor Puddinghead had been replaced by a spy, after the changeling in question used magic to stop a cake from falling from a nearby trolley. The changeling was quickly interrogated and executed, and the original Chancellor located within a nearby cave.”

What an odd thing to document, the rest of the page just covers things like detector spells. You flip over to the next the page to find a list of combat techniques. You read through them, but your mind keeps falling back to that particular passage. You get the feeling that this book isn’t quite as accurate as it lets on. From then on you notice other little errors, like the vivid description of “acid spit” that sounds like something ripped from Alien, or the extremely out of place description of the holes in their limbs (and what they’re used for) which you shudder to repeat out loud.

You skip the rest of the book and go to the index at the back. There no kind of sourcing or research mentioned, and the author has omitted his own name from the thing. You look over the Warm, who’s still muzzle deep in her occult book.

“What kind of crap is this? Is this even right?”

She looks over to you and down the book you’re reading, recognition lighting up her eyes. “Oh! That book. It was written back when everypony was really afraid of changelings, so they exaggerated their abilities, and tossed some weird satirical stuff in there too to try and demean them. I’m pretty sure that the author just wanted to make a quick bit.”

“So why’s it in the library if it’s incorrect?” You ask bewildered.

Warm sighs, “This library’s full of stuff like that. They take what they can get thanks to the shield around the Empire. You just have to keep a watchful eye out for them.”

Fantastic, a library full of bullshit. Kind of poetic when you think about it. With a sigh you fold up the book and take it back to the self you grabbed it from. You decide to get one with an author's name on it this time. "A brief history of minotaurs" catches your eye. It's thicker than the other one, and considering how much Warm still wants to go through you could probably read it all in one sitting.

You plot yourself back down onto the chair and prepare for a few hours of learning. If you're going to be stuck in the library all day, may as well learn something.