"What's going on?" asks 387, finally sensing a note of grief because it's coming from 1988.
"Tantabus killed High- 9999 after it made contact with Luna," reports 1988, "And drones can't deal with the sheer mass of regenerating flesh. We have the vector in which Luna was moved, but no way of getting to her."
387 grits his teeth.
"Alright, remaining here will only get us crushed then, but Tantabus is now vulnerable until it decides to make itself indestructible again. So far, these changes in strategy always took some time. Based on the last known direction of the tunnel I'm getting, Luna must be somewhere in the front part of its chest, so if we get out and fly around we might close on her depending on how easy it is to move her. 559, can you hold the tunnel on your own for a moment?"
"On it!" the warrior's chitin spear breaks and gets immediately replaced by another one while 791 backs off to 387.
"Everyone, blast the floor!" orders 387 and points his horn down.
In mere seconds, chunks of surface under their hooves start disintegrating.
"MAKE WAY, FALLING THROUGH!" yells 10013, dropping from the ceiling and immediately digging downwards. The other drones start arriving from their crawl spaces which quickly close behind them.
The regeneration isn't enough to withstand the combined blasting and digging, and the changelings soon see real light again as they fly out of Tantabus' belly, the hole they created rapidly closing behind them. Unfortunately, the ground seems far further down than it was when they dug in.
The drastically reduced number of fake changelings poses no problem, but when the real lings fly out from under Tantabus' shadow and look up, 387 curses yet again.
The rift is wide open. Tantabus' previously broken off leg is back in full, and the monster itself is almost touching the sky with its horn while wearing a wide smile. The front of its chest is now see-through like glass, revealing Luna stuck in the root-like structure and forced to look up by having her mane pulled backwards. It's clearly just taunting them now.
"CONGRATULATIONS, BUGS. YOU PRESERVED THE SECRETS OF YOUR MIND, BUT I'M ALMOST IN THE REAL WORLD. WITH SO MANY PONY MINDS TO SPREAD INTO, I WILL NEVER BE CHAINED AGAIN! LOOK UP, LUNA, AND SEE THAT YOU FAILED!"
"BLAST IT!" orders 387, kicking a fake charging at him in the face while shooting green lasers from his horn at Luna's prison. As chunks of Tantabus' chest start evaporating under the changeling fire, the titanic equine laughs.
"NICE TRY, BUT TOO LATE. DO YOU WANT A PLAY BY PLAY? THE RIFT IS BIG ENOUGH, AND THE MOMENT I TOUCH IT I WILL ENTER THE MINDS OF MORTALS. THE DREAMWEAVERS WILL DEVOUR YOU AND LUNA-"
"YESSSS! IT WORKED! IT FINALLY WORKED!" yells a squeaky voice from the rift, "Why did it work now? Nevermind, focus, dummy. BLUE, NOT-BLUE, HERE WE GOOOOO!"
"...WHAT?"
The starry night-ness of Tantabus' horn connects to the blinding whiteness of the open rift-
No... to the blinding whiteness of some other massive entity coming through the rift.
Tantabus backs off, forced to dodge a dropping object of its own size followed by a slightly smaller, darker one.
Unprompted, changelings fly upwards to avoid another cloud of dust raised by the landing, only to hear a loud, somewhat feminine, robotic voice say:
"FIRING MAIN CANNON!"
YOU ARE READING
They're EVERYWHERE!
ספרות חובביםNo one really knows how many changelings were present during the invasion of Canterlot. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, it also means that the love explosion scattered them all over the surface of Equus. These are stories of their Queen and...
