In the vicinity, by chance, was another changeling. One who occupied the opposite end of the totem pole, the lowly drone, who had taken the name Sybaris. He had not been...important enough, to have a name before the hive had been ransacked, but he had always wished for one, and he had always wished it would be Sybaris. This mild bit of self-indulgence was one of few comforts afforded to him, as in a desperate bid for survival, and as part of a longer game of revenge, the drone had adopted a comparatively simplistic disguise, and spent the last month or two attempting to embed himself within the gears of civilized pony society.
Unfortunately, he could not readily find much nourishment within that world without arousing quite a bit of suspicion, and so he spent much of his time starving, until he would drag himself out of town, and go preying on travelers in some isolated neck of the woods. He would always try to pick different places to avoid setting up a pattern, but that meant traveling further and further each time...
So by the time he came to this neck of the woods, and by the time the familiar scent of one of her many, many sons reached the Queen's cave on a brisk wind, Sybaris was starting to genuinely wonder if he had the strength to make it back. His disguise kept faltering, and if he lost consciousness, it would likely fail entirely, so the potential for him to be found by some good samaritan pony would drop to almost nil...
