Castlevania: Portrait of Chaos

Chapter Sixteen, Part Two: Shadow Spectre

“Hey, guys...My wing has a bone sticking out here…!!” Rainbow cried.

“Get her a potion, and quick.” Loretta sighed, the ice-sphere floating next to her. Jonathan opened his good wing and stuck a hoof in the feathery mass before furiously shuffling through it, accidentally cutting his foreleg with the knife in the process.

“Potions don’t help broken bones. One of us has to manually put that back in place.” Charlotte retorted, returning to her regular pony form.

Stella sheathed her sword, glancing briefly at the blue fires that ravaged the carriages before trotting over to Rainbow and grabbing her wings with her hooves.

“Ow, what the hay! That really hurts! Do you even know what you’re doing?!” Rainbow protested, wincing in pain.

“No.” Stella admitted calmly. “Hold still unless you want to be wingless for the rest of your life!”

“Okay, I see your point. JUST BE CAREFUL, OKAY?” Rainbow hollered angrily, her eyes narrowing low.

“Cut off your wings? Okay!” Stella replied with a grin as she was about to unsheath her sword.

“That’s not what I said!!!” Rainbow yelped, trying to get away from Stella. The purple mare held a firm grip with her hooves, and she was pressing right down on the hurt bone, which added more pain.

“I’m not a surgeon; go cry about it to Charlotte if you’re THAT desperate.” Stella commented, refusing to let go of Rainbow’s injured wing.

“But she’ll turn me into a frog!” Rainbow pleaded, putting on a sad face.

“Why would she do that?” Loretta thought, rubbing the back of her head nervously with a hoof.

Rainbow screamed as the bone was somehow put back into its proper place. A white aura bathed it and the wound had healed. The cyan mare glanced around before finding out why: Charlotte’s horn was aglow.

“Next time, I’m bringing something along the lines of a chainsaw.” Charlotte commented, her horn ceasing its glow.

The carriages became sparkly blue ash that glistened like the night skies above. They began to coalesce into a small vortex.

“Whoa, how did my wing get healed?” Rainbow asked, moving it to make sure it worked.

“It’s magic. I ain’t gotta explain anything.” Charlotte answered, pointing a hoof at her horn before glancing at the small vortex of gleaming dust forming in the walkway.

“I will have to admit, it worked much faster than the time I broke my wing, that was not a fun time…” Rainbow reminisced, also watching the sight in morbid fascination.

The ashes began forming into a vertical shape with a sharp point like that of a crayon. It then grew wider and longer before morphing into the shape of an alicorn.

“Oh, sweet Celestia! It can’t be… her!!!” Rainbow panicked, eyes shrinking from shock.

“Rainbow…. Who’re you talking about?” Stella asked, rather impressed by the sight of the stardust.

“It’s Nightmare Moon’s last remnants of evil!” Rainbow answered, her ears falling flat.

Charlotte stepped towards the dusty alicorn. “I heard all about her from Twilight.” She said, staring down the ashes as if the mass had eyes.

“Something about making night eternal around here, so I was told.” Jonathan sighed, also taking a step forward.

“Vampires would have loved her for that reason.” Loretta commented, joining the two ponies that began their approach.

“Wereponies too.” Stella pointed out, unsheathing her blade and rushing at the swirling mass of ashes.

“Yes, but technically only on a full moon, Stella.”Loretta corrected her sister as she noticed her sibling charge at the mass of ash.

The pegasus sliced at the head and wings of the alicorn before returning to the group. The head and wings, strangely enough, remained in place.

“Ah hell! It’s a ghost of some kind!” Jonathan shrieked, digging into his good wing for something.

“Yeah, I mentioned that earlier if you were paying attention!” Rainbow Dash snapped while rolling her eyes in a crude manner.

“Okay, I’m not the best listener of the classroom.” Jonathan retorted, another pained look coming across his face as a long, slender pole of metal stuck out of his wing.

“Jonathan, I think your sub-weapons have shifted again…” Charlotte sighed, looking at the wing.

“And this ain’t one of them.” He replied, pulling it out of his wing. It was a polearm whose blade and handle met at an angel’s wing and another wing that was broken off of it at some point in time. The handle was a black, and the blade silver.

“Well, I have to admit it needs to be at least twenty percent cooler…” Rainbow commented, her eyes widening in awe.

“Wait a second… I recognize that weapon!” Loretta stated, looking at the polearm in shock.

“Now that you mention it Loretta, isn’t that…?” Stella begun saying, only for an aura of magic to lift her in the air and fling her into a house.

“S-s-sister! Are you alright?!” Loretta cried, only to be picked up herself and thrown into Rainbow.

“This is a problem!” Jonathan shrieked, using the polearm as a means to hold onto the concrete.

“Well, she is a ghost technically…. perhaps my magic can get rid of her, …there is a chance that she could neutralize my spells...here goes...” Charlotte murmured, rubbing a hoof on her chin as her horn began radiating a glow of fire.

“Uh…. what does that word mean again?” Jonathan asked, noticing the polearm was about to be pried out of the ground.

“Ugh… it means she could make the spell not work!” Charlotte answered, her gaze on the alicorn dustball that stood there mockingly. Her horn glowed brighter and brighter until a steady stream of blaze formed a halo above her head.

“I see your friend is a dimbulb. I’d say he’s about as smart as a brain-dead toad!!!” Bellowed the dust ball, spreading its sparkling wings as if to prepare for flight.

“Is that so? Well you’re a birdbrain!!!” Jonathan retorted, flapping his good wing nonstop.

Rainbow Dash had recovered and heard Jonathan’s retort and she hit her face with her hoof as she thought “Really, is that the best you could think of…he’s pathetic?”

Charlotte suddenly let loose a thick stream of fire from her charging horn, and her eyes turned a blazing orange in hue. The stream shot up in the sky like a rocket before it grew small reptilian legs and a large, draconian head.

“Salamander!” She cried, pointing her hoof at the dustball. The flame-lizard roared and rushed at the target in elegant movements, spreading embers in its wake.

Rainbow Dash looked in awe as she gently pushed Loretta off of her, since she had never seen a spell like this before.

Fortunately the ghost of Nightmare Moon was distracted by Jonathan and the spell hit her in her blind spot: the back, right between the wings.

“AAAAHHHHH!! THAT HURT! WHO CAST THAT ARCANE SPELL?! YOU BURNED MY WINGS!!!” The dustball cried, its voice like that of a demon. The wings burnt off with ease.

“Hey, ugly, you looked away from the blue pony.” Jonathan taunted, still flapping his good wing like a maniac.

The alicorn-now-turned-unicorn glared at Charlotte, whose horn was charging up another spell; this one with electricity dancing about its pointed frame. Her eyes took on a color of gold now.

“So, I sense you can cast all sorts of spells. Even summon monsters… fascinating… perhaps after I kill you, I can absorb your magic core…” The ghost said, grinning horribly.

“That just… sounded wrong on so many levels…” Rainbow commented while slightly green in the face.

“Heads up.” Charlotte said, smiling triumphantly and jerking her head slightly upwards. The ghost looked up and saw Loretta flying in the air without the aid of wings. Above her was a dark purple void, and the bonnet-wearing mare was twirling like a ballerina with the accusing hoof set on the dustball.

Giant masses of ice began to emerge from that void.

“Icicle drop!” Loretta cried, causing the masses of ice to fall down and come crashing on top of the dustball.

“THAT’S COOOOOOOOOLD!!!” The dustball wailed, its horn becoming damaged as it tried frantically to outrun the mare who was gaining ground with her impending icicle storm of doom.

“Take that, you damn ugly ghost!” Jonathan shouted, pointing a hoof at the dustball as his good wing began lifting him off of the ground with increasing ease.

“Even I’m not stupid enough to piss off Loretta, and you did that by slightly injuring her sister!” Charlotte added, her smirk widening.

An icicle stopped right in front of the ghost’s path, and then another landed right on top of the ashy mass. It screamed and dissipated into a pile of dust.

“.... I guess since she had no body, she was weak to begin with…” Loretta commented, her horn ceasing its glow. The void above her faded away.

“It’s definitely possible little sister. After all, it was dust.” Stella chimed, standing next to Charlotte.

Jonathan breathed a sigh of relief, still clinging to the polearm with his hooves. His wing stopped flapping.

The ashes begun to stir, sparkling even brighter now as a head rose from the pile. Quickly, the ghost was reformed without so much as a visible scar.

“Not again!” Everypony cried in shock, quickly readying battle stances again.

“I knew it was too good to be true!” Rainbow Dash deadpanned with a horrified wail as her eyes went wide.