Underworld: Equestria

Chapter 14: A Tale of War

“Lucian, just what the hay is going on?” Twilight snorted as Lucian opened the wooden door and she trotted inside, annoyed at not only being told what to do without any information whatsoever, but also having her library turned into a meeting room without a moment’s notice.

“Yes Lucian, this is, with all due respect, rather inconvenient… I happen to have quite a lot of orders to fill,” Rarity put in as she entered and seated herself beside Applejack and Spike. “And while we’re asking questions, what exactly is that… thing… doing here?”

The last, rather venomous words were directed towards Silver-Fang, who had decided to stand against the stair case in the corner of the room, and by the looks of things was inspecting his spear’s point for any scratches or nicks; the grey diamond dog reacted by pulling his ears back and flicking his gaze up at the alabaster unicorn.

“You have a problem with me, little pony?” he asked dryly, the edge of a growl evident in his voice as he eyed the mare.

Rarity snorted while everypony else looked between each other, fearing an all our war was about to start in the library. “You mean other than the fact you’re an unclean and smelly animal just like the rest of your brutish kind? With no apparent sense about how one should look when meeting royalty?”

The last few words she said while nodding her head towards Luna, who in return face-hoofed along with everypony else in the room.

Much to everyone’s amazement, Silver-Fang simply laughed at the white unicorn’s venomous insult. “Oh, you are a funny little pony, bah! You and your need to look all pretty and proper,” he chuckled, folding his paws across his chest as he grinned in her direction. “We diamond dogs call pretty bitches like you by a special name.”

“And what might that be?” the alabaster unicorn scoffed with her muzzle in the air, everypony and dragon now cringing at the argument. “Civilised? Cultured?”

The diamond dog chuckled and shook his head at the well-groomed fashion designer. “A whore.”

“WHY YOU FILTHY…!”

“THAT IS ENOUGH FROM BOTH OF YOU!!!”

Lucian had heard Luna’s royal Canterlot voice before, but that had been in the rather large space that was the royal library in Canterlot palace, hence the volume dissipation had made the sound somewhat bearable. In a small and confined space however, such as the Ponyville library, the volume dissipation wasn’t so good, and hence the lycan with his sensitive hearing literally felt his ear drums ringing from the almighty barrage of sound.

“Silver-Fang… is here to represent his race, Rarity,” Lucian explained gingerly at last as he turned and faced the group before him, the ponies, a still enraged looking Luna, Spike, and Raze all ducking around the library carpet, while Titan, Ash, and Thane stuck their heads in through the various windows, all with slightly uneasy looks on their faces.

“And as a diplomat of another race, you are required by law to treat him with some respect,” Luna added with a furrowed brow, a stern glare, and an annoyed flare of her wings, the tone in her voice serving the make the white unicorn feel very small, very quickly. “He has said he wishes no ill upon us, and I expect us to do the same despite past… experiences.”

A small grin spread across the dog’s face as he watched Rarity shrink back under the gaze of the dark alicorn, although she still looked far from friendly, as did the purple hatchling beside her.

Once everypony seemed comfortable, and somewhat calm again, Lucian loudly cleared his throat, shifting all wandering attentions to where he was standing in the middle of the room, and ceasing all prior mutterings and conversations as he began speaking.

“Everyone, I know this comes at short notice, but it seems Silver-Fang has all but confirmed a prior fear of mine… a fear I believe you all have the right to know given recent events,” the lycan sighed, crystal blue eyes wandering over each of the confused faces individually. “I have told most of you about mine and Raze’s former world to so some degree, and about the three races that inherit it. However, there is something I never mentioned to any of you except Luna, and… regrettably, I believe it is no longer safe for me to hide these things from you all… ”

His eyes closed for a moment as he spoke, and rapidly the memories of the war came flooding back like he had never even tried to forget them. “The truth…” Lucian growled in his throat. “Is that is our world was far from peaceful like this one.”

“So you mean there was conflict?” Ash asked curiously, his head hovering protectively above both Twilight and Spike. “With respect Lucian, Equestria is not a land free of…”

“Conflict… does not come close to describing the nature of our world,” Raze said darkly, the expression on his face, coupled with the ice-cold tone in his voice, actually making the dragon flinch. “Since the beginning our two races, vampires and lycans have been at war and brutally tried to destroy each other, and that beginning was over a millennia ago.”

“Although it is a little more technical then that… what Raze has said is true,” Lucian sighed as he rubbed his brow, fully aware every pony and dragon in the room now looked either confused, curious, shocked, horrified, or a combination of all four, and Raze had put it lightly. “So I guess it’s time to tell you all the truth about our two races. I want you all to know now this story is not pleasant in the slightest… but hopefully by the end you’ll all understand why I’m asking you to listen.”

He momentarily glanced over at the massive black lycan sitting nearby, who simply nodded back at his leader to show he agreed with the proposition, everyone else around them looking between the two oddly before getting comfortable again.

The lycan sighed under their gazes and closed his crystal blue eyes, preparing to tell them all of a hell he had hoped to have left behind when Kraven’s last bullet had taken him, but even in death he couldn’t seem to escape it.

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“The vampire and lycan bloodlines were born from two brothers,” Lucian started as he walked in small circles around the middle of the bookshelf-lined room, recalling what he had learned of both his race and the vampires over the centuries, the various ponies around him all dead silent as they listened. “Both of whom were born with a pure strain of the immortal virus that I have told most of you about, the virus that all vampires and lycans carry. Their names were Marcus and William Corvinus. As it came to be, Marcus was bitten by a bat, and hence, through the mutation of his virus, became the first and most powerful vampire in history. William, like his brother, was bitten and became almost godlike in strength and agility, but he was bitten by a wolf and hence became the first lycan.”

“But if you were all… related… I guess, why did you say you were raised in a cage?” Twilight asked, looking both confused and uneasy.

Despite her apparent nervousness in asking the question, her signature pad and quill were levitating in front of her face and recording everything he said in reply, the quill’s scratching much to apparent annoyance of everypony else.

“Because although Marcus maintained his humanity and sanity… William did not,” Lucian sighed, running his fingers through his black locks as he remembered the tales of William’s rampages, and subsequently the hatred of werewolves he had carried in his first two hundred years. “William became a savage beast, guided only by his wolf instincts to hunt and kill anything in his path, and any human he attacked inherited his virus, and became a beast just like him. Marcus, it is said, used his own powers to try and hunt down the infected and control his brother, but all trace of human and reason in William had died the day he became infected… he couldn’t be controlled. In his failing Marcus did the only thing he could do. He sought the aid of the ruler of his land, a human named Viktor.”

Lucian couldn’t help but ball his fists as the memory returned, the memory of the vile creature who had once taken everything from him in a single night.

“Viktor was old at the time and on the very brink of death, so Marcus made a deal with him. In return for helping him stop his brother and hunt down the werewolves, the spawn of William’s virus, Marcus would infect Viktor and make him a powerful immortal vampire like himself, and then do the same with his army… needless to say, Viktor agreed.”

“So if William was as monstrous as you say Lucian, and the forefather of the lycans, why then do you not share such… well, bloodlust? No offense or anything,” Thane asked curiously, his green head snaking inside from the window beside the doorway.

“And you still haven’t answered my question,” Twilight put in, sounding a tad agitated while her statement caused a collective rolling of eyes.

“For both of your information, that is where things changed dramatically,” the lycan explained, giving up his fight against gravity and seating himself on the floor, his legs forward and his hands resting on his knees as he closed his eyes. “Viktor agreed to Marcus’s conditions and helped imprison William for eternity, but after a while, rather than simply slay all the other werewolves his army came across… he enslaved some of them for his own use. Like bats, vampires cannot go out into sunlight like lycans or werewolves can, and Viktor happened to be very protective of his kingdom’s silver treasury and the human slaves he commanded, so he basically used the captured werewolves as guard dogs during the day… and those he didn’t capture he simply slaughtered. For years he did this and believed he and Marcus had crushed all fight in the wolves William had created… but then one day all that changed, and that day was the day I was born.”

More than a few cries of ‘huh’ and ‘what’ resounded through the library, but the lycan payed them little attention and simply continued.

“As I said the night we first met, I was the first of my kind. Before me there were only mindless werewolves such as William and my parents, purebloods if you will, who once turned couldn’t change back into human form like I can… there in which lies the difference between me and them, Thane. When I was born, Viktor was tempted to kill me at first sight just as he did the werewolf who birthed me… which if he had been wiser he would have,” Lucian went on, a small smirk crossing his face at the last few words. “But instead where he should have seen a threat he saw an opportunity, a chance to create a new breed of slaves who were both stronger than humans and immortal… that, Twilight, is why I was raised in a cage. To Viktor I was little better than the mindless beasts who spawned me… my saving grace being that I was useful to him, being able to ‘breed’, so to speak, more immortal slaves.”

The former reactions of shock had suddenly and frighteningly changed; the faces of the diamond dog, ponies and dragons around the lycan were no longer adored with unease, but rather a combination of sadness, anger and even hatred, even Luna looked readily enraged despite already having heard his story.

“That… that is just so bucking wrong!” Rainbow Dash snorted at last, her nostrils flaring and her hooves pawing in anger.

“H-how could anypony… b-be so cruel,” Fluttershy whimpered from behind her pink mane, tears starting to slide down her yellow face despite Titan’s efforts to comfort her.

“Yeah! He sounds like a really nasty mean-meanie-mean pants!” Pinkie snarled, the growl coming from her throat surprisingly and unnervingly like that of a werewolf. “Grrr! If I ever met this Viktor guy… he’d get his just deserts!”

“That is… not the worst of it,” Raze spat, his own massive fists balled in front of him like he was ready to crush something. “Viktor regarded the race of humans as he did lycans, below him and the other vampires. I was taken from my family and homeland, and brought to Viktor’s kingdom to be made a lycan in his service. And as I stood before the wolf who gave me the virus… he said he was giving me a gift… a blessing.”

For a moment Lucian swore that Raze would shift out of pure anger and rage alone, but before he could even prepare to deal with the possibly dangerous situation the dark lycan was strangely his usual calm self again, the remedy to his anger, to Lucian’s utter surprise, being Applejack’s gentle and reassuring amber hoof finding its way onto his massive shoulder.

A silence quickly settled in the room once he finished talking, a silence that was ripe with tension, anger and disgust that permeated the very air. The six elements of harmony quietly looked amongst one another, all silently thinking the same thing but not daring to voice their thoughts; they had believed they had faced and defeated true monsters before, but the very thought of how vile this Viktor creature was made Discord and Chrysalis look like harmless foals in comparison, they had both caused trouble but neither had done anything as evil as what Lucian’s enemy had.

“Lucian,” Ash said at last, his deep but now seemingly calm voice shattering the silence. “I speak for all of us when I say I am truly sorry for what you were all put through, but may I ask... why you have chosen to bring these things up?”

“Aye,” Silver-Fang growled in agreement with a bow of his head. “You have my greatest sympathies also, but what does this have to do with the attacks on my kind?”

“Because, these are the creatures you now find your race being hunted by,” Raze answered for his still angry leader. “The marks you have described on your dead Silver-Fang are those of a vampire. Vampires, when they feed, bite into their victims and drain their blood from their wounds. I believe what Lucian is telling you both should be quite clear… it seems you have vampires in your lands.”

“And… ” Lucian sighed, turning and facing the snarling dog directly. “Because it seems that said vampire or vampires have… infected… another local race with their virus, the ones you all know of as Changelings. A few nights ago I encountered a small group of the creatures in the Everfree forest, and much like a vampire they tried to sink their fangs into me. I believe given what you’ve told me Silver-Fang, we have a much greater problem on our hands then either of us first imagined.”

Lucian was sure he observed Twilight’s complexion pale along with those of Princess Luna and her friends as their jaws just about hit the floor, which Twilight’s pad and quill hastily did as her concentration all but evaporated. A moment later a few of them, namely Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, went a pale shade of green like they were about to be sick.

“Are you saying there are… v-vampires… here? In Equestria?” Fluttershy whimpered from where her hiding place behind Titan’s head. “And they… f-feed on b-blood?”

“I swear if this is true!” Silver-Fang snarled through bared fangs, paws clenched around the handle of his spear and looking ready to barge out the door. “I will take Stone-Paw’s army into that forest, find every one of these putrid creatures, and bury them beneath a mountain of spears!”

Lucian however growled and shook his head at the violent proposition. “Have I not made myself clear? Or were you simply not listening to me, Silver-Fang? What you are dealing with are creatures of supernatural abilities; this is not a fight that can be won on numbers alone. These infected changelings bear all the strength and speed of a normal vampire. To simply charge out into the forest looking for them would be suicide.”

“And you have a better idea?” the diamond dog snarled angrily, throwing his arms up in desperation while his golden eyes affixed on the lycan’s blue ones. “I cannot simply sit on my paws and allow my kind to be hunted like this.”

“And with respect, Lucian,” Luna put in firmly as she rose to her hooves, shaking her mass to get the blood flowing back into her tired limbs. “Given what you’ve told me, neither Celestia nor I can simply sit back on our haunches either, especially when there is a chance these changelings will attack innocent ponies next. I saw what they did to you Lucian even with all your strength, and if something like that happened to one of my subjects… I doubt they’d be able to escape.”

The lycan sighed and put a hand to his lips, his mind running over the various options available given the revelations, of which there were very few. He understood Luna’s want to protect her ponies and Silver-Fang’s need to do the same with his kind, but simply running into the forest to try and find the changelings would be crazy. Then there was also the issue of facing them if their hiding place was located; the creatures bore all the abilities of human vampire, and hence even the most battle hardened of ponies or diamond dogs would be at a disadvantage.

Moreover, if open hostility was shown, what was to say the changelings, with their newly gifted fighting strength and hunger for blood, wouldn’t simply launch a counter-invasion? Ponyville and Canterlot, he guessed, would be able to defend themselves in such a situation; given the presence of either three adult dragons or hundreds of royal guards, but the rest of Equestria however, he wasn’t so sure about.

There was however, one more possible option available, one the lycan dreaded to even think about let alone use. The consequences of such an action would be irreversible and no doubt change the face of Equestria forever, and there was also no certainty it would work the way he intended either.

The problem was though that he presently had little choice left, for in Lucian’s mind it was the only effective solution to the dangerous problem that, being located somewhere the in Everfree, was possibly right on both Equestria and Ponyville’s doorstep.

“Alright,” he sighed at last, turning to the two leaders and deciding to bite the silver bullet. “Luna, if you believe you must do something, send out a small group of your guards to explore the forest and nothing more. I have been fighting vampires for centuries and I know what they’re capable of, so trust me when I say you don’t want to anger them and start a war while you’re nation is unprepared.”

He then turned directly to the awaiting grey diamond dog, who was standing with his fangs drawn and his spear held at the ready, obviously prepared to spill changeling blood at the first opportunity. “As for your kind, and you in particular Silver-Fang… I have a proposition.”

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Notes:

Uh, I HATE trying to find time to write during folio week…

Anyway, I've recently gone back and changed the structure of the story chapters (took me two days, but I managed). Also, special thanks to Edragon for pre-reading this chapter.