Underworld: Equestria

Finished off first exam today and feeling good about it…so to celebrate here’s a chapter for you all. Just be aware I knocked this up in two days, so it probably isn't exactly an overdose of awesome, but I hope you enjoy all the same.
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Chapter 5: Love, Blood, and Moonlight

“What do you think the moon’s like?” Rainbow Dash asked quietly, flicking her head up at the huge white piece of rock that floated through the night sky above.

“I’m guessing pretty flat, barren, and boring,” Thane chuckled in reply, his own emerald eyes joining Dash’s in gazing up. “I wonder if Princess Luna carved her name up there… or maybe she wrote something like ‘Buck you Celestia’ in huge letters.”

The green dragon’s statement was enough to send Dash into fits of hysterical giggling, and cause her to nearly fall off his back; thankfully for her, a quick nudge of his tail he kept her in place.
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The two were out on a late evening moonlight stroll through the Everfree forest, the sky above them almost at the point of falling from day to night, but not quite there just yet. Above their heads thousands upon thousands of stars dotted the cloudless darkening sky beside the white of the moon, which was only just now appearing as the sliver of a new cycle, the movement towards a full moon barely commenced.

There was a soft but warm breeze blowing through the tree as Thane walked with Dash atop him, the soft thump of his steps the only obvious noise other than the wind, and the occasional animal call; with the sky being cloudless, such a walk provided the perfect escape for the two after another lazy day of Ponyville hustle and bustle, plus neither the trees nor the creatures of the forest judged them as pretty much everypony else did.

“Thane,” Dash said quietly, causing the green dragon to look back and see her smiling at him. “How long have we been going out now?”

A toothy grin spread across the dragon’s face as he answered.

“Two months and three weeks Dash,” Thane replied happily, stopping for a moment to stretch his head back and nuzzle her softly on the neck. “But I’m not keeping track of course.”

Dash simply giggled and lazily ran her eyes over his soft-set face; she loved the way the moonlight danced off his apple green scales, illuminated his ivory horns, and made his emerald eyes shimmer like gems... but, in truth, that wasn’t the real reason why she loved him.

Ever since they had met, Thane had shown her nothing but unbound love, care, and affection, something no stallion had ever been brave enough to do when she was growing up; perhaps it had been her tom-colt attitude, but the fact remained regardless, and although she'd never openly let it show those years had been more than a little painful.

Thane though had gone and put himself in harm’s way for her, even saving her life at one stage, and ever since that day she'd stopped caring about what everypony thought.

And, in the end, he had done the same.

“I wonder…how do you think my parents are going to react when they meet you?”

Thane simply smiled, and opening his jaws he ran his tongue across his cyan furred marefriend’s face, coating her cheeks in warm saliva, much to her embarrassment.

“I’m guessing quite badly,” He replied with a smug grin and a shake of his head, his tail flicking with excitement. “But I won’t care either way.”

“And neither will I,” Dash giggled as she wiped away the last of his saliva, laying her head down gently against the scales of his neck and closing her eyes. “Ever.”

Thane sighed happily as he watched her beautiful figure be bathed in moonlight, swearing to himself that he was perhaps the luckiest dragon who had ever lived. Every creature alive new that dragons prided themselves on what they had, whether it be status or material wealth, and here he was, mate to a pony who was not only an Element of Harmony, but had helped save their world from Discord.

“You know Thane,” Dash giggled abruptly, a single cheeky magenta eye creaking open to look at him. “All this mushy talk of love and stuff has got me thinking… you wanna go see Twilight about that spell one of these days?”

Thane thanked his ancestors he had scales, otherwise the redness and heat in his cheeks would have been able to light up the forest just as well as his fire. In truth, he had personally very rarely, if ever, thought about that side of their relationship, but he guessed with almost three months now at their backs, it was natural Dash would be wondering about when they’d take the next step.

“Well… I…” he began, trying to put together a reasonable response.

Dash, however, didn’t give him the chance to finish, instead with a cheeky grin spreading across her cyan face she jumped down and left his back.

The green dragon just stood there silently, and watched her curiously as she walked past him, unsure of whether or not he should be watching the sway of her hips like he was.

He couldn’t stop himself stepping back in shock when she revealed her plan to him; slowly and gently, the rainbow maned mare lowered herself to the forest floor, and flicked her tail invitingly, her magenta eyes casting a single look over her shoulder at Thane, a wink in the mix as her excited scent filled his dragonic nostrils.

“You know… I don’t think we’ll need Twilight’s spell this time, I reckon that tongue of yours would work just fine.”

Before his mind could put together anything else romantic or logical to say, he found his head falling forward, like the primeval urge inside him had suddenly, and completely, displaced his brain and ability to think. In response to his movement Dash’s rainbow tail began to lift, revealing to the young adult dragon a sight that fulfilled all his adolescent dreams and more.

Fate, however, seemed to disapprove of Dash's plan.

Just as Thane’s tongue began to emerge from his jaws, the moment was shattered by two snarling, coloured shapes that hurtled out of the darkness and sprinted past the two of them, one slamming into Thane’s side as it rapidly changed direction.

He snarled as pain swept through his ribcage, directing his anger at the whatever-it-was.

And then a blood chilling roar of pain echoed through the trees, and made him freeze.

Dash, as expected, squealed like a filly, shot up from the ground with a frightened start, and grasped Thane’s neck like a metal vice, magenta eyes scanning the shadow laced trees with Thane’s own green ones, both looking for the creature that was the source of the sound.

Thane wasn’t stupid, and would never put Dash in unnecessary danger, but on the other claw at that point his mind was telling him to find what had roared. He knew from prior... personal experiences... that the sound belonged to a manticore, and hence it had most likely been injured, if not worse, by the very same something that had been chasing it.

If he knew one thing for certain, it was that if something could injure a manticore, it was not a creature Ponyville needed hanging around.

“What the hay was that?” Dash asked nervously at last, sinking into the safety of his neck.

“Just get on my back and stay there,” Thane replied firmly with a snarl, taking a few stealthy steps through the trees with his ivory fangs and claws ready, his keen snout already picking up the unmistakable scent of freshly spilled blood. “And I suggest you cover eyes; if I’m right I may have to kill something, and I don’t want you to have to see it.”

Dash did as she was told while he trudged quietly through the thick wall of trees for a few moments, his dragon eyes seeing everything in the dim light just as well as he would on the brightest of days. Thane’s nostrils were flaring uncontrollably at the now quickly strengthening scent of blood, and his heart was pounding like a drum his chest; whatever had invaded the forest was now close and he knew it, and soon it would feel the strength of dragon claws, and the heat of dragon fire, for both getting under his scales and disrupting his night.

The dragon stopped dead before a thicket of trees when he heard it fill his ears, the gut wrenching and sickening ripping of flesh as it was torn away from bone; he only knew the sound because he was a dragon, and had every so often been guilty of creating such a sound himself, but knowing it was something else at the root of the particular noise he found his blood burning with angry fire, angry fire directed directly at whatever was waiting beyond the nearby trees.

“Dash… If you haven’t had your eyes covered already, now is a good time too; you will not want to see this.”

Dash’s only reply was a tightening of her grip on Thane’s neck; a moment later the green dragon reared up on his hinds, and using the strength of his front claws tore an opening in the tightly woven wall of tree’s directly in front of him with a loud crack. Like a lance, his head and torso shot forward through the opening with his jaws wide open, ready to unleash a torrent of fire on whatever he encountered, when his eyes fell on the creature that awaited him, however, he stopped.

Standing in the middle of a small clearing, bathed in soft moonlight and covered in fresh blood, was a black wolf-like creature; the same one Thane had met only hours earlier in one of Ponyville’s quiet streets.

Lying beneath Lucian’s red stained front claws was the bloody carcass of a freshly killed manticore; the lycan’s head buried in its ripped open chest, as he loudly, and hungrily, tore off and devoured the creature’s meat.

Before the green dragon could think, or do anything for that matter, Lucian’s head snapped up to meet him, the lycan’s glistening black eyes meeting Thane’s own emerald green ones in a neutral exchange of ‘what exactly are you doing here?’.

Thane stood dead still as blood dripped down the motionless lycan’s face, not daring to move in case he provoked Lucian into attacking; then, without growling or making a sound, Lucian opened his mouth and showed the dragon his rows of blood red razor sharp fangs, not in anger or threat but rather saying ‘this is why I’m here’. In reply the green dragon simply closed his jaws, and nodded in understanding at what he guessed was a peaceful demonstration.

He highly doubted that Lucian was a threat to Ponyville, but he still felt a little unnerved at the grizzly sight before him, and he was still a little annoyed.

Before he could remove himself from the scene, however, Lucian’s head snapped around at the sight and scent of a certain cyan pegasus, who was at that moment trembling with her head dug into Thane’s neck. The green dragon winced and blushed under his scales, he knew that Lucian would have a keen nose and had probably smelt, and guessed, what had gone on if he hadn’t seen it properly earlier; but the lycan to his amazement did nothing more than grin, or rather show his bloody teeth to Thane in what looked like a grin anyway.

“I didn’t see anything if you didn’t.”

The lycan simply nodded in reply to the embarrassed dragon’s statement, and then like nothing had happened went back to eating his kill.

Pulling his head back, Thane swore he glanced a set of beady blue eyes disappear into the shadows, but when he shook his head there was nothing. Growling, he dismissed it as just his imagination; he highly doubted anything would be brave enough to watch a lycan eat a bloody carcass.

Slowly and quietly, the green dragon backed away from the clearing and headed off through the trees, leaving the hungry lycan to finish his meal in peace.

Once he guessed they was a decent distance away, and near the border of the forest, he looked back at Rainbow Dash, who to his surprise still had her cyan face buried deeply in the scales of his neck.

“It’s safe now Dash,” he whispered, nuzzling her gently on the cheek with the end of his snout. “You can open your eyes.”

With a little hesitation, the cyan mare pulled her head away and looked around, breathing a heavy sigh of relief when she saw they were now standing at the edge of the forest, the golden lights of Ponyville now shining through the night not too far away.

“What… happened?”

“Let’s just say we had no reason to be afraid,” Thane chuckled with a grin, turning and heading back along the road towards her floating cloud house. “But how about I take you home, I think that’s enough adventures for one night… in the forest anyway.”

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“About time, Twilight,” Spike snapped, giving the unicorn an annoyed glare as she stumbled into the kitchen for breakfast; not exactly the good morning she was hoping for. “Your pancakes almost went cold.”

The unicorn’s first reaction was to yawn and blink a few times, trying her best to banish the essence of sleep that still fogged her mind from the night before. She had to admit being drowsy or late out of bed in the morning wasn’t unusual for her, especially after long study sessions, but the fact she had stayed up half the night worrying had caused her to sleep in much longer than usual.

She had been thankfully to have at last been woken from her twisted nightmares by another of Celestia’s mornings. In the depths of her dreams she had seen horrible things, Lucian as a black wolf, hunting down and devouring innocent ponies with gusto, and to say the least she was now more scared of him than ever.

“Sorry Spike,” she sighed lazily, shaking her head to remove the heaviness from her eyes, taking her usual seat at the table and levitating over her plate of pancakes. “But I didn’t get much sleep last night, I was worrying and I kept having nigh…”

“You weren’t worrying about me, were you?”

The young unicorn then did something she wished she hadn’t, mainly because Spike would never let her forget it from that day on. Upon hearing the voice of the lycan, she squealed like a frightened school filly, and spun around... the only problem was that because she was on a chair, her momentum wasn’t exactly circular, resulting in both the unicorn and chair toppling over with a loud crash.

Spike, as Twilight half expected, burst into fits of hysterical laughter. She still however shot up again like nothing happened, and promptly tackled the bare-chested lycan who was standing in the doorway, throwing them both back into the main room of the library and ending with a slam as they hit the wooden floor.

In an instant, Twilight had a pinning hoof on Lucian’s both of shoulders, her eyes meeting his own confused blue ones with a gaze that was somewhere between questioning and horrified.

“Please for the sake of Celestia tell me you didn’t eat somepony?”

For a moment Lucian just looked up at her oddly, and then burst out with laughter just about as hysterical as Spike’s. With a swift movement he stood and picked up the lavender unicorn, running his fingers through the purple ponies mane to show his affection and amusement.

“Luna said you were one to worry, Twilight Sparkle, but I didn't think you were of such extremes,” he chuckled, at last lowering the now very confused mare to the floor. “I would not and will never eat one of your kind, you have my oath and promise… besides, if I did, Celestia would most likely banish me to the moon, as you know well.”

“But then who-I mean… what exactly did you eat?”

Lucian just sighed and shook his head; this little pony truly didn’t know where to draw the line on curiosity, did she?

“If you really must know Twilight, off the top of my head, it looked kind of like a giant cat with wings and a scorpion tail.”

The small pony's jaw dropped to the point it nearly hit the floor.

“You ate… a manticore?”

“I guess I did,” Lucian replied with a small shrug.

Twilight just stood there speechless as her mind through up gory mental images; manticores were feared by even the elite of the Canterlot royal guard, and now the lycan in front of her, was casually saying he had turned one into an everyday midnight snack.

And, if she had somehow managed to forget, he was living with her.

“Um… ok,” Twilight managed to say, trying her best not to hyperventilate and go into an uncontrollable panic. “I’m going to accept what you said… and ask you that if I ever want to know what you ate again, please don’t be honest with me.”

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Notes:

I’m not one for writing sensual fics personally so don’t expect a lot of such things…unless the vast majority of readers think it would work somehow, then I will possibly think about it.