Heir To Darkness

Chapters

Chapter 2: Arrival
Chapter 3: The First Taste
Chapter 4: History Lesson
Chapter 5: Things Start Looking Up
Chapter 6: Giving In
Chapter 7: A Glimpse Back Home
Chapter 8: Dawn
Chapter 9: A Brighter Day
Chapter 10: Town Meeting
Chapter 11: Into The Flames
Chapter 13: Shopping
Chapter 14: Sunset
Chapter 15: A Glimpse Of Travel
Chapter 16: Struggle
Chapter 17: The Pain Of Death
Chapter 19: A Talk
Chapter 20: Broken
Chapter 21: A Glimpse Of Arrival
Chapter 22: Burning Questions
Chapter 23: First Steps
Chapter 24: Diving Deeper
Chapter 25: Progress
Chapter 26: The Final Confrontation Begins
Chapter 27: Desperation
Chapter 28: Lost at Sea
Chapter 29: One More Time
Chapter 30: Finality
Epilogue
Prologue
Chapter 1: Departure
Chapter 12: House Call
Chapter 18: Fighting Through The Pain

Chapter 2: Arrival

Even when they finally flew over the humble little town of Trotsylvania, Fluttershy could hardly see it. The sun had set, and the moonlight reflected off the dense fog below with a soft blue glow. She couldn’t make out any streets, nor ponies or other creatures. All that betrayed the existence of this hidden place were the few buildings that poked out into the sky, hinting at the civilization below.

Trotsylvania was smaller than Ponyville, but not by much. It was a refuge for those cast out from society, a place they always knew they could call home, and over the years it had steadily grown as any community does. The only major difference was the massive stone wall that came into view as the carriage dipped down, wrapping around the town and giving its citizens some moderate sense of safety and privacy.

Before she could make out more of the town, though, her view was blocked by the one thing the fog could never hope to cover. Utterly massive, Dracula’s grand castle towered above the trees it hid amongst. The flapping wings of bats and owls and ponies flitted around the ramparts, standing in stark contrast to the moon behind them. The imposing patchwork of stone and wood dwarfed the other castles Fluttershy knew, though it was clear that hadn’t always been the case.

At first, the castle had been no larger than Twilight’s, a humble home for a cruel yet altogether normal stallion. As his lust for power grew, so too did his castle. He ordered the construction of buildings at the slightest whim, and those buildings came to be connected by a labyrinth of halls and courtyards and secret passages. Few ponies truly knew the depths of the castle, and fewer still dared to test that knowledge.

When the throne passed to his daughter, so too did the castle. She had no interest in the level of grandeur her father had insisted upon, and so the designs of the castle began to change. No longer did they raise massive towers as monuments to Dracula’s might, no more did the castle fill with wings made only to instill fear in those who knew of them. Instead, the outer reaches of the castle shifted to the practical.

She built libraries to fill with forbidden and elusive knowledge, armories to hide away those tools that once threatened her subjects. She listened to the needs of the creatures in her care, and did what she could to provide for them. Gardens grew herbs and remedies while also giving shelter to the more vegetative of her subjects, waterways were built for the aquatic. Deep, ever-shifting dungeons were dug out for those few who wished never to be known again, and the yet fewer who could not forego her father’s ways.

For thousands of years, the castle expanded in this way.

Now, as the carriage touched down in a patch of gravel that held several more carts and buggies, Fluttershy could hardly make out the shape of the original castle. It was there, strung up as it was by thin hallways and open walkways, but the rest of the building seemed intent on swallowing it up.

One of the pegasi who had been pulling the carriage helped Dracula down from the carriage, then held out a hoof to do the same for Fluttershy. She hesitated, not used to being treated as so important, but relented and held the mare’s hoof as she hopped out. The gravel crunched under her hooves as she landed, and she sank into it more than the felt she should have.

“Thank you,” she said politely to the mare, who simply nodded and left to put away the carriage.

“Come along,” Dracula commanded. She was already walking away, and Fluttershy had to scramble to catch up to her. “I won’t come help you if you get lost, so I recommend you watch where we’re going carefully.”

She led Fluttershy to a little door tucked away in a corner of the castle, barely noticeable until they were right next to it. Dracula had to duck down to go through it, and even Fluttershy felt like she might hit her head on the low frame.

Inside was dark and musty. The air was stale, the floorboards creaked, and the dim orange lights were so ineffective they almost made the room feel darker. One wall of the long, narrow room they were in was lined with beds, only a few of which had sheets and blankets, while the other side had storage, mirrors, cleaning supplies, and anything one might need where they live.

“These are the servants’ quarters,” Dracula said blandly as they walked along. “You won’t be staying here, but you’ll want to know where they are.”

“You have servants?” Fluttershy asked. She looked over the few occupied beds, spying little things the ponies used to make them their own. A lamp and a book here, a photo of a loved one there. Fluttershy felt a pang of loneliness from taking them in.

“Well, of course we have servants. Do you think this place cleans itself?”

“I guess not…” Fluttershy hesitated before saying more. “Couldn’t they have their own rooms, though?”

“Do you not see the empty beds?” They left the room and stepped out into a long, torchlit hallway. Only one wall had doors, while the other was lined with windows overlooking a courtyard filled with wildflowers. A few of the flowers were glowing brightly in the moonlight, and the fog that had snuck in spread that glow to light up the entire field.

“Some servants simply chose to remain there,” Dracula continued. “Perhaps for the familiarity, or the sense of family they shared. Or maybe they just didn’t want to sleep so far from where they work.”

“If there’s only a few in there, though,” Fluttershy asked, “why not make it nicer for them? You could at least give them more space.”

“They’re free to do as they please,” Dracula said. “It’s not my responsibility to make sure every pony or wolf or ghoul in this town is getting a good night’s sleep.”

“Hm…” Fluttershy decided not to press the subject any further.

They came to an intersection, and Dracula stopped. “That hall,” she said, pointing to the left, “leads to the infirmary. Straight across will bring you to the grand staircase, from which you can reach most of the castle. To the right, you’ll find a dead end.”

Having said this, she led Fluttershy towards the staircase. As they passed through the intersection, Fluttershy took a look down the right hallway to find that, just as Dracula said, it ended almost immediately and had no doors or windows to speak of.

Past the intersection, that wall once again held windows overlooking the courtyard. Fluttershy looked back and, as expected, saw a wall jut out from the side of the building before ending abruptly not even halfway to the other side.

“I’m not going to wait for you,” Dracula said, and Fluttershy realized she’d fallen quite a ways behind. She dashed back up to her, and caught up just as the hallway opened up into the massive foyer that served as the centerpiece for the original castle.

The room was gargantuan. The steeply-angled ceiling was easily five stories up from them, and the three inner walls were pockmarked with doors. There seemed to be no structure to the placement of the upper floors, no consistency between the heights the doors stood at, and as such the grand staircase, such as it was, became a disorganized, confusing maze after just the second floor. Walkways and balconies were placed seemingly at random, stretching between doors several floors apart or passing by doors they could have easily reached. Just looking up at it was dizzying.

The first two floors, at least, were more grounded. Two wide sets of stairs sat on either side of the room, and more doors could be seen tucked away behind them. The second floor was all level, all connected by a single ornate balcony, and the walls between each door were lined with books in stark contrast to the bare white walls above.

Dominating all of this, sitting in the middle of the room and stretching far past the second floor balcony, was a fountain. Carved intricately out of crude, gray stone, three massive gargoyles sat atop a wide column with a pool of red liquid at the bottom. Only one gargoyle, the one facing the door, had its mouth open, dropping an endless stream of red. To its left, a waterfall streamed as tears from the gargoyle’s eyes, and to its right, the final gargoyle held its chest open to provide its share.

From the way it made her mouth water, Fluttershy had no doubt as to what filled the pool.

“I think I’ll let you find out where all this goes on your own,” Dracula said. She lifted Fluttershy’s head up and away from the fountain as she walked past her. “Come, let’s go to the throne room.”

Fluttershy blinked and shook her head. “O-Of course,” she muttered, and did her best not to look at the fountain as they walked around it. Behind it stood a tall double door made of dark wood and held together with thick bars of metal. Each door was decorated with a silhouette of a vampire, cast in iron, standing vigilantly with crossed spears.

The doors swung open silently as Dracula approached, revealing the dark abyss within. It swallowed Dracula as she walked inside, and when Fluttershy followed with shaky steps the world disappeared around her when she crossed the threshold.

She turned around, but could no longer see the bright room they’d come from. Even if she strained her eyes, which normally could pierce the darkest nights, all she saw was inky black.

Then the doors slammed shut.

Fluttershy wheeled around, disoriented, and tried to listen for where Dracula was. She heard nothing. No footsteps, no breathing, not even a heartbeat. She could hear heartbeats outside perfectly well, but as far as she could tell, the room was empty.

“M-My Lady?” Fluttershy called out. Her voice cracked as she did. “Are you still there?”

“I can see in here, you know.” Dracula’s voice was distant and echoed around her. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. “How can you expect to defeat me if you can’t even see in the dark?”

“I don’t want to defeat you,” Fluttershy said. “I’m sure there’s a better way.”

“There isn’t. I will not give up this seat freely.”

“I don’t even want to be Dracula,” Fluttershy said. “What if I just go home?”

“You could certainly do that, but the title will be passed down. I’ve done all I can. Whether our future is one of harmony with the ponies of the day, or one of destruction by their doing, I intend to bring us into a new age.”

“But that’s not fair! You can’t lay that blame on me when you could just wait for somepony else.”

“How many lifetimes must I wait? How many generations must we watch from the shadows, forever unsure if this will be the one that decides to end us? No. The time for waiting has passed. Tomorrow must come.”

“But…” Fluttershy clenched her eyes shut. “But I can’t. I’m not a leader, I’m not like you. I could never handle being responsible for so many lives. It’s just… Too much.”

“Which is why you are here. I will harden you against the harshness of the world. I will be ruthless, and you will have to fight to keep the softness within you alive. Nopony else could withstand what I mean to thrust at you without losing themselves to it. This is why it must be you.”

Fluttershy looked down and covered her mouth. She was starting to feel sick, but not in fear of what Dracula might do. What sickened her was the fear that she was going to agree to it.

“How…” Fluttershy took a deep breath. “How sure are you that it has to be me?”

“That depends entirely on what you do from here.”

“I don’t understand,” Fluttershy said.

“You’re at a crossroads, Fluttershy. You have two roads ahead of you. On one, you go home. I accept that I was wrong, and begin my search for an heir anew. On the other, knowing full well what is to come, you agree to try. At that point, there will not be a doubt in my mind that you are the correct choice.”

Fluttershy rubbed one of her legs as she thought. “What if I fail?”

“You won’t.”

“But what if I do?”

“Then I send you home and hope I did not cause lasting damage. That won’t happen, though. There will be no damage, because if you say yes, you will succeed.”

Fluttershy gave a conflicted hum. “Can I have some time to think?”

“No. You must decide now.”

Fluttershy tapped a hoof on the floor rapidly. “I don’t know… I just…”

“Now.”

Fluttershy swallowed hard and, before she could stop herself, said “I’ll do it.” Immediately she covered her mouth, both in shock and from the rising feeling of sickness, but she let the words linger in the air.

There was a long, quiet pause. The only sounds bouncing around the room were the noise of Fluttershy’s rapid, heavy breathing.

“Good. We’ll begin tomorrow.”

Fluttershy nodded slowly. Her legs were shaking. “So… Now what?”

“Now you find your room. There’s a plaque on the door with your cutie mark.”

“Where is it?” Fluttershy asked.

There was another long pause.

“I’m feeling generous. I suppose I can give you some direction.”

“I’d really appreciate it,” Fluttershy said.

“It’s not on the first floor.”

Suddenly there was a loud whoosh as a gust of air blew through the room. It blasted past Fluttershy, messing up her mane as it did, and started swirling some ways in front of her. Then, as quickly as it came, the wind disappeared, and once more the room was silent.

“Um… My Lady?”

Fluttershy’s voice echoed throughout the wide, empty room.

“C-Could you turn on the lights?”

Only silence answered her.

“Or at least… Open the door?”

Again, silence.

Chapter 3: The First Taste

Relief washed over Fluttershy when her hoof finally struck wood. She had no clue how long she’d been fumbling around in the dark, slowly dragging her hoof across the walls in search of an exit, but she knew it had been far too long. She grabbed the handle and ripped the door open, and without hesitation she flung herself out of the darkness.

She shielded her eyes as she crossed the threshold, expecting the light to be blinding, but instead she found herself still in the dark. It wasn’t the same dark, there was no impenetrable force blocking her vision, but seeing that the lights in the foyer had been turned off made her heart sink all the same.

Still, she was out.

The first thing that caught her attention was, of course, the fountain. The smell of blood filled the air, and the sound of the thick, oozing liquid plunging into the pool below was the only sound that met her ears. It seemed the massive gargoyles sitting up on their perch were intent on dominating the room in every way.

She tried to ignore it, to push it from her mind, but it wouldn’t budge. She just couldn’t convince herself to stay away.

After all, there was no reason to stay away. Drinking this wouldn’t hurt anypony, and she was hardly pressed for time. Stopping for a drink might even help her by waking her up to some unknown power hiding deep within.

With every thought, she drew closer to the fountain.

When she finally reached the rim and peered over into the dark, murky pool, her mouth was watering and her heart was racing. It didn’t reflect the world above, but in the surface she could see herself. Red streaked down from her mouth and dripped off her chin, it stained her mane and was splattered onto her chest, and her face was split by a wide, toothy grin.

The vision was almost tantalizing enough to bring her diving into the fountain, but just as she lifted a hoof and placed it on the rim she noticed something hidden behind the smell of blood in the air. Something sharp, something that burned in her lungs.

It gave her just enough pause to hold off from plunging in. It did not, however, stop her from wanting to drink as much of the rich, delectable wine of life as she could. She just decided to do so cautiously.

Her hoof shook wildly as she reached out. She wasn’t sure if it was out of fear or excitement. She wanted this more than anything else in the world, but that didn’t stop her from realizing exactly what she was doing. Even with all of her senses firing wildly, telling her she wanted this, she couldn’t help the voice that spoke up behind it all.

Was she really about to drink blood?

She’d only ever had a sip of it before, and even that was diluted. It wasn’t enough to say she actually drank it, and even if it was it had been at Dracula’s insistence. She could still say she had never chosen to, that she would never, that it was against everything she believed. Was she going to throw all of that away?

She was. She didn’t so much as hesitate before suddenly, violently plunging her hoof beneath the rippling surface. She wanted nothing more than the sweet pleasure of feeling herself drenched in blood.

What she found was pain.

Electricity surged up through her leg and into her body. She reacted quickly and flapped her wings as hard as she could, sending her soaring through the air, but she wasn’t fast enough to stop the jolt from coursing through her, and after that single flap her body seized up as every muscle in her body was shocked into submission.

She landed on her side with a hard thud and slid across the floor. The pain passed quickly, but the echoes of it kept her there, breathing heard and trying to calm her erratic heartbeat.

She wasn’t sure if she should be despising her body or thanking it profusely. Her heightened senses meant she had felt every individual spark as it ran through her body, she had ached as the world slowed down around her and the fire spread through every vein, but if she wasn’t a vampire, then…

It had surged through her heart. She knew it. She felt it as it seized and sputtered when the jolt hit it. And the jolt after that. And every other bit of electricity as it passed her heart on its journey throughout her.

She was disoriented, the world was fuzzy around her, but as it all came back a single thought rose up above the rest.

It worked.

A streak of red marked where she had slid. She almost would have thought it was her own, but the sight of her leg at the end of the trail snuffed out any doubt.

She’d thrust her leg down further than she thought. Her entire leg was coated, nearly up to her shoulder. It dripped down onto the floor and was quickly pooling together in a small puddle. Her fur was matted and slick, and anything that had touched it during her fall had come away sticky.

That leg, though, felt amazing. The slight, consistent pressure felt more comfortable, more right than any clothes she’d ever worn, and every drop that slowly ran down towards the floor was like being stroked by the gentlest touch imaginable.

She had hesitated long enough, she decided.

She grunted and rolled over, pushing herself onto her stomach, and got as comfortable as she could without drawing in her leg. Then, with a single, decisive movement, she ran her tongue across the thick coating.

It lit up her mouth. Just the one drop she’d had before was greater than anything she’d ever imagined, and this turned that into nothing. It seeped into her everywhere it touched, and it was like that incredible, intoxicating flavor was becoming part of her. It flowed into her bloodstream and became her own life force. Her own power. That was what the taste was, at its core. It was the taste of pure, raw power.

She chose to let her instincts take over, and take over they did. She coated her fangs meticulously, giving special care to each one, and as she drew her tongue she ran it across the needle’s edge in her mouth. With both fangs, she dug into herself and drew a pair of long, thin slits running the length of her tongue. They oozed with her own blood, but she felt no pain. It only seemed to bring her more thirst.

She dragged her tongue down her leg again.

This time was even more incredible. The gouges in her tongue let the blood stream in unhindered, and her veins wasted no time in spreading it throughout her body. It soaked in so fast she no longer had to draw the blood into her mouth, and so she was able to take another lick right away, and then another, and more and more as her heart pounded faster and faster. Every taste made her more excited, and every bit of excitement made her want more.

It was hardly any time at all before the top of her leg was clean, and she wasted no time in moving onto the bottom. She cleaned it, too, then her other leg, where they had touched together. Then she searched her body, scraping off every bit of blood that had splattered onto her coat, and when that ran out she found herself lapping it up off the floor.

Her heart was pounding harder and faster than ever before. More than should even have been possible. Blood poured from the wounds on her tongue, and every few moments she had to swallow to get it out of her mouth. Her eyes were wide and sharp as they darted around the room, searching for any little bit she may have missed, and then as she scanned her fur one final time.

When she came up with nothing, she took a few deep breaths and found her gaze shifting steadily back towards the fountain. That gushing wellspring of life.

She looked up at the gargoyles, and the one that stared back was the gargoyle splitting itself open. It looked so inviting, like it was asking her to drink more, like it existed for nothing more than to serve her.

Pain still echoed through the recesses of her mind, though, and it fought against the desire.

She took a few steps, and again found herself at a precipice. A choice. She stared into the gushing waterfall, as though it might give her answers, but its only answer was the quiet splash of blood into blood.

She looked down and again saw that vision of herself. Her own face, dripping with satisfaction in every way.

There was more to it, though. Tiny, hardly noticeable changes. Longer fangs. Sharper eyes. A sense of pride behind the smile. This strange reflection was stronger than Fluttershy could imagine, and she could see in her expression that she knew it.

Fluttershy stepped back away from the fountain. She couldn’t stand to look at that twisted vision any longer.

Thankfully, by now her heart had slowed and her breathing was back to normal. The momentary craze had passed, and her head had cleared enough to be content with what she’d gotten, for now.

Besides, she still had to find her room.

She walked around the fountain and out in front of the grand staircase. Looking up, she could see only a few doors and walkways before the rest was lost to darkness, but the distant sound of flapping wings betrayed the fact that she wasn’t entirely alone.

There was no telling where her room might be. She didn’t even know if it was in the old castle, it could be on the outskirts for all she knew. Cutting out the first floor helped, but that still left an absurd amount of space, especially if she was going to have to search the dungeons down below.

As she made her way up one of the huge, wide staircases at the side of the room, she silently hoped with all her heart that her room wasn’t in the dungeons.

Chapter 4: History Lesson

The second floor landing wasn’t much of anything. A long walkway covering three walls of the room, lined with doors and bookshelves and nothing else of note. Most of the bookshelves were stuffed full, although a few were notably barren. Here and there a book stood out against the rest, be it from strange, glowing text or a bewildering scent. The rest blended together into nothing more than a colorful wall.

None of the doors stuck out to Fluttershy. She walked the whole length of the walkway, checking every door on the off chance that one of them was her bedroom, but they were all just normal wooden doors. No carved glyphs, no ominous shaking, just plain, indistinguishable planks of wood.

With nothing else to go on, she chose a door at one of the far ends and went in.

The hall beyond was warm and lavish. The carpet running its length was a deep red, and stood out against the midnight blue of the walls. Torches ran along one wall to give light, while the other held paintings, family crests, statues, and a myriad of other decorations with absolutely no connecting thread between them.

Notably, though, there were no doors.

The flickering light of the torches cast dancing shadows around the room. Paintings flashed from lit to covered in the blink of an eye. Perfectly normal vases and urns were warped and cracked in the darkness behind them. Statues were flooded with life as the flowing light gave movement to their rigid limbs.

Fluttershy gulped and started to walk.

As she did, her own shadow joined the silhouetted revelry. It danced and played, leaping around the hall and toying with everything there was to see. Its carefree prancing seemed detached and alien to Fluttershy, much like everything else in this castle.

The hallway was long, and as she walked Fluttershy had nothing to do but look at the decorations and think. Few of the things that hung on the wall were of note. She didn’t recognize any of the crests and had little interest in studying the landscapes. It was too dark to appreciate the intricacies of pottery and other craftsmanship. That left little to linger on past the few paintings that weren’t just fields and houses.

They were interesting enough in their own right, though. There were the expected ones, the portraits of Dracula and another pony who, judging by his deep scowl and scarred face, Fluttershy assumed to be her father. There were other vampires, too. They were all adorned with placards, but they were of little use. Dracula’s was labeled as The Lady, which was reasonable enough, but the familiarity ended there.

One of the larger portraits, nestled between one of Dracula and another of her father, was of a white stallion with a sunken face. Even in caricature, the sadness in his eyes brought a pang of empathy to Fluttershy’s heart. The edges of the painting had started to wither away, and the streaks of canvas that had no paint gave the feeling that the world was falling apart around him.

That painting was labeled The True Heir.

Fluttershy didn’t linger on The Count. She had no interest in meeting his icy stare. Past his painting was a litany of ponies with titles like The General and The Architect, all old and stoic ponies who likely worked for The Count. In fact, none of the paintings struck Fluttershy as ponies who would belong working under Dracula.

As she walked, the far end of the hallway started to open up. At first, she had assumed it was a far off corner, but it was becoming more clear with every step that she was coming up on a massive room. She wasn’t close enough to make out what was in the room, but she was starting to see the bottom edge of a truly enormous picture frame.

She passed more and more portraits, and soon the cold, unflinching faces started to blend together in her mind. She was growing increasingly convinced that these were all ponies who served The Count, and as she went along their positions only became more trivial.

By the time she approached the end of the hall, she was hardly glancing at the portraits anymore. It was only by chance that a peculiar one caught her eye.

There wasn’t much to take in, but it still stopped Fluttershy in her tracks. On the wall, positioned just the same as every other portrait, was one final painting. It was the same shape, had the same dark, dull background, and by all accounts should have been another portrait, but it wasn’t. There was no pony, just an empty frame labeled The Visitor.

Fluttershy stared at it curiously for some time, but soon enough her curiosity shifted back to whatever was at the end of this hall of history, and she pressed on.

What she stepped out into was the largest gallery she had ever seen. She’d been to art galleries all over with Rarity, but they paled in size compared to this. It didn’t have the most paintings, in fact it held only one, and it had little in the way of amenities, but there was no doubt it was larger than any other.

All to store one portrait of mind boggling size. It was easily three stories tall. It must have taken decades to paint. It was the most beautiful, well crafted portrait ever made, and it was of a pony she didn’t recognize at all.

It was just a mare. A short tan mare with a bright smile, blue eyes and a mane that, strangely enough, looked just like Fluttershy’s. There were no bat ears. The teeth that showed through her smile were dull and flat. She was, by all accounts, just a mare.

Fluttershy’s eyes were locked to the mare’s as she slowly walked closer. She passed by a bench set up at the perfect distance to admire it, and kept moving closer. She’d seen a glint of gold below the frame, and she had to know what it said.

The placard matched all the rest, but somehow it seemed like more. More substantial, more important, just… More.

It read Mother.

It all became clear, yet at the same time nothing made sense. This was Dracula’s mother? Had she loved The Count? It was hard for Fluttershy to see how that could be, but at the same time it was hard for her to see The Count getting a painting of this scale made. If one had happened, then why not—

“Fluttershy?” A voice came from behind her.

Fluttershy yelped, which became a gurgle, which quickly became a cough. She’d been so caught up by the painting that she’d forgotten the wound on her tongue, and when she coughed blood splattered out onto the wall and stained the placard.

The pony behind her gasped, and was already rushing over when Fluttershy turned around. “Fluttershy, are you alright?”

Fluttershy recognized her right away as Sable Spirit, the orange unicorn who had once been empress to a nation, and now lived as the castle’s sole gardener.

Fluttershy nodded and did her best to smile casually. “I’m—” She coughed again, then swallowed hard. “I’m alright. I’m just, um… Looking for my room.”

Sable Spirit nodded. “Right, The Lady mentioned something about that. Well, this isn’t it.” She smiled softly, then peeked past Fluttershy at the blood on the wall. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

Fluttershy nodded and scratched one of her legs nervously. “It’s just, uh, a scrape.”

Sable Spirit narrowed her eyes. “A scrape, hm? Can I see it?”

Fluttershy pursed her lips. “It’s kind of gross.”

“I can handle it. Show me your tongue.”

Fluttershy looked down at the floor. Her neck was hot, and her heart was pounding. “I, um…”

“Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy took a deep breath, sighed, and reluctantly stuck out her tongue. The deep slits showed no signs of healing, and within seconds a thick line of blood dropped from her tongue and onto the floor.

Sable Spirit tsked and shook her head. “She didn’t tell you anything, did she?”

“Um…”

She sighed. “Put your tongue away before you bleed out.” Fluttershy shut her mouth and swallowed again. “You can’t just go slicing into yourself whenever you want. You might be a vampire, but you still need your blood to stay in your body.”

“I d-” Fluttershy held up a leg to cover a cough, and it came away red. “I didn’t think it would bleed this much.”

“You don’t have normal fangs,” Sable Spirit told her. “They’re kind of… Venomous.”

Fluttershy’s eyes went wide. “I thought biting was safe!”

“It is,” Sable Spirit said, “if you actually know what you’re doing. It just stops clotting and does… I don’t know what exactly, but it makes it feel good instead of hurt.”

Fluttershy nodded slowly. “I think I get it.”

“That makes it dangerous, though,” Sable Spirit went on. “If you don’t know how it works, you won’t know when to stop, and most ponies can’t feel when they’re running out of blood. You could seriously hurt somepony, or worse.”

Fluttershy swallowed and frowned. “B-But I came so close to biting Pinkie…”

“It’s hard to know what The Lady is thinking, sometimes.” Sable Spirit moved back to the bench and waved Fluttershy along, and they sat down together. “Perhaps she assumed you had the good sense to have a third party present, or maybe she just didn’t care.”

“That seems… Harsher than I’ve seen her,” Fluttershy said.

“Harsher than leaving you to electrocute yourself in the middle of the night?”

“I… Guess not,” Fluttershy said.

“She’s got high hopes for you,” Sable Spirit said. She gestured up towards the painting. “Don’t pretend you didn’t notice the similarity.”

Fluttershy frowned. “What does that have to do with it?”

“Well, there’s no doubt you remind The Lady of her mother. I think she’s probably decided that if you can’t live up to her image, you don’t deserve to be a vampire.”

“I can’t just go back, though, it doesn’t work like that.”

“I know. As does she.”

Fluttershy took a deep breath. She swallowed again. “So that’s the real reason she’s testing me?”

“Oh, everything else she said was true,” Sable Spirit said. “This just means that she may be harder on you than is strictly necessary.”

“I see…” Fluttershy looked up and locked eyes with her massive doppelganger. She knew it was a trick of the light, but she couldn’t help but feel like Dracula’s mother was smiling more brightly than before.

Chapter 5: Things Start Looking Up

“Alright, well, we should be getting you to your room.” Sable Spirit stood up from the bench and waved for Fluttershy to follow her.

“You’re going to show me where it is?” Fluttershy asked as they started to walk back down the long hallway.

“I was never told not to,” Sable Spirit said. “Besides, at the speed you were going, it would be weeks before you found it on your own.”

“Weeks?” Fluttershy’s face sank. “How hidden is it?”

“Oh, it’s right off the grand staircase. It just isn’t on a lower floor.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy gulped. “Well, hopefully it’s at least a nice room.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Sable Spirit told her. “The Lady is going to be harsh towards you, yes, but she recognizes the importance of having a comfortable place to go back to. A safe haven of sorts.”

“That’s good…”

As the conversation lulled, Fluttershy found herself looking back at the paintings. A legion of harsh, cruel ponies glared back at her. Somehow, the hot malice in their eyes and the deep creases in their brows seemed even more intense than they had before.

“Why don’t you have a portrait?” Fluttershy asked.

“Oh, I do,” Sable Spirit said. “The Lady’s hall is on the far side of the castle, mirroring her father’s.”

“And the, um, ‘True Heir?’ Does he have a hall?”

Sable Spirit pursed her lips. “No, I’m afraid that portrait is just about the only trace of him left in this house.”

“Oh…” Fluttershy frowned. “Is… Was he The Lady’s brother?”

“He was, yes.”

“What was he like?”

“That, I’m afraid, I could not tell you,” Sable Spirit said. “He was before my time, and I’ve learned not to speak of him around The Lady.”

They reached the trio of portraits showing the family and stopped in front of them. He looked so young to Fluttershy. If she didn’t know of their lifespans, she would have guessed she was her age when the portrait was drawn, and he had none of the sharpened vigor that was so clear in his father and sister.

As they were standing there, a chip of paint fell off the portrait and plunged to the floor.

Sable Spirit sighed and turned to walk away. Fluttershy decided not to press the issue and followed close behind.

The first thing to hit Fluttershy when the door opened up to the grand staircase was the sound of the fountain. She recognized it in an instant, the soft splashing beckoning her to come down and have another taste.

She tried to throw the idea off, to tell herself that she’d already had her fill, but the sight of the blood splattering the wall in the gallery popped into her head. She’d been losing blood all night, and it would be so easy to replace. All she needed to do was to withstand a little jolt, and then she—

“Fluttershy?”

Sable Spirit’s voice knocked Fluttershy back out of her thoughts, and she realized she’d climbed up to lean over the railing of the balcony to get a better look at the fountain.

She pushed herself back and scratched the back of her neck sheepishly. “Sorry…”

“You’ll get used to it,” Sable Spirit told her.

“Mhm…” Fluttershy hummed noncommittally.

“Come on, go find your room.” Sable Spirit walked up beside Fluttershy and directed her vision straight up. “I haven’t been up there to check, but I was told you’ve been put in the room at the very top.”

“What? T-That high?”

“Afraid so. I hope you’re not afraid of heights.”

“Mm…” Fluttershy swallowed and rubbed her legs together. “Couldn’t I just sleep in the servants’ quarters or something?”

“Not unless you want The Lady to take a week trying to get you over your fear.”

A shiver went down Fluttershy’s spine at the thought. “Alright, fine. I’ll manage it.”

Sable Spirit smiled at Fluttershy and gave her a quick hug. “For what it’s worth,” she said, “I think The Lady is right about you.”

“Thank you.” Fluttershy smiled and nodded politely. “I’ll see you soon, probably.”

Sable Spirit nodded back, and Fluttershy looked up into the darkness above to try and steel herself. She could hardly see more than a few stories up without any light, and she knew it went far higher. For all she knew, it could be as dark up there as it was in the throne room.

Still, she had little choice. With one final, heavy gulp, she sprang up into the air and flew into the unknown.

It was a massive relief when, a few seconds into flight, more stairs and walkways started to appear in the corners of her vision. The idea of fumbling around in the dark again, this time trying to find a door in midair, was truly horrible. At least she wouldn’t have to do that, so long as this kept up.

Once she was in it, it became impossible to have any sense of how high she was. The bottom floors had vanished from sight faster than she’d hoped, and the twisting knot of walkways and balconies made it next to impossible to keep track of what was where. They were all completely indistinguishable from one another. There were no railings, no embellishments, just solid, utilitarian planks and stairs running between doors.

Still, all she had to do was go up. That wasn’t a problem. Here and there she had to take wide, swerving turns to avoid pieces of the architecture, but it was hardly a problem to correct her course right after and go back to flying straight up.

At least, it was easy at first.

At some point, a wide walkway spanning the full breadth of the room appeared right above Fluttershy. It was nothing new, and she just turned to the left to move out of its way, but as she turned she saw something, hardly a shadow, that dropped down the right side of the walkway just as she came up the left.

She stuck her wings out to stop her flight, but she was too close to the walkway and one of her wings clipped it. It didn’t hurt, but it did send her spinning out into the darkness. By the time she recovered and found what she thought was the same walkway, the mysterious shape was nowhere to be seen.

She stayed there for a moment, slowly flapping her wings as she mulled over what had happened. She tried to make sense of the shadow, or remember if she had heard anything, but came up with nothing but a formless mass and the far off, disembodied splashing of the fountain.

In the end, she decided there was nothing to be done about it, and set off once more on her journey upwards.

As she rose further and further, she started to feel unease creep into her mind. Every turn to avoid something made her tense up, getting ready for the shadow to spring up again. Every noise, every distant flap of wings or closing door, suddenly felt so much closer. So much realer.

She wasn’t alone in this castle, she was realizing, and she had no idea what that meant.

She pressed on, reminding herself of Sable Spirit’s words. Her room was a safe haven. If Dracula intended it as such, surely the other creatures living here would follow her word. If she could just make it to her room, she’d be safe until morning.

When she finally saw an end to the darkness, hope swelled in her chest. She was almost there. All she had to do now was find the highest door, and—

As she whirled around, her eyes landed on a huge, stone statue. Three stone gargoyles stood upside down, seemingly spitting blood onto the ceiling.

Her heart sank.

Just to make sure, she stopped flying completely, and sure enough she started to fall upwards. She righted herself and, dejected, landed on the cold tile.

Somehow, she’d wound up back at the bottom.

She must have gotten turned around when that shadow jumped out. How far up had she been, she wondered, how close to the end? She could have been mere feet from the top, or she could have just begun. She wasn’t sure which seemed worse.

Before she could ponder that very long, she saw it again. A strange shadow, some shapeless being, had been sitting perfectly atop the gargoyle statue. It was only when they leapt back and flitted down behind it that she realized they were there.

“H-Hello?” Fluttershy called out. Her hooves were shaking, but she made herself move closer to the fountain. “Who’s there?”

There was no response.

“You can just talk to me,” Fluttershy said. She made it to the fountain and began to walk around it. “There’s no reason to hide.”

Still, nothing. When she made it to the other side of the fountain, they seemed to have disappeared.

“Hello?” Fluttershy called again. “Please, just come out and talk to me.”

There was a flap of wings, and the shadow shot up from the other side of the statue. They were a blur, too fast to see, and before she knew it the shadow had vanished into the darkness above.

Fluttershy hummed nervously. “Okay… Well, I guess I should try again.”

Once more she launched herself into the sky. She flew faster this time, more impatiently, and tried to shut out everything else. She didn’t want to get distracted and turned around again.

It was a short flight. It seemed hardly even a quarter of the length the first had been before the ceiling came into view. It didn’t take her long to figure out why.

She was back by the fountain again.

She groaned in frustration. She knew she hadn’t turned around this time. She wasn’t a strong flyer, but she was at least good enough to go up. Something else was going on here.

Still, she didn’t know what she could do about it.

She decided on one final flight, where she would be as absolutely sure as possible she wasn’t turning around. She moved into a corner of the room, hoping that keeping her eyes on that would help keep her level, and flew up once more.

She moved more slowly this time. If a walkway was in her way, rather than fly around she crawled across it so she could be sure she only crossed the edge once. She kept an eye on the doors, to make sure they were all on the right side. She wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

She was a few minutes into the flight when the shadow first sped through a corner of her vision.

Her heart leapt into her chest, but she forced herself to ignore it. She couldn’t take her eyes off the wall, not even for a second, lest she be turned around again.

She had noticed the shadow, though, and doubt started to creep in. She didn’t know how confident she was that the shadow hadn’t distracted her for too long.

Just to be sure, she decided to test it. Just like before, she stopped flying completely, testing to see which way was down.

She fell up.

She growled under her breath in frustration as she turned around and started flying the other way. When she started up again, the shadow darted past her again, but all it took was a quick drop to tell she was still going the right way.

The shadow started to get more daring, more distracting. They would appear on the other side of walkways she was coming up on, peering over at her, only to be gone when she got there. They would fly right to the edge of how far away she could see and keep pace with her. Once, they flew over her head so close that her mane flapped in the gust of wind.

Every time the shadow showed up, Fluttershy stopped and tested her orientation. More times than not, she found herself going the wrong way.

She had long since lost track of how long she’d spent flying when she decided she needed a break. With heavy breaths, she climbed up onto the first walkway she saw and settled down to catch her breath.

The shadow set down on a walkway some ways away. They weren’t even trying to hide anymore.

“What do you want?” Fluttershy called out between breaths.

They didn’t answer.

Fluttershy sighed and shook her head before lying down and resting her chin on her legs. She yawned, stretched out her wings, and without meaning to started to drift off to sleep.

She was woken up not long after by a sudden tug. Her eyes snapped open and she looked around, convinced it would be the shadow, but she was alone. Just her, the open air, and the walkway that was quickly falling away beneath her.

It took her a moment to realize what was happening, and when she did she just gave up. She hadn’t even been moving that time, she didn’t see what options she had left. So she let gravity take over, only using her wings to steer as she glided slowly back down to the floor.

It took less than a minute to reach the ground, which only served to make Fluttershy more frustrated. She trudged over to the fountain and leaned on the rim, staring over the edge at her bloody reflection.

“Yeah, it’s not a great place to take a nap.”

Fluttershy yelped and leapt back away from the fountain. The yelp turned into a cough as blood splattered out of her mouth.

On top of the statue, a pony laughed. “Wow,” he said, “she chose you? What a mess.”

Chapter 6: Giving In

“H-Hello?” Fluttershy’s voice was shaky, and she’d crouched into a defensive position.

Now that she was this close, she could finally make out the pony. He was young, or at least seemed to be. Not as young as, say, Applebloom, but not quite an adult. His cocky grin was filled with an immature mischief.

Nothing about him stuck out as particularly frightening. He had stark white fur and a messy golden mane, and while he did look like he was up to something, Fluttershy didn’t see any hints of malice behind his cool expression. He just seemed like an average, young pony.

His features seemed… Odd. He had the pointed ears and leathery wings she expected to see quite a bit around here, and she thought she saw fangs in his toothy smile, but his eyes were a vibrant, neon green, and he didn’t quite carry himself the same way as other vampires. Most notable were his wings, which were draped down over the gargoyle he was perched on top of. Even Dracula kept her wings neatly tucked to her side when she was idle, but this pony seemed utterly disinterested in doing so.

“Hiya,” he said. “You’re the heiress, yeah?”

“Um… I guess? I’m Fluttershy.” She stood back up to her full height and rubbed her legs together awkwardly.

“Uh-huh.”

Fluttershy watched him for a moment, waiting for him to continue talking, but he never did.

“So, uh, what’s your name?” Fluttershy was quickly calming down now that she saw who she was talking to.

“What’s it to you?”

“Huh?” Fluttershy blinked. “I was just being friendly…”

“Nah, I’m just toying with you. My friends call me Vale.” He flashed her a wide grin. “It’s short for Foggy Vale.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Vale,” Fluttershy said. “Was it you who was flying around with me up there?”

“Yup.” He decided to move and gave his wings a single heavy flap before gliding down beside Fluttershy. Then he sat on the rim of the fountain and, instead of tucking his wings away, wrapped them around his torso.

“You kind of scared me, you know.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I saw that! What’s your deal?”

Fluttershy frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You’re a vampire,” he said. “How can you run around like the whole world wants to eat you when you’re the one with the fangs?”

“Well, I haven’t been a vampire all that long. I’m not used to being… Strong.”

Vale scoffed. “So, not only are you the weakest vampire I’ve ever seen, but you’re also fresh blood? Geez, the old bat’s finally gone and lost it.”

“The old—” Fluttershy gasped. “You mean The Lady?”

He rolled his eyes. “Seriously? You’re next in line, if anyone’s allowed to ignore that stupid title it’s you.”

“It’s not stupid,” Fluttershy argued. “She’s done a lot for us, it’s earned.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Vale let out an exaggerated yawn. “Enough about her.”

“Okay…” Fluttershy walked over a sat with him on the rim of the fountain, even though being so close to it distracted her quite a bit. “Well, what are you doing here?”

“I live here.”

“Oh!” Fluttershy’s cheeks got hot with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, I just assumed that everypony in the castle worked for The Lady.”

“There’s a lot more than ponies here,” he said, “and the only reason anyone listens to her at all is cuz she owns the house. Some of the things here can’t exactly just find a new place to live.”

Fluttershy frowned. “Are they not happy under her?”

“How should I know? I’m not them.”

“Fair enough,” Fluttershy said. “I guess I’ll have to ask them directly.”

“I wouldn’t,” he told her. “The way you are now, you’d get eaten alive.”

“Oh, surely they can’t be all that bad if they still live here.”

“Uh-huh.” He shrugged. “Whatever. It’s your funeral.”

“You haven’t really explained why you live here, though. I mean, The Lady said I was the first new vampire in hundreds of years.”

“You are,” Vale said. “I’m not a bloodsucker.”

Fluttershy’s eyes went wide. “But—”

“My dad was,” Vale explained, “but that stuff only goes so far. Don’t you think there’d be a ton of vampires around if the ones who are left could have vampire kids?”

“So you’re just a bat?”

“Well gee, thanks. Just a bat.” He huffed. “Says the vampire who can’t even get to her bedroom.”

Fluttershy’s cheeks got hot again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He huffed again, quieter this time. “Well, yeah, I’m mortal.”

Fluttershy tilted her head and looked him over curiously. “Huh… I had no idea that was even possible.”

“Is there anything you do know?”

“Not really…” Fluttershy pursed her lips.

Vale laughed under his breath. “At least you’re self aware. That’s more than I can say about my aunt half the time.”

“Your… Aunt?”

“Yeah, you know, Dracula? Big old bat who thinks she’s important? You’ve probably met her.”

Fluttershy’s mouth fell open. She had no idea what to say.

A moment later, Vale gave her a funny look. “You’re, uh… Dripping.”

Fluttershy came back to her senses and snapped her mouth shut, but not in time to stop the flow of blood from her tongue from tracing paths down her chin and neck and, finally, petering out at her chest. Without thinking, she tried to brush it off, but that just made her hoof come away red and sticky.

“You guys are so gross,” Vale said.

Fluttershy swallowed, then coughed to clear her throat. “I’m sorry, I forgot.”

“You forgot you were bleeding. From your tongue. Even though you’ve been talking this whole time?”

“I guess I just… Got used to it?” Fluttershy grinned awkwardly.

“Weirdo.” Vale yawned again. “Alright, I’m bored. I’m gonna go back to my room.”

“Wait!” Fluttershy stuck her hoof out to stop him. “Um, could you… Tell me how to get to my room?”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Seriously? You didn’t figure it out?”

“I have no idea what was happening! It just kept sending me back here.”

“Yeah, cuz it moves. The whole point is to make weak ponies like you get lost.”

“I never saw it move, though,” Fluttershy said.

“You wouldn’t,” Vale said.

Fluttershy frowned. “I’m sorry, I still don’t understand.”

Vale groaned. “It only moves if you can’t see it! Just keep your eye on the door and you’ll get there no problem.”

“It’s way too dark to see up there, though,” Fluttershy said.

“Gee, if only there was some way to fix that.” Impatiently, Vale stuck out a hoof and dipped it quickly into the fountain. Sparks jumped up at him, but he didn’t seem to react. Then, with a single sudden motion, he flicked the blood through the air at Fluttershy.

The blood felt ice cold when it splattered across Fluttershy’s face, staining it with dots of red. She flinched and shut her eyes, but doing so just made the smell more intense, and just like that she was powerless to ignore the fountain. When she finally pried her eyes back open, she was already looking down at her wavy, broken reflection.

“Have fun with that,” Vale said. Then he stood up, stretched out, and took off into the air.

“Mm-hm,” Fluttershy mumbled as he flew off.

Her reflection wasn’t covered in imagined blood this time. The bloody chin, the splatter across her face, the stains in her mane, it was all real. She wanted to believe the cracked, toothy grin was still in her head, but she wasn’t sure anymore.

She watched herself as, slowly, she reached up and wiped up the blood that had landed on her face. She lapped it up without ceremony, and in the reflection her eyes grew wide to match her crazed smile.

It wasn’t enough. It couldn’t have been enough. She needed more.

She tried to copy what Vale had done. As quickly as she could, she thrust her hoof into the pool and yanked it back out.

Electricity coursed into her, and her leg seized up just as it left the fountain. It was less painful, yes, but it still hurt, and her hoof was hardly damp. The blood she lapped up was so scant that the disappointment almost outweighed the elation it brought.

Whatever Vale had done, it was more complicated than just being fast. She needed to come up with her own approach.

After a moment of thought, she flew up to the mouth of the closest gargoyle and tried again, hoping that perhaps the electricity wouldn’t reach up this high.

She was wrong.

This time she’d risked a deeper plunge, and because of that the jolt made it far past her leg. It shot up through her body and into her wing, then jumped out to every feather and made the wing useless for just long enough to send her into freefall.

The world slowed down around her. She was plunging straight into the fountain and had to act fast.

She flapped her working wing, but that just sent her spinning, and in that spin her wing swiped straight through the stream of blood. It got drenched, and with that came an enormous jolt that jumped through every muscle in her body.

Precious moments passed her by as she fought to get control over herself.

The pool drew ever closer, and her descent was only speeding up.

Her eyes clenched tight in fear, and when her limbs were finally her own again, she kicked out blindly with all her might.

Her hooves met stone with a sharp crack, and then she was moving sideways.

She didn’t fly for long before gravity took hold once more and dragged her to the floor. She tumbled across it, crossing more than halfway across the room and leaving a trail of bloody wing-prints in her wake, ending in a long streak as she slid to her final resting place.

Everything ached. Unlike the sharp, momentary pain from the electricity, the dull pain from such a hard landing didn’t just go away. For a second, she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and go to sleep.

Then the smell coming from her wing hit her, and she remembered that the attempt hadn’t been a total failure.

She pushed herself up with a groan and took a deep breath. Then she pulled her wing forward and, without any more hesitation, started to lick it clean.

As soon as she got a taste of it, the pain started to wash away. She coated her mouth in it, letting the taste linger as long as she could. As she did, she accidentally nicked her tongue with her fang again, and the instant rush she got as the wound filled with the incredible delicacy made her close her eyes and inhale sharply from the joy of it.

She was starting to piece together just how this all worked. How the incredible taste was tied less to her taste buds and more to the flood of power that coursed into her when it got into her bloodstream, and how that meant that the faster she could make that happen, the more incredible it would taste.

At the same time, as she drank and drank, she was beginning to forget her inhibitions. Every time she almost snagged herself on her teeth, she felt a pang of excitement growing behind the part of herself that stopped her.

She finished cleaning off the more accessible parts of her wing, but there was still a lot of blood to be had.

Fluttershy rolled onto her back and pulled the wing up onto her chest so she could reach it more easily. She wound up painting her chest and stomach red, but she didn’t care. She was too busy reveling in every feather she ran her tongue across.

Eventually, she couldn’t turn her head enough to reach any of the remaining blood, so she had to resort to scraping it off with a hoof. It worked, but it was slow and tedious. Every lick brought visions of the feast she could be having if she could only drink from the fountain, if she just—

A thought struck her.

Why did she care?

It would hurt, yes, but she’d already been shocked so much tonight, and all of that pain was already gone. Looking back now, it all felt like an easy trade. A lightning-quick jolt was nothing if it meant she could coat an entire leg in the glorious drink.

She was back beside the fountain before the thought finished.

It looked so tantalizing. So inviting. So easy. All she had to do was stick her leg in and pull it back out. She knew she could be flying back before the electricity reached her wings. In fact, she could probably even do two legs, or all four.

Or even…

Her eyes drifted up to the waterfalls of blood. They were all different sizes, and she’d mostly been paying attention to the one streaming from a gargoyle’s mouth, but the gargoyle with its chest open was gushing out far more. That cascade looked like it could easily hide Fluttershy.

She walked around to the back of the fountain to get a better look. From the new angle, she was sure of it. It was significantly wider than her, and there was plenty of room between it and the gargoyle to fit her wing.

The memory of plunging down towards her doom was fresh in her mind, but the idea of being drenched from head to tail in the sweet, thick nectar was even clearer.

She didn’t think on it for very long. She decided to act before she could change her mind, and so she took a few steps back before charging forward and spreading her wings.

She jumped when she was going as fast as possible, and flapped her wings to speed up even more.

Her mouth watered as the wall of red got closer and closer, and her mind was crackling with excitement.

She licked her lips, which, with her wounded tongue, only served to turn the fur around her mouth red.

Then she hit it, and immediately she was lost in a sea of blood.

Then, it hit her.

With how much electricity surged into her, she might as well have jumped into a lightning bolt. The worst pain from before was nothing compared to what she felt now. Her veins felt like they were boiling, and she could feel in excruciating detail as her heart tried in vain to beat against the current.

Worse than all of that, though, was that she knew it wasn’t over.

She’d only just barely gotten under the stream, and time was moving agonizingly slowly. Every inch brought another wave of shocks, and it was ages before the world became visible again. Even then, the rest of her body was still in the deluge. It was another eternity before she was fully out of the storm.

She was unconscious by the time she hit the ground.

Chapter 7: A Glimpse Back Home

“Pinkie?” Rainbow Dash called out as she pounded impatiently on Fluttershy’s door. “Hey, Pinkie, you in there? C’mon, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

She tapped a hoof on the ground and waited in silence for a moment, hoping to get a reply. When none came, she groaned and tried the handle.

“Seriously, where are you?” The door swung open with a low creak, and Rainbow Dash stepped inside.

The air was stale, and the house unclean. Not unnaturally unclean, Fluttershy had never had the cleanest house and that only got worse when Pinkie started staying over, but unclean nonetheless. Blankets were piled in heaps rather than folded neatly or draped over furniture, dishes sat in the sink, and a pile of unread mail filled a sizable chunk of the coffee table. Nothing Rainbow Dash hadn’t seen before, but still enough to catch her eye.

Upbeat music pounded from behind the closed bedroom door.

“Ugh,” Rainbow Dash grunted. “Seriously?” She walked over and knocked on the door, a bit harder than she had meant to thanks to her annoyance. “Pinkie, we had plans! How am I supposed to chill if the pony who’s supposed to chill with me doesn’t show up? That’s not—”

The bedroom door groaned as it opened, and Rainbow Dash’s thoughts fell away. The room was dark, with the lights all shut off and heavy curtains drawn over the windows. Not even a sliver of sunlight made it into the bleak interior. The music was loud enough that she wasn’t surprised Pinkie didn’t hear her at the front door, and there were dirty dishes stacked up next to the bed.

Most notably, though, Pinkie herself looked awful.

Her eyes were sunken, and her ears drooped. Her mane had fallen flat, and the only small volume it had was from the knots and tangles in it from lack of care. Her eyes didn’t seem to have any shine to them, and when she smiled at the sight of Rainbow Dash, the expression seemed utterly empty.

“Oh, hey Dashie,” Pinkie said in a slow, quiet voice. “What’s up?”

“I—” Rainbow Dash wasn’t sure how to approach this. She was never very good at dealing with Pinkie’s worse moods. “We had plans,” she finally said, her voice low to match Pinkie’s. “I got worried.”

“Huh?” Pinkie thought for a moment, then gasped in horror. “Oh no, I completely forgot! I’m so sorry, Dashie, I hope you’re not mad…”

“Nah, I just couldn’t relax if I thought you might be having a bad time.” Rainbow Dash took a deep breath. “What, um… Where’s Fluttershy?”

Pinkie frowned. “She left.”

“Left?” Rainbow Dash furrowed her brow. “What do you mean, she left? She would have told us if she had plans.”

“She’s gonna go live somewhere else,” Pinkie mumbled. With a sigh, she trodded away and slumped down onto the bed. “Somewhere where I’m not allowed.”

“What?” Rainbow Dash walked in after her and stood next to the bed. “That can’t be right, she loves Ponyville! She loves you, there’s no way she’d go live alone somewhere else.”

Pinkie shrugged and rolled over to face away from Rainbow Dash.

“C’mon, talk to me Pinkie. At least tell me what actually happened.”

“I told you. She left.”

“Okay, but why?” Rainbow Dash rounded the bed so she could look into Pinkie’s eyes. “She had to have a reason.”

“Does it matter?” Pinkie rolled over again.

“Ugh.” Rainbow Dash hopped up onto the bed and stood over Pinkie so she couldn’t be ignored. “Of course it matters. She might be in trouble! That girl would do anything for you, there’s no way she’d just leave you here.”

Pinkie huffed and pulled a blanket up over her head. “Just leave me alone. She doesn’t want me there, and I don’t want you here.”

“You know none of that is true. Come on, let’s go talk to the others and—”

Pinkie growled and kicked blindly up at Rainbow Dash, who just barely jumped out of the way. “I said leave me alone!”

Rainbow Dash’s face was starting to redden with anger, and she forced herself to take a step back. “Look, I… I’m gonna go get Twilight.”

“Don’t come back.”

With nothing else to say, Rainbow Dash sighed and walked slowly out of the house.

Once she heard the door click shut, Pinkie grunted and kicked the blanket away. “Stupid Dashie,” she grumbled as she jumped off the bed and stomped over to peek through the window and watch her friend fly away. “You always do this.”

Once Rainbow Dash was nowhere to be seen, Pinkie headed for the front door. She stormed outside, squinting her eyes in the bright sunlight, and slammed the door shut behind her. Then she turned and made for the forest.

“If you’re just gonna run away, don’t come at all,” Pinkie muttered under her breath. She walked pointedly into the woods as soon as she could, then turned in the direction she knew went deeper into the Everfree.

“Whatever,” she growled. “I’ll just go somewhere you can’t bug me.”

Pinkie knew the path she wanted to take well. It was all through dense forest, hopping over shrubs and pushing vines aside, but she always seemed to find her way without getting lost. It was like the place called to her, and ever since she first found it she’d been going there when she needed time alone to think.

Soon enough, just as she always did, she stumbled upon the entrance into the wide-open cave. She followed the winding path down, and before long could see the glittering surface of the still pond. The light that reflected from that water lit the entire cave in a brilliant blue light that shimmered along the walls like she was in a dream.

She was too frustrated to gawk at the scenery, though. She wasted no time in sitting down at the edge of the water and looking down at her reflection.

A bright, bouncy pony smiled back at her. The image made a knot tighten in her stomach.

“Stupid happy Pinkie,” she grumbled. “Why’d you let her get so important to us?”

“Of course she’s important,” she heard herself argue in the back of her mind. “We love her.”

“Well, we should know better.”

“You’re just down in the dumps,” her voice said. “You know we’re glad we can love her so much.”

“Of course we’re glad,” she decided, “but that just makes it hurt even more.”

“She’ll be back, though, and things will go back to normal.”

“Unless she doesn’t come back,” Pinkie argued, “or she changes while she’s there, and because we’re not there we can’t change with her, so she stops liking us.”

“There’s no way that would happen,” she told herself.

“But we don’t know that. The whole time she’s gone, that worry’s gonna be stuck in our head. What if we change? What if worrying for so long breaks us even more than we already are?”

“Those thoughts don’t help anypony. We just have to put on a smile and everything will be okay.”

Pinkie scowled. “I’m sick of making myself smile, though. I don’t care if it works, it’s still fake.”

“Well…” Her optimism was starting to run thin. “I don’t know what you want, then.”

She said the first thing that came to mind. “I want Fluttershy back.”

“Well, then, I guess we gotta go get her!” Her reflection grinned wide.

“But Dracula—”

“Since when do we care what Dracula says? That boring old pony wouldn’t know fun if it bit her on the neck.”

“Hm…” Try as she might, Pinkie couldn’t think of a retort for that. “I guess… You really think we should?”

“Yup!”

“Well, it’s better than sitting around here I guess.” Pinkie stood up from the water and turned to leave.

“Wait!”

She turned back to her reflection. “What?”

“Make sure you go apologize to Dashie! You said a lot of mean things, and—”

Pinkie kicked some rocks into the pond, and the ripples tore through the reflection. Then she turned and started to walk decisively out of the cave.

“They’ll come find me if they care.”

Chapter 8: Dawn

Fluttershy pried her eyes open with a groan. Her muscles ached, tense and sore from having tensed up so severely. The sunlight on her face burned into her, and the air was thick with the scent of…

Nothing.

She should have been rancid with the metallic smell that so permeated the air around her last night. She may not have gotten the chance to take advantage of it, but she knew she’d flown through that fountain. Unless she had dreamed it all, she should have been caked in dry, sticky red goo.

Had she dreamed it all?

She didn’t seem to be in the right place, either. The world was still fuzzy around her, but she definitely wasn’t on the hard tile floor of the front hall. In fact, where she had been sleeping felt closer to a cloud, perfectly soft and fluffy, and the warm covers draped over her were just heavy enough to leave her feeling perfectly secure.

Still, though, something was off. The colors around her weren’t the soft, natural colors that decorated her bedroom. Her pillow smelled too clean, too unused. Most off putting of all, she was alone. Sure, Pinkie didn’t always spend the night at her house, but it still felt empty in bed without her.

As her eyes slowly adjusted to the bright light, more started to become clear. She definitely wasn’t in her room, but she was in a room. The bed was massive, far larger than she could imagine any one pony needing. The quilt draped over it, and over her, was a deep, rich red inlaid with intricate, swirling patterns of gold. The patterns were much thicker and more tangled near the edges, giving the impression that they were framing whoever might be sleeping beneath the covers.

The bed was surrounded by a light pink canopy, but the fabric was so light and sheer that it did nothing to block out the light streaming in. All it really served to do was cast everything on the other side of it in silhouette. It hardly even blurred the edges of the things it hid.

What she could see of the room outside the bed was already opulent. The light streamed in strangely from one side, seeming to seep in from every inch of that wall, which was no small feat given the enormity of the room. Furniture was scattered about, although several things seemed notably absent. She couldn’t pick out any sort of dresser or wardrobe, and there didn’t seem to be a vanity either.

As she scanned the blank outlines of the world around her, something up above caught Fluttershy’s eye. She looked up to find that, where she would have expected there to just be a framework holding up the canopy, a large mirror loomed over her. From where she sat she could see every inch of the bed around her.

Oddly enough, though, she couldn’t see herself in this mirror. It was as though she wasn’t even there.

Somewhat disturbed by this, Fluttershy decided to finally push herself up and head out into the bedroom. Her muscles were stiff, and she had to stretch a fair amount before she could move them all with ease, but once she did the dull throb started to peter out and she had no problem pushing aside the light curtain and stepping out into the world.

The most immediate thing that struck her was the carpet. It was nearly as soft as the bed, and her hooves sank into it satisfyingly. It was a lighter red than most of the room, which only managed to make it feel even softer.

She was completely surrounded by red. The curtains on the window were bright, rich red, the furniture was draped in deep red velvet, even the wood throughout the room was redwood. Besides the golden accents on everything, the only part of the room that wasn’t red were the walls, which were painted a dense black that Fluttershy’s eyes seemed to sink into whenever she tried to focus on it.

It was easily apparent why the light had shimmered so strangely across the room. This was because the room did not, in fact, even have a fourth wall. Instead, it ended in a wide, deep quarter dome of glass. It descended down past the floor of the room a bit, which meant there was a small step before one would enter a shallow pit of regal cushions and pillows that overlooked the world beyond. Fluttershy had no interest in stepping out into it, but she could easily see Rarity lounging there comfortably with four or five of her friends.

The rest of the room was fairly standard. An expensive-looking chaise lounge in one corner, a deep, comfy armchair in another. A single standing lamp with a heavy shade which looked like it would hardly even light itself. The door leading out seemed somehow both ordinary and exquisite, as though a master artisan had been commissioned to perfect the average wooden door. Another door was tucked away in one of the remaining corners, and at the foot of the bed was a heavy wooden chest. Not a chest of drawers or a hope chest, but the kind of imposing chest that would stand out in a room of the most incredible treasures.

There was one final thing of note, for it was a truly massive room. A fireplace was nestled into one wall, its bricks stained with smoke and charcoal in the hearth. It stood out first because, assuming she was in her room, Fluttershy knew how high up she was and how uneven the floors below were. It struck her that the architect must have been a true wonder to have kept this castle in one piece.

It stood out once more, though, because the mantle was lined from end to end with urns. They were packed so tightly that Fluttershy worried that picking one up to see if it was empty would end in her knocking another to the floor, and that was a mess she had no desire to make.

Fluttershy moved first to the unimposing side door and opened it up. Behind it, as she had suspected, was a closet. It was massive, easily the size of her bedroom back home, and almost entirely empty. There were some cloaks and scarves and a couple pairs of practical boots, but it seemed for the most part the only clothes she’d been given were those that might be needed to suit the weather. The were all red and black with sharp edges, exactly the kind of clothes Dracula likely wore. Fluttershy was fine with that, not because it was her style, but because the lack of other clothes gave her the impression that there wasn’t going to be a dress code, and she was incredibly grateful for that.

She took a few steps into the closet to look around, but quickly grew bored of the vacant room and left it again. Back in the bedroom, she made her way to the end of the bed, and the inviting chest that sat there.

She grabbed the sides of the lid and pulled up, but it didn’t budge. It didn’t even move the tiny amount it would have if it were caught by a lock, and looking it over Fluttershy found that that was because there was no lock. By all accounts, it should have been open. She tried once more, in case it was just stuck, but the lid may as well have been welded shut.

She tapped her hoof on the lid and looked around the room. Nothing else caught her eye. Pictures lined the walls, but they were all the kind of landscapes that seemed to fill the empty space of the hall of portraits below. She could see for miles outside the window, but despite everything the thought of going out onto that balcony made her stomach lurch.

Finally, her eyes fell on the sturdy wooden door, and she sighed. With a final yawn and an excessive stretch, she trotted over and stepped through it, back into Dracula’s castle.

Just as she had expected, she was up at the top of the front hall. Her door had a little balcony around it, but no stairs or walkways leading away. It looked like the only way in or out was to fly.

Fluttershy was just glad to see that the balcony had a railing.

Two unlit torches flanked her door, and proudly displayed on the wood was a golden plaque, just like those from the portraits. It read The Heiress.

She steeled herself before looking down over the railing, but rather than filling with fear, she just found herself bewildered. In the light, she could see down to the bottom floor without a problem, and it looked ridiculously close. She hardly seemed to be even five stories up, and only a smattering of walkways blocked her view of the floors below. She could even clearly see the fountain, she could make out the expressions on the gargoyles’ faces, she could see the exact size and shape of the streak of red running along the floor.

Then she realized what the red was and winced. There was a lot of it, and it went far, far enough that she’d stopped leaving a trail before she stopped sliding. From how things looked, she might not have stopped until she hit the wall on the far side of the room.

“You really made quite the mess.”

Fluttershy yelped and wheeled around to find Dracula standing behind her. She grabbed her chest and took deep breaths. “Oh, M-My Lady. I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come up behind me.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Dracula said.

“Um, well…” Fluttershy let out a long, slow breath, and her breathing finally felt normal again. “Good morning?”

“You know,” Dracula said, ignoring the greeting, “I really hadn’t expected that of you.” She walked up beside Fluttershy and looked down at the trail of blood.

“I didn’t think I would…” Fluttershy trailed off, embarrassed.

“Evidently,” Dracula replied. “Truly, though, I thought that once you got a taste you would call for your thrall to be brought here. Your dedication to martyrdom is really quite severe.”

“Well, I don’t know if I would call it that,” Fluttershy said. “I just don’t want to hurt anypony, is all.”

“So you say.” Dracula looked down at her seriously. “What, then, is your plan, exactly? To simply thrust yourself into the jaws of danger time and time again, hoping I’ll be there to pull you out?”

“I thought I would be fine,” Fluttershy said, “and Vale didn’t get shocked. Maybe if I drink enough—”

“You stupid girl,” Dracula interrupted, “your heart will give out long before then. Do you think yourself unkillable?”

“N-No,” Fluttershy stammered, “I just… Well, it was already giving out, and it just started back up.”

“That doesn’t mean it will always start again. If you want to drink, you need somepony to drink from.”

“B-But…” Fluttershy swallowed hard. It stung her throat. “I don’t… Do we know it won’t always start back up?”

Dracula furrowed her brow. “Do we know? How exactly do you propose to find out before it’s too late?”

“Well, I just thought, with all the experience the vampires around here must have…”

Dracula huffed. “Do we know,” she repeated under her breath. “Fine. Let’s have you know.”

With a quick, smooth motion, Dracula raised a hoof and thumped it against Fluttershy’s chest, and just like that her heart stopped beating.

Fluttershy’s eyes went wide and she fell backwards. Immediately the corners of her mind were fuzzy. Her vision started to tunnel. A second later, she lost her breath, and no longer how hard she gasped she could not seem to get it back. Her muscles started to burn, and the world started to spin around her.

She could barely hear the world around her, but someplace far off she heard Dracula say “Well? Start it back up.”

She tried. She directed all the focus she had left to her heart, willing it to move. It did nothing. Her breathing stopped, useless as it was. The ringing in her ears turned to static in her mind. Her vision was almost completely black. Everything she had left, she poured into fighting to start her heart back up.

She couldn’t.

Just before she blacked out, Dracula thumped her chest again. Fluttershy gasped and held her chest as everything started working again. She fell over and shut her eyes as she breathed, listening only to her own gasps and the heavy pounding in her chest. She clutched herself and started to shake as the blood slowly brought her back from the brink.

“So?” Dracula asked. She stared down at Fluttershy with a blank expression. “Do you still wish to play in the fountain?”

Fluttershy couldn’t respond.

“Hmph.” Dracula turned away from her. “I’ll leave you to your thoughts, then.”

With that, Dracula turned and leaped from the balcony. Behind her, Fluttershy curled up as her body shuddered.

Chapter 9: A Brighter Day

“Fluttershy?” A far-off voice broke through the static still lingering at the edges of Fluttershy’s mind. “The Lady asked me to come fetch you.”

Fluttershy didn’t want to get up. She had mostly recovered from her ordeal, but her chest still burned, and she was utterly exhausted. She felt like she could sleep for a week and still not have her breath back completely.

Still, she was being called for, and the dread she felt at the idea of leaving somepony waiting for her easily outweighed her desire to rest. So, she took a deep breath, stretched out, and pushed herself to her hooves.

She stumbled on her first step. Her legs were still shaky, and now that she was up she didn’t feel like that was going to go away any time soon. Still, she pressed on, and walked up to the railing to peer over it.

Far below, looking up at her from next to the fountain, stood Sable Spirit.

“Fluttershy!” She called out again. “Are you able to come down?”

“Ye—” Fluttershy tried to call back, but it just came out as a wheezing cough. She nodded, hoping Sable Spirit could see her well enough to notice.

She stretched out her wings and gave them a few test flaps. She didn’t want to risk jumping out only to have them fail her. Luckily, they felt limber enough, and after a few more deep breaths she stepped forward and hopped out into the air.

She didn’t bother actually flying, opting instead to just stick her wings out and glide down in wide, arcing circles. The slow descent was calming, and the gentle breeze that pushed past her as she dropped was just what she needed to push past the last bits of stress that lingered in her.

It was a little disappointing when her hooves touched down on the hard tile, but she didn’t have time to linger, because Sable Spirit came trotting right up to her with a kind, soft smile.

“Good morning, dear,” Sable Spirit said. “Are you feeling alright? Little Vale filled me in on what happened last night.”

“I’m… Okay, thank you,” Fluttershy said. “I’m sorry to worry you.”

“Oh, pssh.” Sable Spirit waved away the concern. “It’s my job to worry.”

“I thought you were just the gardener.”

“Well, yes, normally,” Sable Spirit said. She started walking as she talked, and waved Fluttershy along. “The castle doesn’t actually have anypony whose job it is to look after fledgling vampires, though, so I volunteered. I just thought that somepony who would be working so closely to The Lady would need a… Kinder touch alongside her.”

“Yeah…” Fluttershy tried not to let her mind wander too much down that train of thought. Instead, she found herself tracing the path of blood she’d left in her wake the night before, and as she did she had a realization. “Wait, are we not going to the throne room?”

Sable Spirit chuckled. “Well, you’re not going to learn all that much if you just stand next to the throne all day, now are you?” She pushed open one of the big doors at the front of the hall, and they walked through.

Past it was a much smaller, much more humble entrance hall. It was warm and cozy, with racks for guests to store their hats and coats, some not-quite-comfortable seating for them to wait on, and a tall mirror for them to tidy themselves up with. Once again, as they passed by it, Fluttershy saw that she wasn’t in the mirror.

“Does the castle have strange mirrors?” Fluttershy asked. Without thinking, she stopped walking and stared at where her reflection should have been.

“Hm?” Sable Spirit turned, and followed Fluttershy’s gaze to the mirror. “No, they’re quite normal. Why, have you seen something in them?”

“Well, no…” Fluttershy hummed thoughtfully. “I just… Why am I not in them?”

Sable Spirit blinked. “You’re… A vampire, remember?”

“I’ve seen myself in mirrors before, though.”

“Really?” Sable Spirit looked shocked. “How strange. It must have been because you hadn’t had any blood.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy frowned. “Does that mean I’ll never show up in mirrors again?”

“I’m afraid so,” Sable Spirit told her.

Fluttershy stroked a hoof through her mane solemnly. Ever since becoming a vampire, looking at herself in mirrors had become something she relished. It wasn’t in a vain way, it was just always a bit of a surprise, and the surprise reminded her of how happy she was to have made the decision to change in the first place. It was her decision, after all, and having such a major change work out well was a much needed boost to her self confidence.

“I guess I’ll just have to get more pictures taken,” Fluttershy said.

“No pictures, either,” Sable Spirit said. “I’m sorry,” she added when Fluttershy’s frown deepened. “We have a wonderful artist, though.”

Fluttershy nodded and turned away from the mirror. “Alright…” She sighed. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to mope.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Sable Spirit said. She put a hoof comfortingly on Fluttershy’s shoulder. “Nopony likes everything about the change. In fact, the way your body interacts with light is one of the more disliked features, although not usually for the same reason as you. Rather…” She pointed over at a rack filled with cloaks and hats. “Well, you’ll want to cover up.”

“I can’t go out in the sun?” Fluttershy asked.

“Well, you can,” Sable Spirit said, “it just won’t be pleasant. If you don’t want to go through an obscene amount of sunscreen, you should learn how to keep yourself properly covered.”

There wasn’t very much to choose from on the rack, and nearly all of it was distinctly styled in a way Dracula would like. Fluttershy looked through it a bit, and eventually came away with a pink hat with a wide, floppy brim, and a standard black cloak that Sable Spirit helped fasten around her neck.

“Rarity would probably have a heart attack if she saw me like this,” Fluttershy said. Her face was shrouded in shadow, and unless you were very close the only thing that could easily be made out were her eyes, which glowed red in the darkness.

“We could bring her up if you like,” Sable Spirit said, “so that you can have a wardrobe of your own.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly tear her away from Ponyville for so long,” Fluttershy said. “I’d much rather just go to her.”

“Well, we’ll see if The Lady allows you out of town,” Sable Spirit said. “Now, let’s head off.”

Unceremoniously, Sable Spirit pushed open the castle’s front door and sunlight streamed in. The beam fell on Fluttershy’s legs, and immediately she could feel herself getting sunburned. It wasn’t painful, not yet, but it was definitely far hotter than she had expected, and she instinctively hissed as she whipped the cloak around to protect herself.

When Fluttershy realized what she’d done, her face turned red with embarrassment. Sable Spirit chuckled and waved her outside.

It was a bright, clear day, and the sun was high in the sky. A gentle breeze flowed through the castle grounds, and in the distance birds tweeted and animals chirped. Past the tall stone wall, the bustling of a small but busy town could be heard.

The grounds themselves were fairly barren. The edges of the castle were lined with shrubs, and tall, sculpted pillars of flora lined the cobblestone path leading towards town, but most of the remaining land was just short, well-kept grass. Off to her right, Fluttershy could see the beginnings of Sable Spirit’s gardens, with leaves and branches of all sorts sticking out in a messy tangle, and to her left Fluttershy noticed the corner of a hedge maze. Further down the path, near the gate, was a humble little home that didn’t look to be connected to the actual castle in any way.

Fluttershy sighed. She’d been inside for less than a day, but she felt like she was seeing nature for the first time in months.

“So… Where are we going, exactly?” Fluttershy asked.

“I have some chores to do,” Sable Spirit told her. “You’re going to assist me.”

“What does that have to do with becoming Dracula?”

“Not much, but you can’t very well do much if you don’t know where things are, now can you? I just don’t have the time to dedicate my entire day to giving you a tour.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy paused for a moment. “Well, thank you for your help.”

“Of course.”

“So… Does that mean we won’t be seeing The Lady today?”

“Most likely,” Sable Spirit said. “She’s a busy woman.”

Without meaning to, Fluttershy let out a sigh of relief. Sable Spirit raised an eyebrow at her.

“Is everything alright, Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy gasped. “Oh, um, y-yes! Why do you ask?”

“Fluttershy.” Sable Spirit narrowed her eyes.

“I’m… I’m fine,” Fluttershy said.

Sable Spirit put a hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder. “Fluttershy, I have a lot of respect for The Lady, but that doesn’t mean I think she’s without flaw. I didn’t sign up to help you purely out of the goodness of my heart. I did so because, despite all of The Lady’s strengths, she is not a kind pony.”

Fluttershy looked away from her. “I just… I don’t know, I guess I assumed I’d seen the worst of what she could do already.”

“I doubt you’ll ever see her at her worst.”

“But she…” Fluttershy swallowed hard and shook her head.

Sable Spirit cupped a hoof under Fluttershy’s chin and lifted her head back up, then ran her hoof comfortingly through Fluttershy’s mane. “This isn’t going to be easy,” she said. “The Lady is… She is a cruel pony. I’m sorry I didn’t prepare you better. You’re strong, though. I wouldn’t have let her bring you here if I didn’t believe you could get through all of this.”

Fluttershy took a deep breath. “I… Thank you.”

Sable Spirit pulled her into a hug and patted her back, then stepped back a moment later. “Are you ready to go into town?”

Fluttershy nodded. “I think so.”

Sable Spirit smiled and started to lead Fluttershy towards the gate. On the way, Fluttershy got a better look at the little shack. It had a few little potted plants scattered about, but all the grass within a foot of the building had withered away. The door was nothing more than a loosely strung together row of wooden slats, although the room beyond was still too dark to see. The roof was missing shingles, the wall had a large hole in it which had been crudely patched up with old, rotting boards, and beside the house was a cellar door with a massive metal bar holding it shut. Most jarring of all, though, was that as she walked along Fluttershy noticed that the windows weren’t quite right. It took a few moments to figure it out, but once she did there was no doubt. They weren’t, in fact, windows, but simply window frames holding paintings of what the inside of a house might look like. Closer examination even showed that every window, every frame, had a painting showing a different house.

Fluttershy was about to ask about it when the gate creaked open in front of them and caught her attention. Through it came a rickety old carriage pulled by a rickety old pony. Fluttershy recognized him, having ridden that carriage into town once before, and smiled at him politely, but he didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he didn’t care.

The curtains over the carriage’s windows were shut tight. Whoever was arriving clearly valued their privacy.

“Come along, dear,” Sable Spirit said. Fluttershy looked over and saw that she had already passed through the gate, and trotted quickly to catch up.

Trotsylvania was a simple, pleasant town. Creatures of all types roamed the streets, from ponies to gryphons to kirin, plus a sizable number of things Fluttershy didn’t recognize. Homes were simple, humble things, built just differently enough to give each resident a sense of self while still making the whole of it blur together into an indistinguishable mass. The entire town consisted of two roads, a short main road leading from the castle to the outer wall, and a much longer road that intersected it halfway through, but it was filled out by an intricate jungle of dark back alleys that filled the space between the longer road and the two walls. The roadside itself was packed full with buildings, but the space beyond didn’t go unused. The majority of the living space was there, hidden away in the recesses behind storefronts, along with a sizable number of stalls and businesses that preferred to avoid the public nature of opening along the road. One could learn the layout with time, but it wasn’t nearly as uniform back there as the streets were, so trying to find a specific place often ended in hours of wandering a labyrinth of barely-distinguishable homes.

Situated in the exact center of town, right in the intersection of the two roads, was a large stage. The open nature of it combined with the tall scaffolding on either side gave it the distinct air of a gallows, despite it clearly not existing for such a purpose. At the moment, the stage was occupied by a young pony telling the news of the day to a small crowd and whoever else might be passing by.

“That’s our first stop,” Sable Spirit said, gesturing towards the stage.

“Are we just stopping to hear the news?”

Sable Spirit chuckled. “Not quite. I’ve got some news of my own to give the crier.”

“Oh? What about?”

She smiled towards Fluttershy. “Well, we have a very notable new resident at the castle, and The Lady wanted me to make absolutely certain that everypony in town knows that The Heiress has arrived.”

Chapter 10: Town Meeting

“Ah, Miss Sable! Any juicy morsels to share with the fine folks out here today?” The town crier smiled charismatically as the two ponies approached the stage. He was a tall, thin pony, and seemed to take up the entire stage even with his humble tan fur. This was no doubt due largely to his deft handling of the newspapers he had grasped in his magic, which floated around the stage just slowly enough to be able to read the headlines as they passed, but the way he carried himself certainly couldn’t be discounted either. He moved with a confidence that few ponies held, and that fewer still could hold without becoming threatening.

“I do, in fact,” Sable Spirit told him. “Something quite major, in fact. Would it be alright if we took the stage for a moment?”

Fluttershy gasped. “I-I thought we were just going to pass the news along,” she said in a hushed voice.

“You’re not going to get very far if you never speak to the citizens in town,” Sable Spirit told her.

“Please, be my guest,” the town crier said. Sable Spirit hopped up onto the stage and helped Fluttershy up as the crier went to the front to announce their arrival. “Creatures of the night,” he began, “it would appear that we’ve news from the castle! Do gather around, quickly now, I have a feeling this is going to be very special news indeed. Is that all of you?” He made a show of looking out over the crowd, although it was obvious that they were all paying attention. “Good! Now, I give the stage over to Miss Sable Spirit!”

He stood aside with a flourish, and Sable Spirit nodded politely before walking up to take his place. Fluttershy hesitated, but an impatient wave from Sable Spirit got her to reluctantly walk up and stand before the crowd.

Whispers ran through the crowd as Fluttershy walked up. None of them recognized her, which was strange enough in this town, but given the way she was dressed and where she had come from, it was quite clear she was a vampire. The creatures of Trotsylvania knew well that Dracula had outlawed the turning of new vampires long before most of them were born, so to see one they didn’t recognize was enough to spur their collective curiosity.

Fluttershy looked out over the crowd. There were a decent number of ponies, certainly, and even one or two vampires hidden away under hats and cloaks, but she was shocked at just how many of them weren’t ponies. There were a fair number of creatures from outside the borders of Equestria, which was notable enough considering how, until very recently, Equestria very rarely attracted the attention of others, but even past them, there was a smattering of things right out of legends. A Nirik burned away towards the back of the crowd. There was a pony with a mane of seaweed that dripped with water. A Sphinx of rough-hewn sandstone sat downwind of the crowd, clouds of sand blowing off of them with every gust of wind, and never seemed to move when Fluttershy was focusing on them. They all seemed perfectly comfortable around one another, even as they looked at Fluttershy like an outsider.

From this new vantagepoint, Fluttershy could see over the outer wall protecting the village and into the forest beyond. It was a dense, dark, and miserably wet forest, which on most days was more of a bog than anything else. Where the ground wasn’t covered in pools of stagnant water, the ground was generally so soft that even the lightest of vehicles became impossible to pull. That, combined with the thick fog that seemed to stick to everything in the forest and refused to let go, meant that only a small number of ponies or other creatures were ever able to make it to Trotsylvania. Any who tried to cross the forest on their own were likely never heard from again, lost to starvation or to those creatures who long ago swore off from Dracula’s protection and left to fend for themselves, and those who did come and go were almost always in the company of The Driver.

Oddly enough, Fluttershy noticed that the fog hadn’t made its way into town today. She hadn’t been to Trotsylvania too many times in the past, but she had never been able to see it this clearly before, and now that she could see it she wished the fog would never roll in again. It really was a lovely little town, the type that she could easily see herself settling down in if she didn’t already have a home in Ponyville.

Sable Spirit had given the crowd some time to ruminate, but now she held up a hoof and demanded their attention. “Good morning, all,” she said. “I hope the day is treating you all well so far. The Lady, Dracula, regrets that she cannot be here to share this news directly, but has bestowed upon me the honor of doing so. I ask you all to keep your questions for the end, and to listen politely.”

“Now,” she continued, “as you can see, we have a new vampire in our midst. Everyone, please acquaint yourselves with Miss Fluttershy.”

Without warning, Sable Spirit used her magic to pluck the hat off of Fluttershy’s head. The sunlight seared into her at once, and she shot a wing out to protect herself. She hardly noticed the gasps in the crowd as a few ponies recognized who she was. Her wing was burning fiercely now, and through gritted teeth she asked “Can I please have the hat back?”

“Of course,” Sable Spirit said as she replaced the hat. Fluttershy sighed and slumped back into a more relaxed stature. “Now,” she addressed the crowd once more, “Fluttershy will be living in the castle until further notice. As many of you know, Dracula has been planning some major changes lately, and Fluttershy is a key player in all of that. You see…”

She paused, clearly for effect as the crowd’s anticipation grew.

“Fluttershy is to inherit the title of Dracula.”

The crowd erupted. Some tried to whisper, while others gave up on that pretense entirely as they talked about what this could mean. One pony, near the front of the crowd, shouted out “Can she protect us?” Several others around him nodded and voiced their agreement with his concern.

Sable Spirit held a hoof up again, and the crowd quieted. “I understand your hesitation. She doesn’t look the part, and to be completely honest, as she is now she isn’t fit for the title. That, however, is precisely why she is here. To learn. She must grow to be capable of fulfilling everything that the name Dracula means. As such…”

She looked pointedly at Fluttershy, then back at the crowd. “From this day forth, I ask you all to consider her, for all intents and purposes, to be Dracula. The Lady will still be in the castle, ensuring that nothing goes awry, but until further notice she’ll be unavailable. Even I, and most of the staff of the castle, will be unable to reach her during this time.”

Fluttershy’s eyes went wide as the crowd started to murmur. “Wait, what?” She turned to Sable Spirit incredulously. “She can’t just leave, she hasn’t taught me anything!”

Sable Spirit turned to her. “Fluttershy, I’m sorry for thrusting so much on you, but this is The Lady’s decision. She plans to speak only to you and Vale. Vale is her family, and so that leaves you as our liaison. She wasn’t entirely clear on how much she plans to take care of for you, but it didn’t sound like much. Starting now, you’re in charge.”

“I can’t be in charge, though. That’s a horrible idea!” Fluttershy bit her lip nervously. “Can’t you take over? Or-Or Vale? Or anypony else?”

Sable Spirit put a hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder, then directed her attention out over the crowd. “Creatures of the night,” she announced loudly, “I give you Fluttershy, The Heiress.”

Then she stepped back, leaving Fluttershy alone at the front of the stage.

The crowd swarmed in, all of them barraging her with questions and concerns. She took a step back from the writhing sea of bodies, but felt a force push her back out even closer to the edge. She looked back to see Sable Spirit’s horn lit up, and frowned. Clearly, she wasn’t going to be allowed to back out of this.

She turned back to the crowd and tried to put a hoof up like Sable Spirit had, but it quivered in the air and did nothing to quiet the masses. “P-Please, everypony, just calm down and—”

The crowd got even louder, all of them trying to talk over the others to have their questions heard.

Fluttershy tried to raise her voice a bit. “Please,” she said again, “I can’t hear any of you, you need to take turns!”

None of them quieted down.

Fluttershy pursed her lips. She didn’t see how she could possibly quiet them down on her own, she needed help, she needed—

She got an idea. She pointed at the sphinx, who at some point had moved up to near the front of the crowd. “Um, y-you! You get to ask something first, but I need to be able to hear the question, so… Um, can you please do something to quiet them down?”

The sphinx didn’t move, but everything else seemed to. The wind picked up massively, and with it the sphinx shed more and more sand. It swirled high into the air, then crashed back down on the crowd in a huge cloud that blocked any of them from seeing anything. Then the wind picked up again and blew the sand away, leaving the crowd stunned and quiet apart from a few dry coughs.

“Um… Thank you?” Fluttershy said. Then she addressed the crowd. “Please, I’m more than happy to listen to you all, but it needs to be quiet. If you have something to say, just raise a hoof or a wing or… Something, and I’ll call on you each in turn, alright?” She paused, and got only a few coughs in response. “A-Alright… Well, first off.”

She turned her attention back to the sphinx, who was now standing, although they still didn’t move. What did happen was that another breeze picked up, and a thin stream of sand blew up onto the stage. Then another breeze blew most of it away, leaving words written out at Fluttershy’s hooves.

She blinked. “Oh, okay. Um…” She read over the question carefully. “Okay, the sphinx wants to know if I would know how to make creatures like them comfortable. Well, um,” she looked closely at the sphinx and thought for a moment, “I think so? At least, maybe. Um, I took care of a lot of animals that wandered out of the Everfree Forest, so I’m pretty used to… Weird biology. I can’t say I’d never make mistakes, but I think I could do an alright job with that.”

She looked at the sphinx and waited for a moment, as if waiting for a response, before realizing she probably wouldn’t get one. “Okay, um, who else?” A sea of hooves and other appendages shot into the air. Fluttershy pointed to a dark purple earth pony with tall boots and a braided mane. “Alright, you?”

The mare stood up straighter and raised her voice. “Yeah, um, are you gonna shut down our shops? I know you’re friends with Twilight and all and a lot of us came here to get away from the Princesses.”

“But the Princesses are so nice,” Fluttershy said at first, but then she caught herself and shook her head. “Well, um, what do you sell?”

“Magic stuff.”

“Magic… Stuff?” Fluttershy gave her a puzzled look.

“Yeah,” the mare said, “like amulets and books and… I don’t know, stuff! I don’t even know what half of it does. It’s just magic stuff.”

“Okay…” Fluttershy thought, trying to piece together why exactly this mare thought she’d be shut down. “Well, is it dangerous?”

The mare shrugged. “Prob’ly.”

“Do you try to be safe with it all?”

“Not really. I just sell it.”

Fluttershy tilted her head. “So you just… Let pon—creatures get hurt?”

“Well it’s not like I’m handing this stuff out to kids,” the mare said. “I at least ask if they know what they’re doing.”

“Uh-huh…” Fluttershy made a conflicted noise. “I mean, I’m supposed to keep you all safe. I’m not sure if letting all of that go is really doing that.”

The mare frowned. “So you are gonna shut us down?”

“No!” Fluttershy put a hoof out defensively. “No, I don’t want to do that, I just…” An idea hit her, and she lit up. “Oh! What if I had a friend come teach you how to be safe with it all?”

“I am not going to start doing what some Princess tells me to.”

“No, no, not Twilight,” Fluttershy said. “I meant Starlight. She’s, uh… Well, I guess you wouldn’t know her. She used to be a bad guy. She’ll understand.”

“Sure, I guess,” the mare shrugged.

Fluttershy smiled. “Wonderful! Okay, um, any other shop owners with similar questions, why don’t you…” Fluttershy hummed. “I don’t know if I have a schedule. Um, just run your shops, and I’ll find time to come visit and talk to you all.” She nodded. “Okay, who’s next?”

Fluttershy spent the next few hours there, answering question after question. Over time, some of the crowd filed out, only for more creatures to show up and take their place. At one point, the crowd was so full of new faces that Fluttershy had to pause the questions to explain to them who she was, but by that point she’d gotten so wrapped up in it all that she didn’t even consider having Sable Spirit do it for her.

That was good, because Sable Spirit had, in fact, left less than an hour into it all. When Fluttershy finally finished, she asked the crier where she’d gone, and he explained that she had more work to do and had to leave.

“Oh,” Fluttershy replied to the news. “Did she want me to go find her when I was done?”

The crier shook his head. “The opposite, actually. She said to tell you that her job was done, and now you’re on your own.”

“On my own?” Suddenly, Fluttershy could feel the anxiety she’d managed to put aside during the questioning starting to creep back in. “What am I supposed to do, then?”

The crier shrugged. “I don’t know, but she seemed pretty adamant that she wasn’t going to tell you anymore.”

As Fluttershy stood there, stunned, the crier said goodbye and went back to his job. Fluttershy hardly noticed her own movement as she walked away and hopped off the stage. She didn’t notice much of anything until she reached the gate leading into the castle grounds, only for the two guards stationed there to cross their spears in front of her.

“Huh?” Fluttershy snapped back to the world and looked at them with wide, confused eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Sorry, Heiress,” one of the guards said. “We were told by Miss Sable that you’re not to be allowed back in until further notice.”

“What?”

“Looks like you’re stuck in town,” the other guard said. “It’s a nice town, though. Go check it out.”

“Oh…” Fluttershy looked back behind herself, at the humble little homes with thatched roofs and smoking chimneys, and smiled. “Yeah, alright. I guess I can do that.”

Chapter 11: Into The Flames

Fluttershy made her way back to the stage and did her best not to stand out as she stood at the edge of the crowd to watch the crier. Thankfully, there were far fewer creatures there than when she had been up on stage, but it was obvious that at least a couple of them recognized her. They whispered amongst themselves, but she couldn’t hear anything they said. They seemed to be taking extra care in making sure she couldn’t overhear them.

It was clear the crier noticed her, too, but he was kind enough to not draw any more attention to her. He just kept circulating his papers and talking about the headlines to any who had questions.

Fluttershy studied the papers as they floated by. Most had headlines like Princess Deposed and A New Reign Begins, but Fluttershy had little interest in reading about things she’d heard all about already. Instead she kept her eye on the less prominent headlines, the more local and niche stories that didn’t warrant a major article.

It didn’t seem like the town got very much news from day to day. Most headlines were minor things, local marriages or the announcement of new stock at a store. A few were a bit bigger, like planned construction or the end of a grand opening sale. None of it really caught her eye, though.

Finally, she saw the headline Visitor To Arrive. She nearly wrote it off, assuming it was just about her, but then she remembered the carriage that she’d seen roll past earlier. She knew it would nag at her all day if she didn’t make sure, so she flew up and plucked the paper from the air.

It was a short article, and clearly not about her. It described a pony—or creature—with a long-standing, close relationship to those known as Dracula. Some even believed, according to the article, that the relationship began well before The Count’s time. Certainly, it had already been in play when The Count became Dracula. The only creature anybody knew of that was still alive from back then was this visitor, but it was widely accepted that they had played a part in The Count’s rise to power.

The article had precious little concrete information, but the final line stuck out to Fluttershy.

The Visitor is expected to arrive by carriage by nightfall.

Fluttershy gave the paper back to the crier absentmindedly as she puzzled over this new information. The Visitor. It wasn’t much to go on, but Fluttershy was certain this was the same Visitor whose portrait was empty, and this just made them even stranger. A creature older than even Dracula. She had no idea what that could mean.

She nearly left to ponder it on her own, but her curiosity quickly outweighed her anxiety, so when she got a chance she caught the crier’s eye and waved him over.

“Ah, welcome back, Miss Fluttershy,” the crier said as he strutted over to her. “It’s a pleasure to see you again. In all honesty, I’d expected you to disappear back into the castle.”

Fluttershy pursed her lips. “I, uh… I got locked out.”

“Ooh, harsh.” The crier winced dramatically. “Well, you may as well make the most of it. Is there anything you’d like to know?”

“I was wondering about that article, actually,” Fluttershy said. “About The Visitor?”

The crier gave her an awkward, apologetic look. “Sorry, Heiress, you picked the one thing I can’t tell you about.”

“Why not?” Fluttershy tilted her head quizzically.

“We don’t talk about The Visitor,” he said. “What’s in the article is all you’ll get, I’m afraid. Things that old… Well, there’s a reason you haven’t heard of any. They simply aren’t talked about.”

“Is there anypo—anybody in town who I can talk to about them?”

The crier shook his head. “I understand why you’d think so, but this goes beyond respect or fear. It isn’t that we choose not to talk about The Visitor. We just don’t. It isn’t done.”

“Hmm…” Fluttershy gave a somewhat disappointed hum.

“If it’s any consolation,” the crier said, “you likely won’t be in the dark for long. More likely than not, The Visitor is here for you.”

“That… Doesn’t make me feel much better, no,” Fluttershy said, “but thank you for trying.”

“Well, good luck with it, Heiress,” the crier said. “Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

“Is there anywhere you’d say I should go while I’m in town?”

The crier shot her a toothy grin. “Now there’s something I can answer. Well,” he stood up straight with a proud flourish, “my normal answer is fairly standard. The tavern is always jovial, and the street is lined with stores. If you’d like a bite to eat, there’s meat to the east and grain to the west. The vampire’s guild is near the inner wall’s gates, and the magic guild mirrors it on the outer wall. For you, though,” he leaned in conspiratorially, “take the west road, and on your right you’ll find a home with a wicker doormat. Knock there, and tell the mare that answers that you’d like some jewelry. If that doesn’t get you in… Well, for the time being, you’re Dracula. Just go in anyway.”

Fluttershy furrowed her brow. “What’s in there?”

The crier chuckled and stood back up. “Well, it’s just a house, of course,” he loudly announced. “Just some friends of mine you’d do well to meet.”

“Okay…”

He laughed. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, Heiress, I’ve left others waiting.” He gave her a polite nod, then turned to talk to other members of the crowd.

Fluttershy stood there for a moment and thought of what to do. She wasn’t especially hungry, which she suspected was because of what happened the night before, and she didn’t have anything pressing to do at the vampire’s guild. The magic guild sounded interesting, and it was also probably worth checking to see if it was safe, but the crier had seemed so insistent on that house. Her desire to find out why was steadily outpacing her plans to do anything else.

Soon enough she decided that the magic guild could wait, seeing as she probably wouldn’t be able to get Starlight here anytime soon anyway, so she turned and made her way west.

The first houses she passed were large and lavish, although not to the degree that they seemed braggadocious. The other homes in town weren’t small, after all. The community was too tight-knit for that to happen. These houses were just bigger, and the ponies who owned them were largely interested in making them look nice.

Just as she was wondering who might own these homes, she came across the home of the town’s blacksmith. This much was obvious because at the base of the home was a small, packed forge. The stone walls were seamlessly connected to the house built on top of them, which on its own would have already made the home seem larger than most, but even past that it had been made into an architectural work of art. The dark, smoky wood used for the walls fit perfectly with the murky greens used as decoration, and even with how dark it was she could see how carefully every tiny detail had been designed.

“Oi, Heiress!”

Fluttershy hadn’t even noticed that the forge was lit, but evidently she’d been caught staring at the house, because the blacksmith was calling her over.

She looked the blacksmith over as she walked closer, although there wasn’t all that much to examine. The deep black coat and bright green flames made them impossible to forget. Fluttershy hadn’t seen many Niriks in her life, and she felt fairly confident that this town only had one.

Fluttershy waved as she got close. “Good morning,” she said cheerily, “is there something I can—”

“Catch.” The Nirik picked up the rod of iron they’d been heating up and tossed it across the forge.

Fluttershy nearly stuck out a wing to catch the rod, but at the last second realized how much of a mistake that would be and pull away from it. “Hey!” She narrowed her eyes at the Nirik. “That could have really hurt me!”

“Aye.” The Nirik grabbed the rod with their magic and floated it back into the flames that had been heating it. “I’d like a word.”

Fluttershy frowned and walked the rest of the way into the forge. The heat inside was intense, nearly too much to handle, but she forced herself not to back away. “That wasn’t a very good way to start up a conversation.”

“True enough, but it would’ve been an excellent way to hit an idiot with a stick.” The Nirik fiddled with the flames a bit before turning their gaze to Fluttershy. Their wide, white hot eyes bore into Fluttershy like a drill. “Folks ‘round here call me Fire.”

“Just Fire?” Fluttershy raised an eyebrow.

Fire nodded. “Go down the other way, find the place that mirrors mine and you’ll meet Bon. She sells my stuff.”

“Bon…” Fluttershy looked off in the direction Fire was talking about as she thought. “Is she—”

“The Kirin,” Fire interrupted, “yeah. Don’t ask. We won’t tell you.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” Fluttershy said. “So, what did you want?”

“Well, mostly I wanted to throw something at you to decide if I cared to introduce myself. I suppose while I have you, though, I may as well ask why you’re here.”

“Well, I was just walking by,” Fluttershy said, “and I noticed your house—”

Fire groaned. “No, not here. Here. Why have you got your eyes on the throne?”

“Well, I didn’t really have a choice,” Fluttershy said. “The Lady told me to.”

“Yeah, and I told you to catch hot metal. You didn’t do that.”

“It would have hurt me!”

Fire shook her head and turned back to her forge. “If you think this business isn’t going to hurt you, we’d best start preparing the casket now.” She pulled the rod out of the flames, then produced a heavy mallet and started hammering away at it.

“But she—” Fluttershy stopped. She didn’t have any rebuttal to that. Instead, she decided to pivot. “What are you making?”

“Bars.” She tilted her head to the side, towards a pile of long, flat iron bars. “Folks always need bars.”

“Oh.” Curious, Fluttershy glanced at the other finished products lying around. Long nails, sturdy tools, plenty of horseshoes, all piled high and ready to ship out.

“Disappointed there’s no swords?”

“I guess I’m just shocked,” Fluttershy said.

“Uh-huh.” Fire slammed away at the rod a few more times in silence. “We aren’t monsters.”

“Huh?” Fluttershy inhaled sharply. “Of course you aren’t! I would never—”

“Yes you would.” She grimaced. “Go. I’m through with you.”

“But—”

She pulled the rod up and swung it wide over Fluttershy’s head. “Get! Go play hero somewhere else.”

“I…” Fluttershy nodded and turned to walk away. “I’m sorry.”

Fire didn’t respond, so Fluttershy just walked back out onto the street.

Once out, she took a deep breath and righted herself. She didn’t want to be seen wallowing in self pity. If she wanted to do right by the creatures of the night, she had to get serious.

Chapter 13: Shopping

The cockatrice slept soundly on Fluttershy’s back as she looked around the market. It was nearly midday now, but it was still almost empty. She was the only one who wasn’t running a stall, and those who did have wares to sell were hardly paying attention to the world around them. It was a slow, lazy day, which felt entirely at odds with how Fluttershy would have imagined a black market to be.

She decided to just make her way around to each of the open stalls, seeing as there were so few, and made her way to the nearest one.

A strange creature was behind the counter filled with cloaks and hats. At first they had just looked like a pony, but it quickly became clear that wasn’t the case. Their body had no fur, no flesh. Rather, they seemed to have been woven together from thick, thorny vines and sturdy branches. The tangle of plants resembled a pony, yes, but in shape alone. Their features were all imagined, their shape arbitrary, and where they should have had eyes they had only empty pits that the vines had chosen not to occupy.

They were rooted to the ground where they stood, and Fluttershy almost would have assumed them to be a sculpture if not for the slow, creaking movement of their head as they watched her approach.

Fluttershy put on the best smile she could, although it was a little shaky. “Um, hello,” she said cautiously. She paused for a moment before going on. “Can you talk?”

“I can.”

Their mouth hadn’t moved. No part of them had, in fact. Their voice seemed like a part of the wind itself, a slight whistle in the breeze that just barely resembled speech. It was a wispy voice, where each sound carried on even as the next began, and the words seemed to linger in the air long after they had finished talking.

“Oh!” Fluttershy’s eyes widened. “Wow, okay. Well, um, I’m Fluttershy. The Heiress, I guess?”

“So I have heard,” the creature replied. “Those in town have taken to calling me Bramble, though if your desire is to emulate Lady Dracula, you may wish to forego names, as she does. It makes no difference to me.”

Fluttershy tilted her head and listened carefully until the words had all vanished, long after Bramble had finished speaking. “Oh, well, I think Bramble sounds like a cute name,” she said with a smile. “So, um, what do you sell?”

“I sell nothing,” Bramble said, “as I want for nothing. The clothing is a hobby, and free to take. This shop exists so that creatures can request that I pass along more sensitive information to others.”

“Pass along?”

“My roots run far,” Bramble told her. “Not many wish to enter the castle grounds, and fewer still deign to brave the world outside our walls. A messenger is needed.”

“Oh, okay,” Fluttershy said. “That’s very nice of you. What kind of sensitive information could there be that needs to be so secret that someone has to come out here, though?”

“That is not for you to know, Heiress.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy stared blankly for a moment. “Alright… Um, well, while I’m here do you think you could deliver a message to Sable Spirit for me?”

“Easily.”

“Okay, tell her that, um…” Fluttershy bit her lip, trying hard to make a decision. When she finally spoke again, she did so quickly, so that she couldn’t take back the words. “Tell her I’d like Pinkie brought to the castle, please.”

There was a pause. Bramble said nothing, simply staring at Fluttershy, and for a moment they almost looked like whatever life was animating them had left their body.

Then they spoke back up. “Done. She said Pinkie should arrive by nightfall.”

Fluttershy let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you!” She smiled brightly. It felt like an immense weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

Bramble responded with a long, slow nod.

“Well, it was very nice to meet you, Bramble,” Fluttershy said. “Will you just be here if I need you?”

“My roots run far,” Bramble repeated. “I will be nearby.”

“Alright,” Fluttershy said. “Well, um… Goodbye.”

Bramble watched in silence as Fluttershy slowly, awkwardly turned and walked away.

The next stall that wasn’t empty was run by someone who, as far as Fluttershy could tell, was just a normal pegasus mare. She had bright pink fur and a short red mane, and was lounging in a lawn chair reading a newspaper as Fluttershy walked up. Her counter was filled to bursting with gemstones of every kind, all loosely piles under a glass cover.

“Hey,” she said idly, “what can I do for—Woah!” As soon as she caught sight of Fluttershy, she leapt out of the chair and held up the newspaper like a shield. “What are you bringin that thing around here for? Are you tryin to kill me?”

Fluttershy was confused for a moment, until she remembered the bird nuzzled into her back. “Oh, he won’t hurt you,” she said softly. “He’s such a sweet little birdie, he couldn’t hurt a fly.”

The mare slowly poked her head out from behind the newspaper, and when she saw that it was asleep she cautiously, quietly lowered it and sat back down. “Uh-huh…”

“Um…” Fluttershy wanted to wait until she had the mare’s attention again, but she was focused completely on the bird. “Well, I’m Fluttershy, The Heiress. I—”

The mare blinked and snapped her eyes back to Fluttershy. “Heiress? As in, like… Dracula’s Heiress?”

Fluttershy nodded. “I know I may not seem like much, but—”

“What?” The mare interrupted. “You’re carrying around a killer bird like it’s a cool beetle you found. What about that is supposed to make you seem like ‘not much?’”

“Well, he’s really just a coincidence,” Fluttershy said. “Without him I’m really just a weak, awkward new vampire.”

“Well, geez, you should hold onto him, then. Having that thing on your back will keep just about everyone off your case.”

“But then how will I get better?”

“That seems kinda redundant.” Fluttershy gave her a puzzled look, so she continued. “If you’re making yourself weak to learn how to not be weak, I think maybe you missed the point.”

“Oh, hmm…” Fluttershy looked down in thought. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Of course it does, I’m a genius,” the mare said.

“Mm…” Fluttershy paused awkwardly, then decided to change the subject. “So, what are the gems for, uh…” She pursed her lips. “You never told me your name.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m Fluttershy.”

“Huh?” Fluttershy stepped back in shock.

“Nah, I’m just kidding.” The mare laughed loudly. “The name’s Brisk Breeze. Folks call me Brisk.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy chuckled quietly. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Brisk. So, the gems?”

“Oh, they’re mostly just gems,” Brisk said. “I’ve got a couple magic ones tossed in there, but I’ll only sell ‘em if you can tell which ones they are.”

Fluttershy looked down into the case and studied the gems. As far as she could tell, there was nothing off about any of them. They were all just normal, cut stones.

“I don’t see anything,” Fluttershy said.

Brisk nodded. “See, it’s the kinda thing you’ve gotta study. It’s all about the color. Here.” She pulled out a couple gems and put them on the counter. One was a vibrant green, and the other was a clear blue. “So, this green one’s a regular emerald,” she said, “and the other one’s an enchanted emerald.”

Fluttershy looked shocked. “But it looks nothing like an emerald!”

“Wrong,” Brisk said, “it looks exactly like an emerald. It’s just the wrong color. Everything else, the way it reflects light, the way it’s cut, the size, the hardness, it’s all emerald. It’s easy to tell if it’s in a box of emeralds, sure, but that’s why I jumble them up.”

“Huh.” Fluttershy was astonished. “What does it do?”

“Nothing,” Brisk said. “They’re just good material to make magic stuff out of. They’re so full up on magic that they can’t hold any more, so it just pushes magic right through. A regular gem soaks up some of the magic and makes it weaker.”

“Wow,” Fluttershy said. “I had no idea there was so much to it.”

“It’s an art,” Brisk said. “I sure can’t do it. I just sell ‘em.” She laughed. “Here, why don’t you keep the emerald. A welcoming present.”

Fluttershy smiled and picked up the magic stone. “Thank you,” she said brightly. Then she looked around and, slowly, started to get embarrassed. “I, um, don’t have anything to carry it in,” she said.

Brisk laughed. “Bramble’s got bags. Just make sure you bring money next time so you can actually buy stuff.”

“Oh, I will,” Fluttershy said. “Whenever I end up back here. I don’t really need gemstones.”

“Come see us on the full moon,” Brisk said. “Everyone’s open then.”

“That’s, uh…”

Brisk laughed. “Hey, it’s tradition. Full moons are big nights around here. Cliche, sure, but that’s just how it is.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Fluttershy said. She gave Brisk one last warm smile and a polite nod. “Well, it was very nice meeting you.”

“Same to you, Heiress.”

The rest of the market was much of the same. Fluttershy introduced herself to the few creatures in attendance, and they told her what they had to offer. She was constantly surprised by how tame everything seemed to be. Sure, a lot of it was dangerous, but the shopkeepers all seemed to know what they were handling, and they gave the impression that they trusted everyone in the town with whatever they were selling. They managed to make it all seem perfectly safe.

Even more surprising than that, though, was just how light and friendly the atmosphere was. It really was just like the farmers’ markets she’d gone to with Applejack, where the ponies all knew each other, helped each other out, talked and generally just had a good time. She was finally starting to see Trotsylvania as a community rather than a place, and she couldn’t help but smile as, so far, it seemed every bit as warm and loving as Ponyville.

Chapter 14: Sunset

The rest of the day went by uneventfully. After leaving the market, Fluttershy decided that things would probably be a lot easier going forward if everyone in town knew who she was, so she spent the day going around to all the stores and popular meeting places and introducing herself.

She stopped first at the magic guild, which was filled largely with unicorns, although some other creatures were mixed in as well. Fluttershy walked in expecting to be met with lots of dark robes and clandestine whispering, but all she really found was a bunch of bookworms. The building was more of a library than a guild, although they explained that there were plenty of back rooms made to do things other than read, and all throughout the front room ponies were sitting at crowded tables surrounded by stacks of heavy tomes. She couldn’t help but think of Twilight.

“So,” Fluttershy said to the stallion giving her a tour, “what do the creatures in the guild think of Princess Twilight?”

“We don’t have much affection for any Princess,” he replied, “but she does have more appeal than those before her. For a time we thought perhaps she would bring change with her, but that hasn’t happened yet, and many of us have soured on her because of that.”

“I don’t think Twilight even knows about this place,” Fluttershy said. “I’m sure she’d want to make things better for you all if she knew more.”

“But she doesn’t,” the stallion replied. “She’s content with being blind to what happens in the land she rules.”

“I don’t think—” Fluttershy started, but then she decided against that line of thinking. “Well, I’m pretty close to her. If I become Dracula, I’ll make sure she knows what needs to change.”

“The Lady thought the same. She was close to Princess Luna when the sisters were crowned, but it soon became clear that the younger sibling was no less of an outcast than the rest of us. The creatures of the night have never been worth the time of those with true power.”

Fluttershy didn’t know what to say to that, and the conversation quickly petered out. The tour ended soon after, and Fluttershy found herself back in town.

From there she returned to the stage in the center of town to meet the new crowd who had gathered, and then went to get a bite to eat. The food was delicious, and it was clear the chef knew just the right amount of spices to add to a vampire’s dish. She even tasted a hint of garlic that, somehow, didn’t overwhelm her senses. It was quite possibly the best meal she’d ever had, and she left seriously considering hiring the chef on as part of the castle’s staff.

The sky was just starting to turn orange with the setting of the sun as she walked up to the stage again. She recognized everyone in the crowd by now, although some of their names escaped her, and they all recognized her. A couple of them watched her intently as she walked up to the side of the stage and waved the crier over.

“Well, well, welcome back Heiress,” the crier said loudly as he pranced over to her. His teeth glistened in the sunlight when he smiled. “How can I help you this time?”

“Hello,” Fluttershy said, and she smiled back softly. “I was wondering if you knew anywhere notable I haven’t been to yet.”

“Well, there’s still the vampires’ guild,” he said.

Fluttershy pursed her lips. “Um… Anywhere else?”

“Mm…” He put a hoof to his chin and thought for a moment. “No, you got it all, I think. You probably missed a couple hermits here and there, but there’s not much I can do about that, eh?” He laughed. Fluttershy didn’t quite understand why.

“Well, thank you for all the help,” she said quietly. “Is there anything you need before I go?”

“Oh, I’m just peachy,” he said. “You enjoy your night, and don’t get caught out too late! The castle wakes up at night, they say.”

“It does seem that way,” Fluttershy said. “Well, good night, Mr… I don’t think I ever got your name, actually.”

“That you did not,” he said pointedly. “Don’t worry about it. Everyone just calls me The Crier, anyway.”

“Well, that seems kind of impersonal,” Fluttershy said. “I don’t want to be disrespectful after everything you’ve done.”

“Really,” he said, “don’t worry about it.”

“Well, if you say so,” Fluttershy said. “Goodnight then, Crier.” She nodded politely to him, then turned and walked away as he strode back to the crowd.

She decided not to go the the vampires’ guild. If possible, she really wanted to be back in her room before the lights were turned off.

As she walked up to the castle gates, the guards frowned apologetically and crossed their spears. “Sorry, heiress,” one said when she got near. “Still no change.”

Fluttershy frowned. “Really? But it’s getting late, where will I sleep?”

“The vampires have beds,” the other guard said.

Fluttershy made a conflicted noise. “Are you sure you can’t let me in?”

“Orders are orders,” the first guard said.

Fluttershy sighed. “Well… Could one of you please at least take the cockatrice back to wherever in the castle his nest is?” Fluttershy nodded to the cockatrice, and it hopped off her back and strode up to the guards.

They both flinched away from it. “Uh, w-we’re not good with animals like you,” the second guard said. “It’ll just turn us to stone once we’re past the gate.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Fluttershy said. “He promises not to, right, buddy?” The cockatrice looked back at her, then nodded to the guard.

The second guard just stepped back more, so the first guard sighed. “Fine,” he said as he opened the gate, “I’ll do it. Come on, uh… You.” He waved awkwardly, and the cockatrice scurried inside with the guard. The gate swung slowly shut when he let go of it, and closed with a soft, satisfying click.

The second guard let out a deep breath and relaxed. “Please don’t scare me like that, Heiress.”

Fluttershy put a hoof to her mouth to stifle a chuckle. “Alright, I’ll do my best to not be a scary vampire.”

“Please,” the guard said.

Fluttershy nodded. “Well, have a good night.” The guard nodded back, and Fluttershy turned and walked away from the gate.

It was a short walk to the vampires’ guild. It was only a couple houses down the street from the castle gates, and it was undeniable which building it was. It was one of the very few three story buildings in town, and the walls were all made of a dark, nearly black wood. It looked almost like it was coated in a thin layer of soot. There were no windows to be seen anywhere on it. The roof was covered with blood red shingles and steeply pitched, and the gables were decorated with thick, swirling patterns of wrought iron that were barely visible against the dark wood. Large portions of the third floor were left without walls, using the ceilings of the floor below as the foundation for balconies. They were prominent, and gave the impression that the vampires watched over the entire town from up on high.

The door was made entirely of iron, but instead of the swirling tangles that decorated the rest of the house, its only prominent feature was that it was inlaid with a large crescent moon. She walked up and rapped the knocker against the door a few times.

It was answered quickly by an earth pony who opened the heavy door with ease. She was tall and sturdily built, with bright yellow fur and a long gray mane, and her black cloak had a showy golden trim around its edges. She stared intensely down at Fluttershy.

The mare studied Fluttershy for a long moment. She seemed to be picking apart every bit of Fluttershy, from her scrawny legs to her shaky smile, and the longer she stood there, the more worried Fluttershy got that she was going to be judged harshly for being too weak.

Finally, though, the mare grinned wide. Her razor sharp fangs were impossible to ignore. “Heiress, finally! We’ve been expecting you,” she said jovially.

“You… Have?”

“Well, of course,” the mare said. “You’re the first new vampire in ages. We’ve all been just itching to meet you.” She stood aside and held out a hoof. “Please, come inside.”

Fluttershy smiled and walked into the guild. Inside was a warm, pleasant lounge. A fire roared in the center, and vampires were lounging all around it and talking idly. Bookshelves and tables were scattered around, and at the far end of the room was a well-stocked bar, which a pony that Fluttershy thought she recognized was taking advantage of. Besides some candles near the bar, the only light in the room came from the fire, and it wasn’t nearly large enough to light it all up. With the lack of windows, and thus natural lighting, it left the room feeling dim and gloomy, but oddly enough the presence of so many other vampires made that seem like it wasn’t such a bad thing.

“My name is Dayfall,” the mare said. “I’m second in command, behind Windbreaker, who you’ll meet later. Of course, we’re all outranked by you.” She laughed and prodded Fluttershy playfully.

“Are you really?” Fluttershy asked. “I’m so new, though.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t argue with Dracula,” Dayfall said. “You’re The Heiress, so that makes you the second most important vampire in town.”

“Huh,” Fluttershy said. “Well, you really don’t need to treat me like I’m anything special.”

“But you are special!” Dayfall shook Fluttershy with an unexpected vigor. “I mean, none of us were around when Dracula took out her dad. We get to be there with you from day one, and that’s something we’re all excited for. We’ve got big plans for you, little lady.”

“Plans?”

Dayfall nodded and gave Fluttershy a shove towards a dark hallway. “Here, let me show you around some more.”

Fluttershy followed her instructions and made her way into the hallway. Once the fire was out of view, there was nothing in the way of lighting, and Fluttershy could barely see. Fuzzy outlines of things showed up at the edges of her vision, of paintings and vases and suits of armor, but she couldn’t make anything out distinctly, and if she focused on them they usually seemed to disappear.

She could see well enough to know that this hallway only went to one place, though. It let out into a dark room at the end, with not a single door or passageway along the way.

Fluttershy stopped abruptly and turned to where Dayfall was.. “Um, where are we—”

“Shh,” Dayfall hissed. She shoved Fluttershy again, this time far less playfully. Fluttershy swallowed hard and went back to walking down the long hallway.

Near the end, but still a decent ways from the room, the sturdy wood floor turned into cold tiles. Soon after that, the walls opened up, and she was in a small room.

She couldn’t see much, just some shapes she couldn’t quite make out, but she knew the room was small. It was so small, in fact, that as she walked in Fluttershy accidentally kicked something lying on the floor, and she had to stop before Dayfall could even leave the hallway.

“Um—”

“Heiress.” A gruff, scratchy feminine voice in front of Fluttershy interrupted her. “Welcome.”

Without warning, two unicorns who were flanking Fluttershy lit their horns with dim red lights, and at once she could see.

The room really was tiny, hardly big enough for two ponies, let alone the four that were in it. The unicorns were wearing long, dark robes that covered their faces, and the mare in front of Fluttershy was wearing a similar outfit, but her hood was pulled down. Her orange fur looked bloodied in the red light, and her short black mane fell down over the top of her eyes. Her face was hard and experienced, with fierce fire in one eye and cold artificiality in the other, and a deep scar ran across the eye that was clearly fake. She was grinning just enough for her fangs to show, and Fluttershy saw that one of them had been broken in half.

“I am Windbreaker,” the mare said, “head of the vampires’ guild and second most powerful creature in town, behind only Dracula herself. It is truly a pleasure to have you here.”

Fluttershy gulped. “Um, h-hello. I’m... Fluttershy.”

“Oh, I know all about you already,” Windbreaker said. She nodded to one of the unicorns. “Here. A token of my hope for you.”

The unicorn silently floated a glass over to Fluttershy that held a tiny bit of bright red liquid.

“Blood?” Fluttershy asked as she took the glass.

“I was told you’ve not had it fresh,” she said. She ran her tongue over her one good fang. “I took the liberty of… Procuring you some.”

“Fresh?” Fluttershy looked at the glass in horror. “I-I can’t drink this, it’s… Somepony got hurt! I don’t want—”

Windbreaker slammed a hoof down on the ground. Cracks ran through the tiles she hit, and the sound of shattering ceramic sharpened the deafening bang. “Drink.”

Fluttershy yelped, and her lip quivered. She looked at the glass, then at Windbreaker, then at the glass, and slowly raised it to her mouth.

Then, in one fast gulp, she drank it all.

It hit her hard. It was as if everything from last night came at her all at once, and all that intensity spiked right into her. Her heart went into a frenzy as she inhaled sharply. The glass fell from her grasp and shattered on the tiles below. Her legs were shaking, and her eyes went wide as, without warning, the room around her seemed to get clearer. Not brighter, the lights from the unicorns didn’t change at all, but sharper, less ambiguous.

She’d hardly had a drop, and just that made her stronger. That thought flooded into her mind as her heart sped up more and more.

“W-Was…” Fluttershy took a deep breath as she tried to focus enough to get a sentence out. “Was that all you had?”

Windbreaker laughed. “I’d forgotten how easy it is to sway the young ones. The get a single drop and all they want is more.”

“I… What?” Fluttershy tried to focus on Windbreaker’s words, but her mind would only hear one of them. More.

“Okay, now, dear.” Windbreaker stepped over the object on the floor and got nose to nose with Fluttershy. She reared up and put her hooves on either side of Fluttershy’s head, holding her steady as they locked eyes. “I need you to listen very carefully. I have more, but it’s not free. Do you understand me?”

Fluttershy tried to nod, but Windbreaker was holding her head too tight for her to move it. “What do you want?” Her voice trembled as she spoke.

Windbreaker grinned and stepped back across the room. “Now, you see this?” She pointed at the thing on the floor, and Fluttershy nodded. Now that she could see more clearly, she could tell it was a tarp covering some sort of strange pile. “Good.”

Windbreaker grabbed a piece of the tarp, and with one swift motion she ripped it away.

On the floor was a stallion, barely Fluttershy’s age, with his legs tied together and his mouth taped shut. The first thing he saw was Fluttershy, and he quivered in fear and tried to move away from her, only for Windbreaker to push him back with a laugh.

Fluttershy gasped. “Wh—” She stumbled backwards, but Dayfall caught her and shoved her back into the room. “W-What’s…” She couldn’t get any words out.

Windbreaker grinned wide and pointed down at the defenseless stallion.

“Drain him.”

Chapter 15: A Glimpse Of Travel

The sun burned overhead as Pinkie walked through a forest of scarce trees. Leaves covered the ground and crunched under her hooves as she walked. Birds sang sad elegies as she passed, as if in mourning, and animals skittered out of sight. The whole forest seemed melancholy and grim around her.

Pinkie failed to notice any of this. Her head was low, her eyes glued to the ground, and the wind had long since blown her mane in front of her face, an impediment which she deigned to ignore. She had little interest in what lie ahead on her path. The ground was a much simpler sight, and her own mutterings were a far easier sound.

“Stupid Dashie,” she was murmuring under her breath. “Stupid… Applejack. And Twilight.” She huffed indignantly. “What’s the point of being friends with Princesses if they don’t even care about me when I’m gone?”

She’d been walking for several hours now, and had seen no trace of other ponies since leaving Ponyville. Of course, this was largely because she wasn’t using roads or pathways, instead just making a beeline in the general direction of Trotsylvania, but still it dug away at her. She was sure Twilight could find her, if she really wanted to. So, obviously, she didn’t.

“Of course they don’t care,” she went on. “I mean, I wouldn’t care about a pony like me. It’s not like I actually do anything. Sure, I pretend I’m making them happier, but they’re ponies. They’re probably only unhappy in the first place because I showed up.”

And so had it gone, a day of Pinkie wandering and muttering and spiraling, floating constantly on the edge between despair and anger. She tried to stay angry. It was easier. It hurt less. Try as she might, though, she couldn’t hold onto it. Not like she used to. Being angry at her friends had just gotten so much harder since then, and when it faltered she hated herself for having been angry at all. So, back into despair she slid.

For the moment though, as the sunlight seared into her neck and ears, she was managing to stay angry.

“I bet they’re having a party,” she said to herself. “Whatever kind of party they have whenever I go back to the farm. A ‘good riddance’ party. I bet they’re having a great time, playing pin the dumb tail on the dumb Pinkie. Wish I could be there. I’d love to—”

Pinkie let out a pained “oof” as she ran head first into a tree.

“Oww…” She sat on the ground and rubbed her sore head. “Who would put a tree there? Stupid nature, getting in my way. I just wanna see Fluttershy, why can’t I… Hmph.” She picked up a sizable rock and chucked it up into the branches. “How do you like it?”

“It cannot feel pain,” came a voice from nearby.

“Huh?” Pinkie shook her mane out of her eyes and looked around, although she didn’t bother to get up. Her eyes quickly settled on a strange sculpture to the side of the tree, a mass of branches and leaves bundled and twisted into the shape of a small pony. “Oh,” Pinkie said, “hey Bramble.”

“Hello, Pinkamena,” the wind whistled. “Are you alright?”

“Mm-hm.” Pinkie pushed herself to her hooves and started off on her way again, walking right past Bramble, who just watched as she passed.

After a few more trees, Bramble was standing in Pinkie’s path again. “You do not look alright.”

“Sorry,” Pinkie grumbled as she side-stepped around the mass of vines in her way.

“Is there anything you would like me to do?” They asked as she walked by.

“You can leave me alone.”

There was a gust of wind, and then silence. Pinkie walked for several minutes, and as she did her frown got deeper and deeper.

“I wasn’t… You didn’t…” Pinkie was hardly whispering, and kept cutting herself off as she muttered. Her voice got deeper with every sentence, though, and became more of a growl than a string of words. Soon she was just baring her teeth at the world, grumbling as thoughts raced through her mind.

It wasn’t long before it all boiled over, and it did so with sudden, explosive force. Pinkie let out a guttural scream and kicked fruitlessly at the plants coating the forest floor. All she accomplished was sending a few leaves into the air, which the wind quickly carried away to a safer home. She stared at them with burning eyes as they left, and just before they were out of sight she yelled “Good! Stay gone, then!”

“I do not think I should leave you alone,” Bramble said from behind Pinkie.

She wheeled around and stared daggers into the holes Bramble used to give the impression of eyes. “You’re so frustrating,” she yelled with an accusatory point. “I can’t even be mad at you! At least with Dashie I know she’s not sitting around listening to me be mad, but you are!”

“You can be angry with me if you wish,” Bramble told her. “My feelings will not be hurt.”

“Augh!” Pinkie growled. “That’s not the point! Every time I’m sad you just sit there and listen and don’t do anything because you don’t care. Nopony ever cares!”

“I do care,” Bramble said, “I simply do not know how to help. My attempts to do so in the past have only made things worse.”

“You don’t! You don’t have feelings, you can’t care.” Pinkie huffed and started walking away again. “You just pretend like all the others.”

“I have feelings,” Bramble said, “just not in the same way that you do. I do care, Pinkamena.”

“Hmph.” Pinkie ignored them and kept walking.

Bramble was back in front of her again before long. “Tell me what I can do, Pinkamena.”

“I told you,” Pinkie said, “you can leave me alone.”

“I do not think I should,” Bramble repeated.

“Then what do you want?”

“I wish to help you.”

“That’s not true,” Pinkie said. “You wouldn’t have shown up if you didn’t want something.”

“Ah, right.” Bramble waited for a moment, until they were in front of Pinkie again. “I came to give you an update on Fluttershy’s wellbeing.”

Pinkie stopped walking and looked at Bramble. “Huh?”

“She is settling in,” Bramble said, “though she misses you a great deal. She has instructed those in the castle to bring you to her.”

“Really?” Pinkie brightened up for just a moment, but then a realization hit her. “Wait, but… I’m not home.”

“I am aware.”

“They can’t find me if I’m not home,” Pinkie said. Her face sank. “Great. Now I’m just gonna worry Fluttershy on top of everything else. She doesn’t need that.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Just…” Pinkie sighed and started walking again. “Just leave me alone.”

“I could travel with you,” Bramble suggested.

“No you can’t,” Pinkie said. “You don’t ‘travel.’ You’re just there.”

There was a long pause.

“I think I will travel with you.”

They didn’t talk much after that, but Bramble made themselves a constant presence along Pinkie’s path. Their effigies seemed to appear wherever Pinkie wasn’t looking, so that they were already fully formed when she glanced over.

Pinkie didn’t try to talk to Bramble, but she did stop most of her muttering as she walked.

Chapter 16: Struggle

“Drain him.”

Fluttershy wasn’t sure she had heard correctly. She wanted to believe that none of what was happening was how she was seeing it, that her head was too fuzzy and she was imagining things. The whole town had been so nice, and even Dayfall had seemed kind at first. How could it have all changed so fast? Where had this darkness come from?

Her legs shook as she stared down at the stallion without really seeing him. She didn’t want him to be there, staring up at her with helpless, pleading eyes. He was shaking even more than Fluttershy was. His terror filled the room like a thick tar, and there was no doubt that it was Fluttershy he was so afraid of.

Evidently she was taking too long, as Windbreaker spoke again. Her voice was slow and level, as though she were leading a business meeting. “I believe I gave you an order, Heiress.”

“B-But—” Fluttershy stuttered and shook her head meekly. “I can’t.”

“You will,” Windbreaker said.

“No…” Fluttershy shook her head and took a step back. “No!”

With a sudden burst, Fluttershy turned and ran. She leapt into the air and over Dayfall’s head, hoping desperately that the unexpected move would be enough to let her escape.

It wasn’t.

Dayfall reacted in an instant. She hardly even moved. She just bit down on Fluttershy’s tail as it passed overhead, then yanked her back into the room with horrendous force. Too much force, as Fluttershy slammed down hard on the floor where she had just been standing, and pain shot through her body.

“Tsk, tsk.” Windbreaker shook her head slowly. “Dayfall, I’m afraid you’ll have to hold her there for a bit.”

Dayfall stepped forward and placed a hoof heavily on Fluttershy’s side. She wasn’t pressing down hard enough to cause any damage, but it was definitely enough to make Fluttershy unable to ignore the pain radiating from the spot on her side where she’d hit the floor.

Windbreaker crouched down so she was almost at eye level with Fluttershy. From that angle, she loomed over the captured stallion like a vulture. “Now, Heiress, it seems I’ll have to explain some things to you.”

Fluttershy coughed and grunted. “P-Please, stop this.”

“Shut up.” There was a venom in Windbreaker’s voice now that hadn’t been there before. “You have no power here, girl. We follow Dracula alone. So long as you are heiress, I’m going to shape you as I see fit. Understand?”

“But she…” Fluttershy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The hoof on her side was making it hard to breathe. “She said you have to act like I’m Dracula until she comes back.”

“Hah!” Windbreaker sneered at her. “Do we, now? Well, then maybe I’ll just kill you here and take the throne for myself!”

“She w—” Fluttershy groaned. “She wouldn’t let you.”

“Don’t act like you know her, girl,” Windbreaker told her. “I’ve served Dracula for a thousand years. If I killed you here, she would only take that as a sign that you were too weak. She would thank me.”

“You’re a monster.” Fluttershy clenched her eyes shut as tears threatened to well up inside her.

Windbreaker snickered. “Yes, Heiress, I am a monster, and once I’m done with you, you’ll know exactly how that feels.”

“I’ll never—”

“Enough.” Windbreaker reached out and clenched Fluttershy’s jaw shut. “Look at me, girl. I need you to understand your place here.” She waited until she had Fluttershy’s full attention to go on. “You belong to me. I’m going to make you the most powerful vampire to ever live, and then I am going to own you. Understand?”

“N—” Fluttershy tried to respond, but Windbreaker pressed harder on her jaw and shoved her head up at an uncomfortable angle.

“Of course you understand,” Windbreaker continued. “Now, you will drain this stallion. Then tomorrow we’ll bring you another, and another, day after day after day until I decide to stop. Your only choice in the matter is how much it’s going to hurt.”

She pulled her hoof away, and Fluttershy coughed hard. “I’m—” She coughed more when she tried to talk. “I’m not afraid of being hurt.”

Windbreaker laughed. “Oh, no, of course you’re not! No, you can’t stop me from hurting you.” She lifted a hoof up and slowly, methodically pressed down on the stallion’s side until she saw him wince. “I meant how much it’s going to hurt him.”

“N-No, wait, please—” Fluttershy struggled under Dayfall’s hold, but she couldn’t move. “Please, you can’t!”

Suddenly Windbreaker’s face contorted with fury. “I can do whatever I wish to, girl!”

With one swift motion, Windbreaker swiped her hoof up along the stallion’s side and gouged a deep groove into it. He contorted violently, and a muffled cry filled the room as he tried to scream.

“No!” Fluttershy’s voice cracked, and her eyes filled with tears.

“One of you open her mouth,” Windbreaker said coldly.

One of the unicorned knelt down beside her and grabbed both sides of her jaw. She tried to fight it, but there was little she could do as her mouth was forced open.

Windbreaker stretched out a thin, leathery wing, then carefully used it to scoop up as much of the stallion’s quickly draining blood as she could. Then she stepped over his body and pulled Fluttershy’s head uncomfortably to the side and into the air.

“Drink quickly, now,” Windbreaker said. “I’m not going to be patient.

Then she tipped her wing over Fluttershy’s mouth, and the blood started to drain in. It fell straight down into Fluttershy’s throat, and the second it touched her she felt it in her veins, being soaked in and spread around her body in the roaring current. Her heart blasted into full gear, pumping as hard and as fast as it could, and as more and more blood fell into her mouth, it grew ever harder to ignore just how delicious it was.

The last of the first scoop fell into her gaping maw, and Windbreaker stood back. “Shut her mouth and nose,” she said to the unicorn, and they did as commanded. “Drink it, girl, if you want to breathe again.”

Fluttershy fought as hard as she could. She knew that swallowing it could very easily make her mind too fuzzy to stop all of this, and she wanted desperately to prevent that, but there was little she could do. With every passing moment her neck and chest grew hotter as she ran out of air, and through her blurry vision she could see Windbreaker already gathering up a second filling. It was only a matter of time before she was forced to drink it.

So, eventually, she did.

As soon as she swallowed, the unicorn released her and she let out a wet, gurgling cough. It should have hurt, but already she was far past the point of feeling pain. The blood coated her insides as it poured down through her, and within seconds the entire mouthful had been absorbed into her own bloodstream.

It started with the usual rush, the sense of pure power that filled her mind and senses, but soon after that it became something else. She started to feel cold, like the room had suddenly dropped to below freezing, and the fuzziness in her mind vanished altogether. It left only that feeling of power, now pure and unhindered, along with a gnawing sense of what that feeling meant.

She followed her instincts, and her instincts told her to do something she knew she could do. To take something she’d done a thousand times before, and channel all of that newfound power into it, so that’s what she did. She shut her eyes and focused as hard as she could, but not on her vision. Instead, she focused on how she would look out.

How she would Stare.

The power flowed where she pushed it, pooling behind her eyes, and it left the rest of her body frigid. She drained every ounce of strength within herself to power up this one act, and once she’d grabbed all she could, she snapped her eyes open as wide as she could and locked them to Windbreaker.

“Stop,” Fluttershy ordered.

Windbreaker made eye contact with Fluttershy and froze. Her wing went limp, and the blood she’d been gathering fell with a splash to the floor. Her one good eye twitched as she fought back, but she was getting nowhere. Fluttershy had her utterly incapacitated.

“Tell them to let me go,” Fluttershy said.

Windbreaker’s voice faltered and shook as she tried not to speak, but the words came out anyway. “Let her go.”

Dayfall paused for a moment, but begrudgingly removed her hoof and stepped away from Fluttershy.

Fluttershy was up in an instant. She shot forward and grabbed the stallion, then flapped her wings as hard as she could to blast back into the hallway without taking her eyes off of Windbreaker. Only once she was clear of Dayfall did she turn and fly forwards as fast as she could down the hallway.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered to the groaning stallion as she flew. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

As soon as she’d turned around, she heard a furious growl from back in the room, followed by Windbreaker yelling in rage.

“Go! Bring her back to me, whatever it takes! Gouge them out if you have to!”

Chapter 17: The Pain Of Death

Fluttershy squeezed the stallion to her chest as she flew down the hall with desperate ferocity. She could feel the gash on his side staining her fur red, and with every jerky movement she made he let out a little groan of pain. Pain that, at least in her mind, was entirely her fault.

It was too late to stop any of it, though. Her only choice was to get through it.

She exploded out into the main lounge and found an unfamiliar scene. The room was empty, not even the bartender was left, and the fire in the center had smoldered down to glowing charcoal. The room felt cavernous without its denizens, far too open, far too quiet. The walls seemed miles away, but at the same time were completely suffocating. Every noise echoed in the vast emptiness of it, coming back to her only to remind her of how alone she was here.

The most glaring change, though, was that she couldn’t see the door she had come in through.

She knew it should have been there. There was only the one hallway, she couldn’t have possibly gotten lost. The wall was blank, though. She flew up to where it should have been and ran her wing across the wall, hoping that perhaps it had just been hidden from her, but it just wasn’t there. She was trapped inside the guild.

The sound of pounding hooves drew closer from the dark hallway.

There wasn’t enough time to think things through. She had to move, and fast. A quick glance around the room showed three hallways, the one she had just left and two others, and also the bar.

Her first instinct was to hide, to fly under the bar and pray that they wouldn’t look there, but she quickly ruled that out. She couldn’t afford to be caught that easily.

Instead, she flew into the middle hallway.

This one wasn’t nearly as dark and uninviting as the other. The walls were lined with dim candles that flickered as she disturbed the air, and they cast a barely visible glow over what seemed to just be a normal hallway. Both walls had an ample number of doors, all unmarked and identical, and at the end of the hall was an intersection. The walls were painted a humble beige, and the floor was lined with a plush red carpet. It made her think of a hotel or apartment building, with their endless identical hallways that existed solely as paths to more personalized spaces.

At the end of the hall, she turned right.

More of the same greeted her. Muted walls and faceless doors. She decided to rest for a moment, and placed the stallion gingerly onto the carpeted floor. He grunted as he touched the ground, but then went back to his slow, practiced breathing. For a moment, he seemed remarkably calm, considering all that had happened.

As Fluttershy settled down to catch her breath, she carefully unwound the tape wrapped around his muzzle. She tried to be as gentle as possible, but it was clear it still hurt; there just wasn’t a way to remove that much tape without taking some fur with it.

Still, though, she eventually got it all off. As soon as he was free, the stallion took in a huge gulp of air before letting out a long, quiet sigh.

“Thank you,” he muttered. His voice was dry and weak, and he winced with every syllable. It was clear that even just talking was enough to make the gash in his side send out another wave of pain.

“Please don’t thank me,” Fluttershy whispered as she got to work on the ropes binding his legs. “We’re not even safe yet.”

“Why—” He flinched and coughed, which only caused him even more pain. “Why not?”

Fluttershy gave him a strange look. “Well, we’re still in the building…”

“No, I mean…” He took a deep breath. “You stopped one of them.”

“Oh. I…” Fluttershy pursed her lips and turned her attention pointedly back to the ropes. “There’s too many,” she muttered. “I don’t think I can do it to more than one at a time.”

“But you could make one attack the others, or—”

“No!” Fluttershy responded, only realizing afterwards how loud she had been and hastily covering her mouth. “I don’t want to hurt them,” she whispered. “I don’t want any more creatures to be hurt because of me, not even them.”

“They already hurt me,” the stallion said. “They were going to kill me.”

“I know,” Fluttershy said, “and I’m sorry, but—”

She cut her sentence short. Her ears swiveled around as she strained her hearing, and just as she thought, there were hooves approaching them, and fast.

“We have to go,” Fluttershy said.

Without waiting for a response, she scooped up the stallion and started flying again. At the end of the hallway, she turned right again, into yet another identical hall.

The stallion coughed as he strained himself to talk while being carried. “What if they’ve split up?”

“What?” Fluttershy was only half listening. She was too focused on running away.

“If there’s only one, you can stop them.”

“I…” Fluttershy shook her head. “That’s too risky.”

She reached the end of the hall. Something started nagging at the back of her mind as she took another right turn.

“You can’t just run blindly forever,” the stallion said.

“There has to be a way out eventually,” Fluttershy said.

“You don’t know that.”

“It’s better than doing nothing,” Fluttershy said. “Please, I don’t want to—”

The nagging thought finally caught up to her, and her eyes snapped to the end of the hall. She hadn’t even looked, she’d just assumed it would be another intersection, but of course it wouldn’t be. Of course it had to end. If it didn’t, it would pass right through the dark hallway she was first taken down.

She slowed to a stop just as she reached the dead end.

She turned around, but the hooves were dangerously close now. It was too late to go the other way.

“We have to hide,” she hissed as she started trying doors. The first was locked, as was the second, and the third. None of the doors opened to her, and with every one she tried the thundering stomps drew closer.

It was after the seventh door that Dayfall skidded into view back at the intersection. Fluttershy gasped as her eyes focused into a hungry glare.

Dayfall bared her fangs in a wicked smile. “Nowhere left to run, Heiress.”

Fluttershy flew back away from her until she thumped hard against the wall at the end. The stallion let out a yelp of pain in her grip.

Dayfall wasn’t running anymore. She was walking slowly, with the overwhelming pride of a predator stalking their prey. “You should probably put the meat down,” she said. “I’m done being gentle.”

Fluttershy whimpered and decided to do as she said. She set the stallion down as gently as possible in the corner. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Just… Stop her,” the stallion replied.

Fluttershy stood back up and looked at Dayfall. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because you need it,” Dayfall said. She continued her slow march forward, terrorizing Fluttershy with the futility of her situation. “Dracula brought you here to get stronger, didn’t she? You can’t very well become Dracula if you can’t even stop me from killing you. You wouldn’t last a day.”

Fluttershy bit her lip. “Please, you don’t have to do this. We can just talk about this and figure something out, we don’t need to fight!”

“Hah!” Dayfall smirked and licked her lips. “You really don’t know anything. I want to fight, Heiress. It keeps me sharp. Plus…” She snickered. “Well, it’s just fun! Really, I couldn’t care less about all that junk Windbreaker was going on about. I just want you to be more fun.”

She took a few more steps, and was nearly close enough for them to touch. Fluttershy backed into the corner, trying desperately to get away.

“Please, just stop,” Fluttershy begged. “Just…” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She had no choice. She focused and channeled everything she had into this one moment. “Stop!”

She snapped her eyes open and glared forward, her gaze quickly settling on—

Fluttershy gasped. There was nothing to look at. In the split second Fluttershy had closed her eyes, Dayfall had done the same, and now had her eyes clenched tight.

Dayfall started to laugh madly. “You idiot! I just saw you use that on Windbreaker. I don’t need my eyes, I could find you by smell if I had to.”

Fluttershy took a breath to say something else, but she never got the chance. In a flash of movement, Dayfall blasted into her and picked her up off the ground, then slammed her violently against the wall.

Fluttershy let out a guttural cough as Dayfall pressed the side of her leg up against Fluttershy’s neck. She let go with everything else, using only her own weight pressed into that one point to pin Fluttershy to the wall.

It was only now that Fluttershy truly realized how much bigger than her Dayfall was. Her hooves dangled several feet off the ground, and Dayfall seemed to hardly need to stand on her hind legs to do so. She was a mountain of a pony, and the full weight of that mountain was crashing down onto her new.

Fluttershy wrapped her legs around the one pinning her, trying desperately to hold herself up by something other than her neck. She could still breathe, but barely, and she was absolutely certain that at any moment Dayfall could choose to take that last bit away.

“P-Please,” Fluttershy grunted.

Dayfall sneered at her. “You sound pathetic, whimpering like that. Have some dignity. You’re The Heiress, act like it.”

Fluttershy kicked outwards with her hind legs, and they landed square against Dayfall’s chest, but the massive pony didn’t even flinch. Instead she pushed down ever so slightly harder on Fluttershy’s neck.

“You know,” Dayfall said, “I’ve always wondered if a vampire who hadn’t drank much blood would still taste like a vampire. Should we find out?”

“Don’t,” Fluttershy pleaded, “I—”

She was cut off as Dayfall used her free hoof to grab Fluttershy’s cheek and shove her head painfully to one side. Then, without any hesitation, Dayfall hissed sharply and buried her fangs into Fluttershy’s neck.

Fluttershy knew right away that something wasn’t right.

She’d cut herself on her fangs before. She’d even bitten herself on accident, and it wasn’t like this. It was supposed to be smooth, painless, more of a strange sense of pressure than anything else.

What she felt now was different. It was the hot, stabbing pain of a bite.

Fluttershy cried out as she felt the blood gush out of her. Dayfall hadn’t gone for an artery, but it was still a bite to the neck. She tensed up and writhed as Dayfall bit down harder, squeezing out her blood with all the ferocity she could muster, and by the time the bite ended and Dayfall pulled away, Fluttershy’s head already felt fuzzy from blood loss.

Dayfall spit the blood out onto the floor. “Disgusting,” she said. She let go of Fluttershy’s face so she could wipe her own clean, and in doing so left Fluttershy to dangle helplessly from her neck once again.

“Pl—” Fluttershy let out a wet cough, which made the fresh wound bleed even more. The blood was draining out quickly and falling over Dayfall’s leg, then onto the floor. “Please, stop this.”

“Still with the whining?” Dayfall snorted. “After you stopped Windbreaker like that, I was hoping you’d at least put up a fight. If you’re going to be such boring prey, I might as well just end it here.”

“No,” Fluttershy begged, “please, just let us go.”

Dayfall growled and pressed down harder on her neck. “You’re a miserable excuse for a vampire, you know that?” She kept pressing harder, and it wasn’t long before Fluttershy felt her oxygen supply cut off. “Heck, you’re not even a worthwhile pony. You deserve to be nothing, so how about we make that happen?”

Fluttershy kicked helplessly as her muscles started to burn. She wasn’t even reaching Dayfall anymore. Her legs were just thrusting blindly into the air between them. Her vision started to tunnel, and she shut her eyes tight as she tried desperately to think of a way out.

There was nothing, though. She only had one tool to use and Dayfall had made sure she couldn’t do that. Even if she could manage to catch her eyes now, it wouldn’t matter. She could no longer talk to tell her to back away.

Still, that really was her only tool, and if she didn’t do anything she would undoubtedly die here. She had nothing to lose, so she did what she had done before and focused every ounce of power within herself into her vision.

Again her limbs got cold, but this time she pressed harder. She pulled at the strength inside her until her legs were numb and useless. Her ears went cold as she pulled the power from her hearing, and the rest of her body started to chill as she slowly drained the rest of her senses.

It wasn’t enough. She could feel it now, just how strong she could make herself, and she wasn’t there yet. So she pulled from deeper still.

The ice started to spread inwards, robbing her of everything she had. First her lungs, which she stole her breath from, but that still wasn’t enough. Nor were her other organs, or anything else within her. She just couldn’t find enough strength.

So she took the only bit she had left, and stopped her heart.

Even with her senses gone, the pain was nearly unbearable. It wasn’t the sharp pain of the bite, or the dull pain of her many bruises. It wasn’t any pain she ever should have felt. It was the pain of unbecoming, of ceasing to be. What raged through her body, where once had been the strength that she so greedily gathered up, was the pain of death.

She wasn’t dead, though. Not yet, and she was finally strong enough. With a final snap, she flung her eyes open and glared straight at Dayfall.

For a moment, nothing happened. It seemed like she had failed.

Then, the massive pony faltered. Slowly, with jerky movements, she stopped her assault and stepped back away from Fluttershy.

Fluttershy crumpled to the floor in a heap. Tears welled up as everything came back, and all that was left of that horrific pain was the shadow of a memory. Her heart beat once more, her lungs filled with air, her hearing returned. She hurt all over, and was too weak to move at all, but it was all back, and no pain could compare to what she had just felt.

Dayfall stood still and stared blankly at the wall for several minutes as Fluttershy coughed and writhed on the floor. Every so often her eye would twitch, but she showed no other signs of being able to break free of Fluttershy’s Stare. She was utterly entranced.

For a few minutes, at least.

Then it all fell at once, and Dayfall slumped back as her body returned to her. She was stunned, and took a moment to recover, but slowly her gaze turned down to where Fluttershy was curled up. As she pieced everything together, a smile grew on her face.

“That’s more like it,” Dayfall said with a laugh. “Get up, Heiress. I’m not done with you yet.”

Chapter 19: A Talk

Fluttershy was stunned. “You… The Visitor is…” She sat up straighter, suddenly very worried about making a bad impression.

“I am simply The Visitor,” they replied. “Please, do not feel the need to give me any special treatment. I’ve been a friend to your successors since long before they took the name Dracula.”

Fluttershy swallowed and tried, unsuccessfully, to relax. “Um… W-What did you want to talk about?”

The Visitor stared at her for a long moment, giving the impression of contemplation. “How was your day?”

“I—” Fluttershy tilted her head in confusion. “What?”

“How was your day?”

Fluttershy hummed in thought. “Good?” She shrugged. “The ‘day’ part, at least. You know, before I…”

“Died?” They laughed. “Yes, that does tend to sour one’s day. How did you find that, by the way? I can’t imagine it was very enjoyable.”

“It hurt,” Fluttershy said. She rubbed her legs together. “It hurt really, really badly.”

“And beyond that?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “It just hurt.”

“That isn’t true,” The Visitor told her. “Part of you held it back. How did that part feel?”

Fluttershy looked down at her hooves. “I… Don’t know.”

“What kept you going? Power? Confidence? Ambition?”

“I was scared.”

“Of dying?”

“Of failing.” Fluttershy ran a hoof idly over the boards of the raft. “I don’t think Dracula would have let me die, but… I didn’t want to let everypony down.”

“Hm.”

They floated along in silence for a bit, the only sound the occasional splash of the oar. After a bit, Fluttershy laid down at the edge of the raft and experimentally poked at the water with a hoof. It felt strange, like it only gave just enough resistance for her to know it was there, and her hoof was still dry when she pulled it back up. She also noticed that the water wasn’t reflecting her image, but she couldn’t be sure if that was because of the river or because of her.

She spent the next few minutes running her hoof through the water as they floated along, making odd shapes and symbols with the wake she left, and soon enough she started to feel a bit more comfortable in the strange place she’d been brought to.

Eventually, Fluttershy decided to ask a question, although she didn’t look up from the water to do so. “Why won’t anyone talk about you?”

“It simply isn’t in their nature,” The Visitor responded. “Part of life is to ignore the inevitability of death. To speak of it, or of me, would invite the idea into their minds, and thus into their lives. Only by necessity do the creatures of your town even acknowledge my existence.”

“I’ve been thinking about you ever since I found your portrait, though,” Fluttershy said.

They chuckled. “Despite what some may wish to believe, I do pick favorites.”

“Oh.”

There was another beat of silence between them. The reflection of the moon in the water drew close to the horizon.

“Was I always meant to become Dracula?”

“Not at all. In truth, I shouldn’t have even spoken to you until you took the throne, but… Well, I do pick favorites.”

Fluttershy felt her cheeks get hot. She pursed her lips and turned away.

“She won’t give up the throne willingly, you know,” The Visitor said.

“I have to try,” Fluttershy replied. “I don’t want to hurt anypony.”

“And if you fail to reach her with words?”

“I…” Fluttershy shook her head. “I just can’t fail. I have to find a way.”

“Mm.”

The moon in the water touched the horizon, and the world around Fluttershy started to dim. It got hazy, like a dense fog had rolled in, and her ears started to ring.

“You should start thinking of a title.” The Visitor sounded miles away. “‘The Heiress’ will be obsolete before long.”

Then the world blinked out of existence.

Fluttershy took in a deep, gasping breath and sat bolt upright. The first thing that hit her as she awoke was the pain, a dull ache that radiated through her body alongside a sharp stabbing pain that shot through her any time she moved her neck. Her back was sore, her legs were mostly numb, and she had a horrible headache.

Soon after that, the world started to fill in around her. She heard muffled voices and the scuffle of movement, and saw the shape of a dark room around her. She was sitting on some hard surface, and two ponies loomed over her.

The first one she made out was a familiar face. Dayfall sneered down at her, looking incredibly frustrated to see her open her eyes. Beside her was a stallion Fluttershy was sure she had seen before. He was old, incredibly old, but solidly built. His fur was a deep orange, but was discolored all over with the marks of a long life. A messy gray mane fell down over his scarred face, and his sharp eyes stared down at her with suspicion.

“You’re…” Fluttershy narrowed her eyes as she fought to remember him.

“I was wondering if you’d recognize me,” he said. His voice was gravelly and made every word sound like it hurt to say.

“Applejack’s great uncle?”

The stallion winced, and a frown crossed his face. “Van Helsing!” He turned to Dayfall with a look of anger. “Don’t you all teach new vampires anything anymore?”

Dayfall shrugged.

Fluttershy coughed and shook her head hard to try and knock away her grogginess, but all she got was a harsh reminder of the wound on her neck. “So,” she said with a groan of pain, “you’re not—”

“Yes, I am Applejack’s great uncle, I’m just mad that that’s why you know me.” He huffed and stomped off across the room.

Fluttershy took the lull in conversation as a chance to make out where she was. There was a small bed in one corner, which was notably empty, and a table beside it. Near that was a small wardrobe, and a mostly-intact bookshelf sat on the opposite wall filled with some books and knick-knacks with no rhyme or reason to why they were there. Besides that, the room was empty and dull.

Fluttershy was lying on the floor, and took a moment to sit up in a more comfortable position before turning her attention to Dayfall. “The stallion?”

“He’s with the doctor,” she replied with a glare.

“Why am I here?”

“The doctor doesn’t take vampires,” Dayfall said. “Some agreement with the old codger.”

Helsing walked back over to them with a needle between his teeth. “I like to keep an eye on you lot,” he said.

Dayfall rolled her eyes.

“So you helped me?” Fluttershy asked Helsing. “Thank you very much.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” he replied as he walked around behind her. “You woke up before I could stitch that up.”

“Well, I still—” Fluttershy started, but was cut off by a sharp pain as, without warning, Helsing started to stitch the wound on her neck closed. Fluttershy inhaled sharply through her teeth, and Dayfall laughed at her.

“Did you tell Windbreaker what happened?” Fluttershy asked through gritted teeth.

Dayfall scoffed. “When would I have done that? You told me to wait.”

“Oh,” Fluttershy said. “I’m sorry. It was the only way to stop you.”

“You’re right about that,” Dayfall said, “and you better be ready to do it again after this ‘talk’ of yours.”

“No fighting in my room,” Helsing said. He pulled the last stitch tight. Fluttershy winced, then sighed in relief that it was done.

Dayfall grimaced. “Fine.”

Helsing patted Fluttershy on the back and walked back around to stand beside Dayfall. “You’re all set,” he said. “All told, you did more to yourself than she did to you. Give it an hour or two and you’ll be back in top shape.”

“That’s it?” Fluttershy was shocked. “I thought I’d be in bed for days.”

Helsing shrugged. “You heal fast.” Then he went and sat heavily on his bed. “Well, I’m done. You two can have your talk.”

“Yeah, let’s get this over with,” Dayfall said. “Then we can go back in the hall and I can get back to ripping your throat out.”

Fluttershy frowned. “I still don’t understand why you want to hurt me.”

“I told you, it’s fun,” Dayfall said.

“It’s not fun for me.”

Dayfall scoffed. “So? Why should I care how you feel?”

“Well, you should care about everyone in town,” Fluttershy said, “but I guess for now you should care because I’m going to be Dracula some day.”

“If you survive.”

“Yes,” Fluttershy said, “if I survive. Then I’ll be Dracula, and you’ll have tried to kill me.”

Dayfall’s expression softened. “Are you threatening me?”

“I’m just saying that you should think things through more,” Fluttershy said. “Enjoying fighting doesn’t mean you have to be cruel. You’re in control of yourself, you could have thought of another way at any point in your life. You need to stop making excuses.”

Dayfall laughed. “That’s rich coming from the pony who just brainwashed me.”

“I just told you to do something,” Fluttershy said. “I couldn’t change how you think. I can’t do any more than Dracula could do by commanding you to do something.”

“Yeah right.”

“It’s true, watch.” Fluttershy took a deep breath, then snapped her eyes wide open and locked them to Dayfall’s. “Kill Helsing.”

Dayfall took a step back in shock. “W-What?” She looked back and forth between Fluttershy and Helsing frantically. “No! I can’t do that, that’s insane!”

Fluttershy shut her eyes and let her breath out, then looked back up at Dayfall. “See?”

Across the room, Helsing laughed. “That was a nice demonstration, Heiress, but I think you’re underestimating what the vampires would do if Dracula told them to.”

“Well, it got my point across,” Fluttershy said. She looked hard into Dayfall’s eyes. “Even as Dracula, I could not force kindness onto the vampires. Being kind is a choice you have to make. That means you’re choosing, every day, not to be kind. Every day you wake up and ask yourself ‘Am I going to be kind today?’ Every day, you say ‘No.’ Why? What makes you choose to be unkind?”

“Please, I’m not ‘choosing’ anything,” Dayfall said. “This is just who I am.”

“I can’t make you believe me,” Fluttershy said, “but maybe tomorrow, when you wake up, you’ll hear yourself ask that question, and you’ll hear yourself say no. That’s all I can hope for, for now.”

“You’re so full of it,” Dayfall said. “I’m done with this. Come on, let’s go finish what we started.”

“No,” Fluttershy said, “I’m not going to fight you. We both know I can stop you. I just did it again, and I didn’t collapse this time. Just go.”

Dayfall growled and made for the door. “Fine. Have it your way, Heiress.”

“Oh, Dayfall?” Fluttershy asked before she could leave.

“What?” Dayfall snapped.

“Is Windbreaker still back in that room you took me to? I need to have a talk with her.”

Dayfall scoffed and walked out the door. “Yeah, she’s there. Go get yourself killed.” Then she slammed it shut behind her.

Chapter 20: Broken

Fluttershy groaned as she adjusted her position on the floor. She didn’t want to wait for Windbreaker to send another pony after her, and she was steadily getting the feeling in her legs back, so she decided it was time to move.

She put a hoof solidly on the ground and tried to push herself up. Then her leg promptly fell out from under her and dropped her back to the floor.

“If you can’t even get up,” Helsing said from his bed, “I can’t imagine you’ll put up much of a fight against Windbreaker.”

“I don’t want to fight her,” Fluttershy grunted. She made another attempt, this time using both front legs at once, then slowly bringing herself up to standing. Her legs wobbled under her, and she had to lean against the wall for support, but this time she managed to stay upright.

“You ain’t got much choice in the matter,” Helsing told her. “No words are going to get her to put her plans aside. You’re the best chance she’s had to get real power in centuries.”

“We’ll see about that,” Fluttershy said. With some effort, she reached out and pulled the door open.

“Girl, just wait for an hour. Read a book! Get yourself back into shape at the very least.”

“She already hurt one pony because of me,” Fluttershy said as she pushed herself into the hallway. “I can’t be afraid of what she might do to me if being afraid will make her hurt somepony else.”

“She’ll rip you apart!”

Fluttershy looked up and down the hallway, and to her right spied the corner of the bar that stood in the lounge. She turned that way, fell against the wall, and started painstakingly walking in that direction.

“I have a doctor,” Fluttershy mumbled back to Helsing as she left. “He’ll put me back together.”

Then the door swung shut behind her, and she was alone.

The wall gave Fluttershy the support she needed to walk, but that didn’t mean it was comfortable. Every movement scraped her side against it, and with it her neck, sending shots of pain into her spine and down her back. It made her walk with a strange, sliding limp that gave the impression more of her dragging herself down the wall than walking alongside it.

The lounge was still dark and empty. The coals had long ago lost the last of their heat, and there was nothing left to light the room at all. It left the room looking strange. Fluttershy could still see, and in fact could make things out even more clearly than before, but the world was cast in a dull monochrome. Everything was colored in shades of darkness. Not black and white, there was no light to shine on anything at all, but the darkness itself. It was like it was thicker further away, more omnipresent, like looking at stars in the night sky and knowing, somehow, which ones were the closest.

A few slow, grueling steps later and she was back in the dark hallway.

She could see it clearly now, and it was a strange sight. It reminded her of the hall of portraits in the castle, but where that had been organized and uniform, this was chaotic and lawless. Portraits once again lined the walls, all of old important-looking vampires and embellished in just the right ways to make them seem fearsome, but around each portrait was a smattering of decorations and other baubles. Some held crests and weapons, some stored scores of books, and others still seemed decorated purely for aesthetic purposes, but no two sections were alike.

They did have one similarity, though, and that was that they made it very hard for Fluttershy to walk down this hallway. She kept having to stop and find new ways to support herself because her path would be blocked by a bookcase or a suit of armor, and moving around these obstacles slowed her pace to a crawl. Worse still, it was noisy, and every errant bump as one of her legs shook and sent her teetering in a direction she hadn’t expected let out a crash telling Windbreaker exactly where she was.

At first she tried to stay hopeful that perhaps Windbreaker hadn’t heard her yet, but that hope was dashed when, about halfway down the hallway, a gust of wind started up and refused to stop.

Luckily, it wasn’t strong enough to push her back, and she forged steadily onward.

She couldn’t see Windbreaker in the room at the end. She was either too far away, or hiding from Fluttershy’s sight. All Fluttershy saw was the blank wall at the back of an empty room that, for whatever reason, was now blowing wind down the hall at her.

“I just want to talk,” Fluttershy tried calling out.

There was no response.

“Windbreaker, please,” Fluttershy said, “there’s no reason for us to fight. Let’s just talk, and—”

She was cut off by something on the breeze whizzing past her head. In the corner of her vision, a tuft of her mane floated gently down to the floor, having been cut cleanly off.

Fluttershy gasped and pressed herself against the wall. “Please,” she repeated, “I don’t want anypony to get hurt!”

“You go ahead and talk, then,” Windbreaker’s voice came from the empty room ahead. “Just don’t move too much when you do. I’d just hate to miss your eyes and hit something more important.”

Fluttershy gulped and started moving again, although now she kept her head low and her ears alert.

“Dracula will never give me the throne if you make me your puppet,” Fluttershy said.

“You’ll take it,” Windbreaker said. Something blasted past above Fluttershy’s head. “That’s the whole point.”

“Why not just take it yourself?”

“She lets her guard down for you. She may have lost her spine, but she’s still the strongest vampire out there.”

“If you’re so sure you’re right, why won’t you just talk to me about it? I’m sure we could—”

Fluttershy’s ears twitched as another sharp whir flew towards her. She pushed herself off the wall in an effort to avoid it, but it was too fast and still sliced painfully across her cheek. She let out a cry and held a hoof to her cheek, which quickly became slick with blood.

“It’ll hurt less if you just give up,” Windbreaker said.

“I can’t do that,” Fluttershy replied, and she put the bloody hoof to the ground and started trudging onwards once more. She stayed off the wall this time, her legs having gotten enough feeling back for her to at least attempt to walk, although the movement was awkward and ragged.

“Fine. I guess we’ll do this the hard way.”

Suddenly the wind picked up, and a dozen more knives flew her way.

Fluttershy acted on instinct and flapped her wings against the wind as hard as she could, trying desperately to knock the projectiles out of the air, and for the most part it worked. There was a clatter as most of them hit the walls and floor.

She missed two of them, though, and a second later they cut deep grooves into Fluttershy’s front legs.

She yelped, and her legs trembled. She nearly fell to her knees, but somehow she managed to stay standing, as painful as it was to put that much weight on those legs.

Fluttershy let out a deep breath in frustration, but since her teeth were clenched from the pain it came out as a hiss. “Just stop this,” she said quietly.

Then Fluttershy snapped her eyes open and Stared at the spot that Windbreaker had been standing in the first time she came into the room. “Stop,” she commanded.

Immediately, the wind died down, and there was a noisy crash from the room as a pile of knives fell to the floor. Behind it, Windbreaker growled.

Fluttershy sighed in relief. She started her walk back up, trudging painfully forward.

“I really just want to talk,” Fluttershy said. Her voice was low and tired. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

Windbreaker said nothing.

“You can talk, you know,” Fluttershy said. “I want to hear what you have to say.”

Windbreaker laughed at that. “Fool.”

Fluttershy frowned. “I don’t think it’s foolish to think everypony has kindness inside them.”

Windbreaker laughed harder. “Are you really serious right now?”

“Of course I’m serious,” Fluttershy said. “I think we can all—”

“You really are stupid.”

As Windbreaker spoke, the breeze picked up again, easily twice as strong as it had been before. Fluttershy gasped and crouched, preparing to dodge an attack, but it was far too late. She was too close, and she wasn’t even watching the right direction.

The wind was blowing in from behind her this time.

Just as Fluttershy processed what was going on and started to turn around, the first knife hit her. It sliced a deep groove into her back before tumbling on past her.

She yelped in pain, but didn’t have time to react past that. The second knife hit right after, cutting through an ear, and the third flew through one of her back legs. Plenty of knives missed her, too, slamming harmlessly into the far wall of the room, but not nearly enough. By the end, she finally fell to her knees.

Fluttershy coughed as she tried to still her trembling body. “Please,” she murmured, “I just—”

“Shut up, girl,” Windbreaker said. “I’m done playing. It’s time for you to feel real power.”

With that, the wind shifted direction again.

Fluttershy braced herself, but it was useless against what was to come. The first knife buried itself into her shoulder. She cried out in pain just as the second knife struck her hind leg, and similarly stabbed deep into her flesh. Then four more slammed into her side all at once, and the force of them sent Fluttershy flying.

She didn’t go far, but she landed hard, and the jostling of it made the knives cut away even more. She screamed in agony at the onslaught of pain.

Suddenly, there was a presence behind Fluttershy. “Stupid, stupid girl,” Windbreaker said. She put a hoof down on the side of Fluttershy’s head to stop her from looking up. “You really thought that would work if you couldn’t even see me?”

“I had to try,” Fluttershy groaned.

Windbreaker scoffed and pressed down painfully. “Dracula really has lost her mind. I knew she’d gotten soft, but to think a weakling like you could earn anything but a painful death is just lunacy.”

“She’s your leader,” Fluttershy said. “You’re supposed to believe in her.”

“Is she?” Windbreaker leaned down closer to Fluttershy. “She hasn’t led the vampires in centuries. It’s been me, and times have been good. I brought us food. Safety. Fun. Dracula would have us hide away in this dump for the rest of eternity. The vampires don’t actually listen to her. They listen to me.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Fluttershy said. She coughed hard. “What you’re doing will just get the vampires exterminated.”

“You bought into that nonsense she spews about her father?” Windbreaker laughed. “She just wants to feel like she took her father out for more than just power. She’s a delusional old bat.”

“That’s not true. She wants—”

Windbreaker ignored her, and instead lifted her free hoof up and pressed it down hard on the blade in Fluttershy’s shoulder. Fluttershy screamed and shuddered as pain wracked her body.

“Oops,” Windbreaker said, “wrong way. I meant to pull that out for you.”

Fluttershy let out a quiet sob. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I can,” Windbreaker told her. She hooked her hoof under the hilt of the blade in Fluttershy’s shoulder and flicked it into the air in a quick motion, then caught it with a wing. Fluttershy barely held back another scream as it cut through her again on the way out. “I’m teaching you a lesson.”

“What lesson?”

“That I’m in charge,” Windbreaker said. “You do what I say, otherwise this all happens again.”

“I won’t give up.”

Windbreaker laughed. “You’re tenacious, at least. Let’s see if we can change that. I really don’t like what those eyes of yours can do.”

In a slow, taunting motion, Windbreaker brought the knife in front of Fluttershy. Her blood still dripped off of it in heavy globs. Then Windbreaker turned the knife so all Fluttershy could see was the thin, sharp edge of it.

Fluttershy wasn’t paying attention to that, though, because in doing so Windbreaker had put the tiniest sliver of her wing into Fluttershy’s vision.

Her eyes snapped open, and Windbreaker froze. “Drop it,” Fluttershy ordered.

The knife fell to the floor.

“Take your hoof off of me.”

Windbreaker did as she was told.

Fluttershy tilted her head achingly upwards. Above her loomed Windbreaker, her face etched into a deep scowl. Fluttershy locked eyes with her.

“Move in front of me.”

Windbreaker did. Fluttershy never lost eye contact.

“Sit down.”

Windbreaker sat.

“Thank you,” Fluttershy said. She groaned as a wave of pain washed over her, but she pushed it away. “Let’s have a talk.”

“You can’t make me care about what you say,” Windbreaker said defiantly.

“Of course not,” Fluttershy said. “This is just a talk.”

“Then talk.”

“Do you really think you’ve done the right thing for vampires, and not just for yourself?”

“Yes,” Windbreaker said confidently. “We’ll never survive by hiding away like this. They’d come for us eventually.”

“Why not try to make peace with the outside world, then?”

“You’re such an idiot,” Windbreaker said. “They’d just find us faster then.”

“I don’t agree,” Fluttershy said. “Equestria is a peaceful place now. They’d welcome us all.”

“You’re a naive little child. The only way to ward them off is by making them fear us.”

Fluttershy sighed. “Well, I’m not going to change your mind in one conversation.”

“If you release me I’m going to kill you,” Windbreaker said. “You’ll have to kill me before then.”

Fluttershy shook her head. “I’m not going to hurt you. I want you to see that Equestria is a kind place. So, I’m going to show you.”

Windbreaker gave her a disgusted frown. “What does that mean.”

“I want you to—”

“Hold your tongue, Heiress.” A familiar, regal voice cut Fluttershy off before she could give any commands.

Behind Windbreaker, the shadows twisted and took on a new image. They warped together, curved in spirals around each other, and in a fast, smooth change took form as Dracula.

“My Lady?” Fluttershy looked up at her in shock.

In that shock, she’d completely forgotten about Windbreaker, and in that tiny window of time she broke free.

Windbreaker pounced, her ears back and her fangs out. She hissed with pure killing intent as she flew at Fluttershy.

As she flew through the air, though, a thin rope of shadow hardened in front of her. She had no time to respond, and it slammed straight into her neck, stopping her cold and instantly taking her breath away. Then the spindly tendril wrapped itself tightly around her neck and held her firmly in midair.

Windbreaker sputtered and grasped at the rope binding her, but her hooves passed right through it. She was completely powerless to free herself.

Dracula walked calmly up behind Windbreaker. “My apologies for the intrusion, Heiress, but this one had some very interesting things to say about me. Care to repeat them, Windbreaker?”

Windbreaker’s mouth moved as she tried to talk, but no sound came out.

“Hm?” Dracula tilted her head. “I can’t quite hear you.”

Fluttershy bit her lip. “My Lady, please, you don’t have to do this.”

“Yet do it I shall.”

“Please, I was trying to help her!”

“This one has lost her right to your help.” Dracula stared hard at Windbreaker. “Speak up, girl.”

Windbreaker pounded her chest in a desperate attempt to force air out. Fear pulsed through her eyes.

Dracula scowled. “Speak!” With her command, the rope binding Windbreaker flew against the wall at remarkable speeds, slamming her so hard against it that cracks ran far enough to hit both the ceiling and floor.

Fluttershy gasped. Without thinking, she snapped her eyes open again. “Dracula, stop!”

The darkness holding Windbreaker disappeared, and she crumpled down onto the floor and started gasping for life.

Dracula turned her head to Fluttershy in a slow, smooth motion. “Did you just give me an order?”

“I…” Fluttershy blinked and swallowed hard. “I-I just don’t want anypony to get hurt.”

Dracula narrowed her eyes at Fluttershy and thought.

“Fine.”

The shadows making up Dracula’s form melted back into the walls and floor, and it was like she had never been there at all.

Down the hall, Windbreaker was wobbling as she pushed herself back to her hooves.

“I’m still—” She coughed violently and spat out some blood.” I’m still going to kill you.”

Fluttershy Stared at her one final time. “No, you’re not.”

Windbreaker growled. “I will never forget this.”

“I would hope not,” Fluttershy said. “I think you’ll have a long time to think about it once you do what I ask.”

“You’re not asking.”

“You’re right, I’m not,” Fluttershy said. “I’m The Heiress, and you tried to kill me. I can’t just ignore that.”

“Get on with it.”

“Alright,” Fluttershy said. “I want you to go to Ponyville and find Princess Twilight. Tell her I sent you to learn about kindness. Then, I want you to tell her about every single time you’ve ever hurt another creature in your entire life. Whatever happens from there is up to her.”

“They’ll lay my crimes on this whole town,” Windbreaker said. “You’re dooming us all.”

“We’ll see,” Fluttershy said. “Now go.”

Windbreaker grumbled something incomprehensible under her breath and started to walk away. Before long, she was completely out of sight. Fluttershy watched the hallway where she’d gone with bated breath for a long moment, worried that the effects of her Stare wouldn’t last, but eventually she accepted that she was safe and let out a long, exhausted breath.

Then she took another deep breath and called out into the air. “Helsing? I heard you follow me. Could you please come help me? I’m not sure if I can move.”

Chapter 21: A Glimpse Of Arrival

Pinkie stood in the eye of a dense storm of fog.

All around her, walls of white too thick to see through rose up to the sky, and even arced overhead to blot out the stars above. Beyond the fog stood a dense, dark forest, but she only knew this from experience. From where she stood, her entire world was the rickety little platform that trains only stopped at if they were asked to. It was poorly maintained, made with rotting boards that had long since fallen through in several places. The railing around the edge of the platform existed only as a long-forgotten memory, just a few posts stuck haphazardly into the soft ground around the platform, and the little ticket booth had never once been occupied by a pony. At the moment it served only as a perch from which a group of crows watched Pinkie with curious eyes.

Pinkie wasn’t shocked to find Bramble waiting when she stepped off the platform. She also wasn’t interested, though, and just walked past them towards the foggy depths.

Moving through the fog was like stepping into a sauna, except it didn’t have the same heat. The air was just hard to move through, it gave just enough resistance that pushing through it felt like it should have come with a real, tangible pressure, even though it didn’t. It weighed down on Pinkie, pushed her ever deeper into the peat that her hooves sank into with every step, and it was so wet that she felt like she was sweating despite the nighttime chill in the air.

As always, Bramble was there whenever she turned her head. “If you stay at the platform, I can alert The Driver of your arrival,” they said.

“I don’t need him,” Pinkie replied. She’d long since abandoned pretending to keep eye contact with Bramble’s effigies, and instead kept her gaze glued to her hooves.

“This area is dangerous at night,” Bramble argued.

“Don’t care.”

“You should. You could be seriously injured.”

Pinkie huffed. “So?”

“The risk is unnecessary. Just return to the platform, and—”

“I’m not going back!” Pinkie snapped at them. “If you don’t like how I’m getting there, you can leave at any time.”

“I would like you to stay safe, Pinkamena.” They thought for a moment. “I will attempt to keep you safe, but you should be prepared to flee.”

“Mm,” Pinkie grumbled.

They traveled in silence for some time. Nocturnal creatures made noise all around them, hidden safely in the fog. Pinkie’s hooves squelched in the wet ground, and the wind whistled ominously through the trees. All through the hike, the only other living creatures Pinkie saw were crows, which sat perched on most trees she passed with their gazes trained on her.

Hours passed like that. Pinkie never stopped to rest, didn’t strike up conversation, and only at Bramble’s insistence did she stop once at a creek to take a drink of water. She ignored her stomach when it rumbled, disregarded her legs when they ached. She had only one goal, and nothing would keep her from it.

It was deep into the night when she finally broke free of the everlasting fog.

The town seemed oddly quiet to her. She didn’t hear the usual sounds of revelry and excitement that so often poured out onto the streets at night, and even the crier seemed to be speaking in hushed tones. Even the guards outside were standing silent at their posts, whereas normally they would have been grouped up and chatting.

Everything looked normal, though. The long, sturdy cobblestone wall stood as strong and proud as ever, confidently sporting the patchy gray coloring that came with its location, along with the moss and vines that so readily climbed its sides. The massive wooden doors were shut tight, so carefully fit together that they looked like a solid, seamless mass of wood. It was the same Trotsylvania she’d always known.

The door was flanked by two guards, although one of them had fallen asleep at their post. Pinkie walked up to the other wordlessly.

“Well, hey Pinkie,” the guard said. He was a tall white stallion who would have looked more at home in Canterlot’s royal guard, but the polished sheen that his old, well-used armor had gave the impression that he was proud of his work. “You walk here?”

“Mm-hm,” Pinkie hummed.

The guard pursed his lips. “Hey, uh, you alright there, pal?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Well… If you say so.” He stepped over to the door and pushed it open for her. “Go ahead on in.”

“Thanks…” Pinkie didn’t look up at him as she trudged on through the open door and into town.

The streets were empty. The streetlights flickered down onto the dusty roads, but no hooves kicked that dust into the air. The crier was sitting calmly on the edge of his stage, having what seemed to be a normal conversation with the two ponies who were still there. Every so often the hints of life would sound from somewhere, a door would close or someone would speak just loudly enough to be heard for a brief moment, but those moments were few and far between.

Pinkie ignored the crier. She walked straight down to the castle gate, which was being guarded militantly.

“Evening, Pinkie,” one of the guards said. She gave Pinkie a kind smile. “I didn’t think you’d come through this way. I figured they’d fly you in around back.”

Pinkie shrugged.

“Well,” the guard continued, “I’m sure you’re pretty eager to see The Heiress, huh?”

Pinkie gave her a strange look. “Is… Is that Fluttershy?”

“Ohh, yeah, you wouldn’t know. Yeah, The Lady decided to give her a title.”

“Oh.” Pinkie looked down and spoke under her breath. “How much did I miss?”

The guard put a hoof on Pinkie’s shoulder reassuringly. “Hey, I bet she’s gonna be super happy to see you. She’s in the vampires’ guild right now.”

Pinkie frowned. “They don’t let me in there, though.”

“Oh, yeah…” The guard hummed softly, then stepped aside, and the other guard followed suit. “Well, why don’t you go on in and wait for her? They gave her The Architect’s old room, up at the top. Which, uh…” She looked pointedly at Pinkie’s lack of wings. “Maybe you could have someone carry you up?”

“I can get up there,” Pinkie said, and without waiting for a response she walked through the gate and into the castle grounds.

They were as empty as the town, although here it was normal. Some of the creatures that worked in the castle liked to go out at night, but they’d go into town, to the plaza or the tavern where they would meet their friends. There was no reason to stay holed up in the castle grounds when they weren’t working, so at night the large, well-kept fields became home to smaller critters and, occasionally, things that escaped from the gardens.

Pinkie made her way quickly up to the castle and pushed through the heavy doors.

The first thing she noticed when she walked into the grand hall was the light. She knew Dracula usually kept the room dark at night, so being greeted with enough light to see by was odd, to say the least.

The second thing she noticed was the sound of frantic, tiny wings flapping as hard as they could and a much larger creature grumbling in frustration.

The scene that greeted her was a strange one. Dracula was standing in the middle of the room, her cloak ragged and stained with blood, holding a cockatrice awkwardly with one leg.

“Um…” Pinkie couldn’t think of anything to say.

Dracula’s glare shot towards Pinkie, and she gave a disgusted scoff. “Great. Who brought you here?”

“I decided to come on my own,” Pinkie said.

“I thought I was clear before,” Dracula said. “You are forbidden from entering this castle, this town, unless you’re giving The Heiress your blood. Tell me, Pinkamena, have you done that yet?”

“I couldn’t get to her,” Pinkie said. “If she bites anypony, though, she’ll want me here so it can be me.”

“And why should I give her what she wants if she’s not able to do what is necessary for it? I told her how to bring you here, and she said no.”

“What if she changes her mind, though?”

“Dracula cannot be indecisive. She lost her chance.”

Pinkie frowned. “Well, I’m not leaving.”

Dracula narrowed her eyes. “Please, by all means, give me an excuse to make you leave. I would relish the opportunity.”

“I’ll just come back.”

“I could tear you limb from limb with a thought, girl. Do not test me.”

“I’m not scared of bullies,” Pinkie told her.

“You should be.” Dracula huffed and turned away from her. “Fine. If you insist on being in my castle, at least make yourself useful.” She floated the cockatrice across the room. It stared up at Pinkie as she set it gently on the ground. “Take this thing into the depths and find its nest.”

Pinkie looked down at the bird, then reached down and gently pet it. It nuzzled into her affectionately.

When she looked back up, Dracula was gone.

Pinkie knew the castle well. She’d spent enough time roaming its halls, meeting the creatures that lived there and playing games, that she didn’t even have to think about which way she was going anymore. Her hooves just set her on the right path, and before she knew it she’d be at her destination.

The bird strutted alongside her the entire way. It squawked and flapped its wings noisily, which to Pinkie made it look excited. She knew it was probably just excited to be going home, but she found some solace in the idea that maybe it was enjoying being with her.

It took only a few minutes to descend the dark, uneven steps into the dungeons. It was a strange place, cobbled together room by room from rough stone specifically to suit whoever the room was being made for, which meant that nothing was uniformly built. The ceiling would raise or lower on a whim, the walls could close in at any time, and in some places the floor would slope up or down into steep hills. The halls looped up and around themselves, giving the feeling that the layout shouldn’t have been possible, and aside from the dimensions it was all completely identical. Yellowed stone walls, rough to the touch, curved up and in to meet the ceiling. Dying torches lit the walls. The cold stone of the floor, which was mostly stomped flat by centuries of traffic, were covered in stones and pebbles kicked up by the less gentle denizens of this level. Altogether, the winding, twisting halls had the uncanny ability to make every new path feel familiar, just enough for whoever was traveling the halls to ask themselves if maybe they had gone that way already. Perhaps, they would think, they’d simply been walking in circles through shifting hallways that at any point could decide to end the charade and close in on them.

Pinkie found it very difficult to be unsettled by any of it thanks to the unceasingly noisy bird walking with her.

Once they were in the dungeons, the bird mostly took the lead. It seemed to know the way, but it still checked constantly to see if Pinkie was still there. If they drifted too far apart, it would stop and wait until she walked up to it before leading her further. If she hesitated, it would squawk angrily, making it perfectly clear it was unwilling to go on without her company.

Pinkie didn’t mind, though. The dungeons were peaceful, and once she’d started thinking of them as homes for creatures of all sorts, they had endeared themselves to her. She was, on some level, glad to have the excuse to take a stroll through them.

It was destined to end eventually, though, and Pinkie felt a pang of disappointment when the cockatrice brought her to a low alcove with a nest inside. The little nook had been dug straight into the wall, and the nest seemed to be made of the scraps of stone left over from that process piled up in a rough circle. It was sharp and jagged, but the bird seemed happy to crawl right into it and settle down.

Pinkie watched it lie there for a few minutes. She knew she had to get back upstairs so that she could be there when Fluttershy got back, but it was so peaceful and calm that she didn’t want to leave. Part of her wanted to just lie down and take a nap right there.

She pushed that part aside, though, and turned to head back upstairs. As she turned, though, she tripped on something, and barely caught herself before she fell to the ground.

She tried to spin around so she could kick whatever had tripped her in frustration, but her legs didn’t seem to want to respond to her. Confused, she looked back to figure out what had happened.

Slowly, but steadily and without stopping, her leg was beginning to turn to stone.

Chapter 22: Burning Questions

“You’re sure you feel up to going back?”

Fluttershy was standing in the hallway, leaning heavily to one side. Bandages were wrapped tightly around her shoulder, and every so often she would shift her weight and wince in pain. The cloak she had been wearing at the start of the day sat in a bloody heap on Helsing’s floor, torn to shreds and completely useless as clothing, and her hat was nowhere to be seen.

Helsing was standing in the open door to his room, giving Fluttershy a hard look.

Fluttershy smiled softly and nodded. “I can walk, and my wings didn’t get too hurt. I should be able to get back to my room, and if Pinkie is there already I don’t want her to worry.”

Helsing laughed under his breath and shook his head. “If you say so. Who am I to stand in the way of The Heiress.”

“Will the guild be alright without Windbreaker?”

He scoffed. “These things are all centuries old, they’re not going to break down over the loss of one vampire.”

“Alright, well, you can always call for me if you need anything,” Fluttershy told him. “I do feel responsible, after all.”

“Will do.” He nodded politely and stepped back into his room. “Okay, I need to sleep. You kept me up all night.” Then he shut the door without waiting for a reply.

Fluttershy chuckled and walked away. Despite everything, she had a smile on her face as she walked out into the lounge.

The fire crackled noisily in the center of the room. Vampires lounged all around it, some together, most on their own, and were in the midst of a rowdy conversation. They laughed and jeered and didn’t seem to have been affected in the least by Windbreaker’s absence.

One of them noticed Fluttershy enter the room and waved at her without getting up. “Yo, Heiress! Come say hi!”

Every vampire in the room turned their gazes to Fluttershy. She blushed from the sudden attention and chuckled nervously before making her way over.

Two of the vampires eagerly spread apart to make room as she approached. “Take a rest,” one said, “you’re earned as much.”

Fluttershy smiled politely and sat in the open space. She was tense and nervous, and it was obvious that even though she’d sat down, she wasn’t relaxed at all.

Now that she was among them, she was able to get a better impression of the vampires of Trotsylvania. It was a strange mix of cultures. Some ponies looked modern, with their manes cut stylishly and their clothes, if they wore any, sleek and contemporary. Others, though, were stuck in the past. Stallions lounged in stiff suits, ponies wore ancient, golden jewelry, and some of them had styles Fluttershy had only seen in history books. Rarely, though, did those vampires pull from a single time and place. They were a mish-mash of centuries of life experiences, and Fluttershy got the impression that, if she looked hard enough, she could find something from just about every time and place that had existed in the past thousand years.

“Um…” She muttered as she looked around at them all. They stared at her expectantly. “I, uh, can’t stay long, but… Hello?”

“Aww, c’mon Heiress, you’ve gotta hang out,” said the vampire who’d initially called her over. His orange fur looked red in the glow of the fire. “We wanna meet our next Dracula!”

All around the fire, ponies voiced their agreement enthusiastically.

“Well, I can come back,” Fluttershy said. “Maybe I could even bring Pinkie, and—”

“Vampires only,” one of them said, interrupting her.

“And Helsing,” a mare added, and several of them laughed.

“Oh.” Fluttershy pursed her lips. “Well, I just don’t want Pinkie to worry, is all.”

The orange stallion reached over and smacked the pony next to him. “Hey, go tell the castle The Heiress is safe.”

“Yeah, alright,” the pony grumbled back as he got up and started walking towards the door.

“There, now you don’t have to worry,” the orange pony told her.

“Well…” Fluttershy sighed. “Alright. I guess I do have a responsibility to get to know you all if I’m going to become Dracula.”

All around the fire, ponies cheered. One of the ponies next to her punched her playfully in the shoulder, which made her yelp in pain, and that only made the crowd even rowdier.

“Okay, okay,” the first stallion said over all the cheering and laughing, “so, Heiress, what the heck happened last night? That hallway is rancid!”

“Been a while since we had to fix a wall,” another said.

“And where’s Windbreaker?” A third added. “Did you kill her or something?”

Fluttershy gasped. “No, of course not! I didn’t hurt her at all, I just sent her off to talk to Princess Twilight.”

“So you did kill her.” There was another round of laughter.

“Twilight isn’t as dangerous as you all think she is,” Fluttershy said. “One day I’ll bring her here, and you’ll all see that she’s just a regular pony like me.”

“A fresh vampire that can take out our two strongest fighters in one night and live to talk about it ain’t a regular pony,” one said, and several others agreed with them.

“I didn’t do anything special,” Fluttershy said. “I mean, I could do The Stare even before I was a vampire. Also, um… I’m not sure I did live? I think I might have died while Dayfall was attacking me.”

There was a beat of silence, then they all burst into laughter.

Fluttershy blushed. “I’m serious! I talked to The Visitor and everything, it—”

A pony near her waved for her to stop. “We believe you, Heiress,” they said, “it’s just, well… I mean, do you hear yourself? ‘Yeah, I died, no big deal. I’m just a normal pony.’”

“Oh.” Fluttershy’s blush deepened. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to boast, I just… I guess I didn’t realize.”

There was more laughter, and the conversation moved on. They asked Fluttershy anything they could think of, from her life before becoming a vampire to what she planned to do as Dracula, and Fluttershy answered every question patiently. They were loud and unruly, and had absolutely no sense of personal space or manners, but to Fluttershy’s relief they seemed, at least for the time being, to be kind and friendly ponies.

Eventually, Fluttershy yawned and realized how long she’d been there. “I really should be going,” she said, and she stood up and smiled at them all. “It was lovely meeting you, and if any of you have questions for me, you can feel free to come find me at any time. I’m here to help, after all.”

They complained, but ultimately said their goodbyes and let her go, and she made her way to the heavy iron door that she’d first come in through.

It took some effort to pull the door open without using her injured shoulder, but she managed it, and as it creaked slowly open a sliver of light trickled through. Fluttershy bit her lip anxiously at the sight of it, and opening the door the rest of the way revealed just what she had feared. The sun was already up, and it was morning in Trotsylvania.

She winced and hissed quietly as she stepped out into the light. She could shield her eyes with a wing, and that stopped most of the discomfort, but the scrapes and cuts scattered all over her body started to ache as soon as the sunlight hit them. They got almost unbearably hot, and Fluttershy started moving as quickly as possible towards the castle, although that wasn’t very quick with her injuries.

A deep frown etched itself onto her face as, when she approached the gate, the two guards crossed their spears in front of it.

“Really?” Fluttershy asked as she walked up. “I’m still not allowed back in?”

“Sorry, Heiress,” the more talkative guard said. “Orders are orders.”

Fluttershy gave a frustrated hum. “Well, how long did the orders say to keep me out?”

“Until further instruction.”

“But I want to see Pinkie!” There was a desperation in Fluttershy’s voice that she hadn’t expected.

The guard frowned sympathetically. “We can’t disobey orders, Heiress. We could be exiled for it, or worse.”

Fluttershy’s hooves started to feel very hot on the gravel under them, and she began shuffling in place impatiently. “Well, I… Who even gave you the orders? Dracula said she was leaving everything to me.”

“Miss Sable did, Heiress.”

“But I’m The Heiress! I know she’s helping me learn things, but how can The Gardener give me orders?”

“She can’t,” the guard said. “She gave us orders.”

Fluttershy pouted. “Come on, isn’t there anything you can do? Please?”

“We can only follow orders,” the guard said.

“Ugh!” Fluttershy growled and rubbed her neck, which felt like it was starting to burn. “That doesn’t make any sense, I’m supposed to be acting as Dracula, I should be able to just—”

Fluttershy stopped moving as a thought hit her.

“I…” She hummed anxiously. “Stand aside.”

“I’m sorry?” The guard looked at her curiously.

“Let me in,” Fluttershy said. “That’s an order.”

The guards exchanged a glance, then uncrossed their spears and stepped away from the gate. “Go on in, Heiress.”

Fluttershy groaned. “Seriously? What was that, a test? I just had to—” Her shoulder throbbed, and she hissed and shook her head. “I’ll talk to her later. I just need to get inside.”

Once through the gate, Fluttershy would have sprinted across the castle grounds if not for her shoulder, but even with the injury she got close. Her body felt so hot at this point that the pain that shot through her as she cantered down the path.

She slammed through the front doors with a bang. As soon as she was in the shade of the small hallway that connected the front doors to the main hall, she slid to a stop and started panting.

She stood there for several minutes as her body cooled down. Eventually, though, she felt well enough to move on and made her way into the main hall.

Nothing seemed out of place as she walked in. Her hollow hoofsteps echoed out as she crossed the cool tile. The fountain still sat in the center of the room, although now that she’d tasted fresh blood it was far less tantalizing. It still looked good, and she would have loved to take a drink from it, but she didn’t want it enough to brave the electricity again.

Her eyes traveled up and into the winding paths above. It all looked unfamiliar, the walkways and staircases all sitting in just the wrong places, but she could still see clearly up to her door, which beckoned to her with its rich red wood.

She crouched down and stretched her wings out, preparing to fly.

“She’s not up there.”

Fluttershy yelped and sprang forward in surprise, just barely managing to land on her hooves. Then she wheeled around to the source of the noise.

Above the door, Vale was hanging upside down with his tail wrapped around a light fixture.

“Oh,” Fluttershy said with a relieved sigh. “Hello, Vale. Good, um, morning?”

He laughed. “You look like you had a fun night.”

“Yeah…” Fluttershy rubbed her sore shoulder. “Things got a little heated. I’ll be alright, though.”

“Sure.”

“What do you mean, though? She’s not up there?”

“Your pink friend,” Vale said. “I think she probably got lost somewhere in the castle.”

Fluttershy gasped. “Oh, no! What happened?”

“The Hag told her to take a bird down to the dungeons. She just never came back.” He shrugged.

Fluttershy bit her lip. “S-She’s lost in the dungeons?”

“Looks that way.”

“Um, I, uh…” Fluttershy looked around frantically, although she didn’t know what she was looking for. Finally, she turned back to Vale. “How can I find her?”

“Uh… Go look?”

“Look?” Fluttershy swallowed hard. “In the…”

“The dungeons, yeah.” Vale groaned. “You can’t be afraid of your own house!”

“I…” Fluttershy shut her eyes and concentrated. “Okay! Alright, I’ll do it. I can do it. To help Pinkie.”

Fluttershy nodded and went off, heading through the closest door muttering affirmations to herself under her breath.

A moment later, she burst back into the main hall and looked up at Vale. “Where are the dungeons?”

Chapter 23: First Steps

Fluttershy stood at the top of a dark staircase.

At least, she would have called it a staircase. That was the closest thing to what this steep, jagged tunnel was. It wasn’t a slope, there were too many sharp landings jutting out at every angle, but they weren’t nearly uniform enough to actually be considered stairs. Paired with the stalactites that hung from the roof of the cave, they looked more like teeth than anything else.

Fluttershy stood before a gaping maw of stone.

“So, uh… Good luck.” Vale stood nearby with his mouth pressed into a thin line.

“You’re not coming?” Fluttershy’s eyes went wide.

“I’m not allowed down there anymore,” he said. “Apparently I ‘disturb the peace’ or something.”

Fluttershy frowned. “Oh…” She looked back at the hole that seemed so eager to swallow her whole. Her ears drooped. “H-How do I find her?”

Vale shrugged. “It’s a maze down there. I guess just wander around ‘til you find her or, like, die.”

“That’s not very reassuring,” Fluttershy murmured. “You said she was guiding a bird?”

“Yeah, some kind of lizard-bird thing.”

Fluttershy gulped. “That’s not good.” She closed her eyes tight and took a deep breath. “I can do this,” she told herself. “For Pinkie. I have to do this.”

There was a beat of silence as she stood there, not doing anything.

“Well?” Vale asked.

“I’m trying,” Fluttershy said. “My legs won’t move.”

Vale groaned and, without warning, shoved Fluttershy into the tunnel.

She yelped and shot her eyes open to see rock rushing past her. She panicked and flailed her legs, but quickly realized that trying to land on the jagged rocks was a bad idea. With how steep the path was, it would have been like trying to cling to a wall, and she’d be lucky to get out of that without another trip up The Visitor’s river.

Instead, she spread her wings in an attempt to control her descent.

It wasn’t easy. The tunnel barely had room for her full wingspan, and it was definitely too small for the movements it would take to slow down. All she could do was keep herself afloat as the world became a blur around her, and even that proved difficult with how uneven the walls and roof were.

She kept gaining speed as she fell. More than once, she scraped the tip of a wing against a wall and swerved violently as the stone scraped at her mercilessly.

Just as she was starting to really panic, the end of the tunnel came into view. Light bounced off a floor that she was hurtling towards at alarming speeds.

She tilted her wings back in an attempt to slow down, but in doing so drifted too close to the ceiling. Just before she reached the bottom, her wing clipped a stalactite. The soft stone shattered easily, but the impact still crumpled her wing, and she almost twisted straight into the wall.

With a desperate flap of her other wing, she just barely managed to keep herself in the air until the ground leveled out under her.

A second later her hooves hit the rocks. She landed awkwardly on two legs, skidded a few feet, then tripped and tumbled over herself. When she finally rolled to a stop, she was on her back with her injured wing lying limp beside her.

“Oww,” she moaned. She clenched her eyes shut and focused in a futile attempt to will the pain away.

After a minute of failing that, she groaned and rolled over onto her stomach. Her bandaged shoulder complained as she pushed herself upright, but she ignored it and managed to find some small amount of comfort by adjusting herself on the stone floor.

Nervously, she grabbed her limp wing and pulled it forward to look it over. It wasn’t obviously broken, nothing had pierced the skin and everything was the right shape, but the sharp pain that shot through her every time she touched it still had her worried.

Finally, she clenched her teeth and tried to fold the wing back to her side. To her relief, she at least seemed to still have enough mobility to manage that.

She sighed and started taking deep, practiced breaths. As she gathered herself, she took a look around at where she’d landed.

The tunnel hadn’t quite ended so much as it had just shifted to a more gentle slope. It was definitely still going down, but not by any significant amount. It was a tight fit, still barely her wingspan from wall to wall, but the ceiling was a lot higher. The strange, unmatching dimensions gave the hall an unsettling atmosphere, as if from the very foundation the construction of this place was just wrong.

Sconces lined the walls, but only a few had lit torches in them. While it was more than enough light for Fluttershy’s eyes, it was clear that the shadows ruled these depths. They flowed along the walls like a murky liquid, breaching constantly into the few dim pools of light that still fought them off.

Lastly, there were the doors that made this place more than just a tunnel. The countless entryways that made it, without question, a dungeon. Most didn’t actually have anything closing them off from the hallway, and were only recognizable as doorways by their shape and size. Presumably they lead to rooms, but Fluttershy couldn’t tell. All she saw past them was darkness, solid walls of black that seemed to sap her energy just to look at. A kind of darkness that told the deepest parts of her mind to stay away, as it was a darkness that could support no life.

A select few doorways had actual doors, which stood out as the only thing in the tunnels, beside the torches, that wasn’t made of stone. Most were made of a thick, dark wood that looked charred and stained with smoke. They were held shut by heavy iron bars, sitting snugly on holders lodged deep into the stone. Some doors, though, were more. They were made from some dark, ancient slabs of metal that Fluttershy didn’t recognize. The metal itself was a deep, dull gray, but over the millenia, as water had run down from the ceiling and across the metal, they’d been stained with thick, rich veins of red. They spread out in lightning bolt patterns as they ran down to the floor, and the doors which had been bombarded the most were covered with indecipherable webs that grew more and more tangled as they approached the floor.

Once she felt up to moving again, Fluttershy pushed herself unsteadily to her hooves and stretched out her legs. Then she set off and followed the path onwards.

For a while, nothing really changed. The dimensions of the hall around her shifted constantly, but the path was straightforward and easy to follow. She didn’t hear anything else scurrying around her, she saw nothing in the countless rooms she passed by, and eventually she started to calm down a bit as the unknown became known.

Then she came across an intersection.

All three paths were completely indistinguishable. Endless layers of stone that stretched out into oblivion. There were no signs, no tracks to follow, nothing at all to guide her way.

At a loss for better ideas, she stepped up to the path on her left and called into it. “Pinkie?”

Her voice echoed down into the hallway for a moment, then was lost into the caves. She stood there and listened intently for any noise that might return to her. At first only silence answered her, but after a few anxious minutes she heard the faint whispers of a returning call.

Then she recognized the voice, and her heart sank. Behind her, from the right path, came her own voice.

“Pinkie?”

“How…” Fluttershy pursed her lips and moved over to that tunnel. It didn’t seem like it should have been possible for the sound to travel around like that.

She decided to try calling out into that tunnel. “Hello?”

The wait was a lot shorter this time. It was hardly thirty seconds before the sound came back down, this time through the middle tunnel.

“Hello?”

Fluttershy bit her lip nervously. This definitely felt wrong.

She moved back to the tunnel she’d entered from, and faced the three unexplored paths. “Is someone messing with me?”

She had hardly finished the sentence this time when it came back to her.

“Is someone messing with me?”

She would have thought it was just an echo that time, if not for the fact that it was crystal clear, and also coming from behind her.

She spun around and crouched down defensively. She couldn’t see anything down the tunnel, but that did little to put her at ease. She called out again, as it was all she could think to do. “Who’s there?”

The reply came from the left tunnel.

“Pinkie?”

Fluttershy clenched her teeth. “No you’re not! Stop it!”

All three unexplored tunnels called back in an eerie chorus.

“Who’s there?”

“What do you want?” Fluttershy’s voice cracked. She backed slowly into the center of the intersection and looked all around, searching for any sign of life.

All four tunnels started calling out to her.

“Pinkie?”

“Who’s there?”

Stop it!”

“Pinkie?”

“Is someone messing with me?”

“Pinkie?”

Fluttershy dropped to her knees and covered her ears. “Stop! This isn’t funny! What do you want?”

The voices started to come from every hall, all saying the same thing over and over without stopping.

“Pinkie?”

The noise washed over her. Fluttershy’s legs were trembling. Her breathing got faster. Her heart was beating as hard as it could. She was drowning in a tidal wave of echoes.

Fluttershy took several fast, deep breaths that were too rushed to actually give her any air. Then she shot her eyes open wide and Stared down one of the hallways.

“Stop!”

All at once the noise ended. All that remained was Fluttershy’s panicked breathing.

Things stood like that for a long moment. Fluttershy kept her eyes trained on the empty hallway, refusing to allow herself to blink even as her entire body shook.

After a moment, a single call came from the hall she was looking down.

“Who’s there?”

Fluttershy clenched her teeth. She pushed herself to her hooves, stumbled a bit, then stepped towards the hallway. “I am The Heiress, next in line to the title of Dracula, and until she steps out of the shadows again, I am Dracula. I run these halls, and if you want a place here, then this behavior is completely unacceptable.” Fluttershy straightened her back and stood taller as she fell into the role she was so used to using on the creatures of the Everfree. “You do not torment guests to these halls. If you want to be a bully, you can do that outside. Do you understand me?”

Fluttershy took a long, slow breath, and relaxed her vision.

There was a beat of silence before the creature called back to her one final time.

“I am Dracula.”

Then there was a gust of wind and a rush of shadow that poured over Fluttershy. It blinded her for just a moment, and when she could see again she was in a long, straight hallway with no intersection to be seen, and whatever presence had just been there was gone.

Chapter 24: Diving Deeper

Fluttershy sighed as she rested against a wall.

How long had she been down there, wandering aimlessly through identical tunnels? It had been hours, at least, since the incident with the echo creature, and there was no end in sight. Her hooves were starting to ache, and her injured shoulder wasn’t helping. It felt like only a matter of time before she’d drop from exhaustion.

She wasn’t even sure anymore that she’d be able to make it back out. The tunnels had long since put a stop to their linear nature. This far in, she could hardly go a few steps without running into another intersection, and there wasn’t nearly enough uniformity to them for her to have memorized her path. At this point, even if she did find Pinkie in this citadel of earth, she felt like she’d starve to death on the way back out.

She pressed on, though. For Pinkie.

It took a moment of concentrated effort to push herself off the wall and stumble forward, but once the momentum was there she fell back into her usual pace. It wasn’t fast by any means, but she didn’t let herself slow down too much. She didn’t have that luxury.

It wasn’t long before she stopped again, but this time it wasn’t to rest. In front of her was a solid wall of stone. It would have been a dead end if not for the thin crack that ran down the middle of it, glowing strangely with light from the other side of the wall.

The crack had looked a lot bigger when she turned down this path. She thought it wouldn’t be a problem, but now that she’d reached it she saw that it was hardly big enough for her to fit through at all. She could spy more tunnels on the other side, but the idea of trying to push through the stone brought to mind images of herself trapped in stone, and that was enough to send her back the way she had come.

She backtracked to the nearest intersection, a group of five tunnels that stretched off in random directions, and picked another route.

She saw another wall cutting that tunnel off before it could go far, but again it looked like she should be able to get past without a problem. Instead of a crack, this one had a wide, flat hole stretching across the bottom of it, and it was big enough that she could see the other side of the tunnel from where she stood.

So, she made her way down that tunnel, this time keeping her eyes trained on the hole in the wall. Nothing changed. She made it halfway there, and it was still just a hole, nearly as tall as she was. She was sure of it. She knew there wouldn’t be any problem—

She blinked.

When her eyes opened again, she stopped in her tracks. The hole was the exact same size, she knew it was still the same size, but it wasn’t right. It was hardly half her height, maybe even less, and she doubted if she could fit through even if she got down onto her stomach. Even if she could get in, she couldn’t tell if it stayed the same size the entire way. It could easily squeeze in on her partway through.

She knew it was the same size, though. All she did was blink. She would have seen if it shrank while her eyes were closed. She must have just been wrong before, focused on intently on the opening itself that she lost track of everything around it.

She shook her head and turned around. There was nothing she could do about it now.

Back at the intersection, she looked down all the tunnels that were left to her. Only two were left to try, and at this point neither looked appealing. One clearly had a pit halfway through, and while it looked miniscule from where she was, she wasn’t going to trust herself on that a third time. The other path ended completely after a ways, the roof of the cave sloping down until it met a pool of water. It seemed the tunnel went underwater for some unknown distance.

She reached over to her side and gingerly felt her injured wing, then winced and recoiled as a sharp pain shot through her. It was clear she wouldn’t be doing any flying any time soon. She briefly considered the two cracks, but the thought of being trapped there, rock squeezing so tightly around her she couldn’t even call for help, was too terrible to risk.

She then looked back at the fifth tunnel, the one she had come from in the first place. She knew there were more intersections back there, but the idea of going back seemed futile. Running into all these roadblocks at once seemed far too unlikely to be a mere coincidence, and if it was deliberate, she doubted she could just find another path that wouldn’t try to stop her.

Reluctantly, she turned her attention to the final option and made her way down to the waterways.

To her relief, the pool didn’t seem to shrink at all, even as she walked right up to the edge of it. It filled the breadth of the tunnel, and while it was by no means large, there was more than enough room to maneuver in it. At least here, it didn’t seem like she was in danger of getting stuck.

The water was dark and murky. Silt swirled around on invisible currents and made strange, dancing patterns. Every so often a patch would clear up, and she’d be able to see deep into the water, but she never saw a bottom to it. For some reason, she felt that no matter how deep she swam, she never would see the bottom.

A light blinked somewhere in the depths for only a moment, barely long enough to notice, and too quick for Fluttershy to be certain it had even happened in the first place.

Gingerly, she reached out and dipped her hoof into the water. It was ice cold, and sent a shiver down her spine.

Fluttershy took a step back from the edge and looked back down the tunnel. She weighed her options again, and then a third time, searching desperately for any excuse to stay out of the water. None came to her.

She shook her head and took several deep breaths, trying to work herself up to jumping in. She hopped in place to warm up her muscles. She told herself a thousand times that she could do it.

“Okay, Fluttershy, just go,” she muttered under her breath. “Just… Jump in.”

She bit her lip. “Okay, on three. One… Two… Three!”

She didn’t move.

She groaned and walked back to the edge of the water to look down into it.

“Come on, Fluttershy, it’s just water. You can deal with the cold. Plus, you’re The Heiress! If anything is down there, you can just—”

There was a loud splash, and a set of razor sharp talons shot out of the water. They looked ancient and rotted, their dull gray scales covered in a mass of sickly green algae.

Fluttershy screamed and tried to jump back, but she was too slow. The claws wrapped around her leg and squeezed tight. The entire length of every claw was sharpened like a knife, and each one sliced into her with a sickening ease.

Then the creature tugged with tremendous force, and before she even had time to take a breath Fluttershy was underwater.

She opened her eyes and tried to search for her assailant, but the turmoil had kicked up so much dirt and dust that she couldn’t see a thing. All she got for her efforts was an eyeful of grime that stung horribly and made her clench her eyes tight.

With every second she wasted trying to reorient herself, the creature pulled her further into the brackish depths.

Fluttershy tried to tug her leg free, but that only served to slice the thing’s claws deeper still. The pain was sudden, and before she could stop herself she tried to scream, which lost her the precious little air she’d managed to capture before being dragged under.

Her lungs started to burn as she searched her mind for a solution.

Then, without warning, the creature stopped pulling her down and let go of her leg.

She didn’t understand, but she knew she didn’t have time to figure it out. She spun herself around so she was facing the opposite direction and started to swim.

She barely got through a single stroke before the creature returned for more. Its talons wrapped around the back of her neck and dug in with horrific force, so strong that it made her entire body seize up painfully.

Then it started to pull her again, but this time was different. It didn’t pull straight down. This time the creature stayed in place and pulled her in circles around itself, spinning her around constantly and completely destroying any sense of where she was.

Through the sound of rushing water, she heard something that almost seemed like laughter.

Eventually the creature let go of her, but it was far from finished. As Fluttershy floated there, disoriented, it started to dart around her in quick, random motions that left her completely unable to keep track of where it was.

Fluttershy was at a loss for what to do. Her entire body was starting to burn as it ached for air. It was getting harder and harder to keep her breath held, and she knew that any second she could lose that control and it would all be over, and she didn’t know if that was something she could come back from.

She knew she could at least stop that from happening, though. Just as she’d done before, she reached inside herself and found that part of her that controlled her lungs, and she shut it down.

Immediately, that cold, empty pain started to creep back in.

Then the creature made a move, darting close to her and scraping its claws down her side, then went back to circling its prey as she writhed in pain.

She tried to open her eyes again, but it was still completely impossible to see. She tried to Stare anyway, but it did nothing. She had to find another way out.

The creature dove in and took another swipe at her. A cloud of red poured out of the fresh wounds.

She tried to imagine what Dracula would do, but Dracula would just kill it, and that wasn’t an option. She couldn’t use the shadows as a weapon like Dracula did, it would be horrible. She had to be better, she—

The shadows.

It finally struck her. All this time, Dracula had been using the shadows for everything. Up until now Fluttershy had assumed it was just alicorn magic, but what if it wasn’t? Fluttershy had seen the shadows, she had felt them, so why wouldn’t she be able to use them?

She shut her eyes and started up the now-familiar process.

First she numbed her limbs, and they went cold.

She twitched as the creature sliced across her chest.

She shut down her hearing, and her sense of smell.

The creature drew close and slowly, agonizingly dragged a single talon across her cheek.

Then she shut down her sense of feeling, dulling herself to the outside world.

The last thing she felt as it dimmed was the creature gently wrapping its talons around her neck.

She then took all that power she’d pooled and used it to tug at the darkness she felt in the corners of her mind. It came to her with ease, like an old friend, and she kept pulling. She pulled and pulled until she had every bit of that darkness, and it was all there, ready to do as she willed it to.

She didn’t send it out against the creature, though. Instead, she took every bit of that darkness and pushed it inside herself.

It was a bizarre sensation, to let in the shadows, to become one with them. It was like getting into bed after a long day, but instead of warmth, it filled her with… Absence. The absence of light. The absence of heat. The absence of life. She filled herself with the calm, quiet comfort of complete emptiness.

Then, as it had fallen into her, she then fell into it. She let go and let the darkness swallow her whole.

From the outside, what happened was simple enough. Fluttershy was there, and then she wasn’t. One second she filled the space, and then she faded away, replaced by… Something else. It was shadow, dark and intangible, but a special kind of shadow. It could still be lit up, it did nothing to stop heat. It was the shadow made when a space should have held Fluttershy, but just… Didn’t. It was her absence.

To Fluttershy, things were much stranger. She opened her eyes just in time to see the shadows start to stream out of her and devour the world. The water boiled away, the creature crumbled to dust. The air itself was washed away, and then the nothingness below it was gone, too. Slowly, the shadows spread out and turned everything around her into darkness.

Strangely, though, she could still see. The shadows that should have been water were somehow different from the shadows that should have been stone. They weren’t lighter or darker, they weren’t some strange color, they were just missing something else, and she could see that.

This strange new place would have to wait, though, because Fluttershy was at the end of her rope. She released the stranglehold she held over herself, and everything flooded back. The rush of pain that came with it made her cry out and crumple to her knees, but she was glad to feel it again, to be able to feel it again. She was glad to push away the emptiness that was behind it all.

Finally, she took a deep breath and was relieved to find out that, somehow, she could breathe in this place.

She was so relieved, in fact, that she immediately lost consciousness and collapsed.

Chapter 25: Progress

Fluttershy awoke to a world of darkness.

She recognized it as the tunnel she had been attacked in, even though it was clear that wasn’t where she was. There were no solid surfaces, no floor, no ceiling. The water she floated in wasn’t wet, and it didn’t stop her breathing. There was no pull of gravity, nor the push of atmosphere. All that was really around her was… Nothing.

In truth, Fluttershy wasn’t anywhere. She wasn’t in Equestria, she wasn’t in space, she wasn’t in some other world. She was in a place that wasn’t. It existed only because it didn’t exist as anything else. It was a place born of context, of what it was not, and more than anything else, this place was not the tunnel Fluttershy had been attacked in.

As she woke up more, her body started to ache. Her wing throbbed, and the places she had been cut were hot and itchy. Tentatively, she reached up and touched her cheek, and was relieved to find that doing so didn’t bring a shock of pain. She still felt the cut there, running from just under her eye to the edge of her chin, and she felt certain it would leave a scar, but it seemed to have already healed almost completely.

Curious, she pulled her wing out and gave it a few experimental prods. It ached, but again it seemed mostly healed. At this point it felt like just a bruise, and while it would still hurt to fly, it wouldn’t be impossible.

Finally, she unwrapped the bandages around her shoulder and gave it a test. That was a wound she had expected to last for several days, no matter how fast she healed. A stab wound several inches deep into a joint wouldn’t just go away, she thought, and as expected, it was still there, but it had healed far more than she thought it would. She seemed to have her full range of motion again, and while it still complained if she put pressure on it, it didn’t hurt so badly that she couldn’t use it if she had to.

She took the rest of the bandages off and dropped them. The darkness devoured them hungrily, and then they were gone, completely removed from existence in any context at all. Their obliteration was absolute, and watching it struck Fluttershy with a pang of apprehension.

She decided she shouldn’t stay in the darkness any longer than she needed to, and began to plan her next move.

She couldn’t just return to the water, that much was obvious. She could still see the creature there, hazy and indistinct as it swiped fruitlessly through her shadow. So, she looked around until she found what she believed to be the hole she’d been dragged in through. It was tiny from where she was, but eventually she found it, and saw that her hunch had been right. Across from it, on the far side of the deep chasm, was another hole leading up into the dungeons.

She had to get that far, at least, but what then? Her mind filled with images of the creature crawling out of the water and chasing her, bent on revenge, and she winced.

She decided to experiment a bit, and tried to reach a hoof out towards the creature. It darted away from her as she did, which confirmed her suspicions. This place seemed to be keeping her safe, but it didn’t hide her. Her shadow followed her every move.

She could worry about that at the surface, though. The most important thing was to get out of the water.

She tried to swim upwards, but nothing happened. Her legs flailed uselessly through the nothing around her, unable to propel her without water to push off of. Her wings, similarly, failed to move her, and she certainly couldn’t just walk.

Then she had a thought. What if she could walk?

She’d been able to pull the shadows in, so why shouldn’t she be able to manipulate the ones around her now? She just had to figure out how.

Her first attempt was just blind concentration. She put a hoof out and, without any focus, tried to exert her power into the world.

Unsurprisingly, nothing happened.

Next, she tried to mold it. She ran her hooves through the air in complicated patterns, trying to do what she thought might shape the shadows into a usable form, something solid that she could push herself off from.

Again, she accomplished nothing.

She pursed her lips. It was so easy before, she just saw a curtain of darkness and pulled it down, so what was wrong now? She didn’t see the darkness around her as anything but emptiness, and she had no idea how to shape it into something else.

Unless…

She had an idea. Maybe, she thought, she didn’t need to reshape the darkness. The darkness around her was clear to her as not being water, but it wasn’t anything else either. If it wasn’t anything, and she could interact with it like it was, then maybe it was already... Everything.

She wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing, but she tried to just imagine a floor under her hooves, and started to walk.

She grinned as she began to move up towards the tunnels, and soon enough she breached the surface.

After such a harrowing experience, the sight of those identical, neverending tunnels was a welcome relief. That relief was short-lived, though, as a moment after she got out, a set of sharp talons shot out of the water and tried to grab her shadow. She wasn’t safe yet.

She walked the short distance to the first intersection and looked down the halls. Her heart sank as she did. It was just more tunnels, more branching paths, more endless wandering. A part of her was hoping that such a large roadblock meant Pinkie would be waiting on the other side, but now that she saw the reality, she was starting to lose hope that she’d ever see Pinkie again.

Beside her, the creature started to pull itself out of the water. She still couldn’t quite see what it was, but she made out what seemed to be a beak as its head emerged. She took a few tentative steps away, even though she knew she was safe.

She bit her lip. How long could she go on like this? She’d survived this, but what about the next creature? Or the one after that? She wasn’t ready to be down in the dungeons, that much was clear, and the longer she spent there the more likely it got that she’d never leave.

Something had to change.

She looked away from the creature and stared at the wall to think. She had to find some way around the tunnels, some method of avoiding the endless labyrinth entirely.

She got an idea.

First, she reached out and tried to touch the wall. It stopped her, like a wall should, even though it wasn’t really there. She had expected as much; It was a wall, so it would act like a wall.

It wasn’t a wall, though, and Fluttershy thought she could use that. She tried to push the idea out of her mind, to forget that those shadows were in the place of a wall, and instead to just see the nothingness that they really were.

Gradually, the wall started to fade from her view.

She reached out again, and this time her hoof went through the space with ease. Nothing was there, so nothing stopped her.

She smiled and stepped into the now empty space, then looked back at the creature. It stared in confusion towards her and took a swipe, which met solid rock, and recoiled from the shock.

After another moment of blank staring, the creature turned and dove back into the water.

Fluttershy was ecstatic. She’d done it. She’d survived, and without hurting the creature at all. She didn’t resort to Dracula’s violent ways, and instead she’d found something better, maybe even something stronger.

For the first time, she found herself thinking that maybe she would be a better Dracula.

She shook her head and shrugged that line of thought away. It wasn’t the time. She had to find Pinkie.

Her next experiment was simple enough, but it took a lot of effort. Just like she had done with the wall, Fluttershy stopped seeing the shadows around her as anything at all. Then, when they faded, she did the same with the shadows that were behind them, and then further and further until the entire world no longer existed. She was in a world of darkness, of pure nothing, and there was nothing to see or touch at all.

Then, she looked for one thing. Somewhere, out in the world, was a bit of darkness that was meant to be Pinkie, and all she had to do was find it.

She pictured Pinkie in her mind and looked around. First she tried the level she was on, but saw nothing, so she started to expand her search. She looked up and down in wide circles, methodically searching every bit of nothingness that surrounded her, trying to find the beacon of Pinkie’s existence.

There was nothing.

Fluttershy felt fear starting to well up inside, but she pushed it down. There were plenty of reasons she could have failed. Maybe she could only see so far, or maybe it just didn’t work that way. There was no reason, she told herself, to start jumping to conclusions.

Besides, she had other options. Instead of Pinkie, she decided to look around for a cockatrice.

She found it almost immediately. It was nowhere near her, maybe miles away, but there was no doubt it was a cockatrice, and it was the only one she saw that was even remotely close to her.

The search did make her more worried, though, because it wasn’t the only cockatrice she saw. She saw hundreds, all around her, and one group in particular unsettled her, because she knew them. The size of the family and the ages of the birds were so exact that she had no doubt she was seeing birds that lived in the Everfree Forest, half a world away.

She started moving briskly towards her goal, ignoring the ache in her shoulder as she pushed it.

It was an agonizingly long walk through the empty darkness. The bird came closer at such a sluggish pace that at times she worried she’d forgotten the floor and stopped moving at all. The pain in her shoulder only got worse as she kept going, and it didn’t help anything that she refused to rest. Even her other, uninjured legs were starting to ache by the end.

She had no way to keep track of time in the darkness, but she walked for at least an hour. When she finally reached the bird, she was so relieved that she nearly moved back into the world of light without a second thought, but she just barely caught herself when she realized that that would be a very bad idea.

She took things slowly. First, she looked for the nearby tunnels, not the bit of tunnel she wanted to emerge in but rather the parts connecting to it. She used those to orient herself into a position where she didn’t think she’d be in any walls, then she slowly filled in the world closer and closer to herself until, at last, she saw everything once again.

The tunnel was nothing special. It was exactly like all the others, with a low ceiling and very few doors. The only defining feature was the little alcove that held the sleeping cockatrice.

Leaving the world of shadows was as natural as walking through a door. All she did was step into her shadow, and at the same time her shadow stepped into her. Then she was back, and the place she had been was no longer a place at all.

Stepping out into the real world was a shock to Fluttershy’s system. The air pushed in on her, crushed her from all angles, and at the same time gravity took hold again and tried to pull her to her knees. The forces that suddenly ravaged her body knocked her off balance, and she had to lean against a wall to avoid falling over.

More than that, though, was just the pressure of existence. Her body still held all that shadow that she’d pulled in, and reality pushed in on it unceasingly. The world wanted nothing more than to be, and now she fought against that as she clung to the part of herself that was no longer there.

She could have let go, stopped fighting and let the weight of existing crash back into her, but she didn’t want to. The darkness just felt right. It was a constant comfort, and she never wanted to lose it. She didn’t want to have to be more than was comfortable, and with the darkness she didn’t have to.

So, she fought for it. She pushed back against existence and kept it at bay, just as she kept the air and gravity at bay, and accepted it as just another force of the world.

It didn’t take too long for her to acclimate to the real world again, and once she did she crouched down beside the cockatrice and gently shook it awake. It looked up at her with tired eyes and greeted her with a curious cluck.

“Hey, little guy,” Fluttershy said sweetly. “Sorry to wake you, but I’m looking for my friend, and I think you were the last one to see her. Do you know what happened to the bubbly pink pony that brought you down here?”

The cockatrice tilted its head, then clucked back with a response.

Fluttershy gasped, and her eyes went wide. “You what? How could you? Oh, that was very, very naughty of you, young man. You turn her back this instant.” She looked around, then her expression softened. “Um… Where is she?”

The cockatrice turned its head away from her, unwilling to answer.

“Oh, come on, don’t be like that,” Fluttershy said. “I won’t be mad, I just want her to be safe.”

The bird shook its head defiantly.

Fluttershy frowned. “Why won’t you tell me?”

It gave her a short, concise cluck.

“You can’t?” Fluttershy hummed curiously. “Why not?”

It shook its head again.

“Please?” Fluttershy pouted and begged the animal. “I need to find her.”

The bird looked up at her in thought, but after a moment just shook its head more.

“I—” Fluttershy stuttered nervously. “I don’t want to have to, um…” She tapped her hoof on the ground for a moment, then shook her head vigorously and opened her eyes wide to Stare at the cockatrice. “Tell me where she is.”

The cockatrice caught her eye and flinched before giving a quiet, half-spoken answer.

Fluttershy blinked and stepped back. “What?” Her bottom lip trembled. “What do you…”

Fluttershy tripped as she stumbled back and fell onto the ground.

“What do you mean Dracula took her?”

Chapter 26: The Final Confrontation Begins

Fluttershy shot through the darkness, ignoring the pain as she flapped her wings with all she had. Her eyes narrowed as she glared at her target.

It hadn’t been a problem to find Dracula. The Lady had no reason to hide. She wanted Fluttershy to come after her. She was just there on her throne, lounging elegantly without a care in the world.

The sight frustrated Fluttershy to no end.

She redoubled her pace.

She knew she wasn’t going to catch Dracula off guard, but she didn’t care. She had to help Pinkie, no matter the cost. It didn’t matter what Dracula was going to do to her. She just had to help Pinkie.

She didn’t bother checking for obstacles once she reached the throne room. She knew the room was mostly empty, and she didn’t want to waste any time. She didn’t even slow down first. In the same motion she used to stop flying forward, she let herself glide back into the world of existence.

The room she emerged into wasn’t what she expected. She thought she’d be flying into that oppressive darkness she’d seen in the throne room before, but the room was bright. It was completely lit, in fact, and for the first time Fluttershy saw the full breadth of the throne room.

The throne sat towards the back of the room on a grand, multi-tiered pedestal. It was a rich velvet red with tarnished silver accents, and those colors were matched around the mostly-empty room. What little furnishing it did have was grand, with ancient candelabras lining the carpet leading up to the throne, and glittering glass chandeliers that were bigger than her house. It was a monstrously huge room, which only made it feel even emptier as the regal throne and posh center pathway were dwarfed by the swathes of empty space.

Fluttershy had little time to take any of this in, because gravity quickly caught up with her and dragged her crashing to the floor.

She hit the shallow red carpet with a dull thud and tumbled over herself. The world started spinning, and she quickly lost track of where she was as she rolled across the floor. She only found herself again after she hit the pedestal holding the throne and came to a sudden stop.

“”Heiress, what a lovely surprise.” Dracula spoke calmly, as though nothing at all was wrong. “How may I assist you?”

Fluttershy gritted her teeth and pushed herself to her hooves. She wobbled for a moment, but she quickly steadied herself, and once she had done that she looked up and locked eyes with Dracula.

The Lady had her legs slung up over an arm of the throne and was looking down at Fluttershy with a soft, unassuming smile. She had a tall glass of something red floating nearby, and her perch was flanked by a pair of massive sleeping timberwolves.

Fluttershy took a moment to catch her breath. Then she mustered up as much conviction as she could to brace herself for the concentration.

“Where’s Pinkie?”

Dracula raised an eyebrow. “Who?”

Fluttershy frowned. “My girlfriend.”

“Oh, right, the blood bag.” Dracula swirled her drink around in its glass absentmindedly. “I would assume she’s back in Ponyville. Where else would she be?”

“I know you took her from the dungeons. The cockatrice saw it all.”

“And you’d trust some bird more than you trust your Lady?” She scoffed. “Really, an ounce of power and every vampire thinks they’re above everything else.”

“I don’t think I’m above anything,” Fluttershy said. “Except maybe you, if you really are the bully you’ve been acting like.”

Dracula’s eyes went wide. “My, what a mouth! Where is this coming from?”

“It’s coming from you kidnapping Pinkie!” Fluttershy let out a frustrated hum. “Please, just tell me where she is.”

“I truly do not know where she is, and I’d advise you to accept that. I don’t take well to being nagged.”

“But I know you took her!” Fluttershy kicked the ground and shook her head. “Even if you don’t know where she is now, you were the last one to see her, so—”

Dracula raised her voice, although her tone stayed constant. “I told you, I haven’t seen her since I picked you up. Here.” She floated her glass down to Fluttershy. “Have a bit of this to calm yourself.”

“I don’t need blood, I need—” Fluttershy cut herself off with a growl, then opened her eyes wide and Stared at Dracula. “Tell me where Pinkie is!”

Dracula got a sour look on her face, and without warning splashed the glass of blood onto Fluttershy’s face. The thick liquid flew straight into her eyes, and she flinched as it stung them badly.

Fluttershy rubbed frantically at her eyes, trying to get the blood out, but it was a losing battle. Some of it did drain down onto her face in branching tear tracks, but it was far too sticky to get rid of it all, and she quickly realized she was going to have to deal with bloody vision until she could wash her eyes out.

When she pried her eyes back open and looked up, Dracula was standing right in front of her with a deep scowl.

“I let you give me an order once, girl, and you were lucky for that. Do not push that luck.”

Fluttershy clenched her teeth and fought away the pain in her eyes. She kept her vision locked with Dracula’s. “I just want Pinkie.”

Dracula leaned down over Fluttershy and grabbed her mane, then yanked her head back painfully to stare down at her. “You listen to me. If I did have that little cretin, I’d have shattered her at my earliest convenience, and after this display I may go find her and do just that.”

Fluttershy gasped and tried to back away, but Dracula held her in place. “Y-You’re lying.”

“Am I?” Dracula tugged hard on her mane again. “What have you seen here to make you believe I wouldn’t do that?”

“You couldn’t…” Fluttershy could feel tears start to well up and mix in with the blood that was still there.

“I could, and I would relish it.”

Fluttershy didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t believe it. She had to do anything she could, use everything at her disposal, to make sure Pinkie was safe. To be sure.

She only needed one question.

She didn’t bother going slowly. She didn’t take things in stages to help withstand the pain. In an instant, she shut down everything she didn’t need to ask the question. Her limbs, her heart, everything but her eyes, ears and mouth.

Then she Stared again.

“Where. Is. Pinkie?”

Dracula bared her teeth and hissed. Her eyes lit up with anger. Before Fluttershy could process what was happening, she was flying through the air, struck full force by one of Dracula’s hooves. An instant later she was on a wall, and then the world became a blur.

Her ears were ringing. She coughed violently as her body kicked back into motion. She felt blood start to pool in her mouth. The world around her was just shapes and colors, mostly red, that were coming back into focus incredibly slowly.

Before she was back to her senses, Fluttershy felt another yank on her mane, and then immense pain as she was lifted into the air.

She blinked a few times, trying to clear her vision, and the world started to come back to her. She was at eye level with Dracula, and somehow they’d wound up in a hallway. The dim lighting made Dracula look even more sinister, and even more furious.

“Clearly you need me to show you the realities of this world you’re in,” Dracula told her in a quiet, hissing voice. “I am Dracula. I am the lord of all creatures of the night, and that means you respect me. And around here, respect comes from fear.”

“P-Please,” Fluttershy sputtered, “I—”

“Shut up!” Dracula struck a hoof against Fluttershy’s face hard enough to draw blood. “Your Lady is speaking. You don’t get to speak to me like you just were until you can kill me, you understand? And you cannot kill me, not how you are now.”

Dracula looked her hard in the eyes for a moment, then took a step back.

“But, I can see you don’t understand yet. You need a demonstration of why you need to fear me.”

Dracula stuck a hoof out to her side, and shadows started gathering around it. They formed into something big, about Fluttershy’s size, and swirled around as they brought it back into reality. Then they disappeared, bit by bit, and left behind a stone statue.

Pinkie Pie’s petrified face stared back at Fluttershy with a look of pure horror.

“Pinkie!” Fluttershy gasped and pulled at her mane, trying to somehow free it from Dracula’s magic so she could go to her, but it was useless. She was trapped.

“Yes, Pinkie.” Dracula spat her name out with disgust. “Tell me, Heiress, what’s her life worth to you?”

“What?” Fluttershy looked at Dracula in shock. “A-Anything! I’d do anything for her.”

Dracula waved a hoof, and shadows wrapped up around one of Fluttershy’s back hooves and tugged at it lightly. “Is she worth a leg?”

“Yes, absolutely!” Fluttershy bit her trembling lip. “Please, just let her go.”

“Hmm…” The shadows moved up to Fluttershy’s back and pulled at her wings. “And these? You’d give them for her?”

“Yes! Take anything you want, I just want her to be safe.”

Dracula raised an eyebrow. “Well then, what about…”

She moved her hoof in a wide arc, and the shadows flew down the hall and wrapped around one of Pinkie’s hooves.

“Her leg?”

“W-What?” Fluttershy swallowed hard, and thick red tears started to flow down her cheeks. “But why her? Why not me? I don’t want her to be hurt, I—”

Dracula flicked her wrist, and long cracks ran up through the leg the shadows had in their grasp. “Clock’s ticking, Heiress.”

“I—” Fluttershy bit her lip hard. “Y-Yes! If it’s the only way for her to live, then yes.”

“How generous of you,” Dracula said. She swiped her hoof forward sharply, and the cracks started getting worse.

The sound of crumbling stone filled the halls. Sharp, sickly cracks and pops rang out at random, and each one was like a knife when it hit Fluttershy. The cold stone started to bend, to deform, and quickly began to lose hold of itself.

Finally, with a loud, quick snap, the statue’s leg was torn off.

“No!” Fluttershy flailed desperately in the air, but she wasn’t able to get any closer. She flapped her wings and tried to fly, but all that managed to do was rip out a few hairs, and not nearly enough to get free.

Blood started to drip from her scalp as she fell limp and began to sob.

“Enough of that,” Dracula said with a disgusted huff. “Have some dignity. At least save it for when we’re done.”

Fluttershy sniffed and looked up in horror. “What? B-But you said you’d set her free…”

“I said no such thing,” Dracula said. “I just asked if you would make the trade. That doesn’t mean I offered it.”

“You…” Fluttershy wiped the tears from her eyes and glared at Dracula. “You’re a monster.”

“Finally you begin to understand. Now, here, hold this.” She floated the broken leg over to Fluttershy and left it in her grasp.

Fluttershy stared down at it with wide, teary eyes. Then she hugged it to her chest and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“Let’s move on, shall we? Now, we’ve already done a leg, and she doesn’t have wings… What about the eyes?”

Chapter 27: Desperation

“Please, you have to stop!” Fluttershy’s voice cracked as a sob came over her. Her legs were trembling as she clutched the hunk of stone that had been given to her.

“I do not have to do anything! How many pieces must I break off to make you understand that?”

Dracula didn’t take her time the second time. She didn’t even move, just commanded the cloud of shadow to wrap around another leg and tear it off with a thunderous crack.

This one, she launched towards Fluttershy.

Fluttershy flinched, and there was a tremendous boom as the piece of statue smashed against the wall beside her. Dracula hadn’t been aiming for Fluttershy, but the leg exploded with such force that it turned the bits of stone to shrapnel that pelted her body.

A cry got stuck in Fluttershy’s throat and she coughed hard. It was a wet and painful cough, and made blood splatter out into the hall.

“Please,” Fluttershy choked out, “what do you want? What do I have to do to make this stop?”

“There’s nothing you can do.” Dracula stared into her eyes intensely. “I am the most powerful vampire in the world, and there are none who can stand against me. You? Well, let’s see.”

Dracula let go of the hold she had over Fluttershy, and she fell weakly to the ground. The leg clattered to the floor as Fluttershy moved to catch herself, and she still only managed to keep one hoof on the ground. The others crumpled unceremoniously under her, and she had to painstakingly push herself back up.

It was a slow and arduous process, but eventually Fluttershy was standing again, and even through the tears streaming down her face she once again locked eyes with Dracula.

“Go on, then,” Dracula said. She held out a hoof as if to welcome Fluttershy in. “Stop me. Come and kill me. Take your throne.”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Fluttershy said. “I’m not like you. I just want Pinkie back.”

“You selfish girl!” Dracula slammed her hoof against the wall hard enough to shake the entire hallway. “What makes you think you can have everything? You want to be a vampire, but you don’t want the wings. You want power, but you don’t want blood. You want your precious little pony, but you don’t want to hurt me. Make a decision!”

“There has to be another way!” Fluttershy put her hooves together and begged. “Please, I’ll give you anything. I’ll cut my wings off myself if I have to, just don’t hurt her anymore!”

“I gave you your options! It’s me or her, Fluttershy, you can’t have both!” She tore off another leg and hurled it at Fluttershy’s hooves. “You’re running out of time, girl!”

“You brought me here to be different,” Fluttershy sobbed. “Remember? You… You thought Equestria needed a pony like your mother, right? What would she do? Would she hurt you, or—”

“Enough!” Dracula tore off the final leg and let out a cry of anger as she hurled it straight into Fluttershy’s chest.

Fluttershy had no chance to react. The stone slammed into her like nothing ever had before. She felt something crack as she was thrown into the air, and it only got worse when she landed hard on her back and slid down the hall.

She wheezed and tried to regain her breath, but all that came to her was pain. Something in her chest had broken, and it stabbed into her with every inhale. Even when she did manage to take a breath, it didn’t seem to actually do anything. She still felt utterly breathless, and her muscles were quickly starting to burn as they struggled without oxygen.

Dracula wasn’t finished. The shadows wrapped around Fluttershy’s tail and dragged her painfully back over to Dracula, then lifted her upside-down into the air to meet Dracula’s fiery gaze.

“You know nothing of my mother,” Dracula told her. “How dare you speak of her to me. If I did not need you, I’d rip out your heart right here, but seeing as killing you just slows things down, I’ll settle for this.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Dracula motioned with her hoof and commanded the shadows holding Pinkie. It took only a second for them to build up enough speed, and then they slammed the statue into the wall.

The brittle stone crumbled. In just an instant, all that was left was dust on the ground.

“No—” Fluttershy started to cry out, but the stabbing pain in her chest cut her short. She tried to free herself, to flail loose or kick at Dracula or anything else, but her legs could hardly move. She’d lost too much air, and already the edges of her vision were starting to go dark.

“Do you understand your position here yet?” Dracula stared hard into Fluttershy’s eyes. “You do as I say. I am your Lady, and until you can kill me, I am above you in every way.”

“I won’t…” Fluttershy coughed up more blood and wheezed. She could barely get words out. “Play your game.”

“You already are. Or is that pile of rubble not enough to make clear that you cannot stand against me? You either do as I say, or things start dying.”

Fluttershy shook her head. “I’ll die before I let you hurt my friends any more.”

Dracula laughed. “And what exactly makes you believe that would stop me?”

“I won’t let you…”

Fluttershy was running out of time. Her vision was tunneling fast, and the ringing in her ears was only getting worse. She had to do something, anything, before it was too late.

So, she decided to do the only thing she was still able to do.

She shut down.

First her lungs, her ears, her eyes. Those vestigial pieces that had already become unusable. Then her other senses, and her limbs, and any other movement she could have accomplished. She left nothing but the small amount of effort needed to hold back the pain for as long as she needed.

She stopped her heart last, and when she did the pain washed in. She drowned in it as it filled every bit of her, made her cold, empty and lifeless. It filled her lungs like briny water, pressed in on her with crushing force, shot through her body like a bolt of lightning. It came at her on every front in its unceasing attempts to drag her back to the river.

She held it back though, at least for now. She’d kept just enough of herself going to do that. Every other ounce of power she had in her body was channeled into one thing, the one part of her that the pain couldn’t touch.

The shadows grew.

They grew and grew through her body, flowing with ease with nothing stopping them but that pain. They washed through the pain, pushed it away, stopped it entirely. They even used the pain, devouring it until all that was left was an echo of a memory, the shadow of pain, which was just more shadow to overcome Fluttershy.

Then, when it had no more space to fill, the shadows grew into Fluttershy.

It started with her heart. It took only a split second for her heart to be devoured by the darkness, changed forever into a shadow of what it had been. Of that, Fluttershy had no doubt. When she fell into the darkness, let it take her over, the bits of her that it swallowed would never exist again.

The shadow of her heart still knew what it was meant to do, though, and it started to beat. It pumped shadow into her where blood had been, and that poured into her veins, to her organs, all throughout her body.

When her lungs were devoured, she felt herself gasp for air. It still hurt, but it was just the shadow of pain, and instead of making her weaker, the pain poured into her and became a part of the shadows that she was. It made her stronger.

Finally, after everything else, the shadows got to the final piece of Fluttershy that she’d held against the pain, and they waited. The shadows weren’t hungry, they weren’t devouring everything as some malevolent force, they simply were. They filled space that had ceased to be filled, and this last bit of Fluttershy wasn’t yet open to them.

Fluttershy had come too far to stop there, though, and she let them in. She let go of her grip on reality and fell into the darkness that swarmed in on her.

The world was gone. No Fluttershy, no Dracula, no castle, no river. It was all just shadow. Just darkness.

Fluttershy’s consciousness wasn’t even there, not really. There was just a bit of shadow that was meant to be her mind, and it still had what were meant to be thoughts. It felt it as the shadows that were meant to be Fluttershy pieced themselves together around it. When it was meant to have ears, it could hear again. When what was supposed to be its legs returned, it could stand.

And, finally, when the shadows of its eyes filled into place, it could see the world once more.

It took Fluttershy a minute to figure out what was happening. She was standing on the ground again, that much was clear. Dracula stood before her, staring curiously down at her. Around her was a hallway, and around that a castle, and around that a town. Everything seemed to be in place.

She looked down at herself, and was somewhat shocked to see that she looked… Normal. Fluffy yellow legs under a furry yellow chest, all of it perfectly clean and uninjured. As far as she could tell, she was still just Fluttershy.

She knew better than that, though. If she looked for them, she could still find the shadows swimming around her, making up who and what she was. She could feel the frigid nothingness that flowed past her.

She knew that, while she was Fluttershy in a sense, she only really existed because Fluttershy did not.

“Well that was a fun trick,” Dracula said, “but I’m afraid it’s a bit too late. Maybe if you’d done that sooner, you could have saved your—”

“Please stop talking,” Fluttershy said.

Dracula flinched. It was barely noticeable, but for just a moment, she hadn’t been able to speak.

“What did you say to me?” Dracula asked.

Fluttershy looked up slowly and Stared at Dracula. “I said, please stop talking.”

Dracula went quiet again, but it still didn’t take long for her to shrug off Fluttershy’s influence.

But still, she didn’t talk.

Fluttershy was quickly getting used to her new non-self, and that came with some useful insight, the first bit being that it didn’t actually matter if her Stare worked. Either way, it was meant to work, and the shadow of a Stare was just as potent as the real thing.

Fluttershy turned her attention away from Dracula and walked over to the pile of rubble that sat nearby. A tear came to her eye as she looked down at it, but she wiped it away. She focused intently on the debris, painstakingly gathering every bit of it with shadows and pulling it together.

When she wasn’t strong enough, she started to use herself once again. She pulled shadows from the mass that was meant to be her, shadows she had much finer control over, and used them for what she was doing. She tore at herself in chunks, and as she did parts of her simply ceased to be.

At some point she tore away a piece that made her Stare stop working, and Dracula spoke up again. “What exactly are you trying to do?”

“I told you,” Fluttershy said, although speaking at this point took a fair amount of effort, “there had to be another choice. I found it.”

After she said that, the last little bit of herself floated away and down to the rubble. Then it all swarmed together, pulled the bits into one place, and started to piece them back together.

The shadows swirled together for a long, slow minute. As they did, Dracula just stood back and watched.

Then they finished, and the shadows all wisped away like smoke. Where they had been stood a very dazed, very confused Pinkie Pie, who was looking all around the hallway and trying to figure out how she’d gotten there.

It took Fluttershy’s body a long time to piece itself back together again. She floated in the darkness for what felt like hours, waiting impatiently for the shadows that made her up to regain enough of themselves to pull together.

When she could see again, she wasn’t where she had expected to be. Above her was a vibrant, swirling orange sky, and below her was the blue of nighttime. The raft she was on rocked on light waves.

At the back of the raft sat The Visitor, shaking their head solemnly as they slowly paddled along.

“Oh, Fluttershy,” they said. “You have some really dumb ideas, you know that?”

Chapter 28: Lost at Sea

“I’m sorry?”

Fluttershy was giving The Visitor a blank stare, which they didn’t seem to feel the need to return. They were staring off into the vast, ever-shifting landscape above, watching intently as the mists mixed and mingled.

Then they laughed.

It hardly sounded like a laugh. It was closer to the sound of the waves as they crashed lightly against the side of the raft, harsh and disjointed as all primal forces tend to be, but it was definitely a laugh. There was no doubt about that.

“You should be,” they told Fluttershy.

They finally took their gaze from the sky and fixed in on Fluttershy. Even now, with shadow as her home and life, Fluttershy saw nothing below their hood but an inky void.

“I’ve been sitting here for hours waiting for you,” The Visitor continued. Their voice still sounded hollow and wispy, but there was a sort of playfulness to it now, like a soft spring breeze as compared to a howling storm. “Would you want to spend hours here alone with nothing to do?”

“I’m sorry,” Fluttershy said again. “Um, if I may ask, though…” Fluttershy pursed her lips. “Why did you bring me here? I really don’t want to leave Pinkie alone with Dracula.”

“Bring you?” They laughed again. “You died, Fluttershy. That was all your doing, not mine.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy wasn’t quite sure how to react. “Um… Now what?”

“Good question. Usually I just toss you lot back up there when your bodies are healed, but, well, usually you’re real. This…” They gestured vaguely at Fluttershy. “This is new.”

“What?” Fluttershy gasped. “New? How is it new? I-I mean, I’m seen Dracula move shadows around, she even had Pinkie hidden in the shadows, wouldn’t she… I mean…” Fluttershy trailed off into nervous muttering.

“Dracula commands shadows, yes,” The Visitor said. “She didn’t jump into them, though. She at least has some sense of self-preservation.”

“She just…” Fluttershy winced. “I could have just controlled them without letting them in?”

“What, you thought every powerful vampire in history had abandoned their existence for power?”

“Well, it just felt like what I had to do,” Fluttershy said. “I mean, why else would so few vampires be strong enough to stand up to Dracula?”

“Most vampires don’t get to go back if they step too far and wind up here,” The Visitor said. “And you’re still not even Dracula. If I was following the rules, you’d be done.” They thought for a moment, then added, “Probably.”

“But you’re not following the rules?”

“Well, I made them. I get to break them.” They shrugged. “You’re fun.”

“Oh.”

“Well, anyway, now that you’re back in one piece you should probably start working on getting out of here,” they said.

Fluttershy frowned. “You can’t just send me back?”

“To what body? Who would I even be sending back? I’m the only real thing in this boat.”

Fluttershy pursed her lips. “Okay, I get it.” She looked down at the old wood under her hooves and thought for a moment. “Well, you brought me here when I fell asleep, right? Could I go the other way?”

They shrugged. “Let’s find out.”

The Visitor stopped moving and went completely silent. A quiet descended over the little raft, the only sounds being the waves lapping against the side and Fluttershy’s slow, anxious breathing.

Fluttershy glanced around as she waited. The sky whirled above as always. There was no wind, but still the water rippled with waves. They shook the moon as they passed through it one by one.

She looked over the edge and was unsurprised to see no reflection. A thought struck her mind, though, and she looked again. This time she looked not for a reflection, but the lack of one, and of course it was there. If there was no reflection, there had to be a shape hidden in the shadows that the reflection could fit, and once she found it she could see in it what the reflection would be, and that was good enough.

She frowned at the face that looked back at her. It seemed her new existence couldn’t erase the damage that had already been done. Her mane was a mess. One of her ears drooped, and she couldn’t seem to right it. A deep scar ran down one cheek, narrowly missing her shadowy eye.

Her eyes were the one thing that seemed to have changed significantly. The vibrant red that had once filled them was gone, and in its place was darkness. Only the whites of her eyes held back the shadows, and even they faltered. Her eyes were badly bloodshot, but instead of the red that should have run in cracks through them, it was just more shadow, tendrils of shade that slithered out from the pits that centered each eye.

“I liked the red,” she muttered sadly under her breath.

Before she could ruminate further, The Visitor once again stirred. “She’s coming,” they said.

The air nearby started to shimmer as a mirage formed. A tall blue door slowly formed itself, hovering above the water and keeping pace with the raft.

When the door opened, it blocked Fluttershy’s view of the other side, although she had a good idea of who stood there.

Her thoughts were quickly proven right when she spoke. “Yes, cousin? I’m quite busy,” Princess Luna said in an annoyed voice.

The Visitor pointed at Fluttershy. “I think this belongs to you.”

Luna opened the door the rest of the way and stepped out into the air. She stood on air, but still she stood, her wings resting at her side.

As soon as she saw Fluttershy, she gasped and leaped down onto the raft. It shook violently as she landed with a heavy thud and leaned down to match Fluttershy’s eye level.

“Fluttershy, what happened?” Luna stroked Fluttershy’s scarred cheek in a loving, worried gesture. “I thought you were just on vacation, how did this happen to you?”

Fluttershy couldn’t help but smile at the tenderness. “I, um… I’ve been staying with Dracula,” she said, “and she kind of… Killed me.”

The Visitor snickered. “Yeah, sure, blame it on Dracula.”

Luna ignored them. A fire lit in her wide eyes, and a look of anger crossed her face. “That treacherous little imp, I’ll rip her apart for this.”

Fluttershy gasped and waved her hooves out in front of herself. “No, no, don’t hurt her! I’m fine, really, I can go back, I just um… Need to figure out how. I don’t really have a body to go back to.”

Luna hesitated, but eventually her face softened. “Oh, you poor thing.” She cupped a hoof under Fluttershy’s chin and lifted her head to better look into her eyes. Then she shook her head, tsked, and looked back at The Visitor. “Why didn’t you tell me about this? I could have stopped all of this from happening. You could have stopped it.”

“You know I like to see how things play out,” they said.

Luna huffed and stood up. “I see you haven’t changed.” She hopped back through the door and waved for Fluttershy to follow. “You should be ashamed of yourself, cousin,” she continued. “Look at her. This is as much your fault as it is Dracula’s.”

Fluttershy stood up and stepped over into the door, although she did so somewhat awkwardly as she didn’t want to actually leap the gap. Once she was in, she looked back and waved to The Visitor. “Um, thank you for all the help,” she said. “I hope we get to talk more, just not, you know, on the river.”

Luna shut the door before they could respond. “Be cautious, Fluttershy,” she said quietly. “Death has no true friends.”

“We’ve helped lots of ponies who had trouble with friendship,” Fluttershy said. “They’re just another pony.”

“Mm.”

Fluttershy looked around at the place she’d been brought to.

The realm of dreams was a strange, spaceless place. It had no true physicality, no measurable depth. Dreams stood outside of space. Even with her connection to the shadows, Fluttershy held no power over the realm. Even shadows needed space to exist, and without that space they simply weren’t there.

It felt cold and lonely to Fluttershy to be someplace devoid of shadow. She stared out into the vast void of nothingness, and when nothing stared back at her, her heart ached with an empty feeling.

Aside from the nothing, the world of sleep was speckled with tiny lights that looked to be infinitely far away. They were all around, twinkling like stars, and shifted constantly as ponies woke up and others fell asleep. The result was a strange, flickering movement that shifted around her vision in ways that were not quite perceptible on their own, but together formed a picture like no other.

“Are you intent on returning to the castle?” Luna asked.

Fluttershy nodded. “I have to finish things.”

“I’d like to be there to assist you.”

Fluttershy shook her head. “I think I can handle it, and having help would make it easier for Dracula to ignore what I have to say. Give me about thirty minutes, okay?”

“If you say so,” Luna said. “I’ve found a nearby dream. Are you ready?”

Fluttershy nodded.

Luna took a few steps, and Fluttershy followed. As they walked, a world shaped itself around them. Dark evergreen trees topped with snow sprung up all around, and fresh snow soon crunched beneath their hooves. The empty darkness changed to the soft blue of night, and a full moon filled the sky.

They stood at the porch of a tiny log cabin, nestled so snugly in the trees that even right up against it, it nearly blended into the world around. The walls were a patchwork of old and new wood, and smoke rose from a tall stone chimney. Firelight flickered through the curtained windows, and the smell of a freshly cooked dinner wafted towards them.

From inside, they could hear the muffled sounds of a young pony yelling in anger.

Luna frowned. “We’ve come at a bad time.”

“Is this a nightmare?” Fluttershy asked.

Luna shook her head. “No, this is cathartic for him. I just hate to interrupt.”

“Oh…” Fluttershy thought of Pinkie, but fought away the worries. “Should we find another dream?”

“Your little village doesn’t sleep much,” Luna said. “He’s the only one that knows you well. He’ll understand. Just wait here for me, alright?”

Fluttershy nodded, and Luna walked in. The yelling got clearer as the door opened, but she shut it so quickly behind herself that Fluttershy didn’t hear anything intelligible.

The yelling stopped almost immediately, and the world got very quiet. Insects chirped in the woods around the house, and for a moment Fluttershy was tempted to go look for them, but she decided against it.

After a few minutes, the door opened again and Luna walked out eating a bowl of stew. Shortly behind her was Foggy Vale, his wings folded sheepishly to his side and an embarrassed look on his face. When he saw Fluttershy, he wiped his eyes and forced a smile.

Fluttershy smiled back. “Hi, Vale,” she said. “Sorry to intrude like this.”

“Nah, it’s cool,” he said. “I got it out of me.”

Fluttershy turned her gaze to Luna and gave her a quizzical look, glancing accusingly at the bowl.

Luna shrugged and swallowed a bit. “As much as I dislike Alucard,” she said, “he is an excellent cook.”

“It’s not even real,” Fluttershy replied.

“You’re one to talk,” Luna said teasingly. She smirked and tossed the bowl into the snow nearby. “Are you ready to go?”

Fluttershy nodded. “As ready as I can be, I think.”

“Good,” Luna said. “I’ll see you soon, then. Vale, just wake up when you’re ready.”

With that, Luna stepped off the porch and vanished into the aether.

“Guess we’ll just go,” Vale said. “You’re really gonna fight my aunt?”

“No,” Fluttershy said, “I just want to talk.”

Chapter 29: One More Time

Fluttershy took a slow, deep breath.

She wasn’t sure if she actually needed to breathe still, but this was more an effort to calm her nerves than anything else. Even now, even though she was more confident than ever before, her heart pounded as she looked up at the heavy doors leading into the throne room. Her legs still turned to jelly, and a part of her mind still yelled at her to flee.

The breathing helped, though. She could focus on the mundanity of it, and it gave her back the slightest sense of normalcy. Not much, there was nothing normal in the castle, but enough.

Enough to let her push the doors open and walk inside.

Dracula was back on her throne, but for once she wasn’t lounging. She looked more serious than she ever had before. She sat tall and proud at the top of her world, her cloak wrapped around her and a murderous glare on her face that existed solely for Fluttershy.

Fluttershy barely even looked at Dracula, because next to the throne was somepony more important. She was lying on the floor, curled in on herself, and her long, straight pink hair was pulled down over her eyes. She didn’t so much as stir when the doors opened.

“Pinkie?” Fluttershy called out with equal parts fear and relief.

Pinkie Pie jerked awake and slowly rose her head to look. When she met her tired, dreary eyes with Fluttershy’s, they went wide and she shot up onto her hooves. “Fluttershy, you’re okay!” The shaky fragments of a smile tried to find their way onto her face, but she couldn’t quite manage it.

“Of co—” Fluttershy choked up, and tears came to her eyes. “Of course I’m okay, Pinkie, I’m just glad you are.”

Pinkie nodded vigorously. “B-But what happened to you, you lo—”

“Shut up.”

Pinkie and Fluttershy both glanced over at Dracula as she spoke up, and she stepped calmly off of her throne.

“Why are you back?” Dracula’s eyes were locked to Fluttershy’s, and Fluttershy couldn’t look away. “You should be dead.”

“You know we have a deal with The Visitor,” Fluttershy replied.

“I have a deal with The Visitor,” Dracula corrected. “You have nothing, and they have no right to make deals behind my back.”

“I think they can probably do whatever they want,” Fluttershy said.

“Nothing is above me.” Dracula swiped her hoof through the air dramatically as she spoke. “No creature, living or otherwise, has the power to stand against me. That thing is no exception.”

Fluttershy frowned. “Our line only got that privilege in the first place because we were friends with The Visitor. You shouldn’t talk about your friends like that.”

Dracula scoffed. “You think my father had friends? Or whatever came before him? Entire civilizations rose and were wiped from history in the time since my line had any friends. We have tools, servants, underlings that do as we command. That is all.”

“Your father had friends. I saw that hall of memories. Those displays were made with some kind of love, even if it was twisted and evil.” Fluttershy shook her head. “At the very least, he had your mother.”

Dracula bared her fangs. “I thought I told you not to speak of my mother.”

“Would she have wanted you to have friends?” Would she have—”

“Quiet!” Dracula spread her wings and leaped forward. She flew at Fluttershy full speed, then picked her up and slammed her against the wall above the door.

Fluttershy winced as she hit the wall and pain shot through her back. When Dracula pinned her there by pressing a leg to her neck, though, she didn’t struggle.

“Fluttershy!” Pinkie screamed out in horror and leaped down the stairs from the throne. She sprinted full speed over to them and stood nearby, staring up. “Let her go, you big bully!”

“I told you to shut up!” Dracula’s voice boiled with rage. “Do you want to lose that tongue?”

Fluttershy took a deep breath. Dracula had damaged her throat badly with the pin, but that didn’t matter anymore. Everything had a shadow, from her throat to her lungs to the air itself, and it was only a matter of finding the breath.

Then she looked down at Pinkie and tried, almost successfully, to smile reassuringly. “I’m okay, Pinkie,” she said. Her voice was as clear as ever, despite the pain Dracula continued to ravage her with. “She can’t hurt me.”

Dracula growled. “Don’t get cocky, girl. I might not be able to kill you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hurt you. The shadows are mine to command.”

Dracula pulled back her free hoof, then slammed it forward into Fluttershy’s chest.

It didn’t hit Fluttershy, though. At least, not the Fluttershy that was there at that moment. Everything had shadows, and Dracula saw them, too.

Dracula’s hoof slid into Fluttershy’s chest without any resistance, and Fluttershy felt every excruciating moment when it slammed into a shadow of her heart and crushed it against the wall.

It was over in a moment, but it felt like a lifetime. Fluttershy screamed out in agony and uselessly clutched at her chest as her hind legs flailed.

Pinkie gasped. “No, stop! Please!”

“Don’t give me commands!” Dracula wheeled back for another strike, and Fluttershy tried futilely to brace herself against what was coming.

She knew how shadows worked. She knew a shadow couldn’t actually be destroyed, because another shadow would just take its place. Even shadows can leave shadows.

So it was no surprise when, once again, Dracula’s hoof plunged into her chest and crushed her heart.

She screamed again. The pain was no lesser the second time.

“Fluttershy, do something!” Pinkie’s voice cracked as she started to cry. “Stop her!”

Fluttershy was breathing hard, trying to calm herself down from the overwhelming pain. “I don’t…” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

“See, Fluttershy, even she agrees.” Dracula leaned in close and pressed her hoof into Fluttershy’s chest again, this time far more slowly. It still hurt just as much when she squeezed Fluttershy’s heart, still made Fluttershy scream just as loudly, but this time the pain didn’t stop after an instant. “Hurt me. Kill me. So long as I still breathe, I’ll never allow you to take the throne, and so long as you still breathe, I’ll never stop trying to make you into what you need to be. There’s only one way out of this.”

“You—” Fluttershy coughed from trying to speak through the pain. “You’re wrong.”

Fluttershy knew she had to do something, though. She had to get away. As long as she was there, her shadow would be there, and Dracula would never run out of ways to torture her.

The only solution she saw was to stop being there, so that’s what she did.

Dracula jerked forward and struck the wall as Fluttershy vanished into a puff of smoky nothingness.

The world went dark around Fluttershy again. With no body, she couldn’t see the world around her, and she couldn’t risk forming even the shadow of a self, because Dracula could find that easily.

She needed a change of perspective.

She tried to rethink things. When she’d walked into the world of shadow before, she’d seen the world around her, but that didn’t mean she was only able to see the world. She was the darkness. She should be able to feel it.

She was surprised by how easy it was, but really, she’d been doing it all her life. It was no harder to feel the shape of the darkness than it was to feel where her legs were when she had a body. She only had to realize that the sense was there at all.

Back in the world of the existing, darkness started to swirl beside Pinkie. It found its shape quickly, and just like that Fluttershy stood there, completely uninjured.

Before either of the others could react, Fluttershy grabbed Pinkie and flapped her wings to shoot back away from Dracula.

“Don’t think you can run from me, child,” Dracula said once she noticed Fluttershy flying away. She pushed off the wall and swooped down to give chase.

Fluttershy put a hoof up defensively, and Dracula stopped in her tracks. A chain of shade had appeared, wrapped around one of her hid legs, and it tethered her to a single spot in the air.

When they landed, Fluttershy let go of Pinkie and stepped in front of her. “It’s time to talk, Dracula.”

Dracula snarled back. “What do you hope to accomplish by talking? Do you truly expect me to just step down from my title?”

“No,” Fluttershy said, shaking her head. “I expect you to keep it.”

Dracula surged back, startled. “After all this time, you wish to just give up?”

“I’m not the one who’s trying to give up. You keep saying the creatures of the night need a better Dracula, well, then be a better Dracula.”

“Look at me,” Dracula said. “Look at what I’ve done to you! It cannot be me!”

“That’s just an excuse,” Fluttershy said. “You say you took power from your father to stop his tyranny, well then prove it! Because all I’ve seen from you since I got here is the exact kind of evil I’ve been told he was. You lust after power, you refuse to change for the good of your subjects, you won’t even try to settle anything peacefully. You can’t just claim to be better. I came here expecting to stay with The Lady, but all I’ve seen is The Count.”

Fluttershy stomped on the ground to accentuate her final words, and then she glared at Dracula. Her chest heaved as she breathed quickly and heavily, and her head was spinning from the adrenaline that had pumped into her.

Dracula looked at her blankly for a moment.

Then she hissed and shot forward with enough speed and strength to shatter the chain that bound her.

“You’ll die for that!” Dracula’s screech was ear-piercing, both loud and forceful when it slammed against them.

Fluttershy’s cheeks started to turn red as she got more frustrated. “Stop it!” She yelled back desperately. “Just… Stop!”

She snapped her eyes open and Stared at Dracula.

Dracula stopped flying and slid to a stop on the floor.

Fluttershy took several deep breaths, trying to decide what to do. She felt light-headed, and it was getting tougher to think straight. She was getting too worked up.

Finally, she made a decision.

“Fine! You want me to make you stop, then I will.”

Fluttershy shot forward and flew at Dracula. She hardly even slowed down as she approached her target, and once she did she latched on and refused to let go.

Then she sank her teeth into Dracula’s neck.

Dracula gave her a strange, shocked look, because not only did it not hurt, she couldn’t even feel it.

Really, Fluttershy hadn’t bitten Dracula, but rather her shadow, and a very specific part of it. She didn’t want to hurt Dracula, or kill her, or steal her blood, so she didn’t bite any of the parts that would do that. She bit only what she wanted to.

Then she drank.

Overwhelming swathes of power washed into Fluttershy as she drank. The first sip dwarfed what little strength she had amassed for herself, and there was a lot to take in. The cracks in her eyes pulsed as she drank, and the tips of her mane and tail started to lose their color.

Still, she drank. She drank and drank until there was no more left to drink. Nearly half of her mane had turned gray by that point, and even her hooves were developing strips of white.

Once she was done, she pushed herself off of Dracula, landed back on the floor, and wiped her mouth with her leg. “There.” Her breath was slow and heavy, and a trickle of darkness drained from her mouth.

Dracula hadn’t changed much, but one change was readily apparent; her once vibrant, shining red eyes were now a humble silver.

Dracula’s voice was somewhat shaky when she spoke, and her eyes stayed wide. “W-What did you do to me?”

“I stopped you,” Fluttershy said. “Congratulations, Dracula. I’ve cured your vampirism.”

Chapter 30: Finality

“You’ve killed me!” Dracula glared at Fluttershy with unquenchable fury. “You think yourself so high and mighty, but this is no different than killing me yourself. What do you think is going to happen to a Dracula with no power?”

“I’m not going to just leave you here,” Fluttershy said. “I told the creatures of this town that I would help them, and that’s what I plan to do.”

“Don’t patronize me by placing yourself as my bodyguard after you put me in danger. Just accept what you’ve done. Perhaps you can be ‘friends’ with whatever takes my place.”

“The creatures of the night aren’t as bloodthirsty as you think they are,” Fluttershy told her. “If you still bothered to actually lead them, you’d know that.”

“What, was it me who attacked you in the guild? The dungeons?”

“Yes!” Fluttershy took a step closer to Dracula and pointed at her accusingly. “It was your lazy, uncaring, power-hungry ruling that led to all of that. If you want this town to change, then you have to change first.”

“You’re a fool,” Dracula snarled. “Delusional. I’ve lived for millennia, watching and learning how creatures work, and you think you know better than me? Bah.” She huffed indignantly. “Enough of this. Return my power to me.”

“I’m not going to do that,” Fluttershy said.

“I wasn’t asking.” Dracula hissed. “I am your Lady, and I command you to return my power to me at once!”

“You are not My Lady,” Fluttershy replied. “I am not your Heiress. I am Nothing. There’s no creature that exists that can give me orders. Only you had the power to so much as touch Nothing, and now Nothing has taken that power back. I am Nothing, and I serve Nothing.”

“You’ll kill us all!” Dracula bared her fangs and leaped at Fluttershy’s throat with killing intent in her eyes.

Fluttershy didn’t move.

Dracula couldn’t touch Fluttershy. She simply flew past and landed back on the floor as though nothing had been there at all, which, for the most part, was true.

Nothing was there, and Nothing looked incredibly calm as she turned to face Dracula once more.

“Coward,” Dracula spat. “Hiding in your shadows. That’s all you’ve ever done, run and hide, and now you’re hiding from what you’ve done to me. Well, you’ll see. I’ve no intention of waiting quietly for my death.”

Dracula turned away from Fluttershy and made for the door.

Fluttershy gave her a puzzled look. “Where are you going?”

“Into town,” Dracula told her as she swung the door open. “I may as well enjoy the sunlight.”

Then the door shut with a heavy thump, and Dracula was gone.

Pinkie and Fluttershy both looked at the door for a moment. Then they looked at each other, and as soon as their eyes met they both started running for each other.

When they met, Fluttershy grabbed Pinkie in a tight hug and pulled her into the air, kissing her cheek gently. “Oh, Pinkie, I’m so glad you’re alright.”

Pinkie nodded and pressed herself up against Fluttershy without a word.

Fluttershy squeezed her, then started to hold her with one leg as she brought her hoof up and twisted it through Pinkie’s limp mane. “I’m so sorry I put you through all of this.”

Pinkie shook her head. “I didn’t go through anything,” she said. “You’re the one who got hurt.”

Fluttershy sighed and stroked Pinkie’s mane as she floated back to the ground. “It’s almost over. I can’t get hurt anymore. I just have to see things through.” Fluttershy pulled Pinkie’s mane aside and kissed her forehead. “Then we’ll figure everything out, okay?”

Pinkie nodded meekly.

Fluttershy gave her another squeeze. “Wanna see what I see?”

Pinkie tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

Fluttershy grinned. “Here, look.”

She held Pinkie tight and, without even needing to move, pulled them both into the world of shadows. The world vanished around them, only visible as a shadow of what it had just been. It took some effort on Fluttershy’s part to make sure Pinkie could see at all, but she managed it well enough.

Pinkie’s jaw fell open. “Woah. You see this all the time?”

“Well, yes and no,” Fluttershy said. “It’s always there, but I tune out most of it. Kind of like how you don’t see your own nose.”

“Wow…”

Fluttershy looked over at Pinkie and got a giddy grin on her face. When Pinkie noticed, she shot back a look of annoyance.

“What?” Pinkie asked.

“Nothing,” Fluttershy said, “it’s just… You’re still pink.”

“Of course I’m pink, I’m Pinkie.”

Fluttershy laughed. “Of course. It’s just cute.”

Pinkie huffed.

“I should probably get going if I want to be there in time for whatever Dracula’s doing,” Fluttershy said. “Do you want to come?”

“Um…” Pinkie looked away and frowned. “You said you can’t get hurt?”

“Mm-hm,” Fluttershy hummed. “It’s not possible if I don’t have a body to hurt, and I only need to be seen for this, not felt. They can’t touch me.”

“Well, then…” Pinkie swallowed nervously. “Is it okay if I don’t come? It sounds like a lot, and now that I know you’re okay, I kind of just want to be alone.”

“Of course,” Fluttershy said. “Here.” She shifted her perspective, and the scene around them changed. Suddenly they were no longer in the throne room, but somewhere else.

Then Fluttershy stepped them both out of the shadows, and they stood in her room at the top of the castle.

“This is my room,” Fluttershy said, “so it’s your room, too. I’ll be back as soon as I can be, okay? If you need anything, just… Go onto the balcony and yell for Vale. He’s probably out there.”

Pinkie nodded. “Good luck,” she said, “and, um…” her voice trailed off.

Fluttershy kissed her cheek. “I love you, too, Pinkie.”

Then Fluttershy vanished in a puff of smoke, and Pinkie was alone. After a quick glance around the room, she went and laid down at the massive window that overlooked the world outside and stared out at the horizon.

A crowd was already gathering around the stage when Fluttershy got there. The crier had hopped down to join them, and Dracula stood alone on the wooden platform. She seemed to be waiting for more onlookers to appear.

Fluttershy didn’t feel any need to wait, so she stepped out of the shadows beside Dracula. There were gasps around the crowd, but Dracula didn’t so much as turn her head.

“The audience is down there,” she told Fluttershy.

“I know,” Fluttershy replied. “Whatever you’re planning on saying, I’m probably going to want some input.”

“And why, exactly, should you be allowed to interrupt me?”

“Because I want to,” Fluttershy said, “and you can’t stop me. I can’t let you mislead these creatures. This is the time for you to step up and actually be a leader.”

Dracula sneered. Then, evidently, she decided that the crowd was large enough, because she finally addressed them.

“Creatures of the night,” she said, her voice loud and commanding, “I come to you today with grave news, news that will likely shock and worry you.”

Fluttershy frowned.

“All of my power has been stolen from me,” Dracula continued. “I can no longer protect you.”

There were nervous murmurs throughout the crowd.

Fluttershy huffed. “B-But, that’s no reason to be scared,” she said to the crowd. “Equestria isn’t the horrible place you’ve been led to believe it is. You don’t need protection.”

“This girl is a delusional fool,” Dracula replied. “She lacks my experience, my wisdom. She would kill us all.”

“I—” Fluttershy frowned and decided she needed a different approach. She looked out to the crowd. “Um, crier? Could you return to the stage, please?”

The crier, who’d been sitting right up front, hopped up effortlessly to join them. “How may I help you, Heiress?”

“I’m not the Heiress,” Fluttershy said. “Just call me Fluttershy. Do you think you have a good idea of the needs and fears of the town?”

“Well, of course,” the crier said. “It’s my job.”

“Good,” Fluttershy said. “I need you to bring up any objections you think of while we talk, alright?”

Dracula rolled her eyes. “What a farce.”

“I can do that,” the crier said. “Um, to start, you haven’t really actually addressed what Dracula has always said about the outside world. That if just one of us were to do something bad, we’d all be held responsible.”

“Well, I can’t really say that that wouldn’t happen,” Fluttershy said, “but Equestria has at least changed enough that you wouldn’t be hunted. Honestly, it’s sad to say, but you probably would be treated unfairly. It happened to Princess Luna. It’s just… Something that will take a lot of work to get past. I’m willing to commit to that work, though, and I think it’s worth doing when the other option is to continue to keep your existence a secret.”

“This is all assuming we won’t be hunted down,” Dracula argued, “and I find that to be a very risky assumption.”

“The town could stay hidden,” Fluttershy said. “It can exist as a safe haven, but there’s no reason to keep the creatures trapped here. You’re holding them all in a cage because you’re afraid, but you won’t do what needs to be done to address that fear.”

“You were what we needed,” Dracula snarled back. “I signed my life away to you so that this town could move forward. Is that not commitment?”

“You have more to offer this town than your title,” Fluttershy said. “Your idea of commitment would sacrifice all the good you could do, and for what? I’m already here, and I’m not going to leave just because I’m not Dracula. You could have just asked for help.”

“Um, she’s making good points,” the crier said. “A lot of us have never known you as a ruler at all. You were just… There, in the castle.”

Dracula glared at him. “Excuse me?”

The crier flinched back. “S-Sorry!”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Fluttershy said with a huff. “They’re all too afraid of you to speak up and tell you how to be better! That’s what ruling with fear and power brings, and it’s made you no less of a tyrant than your father was.”

There were shocked gasps all around the crowd. Dracula snapped her gaze towards Fluttershy. “You know nothing of tyranny. My father would have stood over the entirety of this world, had he been able to. He would have burned it down and rebuilt it in his image. Compared to him, I am a saint.”

“What, so you wouldn’t wrest power from the Princesses if you thought you could? You wouldn’t change the world to your liking if you had the chance?” Fluttershy shook her head. “You’re no different from him.”

Dracula growled. “Girl, you had better hope I never find a way to hurt you.”

Fluttershy gestured out towards the crowd. “Look at them. When’s the last time you did something to help one of them?” She turned her attention to the creatures. “Has she ever helped any one of you? Even a little? Please, speak up if she has.”

The crowd was silent. There was an awkward cough near the back.

“Look around you,” Dracula said to them. “This town is what I’ve done for you”

“You know what? That’s true,” Fluttershy said. “You did make this town possible, thousands of years ago. And, despite how poorly you went about it, you brought me here because you saw a problem. That’s why I know you can lead, that you have the capability to do great things as Dracula if you just… Just…” Fluttershy sighed. “Just get over yourself.”

Dracula growled. “Enough of this. I came here for a reason.” She stepped up to the edge of the stage and addressed the crowd once more. “Creatures of the night, I am powerless, and I’ve no desire to hide away from what is to come. If you’ve been waiting, here’s your chance. Come, and claim the throne of Dracula.”

She stood up tall and proud as she looked down at the creatures, who nervously shifted their gazes around at each other. Some of them whispered, some left to avoid any bloodshed. It was quiet, and the air was tense.

And nothing happened.

No creature stepped forward to challenge Dracula. None of them even seemed to consider taking the easy shot at power. They all just looked around and waited for something to happen.

Eventually, Fluttershy stepped up beside Dracula and spoke to her quietly. “They don’t want power, Dracula. They don’t want to rule over this village. They just want to live the best lives they can, and even with all the horrible things you’ve done, they see in you the power to make that happen. You just have to try.”

Dracula looked out over the crowd in silence. She gave no indication she’d even heard Fluttershy, but she didn’t say anything more. She just looked from face to face, taking in the expression of each and every creature that was there to listen to her speak.

Then she scoffed and turned away from them with a dramatic flip of her cloak. “So be it. I’ll await my death on my throne.”

Then she hopped off the stage and walked confidently back up the path towards the castle.

A few minutes later she disappeared through the gate, and Fluttershy turned around to look over the crowd. They were looking up at her expectantly, and suddenly she felt very hot. “Oh, um… Well, I think that’s it.”

“What happens now?” The crier asked.

Fluttershy shrugged. “Now we work. We make things better.”

“And Dracula?”

“I think she’ll calm down soon enough.”

“So, we just… Go back to normal?”

“I guess. For now, at least, I think…”

A tiny smile came to Fluttershy’s lips.

“I think it’s over.”

Epilogue

Dense waves of fog rolled through the forest, pushed along by a light afternoon breeze that rustled the leaves just enough to fill the air with noise. Heat and humidity seemed to radiate out from the earth. It was the kind of day that made creatures feel stiff and sticky if they went outside for more than a few minutes, and more often than not they’d wind up back home covered in itchy bites.

None of this seemed to phase The Driver as he trudged along. His hooves left deep tracks in the soft ground as he shouldered his burden and pushed on. The old covered carriage rattled and shook as he pulled it, and the overpacked wagon hooked up behind it threatened to topple with every turn.

The Driver hadn’t carried a full load in quite a long time, but he did so with ease and a stoic expression.

Even the carriage, which rarely even carried two passengers, was full. It was a small carriage, with two benches facing each other that both had room for two ponies, and carrying the full four made it fairly cramped.

With the lack of room, the shaking of travel, and the slow pace that came with a full load, it had been a less than comfortable few hours for the group.

Still, laughter and smiles had filled the cabin the entire time.

Eventually, most of them had found some manner of comfort. Fluttershy leaned against a wall, and Pinkie leaned against Fluttershy. Across from them, Rarity had stayed sitting straight up the entire trip, and as always never let her veneer of dignity and class slip.

Rainbow Dash, on the other hand, couldn’t sit still. She shifted around into new, often awkward positions every few minutes, none of which looked comfortable at all. For the moment she was lying sideways, her head resting in Rarity’s lap, and she had her hind legs propped up against the wall of the carriage.

“Thank you again for helping us move,” Fluttershy said. “I still feel kind of bad for asking. I mean, I could do it all myself, but—”

“Nonsense, dear,” Rarity told her. “We all know you could do it, but that’s not the point. We’ve missed you! And, really, I couldn’t sleep at night if I didn’t at least come and see the town that’s stealing you away.”

“They’re not stealing us,” Fluttershy protested. “I just… I can help them. What kind of pony would I be if I just left them here? I can’t do that, I have to—”

“I’m just teasing,” Rarity interrupted. “You’ve no need to justify yourself.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy pursed her lips in embarrassment.

“Well, I still don’t really get what you’re gonna be doing here,” Rainbow Dash said. “Is there some kinda position only a shadow monster can fill?”

“Hey.” Rarity flicked one of Rainbow Dash’s ears. “She’s not a monster.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” Fluttershy said. “It doesn’t really bother me. I kind of am a monster now.”

“Rarity just doesn’t want the competition,” Rainbow Dash muttered under her breath. Rarity huffed and pushed her onto the floor, where she landed with a heavy thump, and Pinkie raised a hoof to stifle a snicker.

After a moment, Fluttershy cleared her throat and continued. “Um, so, no, that’s not really why I can help. I guess it wouldn’t really have to be me, even, I’m just a good fit. They need some kind of connection to the outside, and I know all the Princesses and, if I need to, I know I can tell them when things need to change.”

“So you’re like an ambassador,” Rarity suggested.

“Kind of.” Fluttershy nodded. “I’m also going to be advising Dracula, though, and that’s going to be a bit of a struggle. I mean, she’s finally at least trying, but… Well, I just hope she gets past the nihilism soon. Anyway, I also have a lot of ideas for little improvements I’d like to make. I mean, The Architect was clearly a very talented creature, but his work is kind of… Hostile.”

Rainbow Dash crawled back up onto the seat and plopped her head in Rarity’s lap again. “Yeah, that’s pretty obvious,” she said, “what with the eyes and the gray mane and the scar and all.”

“Sc—” Fluttershy reached up and touched her cheek, then looked at Pinkie. “I still have the scar?”

“Yup,” Pinkie said. “There’s a couple little ones, too, like here, and here.” She poked Fluttershy’s sides as she spoke. “I thought you knew.”

“I haven’t looked in a mirror,” Fluttershy said. Her face sank. “Does it… Does it look bad?”

“Nah, it’s cool,” Pinkie told her, ”and nothing can make you less cute. It just kinda put the cool on top of the cute.”

Fluttershy turned her head. “Rarity? Does it mess up my, um… How I look?”

“For once, darling, Pinkie’s nonsense is actually right.” Pinkie protested and pouted, but Rarity ignored her and went on. “It takes quite a bit for a scar to damage one’s look. Nopony will stop seeing you as a cute pony, they’ll just see a cute pony who has a scar.”

Fluttershy smiled softly and nodded. “Thank you.” Then she turned to Pinkie. “And you, too, sweetie. You’re just… A little biased.”

Pinkie huffed. “Not my fault you’re so cute. You just—”

Suddenly, Pinkie gasped and sprang to her hooves. She bounced in her seat and pointed out the window excitedly.

“We’re here!”

Rarity and Rainbow Dash both moved closer to the window so they could take a look outside.

They’d broken out of the trees, and with them the fog. Now the sky was clear, and the sun beat down harshly. The soft peat turned to hard, cracked dirt that made the carriage rattle twice as loudly. Slowly, The Driver turned them and started to walk along the long stone wall.

“Oh.” There was more than a hint of disappointment in Rarity’s reaction.

“What’s wrong?” Fluttershy asked.

“Oh, nothing!” Rarity caught herself far too late. “Nothing, really, just… Well, really, cobblestone? Don’t you think it’s kind of tacky?”

Fluttershy gave her a puzzled look. “But… It’s a wall.”

“Well, just because it’s a wall doesn’t mean it can’t look good,” Rarity replied. “I mean, it doesn’t even match the environment!”

“She kind of has a point,” Pinkie agreed. “We have a lot better stone nowadays.”

“Exactly.” Rarity tsked and shook her head. “It’s the modern age, Fluttershy. Be bold. Be daring. Might I suggest a nice obsidian? It would contrast wonderfully with the fog.”

“I don’t think obsidian would make a very good wall,” Pinkie said.

“Oh, what do you know?” Rarity replied.

“A lot. I grew up on a rock farm.”

“Oh, pssh.” Rarity waved a hoof dismissively. “You left almost as soon as you could walk. I be today’s obsidian is far stronger. Certainly enough for—”

The argument dragged on as the carriage tumbled over pebbles and stones on its way to the town. It creaked and slowed when the gate came into view, and The Driver stopped so expertly that there was hardly a jerk. It wasn’t until he knocked impatiently on the door that any of them even noticed they’d arrived.

“Ride’s up,” he grumbled.

Fluttershy didn’t keep him waiting. She hopped up almost immediately and opened the door.

“Thank you very much, Driver,” she said as she jumped out.

“Anytime, Miss N,” he replied.

“You really can just call me Fluttershy.”

“Not how I do things.” He walked past her and started to unhitch the wagon from the carriage.

“Of course.”

The others filed slowly out of the carriage and into the oppressive heat. Pinkie walked up beside Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash took straight to the sky to look over the wall.

Rarity, meanwhile, trotted over to The Driver with a smile on her face. “Thank you so much for the travel, Mister… Driver.” She laughed awkwardly. “Do you take any sort of tip?”

“Nope,” he said. “Get paid plenty by the castle. Patience is thanks enough.” He glanced sidelong towards Pinkie, then shook his head. “Just stay out of the woods. It falls on me if you go and get yourselves lost out there.”

“Of course, sir.” Rarity gave him a kind smile before she turned away.

As she walked back, Rainbow Dash was shielding her eyes with a leg as she stared into the sky. “I mean, do you guys even have pegasi? This would never fly in Ponyville.”

“We have, um… Vampires?” Fluttershy shrugged. “It’s just a different climate. The fog blocks it out most days, we just got unlucky.”

“Unlucky?” Rainbow Dash scoffed. “In Ponyville we have a schedule.”

Fluttershy looked at her coldly. “I know how things work in Ponyville.”

Behind them, the carriage started rolling noisily away.

Rainbow Dash went on without responding. “So, which of these shacks is yours?”

“Oh, we’re not in town,” Fluttershy said.

Rarity’s eyes lit up. “Are you in the castle?”

“No, sorry,” Fluttershy said. Rarity’s face sank in disappointment. “That was a little too detached.”

“Well, what’s left?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Fluttershy laughed and walked over to grab the wagon. “Oh, you’ll see.”

The streets were bustling when they walked in through the gates. The crier was on his stage, talking up a storm to a crowd of creatures, while even more walked by. Some had bags or carts full of groceries, others stacks of books and supplies, but most were just walking with friends, talking and enjoying the sunny weather.

Rarity stopped walking as she stared out at all of them with wide eyes. “So… So many…” She was muttering under her breath.

“Yeah, it’s a lot to take in,” Fluttershy said. “Really, though, they’re all just like you and me. You just have to—”

“So many ideas!” Rarity spun around and grabbed Fluttershy’s shoulders. “Who do I talk to about a business permit?”

Fluttershy flinched. “W-What?”

“Look at them all, Fluttershy!” Rarity put a leg around Fluttershy’s shoulders and gestured out grandly. “These creatures deserve to look good, do they not? Well, I can make that happen!”

“They’re more than just new bodies for you to put dresses on, Rarity,” Fluttershy said.

“I—” Rarity swallowed her words and nodded. “You’re right. That was very rude of me. I’ll just… Get to know the local designers? Yes, I think that should work.”

“Let’s just get me and Pinkie moved in first.”

“Yeah, come on,” Rainbow Dash said. “The sooner we get to Fluttershy’s, the sooner we can get out of this heat.”

Fluttershy led the group past the stage, saying hello as she passed and apologizing for being too busy to stop, and onwards down the castle street. She took them past the businesses and the homes, telling them who, and what, lived in each as they passed by. They walked on past the vampires’ guild, which had construction materials stacked up outside the door. Two vampires, tired and messy from a day of work, smiled and waved as Fluttershy passed, and she returned the gesture, but still they didn’t stop.

When they approached the inner gates, one of the guards gave them a friendly nod. “Finally committing, huh?”

“Yeah,” Fluttershy said with an embarrassed smile. “I put it off too long. It’s been… Hard, to let go of Ponyville.”

“Yeah, I bet,” the guard said. “Well, I won’t keep you. Go on in.”

“Thank you.” Fluttershy grinned.

As they walked in, Rainbow Dash landed next to Fluttershy and matched her pace. “So, are you?”

Fluttershy glanced at her. “Am I what?”

“Letting go of Ponyville.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy stopped walking. Behind them, the gate swung shut silently. “I’m… I have to try to, I think. It wouldn’t be right to not put my all behind what I’m trying to do here.”

“What about the cottage?” Rarity asked.

“Empty, for now,” Fluttershy replied. “I want to find somepony to fill the space I’m leaving behind, to take care of the animals and the forest, but…” Fluttershy frowned and looked down. “This all just happened so fast. I never thought I’d need to be thinking about a replacement, and now I’m too busy to look.”

“Well, we can keep an eye out, dear,” Rarity told her. “The animals are tough. They’ll be able to take care of themselves in the meantime.”

“I wish I could just do both,” Fluttershy said, “but it’s just too much. Even after all this, I…” She looked down at herself and shook her head. “I’m still not good enough.”

Rainbow Dash nudged her shoulder reassuringly. “Hey, c’mon, you’re plenty good enough. I mean, you took out Dracula. Sometimes we just gotta make tough choices.”

Pinkie hopped over and nuzzled Fluttershy’s cheek. “None of us want you to tear yourself to shreds for us. You’re doing amazing already. We’ll figure out the rest.”

Fluttershy sniffed and wiped her eyes with her leg. Then she looked back up and smiled. “Thank you all.”

She let go of the wagon then and stepped to the side of the path. “Anyway, um, we’re here.”

She was standing in front of a little shack that sat just inside the gates. Even with the work she and Pinkie had been putting into it, it still looked almost too ramshackle to be lived in. The lawn was filled with dead grass, the plants were dry and withered. The roof was in shambles, and the walls were full of holes. In some places, the wood was so weak and worn away that it made the cabin look even older than the castle itself.

They had been working on it, though, and it was starting to pay off. There was a lovely new door painted in a soft green, and bit by bit the walls were being replaced with clean, orange-ish wood. The window frames had been replaced to match the door, although they had decided to keep the paintings that sat in place of the panes. They made up for the lack of real windows by installing a new one where the massive hole in the wall had been, and through it they could see a home under heavy construction. The half-finished renovation gave the home the feeling of being stuck between times, tethered to the past, and at the same time being dragged to the present.

Fluttershy was looking it over proudly. “This is where The Artist stayed, a long, long time ago. None of the creatures seem to know what she could actually do, but they all assume that Dracula wouldn’t have just any artist, and so it’s stayed empty ever since because of her last words. ‘Do not touch my home. Nothing is to live there.’” Fluttershy chuckled quietly. “I thought it was a funny coincidence.”

“Uhh…” Rainbow Dash gritted her teeth as she looked over the mess of a building.

Rarity had her head tilted to the side, trying to find a flattering angle. “It’s, um…”

Fluttershy turned around to face them. She had a huge grin under still-teary eyes.

“Isn’t it perfect?”

Author's Note

And we're done! Thanks for reading, everyone, and thank you for all the kind words and support in the comments!

Honestly, I'm pretty happy with this story.

If you're interested in more, consider checking out my other stories! You can find my old pinkieshy vampire stories here and here.

Alternatively, if you're interested in more stories set in the same continuity as this, I have that too! Just check out this bookshelf, which has all my stories that take place in the same universe.

And, as always, you can follow me to keep up with what I write. My next story is probably gonna be in this universe, and it's gonna have Pinkamena! So, stick around for that, and one final time, thank you so much for reading. ^w^

Prologue

Ponyville was renowned for its beautiful, sunny days. The light beamed down on the peaceful little village, glinting off windows and bringing a smile to every face it rested on. Ponies lounged in the park, or strolled through the market, or soared through the air. Every day was like a holiday when Ponyville was sunny.

Fluttershy was renowned, among other things, for not particularly caring to revel in those sunny days. It wasn’t that she disliked nice, warm days. Those were the days nature bloomed, when animals would play and foliage was at its brightest. It was just that those were also the days when the rest of nature was more lively, too. The bustle in the sun would rile up the creatures in the forest, and plants living mostly in the dark would perk up from the rare beam of light. So, no, Fluttershy didn’t dislike sunny days at all. She just had so much else to do that she was rarely out and about to simply enjoy them.

Of course, all that was before she became a vampire.

Since then, she’d only become more of a hermit. The sunlight wasn’t poison to her, it didn’t burn her to ash, but it wasn’t pleasant. The change had sharpened all her senses to absurd degrees, and that came with a price. Bright lights stung her eyes, and having the sun beat down on her made her long for sunscreen. She hated crowds more than ever, shying away from the barrage of noise they sent her way. These things were all avoidable, yes, and she could diminish them with earplugs and sunglasses and the like, but still, they made it far more of an ordeal to go out on Ponyville’s lovely, sunny days.

Despite all this, Fluttershy loved her new body.

She had foregone the leathery wings, not wanting to lose the cuteness of the fluffy wings she had, but aside from that she was a vampire through and through. Her pointed ears and red eyes made that clear enough, and even if somepony failed to notice those, when she talked there was no missing the long, needle-sharp fangs in her mouth.

It had been a lot for her friends and family to take in, but Fluttershy thought she was cute, and that’s what mattered.

The newfound power was just a bonus, but what a bonus it was. Things other ponies found beautiful, the sky and the sea and fields of grass, had lost their luster, but in exchange the warmer colors of the world popped out at her in a way she could never have imagined. All of Equestria was a masterful oil painting in her eyes, and when focused on things that particularly caught her eye, things saturated with reds and oranges and pinks, they were so captivating she could almost taste them.

Her hearing, too, had been drastically improved. She could pick out conversations across town, or pinpoint the exact blade of grass an insect landed on. More than that, though, if she focused on the right sounds, the beat of a heart or a drip of blood, she could hear everything. She could find anypony, anywhere, so long as she knew the sound of their heart. She had never truly tested the reaches of this strange sonar, but it didn’t seem necessary. Something inside her told her it was, truly, limitless.

Then, of course, there were the tastes. Food exploded with flavor, making every meal the best she’d ever had. Some things were too powerful—garlic, in particular—but once she had figured those out, eating became one of her favorite parts of the day.

There was one taste that stood tall above the rest, though. One single, delectable drink that made her mouth water at just a thought. It tasted the way Ponyville’s beautiful days felt to others. It tasted like being in love, and knowing you were loved back. It tasted like an unquenchable, endless wellspring of power. And it tasted like nothing else in the world.

She’d only tasted it once, though, and had no intention of doing so again. There was only one way to sate that thirst, and it wasn’t something she was willing to do.

This was what was running through her mind as she rested in her huge, comfy armchair, cradling the love of her life in her grasp. Pinkie Pie was sound asleep, her breathing slow and a smile on her face, and Fluttershy was stroking her side. The petting was gentle enough not to wake her, but still Fluttershy could feel the slow, steady beat of her heart, and it brought peace to her own.

The windows were open, and the breeze carried birdsong with it. Fluttershy took a deep breath, taking in the smells of the wildflowers growing behind her house, and held it for as long as she could. She lingered on the scent, picked it apart so she could appreciate every bit of it, until her own heart started pounding in her ears, and she slowly let the breath out with a contented sigh.

Today was perfect.

Her ears perked up as something big landed on the loose gravel that lead to her door. There was a moment of heavy silence before two sets of hoofsteps started coming closer.

Fluttershy tapped Pinkie softly. “Pinkie? Somepony’s here, I’ve got to get up.”

Pinkie yawned and turned over, then pressed herself into Fluttershy’s chest and fell asleep again.

Fluttershy sighed and smiled. As carefully as she could, she shifted and maneuvered around until she was able to stand up and leave Pinkie asleep on the chair. Before she walked away, she smiled and gave Pinkie a soft kiss on the cheek.

There was a light, patient knock at the door.

She put on a welcoming smile as she walked over, and opened the door as quietly as she could. “Hello, can I—”

She stopped short when she saw who she was talking to. At her door were two pegasi with sleek, leathery wings. They both had dark sunglasses, but aside from that were nothing alike. One was a tall, slender purple mare wearing a sharp suit, while the other was a short yet imposing cyan stallion in a heavy duster. Neither of them made any move to greet her.

Behind them, a third pony towered over them. She was easily Celestia’s size, with metallic gray fur and a long black cloak. Her mane was stark white, blindingly white, with streaks of empty black that seemed to shift in imperceptible ways. Even hidden under the cloak, her dark wings looked like deadly weapons, and the long horn on her head was sharper than any Fluttershy had ever seen.

Her burning red eyes locked with Fluttershy’s, and she smiled. It was a kind, loving smile, but the hint of fangs that it revealed made it imposing all the same.

Fluttershy’s eyes went wide, and she swallowed hard. “M-My Lady?”

The pony moved forward, and her guards stepped aside. “Now, Fluttershy, I’ve told you there’s no need to be so formal. We’ve important business ahead, and I don’t want you to feel undue pressure. So, please, know that you can always call me Dracula.”

Chapter 1: Departure

“Well? Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

Dracula towered above Fluttershy with her head held high and her smile unflinching. She was the very picture of confidence, even despite the warm, sunny Ponyville day behind her contrasting with everything that she was.

Fluttershy gasped and stepped aside. “Of course! Please, come in, make yourself comfortable. Oh, and your—”

Dracula held up a hoof to stop her. “No. They can stay outside.”

“Oh. Well, if you’re sure…” Fluttershy turned to the two ponies waiting outside and gave them a meek smile. “I’m sorry.”

The stallion shrugged.

Before Fluttershy could say anything else, a white glow enveloped the door, and it swung shut with a quiet click. When Fluttershy looked back, Dracula had already lounged on her sofa extravagantly.

The room stood silent. The birds and insects outside had fallen quiet, and the breeze that blew in was hollow. A clock ticked in the kitchen, but even it seemed further away with every second.

Dracula propped her head up with a hoof and watched Fluttershy wordlessly.

Fluttershy looked back, their eyes locked together, until she realized that she should probably be doing something. Then she coughed and trotted over as quickly as she could without looking panicked. “Is there anything I can get you, My—” She caught herself and cleared her throat. “Um, Miss Dracula?”

Dracula wrinkled her brow. “Well don’t call me miss. I’m not some doe-eyed bride-to-be.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy looked more nervous with every word. “Sorry, um…”

“Fine, just go with ‘My Lady.’” She sighed. “This is going to be harder than I thought.”

“What is?” Fluttershy asked without thinking, then gasped and covered her mouth. “Oh, sorry, I probably shouldn’t—”

Dracula put a hoof up again, and Fluttershy stopped talking. “Sit down. We need to talk.”

Fluttershy looked around at the sofa taken up by Dracula and the chair filled by Pinkie. Seeing no other option, she sat on the floor.

Dracula narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing? Use a chair, you’re embarrassing us both.”

“But… The chair is taken.”

Dracula’s gaze lingered on Fluttershy for a moment before slowly turning and falling on Pinkie’s sleeping form. “Ah,” she said. “Your thrall.”

Fluttershy pursed her lips. “Girlfriend, actually,” she said quietly.

Dracula raised an eyebrow towards her. “Hm?” The blazing red of her eyes seemed to pierce straight into Fluttershy’s soul.

“N-Nothing!” Fluttershy sat up as straight as she could and shut her mouth.

“Mm.” Dracula regarded her for a moment, then returned her attention to Pinkie. “Wake her up.”

“What?” Fluttershy looked at her blankly. “But why?”

“You need a seat. At the very least, she could share.”

“She’s comfortable, though,” Fluttershy said.

“And I should care why?”

“Waking her up would be mean”

“I’m Dracula. I don’t care if something is mean.” She stared down at Fluttershy for a moment, until her face softened as a thought struck her. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

“But-” Fluttershy started, but Dracula ignored her.

Dracula’s horn lit up with a blazing white glow, and a moment later one of Pinkie’s hind legs did as well. Then Dracula dragged her into the air, holding her with one leg like a towel with an unsightly stain, and scowled. “Wake up.”

Pinkie yawned and blinked a few times as the sleep left her body and her mind came back to her. She didn’t seem to notice that she was being held upside down in midair. “Mm?” she mumbled, and when she was finally lucid enough to recognize Dracula, a wide smile crossed her face.

“Dracula!” Pinkie tried to swing her legs up excitedly, but all that accomplished was making her swing back and forth. “You came to visit!”

“This is not a visit, Pinkamena. I’m here on business.”

Pinkie tilted her head. “With me?” Behind her, Fluttershy stifled a laugh.

Dracula growled and dropped her. Pinkie landed with a roll that left her lying next to Fluttershy, who ran a hoof through her mane and smiled.

“Enough of this. Fluttershy, say your goodbyes. You won’t be returning to Ponyville for some time.”

Fluttershy’s face fell. “What? B-But, My Lady, why? This is my home.”

“That’s part of the problem,” Dracula said. “This place has softened you. If you are to be a proper heiress, you’ll need to strengthen your resolve.”

“A proper…” Fluttershy choked on the words.

“Heiress, yes. I’ve made my decision, and you are to be the next Dracula.”

Pinkie gasped. “Fluttershy, did you hear that? You’re Dracula! Ooh, I’m dating Dracula, this is so cool!”

“But...” Fluttershy was reeling. “But I…”

Dracula glared at her. “Are you doubting my wisdom?”

Fluttershy gulped. “No, M-My Lady, I just… I don’t think I want to be Dracula.”

“Nor did I, when I took the throne. It is a position of necessity, not desire.”

“How could I be the best choice, though?” Fluttershy bit her lip anxiously.

“A modern Equestria needs a modern Dracula. Conversion has been outlawed for some time, though, and so you’re the only modern vampire. Thus, it falls on you.”

“Oh…” Fluttershy looked down at the floor, trying to wrap her head around it all.

“Plus,” Dracula added, “I like you. You’re cute when I make you squirm.”

“So I have to say goodbye to everypony?” Fluttershy asked. “Even Pinkie?”

“Well, that depends,” Dracula said. “Thralls are perfectly permissible. Significant others, however, are not.”

“She’s not—”

“I could be a thrall,” Pinkie said. “What’s a thrall?”

Dracula grinned. “Oh, a thrall is many things. A servant. A plaything. A snack. Anything Fluttershy might need, really.”

“Just give her whatever she wants?” Pinkie waved a hoof. “Pfft, that’s easy. I already do that!”

“Anything she needs,” Dracula corrected, “and in my care she’ll need many things. She’s to become the most powerful vampire in Equestria. A thrall will come with certain… Expectations of her.”

“You mean—”

“I’ll do it!” Pinkie said. “I don’t care what I’d have to do for her.”

“But Pinkie—”

“Fluttershy, don’t worry about me,” Pinkie told her. “I can handle whatever she’s talking about.”

“I’m not worried about you,” Fluttershy said. “I know you’d be fine, but I can’t bite you. It’s just too much.”

“Oh.” Pinkie looked blankly at her, then started to frown.

“Well, I suppose that’s settled,” Dracula said. “No Pinkamena” Suddenly, she stood up. “Well, it’s getting late. Shall we go?”

Fluttershy gasped quietly. “But I thought you said I should say my goodbyes!”

“Yes, to Pinkamena here,” Dracula said. “Did you think I was going to go gallivanting around town with you as you shed your tears for every friend you have?”

“Well, I just—”

Dracula glared at her. “What was that?”

Fluttershy swallowed her words. “N-Nothing, My Lady. Of course, you’re right. I shouldn’t… Waste your time like that.”

Dracula shook her head. “You’ve a long way to go.” Then she turned and started walking to the door. “Say goodbye quickly, lest my patience run out.”

As soon as the door clicked shut behind Dracula, Fluttershy turned to Pinkie and grabbed her in a tight hug. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m not strong enough to take you with me.”

Pinkie sniffed hard and squeezed her back. “I get it.”

“I’ll miss you,” Fluttershy said. Her voice cracked as she spoke. “I’ll think about you every day.”

Pinkie nodded and pressed herself against Fluttershy. “Mm-hm.”

“I’ll come back to you as soon as I can. I love you, Pinkie.”

“I love you too…”

They stayed there, holding each other, until there was an impatient knock on the door. Then Fluttershy pulled back, gave Pinkie a soft kiss, and got up to head for the door.

“Bye-bye,” Pinkie muttered under her breath. It was too quiet for Fluttershy to hear.

A moment later, the door clicked shut again, and Pinkie wiped her eyes. “It’ll be okay, Pinkie,” she told herself. “She’s just… Going to a town full of vampires and ghouls and ghosts and is gonna be stuck there until Dracula thinks she’s mean enough. So… Forever.”

The color seemed to drain out of her as her expression started to turn even more sullen.

Fluttershy tapped the side of the carriage anxiously as they flew over a far off forest. Below her was a sea of trees, and from up above the dark wood and thick canopy made the few places where she could see past the leaves look like they dropped into a bottomless pit. The dense fog had just started to creep in as they made their way closer to their destination.

It was a simple carriage. Two seats, facing each other, with no roof or enclosure. It was made of old, dry wood that creaked and groaned as the carriage shifted in the sky. Dracula was sitting opposite Fluttershy, watching her in silence, and had been for the entire trip.

Without thinking, Fluttershy let out a sigh.

“Something the matter?” Dracula asked.

“What?” Fluttershy’s eyes went wide. “Oh, no, not at all, My Lady.”

“Fluttershy, I’m not your enemy here,” Dracula said. “You needn’t be afraid of me.”

“O-Of course, My Lady.”

Dracula hummed in thought for a moment. “How do you think I gained the name of Dracula?”

“You, um, said you were the first Dracula’s daughter, right?”

“Correct, but that does not mean it was willingly handed down.”

They locked eyes, and looked at each other in silence for a minute.

“My father was an awful man. He ruled through fear and power, and instilled in the creatures of the night a drive to do the same. And, for a time, it worked.”

Fluttershy nodded slowly.

“You can only push so hard, though, before something pushes back. The ponies of the day learned. They studied. They began to rise up, and there was nothing we could do. Should we stop one of them, three more would rise seeking retribution. The world changed. We were hunted.”

She paused and stared into Fluttershy’s eyes, letting it all sink in.

“And yet, still, they followed him. The creatures of the night were all but ready to follow my father to our bitter end.”

“So, you…”

Dracula nodded. “So, I seized the throne. I knew he would never step down, and I would be unable to change the flow of events with words alone. Power was the language they understood, so power was what I showed them.”

She paused again, this time for several minutes. In the distance, the sun started to set.

“My reign has lasted far longer than his, and I have been far more successful. I’ve led up to a state of peace with the ponies of the day, though it cost us dearly. We’ve lost our place in this world. We live in secrecy, always afraid we may be found and hunted once more. I’ve bought us safety, yes, but at the same time I lost us security.”

She took a long, deep breath before continuing.

“We need a new leader. One who can bring us out of hiding without placing us in danger, because that is something I cannot do. We need a softer touch.”

She focused intently on Fluttershy.

“We need you.”

Fluttershy reached up and rubbed one of her ears nervously. “Am I really the only pony who can do it?”

“Plenty of ponies probably could,” Dracula said, “but they aren’t here. They’re in their own world, full of light and hope. Of my subjects, there are very few I believe could lead us into the future, and of them all, you are the only one I believe could ever take the throne from me.”

“Wait, take?” Fluttershy leaned back in shock.

“We are not the Equestria you know. Despite all I’ve done, I’ve never been able to move us past that focus on power. What do you think would happen if I were to step aside, and tell them all to follow you as you are now?”

“Um…”

“They would tear you apart. Every creature out there with delusions of grandeur would descend on the throne, and our society would fall apart. You need to be strong enough to take the throne.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy looked to her side, out at the great body of trees that was now entirely shrouded in mist. “And… And you’re sure it has to be me?”

“There is not a doubt in my mind.”

Chapter 12: House Call

It wasn’t long before Fluttershy came up to a cute little home with a wicker doormat. It was much like the others around it, with a flat thatched roof on top of starched tan walls built from the willow trees that surrounded the town, but it had little touches all over that made it seem special. Planter boxes in the windows held pure white flowers, which stood out brilliantly against the dark gray of the curtains behind them. Thorny shrubs surrounded the base of the house, and vines ran like a scar across one corner. The doormat itself was blank, but a little wooden sign hanging on the door announced this as the home of Pond Sedge.

Just as Fluttershy raised her hoof to knock, a voice came from beside her.

“Can I help you?”

Fluttershy yelped and wheeled around. To her left, standing only inches away from her, was a small mare with a short mane and an annoyed look on her face. At first her coat seemed blue, but then the light shifted and it changed to a pale white, and then a shining gray. For some reason, try as she might, Fluttershy just couldn’t focus on her well enough to say for sure.

Fluttershy took a deep breath and tried to calm her breathing. “Oh, h-hello,” she said nervously. “The, um, town crier suggested I come here for some… Jewelry?”

The mare tilted her head as she stared at Fluttershy. She never seemed to blink, or even to narrow her eyes, and her hard black pupils gave the impression that she was looking at something behind Fluttershy.

After a long silence, the mare finally spoke up. “Why?”

“Huh?” Fluttershy blinked. “Well, I… I don’t really know why. He didn’t actually tell me what I’d find here.”

The mare’s expression soured even further. “I don’t even know who you are, why does he think I would let you in?”

“Um… Oh, I guess you didn’t see the announcement.” Fluttershy rubbed her leg nervously. “Well, I’m Fluttershy, to start.”

The mare nodded. “Sedge,” she replied.

Fluttershy gave her a tiny smile despite her nerves. “It’s nice to meet you, Sedge. So, I’m kind of… Dracula’s heir, I guess? And apparently Dracula decided to put me in charge today.”

Sedge gritted her teeth, and managed a surprisingly thorough look of concern even without changing her cold, emotionless eyes. “Seriously?”

Fluttershy nodded and looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry, I know it’s probably pretty worrying. That’s why I’m here, though!” She perked up a bit, doing her best to stay hopeful and positive. “I’m going to learn and get stronger so that some day, if I do have to be Dracula, I won’t let you all down.”

“And so that fool decided to have me be the one to scare you off.” Sedge sighed, but her expression seemed to soften a bit. “Fine.”

Fluttershy stepped back to give her room to open the door, but Sedge just turned to her side and walked through the wall into her house.

Fluttershy gasped. She was so stunned that she just stood there for so long that, eventually, Sedge actually did open the door and gave her an annoyed look.

“Are you coming?”

“Oh!” Fluttershy jumped out of her shock and straightened up. “Um, may I?”

Sedge sighed. “Yeah, come on in. Wipe your hooves on the mat so I don’t have to clean my floors.”

Fluttershy did as she was told, wiping her hooves as well as possible before stepping into the mare’s little home and shutting the door behind her.

It was a nice place, perfectly suited to a single pony living alone, but it hardly looked lived in at all. There was no clutter, nothing out of place, and all the furniture looked brand new. It had the stale smell of an empty home, and the floorboards creaked as they settled under her heavy steps.

Sedge led Fluttershy to the back of the house and into a long, thin room that Fluttershy would have expected to hold a kitchen. It didn’t, though, and instead had been converted into a packed storeroom. Boxes filled shelves, shelves filled walls. There wasn’t a single bit of unused space in the room, and there was hardly enough room for Fluttershy to walk through it.

It was a nice sight, though, compared to the emptiness elsewhere. That had been alienating, but Fluttershy felt right at home in this storeroom because she had one just like it back at her cottage.

“Well,” said Sedge as she approached the door on the far side of the room, “here’s what you came for.”

She opened it up and led Fluttershy back outside, this time behind the house. It wasn’t what Fluttershy would have expected. The rest of the town was a maze of houses once you left the street, and that maze could even be seen to either side of the house, but here Fluttershy found herself in a wide open field. Houses lined the sides of it, facing into the field just as Sedge’s faced into the road, but there was a clear line where housing ended and open air took over.

It wasn’t empty, though. Every house that lined the edge had a canopy attached to it, under which the homeowners had stalls set up for anything Fluttershy could think of. There were magical artifacts, unicorns offering up magic services, books, bobbles, odds and ends and everything else. The stalls lined the wall that surrounded the castle, and there were more set up all throughout the field. It made Fluttershy think of the farmers’ markets she’d gone to in Ponyville, although with a distinctly darker feeling.

Only a few of the stalls actually had creatures running them. The rest stood empty, their goods locked under glass and signs hung up advertising their hours.

Fluttershy must have been staring, because Sedge cleared her throat nearby to get her attention.

“Can we get this over with?” Sedge asked. “I have work to do.”

Fluttershy turned to see Sedge in a stall of her own. In the darkness under her canopy, Fluttershy saw her much more clearly, and could easily make out the clear blue of her fur and the dark teal of her mane. Behind her was a sign showing her prices, but it didn’t actually say what she did. It just had hourly rates listed.

When she turned around to look at Sedge, Fluttershy saw something else. Attached to the house was a little white fence that corralled off a sizable area, and in that area were various little huts and toys for animals to use. There weren’t many actual animals to be seen, mostly little lizards and flightless birds, but it looked like it could handle quite a few.

“So, you take care of animals?” Fluttershy asked.

Sedge nodded. “Mostly I act as the castle’s vet, but I also take care of pets in my spare time. I mean, nobody really leaves, so there’s not a ton of business, but sometimes they just get to be too much.”

“I thought you said he wanted you to scare me.”

Sedge let out a dry laugh. “Here.” She leaned down and hefted a heavy carrying case up onto the table. Inside was a massive, angry-looking bird. “I was just about to take this guy home, but—”

Fluttershy gasped. “Is that a cockatrice?”

“Yeah, but don’t—”

Fluttershy didn’t hear her. She dashed up to the carrying case and opened it so she could reach inside and pet the bird, which rubbed up against her in appreciation.

“—worry.” Sedge stared at her in confusion. “You do know what a cockatrice is, right?”

“Oh, of course!” Fluttershy looked back at Sedge with a huge smile. “Ever since ours moved deeper into the Everfree, I’ve been missing them so much. They’re really some of the most loving birds out there.”

Fluttershy put her leg out, and the cockatrice hopped out of the carrier and onto it before crawling up onto Fluttershy’s back, where it laid down and nuzzled into her.

Sedge tilted her head. “How are you doing that?”

“Hm?” Fluttershy had gotten distracted by the cockatrice, and turned back to Sedge. “Oh!” She chuckled. “Well, I didn’t exactly get my cutie mark for being a vampire. I’ve always been good with animals.”

“I’ve met plenty of ponies who are good with animals,” Sedge said, “and they all still run from a cockatrice. Heck, I would’ve before…” She looked down at her legs and pursed her lips. “Well, before.”

“Who could ever be scared of such a lovely bird?”

“Everyone,” Sedge replied. “That thing will turn you to stone on a whim!”

Fluttershy laughed. “Well, maybe if he’s grumpy, but he sure doesn’t seem grumpy to me.”

“It’s from the castle, stuff in there is… It’s feral!”

Fluttershy gasped. “There were cockatrices in the castle this whole time?”

Sedge put a hoof to her forehead. “If you go looking for them, you’re gonna get yourself killed. Maybe back where you came from these things can be nice, but anything in those halls is gonna be mean.”

“Aww,” Fluttershy cooed towards the bird, “but look at him! He’s harmless. If they’re mean in the castle, maybe they just need a bit of renovation so they’re more comfortable.”

Sedge shook her head dismissively. “Whatever. It’s not my problem, I’m just fine with the Dracula I’ve got.”

That caught Fluttershy’s attention. “It seems like everyone is happy with her.”

“We are. Life in Trotsylvania is just fine. It’s good, even.”

“Why does she want me to be Dracula, then? If you’re happy, she must be doing a good job, right?”

“I don’t pretend to know what she’s thinking,” Sedge told her. “Did she not tell you?”

“She said she doesn’t think she can take you any further,” Fluttershy said.

Sedge laughed. “Well, she’s right in that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I haven’t been out of this town in fifteen years,” Sedge said, “and why not? I mean, it’s not like I’m gonna get hurt. I’m happy here, though, and out there I wouldn’t be. That’s just how it is.”

“I was happy back in Ponyville, though,” Fluttershy said.

“Lucky you.”

Fluttershy frowned. “I just mean, why couldn’t you be?”

“I’m dead.” A hint of frustration crept into Sedge’s voice. “What do you think will happen when ponies out there who’ve lost loved ones see the one pony who came back? There’s not a life for me out there.”

“Oh…” Fluttershy was tempted to argue, to say that that couldn’t be true, but she held it back. “I’m sorry.”

Sedge huffed. “Whatever. You gonna take that bird back?”

“Oh! Yeah, um, sure! I’d be happy to. Thank you for taking care of him.”

“That’s my job,” Sedge said. “Get outta here. Find someone else in the market to scare you.”

“Oh, okay,” Fluttershy said. “Um, well, it was nice to—”

Before she finished the sentence, Sedge turned around and walked through the wall back into her house.

Chapter 18: Fighting Through The Pain

“Come on, get up!” Dayfall growled as her patience wore thin. “Don’t you at least want a chance to play with those eyes before I take them from you?”

Fluttershy barely heard the words. Her ears were ringing too loudly, and the world seemed too distant. Even the carpet under her seemed miles away as her mind and body fought to bring her back from the brink of obliteration.

Dayfall walked up and loomed over Fluttershy. “You can’t go getting my hopes up like that, Heiress.” She roughly rolled Fluttershy over and pried one of her eyes open. “I know you can hear me. How long are you gonna make me wait?”

Fluttershy let out a wheezing cough. Her lungs still burned ferociously, and every breath felt like too much. Her heartbeat was slow and not entirely rhythmic, and her legs were still completely numb.

Her eyes were sharp, though. When Dayfall pried one open, she had no trouble focusing in and locking their vision together.

“St—” Fluttershy gave a wet gurgle as she found her voice again. “Stop this.”

Dayfall’s eye twitched. She tensed up, and for just a moment looked like she was going to step back. Then a shiver went through her body, and a smile grew on her face. “Try harder, little girl,” she jeered. “Fail too much and it won’t work at all, and well, neither of us want that. You’d be no fun anymore!”

Fluttershy grunted. With all the energy she could muster, she tilted her head up in a slow, jerky motion and opened her one eye as wide as she could. She left the other closed, and put everything she had into the one-eyed Stare.

Dayfall huffed with effort as she fought it, but after a moment she took a shaky step back.

“Good,” Dayfall taunted, “you’ve delayed me. How long do you think you can hold me back, though?”

Fluttershy’s head was still swimming too much to engage with anything Dayfall was saying. “Please,” she choked out, “just stop.”

“Really, after all this, you’re still begging like a dog? If you want me to stop, you’re gonna have to make me. Get up and fight.”

“N—” Fluttershy groaned as a wave of pain wracked her body. “No.”

“No?” Dayfall laughed. She grunted with effort, and with a quick burst took a single step forward. “You don’t have a choice, Heiress. I’m almost out of this, and then I’m coming at you. And, hey, here’s a promise; Next time I get a hoof on you, you’re gonna lose that eye.”

Fluttershy could see she was running out of options. In a desperate bid, she put one of her numb hooves to the ground and tried to push herself up. Her lungs screamed in pain as she did, but she ignored them and pushed until she was on her hooves again.

Then one gave out, and another, and she crumpled back to the floor. All she had to show for her effort was a fresh new pain in her chest.

Dayfall laughed. “Come on, you can do better than that!” She fought forward another step. “Another stumble like that and I’ll be free.”

Fluttershy took a deep breath and tried again. First one hoof, then a second. With no feeling, and unable to take her gaze off of Dayfall, she had to just trust in her body to make the right movements. A third leg took hold, and finally the fourth. Once again she was up, although her stance was wide and shaky.

“Sto—” Fluttershy started, but a cough cut her off and threatened to send her tumbling back down. Instead, she stumbled over to a wall and fell against it, hoping to brace herself.

She chose the wrong wall, though, and was quickly reminded of the gash in her neck as it slammed against the hard surface.

She winced. It was barely a twitch in her eye, only a shudder, but she winced.

That was all Dayfall needed to break free. In a blur of speed she shot forward and slammed into Fluttershy, knocking the wind out of her and dropping her back to the ground.

Fluttershy landed on her back, and Dayfall pounced on her. One leg landed hard on her neck, far harder than when she’d been pressed against the wall earlier, and the other rose into the air and prepared to strike.

Fluttershy was at the brink again, and this time she knew exactly what would save her.

Again, she shut everything down. Her senses, her organs, her heart, she pushed it all back up into her Stare.

The pain was back in an instant, even worse than before. She’d barely even begun to recover, and her body was in no state to fight it back. It swept through her, filled every part of her that she’d just drained. It grew so strong, so agonizing and all-encompassing, that it soon no longer fit the word pain. It was a never ending, bottomless kind of torture that few living creatures, even few vampires, had ever felt.

In the echoes of thoughts that still focused on things besides her Stare, Fluttershy recognized that she really was experiencing what it felt like to die.

The rest of her mind didn’t care. She snapped both eyes open and locked them to Dayfall’s. She looked past Dayfall’s gaze, right into her very being, into her intention, and stopped her at her core.

Dayfall’s hoof stopped, but she was still over Fluttershy, and her leg was still pressed into Fluttershy’s neck.

Fluttershy couldn’t talk, but she didn’t need to. At this point, talking was a courtesy to let the other pony know what she was doing. She just reached into Dayfall’s mind and told it to back away.

It worked. Dayfall stood up and stepped away from Fluttershy.

With the immediate danger gone, Fluttershy could no longer ignore the pain. It swept through her mind, and she could hardly keep it at bay enough to think. She could feel herself sinking into it, and at the same time the corners of her vision were going black.

She decided to let it come.

The threat wasn’t gone, she knew. Dayfall would break out again before Fluttershy could recover, and eventually Fluttershy would be too weak for this trick. She had to stop things before she let her body’s weakness set in again.

She dug through her mind, and found a way to move again. She couldn’t feel her body anymore, just a vaguely pony-shaped mass of pain, but she pushed it to move. Her shifts in weight were strange, more like a ragdoll than a living being, but in long, swaying motions she somehow pushed herself to her hooves.

Her eyes never flinched. She kept them locked to Dayfall.

Like a puppeteer, she pulled her own strings and walked awkwardly over to Dayfall. Her vision tunneled more with every step, but she knew it wasn’t making her Stare any weaker, so she didn’t care.

She couldn’t talk, but she mouthed out words so Dayfall could understand what she was being commanded to do.

“You will stop,” Fluttershy ordered. “You will take me and the stallion to a doctor, and then you will wait, and when I wake up, we’re going to have a talk.”

Fluttershy thought for a moment, then added “Please.”

With that, she ran out of whatever force she had found to propel herself forward. Her vision went black, the pain washed over her mind, and she fell to the floor.

Fluttershy found herself next in a strange place.

She was on a raft. It was old, made of rotted wood and strung together with frayed rope, and the boards shifted uncomfortably under her weight. It wasn’t small, but it wasn’t necessarily large either. If she’d been asked to describe it, Fluttershy would have said it was the size it needed to be.

She was under a canopy of old, dry leaves that were speckled with holes. It did nothing to protect her from the icy wind that coursed endlessly through her body.

Fluttershy herself looked horrible. Her fur was matted all over with blood, but the worst was on one leg. Thick streams of blood had been pouring from her neck ever since she was bitten, and they’d made strange, swirling patterns on her leg as they made their way to the ground. Patches of yellow shone through curves of red, and without seeing the gash on her neck, it would have been easy to assume the markings were deliberate.

Below the raft was a vast river of dark blue. It stretched to the horizon in every direction, and the only thing that disturbed its perfect stillness was the wake left by the raft. It had a crystal clear reflection of the full moon, but otherwise showed nothing else.

Then she looked at the sky above, and saw something strange. It wasn’t sky, not like she had expected. There was no moon, and it wasn’t the pleasant starscape of Equestria’s night sky. Instead, it was a swirling vortex of colors, reds and oranges and purples all sliding past each other without ever mingling. They flowed like gases, but the sheen they gave off made them look almost solid.

After she’d taken everything in, Fluttershy noticed that she wasn’t alone on the raft. She could have sworn she’d looked that way, but at the other end sat a cloaked pony silently paddling the boat along, and Fluttershy couldn’t actually remember looking at where they were sitting.

Their cloak hid them almost completely. Their face was completely shrouded in darkness, and the fabric wrapped around their body with ease, but she was able to see a pair of pitch black hooves gripping the oar they were using.

“Um…” Fluttershy swallowed hard. “H-Hello?”

The pony nodded.

Fluttershy looked around awkwardly. “Princess Luna?” She asked after a moment. “Is that you? Is this a dream?”

The pony shook their head.

“Oh…” Fluttershy bit her lip. “Well, um, what’s going on?”

The pony shifted their gaze towards Fluttershy, although she still couldn’t see their face.

“You should already understand,” the pony said. Their voice sounded strange and hollow, as though their hood were a vast cave, and somepony deep inside was yelling out. It seemed to somehow echo over itself, like whatever they said was being spoken a hundred times over, all at the same time and the same pitch. Speaking to them felt like speaking to the sky itself, or to the ground beneath her hooves, as though the other end of the conversation was speaking in such a vast manner that it was, to her ears, completely indecipherable from a normal pony’s voice.

“I should?” Fluttershy frowned and tilted her head. “Well, I just passed out I think, so… I don’t know, it really seems like I should be dreaming.”

“You believe you fainted?”

“Yes? I mean, it’s not like I—” The color drained from Fluttershy’s face. “Oh.”

A strange, raspy chuckle came from somewhere inside the pony’s hood. “Worry not, Heiress. You are not dead.”

Fluttershy let out a deep breath. “Oh, thank Celestia.”

“Well…” The pony shrugged. “Perhaps you are. I was never actually that clear on where the line is.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter,” they said. “You’ll wake up regardless. This will not be your final trip down my river.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy looked at them blankly. “Well… That’s good, I think?”

They laughed and nodded. "Yes, it is. In truth, you should be in the realm of dreams, and the Princess will likely be very cross if she discovers that I weaseled you away, but what she doesn't know won't hurt her."

The pony stopped talking for a few minutes. They looked up into the sky and watched it thoughtfully as they paddled along.

"Anyhow," they eventually said, "it's lovely to meet you, Heiress. You may call me The Visitor. I'd like to have a chat."