Rise of the Blood Moon
Prologue
A lone mare walks through the fields outside a small town, listening to the sounds of the world around her. A crescent moon hung low in the sky, making it hard to see the surrounding landscape. Her fur was as dark as the night, and she had a scarlet and black mane, with ruby coloured eyes. She was no normal pony, however. Her jet black wings where folded against her sides, covering most of her cutie mark, which was in the shape of a chaosphere, and a horn was sticking out of her mane, revealing to the world that she was an alicorn. She had come to the town for one reason; to kill its inhabitants. She didn’t care if they were innocent ponies, she just had to kill them all. She leaped high into the air, flying above the town, looking for somewhere suitable to land for her to start her destruction. She chose the tower bell of the town centre, and announced her arrival. “Hear me little ponies! Your time in this world is over, and I am here to send your souls to my master!”
The townsfolk quickly rushed out, some of the earth ponies wielding farming tools as weapons, and some of the unicorns fired spells at her, and even when they collided with the alicorn, they did nothing. Seeing this, some of the ponies tried to flee, but they quickly discovered that they were trapped in the town, and they started to panic.
A filly, who was appeared to be no older than twelve, yelled out to the alicorn “Who are you? Why are you doing this to us?”
The alicorn jumped down from the tower, landing in front of the young pony, which started to back away from the larger mare. She leaned in close and whispered to her “you want to know my name?” she raised her head towards the sky, and yelled “I AM DARK HEART!”
Dark Heart than looked back at the filly, who started backing away even faster. It wasn’t the power that seemed to radiate from the alicorn that scared her, it was the eyes. Dark Heart’s eyes had the appearance of someone who was insane. The last thing she saw was Dark Heart’s horn glowing, before she was incinerated in a blast of fire.
The next few moments passed quickly, and before too long, almost everypony was dead. The last survivor had tried to hide themselves in a closet in her house, and opened the door when she thought that Dark Heart had left the house.
“You should never hide in the most obvious place when someponies trying to kill you” came from behind her as she was leaving the room. She then felt a feeling of weightlessness as Dark Heart levitated over to herself. No matter how much she struggled, there was no way she could break free from the spell, and she knew. She waited for the intense heat to come, but it never did.
“Why aren’t you killing me?” she yelled at the alicorn
“Because everypony else died too quickly, which was no fun. So instead, I’m going to make your death slow and painful!” Dark Heart started to smile as she brought the mare to just above her horn, and started laughing. As she did so, she impaled the mare on her horn, causing her to scream out in pain, and blood started running over the alicorns face. She impaled the mare on her horn multiple times, dragging her off slowly each time to make her feel pain so intense that she almost blacked out. Eventually the alicorn stopped, and lowered her down, so that her face was in front of the horn.
“No, please Celestia no!” she pleaded, but it was no use. Dark Heart pulled her towards the horn, and with a final scream of “NO!” the horn penetrated her skull, going all the way through and coming out the other side.
“AAAAAAAGGHH!” yelled a young female Pegasus, falling out of bed and lying in a small ball, shaking so hard with fear that she couldn’t see properly. She took a few moments to gather up her wits and calm down, repeatedly telling herself it was just a dream, before going back to sleep on the floor.
Chapter 1
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!
“Ember, wake up!’
“huh, wha? Gimme five more minutes” said Ember, still half asleep, and not realising she was sleeping on the floor.
“Ember Flare, get up now!”
“No.”
“I SAID WAKE UP!” was the last thing she heard before having a bucket of freezing cold water dumped onto her by one of the pegasi living in the dormitory with her.
“WHAAH!” Ember jumped up, drenched from head to toe. “What was that for Mists?” looking with an annoyed expression at her one and only friend at the dorm. Her name was actually Misty Skies, But Ember had given her the nickname ‘Mists’ because she was given the nickname ‘Ems’. Her mane was ice blue, with darker blue strips at the back, and her blue eyes were so light, a lot of people thought they were white. Ember also knew why the water poured on her was so cold; Misty had the ability to lower the temperature of anything, and it was the reason she worked in the weather teams.
“I had to do it cause it’s nearly three o’clock, and nopony had the guts to come and wake you up” Misty Skies replied.
“THREE O’CLOCK! How could I have slept in so late?” Ember said, running over to her chest to grab her bag and a few things. But as she was doing so she stopped, and placed her head against the open lid of the chest.
“Hmm? What’s wrong Ems?” asked Misty, and she noticed the single, solitary tear roll down Embers cheek, lingering on the bottom of her chin, catching the sunlight, before it obeyed gravity and fell. Her red and orange mane was sopping wet, and the water was rolling down her black fur onto her bag. Misty always liked the ruby colour of Embers eyes, and thought it was really cool that they would get darker when she was angry, and lighter when she was happy or sad.
“Today was a day I couldn’t have afforded too sleep in on” Ember said, her voice heavy with sadness. Misty’s expression became one of realization. “Today’s Wednesday. Today’s the day that I had to work at Global Postal. This makes it my sixth and final late arrival for work, because now, Sam’s going to fire me”
Ember stopped packing her bags and grabbed a towel from the bathroom, and dried herself off. “I better go to work so that Sam can fire me. I’ll see you at the usual spot later.” Without waiting for a reply, Ember left the room and walked down the corridor, and went out into Ponyville.
After a short flight over Ponyville, Ember landed out the front of Global Postal and headed inside. Ponies were running around everywhere, talking and putting delivery orders into the appropriate areas, and the noise this was making made it impossible for Ember to hear herself think.
“YOOOOUUUU!” came a yell that was louder than everything else in the room. Most of the employees stopped what they were doing, and some of them were moving out of the way to allow the owner of the loud voice through. A stallion emerged from the crowd. He had a purple coat, with a purple and red mane, purple eyes, and was wearing a black hat and had a watch on his left foreleg. He walked right up to Embers face before screaming at her “I WANT YOU IN MY OFFICE IMMEDIATLEY!”
Caught off guard, Ember jumped back, but obliged and started heading towards the ponies office. She felt incredibly terrified, because everypony was staring at her as she walked in to the ponies office. When she made it inside the office, the stallion closed the door behind him.
“You can try and make any excuse to me Ember, but this time you won’t be keeping your job. This is the sixth time that you’ve been late for work, and this time you’ve missed your entire shift. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Sam, I’m sorry. I’ve let you down. You gave me a job and I failed you.” Ember said, before finally breaking down in tears.
“Well, you’re now officially fired. Leave the building now!” he said, in a stern, commanding tone. Ember left the office, without looking back.
“Time to go and meet up with Butterscotch and Misty!” Ember took off and flew towards the Everfree, heading towards the hut that Butterscotch lived in. When she landed in the yard, Misty was already there waiting.
“Scotch, Ems here!” Misty yelled out, and a stallion came out of the small cottage that the other two were standing outside of. Ember had become friends with Butterscotch because he had been teased about the fact that he looked like his Great-Grandmare, Fluttershy. Ember had been teased by the other children at the dorm because of the unnatural black colour of her coat.
“What do we want to do first?” Ember asked, “To be honest, I feel like spending some time helping you look after the animals, seeing as I’ve just been fired and everything.”
“Yeah, I think maybe we should help you out for once with your pets. You do so much for us, so we’ll return the favour!” Misty said, and headed towards where she thought the animals where located.
“Umm, Misty? The animals are the other way” Butterscotch said, causing Misty to blush heavily and start walking the other way. Butterscotch and Ember followed her.
Sorry it's taken so long for this part, I've had too much school work to do, and I have been procrastinating. A lot. Had some tips from Shadow, as he thinks I've rushed it, and I agree. So some things in this chapter will be moved to the next one
Luna sat on the throne, wondering what she could do now that court was over. She'd successfully raised the sun, painted the stars, and was not willing to wake up her sister just to play a prank. She remembered her son was with a research team at Tartarus, and so she decided to send him a letter enquiring what had been discovered.
"Guard, would you be able to get me paper, a quill and ink from my study?" Luna asked one of her night guards.
'Yes, your highness" the guard said, before bowing and walking towards Lunas study. he came back shortly with the items, and Luna excused him.
"Hmmm... I'll make it short and sweet, I can embarrass him when he gets here,"
--
An Alicorn sat in the command tent of the Tartarus research facility. His fur was jet black, and his mane was a powerful dark blue, taking after his mother. As usual, he was on full alert. It didn't pay to lose concentration when some of the most dangerous creatures were metres away, even though there was a seven inch thick, 5 metres wide and high metal gate separating them. One of the guards came into the tent, levitating a letter, which he recognised instantly as being sent by his mother, due to the crescent moon on the seal.
He unfolds the letter than starts reading it, forgetting that the guard was still in the tent. "Dear 1st Prince Nocturne of the ........" He stops rolling his eyes before gently placing the letter on his bed and yelling "WHY? Why can't you just say Dear Son, or just son. Why!" he looks over and spots the guard looking at him, trying to stop himself for laughing at the normally formal commander "Dismissed!"
He picked the letter up again, and read the whole letter. He was to make his way back to Canterlot to speak with his mother concerning the research of the odd magic emanating from Tartarus. He knew he couldn't leave yet, as a new creature that had recently been captured was on it's way over to be imprisoned. He was interrupted as one of his officers walked in, giving him news that the beast had arrived. Nocturne's horn illuminated a light blue as he grabbed his armour, it looked like regular guard armour, but with several changed. It fitted his unusual figure easily. It was painted a light blue and on the front was his mother's cutie mark, a moon. He smiled as he quickly put it on, he had this particular set of armour for several years and help a special place in his heart.
Nocturne walked over to the caravan, and told the earth pony who was pulling it that he was going to inspect it before they took the cage out. he walked around the back and hopped in, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the lighting, when they did, what he saw horrified him. The cage that the monster had been kept had been opened, and the guards that had been guarding the convey where lying dead around it, and Nocturne realised that the caravan had been hijacked, the guards killed and given to the monster that stood before him. He also saw that the monster had taken the horns and wings of the unicorn and pegasi, and had attached them to its body. Before he could react, however, the beast had grabbed him in a telekinetic grasp, and threw him so fast he not only went through the roof of the facility, he was thrown half way across the Everfree.
This landings gonna hurt was the last thing Nocturne thought before losing conciousness.
--
Ember was flying over the Everfree, but she felt more like she was floating. Her friends had helped cheer her up quite a bit, but it wasn't the reason she was so giddy. She so happy because Misty had finally told Butterscotch that she loved him, but she was surprised when Butterscotch said he had the same feelings towards her. Ember had decided to leave and let them have time to themselves, but her train of thought was broken when she heard a loud crack, and saw a blue form flying through the air. She could tell that they had been thrown, and weren't conscious. She flew over to grab them, and gasped when she realised who it was. She had just saved Prince Nocturne, and shock turned to urgency when she realised she couldn't hold on to him much longer.
She flew down to the ground, but forgot that the added weight of Nocturne would make her descent quicker, and in the last moments before hitting the ground, she flipped herself and Nocturne, and she hit the ground hard on her back. There was a loud snap as one of her wings broke, and she screamed out in pain. She pushed Nocturne off of her, and struggled to stand. Her right wing was broken in the middle, and wouldn't close properly, sticking out awkwardly. She decided to divert her attention to the unconscious prince, as he need more attention at the moment.
Ember walked over to him, gritting her teeth as the pain of her broken wing making her feel slightly weakened. She took a long look at him, his face looked so peaceful and calm despite, a direct contrast to how Ember was feeling at that particular moment. She took another look at him and smiled as the memory of when she first met the prince flashed in front of her.
It was a nice summers day. Celestia's sun was high in the sky and Canterlot was busy. Ember walked down the streets, her bag on her back after delivering a large order. My only order for today is finished, and i've got the rest of the day off. What could i do? She started looking at the buildings, comparing the structure of the ground ones to those of Cloudsdale. She suddenly felt something bump into her. She quickly turned her head to find it only centimeters away from a stallions. She took several seconds to take in the stallions features: His mid-night black fur, dark blue mane that practically floated around his head in the breeze, she looked into his eyes at they looked into her's. For whatever reason, she couldn't look away, his eyes were a light blue, reminding Ember of ice. Suddenly she felt her cheeks burn as they turned crimson almost straight away Dammit, Ember, now is not the time to get flustered about a random stallion you just ran into! Just because he's kind cute and has the pair of the most amazing eyes you've even seen doesn't mean your allowed to throw yourself at him. She took a step back and tried to calm herself down, with little success.
Ember took another look at the pony after she took a long, deep breath. He look young, barely 18 at the most. She easily spotted his wings, which were fully flared out. She looked at them for several seconds before realising something, her wings were also fully flared out, but not because of fear, but rather arousal.
Luna Dammit, of course this would happen! Why is it always at the worst possible time and...wait, are his wings stiff like mine? no, he's just nervous, yeah. Dammit Ember, you love him Ember saw he was wearing something that reminded her of battle armour. It was a simple chest piece that covered his back, but on the front she saw an obvious symbol. It was a moon surrounded by black. Th..That's Princess Luna's cutie mark, but that means.... Ember looks at his mane and spots it, a black unicorn horn poking out from it. Ember quickly apologised before practically galloping off, upset. What were you thinking! He's royalty, the child of the goddess who raises the moon! What made you even think you had a chance with him?
Despite what happened that day, she never forgot him and when ever he made a public appearance, she would feel her cheeks turn red. A moan from the young prince brought her train of thought back to the present.
I'm ok Nocturne thought as he regained conciousness. He looked at his surroundings, noting that he had landed in a clearing, when he spied movement on his right. Thinking it was one of the Everfree's beasts he rolled to his left, and pinned it down with his magic.
At the same time he summoned his blade, and assembled the seven fragments of the meteoric blade. He used his magic to locate it's throat and held the blade against it. When he stood up and looked at it, he saw it was a black pegasus mare that he had attacked. He had the nagging feeling that he knew her, but he couldn't remember how.
What just happened? Ember thought as she felt the telekinetic grip release her, and a cold object that was pressing against the back of her neck vanished. She tried to get up, but fell back down when she knocked her broken wing. "Stay still, I can heal your wing" she heard before an itching feeling ran over her wing, and she felt the bones scraping together as they realigned, and there was a small crack as the broken bones fused together again. She instantly flared the wing out, to test if it worked, and heard a cry of surprise as it bumped against an unprepared Nocturne.
"Sorry for attacking you just then," Nocturne explained as he helped the mare onto her hooves. "I thought you were a creature of the forest, miss?"
Ohmygoshhe'saskingmeformyname! Wait! Calm down before speaking so you don't speak too quickly. "MynamesEmberFlarebuteveryponycallsmeEmber!" she said, facehoofing when she realised that she had spoken too fast, and repeated "My names Ember Flare, but you can call me Ember if you want, prince Nocturne.
"Also, why were you uh, y'know, falling like that?"
Nocturnes eyes widened as he remembered what happened. "That's a long story...."
