Angel of Justice: Blood Moon

All at once, Scholarly Scribble shot to consciousness with a deep inhale.

The first thing she felt was cold. However, it was an odd kind of cold. It wasn't like the room she was in was cold, with different parts of her body feeling warmer than others. Rather, it was a uniform, constant sensation, but it wasn't causing her to shiver or feel uncomfortable. It was like she was cold.

The next thing she felt was the harsh stonework floor beneath her, abrasive and filthy. This, along with the sight of an oppressively blank slate of a wall in front of her led her to believe that she was still in the castle.

Remembering what had happened before she blacked out, she raced a hoof to her neck protectively as a phantom tingle came. Strangely, however, it didn’t hurt anymore, and it felt dry. Where before there was a seemingly fatal slash wound, now there was just her own fur.

Was it just a dream? It had to have been. She would be dead if it weren’t some kind of hallucination or head trip. Her head was foggy and tingly, so perhaps she had struck it on something?

She lay there, processing her newly restored consciousness for a moment with her thoughts racing and her lungs pumping. However much air she was taking in, it didn’t seem to be doing anything to help her catch her breath, and as she slowed her breathing down, she realized that the sensation of needing to breathe was actually missing entirely.

Suddenly, her ear twitched and rotated to meet a wet squelch. She shifted, using her forehooves to turn and lift herself up so she could look behind her. The area was lightless and dark, yet strangely she could see clearly.

And what she saw next made her freeze in fear.

A lithe, equine figure was seated a few feet from her, facing away. Lying on the ground in front and around the figure were three motionless bodies.

One she recognized immediately to be Snapshot. The young stallion’s face was forever frozen in an expression of pain and terror, with a gruesome display of exposed flesh, tissue, and muscle where his neck was. Strangely, despite the sheer scope of the damage, it seemed devoid of any blood.

Next to the pegasus’ body, a larger green-furred stallion could be seen that must have been Pathfinder. She couldn’t see his face well, but she gleaned that much like Snapshot, he too was dead.

The third body was directly in front of the lithe figure, largely obscured from view by its form. However, Scribble could see yellow hind legs and hints of a white and black tail, all but confirming its identity.

Another wet sound came as the figure shifted, its head bowed and out of sight. It seemed to be holding the pegasus mare’s body in its lap, and as it lifted its head up, Scribble could see small amounts of crimson fluid spilling off of its muzzle.

Without even realizing it, Scribble gasped softly in horror. Almost the instant her sensitive ears picked up the sound, she froze, as did the figure. It turned its head to the side, allowing a glowing red orb to gaze back at the now trembling pony.

“AH!” Scribble leaped from the floor, scrambling backward and into the wall behind her. She groped at it with her forelegs as she stared ahead with wide eyes. “P-please! Don’t hurt me!” Her words tripped out of her mouth.

She didn’t expect her pleas to gather any meaningful response from the bloodthirsty creature that had just murdered her friends. She certainly didn’t expect a voice to respond.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

A soft-sounding masculine voice spoke, a bit of smooth refinement to it that reminded Scribble of the noble ponies that once visited her editorial team at her old job.

The figure stood and turned around, fully revealing its features. Scribble flinched in surprise and stunned shock. The brown fur, the silver hair, the horn and wings. This was the monstrous alicorn they had encountered, but strangely, it wasn't a withered and desiccated corpse any longer.

He had full, healthy-looking brown fur. His skin was no longer sagging and patchy, and his short hair, while a bit disheveled, was no longer falling out of a crumbling scalp. The sunken, hollow pits for eyes were now missing, though his colorful orbs still held an eerie red tinge that was unlike any pony Scribble had ever seen.

His face even looked somewhat young. Based on what little Scribble knew of alicorn biology, he seemed to be around Princess Cadence's age, or perhaps Luna’s.

It seemed as though the stallion before her was completely different from the nightmarish entity that had chased her and her friends down. Although, one detail of his appearance had stayed the same. He still had those three bloodless slash wounds across his neck and wrists that somehow looked even more disturbing now that his body was restored.

“You’ll forgive me for moving us to this dismal location.” The alicorn said as he slowly and casually walked toward the peach mare. He gestured around them at the dark and dingy room, seemingly one of the empty areas in the downstairs portion of the castle. “The sun came up before you woke, you see… and let’s just say that that would have proven problematic for us.”

Scribble reeled back, only to meet solid stone behind her as the alicorn came to a stop and sat a few feet from her. She was barely absorbing what he was saying as she looked past him to the bodies of her three friends.

“You… y-you killed them…!” Scribble squeaked as she shuffled to the side, slowly making her way along the wall while the alicorn watched her like she was the oddity in the room. She looked over to the side, spotting an open doorway that led Celestia knew where. She didn’t rightly care. All she cared was that it led away from the red-eyed monster.

“Now, now, let’s not overreact, my dear.” The alicorn said, unmoving as Scribble kept inching away. Then, she suddenly bolted forward at full speed heading for the door.

“Stay away from me!” She cried, not even bothering to look behind her. However, just as she reached the door-

“Stop right there.” The alicorn’s voice came, firm but not quite hostile sounding.

The tingle in Scribble’s head intensified briefly, and she came to a sudden halt. She didn’t even know why she did it. He just told her to do something, and her body followed his instruction.

She stood there, still panting wildly and tensing her shoulders. Slowly, she turned and looked to him with eyes still full of fear, but also confusion.

The alicorn got up and walked a few steps toward her. He seemed to consider his words for a moment before speaking again. “Now… I understand you must be upset about your friends,” He turned his head toward the bodies, his voice going flat and a corner of his face tugging before he faced her again, “but, I simply couldn’t help myself. Those with my… condition, tend to work off instinct alone when deprived of sustenance for so long.”

“Your… condition made you eat them?!” Scribble replied. She wanted to back away, but she still found herself unable to retreat from him. “You’re a monster!”

A warm chortle came as the alicorn smiled at her, revealing a set of two elongated fangs at the top of his mouth. “I’m a monster, am I? Well, that puts you in the same company, my little pony.” He said, lifting a single hoof and pointing it at her.

“What?” Scribble asked, instinctively following his direction down with her eyes. Suddenly, she paused as she saw her own forelegs. Lifting one of her hooves up, she held it in front of her face. Instead of the normal peach coloring she had grown used to all her life, her fur was a deathly paler shade of its usual color.

She drew her bottom lip in, and as she did, something sharp poked it. Scribble moved her tongue to find the foreign object, only to discover that she was touching her own teeth. She reached a hoof to her open mouth, alarm and fear now coursing through her veins as she felt down the length of the now elongated and sharp predatory instruments.

“Wh… what did you do to me?!” She fell back to her haunches, feeling her hooves down her body. She was so cold and pale, like all of the life had been washed out of her. Even her mane was discolored.

Then, much to her horror, as she rested her hoof against her chest, she realized something. Her heart wasn't beating.

“You should be grateful, my child. I have revived you from death.” The alicorn said, a bit of an amused smirk forming on his features as he saw a glint of confusion and denial in the mare’s eyes, which were red like his own. “What? You thought that was a dream, what happened to you?” He asked, lifting a hoof and brushing it along his neck pointedly, drawing attention to the wound across its surface.

Scribble trailed her eyes down and held her own neck, memories of a burning pain and her own blood being siphoned out flooding back to her. “I’m dead…?” She muttered quietly.

“Undead, rather.” He clarified. “I thought it would be a suitable gift to give you as thanks for reviving me. Although… I must apologize. Were I more in control of myself, I would have been a touch gentler with you and your compatriots… and I wouldn’t have drained them quite so much.” He glanced back to the corpses behind him, which were mostly devoid of blood, save for Gale, who still had some of the crimson fluid oozing out.

“I… I don’t-” Scribble paused, her eyes struggling to maintain focus. Her vision was starting to blur, and the faint tingle in her head had grown into a dull buzz that made thinking difficult. She planted a hoof in front of her in an attempt at getting up, only to stumble and barely catch herself before panting. Her breaths came in odd rhythms, and it felt like she was about to pass out.

“I see…” The alicorn said, a curious inflection to his voice as he watched this happening. “So even if you are freshly turned, you still need to feed.”

“Wh… what are you… talking about?” Scribble clenched her eyes shut and grit her teeth. She felt ill, but she couldn’t place why. Her stomach was in knots like she hadn’t eaten anything in a week.

“Worry not, my child. Luckily for you, I left this one with just enough blood for you in the event of this happening.” He stepped back and gestured to Gale’s body.

Scribble lifted her head up and looked toward the yellow mare’s corpse. Suddenly, she froze as a single dull drip pricked her ears.

Her big red eyes dilated and her jaw fell open as she saw some blood trickling out of Gale’s neck and pooling on the ground. She sniffed twice before taking a longer inhale of the copper aroma. Such a smell would have been abrasive to her before, but now it was oddly hypnotizing.

With a yet undiscovered instinct fueling her, Scribble crawled forward toward her former friend. She paused before the mare’s body, staring down for a few moments as saliva eagerly gathered on her tongue.

Part of her knew that what she was considering was foul, revolting even. Part of her wanted to turn her nose up and recoil in disgust, as a normal pony would. However, that part of her was silent, as a different part of her was hungry.

“Go on. You need to get your strength back.” The alicorn coaxed from his position watching her. His words seemed so appealing. She was so tired and weak and thirsty, and she knew just how to restore herself.

However, as she lowered herself toward Gale’s neck, her fangs poised and ready to sink in and drain the pegasus of every last drop, she hesitated as a memory flashed in her head.

She thought back to first meeting the pegasus and the others, to their journey through the woods and up to the castle. Their smiling faces gathered together in the cold. She thought about Gale’s bravery in trying to save her. And through all the transfixed hunger and feral instinct burning in her eyes, tears began to form.

“N-NO!” She yelled, jerking away and scooting herself back before forcing herself to look away.

The alicorn’s brows lowered and his head tilted as he watched the peach mare shivering and panting as she held herself back. “What’s wrong? Aren’t you thirsty?”

Scribble gently sobbed and shook her head as she held her sides. “No… I… I-I can’t… Please, don’t make me.” She whimpered before another pang of hunger made her cringe and curl into a ball.

The pale alicorn observed the peach mare quietly for a moment before walking up to her. She trailed her worried and strained eyes up to him, but she was too weak to move away.

“Very well… If you do not wish to partake in her blood, I think I can accommodate you.” He held up a foreleg and lifted his hoof, exposing his wrist and stretching the wound on it.

Much to Scribble’s surprise and morbid astonishment, a small, controlled trickle of blood slowly fell down in one long stream from out of his wrist. It stopped above her, pausing unnaturally in the air.

The hunger inside her wasn't going away anytime soon. While a hint of disturbance still remained in the back of her mind, Scribble relented and opened her mouth hesitantly, leaning her head back to line up with the stream. As she did, it continued falling down, landing in her mouth and sliding down her throat.

It was wonderful. Somehow, it still tasted the same metallic way that blood always did taste, but she didn’t find it disgusting anymore. In fact, she almost found it euphoric.

As the stream eventually ceased and the alicorn lowered his foreleg, Scribble exhaled with relief and deflated back to her haunches. The tingling sensation was gone from her head, and her body felt stronger than it ever had before.

However, now that she had her mental faculties back in order, she adopted a more disquieted expression as she thought about what she just did. She drank blood, and she liked it. It might not have belonged to an innocent pony, but the macabre implications of it and of what she now was unsettled her.

Looking back up to the alicorn, she still felt a bit of fear and unease. Yet, underneath all of her uncertainty and nervousness, she somehow knew that she couldn’t get away if she tried.

Her monstrous host shifted his head to gaze around the room. He had a pensive look about him, and he didn’t seem to be taking in his surroundings so much as he was thinking on other subjects, and whatever subjects they were seemed to sour his expression briefly.

“So…” The alicorn spoke, catching Scribble off guard with his flat tone as he turned to her. “Tell me, what year is it?”

Scribble blinked, a bit unprepared for such a strange question at first. “Umm… it’s the year of our lady, two thousand and nine.”

This made the alicorn give pause briefly. “Hmm… It’s been that long, has it?” He muttered to himself, resting a hoof against the wound on his neck. He was silent for a few moments as he stared at the floor, his jaw tensing in mounting anger. Finally, he looked back up to her. “Is Celestia still your ruler?”

“Y-yes,” Scribble nodded timidly, “her and Princess Luna.”

Now, the alicorn blinked in stunned surprise. “What…?”

“They both rule together… It’s kind of sweet how they-”

“What do you mean?!” The pale stallion snapped abruptly, his red eyes glowing more intensely. “Luna was banished to the moon! How in thrice-damned oblivion is she ruling beside Celestia?!”

Scribble flinched back as a feral-sounding growl emanated from the alicorn’s throat. “She… s-she came back. She was going to overthrow Princess Celestia, b-but then she got purified by Twilight Sparkle and the other elements of harmony… or something… I-I don’t know, please don’t hurt me!” She stammered fearfully, hiding her face.

The alicorn’s grit teeth and tensed jaw gradually relaxed as the peach mare cowered from him. He thought to himself for a moment before taking a few calming breaths and speaking again, this time in a more soft tone.

“What is your name, my child?”

Scribble peeked out, still a bit unnerved. “Scholarly Scribble…” She squeaked.

The alicorn hummed and slowly reached a hoof out to her. She froze, her jittery form jolting and a tiny squeak of fear escaping as he lifted her chin up to face him. He had a slight curl to his mouth, but it didn’t quite radiate joy like a smile should have. His eyes were also intense, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.

“Well… Scholarly Scribble,” He snorted softly, “I want you to tell me every major event that has happened since Luna was banished.”
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...
…..
And so, Scribble did as she was told.

She sat there in the dark, surrounded by the bodies of her friends and the alicorn that murdered them. Her new master, though such a description repulsed her. She hated him for what he had done to her and the others, and she was terrified of what he was capable of.

And yet she obeyed him. He listened intently as she described the history of Equestria in the last thousand years, or at least to the best of her knowledge.

She told him of Luna’s return as Nightmare Moon, and of Celestia’s student Twilight and her five friends that would become the bearers of harmony and defeat the tyrant of the night. She told him of Discord’s return and defeat, and of the hooded ponies’ arrival and attempted coup.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of her whole retelling to the alicorn was the arrival of Thomas Greene, Equestria’s only human and slayer of evil.

The alicorn scratched his chin pensively as he mulled over everything the mare had explained. It was a lot to take in, and for one reason or another, it seemed troubling to him. “So, let me get this straight,” He said, looking up to Scribble, “Celestia’s… student, wielded the elements of harmony and purified Luna.”

“Y-yes.” Scribble nodded.

“And now Luna leads a team of monster hunters to contend with all the creatures unleashed by the… what did you call them?”

“The hooded ponies,” Scribble said.

“I see… how quaint.” The alicorn nodded to himself with a flat hum. “It seems that a lot has happened since I-” He trailed off abruptly, that look of intensity returning to his eyes before he shook his head. “Nevermind that. I have more important things to do than to sit here and think on the past. I’ve done enough of that already…” He glanced down to his forelegs, paying close attention to the slashes on both wrists. “Now that I have this power, I think it is time that I acted.”

As the alicorn got up and turned around, Scribble watched him hesitantly. He walked over to the three bodies on the floor, pausing before Gale’s.

Much to Scribble’s disturbance, she watched as all of the remaining blood in the pegasus’ body was pulled out of the wound in her neck. The crimson fluid floated up and into the alicorn’s neck, whereupon he produced a pleased sigh.

Then, he lifted a foreleg up and exposed his wrist, allowing a stream of his own blood to flow out and split off into three tendrils that quickly spread out and flowed into the three dead ponies’ wounds in a confusing and unsettling display.

“What are you doing?” Scribble asked softly, deciding that it was best to keep her revulsion to herself.

The alicorn ceased the flow of blood from his wrist and gazed at the bodies for a moment before turning to Scribble. “I’m going to leave here tonight, and when I do, I’m going to require some aid… Aid that you are unable to give me, it seems.” He gave her an odd look, like he was merely tolerating her presence.

Scribble furrowed her brow slightly and shook her head. “I don’t understand. What did you do to them?” She asked.

Instead of answering her question directly, the alicorn walked back over to her and passed her, starting to make his way to a doorway leading out into what must have been one of the basement corridors. “Enough questions, Scholarly Scribble. Come, follow me. I will show you to a comfortable place for you to wait while I’m gone. Besides… what happens next is rather unpleasant to behold if I recall, and I grow tired of your incessant whines.”

As he exited the room, Scribble remained for a moment as she looked over to her former friends. Why had the alicorn given them his blood? Where was he going, and why? These and a million other questions swirled around in her head. She felt a wave of despair washing over her as she looked down to her pale hooves. She just wanted to wake up from this nightmare already and see her brother again.

“Come along, my child.” The alicorn called from outside, sounding a bit impatient with her. A sharp tingle filled her mind, suddenly nudging her will into following his command.

“I’m coming!” She assured, hurrying along to follow after him. However, as she reached the doorway, she paused and stole one last glance at the bodies behind her.

She could almost swear she saw Gale’s leg twitch.