Tugging at my undead heartstrings

Tugging at my undead heartstrings

By: Fimbulvinter

Chapter 4: Kill me, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the Vampony

Twilight

I sped into my library, grabbing a quill and ink from the side table before settling down to write a message to the princess.

‘Dear Princess Celestia
We have a problem in Ponyville. I think that one of the mares here, Lyra Heartstrings may actually be a vampony, as impossible as it sounds. She just returned from an unexplained 6 month absence with a black pegasus, and I saw her bite her mare friend on the neck. She had fangs. Please, I’m scared that she may have seen me and come after me next. What should I do?

Your Faithful student
Twilight Sparkle’.

I rolled up the parchment and ran up to where spike was asleep in his basket.

“SPIKE! Get up now,” I yelled, kicking his basket over. He got up slowly, shooting daggers at me as he did so.

“What’s going on Twilight, why are you so panicky? Your report on arcane focusing crystals isn’t due for another twop days, and you are done already.”

“I saw something in town, and the princess needs to be told right away.” I held out the parchment for him to take.

“It’s two AM, Twilight. Can’t this wait until morning, I was having the ice-cream dream again”

“No Spike, send it now and stay up in case she decides to respond.”

Spike shrugged and blew his green dragon fire over the scroll, watching as it evaporated away. “Well, there it goes but I don’t think that the princess will respond right away. She should be asleep at the moment. What is so important that it could not... BUUURRP.”

A response scroll belched out of his mouth and I snagged it before it could hit the ground. I opened it and scanned the contents

‘Dear Twilight
Tell no-one the contents of this scroll, not even Spike, it will self destruct after you have read it.

You have stumbled onto one of the dark secrets of Equestrias past, something I always suspected that you would. Report to Canterlot Castle at once, we have much to discuss. Again tell nopony about this.

Celestia
Regent of the Silver Sun’

The scroll burst into flames on my desk, reducing it to cinders, but somehow not damaging the other contents in any way. I looked at the charred remains in disbelief; Celestia had never used that title before. I had no idea what that meant.

“Twilight, what is going on? You’re acting weirder than when you forgot that friendship report.” Spike was concerned for me, this was touching, but a direct order from the princess could not be overlooked.

“I’m sorry, Spike, but I can’t tell you right now, princess’s orders,” I said to Spike before gathering up my saddle bags. Checking to see that I had everything I was likely to need for a trip to Canterlot, I simply teleported out, re-appearing in an open field north-east of Ponyville. I paused for a moment to get my bearing before ‘porting again.

Some time ago, I had set up a selection of magical homing beacons for use in a situation like this. They allowed me to rapidly teleport myself from Ponyville to Canterlot, by establishing a series of waypoints that I could lock onto and track through the un-space of the teleportation matrix, boosting out my range and accuracy. Where it would normally take the better part of a day to reach the place, I could now get there on my own is less than 5 minutes.

The last jump took me directly into the throne room, where I was surprised to see Celestia sitting. It was still the middle of the night; Luna’s court was meant to be in session now.

Celestia lacked any of her normal graceful nature tonight. She wore a robe I had never seen before, emblazoned with an image of her cutie mark done up entirely out of silver thread, and everything about her screamed ‘all business.’

“Twilight, thank you for coming so quickly. The matter I am about to discuss with you does not leave this room. Are we clear?”

I had never seen Celestia so serious before. I nodded quickly.

“Good, now tell me something. What do you know of the protection spells that Luna and I cast to make Equestria safe?”

A question to which I knew the answer perfectly; every schoolchild learned about the spells they cast following the Age of Discord. “You and Luna created spells that removed all of the dangers from this land, making Equestria safe for all the types of ponies that live here.”

Celestia nodded gravely. “Do you believe that?”

I did, after all it was in all the books. And Equestria seemed a very safe place to live; crime, murder almost never happened. “Yes I do.”

“Then you are a fool, Twilight Sparkle. I had hoped that one as smart as you would have been able to see past the clear lies and political bullshitting such a story entailed. While we did cast spells, none of them were as effective as everypony believes. Surely you noticed things like the Ursa, the Hydra, not to mention Cerberus.” I nodded remembering all those incidents, and the Princess was right, the protection spells were meant to keep monsters like those out. “Those spells are there mostly to make ponies think that they are protected. Ignorance is bliss.”

Celestia motioned for me to follow her. “Come with me Twilight, It is time you learned the truth about yourself and one the many dirty secrets behind the throne.” Celestia led me into her private chamber, and opened a secret stairway behind her bed. The passage was small, but very clean, something that appeared to be used frequently. Two tunnels ran off of it; One descending into the depths of the castle. The other ran off into the darkness but appeared to stay level with this floor.

“Equestria is not the safe place that you think it is. Monsters, vampires, werewolves, they all exist and are all kept from the public eye through the actions of some very dedicated ponies.” The passage opened up into a large chamber, filled with sparing equipment, weapon and armour racks, photos of various ponies lined the wall. Some of the photos had been crossed with a red X. The silver symbol of Celestia’s sun hung above everything.

Three ponies were currently in engaged in some kind of fight, each using weapons and attacking the others. A pegasus stallion was wielding some kind of whip, while a unicorn was holding steady behind a solid looking shield. All however stopped as soon as Celestia entered the chamber, dropping into a low bow.

“Twilight, this is the headquarters for the Monks of the Silver Sun. They act as my enforcers behind the scenes. If a monster or supernatural creature appears, they are dispatched to eliminate it, quickly and quietly before knowledge of its existence can spread to the general public.”

Celestia looked hard at me. “My school for gifted unicorns holds a secondary purpose, as do all of the state sponsored schools – to seek out the most powerful and loyal ponies and to gauge if they could be recruited. When I took you on as my apprentice, it was with the intent that you would become one of these monks. Your magic would have made you a powerful assassin for the royal cause with the right training and conditioning. However it soon became clear that you were the one to wield the element of magic, thus I refocused my attention to you stopping Nightmare Moon, and decided that you did not need to know about this less savoury side of government. But if you are correct and a member of Ponyville has been turned, then I’m afraid you have forced my hoof in this matter.”

Celestia turned her attention to the three agents waiting at attention. “Agent Philharmonica, come here.” A grey coated mare with purple eyes and a black brown mane and tail approached and saluted the Princess.

“Twilight, this is Octavia Philharmonica von Clef; she is one of my most competent agents. She will accompany you back to Ponyville and investigate this ‘Lyra’ you mentioned. If it turns out that she is indeed a vampony, she will deal with this threat in a discreet manner; you will not need to get your hooves dirty.”

Octavia turned to me. “So you are the famous Twilight Sparkle. Our Lord has told us much of you. Can you describe the mare I will be tracking?” I noticed that she had the classic refined Canterlot accent that most of the upper crust was known for.

“Lyra is a unicorn mare with amber eyes, a green coat…”

Octavia interrupted me “And a two tone mane?”

“Yes, have you met her before?” I asked.

“Possibly, if it is the same mare, I’d say that it is a very good chance you are right, and she is a blood sucking abomination. I encountered a mare matching her description 6 months ago while tracking a known vampony; she got in the way during an engagement. If she is still alive then she must have been turned. Vamponies don’t leave loose ends.”

Lyra

In a perverse way, I was getting exactly what I had wanted. Bon-Bon and I could be together forever. And I mean forever forever. She would be young and pretty everlasting. We could live however we wanted once we had both learned control. So why did I feel so rotten about the whole thing? Likely because of the way it had gone down, and how I had acted. The moment of lust gone, I was now ready to die of shame if I wasn’t already dead. I hadn’t given Bon-Bon any choice in the matter, never asked if she wanted to be turned. Maybe she would have rather died than become one of the undead. I would never truly know.

Our house was now fully ablaze behind us. With a practiced ease that indicated that this was not his first purging, DeVille had carefully weakened structural supports and lit fires in key spots to ensure that no evidence would remain. Nopony had seen me return, and they would most likely think that Bon-Bon had perished in the fire when she did not turn up at a hospital. Aside from the grief that would certainly visit our friends in the town, we had gotten away clean.

DeVille told me to go back to the fortress in the Everfree, with Bon-Bon on my back. He was going to get some emergency supplies that we would need before we made a decision about where to head to next. Bon-Bon needed to be acclimatised, and we needed to keep an eye on what was going on in Ponyville to make sure that we weren’t being followed.

The trip back through the forest was uneventful. For some reason, the creatures of the Everfree could sense that we were unnatural and avoided us for the most part. A couple of times during my stay here before, a larger creature would try and well, free lunch.

The fortress was just as we had left it that evening, not surprising as nopony ever came willingly into this part of the forest. The most anypony would normally come was to that zebra’s hut, and that was still close to the outskirts.

I put Bon-Bon down onto one of the mats we used for when we rested during the day, and made sure she was a comfortable as I could. Going on my own transformation, she would not be aware of any of this, but even still, I wanted to treat her right.

With Bon-Bon tucked in there was nothing to do but wait for DeVille to show up with his supplies, whatever those were. And it seemed I would not have to wait long for that. DeVille appeared in the entry hall with a bulging saddlebag filled with what I saw were blood-packs from the Ponyville emergency clinic. I was not remotely hungry, still being full of Bon-Bon, but she would be starving when she woke.

“Nothing to do now but settle in; another few hours at the most,” DeVille said, checking on Bon-Bon the moment he put his saddlebags down.

Another few hours in which my mind could beat me up over my inability to control myself. We both settled in to watch Bon-Bon; neither one of us speaking.

Twilight

Standing before us was a total wreck of a home. The house in which Bon-Bon had been living alone for the last 6 months now stood gutted, burned to the ground. Weather ponies had been able to contain the fire, preventing it from spreading to the surrounding houses, but this home was a total write off. None of the neighbours nor the Ponyville hospital had seen Bon-Bon after the fire, and the current theory was that she had been trapped inside. Two police ponies were combing the scene as we and much of the town watched. An arson inspector had been called to investigate, but was some time away.

“Rather convenient, wouldn’t you say?” Octavia asked me.

“What do you mean? Somepony may have died in there,” I replied. She was not taking this at all seriously.

“What I mean is that within hours of a likely vampony attack, the house in which it happened is destroyed in a fire, tainting any evidence that could have been found. I doubt that we will get anything of use here.” Octavia turned to leave as one of the officers came outside to speak with EMT ponies.

I quickly cast an auditory spell allowing me to hear what was being said.

“We didn’t find a body, but there were some blood stains on the carpets, very fresh, if you can separate the damage caused by the fire. Preliminary work indicates that it matches the owner’s type. I’d say it’s likely she perished.” I turned the spell off at that point; I had heard all I needed to.

Octavia was not impressed with the report when I mentioned it t her. “If you wanted to get out of town without being seen where would you go?”

“The Everfree forest; everypony avoids it if they can help it, plus once you are in, the dense foliage makes tracking almost impossible.”

“Can you think of any place that you would go, if you had to flee into the forest?”

I nodded. “The ancient fortress of the Pony Sisters. It’s a ruin now, but is the safest place inside the forest.”

“Take me there.” Octavia started to trot over towards the path leading to the forest entrance. “If we hurry we might be able to catch them. Turning a newborn will slow them down; we might get there in time to keep the monster from rising at all.”

I was incensed at her casual classification of two ponies that I had known and considered to be friends as monsters. “Octavia, these ponies are not monsters, they are my friends.”

“No they are not; not anymore. The ponies you knew are gone, replaced by a creature that endlessly thirsts for your blood, and will stop at nothing to ensure that their thirst is sated. You saw it yourself. A single scratch was all it took for Lyra to shed her control and become a bloodsucking monster. I cannot allow such a threat to Equestria to exist. For the good of all ponies everywhere and in the name of Celestia, I am going to find them and destroy them all.”

I was shocked at the venom I heard in her voice. Even to me, it was clear that Octavia was acting far above her role as a professional. To her, this was personal. And that made her dangerous, not only to her enemies, but to herself as well.

I led Octavia to the entry to the Everfree, pausing a moment while Octavia pulled out what looked like a Cello bow. Closer inspection showed that the hair of the bow had been replaced with silver wire. I watched as Octavia rose up onto her hind hooves and continued walking bipedal along me, the bow now strapped to one of her front hooves. Such an action required near impossible strength, but she was an Earth Pony after all; they were just naturally built stronger.

Since Nightmare Moon, I had been back to the fortress on a few occasions for study. I knew the way there, and remembered each of the trials she had subjected us to on the way. Steven Magnet was splashing around in the river, so I just teleported us across; something I could have done the first time we met, though it would have robbed Rarity of her chance to express her element.

The rope bridge where Dash had met the Shadow Bolts had long since been replaced by me. Sturdy new ropes and fresh wooden planks spanned the gap. Over the bridge we caught sight of the fortress and Octavia called for a halt. Voices could be heard over in the distance, from inside the base of one of the outer towers.

Moving up slowly, we caught sight of two ponies, Lyra and that black pegasus, both sitting down and watching over the body of a third, cream coloured pony. It had to be Bon-Bon.

Octavia motioned for me to stop. “Now we wait for the opportune time.”

Lyra

Bon-Bon lay at my hooves. From what DeVille told me, she should be rising up any moment now. Part of me knew that I should not be there, and allow her to come to terms with what I did away from me, but a stronger part said that I would not let her go through finding out was she was without me.

Fortunately I did not have to wait long. Within moments, Bon-Bon began to stir on the ground, legs twitching as her eyes slowly opened. A pair of fangs could now be seen protruding from her mouth, but she did not appear to notice them just yet.

Bon-Bon took one look around, saw me and instantly backed away, slamming into one of the towers walls, cracking it slightly. I stood still and waited for the inevitable barrage of outrage and questions.

“Lyra, you, you bit me! You’re a vampony, oh sweet Celestia, you’re a vampony. Help POLICE, somebody help me, my mare-friend is a vampony.”

I could not answer her; all she said was true, but DeVille stepped in and took over the conversation. His voice was calm, quiet, but radiated authority, the kind of voice that could cut through even the most heated of debates. “Bon-Bon, remain calm. I can explain everything.”

It worked to a degree. Bon-Bon stopped trying to force her way through the wall and turned to him, though she was still very tense.

“You are right, Lyra is a vampony, as am I. She has been one since the day she disappeared. None of it was intentional, I was meant to be passing through, but got stuck in Ponyville for the day. Lyra showed me around and got caught in the middle of a feud between me and a clandestine group that thinks of us as monsters. She was badly hurt and the only way to heal her was to turn her. I brought her here to train her until I thought she was ready to return to you, but she cracked when you cut yourself on the glass. She drained you of almost all of your blood, far more than you could afford to loose.”

Understanding blossomed over her face. “Wait, does that mean that…” Bon-Bon ran her tongue over her mouth, stopping at the two fangs. “Am I a vampony now too?”

DeVille nodded. “I know that this may come as a great shock, but I can assure you that you will find it quite tolerable once you get used to it.”

Bon-Bon wasn’t listening anymore; she was muttering to herself. “I’m a vampony, I’m a vampony, I’m a vampony.”

Her face brightened as she processed what she was saying. “I’m a vampony now, HOW COOL IS THAT. I’M A VAMPONY, WHOOOO!!!” She started jumping up and down on the spot.

DeVille turned to me. “She seems to be taking the news rather well. Something I don’t know about?”

I just watched as Bon-Bon came down slightly, still beaming at me though. “Oh, this has been one of my secret fantasies for as long as I can remember. Vamponies, so dark and sensual, everything about them drips romance.”

I was stunned at the change in her. All this time I had though that she was going to hate me. It seemed that she was over the moon about the news though. Never saw that one coming.

“Don’t get so excited, Bon-Bon. Remember that you will have to drink blood from now on.” DeVille was trying to act as the voice of reason.

“Oh I know that. I’ve read all the stories; The Moonlight saga, Real Blood, Count Neighcula, and honestly, it wouldn’t be the first time. I went through a bit of a phase when I was younger, rebelling against my parents.”

I found my voice at this point. “So let me get this straight, you actually like the fact that you are now a vampony?” Bon-Bon nodded rapidly.

“Yes, but don’t think this means I forgive you for how you went about it. You could have just asked me.”

DeVille pulled out one of the blood packs he had liberated from the hospital. “Well then, here is the first meal of the rest of your life.” He handed the pack to Bon-Bon who looked at it with mixed feelings. Her eyes and mouth watered for it, but she seemed to hesitate, much like I did when offered blood for the first time. Taking it would be to confirm beyond all doubt that she was no longer a normal pony.

Eventually Bon-Bon simply shrugged and tore off the tip of the pack, upended it into her mouth and chugged the entire thing. Sensual moans escaped her lips as she swallowed mouthful after mouthful of the rich, crimson liquid. Just watching her was getting me horny.

Bon-Bon drained the last of the blood from the pack, desire burning in her eyes. “Oh, Wow. Is it always like this?”

DeVille nodded. “For pony blood it is, and it is even better when taken direct from the source, as Lyra here can attest. If you can keep control over it, the act of feeding will be the most pleasurable thing both you and the donor will ever experience, but before we get side-tracked too far, we need to decide where to go from here. Ponyville believes you to be dead; to return there would almost certainly bring down hunters on you. We need to go somewhere there is both plenty of food and easy places to hide out. A large city would be best, we can hide in plain sight, and nopony will notice if a homeless pony or two goes missing.”

“Manehattan, it’s not to far way and fits the bill,” I called out. I had been to Manehattan for performances several times. It had a sizable beggar population, and multiple hospitals and blood banks. Three vamponies could camp out there for a long time and stay under the radar.

“So what else is there? Do we live forever, can we enter a church, and do we get all kinds of cool powers?” Bon-Bon was so eager to learn more about her new nature, it was almost like watching a young puppy, which in some senses was exactly what it was.

DeVille laughed. “Something tells me you are going to do fine, young one. Yes you will live forever, we can enter anywhere we have been invited, and we do get some cool powers. The exact breakdown differs depending on type, but earth ponies tend to get enhanced physical prowess. You will be stronger and will run faster than either of us. If you so desire, you will be able to climb up sheer walls a spider or a lizard would. And finally your earth pony magical connection to the ground gives you a limited ability as a Terrapath. As long as you are touching the ground, it will respond to your call and serve you as magic would a unicorn.”

“Cool,” Bon-Bon said almost reverently. I watched as she ran up to the nearest wall and put her front hooves on it. Lifting one of her back ones up as well, she stuck fast, hanging from the wall. In an almost Pinkie Pie display of lack of regard for the laws of physics, she clambered up the wall, walking with no more effort than if she was walking normally.

As she neared the top, Bon-Bon called out, “How do you get down?” As if triggered by her question, all of Bon-Bon’s hooves fell away from the wall as one, and gravity reasserted itself with a vengeance.

I watched as Bon-Bon fell down the full length of the tower, landing with a sickening CRACK, right on her neck. Tendons popped out, bones poking out of her chest, internal organs visible for all the world to see. For a moment she simply lay there, broken and twisted. I began to panic for her when I saw her wounds began to knit. Bones re-aligned themselves, flesh closed over, and within a few moments it was as if she had never fallen in the first place.

A quiet whistling sound followed by a muffled thud was heard somewhere behind me, but I paid it no mind, my focus was on Bon-Bon

I rushed over to her as she weakly got back to her hooves, looking over her for signs of lasting damage. With a solid crack of her neck she looked up to me. “Let’s never do that again,” she commented weakly. I nodded and helped her up the rest of the way.

I turned to DeVille, hoping to get some kind of answer and froze.

The now liberated head of DeVille rolled to a stop at my hooves. His decapitated body slumped to the ground, slowly starting to disintegrate into liquid blood. Behind him stood the pony from the alley. Standing on two hooves, she held a bloody cello bow in both her front hooves and had murder written across her face, her purple eyes flashing at us.

“That was for my father, you unholy demon spawn” She spat down at the corpse, before turning her attention towards Bon-Bon and myself.

We did the only thing we could think of to do. We ran, pausing only long enough to grab the bags of blood still in DeVille’s saddle bags. He wound not need them any more.

Twilight

I watched as Octavia beheaded the pegasus, having snuck up while he was distracted watching Bon-Bon clamber up a wall. Her attack had been swift and brutal, one single swipe with the bow, the silver wire cutting through his neck like a blowtorch through butter.

I stood there as Lyra and Bon-Bon; I could not bring myself to think of them as anything different than who they had always been, turned and saw Octavia standing there above the corpse of their friend and maker. They simply fled, moving faster than anypony I had ever seen; even Rainbow Dash would have a hard time keeping pace.

Octavia watched them go before turning to me.

“Report back to the Princess at once. Let her know what happened here. I have killed the elder, but the newborns escaped.”

“What? Where are you going?” I asked. Surely she would be coming back with me; she had just killed somepony after all. Reports had to be made, next of kin notified.

Octavia looked at me with mask of pure fury, cleaning her bow on a rag she picked up from the ground. “I’m headed for Manehattan”…