Demon Seed, Part I
Demon Seed, Part I
It's been less than an hour, but what does it matter? Time has become worthless to Rarity. Much like any material possessions, time becomes utterly meaningless once your world comes to an end.
The doctor and nurse analyze her, treat her, do everything they can for her. She's poisoned, Rarity was told. Sweetie Belle. Poisoned. Likely from the puddings. The hospital staff have already started an investigation on this, she was informed, and they have closed the cafeteria until further notice.
But what kind of poison could do something this terrifying? Rarity sits on a chair, watching the doctor and nurse. They hover about Sweetie Belle, at work administering treatment. For some reason, to Rarity, they look like a pair of bees pollinating the same flower.
Poison.
She fed her poison.
She fed her baby sister poison, and she didn't even know.
Rarity swallows. But the doctor can help. It's his job. He knows his job well. She can trust him. She just
(this is)
needs to have
(I'm sorry, I)
a little faith. Sweetie Belle will survive. She'll live. This will all be behind them one day, and
(my fault)
they'll—they'll just look back on it and even though they'd still be sort of scared by it, they'll laugh, but Sweetie Belle, she'll be all right she'll be okay it's nothing to worry about Rarity will find a way she always did always would always does would never leave Sweetie Belle out to die never never never
"Miss Rarity?"
She snaps back to reality. The doctor and nurse are looking at her with tired, terrified faces. Her heart slams against her chest. Has the worst passed? Has the worst yet to happen?
"Yes?"
The doctor fidgeted. "The poison in your sister's systems is acting very quickly. I've never seen any poison like it in the ten years I've worked as a doctor." He looked away, then back again. "Miss Rarity, your sister... We've, uh, we've managed to stabilize her, for now... but... the poison will in all likelihood act against the medicine we've administered."
Suddenly, Rarity is overcome with anger. "Well then, remove the poison, you tactless dolt!" It takes her a second to realize that she's only an inch away from the doctor's face. He breathes in deeply, then continues.
"What I mean is, unless we have an antidote, the poison can't be removed. It's acted too quickly, and there is evidence it was created using arcane ingredients, not just physical ones, thereby making it extremely potent. It's destroying your sister, and unless an antidote can be made, and quickly, she won't make it."
"Then make an antidote!"
The doctor backs away from Rarity. He was afraid of this. Rarity is well-known for her forced hysterics, but now that there is real terror—no mismatching colors, no hair-out-of-place, but the real deal, real terror—the hysterics are equally real. He isn't sure which is more terrifying, Sweetie Belle being poisoned, or her sister's breakdown because of it. He dreads what he must say next.
"Miss Rarity, it takes years of research to create an antidote for a poison with unfamiliar properties. The way our mail system is slowing down, it might take weeks to even get a group of professionals gathered to do anything. Your sister... has maybe a few days, even with our medicine."
Tense silence. Even though her coat is pearl-white, the doctor can tell the color has left her face. He can hear something inside her wilt... wither... die. Her eyes age a hundred years. After a second or so, Rarity slowly walks over to Sweetie Belle, who lies in the bed, machines hooked into her like a mad scientist's experiment.
The doctor hates this. Always has. The bad news. Too many ponies die in a hospital. The one place where ponies go for treatments, to get well, and yet too many ponies die here. Such sickening irony. And all these foals dying lately, or disappearing...
He and the nurse decide to walk out, leaving the two sisters alone. It's almost a minute of quiet before Rarity even does anything. Her hoof comes up and she begins to stroke her baby sister's mane, slowly. She looks into her sister's closed eyes.
"Sweetie Belle... I don't know if you're able to hear me, but... but I'm sorry. This is all my fault. I'm so... all those times, I..."
The thoughts meant to form words instead form gibberish. Nothing she says or does means anything anymore.
Nothing.
No words. Rarity falls down, her forelegs wrapping around her sister's tiny body—the very body that just a week or so ago was happily dancing and singing and so very, very alive and full of affection for those around her. The tears begin, and do not end until Rarity falls unconscious, her sister held tightly to her chest.
Screams erupt all across the hospital, one right after the other like an alarm system going off. Mothers and fathers and older siblings panic as young foals begin frothing at the mouths, screaming at things that aren't there, clawing at their loved ones as if they are wild animals, running from them as if possessed.
Doctors and nurses rush to see what's wrong. The affected foals are taken to emergency analysis rooms. In the time span of around thirty minutes, the doctors all understand that the foals are suffering from severe hallucinations. Hallucinations that end when their body's systems all arrest at once.
Medicine is administered, but the poison that is responsible for all this is fast-acting and terrifyingly powerful. Any medicine the hospital can administer at this point seems only mildly effective, and can only give the foals peace before the inevitable. After the screams of terror comes a fog of despair, parents and siblings and guardians becoming greyer. The hope that was slowly coming back to Ponyville has been ripped back out again.
Marble walks along the hallways, cool as autumn wind, as the downtrodden hold each other for any comfort there may be left. Near the stage of panic, ponies don't notice the infant at her side, whose face is beginning to go blue, whose mouth is already covered in foam. She looks haughtily down at those who do, and they instantly feel
it
and back away.
She already has a vague implication of where her target is, and she can feel its presence grow stronger as she closes in on it.
Almost as soon as she comes into the hospital to check on Apple Bloom, the place explodes around Applejack. The moment she sees a foal screaming his head off at things that aren't there, her stomach sinks. Then another foal, then another. The place chokes in the grip of panic as parents and doctors alike try to get the foals under control.
Then their mouths begin to froth.
Then their eyes begin to roll back in their heads.
Applejack along with her brother Big Macintosh run down the hallways of the mental ward, where a nurse told her she last saw Apple Bloom. She calls for her sister, hoping against hope that she hadn't fallen victim to whatever was breaking out.
Apple Bloom is not in the mental ward. It takes some investigation, but she's told that their little sister went to the west wing. They head there, swimming through crowds of dimming panic.
At last, they see her, amidst a crowded hall, calling for her siblings. She fills them in, what she was told, what she saw. She points to the door next to her, saying that this is where they took Sweetie Belle. Listening inside, Applejack can hear Rarity shouting hysterically.
Applejack holds onto her little sister in horror as Big Macintosh looks away, tries to calm himself. He sees a ghost white figure prance by, almost cheerily amongst all this panic.
He looks up in time to see her round the corner, out of his sight. "...Marble?"
"What?" asks Applejack. Big Macintosh, unable to fight his curiosity now, follows her through the hallway just in time to see her round another corner. Applejack calls after him, telling him impatiently to come back.
When he does not, Applejack grumbles. She turns to Apple Bloom. "Listen, Ah want'chu to stay here in case Rarity comes outta there. Ah'll be rightt back; shouldn't take more'na minnit." With that, Applejack storms off to grab her idiot, insensitive brother, leaving Apple Bloom alone to her thoughts for a few minutes more.
Applejack calls for Big Macintosh, but it's like he doesn't hear her. What is he thinking, leaving his sisters alone like this? She chases after him, running past doctors and nurses and other ponies, keeping her eyes on the big red stallion as he rounds this corner, that corner.
More than just the promised few minutes pass as the chase continues, and when she catches him, Applejack swears she will kill Big Mac's stupid ass for wandering off like a curious three-year-old. The hallways become more familiar to her.
Isn't this the hall where Twilight Sparkle is?
It's been almost two hours since he'd checked on Twilight, but Aeon feels that his surveillance is necessary. And after several days of routinely helping prepare meals for the sick, only taking the occasional break to talk to Miss Heartstrings or Twilight, he was ready to do something else anyway.
On his way there, he walks by a doctor whose name he remembers as "Stable." He nods to him as he passes, and Stable returns the gesture. The nurse Stable is talking to also nods in Aeon's direction, just to be friendly.
Aeon perks his ears as he hears the familiar, frantic pace of Pinkie Pie talking. He looks aside to see both her and a foal (Scootaloo, if he remembers correctly) walk by. Pinkie Pie waves to him and adds a "HIYA EENIE!" to whatever else she was talking about. Scootaloo looks at him like he's the strange creature he is, and just to be friendly, Aeon greets her with a warm smile. He agrees to follow them to Twilight's room, and on the way there, Pinkie explains (At breakneck pace, as always) that Scootaloo is going to ask Rainbow Dash for an apology.
Rounding the corner behind these two, he sees a white unicorn mare at Twilight's door.
It's been almost two hours since he'd checked on Twilight, but Aeon feels that his surveillance is necessary. And after several days of routinely helping prepare meals for the sick, only taking the occasional break to talk to Miss Heartstrings or Twilight, he was ready to do something else anyway.
On his way there, he walks by a doctor whose name he remembers as "Stable." He nods to him as he passes, and Stable returns the gesture. The nurse Stable is talking to also nods in Aeon's direction, just to be friendly.
Aeon blinks. What just happened? Hadn't he already done this before?
He perks his ears (again) as he hears the familiar, frantic pace of Pinkie Pie talking (again). He looks aside (again) to see both her and a foal, Scootaloo, walk by (again). "Pinkie!" he calls.
"HIYA EENIE!" she chirps (again). "I was taking Scootaloo to—"
"Rainbow Dash, for an apology?" he asks.
Pinkie Pie gasps. "Whoa! You're a mind-reader, too?"
"No," he says, "It is that you have told me this before."
Scootaloo raises an eyebrow. "Huh? When did we do that?"
Before Aeon can give an answer, he hears somepony shout from further down the hall. "We need medical attention over here!" Aeon raises up his head and
It's been almost two hours since he'd checked on Twilight, but Aeon feels that his surveillance is necessary. And after several days of routinely helping prepare meals for the sick, only taking the occasional break to talk to Miss Heartstrings or Twilight, he was ready to do something else anyway...
At last, Marble comes to the door. The infant still at her one side, the saddle bag at the other, she calmly knocks. Once, twice, thrice. She feels perky today, so she adds a "shave and a haircut" to the previous three knocks.
She can feel it behind this door. Dracula's rib is behind here, waiting, calling out to her: it's been lonely in here without its trusted minions. She takes a deep breath as she waits, a pleasant smile on her face as if she's visiting an old friend. When the door opens, she's met by a handsome young pegasus wearing Royal Guard armor, despite no helmet.
The moment he sees the foal, he scowls. "What are you doing with that kid?!" he says, his stance becoming more threatening. His wings flutter as he snorts. "He should be in the infirmary!"
"Shatterstorm, what's going on?" asks a voice from inside. Marble grins wider. The little sorceress. Just who she wanted to see, and expected to be here.
"May I speak to Twilight Sparkle?" she asks, her voice clean and cold. "As you can see, this is an urgent matter that I think only she can solve."
"Lady, if you don't get a doctor for that kid, I will put you under arrest for deliberate foal endangerment!" He looks around the hallway. "We need medical attention over here!" he shouts.
There is somepony there, a few someponies in fact, but before Shatterstorm can recognize who they are, they disappear. No puff of smoke, no burst of unicorn magic. They just blink out of existence, as if the hallway itself closed its eyes on them. He holds a gasp, unsure of what he really saw.
Suddenly, Shatterstorm feels himself being picked up by something invisible. Before he has the chance to say or do anything, he's thrown down the hallway, slamming into what feels like another pony. Not waiting to see what he had been thrown at, Shatterstorm gets back up and prepares to ram Marble. He'd torn a hurricane to bits, so there's no way some unicorn magic is going to stop him!
Marble smirks as he speeds toward her, and holds up the foal in front of her to remind him of her hostage. Shatterstorm gasps and tries his hardest to stop before he accidentally crashes into the sick foal, but his momentum is too great for a clean stop. In a last attempt to avoid harming the foal, he tries to swerve, only succeeding in smashing into a nearby wall.
The impact from Shatterstorm's crash knocks paintings off the hospital room's walls. Before Twilight or Spike can figure out what's going on, Marble walks into the room. Twilight sees the foal with the foaming mouth and grits her teeth.
Marble locks eyes with the little sorceress and greets her with a pleasant smile. Twilight feels
it
and growls. Marble closes the door behind her as Twilight hears somepony call her name. "Now then," says Marble pleasantly, "let us get right to the point."
"Applejack?" asks Rainbow Dash. "Applejack, what're you doing here?"
The farm girl slows to a stop. "Have any y'all seen Big Macintosh? He wandered past here, didn't he?"
Fluttershy cocks her head. "First Scootaloo, now Big Macintosh? What's going on?"
Rainbow Dash looks ahead. Down this hallway is the room with the rib. Also down this hallway is Big Macintosh. Her eyes widen as she sees Shatterstorm crash into him, causing the big red stallion to flinch. Shatterstorm gets back up and soars across the hallway, suddenly swerving and crashing into the far-away wall.
At the sound of Shatterstorm's crash, the other two mares look up. Their eyes widen and all three shoot down the hall. Rainbow Dash calls Twilight Sparkle's name click eman s'elkrapS thgiliwT sllac hsaD wobniaR .llah eht nwod toohs eerht lla dna nediw seye riehT .pu kool seram owt retho eht ,hsarc s'mrotsrettahS fo dnuos eht tA
At the sound of Shatterstorm's crash, the other two mares look up. Their eyes widen, and all three shoot down the hall. Rainbow Dash, however, gets a strange sense of deja vu. Didn't she just see Shatterstorm crash into the wall?
She stops as the other two continue down the hall. Then, she hears a click. Suddenly, there Shatterstorm is again, smashing into the wall. She can't see past Big Macintosh, but she thinks somepony might be at Twilight's door. Something is wrong, but it doesn't seem like Applejack or Fluttershy know.
Suddenly, Rainbow Dash hears a voice as Applejack and Fluttershy once again repeat this performance. The voice is thin and whispery, sing-songy yet still raspy, and sounds like it is coming from everywhere and nowhere, all at once.
Tick... tock... tick... tock... tick tock goes my pony clock...
Click.
This time, Aeon forsakes any manners he has. He dashes by the doctor and nurse without acknowledging them. He bowls right by Pinkie Pie and Scootaloo. He knows exactly what is happening, and he only has a short time to act. He curses himself for not considering the idea that his old enemy would concoct a new way to extend his mild dominance over the flow of time.
He's in the hallway again, only this time there is no white unicorn mare. Instead, Aeon flinches a little as he sees—and actually feels—Shatterstorm crash into the wall. He hears somepony (Applejack?) call for a "Big Macintosh." Acting quickly, he reaches into his coat pocket, pulling out the Stopwatch.
A click, and time has stopped instead of reversed. And there, next to Shatterstorm's battered body, stands precisely whom Aeon expected.
He is a white rabbit, wearing man's clothing. A neat little blue jacket fits him snugly while a black top hat rests on his head. Despite his rabbitlike upper-section, everything waist-down is goatlike: long and skinny legs with cloven feet. His monocle cannot hide the red eyes that bulge from his head like a pair of hateful, oversized pimples ready to burst.
He looks to Aeon and snickers.
"Ah, Aeon," says the Chronomage as he looks at his own pocketwatch, "Always so timpunctuous! Right. On. Time." The pocketwatch gets put away. "Something I've always loved about our excigerous battles: I can always count on them happening precisely when they don't mean to."
He draws out his Vorpal Blade, a shimmering sword made of words and nonsense. Their eyes lock. "Now then. Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?"
"Do you know what this is?" Marble asks, lifting the foal. "The foaming mouth? The discoloring of his flesh?"
Twilight Sparkle becomes impatient, and her horn glows threateningly. "What are you getting at?!"
"I wouldn't cast anything on me if I were you," Marble says. Her voice is a deep and regal alto that commands respect. Her tone adds to the queenly voice: she speaks as though she is merely making casual orders.
"Why shouldn't I?"
"I cast an Alarmfire spell on myself. I'm sure you at least know what that is?"
Of course. Alarmfire. A spell that sets a magic-caster on fire if they attempt to cast a spell on the affected object. Twilight's horn ceases to glow. "That's a good girl," Marble says condescendingly.
She smiles pleasantly as she lifts a book out of her saddlebag. Its title is Some Devils Have Only One Horn: A History of Unicorn Crime. She throws it to Twilight. "Now, then. Nevermore the Perverse," she says. "What do you know about him?"
With a growing sense of dread, Twilight recalls what she knows. "He's one of the most evil unicorns to have ever lived. Dabbled in numerous forms of black magic and chemistry that have since been forbidden." Her eyes widen in horror as she slowly realizes what is going on. "He... became infamous for his role in the Ancient Pony Wars. The Demon Seed. Using an exact combination of Whisperdust and various common vitamins and minerals, he poisoned the food Earth ponies used to feed their young..."
Another book is removed from Marble's saddlebag and dropped to the floor. Twilight recognizes it as a chemistry book that's in the restricted area of the Canterlot Royal Library. But since Canterlot has been evacuated...
"And what were the symptoms?" asks Marble, her pseudo-pleasant smile never leaving her face.
Twilight begins to pale as she recounts. "It only affects young foals, and begins with intense hallucinations. Eventually, it begins to damage the brain, shutting down system after system." Her eyes begin to water with tears of fear. "It kills within hours," she finishes weakly. Spike covers his mouth in terror.
Marble nods. "Of course, there is a cure. Nevermore had a few foals of his own from what I've read, so he fashioned a cure to make sure his poison couldn't be used against his family." Out of her saddlebag comes a sizable bottle of purple liquid.
Twilight grits her teeth again as Marble looks from the bottle, to the foal. She tips it into the foal's mouth and forces him to swallow a few drops. He lets out a sudden, raspy gasp: the foaming ceases and the color begins to come back to his face. Marble smiles as her eyes go right back to Twilight as she finishes her demonstration. "You know what it is I want, little sorceress."
Spike begins to hyperventilate as Twilight scowls at her. "The rib," she says. "You want the rib."
The cure goes back into the saddlebag. "Precisely. The rib for the cure. You can lose the rib to your enemy, or you can leave every poisoned foal in this hospital to die." Marble chuckles a little as she drops the unconscious foal on the nearby bed as if she were merely setting down a bag of groceries.
Intense silence for a few seconds. Time is short. If it's true that this is what's going on, so many foals are already poisoned, with many of them likely on their way out. If she tries to outright attack Marble (as opposed to casting a spell upon her directly), there might be unforseen consequences; and if her nemesis turns out to be stronger than Twilight expects, they'd be in for a heck of a battle that this situation has absolutely no time for.
With no other option available, Twilight breaks open the dome. Marble's nostrils gets a whiff of the familiar scent of Dracula's power. It begs to be taken away from this oppressive atmosphere. It wants to go home. Marble coos as it floats over to her, as if she is calming an upset child. She puts the rib into one of her saddlebags.
"Now then," Twilight says, "the cure." Almost as soon as the words leave her mouth, Twilight realizes what a huge mistake she's made. Now that Marble has the rib, she has no reason to give them the cure. She noticed before this weird aura Marble produces, this
it.
It feels similar to the one emitted by the rib, but there's something else besides the underlying malice that causes every alarm in Twilight's mind to go off. She steels herself, expecting betrayal. Smashing the bottle. Throwing it out the window. Drinking the cure herself.
Instead, none of those things happen as Marble merely grins and pulls out the cure again. Suddenly, the jar glows white as Marble casts a spell on it. "What do you think you're doing?!" Twilight demands.
"I cast a spell on this cure's bottle," says Marble. She raises a dainty hoof to her mouth, and to Twilight's alarm, bites it until it begins to bleed.
Chink.
"The Painshare spell," says Marble. A crack has formed on the bottle's glass, small but very visible. "I'm sure you already know what it is?"
The Painshare spell is exactly what it says: a spell that causes an object or fellow pony to feel the pain its caster experiences. Twilight purses her lips and glares down Marble. "Of course you do," says Marble condescendingly. "Just outside are all your little friends. I walk out there and they would not hesitate to tear me to ribbons."
Marble closes the distance between herself and her quarry. "So you're going to escort me, safe and sound, out of this hospital. Or you don't get the cure." Her pleasant smile becomes even longer. "And don't even think of trying to undo my Painshare spell behind my back, either. I layered it with an Alarmfire spell." The smile becomes even longer.
Twilight glares down Marble. This enemy is a schemer. Not a brute, like Dirt Nap; Dirt Nap was powerful but easily manipulated. This one planned this whole operation. This kind of thing takes a long time to do, lots of planning, and lots of studying. She knew everything she needed to know, somehow, and pulled off everything perfectly in five days. All right under Twilight's nose.
Stupid. Twilight feels like smacking herself. Stupid! Just giving her the rib? Of course! Genius! She should feel lucky Marble didn't just decide to teleport out of...
...Wait, why hasn't she teleported out the hospital? She knows all these other spells, but doesn't know teleportation?
Then Twilight considers other factors. Then she realizes what it is Marble really wants, probably even moreso than Dracula's rib.
She wants to humiliate Twilight. To rub this little victory in her face. Sneaking in, taking the prize, then having her enemies escort her out, laughing all the way back to base. And there is nothing Twilight can do but play along, already having fallen into Marble's carefully-laid-out trap.
Reluctantly, Twilight raises out a hoof and grits her teeth.
"...Deal."
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Alt. Title: What A Horrible Night To Write A Crossover
1782500
Rather meta. Maybe I can save that for one of the other books in this series, though.
an update
got say man your really good at building suspense. Then taking what is already a wost case scenario for everypony involved and some how making even worse. It almost half the fun of story just trying guess what horrors come to twilight and company next.
With that in mind I'm betting since Chronomage is here his friend isn't far behind.
images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090313040360/castlevania/images/6/68/Dos_zefa.gif
Toki yo tomare!
1784154
ZA WARUDOOOO
WRYYYYYYY
Holy gods man. There are no words for how awesome this is. I need your brain to write my non-piny fic!
1793765
What kind of nonpony fic we talkin'? PM me and maybe I can help you out.
Damn! You beat me to this idea. I am planning to do a Castlevania Fanfic. The idea isnt dead because I still want to do a kind of AOS + SOTN mix with a explanation of the war of 1999. I was going to do a corrupt Discord with a Dracula influence. I think I will add some intense boss fight scenes within my next fic, but anyhow I'll have to give this a read. Don't worry, I won't steal any ideas
1797298
You better not. I'd hate to have to call the ePolice and put you in eJail for ePlagiarism.
But when you DO post that Castlevania story, let me read it. There needs to be more than one MLPvania.
1797447
Haha, will do. Don't worry, I don't plagerize. Doing so would be extremely dull and uncreative for my tastes. Go check out the teaser I released so far if your interested on my profile. But first things first, I have to complete and polish up my current fanfic so far. Castlevania bronies unite.
1941206
Thanks for telling me about the link, link.
1957435
Tell that to Pokey Pierce. ItsnotlikeIhavetousethosespacesman.