• Published 17th Oct 2012
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Equestrylvania - Brony_Fife



A Castlevania/MLP crossover. But enough talk! Have at you!

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Demon Seed, Part II

Demon Seed, Part II


They'd been told not to harm her. They'd been told what she did, and what is at stake, and why they cannot harm her. As Twilight fills in her friends as to the situation, Marble smiles, once again putting on display that bogus pleasantry. There's an air of smugness about her. A sense of twisted accomplishment.

As Twilight finishes explaining, Pinkie Pie arrives with Scootaloo in tow. Marble glances to Scootaloo, her rosy eyes widening at the sight of a child she had apparently missed. Scootaloo immediately recognizes her from the hospital cafeteria. At the same time, she feels

it

perhaps even more strongly than any of the adults. Something deep down inside Scootaloo screams at her to get away from this mare, get as far away as quickly as possible. This is no Headless Horse or Olden Pony. No made-up fictional beast meant to scare children while they sit around a campfire. This is the real deal, just like the monsters from the attack six days ago. She hasn't the foggiest how she didn't feel this aura before.

Rainbow Dash speaks up, her voice flat and quiet and commanding. "Pinkie," she says, "take Scootaloo someplace safe." The color drains from her face, her brow speckled with sweat as if she'd just flown a marathon. Pinkie has never seen Rainbow Dash look so terrified before.

Scootaloo looks up to Pinkie Pie as the party pony looks from Rainbow Dash to Marble. For a split second, Scootaloo sees Pinkie's hind legs flinch, then an ear twitch, ending with a shiver along her spine. Pinkie Sense? Whatever that was, Pinkie looks to Scootaloo with the most terrified look in her eyes, a look Scootaloo has never seen before.

Slowly, the pink party pony nods, and in an uncharacteristically quiet, calculated voice, asks Scootaloo to follow her. As Scootaloo obeys, Marble's grin doubles. The white unicorn waves her goodbye, and blows her a kiss.

Scootaloo keeps very close to Pinkie Pie for the duration of their trip.


As they begin their trek out of the hospital, Marble suddenly decides that she wants not only to be escorted out, but to be paraded out as well. Males out first. Her grin becomes malicious as she makes this demand in particular, "Males out first."

At first, none of the mares present really know why. But Shatterstorm knows. He shudders as he feels her eyes on his flanks. Eyeing him the way a lion eyes a meal. He'd felt it before, and hated it then. She's a predator, just like all the high-school fillies who merely wanted to use him for their own childish goals, at the cost of whatever dignity he had left at the time.

But there is something else along with that stare. Something that is far worse than teenagers seeking some way of losing their virginity. There is an ageless mind behind that stare, an ageless mind with an equally ageless hunger. It yearns for more than just the satisfaction of the flesh. The intent behind that stare makes Shatterstorm's stomach chill.

He keeps his eyes forward. Royal Guards do not show emotion. They are machines, trained to fight and to protect. He'd already broken that image during his breakdown after his encounter with Death, and that cost him his best friend. He had broken that image again when he lost his temper with Rainbow Dash, and that made him look like an idiot. But not this time. No. He cannot let this beast intimidate him. Too many innocent lives are at stake.

As they came to the next hallway, Marble's attention is drawn to the golden cross around Fluttershy's neck. She raises an eyebrow and chuckles. "Beautiful necklace," she says. Fluttershy's eyes dart away and she begins to sweat. Just like everypony else, Fluttershy feels

it.

Fluttershy holds onto that cross, the very cross that protected her during the attack on Ponyville. For whatever reason, its strength gave her the courage to save her friends. But right now, all of a sudden, the moment Marble's eyes descend upon her, Fluttershy freezes. She holds the cross tightly, but it cannot rescue her from

it.

Marble lazily canters on. A few seconds pass. Her eyes return to Fluttershy. "Have you ever looked into the eyes of another living thing as it dies?" she asks coolly. Fluttershy feels her blood turn to ice. Marble draws nearer to her as she continues, stating in matter-of-fact delivery the process of death:

"First, there is confusion. No one ever understands why this is happening to them. They only understand that it is happening, and from that split second of confusion, fear is born. The air escapes their lungs. Perhaps their blood is leaving them. Maybe their guts or other body parts are on the ground in front of them. Whatever the case, they understand that they are soon to die, and as a result they are afraid.

"Lips go blue. Voice becomes a choke. The eyes widen." Marble looks ahead, as if recalling a charming birthday party. "It's always the eyes I remember most. You get a better view of what kind of animal they really are when you look them in the eyes as they die. Everything they have ever been comes together in one final, shrieking climax that concludes with silence.

"Forever."

Marble smiles as if she had just told a particularly humorous story. Fluttershy only notices just now that she can hear her own heartbeat, feel her own insides as they crawl around, attempting to claw their way out of her. Fluttershy's friends all look at this scene, horrified of what they'd just heard.

"Scared?" Marble chuckles as she turns to walk away. "You raise animals, don't you, little beast-killer? I'm sure you must have seen at least some of them die."

This is indeed true. Even before the attack on Ponyville, Fluttershy had witnessed many of the animals she'd cared for die. The first time had been the worst; Fluttershy had lost her appetite for days. As the years went by after that, and as more and more of her animals would die, Fluttershy had developed a thicker skin and, while saddened by their deaths, understood that it was merely their time to go.

But everything she said has given Fluttershy the implication that Marble is the type to torment innocent children for the same reason she'd torment or kill small animals: to feel power over another living thing. Fluttershy has had the terrible misfortune of knowing some ponies with that kind of attitude. But Marble... this part of her is a smaller piece of a much larger, entangled, terrifying mess. Whatever she is, Fluttershy does not believe Marble has any right to call herself a pony.

Fluttershy grips her cross again. "Y-You're disgusting..." she says, quietly. Her insult has little power behind it.

Marble suddenly has a smile that causes every primal fear Fluttershy possesses to surface. She leans in so close to Fluttershy's face, the timid pegasus can feel her cold, rancid breath. "What would I see in your eyes?" she whispers. A hoof claws up and strokes Fluttershy's face.

Up goes the golden cross. Rainbow Dash and Twilight let out a combined shout as they hear a sudden sizzling, smell the scent of burning flesh. Marble shrieks, then breaks into a laugh as she falls down, a burn mark in the shape of the cross on her cheek. Rainbow Dash immediately pulls Marble away from Fluttershy. Just as she does so, a white aura picks her up and casts her aside with a shocking amount of strength.

"Don't you dare touch me!" Marble roars.

The chaos ends after a single second. The hallway becomes dead silent, save for the sound of Fluttershy running away, sobbing in fear. Marble, her face still marred by her new scar, lifts the vial of the antidote out of her saddlebag. There are several more cracks in it. Her eyes go from the vial to Twilight.

"I could break this right now," she says. "I could destroy it. After all, you didn't protect me from your little friend."

"Because you intimidated her first!" Rainbow Dash says angrily, getting back up.

Twilight reaches for something to say before the situation could get any worse. Finally, she says, "Break that jar. The moment it goes, there will be nothing to protect you from us." She compounds her threat with a glare. It's joined by the glare of her remaining friends.

At this, Marble laughs. "Such cheek!" she says. At this, everypony is lifted into the air by a white aura, then slammed down on the ground. Not letting them drop: they are thrown to the ground and are compressed there, as if there is a giant hoof on their backs.

"I am more powerful than anything you've encountered thus far, little sorceress," Marble hisses as she puts away the antidote. She licks her hoof and runs it down the length of the cross-shaped scar on her face and smiles as she feels the familiar, comforting pain of sensitive, burnt skin. "I could have killed all of you had I wanted."

Suddenly, the invisible giant hooves vanished, and they were all able to breathe again. Marble looks at them with a smirk. Slowly, they all get back up. Twilight groans. "You could have, but that isn't enough for you, is it?"

The smirk doubles. Marble walks by them, an air of unholy invincibility around her. The feeling that caused Fluttershy to attack Marble in a panic wafts through each of the ponies as she crosses by them. She is a terrifying force, perhaps merely driven by her own boredom to toy with them the way she has.

"Come along now, we still have a ways to go. Unless you truly wish to let the children die?"

Angrily, all present stand up. Once again, males out front. They march.


Any sound made by the clashing of weapons and thumps of kicks is distorted. Aeon, now in his true form and wielding his clock-hand sword, backs off from his foe as he brings down his Vorpal Blade. The Chronomage brings it back up intending to get a cut of Aeon's face, but finds it parried. A shove, a kick, and the Chronomage staggers backward. The two circle each other, looking for openings.

"My, what raw janx you have!" the Chronomage chuckles. "Such braviosity!"

Aeon's grip on the clock-hand's handle tightens. The Chronomage is a dangerous enemy, every bit as unpredictable as the children's fairy-tale characters he viciously parodies. Any opening could be enough opportunity for the Chronomage to end him. Now is no time to give into his emotions. He always felt he was very good at keeping his emotions in check, but there was always something about the Chronomage that sets him off.

Perhaps it is that, like Aeon, the Chronomage is a creature born to manipulate time. Perhaps it is that, like Chronomage, none of the other time-masters he knows have any shred of empathy for others. Perhaps it is that Aeon, because of his empathy for others, caused all this to happen. Or perhaps...

The Chronomage grins, his thin rabbitlike lips curling at the corners. A low giggle crawls out of his throat. "Oh, I know that look!" he says. "That war in your heart is still grangling? The knowledge that everything that has transpired thus far is all your doing?" The giggle becomes a shrill laugh. "I thanked you long ago for your help in my Master's conquest of other worlds, and ignardlouslessly, I still stand by that trungrunce!"

Before Aeon's brain can register a thought, his hands swing the clock-hand at the Chronomage. He deftly maneuvers out of the way and lunges, his Vorpal Blade "swimmering" through the air. Aeon jumps back, but not before the blade cuts across his chest. He takes a step back. Instead of a mere line across his flesh, the Vorpal Blade had carved a word: "floozle".

The Chronomage chuckles. "Quite a fun portmanteau, 'floozle.' It's a combination of the words 'flail' and 'lose.' Such a strapt description! You flail about ineffectivously like a child who just had all his toys taken away." Lifting his blade in one hand, the Chronomage makes a motion with the other. A nearby chair shoots across the hallway and, had Aeon not ducked in time, would have smashed his face.

Aeon raises an eyebrow. "How...?" It is then that he realizes his voice does not come out backwards. He only realizes, just now, that there is no one else present in this hallway. His heart sinks.

The Chronomage cackles louder. "Figured it only now, haven't you? We aren't in a timelock. All I did was set up a timeloop here in this hallway. Then I waited for you to show up, as you always do. And wouldn't you know it, you dunch up a timelock the moment I make a second timeloop!" His bulging red eyes shrink into his head, making him appear demonically pensive. "Do you know what happens when too many manipulations of time stockify the same space?"

Aeon clenches his teeth. How could he have been so foolhardy? He had gone and created a time pocket—one step down from a time rift. Unlike time rifts, there is no way to keep a time pocket stable. It will shrink and shrink, and destroy everything inside it, literally a fleeting moment.

Another chair flies across the hallway, and this time, it gets Aeon in the side. He is knocked into the wall with a teeth-shaking thump, and lands on the ground, winded. As he struggles to get up, Aeon feels long, spidery fingers clench his bangs and pull him up. The Chronomage grins as he forsakes the Vorpal Blade and settles for punching Aeon in the face and stomach. His blows are surprisingly strong, coming in at fierce velocity and unrelenting number. Once he becomes bored with this "softening", the Chronomage tosses Aeon aside like a toy he is no longer interested in.

Aeon flumps to the floor. He hears the Chronomage lift his Vorpal Blade behind him. Up goes the clock-hand, and a ringing clang fills his ears as he parries the blow. His foot flies out and gets the Chronomage in the shin, dropping him to one knee. With his free hand, Aeon grabs the Chronomage's sleeve and pulls him forward for a headbutt, sending the repulsive rabbit careening backward.

He hears something behind him as he stands back up. He looks, and sees that a corner of the ceiling has begun to warp. The time pocket is collapsing faster than he expected. He feels the Chronomage's fingertips on his foot and immediately stomps on them. "You fool!" he hisses. "You're going to be killed as well!"

At this, the Chronomage laughs. His hand still under Aeon's foot, he lifts his Vorpal Blade. Aeon cuts him off by raising his clock-hand and plunging it into his rabbitlike head. A second passes. Another sound of the time pocket collapsing. The Chronomage sniggers.

"You must think me a real jobbler if you honestly believe I'd just let myself die," he says between gasps for air. "I'm just the enigmunction, but even so, I at least thought several slurps ahead." And with that, he begins to fade out of existence.

Aeon's eyes widened. Of course! The Chronomage must have set up a continuation point someplace else. Else, he'd have stayed here in this unstable time pocket. The Chronomage's body continues to vanish until only his large grin remains, and even that starts fading away as well, all while reciting a nonsense poem.

Aeon has not made a continuation point in a while. His last one must have worn away by now, else he'd have warped right to it the moment he was in mortal danger, which would have been when the Chronomage was pounding him to mush. The only way out of here now would be...

Just as the Chronomage's mouth closes upon a word, Aeon dares to shove his hand inside it. The Chronomage lets out a gasp, and Aeon squeezes his hand over the Chronomage's tongue, refusing to let go even as he feels the Chronomage's sharp teeth close on his flesh. Aeon grabs the mouth and forces it to stay open, trying to keep it from biting his whole hand off. He gasps and holds a shout in his throat as he sees his white sleeve begin to grow red.

Aeon begins to fade away along with the Chronomage...


It's a while before anything else is said. Mostly, ugly looks are flashed Marble's way, but she disregards it the way a child disregards rules he doesn't like. She slows down to the point of causing irritation to the rest of the group. Finally, Applejack growls at her. "Pick up yer hooves!"

Marble sniffs nonchalantly, as if Applejack had not said anything. She looks to the farm girl and sneers. "So," she begins, "did your brother tell you?"

Applejack blinks. She looks to Big Macintosh, then back to Marble. "T-Tell me what?"

Shatterstorm looks aside at who he guesses must be Big Macintosh. The color begins to fade from his face. His strong features grimace.

Marbles continues. "About your father, little thief. Haven't you heard yet?"

Big Macintosh snorts. He turns and glares down at her. She stops and smirks. Before any tempers are lost, Twilight jumps between them. "Look," she says, "we need to just get her out of here. If she says anything else, anything at all, just ignore her." Twilight's eyes scan everypony else present. She nods, and they continue.

All throughout this, Twilight's mind is racing. She can't just let Marble get away with what she has done. They can't lose this badly to such a terrible enemy. There has to be something Marble hasn't considered in her meticulous planning, something that Twilight can use to her advantage, but what?

Can't use any magic on Marble. Twilight would be set on fire.

Can't use magic on the bottle that holds the cure. Same reason.

Can't just push her out of the hospital. Her extensive knowledge of unicorn magic and her earlier demonstration of psychic strength means she probably has some nasty spells in mind for anypony she feels is a threat.

Can't harm her physically. That would destroy the bottle that holds the cure.

The bottle. Twilight lifts an eyebrow. The bottle. If Marble's demonstration is accurate, then that Painshare spell was cast on the bottle, not the cure itself. If she could cast a teleportation spell on the cure itself...

But the cure is a liquid. Although teleportation objects other than oneself can be taxing, teleporting solid objects is easy enough, whether it's books or toys or even living things. But teleporting a liquid is hard. Like, Super Mare Sisters, World 8 hard. Solid objects are a tangible, constant shape. They go into the spell whole and come out whole. Liquid, as a physical substance whose shape is easily transformable, can't do that. Twilight remembers the weeks she spent trying her very hardest to teleport liquid from one glass to another, but for some reason, sometimes the liquid became soured, or there was only a little bit of it left.

Even if she could teleport the cure itself away, where to? Even if she could teleport the cure itself away, would it be safe? If she tried casting a teleportation spell anyway, she'd have to concentrate pretty hard. Marble would see it, and react. Maybe cast some dangerous fire spell or something.

Twilight snorts in frustration. Just as she does so, Marble speaks up again. "We found your daddy."

Applejack snaps up and freezes. "He was with the zombies," Marble says.

Big Macintosh looks behind himself, his eyes wide with fear. "Marble," he says quietly, "Marble, please don't—"

"We found him outside a house. Blood all over his mouth." Marble smiles sweetly as she stops. She leans into Applejack's face menacingly close, so close Applejack can smell

it

rolling out of her mouth as she speaks. It smells rank and foul and dead and cold and burning hot and fierce and angry, all at once. Applejack shrinks away as Marble continues. "We found him outside a house. Wanna know who he killed? I recognized them. I want to say Big Macintosh did too."

"Marble, that's enough!" Rainbow Dash grabs onto Marble's tail and pulls her away from a stunned and pale Applejack. She glares nose-to-nose with Marble. "We're gonna comply with your demands. But only for a little while. You hear me? You do anything like that again, and I'll..."

"You'll what?" Marble smiles. "You'll hurt me? Go right ahead." She sticks out her chin, as if to give Rainbow Dash a free shot.

A second or so passes. Electric emotions in the air are walking on the edge, putting everypony into a tension. Shatterstorm speaks up, breaking it. "We're wasting time. Just ignore her."

They continue on, Rainbow Dash glaring daggers at Marble. Marble looks back at Applejack, who had remained where she stood.

"They were foals, you know," she says, loud enough for Applejack to hear. Big Macintosh shivers as the memory comes back. The empty, glazed eyes of the dead foals. The blood around his father's mouth. How his father smelled. The fangs in his mouth that were never there when he was alive. Everything crashes back into his mind, and as it does, Big Macintosh clenches his teeth and fights his tears.

But it's a fight the big stallion cannot win. He slows down, casting his eyes to the floor. He looks behind him to his sister, almost reluctantly, and what he sees in her face and eyes breaks him.

The group continues on, but Applejack stays behind, her eyes wide in disbelieving shock. She sits down, slowly, onto the hospital floor. The look of shock on her face remains. She wants to believe it is not true. That her father would hurt anypony, much less kill foals is ludicrous!

Big Macintosh comes near her. Her green eyes scan his face, silently begging him to tell her it isn't true. That can't be true! Their father is no killer! He held them the day they were born! He taught them the farm life! He sacrificed so much for them, and...

...and...

...and the look on Big Macintosh's face says everything. "Eeyup," he chokes, his eyes brimming with tears. He can't bear to look at her. The shame is too heavy. Something inside his sister, something fundamental to her very self, has been robbed from her.

One onlooker will later tell anypony who asks that, at this precise moment, Applejack looks like a forgotten doll left on somepony's doorstep.


Twilight's mind has already weighed a multitude of possible strategies. She only has enough time before Marble leaves to do something. Every strategy she has concocted would hypothetically come to null. Marble has nearly everything stacked in her favor. There doesn't seem to be much that Twilight can do. Frustrated, Twilight "retreats."

Her mind has always been something of a neverending library. Every memory filed away in its proper place. Every scrap of knowledge, no matter how trivial, lines her mental shelves. She retreats into her mind for now, and sets to work looking for something she can use.

She comes across a memory titled, "Before Marble Came In." She pulls it off the shelf and opens it up, flipping to the appropriate page...

Twilight Sparkle sighed a bit and relaxed, backing away from the Arcane Aura Analyzer. She had finally found the exact frequency of Dracula's aura ("5.501 Darkness/Ignus", for those curious). The Arcane Aura Analyzer gave extreme positive reactions when she tuned the rib into that frequency. If it was not the EXACT frequency, then it was extremely close.

Twilight explained all this to Shatterstorm and Spike, her present audience. After sharing interested glances with Shatterstorm, Spike asked what she could do with this knowledge. "I'm going to make trackers," she had said.

Twilight closes this memory. It's good knowledge. "5.501 Darkness/Ignis alignment." The exact magical frequency (or close enough) of the treasure Marble schemed to plunder. She wanders about her mental library, suddenly feeling lost. She stops a librarian, who in her mind, looks like her old doll, Smarty Pants.

"I have this problem," she begins. "My friends and I are being casually tormented by this one pony, Marble. She came for Dracula's rib, and I only have enough time to try stealing it back. I remember the frequency for the rib," she asks Smarty Pants, "But I'm not sure what I can do with it..."

Smarty Pants nods reassuringly and pats Twilight on the head. "Don't worry," she says, "we have a memory that perhaps you could find useful."

Up from the floor comes a ladder, shooting straight up as if it were a plant growing at a thousand times its usual speed. Smarty Pants climbs it to the very top shelf, grabs another memory, and brings it back down to her client. Twilight takes the memory. This one is entitled, "What Celestia Taught Me, Year Five/Day Two Hundred and Twelve." She opens it...

Twilight had been searching all day.

Her favorite book had gone missing that morning. She didn't know exactly how it could have gone missing; she had enchanted it with a divining spell that could always allow her to find it, no matter where it was. It was a tough spell to use: first, she had to know the book's exact magical frequency. Then she had to "tune" her own magic to it to create a link.

She could only "tune in" to one object at a time, and she could have chosen any of her possessions. Smarty Pants' little accessories (her book and inkpot) would go missing very easily, so it would be helpful to "tune in" to those. But she chose the book. Out of all the books she owned, this one was the most special.

It was hours and hours of searching, searching every place she had been in the past week. Finally, as the sun began to set, a teenage Twilight sat down on a parkbench in a Canterlot Park. Frustrated by her failure to find her very special book, she let out a groan and buried her face in her scrawny hooves.

A familiar presence came down and touched the grass. Twilight looked up to see her mentor, Princess Celestia, looking down at her with maternal patience. "What seems to be the trouble, Twilight?"

Twilight fought the urge to break down in embarrassment, but told her teacher what had happened. As she reached the end of her explanation, Celestia began to laugh. Twilight raised an eyebrow as Celestia guffawed long and hard, wiping away a tear.

"What's so funny?" asked Twilight.

Celestia calmed down and produced, from seemingly nowhere, the book Twilight had been searching for all day. Her student squeaked with excitement as she took the book back. Inside this book were photographs of her and her family and teacher, all managed with dedication. Every picture was still perfect, and in its proper place. She looked back up to Celestia, suddenly scowling.

"You tricked me," Twilight concluded.

Celestia shrugged. "Oh come now, Twilight, I was only playing a joke. There's no need to be upset." She became a little more serious. "Besides, I bet you're more interested to know how I hid it."

Twilight sat up straight on her park bench, her posture and facial expression proposing her interest. She was about to learn something!

Twilight read through the rest of this memory, and smiled. Finally, as she closed the memory, she had a plan.