Intermission ~ Stalker
The fog twirls whimsically around Eagle Eye’s fetlocks as he carefully trots along, his ears twitching as they listen for danger. Though the fog is thick, it does nothing to blind him—he could see through mud if he needed to. Lost Canterlot may appear as though dead, but it is alive with sounds. Over there, the howling of wolves. Farther away, a murder of crows cackling. Still farther, a distant, pleading scream that ends just as suddenly as it began.
The cold around him slowly pulls ropes of running mucous from his nostrils. He glances aside and notices that Shaky lives up to his childhood nickname; the way his body jitters and spasms under this oppressive cold reminds Eagle Eye of a puppy he’d seen running through the winter rain long ago.
“What are we gonna do?” Shaky asks quietly.
It’s strange to Eagle Eye how that question had in fact been infecting his doubtful mind, yet he never granted it voice. He looks about, his lips suckling pensively as he scans the street and its dusty buildings and their broken windows and the rats that dwell inside. One glances up as if it can tell, even from this sixty feet of distance, that someone is watching it.
“We can’t go back, obviously,” Shaky continues as the two slowly trot along. “And I’m not sure it’s possible to leave. Dracula’s creatures are sneaky.”
“Then we’ll just have to be sneakier, love,” Eagle Eye says, not sarcastically, stepping over some fallen, rotting fruit.
“Sneakier?” Shaky growls. “Malphas can think and see through his crows. He’s literally their eyes in the skies. And don’t even get me started on that… that puppet thing, w-with the dolls! How do you get any sneakier than that?!” His shivering becomes much more violent.
“Wind Walker,” Eagle Eye says, using Shaky’s birth name in a tone that sounds parental, “you need to stop treating this situation like it’s a game we can’t win. We bloody well can leave this place, we just gotta be—be smart about it, like.”
Shaky rubs a hoof against his black mane, letting its curls bob and bounce and droop as he blows a tired sigh from his mouth. “Okay then,” he says after a brief pause. “What do we do?”
“You’re the one with the wings, remember?”
“Eyes in the skies, remember?”
“Who you think you talkin’ to, mate? I got eyes, too. And I’ll bet me balls mine are better than Malphas’ li’l vermin soldiers.” Eagle Eye sniffs, drawing one hoof across his muzzle to remove the sticky mucous, his eyes darting about, alert. “Here’s what we oughta do, so listen carefully.
“We ain’t takin’ the sky, I'll admit you’re right about that. Too dang’rous. We also can’t just walk through the main gates, that’s such an obvious solution Dracula’s captains have likely booby-trapped it already. No, what we need to do—if we ain’t goin’ over the fence, or even through the fence, we, love… are goin’ under it.”
Shaky’s eyes grow distant a moment. “Under it?” he echoes. “What, like... through the sewers?”
Eagle Eye nods, a self-satisfied grin plastered on his face, proud that a mind as grand as his could think of such a great solution.
“What makes you think Dracula’s minions haven’t already taken up house there?”
“Ever see any of ’em pop up from the sewer lines?”
“No.”
“From the gutter drains?”
“No.”
“Then if they’re under there, there prolly ain’t too many of ’em runnin’ around.”
Shaky looks about, still shivering from the cold. “I… I-I dunno,” he says slowly. “I’ve heard a lot of stories about Canterlot’s sewers…”
Eagle Eye rolls his eyes. “Yes, yes, we all have, Shaky. How they’re built over the old catacombs, and built next to the abandoned crystal mines where strange moans are heard—”
“—a-and how they lead to an underground city for those scary bat-ponies—”
“—and how the long-dead spirits of Canterlot nobles murdered by their own servants haunt it—”
Here, his fear approaching a sudden and unexpected climax, Shaky curls himself into a ball, still shuddering, this time from terror. “—a-and the r-r-rats!” he squeaks.
Eagle Eye pauses, the confident, cocksure look in his eyes suddenly wavering. “…The rats?”
Shaky’s wings close over his face like curtains. “The rats! In the poorer areas of Canterlot, the rats would sometimes pour out from the sewers like an invading force, like it was planned; and they’d—they’d—oh!—the things they’d do! They’d eat through walls just to break into nurseries and foal’s bedrooms and they’d bite the foals and tear them apart and—and—” The rest of Shaky’s rambling horror story stumbles into an unlistenable jargon of half-words and sobs.
Eagle Eye remembers that Shaky mentioned once or twice about his colthood, how he’d grown up in the older, poorer sections of Canterlot. The places of this great, mountain-carved capital you won't find on any grand tour or travel brochures. Places where the buildings sagged and the windows cried and the roads groaned and there are certainly large rats. These must have been tales Shaky had been told by cruel older siblings or his even-crueler parents as a means of manipulating him into obedience.
He has half a mind to tell Shaky if he thinks the rats in Canterlot are terrifying, he should see some of the rats he’d encountered back in Trottingham. Horrible, nasty little creatures they were! Bodies the size of a small foal. Faces like starved perversions of black skulls. Tails like writhing, foot-long earthworms.
But it was the sounds they made that scared Eagle Eye the most: the shrieks and squeals and squalls that reminded him of the terrified cries of an infant separated from its mother for too long; the horrible, invasive scratching of their clawed toes as they swarmed and schemed behind a wall. Always, it was the sounds—the sounds that warned of their presence—warned they were coming—warned they would be here any second if no action were taken.
Eagle Eye swallows a lump in his throat before he slaps Shaky’s wings out of his face. “Quit doin’ that, Shaky,” he warns, “yer gonna give us away, ya keep bawlin’ like that.”
Shaky’s breathing is coaxed slowly from small convulsions to something more regular, if still a little, well… shaky. “You’re sure we gotta use the sewers? Why can’t we just use the river?”
“You mean that big territorial marker Dracula’s goons’re usin’?” Eagle Eye smiles impishly. “Where there’s a buncha snipers waitin’ ta pop off any poor sod who wanders too close? Or maybe you wanna see what bein’ lunch fer those fish-things is like? Trust me, mate; the sewers is the best way out.”
Shaky gulps. Glances around nervously. “I-I dunno...”
“It’s the hardest option, I agree,” Eagle Eye states gravely as he helps Shaky up. “But only ’coz the easier ones are obviously traps. Don’t worry, mate—we’ll make it outta here yet. We just gotta be smart, plan our moves.”
Shaky stands on his legs, forcing them from their gelatin state into something more solid. Finally, he says, “So, what, we just… find a ponyhole cover and…”
“Hm, nah,” Eagle Eye sniffs as he begins their trek once again. “This is where our keen sights are gonna come in handy, love. See that squat, grayish buildin’ out there?”
Shaky squints as he leans forward, gazing into the direction Eagle Eye points. “…The one with the rounded roof?”
“That’s the one. It’s the sanitation standards building. Worked there fer a bit before I decided to join the Guard.”
“We go in through there?”
“Yup,” Eagle Eye says, histrionically emphasizing the puh sound so that it sounds like a bubble bursting. “They got a map’a the ole’ sewers anyway. And you got me word—the sewers don’t go anywhere near no catacombs or crystal mines or hidden cities fulla uglies or anything’a the sort down there. Just keep your eyes peeled, love, and we’ll be keen.”
His reassuring words are delivered with the breathless tone of recklessness, and do nothing to alleviate Shaky’s infected imagination, where catacombs and bat-ponies and rats and other horrors dance and eddy and shriek.
After getting into the drainage station—a simple task if you know how to pick locks—Eagle Eye had been quick in locating the map and other equipment they’d need to navigate the labyrinthine intestines of Canterlot Mountain. Small lights (which, upon Shaky’s own suggestion, they may need to not use as much so as to not attract too much attention), thick boots for wading through unpleasant sludge, and gasmasks for breathing.
Even with the gasmasks, the odor in the sewers is overpowering, to the point where Shaky is certain that without the mask he might vomit. There’s also a stuffiness in the air, cloying and choking and forcing beads of sweat to pop from their coats. If a color were to decorate these bricks and pipes, it would be the color of age and waste. Then there’s the sound of tiny things scuttling and worming and writhing…
It is also perilously dark.
The light Shaky attached to his helmet blinks on with a quiet pop, and before him is illuminated the awful scene of excrement and refuse burbling through the lower part of the circular ground, roaches shivering as they escape the sudden light.
He gulps.
Something crunches beside him. Shaky’s eyes dart sideways and catch Eagle Eye taking the first few brave steps into their escape plan. He turns his head, and nods. “What you waitin’ for, mate?” he whispers to Shaky, his voice muffled by the gasmask. “Let’s get on with it, then.”
Uneasily, Shaky follows. There’s more to this place than the shadows and the stench and the roaches. Something hideous touches upon Shaky’s soul, pinching it between its spindly fingers, squeezing it gradually, building and building and building in its pressure until Shaky is certain that the sweat on his brow is no longer merely because of the still, stifling humidity. There are moments when this feeling subsides, or even just cuts out entirely. Those are the moments that worry Shaky the most.
They’re sneaking quietly through the winding guts of Canterlot, the only lights emanating from their helmets. Not so much as another word is shared between the two ponies for a palpable length of time. The lights on their helmets illuminate this, illuminate that, illuminate the map—then after the previously agreed-upon five minutes, the lights are shut off. The two sit down. Listen for danger. Nothing is heard but the hairy legs of a million roaches and the distant, yet still mortifying, squeal of rats. Once or twice, Shaky gasps as he feels the tiny brushes of roach legs suddenly crawling across his leg, like little hairy olives, and swats at them with his tail. When one minute passes, their escape continues.
That hideous feeling returns to Shaky, pinching him and holding him, this time applying so much pressure as to make him whimper.
“What is it, Shakes?” Eagle Eye whispers, his voice barely above a whisper.
“C-c-can’t you f-feel it?” Shaky asks, his voice cracking as he glances about. The light from his helmet darts about spastically, the illumination bouncing from ground to ceiling, coloring every brick and splashing every roach. “I swear, I f-f-feel something terrible.”
“Shakes, listen, love, we’re almost outta here. We just go this way and we’ll be fine.”
They go “this way” in the same fashion they’d done up to this point, walking then stopping. After minutes of this, that pinching feeling—which this time refuses absolutely to leave Shaky—jabs him. He lets out a terrified squeal, minute in its volume, but enough to erupt Eagle Eye into issuing a “Shhh!”
“Would you stop that?!” he hisses.
“Something’s near,” Shaky babbles in fear, once again glancing everywhere around them. “Can’t you hear it breathing?!”
“Besides you ’n me, ain’t nopony here,” Eagle Eye says, placing a reassuring hoof on his comrade’s shoulder. He brings up the map again. “Now. If we just go down the hall to th’ right, we’ll approach the last gate that’ll lead us up to the surface of Canterlot mountain, right outside the city. We’re almost there.”
Shaky looks in the direction Eagle Eye indicates. He squints. “What hall?” he asks.
Eagle Eye turns his head sharply. As Shaky says, there’s no hall. There isn’t even any indication there ever was a hall. There’s a scummy-looking brick wall lined with pipes and pipe-reading devices, but no hall. The scum built up on the wall spins yarns on how the wall has been here for generations.
He returns to his map. “Tha-That can’t be right,” Eagle Eye murmurs. “I’ve been through here a billion times before. There was a hall here, I’m sure of it.” He looks up and in a different direction. “Let’s just keep going down this path. We’re bound to find it, you’ll see.”
They continue in this direction.
Hours pass.
No hall.
All the while, that awful feeling is tearing at Shaky. His vision clouds with tears. Maybe it’s the fact he and Eagle Eye had been working tirelessly—from hunting the Wharg, to capturing the Wharg, to bringing it in, to guarding Shatterstorm, to nearly getting killed by the Wharg, to escaping the entirety of Rose Blade’s funhouse of horrors, to all the guilt each of these actions carry—but his delirium finally reaches its boiling point. Shaky collapses entirely, blubbering and sobbing into his curled forelegs like a terrified infant. “It’s here,” he babbles, “it’s here, it’s here.”
At his own wit’s end, Eagle Eye brings a hoof down on Shaky. The pop his hoof makes against Shaky’s gasmasked face rings loudly against the darkness. “Stop it!” he hissed. “You’re freakin’ me out!”
But Shaky can’t uncurl from his current position, simply continuing to blubber helplessly. Eagle Eye groans impatiently as he looks up,
just in time
to see the shadow
and the burning red eyes
looking back at him hungrily from the darkness.
Before it flickers and dies, Eagle Eye’s light captures, like a final snapshot, is a pasty-white thing, a face that looks as though it is melting. Jagged teeth, yellowed and browned by its unfortunate meals, crown a mouth that twitches into an unrecognizable, dangerous shape. The long, scraggly blue hair may have been quite handsome at some point, but the days of wandering in darkness and filth had already done a number on it.
The eyes—the red, bulging things with the silent black slices that count for pupils—hang in the darkness, clearly visible. They glow, their ugly shapes like a pair of bloodsoaked, breathing vaginas, accompanied by hoarse and perverted suckling sounds that might pass for breathing.
Then they vanish.
The perverted suckling continues.
It’s over there.
And it’s over there.
And now, after a sudden pause, it’s right on Eagle Eye’s neck.
The breath that falls on his shoulders is unbearably cold. The suckling sound draws closer and closer as the breath flows harder and colder. Eagle Eye’s mind is screaming for him to run—but the cold—the death-cold breath—no—no—Divine Sisters—no—not like this—no…
Suddenly an awful squall interrupts this horror. Eagle Eye opens his eyes—not realizing he’d closed them before—and finds light is cast upon them. He sees his own shadow on the wall, with another, far more twisted and cruel black shape looming over it. The cold breath dissipates with a snakelike hiss that boils into a deep, animalistic growl.
Shaky had turned his light back on, shining it upon Eagle Eye, unaware of his mistake. The consequences happen immediately: Eagle Eye is knocked aside, and the jagged teeth leap at Shaiky with the rest of this creature following suit, puncturing into flesh and pulling with the might of a thousand lions. Shaky’s sudden squall ends with a wet gurgle as blood paints the ancient colors of Canterlot’s sewers.
As the lights fade from Shaky’s eyes, Eagle Eye can see the light from his helmet filling in properly the awful creature’s face for one brief second before it digs back into its meal. Eagle Eye cowers as he watches the Captain devour Shaky, whose legs twitch and wings flutter weakly as the Captain’s ugly growls become greedy gulps and slurps.
Blood flies everywhere. The light from Shaky’s helmet works the place like a light show, jerking this way and that as more of the blood and bone and something green and sloppy fly and paint the walls and the Captain tears and eats and tears and eats without stopping.
The Captain is eating Shaky.
The registration of this thought breaks Eagle Eye from his stupor. Frozen legs melt into muscles that carry him from this terrible spectacle at a desperate speed, a whine shivering from his mouth as he forsakes the map, made useless for reasons unfathomable, and simply runs down the passageways of the sewers in the hope that he can find an exit.
His eyes adjust to the dark quickly, the same way they always do. Walls of bricks and pipes dart by him. Rivers of waste sit and idle and stink. Roaches and rats—thankfully, not the giant ones spoken about earlier—clear from his path as he runs and runs and runs hopelessly.
He goes down this passage. That passage. He runs by a shadowy entrance to yet another passageway, and upon running by it, catches a glimpse of something even more terrible.
His nostrils are first attacked by the smell of rot and death and ancient generations. The darkness in that hall parts like a curtain, revealing piles of bodies wrapped in cloth made filthy from years of neglect. They sit in windows carved out of the walls, their jewelry and bony arms dangling from the ends, as if there was no more room for them here.
And there, pruning the bodies of their heads and collecting them in a bag, is a figure. Her mane, from behind, looks almost like the petals of a gold flower—an image completed by the deep green of her elaborate, elegant dress. Another skull lands in her bag with a thump as she turns her head, revealing the side of her face.
And the fangs in her mouth.
And the same red eyes Eagle Eye had seen only moments before.
He turns and runs and runs and runs.
In moments, Eagle Eye realizes he is looking down the sewer hole he just crawled out of, his chest heaving with labored breathing, his stomach spinning like a wheel. He feels his mind might be missing some pieces: all he remembers is a pair of red eyes and Shaky screaming and a smiling, pretty face with fangs…
…Shaky. His blood splattered the walls. Eagle Eye looks at his reflection in a nearby window to see that, yes, some of it got on him as well.
He tries brushing the blood off as his face suddenly grows hot. He removes the gasmask and the light-helmet, letting them clatter to the floor inelegantly.
Shaky.
Eagle Eye’s face burns as mucous rolls out of his nostrils and tears pool around his eyes. Before he can stop it, a sob squeezes its way out of him.
He looks behind himself, peering at that ponyhole, that hole that leads to an oblivion of a sewer—a spiraling, neverending tomb. His bottom lip trembles as he trots slowly over to the ponyhole cover and, with a heavy movement, slides it back over the hole until it falls in and stops with a click. Some part of Eagle Eye scolds him for not acting faster, but really, what does it matter anymore?
Can’t leave by flying over the gates.
Can’t leave by passing through the gates.
Can’t leave by sneaking under the gates.
Can’t leave. Can’t leave, ever.
Another sob shoots out of Eagle Eye, this one long and wheezing and pulling his stomach into knots. His legs lock up, and he falls onto his side, curling up as the sobbing continues. The world around him spins, becoming washed-out, runny kaleidoscopes and empty sounds drowned out by a whining buzz in his head. The tears flow, his body spasming as if getting squeezed by invisible giant hands. This is the world. This is the world, and it squeezes him and crushes him and it destroys him.
A sound pierces the ringing in his ears, drawing nearer and nearer. The trotting of hooves.
He raises his head slowly. His vision still blurred from the tears, Eagle Eye quickly wipes the tears away to see a figure melting into his sight. Its hooves carry a large and misshapen head through the parting tendrils of fog. Even though Eagle Eye’s namesakes can see this figure through the fog—and the Castle as it looms ominously behind him—the figure’s head is lowered, the hood covering it casting it in a frank shadow that blanks out any facial features, aside from what looks like a red mouth and white whiskers.
The figure stops just before him.
Eagle Eye pulls himself out of his fetal position, looking up into this strange pony. They stare at each other for a moment, as if neither are certain the other is real. He’s so close, Eagle Eye can hear him breathing—it’s a raspy sound as if he’s inhaling through an old trumpet. Wisps of cold air roll from his nostrils like cigar smoke.
“…Wh-Who… what’re you?” Eagle Eye asks, not sure if anything means anything anymore.
“I assure you, I am real,” it says in a thin voice. It’s barely audible, even from where Eagle Eye sits.
The eerie presence of this stranger is too well-timed, too convenient to be anything but the end of Eagle Eye’s life. He gulps. He’d heard stories about the Pale Horse, and how it would appear before a pony just a few moments before his death to carry his spirit away to the Hereafter. So gentle an end would be preferable.
“Are you, erm… a-are you the Pale Horse?”
“Am I pale?” it asks, another wisp of cold air billowing from his lips. The turn up in a smile that reveals predatory fangs…
Fangs…
Eagle Eye stands up suddenly, taking a step back as he does so. “Y-You’re one of them, a-aren’t you?!” he gasps. “O-One of those things from the sewer!”
At this, the figure laughs. It’s a startling sound, like something gasping as it dies. “I am not one of them. I am not from the Castle, though indeed my interests do lie there.”
“What do you mean?”
The stranger turns its head to look at the Castle. “Can you not feel the weight of its dark presence, little pony? Can you not taste of its promising flavors? Smell its perfumes? Hear its laughter? This Castle is more than a mere… place.”
Eagle Eye gulps. This whole situation is getting so wrong, so fast…
The stranger slowly turns its face around, looking wistfully to the grayed outline of the Castle. It holds its head up high enough that Eagle Eye can see its face more clearly. Burned red, haggard with hills and valleys that formed cheekbones, shaggy white mane. Wet white lights sparkle menacingly from the deep, dark pits where eyes should be. The almost-casual smile this stranger had is gone now, merely a line of thin lips. It holds its gaze for too long.
“I am not ready to visit it yet,” he admits.
He takes a single step forward.
Eagle Eye takes another step back. “H-Hey, listen, I—”
“This is where you come in, little pony,” he continues, taking another step forward. His head moves awkwardly, until Eagle Eye finally makes the connection that the upper part of the stranger is not a bizarrely-shaped head or neck, but really an upper torso. Arms extend, one with a finger pointing right at him. “You shall aid me.”
Eagle Eye blinks. Gulps. He doesn’t realize until he blinks how dry his wide eyes are becoming. “What, what do you want me to do?”
The stranger stands before him for several seconds. Their gazes do not disconnect. Their faces do not change. It has the gravity of an Appleoosan standoff.
Suddenly, the stranger’s mouth springs open in a way that reminds Eagle Eye of how anacondas open their jaws before swallowing their prey. Before Eagle Eye can escape this situation, a single screaming beam of light suddenly shoots from the stranger’s mouth and pierces his face.
His vision—his beautiful, beautiful vision—is robbed from him, crystal-clear images breaking then melting then exploding into glints of colors. He has no legs, merely dull things twitching from miles away. No face besides the vague thing decorating his head. No heart that beats, no mouth that speaks, no nostril for smell. No identity. He falls to the ground, reduced to nothing.
But he still has hearing. The stranger was grateful enough for Eagle Eye’s unoffered “help” to leave that.
The blurry black and red thing in front of him yawns and stretches, like a lion after a successful hunt. “I missed the taste of pony magic,” he says in a tone that sounds almost like gentle cooing. If the stranger makes any movement between its words, it’s just shuddering afterimages to the now near-blind Eagle Eye.
“These fiends that crawl over Canterlot now are mere appetizers,” he continues. “Barely filling. Almost not even worth the effort. But if there is you, little pony, then there must be more. You have filled me with the strength to expand my hunt. For that, you have my sincerest gratitude.”
The stranger melts away. The sound of hooves against cobblestone grow fainter and fainter. Those sounds are suddenly soaked with a new one. Tiny paws skittering along, pulling fat hairy bodies with hairless tails. Curious squeaks. Gathering. Many. All of them large creatures.
The teeth that dig into him tug from miles away, pulling the meat off him. Eagle Eye lacks even the energy to formulate fear. He glances up for some reason. The shuddering, blurry black thing he looks at looks like its laughing to itself. It continues to crow in self-satisfaction as Eagle Eye’s prized eyes are pulled from their sockets and rent and torn into pulp by vermin’s teeth.
Darkness.
Eagle Eye sees the Hereafter
All it is... is darkness…
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Sudden tense change.
This shouldn't be here.
You can see it.
I think you mean 'at'.
They.
Another sudden tense change.
Should be 'it's'.
You sure you don't want my editing services again?
Anyway, great chapter as always. The new guy makes me think of Tirek, and I'm excited to see how he fits into the story moving forward. And yeah, rats are fucking scary, and cannibals as I've come to witness on one occasion.
I found this in the Completed Story Compendium group, but it says incomplete. Someone should be feeling awkward right now.
6626412
It was complete until I decided to continue it. Then I decided to cancel it.
So, are you planning to pick this up again at some point maybe? I have to admit, the way the narration it written makes it just sound... off at first and it took me a while to get used to that, but once you are, it's really a pretty good read. I'd love to see the rest of it.
Really Good story and I am actually having a fun time looking up all the castlevania characters and learning the backstory I hope you complete this I really think it has a lot of potential
Why is this story incomplete instead of cancelled
?
8715759
Mostly because I was too lazy to flip it to Canceled.
8717717
Lulz XD
I know you hate Lords of Shadow with a passion, but the tone of this fic is closer to it rather than the classic Castlevania to me
Stupid question here but what is this a crossover with?
10750483
Castlevania
Is there any plans for Spike?