//------------------------------// // Chapter 7 // Story: Tales of a Wizard: Flesh Masks // by Applechip //------------------------------// The flight to Canterlot was a long one, as the chariot was being weighed down by more passengers than the pegasi team was expecting. I spent most of the trip with my head hanging over the side of the chariot, watching the land beneath us flash by. I felt a slight nudge on my shoulder and heard a whispered, “Uhm, Mr. Dresden…” I turned around and saw Fluttershy looking nervously at me, but she didn’t flinch away from me like she did last time. Fluttershy seemed to be trying to steel herself for whatever she was about to say. She was planting her hooves on the deck of the chariot and was puffing out her chest. “Mr. Dresden, what exactly do you know about what’s going on? All we know is that ponies are starting to disappear and that the princesses want to talk to you about it.” I was impressed by the mare’s abruptness, given what I’d seen of her timid nature at Pinkie’s party. I tried to give her a comforting smile, but it turned out to be something more like a weary grimace laden with too many bad memories. “I’ll spare you the details, at least until we get to the princesses. I imagine they’ll want to hear this too, but I’ll give you all a brief summary. Did Twilight tell any of you about the creatures called Red Court vampires?” I raised my voice directing my question too all of the mares in the chariot. Applejack gave me a short nod. “She said they were somethin’ that you and Michael where chasing after. That’s about it.” I returned the nod. “Yes and I’m sorry to say that I believe we drove them here, or at least a small group of them. It is my belief that these disappearances are the result of the vampires that Michael and I were chasing, settling in here. The Red Court’s sole goal is to expand and conquer, to capture, turn, and kill as many as it takes to make them the leading power of whatever environment they’re in.” “B-but why?” Fluttershy’s eyes had shrunk to the size of pinpoints. “Why would they want to do something so horrible?” I looked into her face and saw something I hadn’t seen in a long while, innocence. It nearly broke my heart to answer her, but maybe if they understood the dangers I was dealing with, then maybe they’d take my advice and leave. One thing was for sure though, in order to understand the danger they would have to lose some of that innocence. They would have to accept the fact that some things are purely and simply evil. I decided to answer her question with a few of my own. “Why does Twilight want to read and study magic? Why does Rarity want to create clothing? Why does Pinkie like parties? The Red Court does what they do because that is simply their nature. They thrive on the blood of others, and if they get their way they’ll turn this whole world into a farm, where we are the cattle.” Twilight and her friends stared at me, unable to process what I had just said. Then as a whole, they turned towards Applejack as though to discuss what I just told them. Applejack looked at her friends and nodded, “He’s telling the truth.” That more than anything seemed to impact them the most. So the Element of Honesty is a walking talking lie detector? That could be extremely useful. Michael, the ever present pillar of strength, chose this moment to chime in. “Do not lose hope. They’ve only been here for a few days, their numbers are few. So with some luck, we can prevent them from ever becoming a threat.” His voice rang with that same indefinable soothing tone he always used whenever things were starting to look grim. We drew strength from his words and calm assurances, myself included, as we turned to face the castle we were descending towards. Canterlot castle is easily one of the grandest structures I have ever seen. The castle towered over everything else around it, making normal houses look like sheds in comparison. All the walls seemed to be made from polished pure white marble and elegant tapestries decorated it in strategic places, never letting a single space be wasted while not letting it become overbearing. What really drew my attention however, was the crowd of ponies running around the entryway to the castle proper. The chariot landed as near to the castle doors as the crowd would allow. We disembarked and tried to make sense of the confusion around us. Michael and I understood what we were seeing almost immediately, a triage center. Many guardsponies were on stretchers that were placed in organized rows in front of the castle. Doctors and nurses were moving around them all, identifying the worst cases and treating them as best they could. From what I could see the majority of these injuries were relatively minor, many cuts and slashes, several nasty bruises, maybe a couple of broken bones at worst. There was one stretcher however that many doctors, nurses, and a very large dark blue alicorn were crowded around. “We cannot replace the blood he’s lost. He needs a transfusion, NOW!” the dark alicorn yelled at a passing nurse. The nurse immediately ran off and returned with a small blood pack and the equipment necessary to set up the transfusion. I approached the group, surprised at seeing what seemed to be modern medical practices being used by the ponies. As I got nearer I got a good look at the center of all the turmoil, a light brown pegasus with a jet black mane and tail, not unlike my own, and a dark shield for a cutie mark was sprawled on the stretcher. If his muscle mass was anything to judge by, he was a pony that probably spent the vast majority of his time training and sparing with his fellow guardsponies. Although whether or not he’ll get to keep his carrier, or his life, was still up for debate. His right foreleg and his left wing had both been viciously ripped from his body. The fact that he hadn’t already died from blood loss was a miracle in itself. The area around him was a complete mess of blood and gauze. As I studied the pegasus I noticed that the stumps that had been connected to his missing foreleg and wing were glowing a dark blue, and were slowly closing, preventing anymore blood loss. I looked up to see the alicorn frowning in concentration, her horn aglow as she sealed the pegasus’s wounds. I noticed the dark crown on her head and the various pieces of regal decorations that she wore. She finished repairing what she could and stood back to let the doctors and nurses do the rest. “Now that was some incredibly complicated magic. Princess Luna I assume?” I asked as I approached her. “You were not aware of who I am? I had assumed news of my return would’ve been common knowledge by now.” She looked at me with a slightly confused expression, “You do not bow?” “Excuse me?” I retorted. “Most ponies that approach me cower and bow before me.” My mind immediately shifted gears into a much more confrontational manner. I really don’t like bullies, even if they are royalty. “And most creatures that threaten me usually end up burning. What’s your point?” I deadpanned. A few of the passing nurses paused to gasp at what I just said. Luna looked taken aback at that, but then she did something that I was completely unprepared for, she laughed. Her laugh was a deep and pure wave of emotion the literally shook the air around her. She took a few seconds to finish laughing over whatever it was that she found funny, and then returned her attention to me. “Oh finally, a pony with some backbone. You have no idea how aggravating it can be to have ponies cower wherever you go,” she said with a smile on her face. “Tell me, what is your name citizen?” It took me a second to get my brain back on track after that sudden derailment. “My name is Harry Dresden, Princess,” I answered, adopting a much more polite tone and bowed my head slightly. “Please, Luna is fine. But, that name… Dresden,” she muttered, clearly lost in thought. “Oh, so you are the one my dear sister mentioned. But then that means...” She craned her head to look past me at the rest of my group that were just finishing collecting their things. “Ah, there they are.” Her face became very serious, “I'm surprised that they all came with you. Did you not warn them of the danger we face?” I looked back at the group that had begun to make their way over to me, and then back at Luna. “I tried, they wouldn’t listen to me. I told them that it’d be dangerous but they just don’t understand…” I paused midsentence to look at the makeshift medical center around me, and saw one last opportunity to really hammer my point in. I turned back to Luna, “Hang on, I’ll be right back.” I turned around and ran off to confront Twilight and her friends. I walked up to the six mares, while Michael went off to offer whatever assistance he could to the medical staff. Twilight looked at me as I came to a stop. “Harry, what is all of this? What’s going on?” Instead of answering her, I addressed the group as a whole, “I want you all to take a good long look at what’s around you.” I stepped to one side so that the pegasus with missing limbs was in plain view. Rainbow in particular cringed at the site of him. “This is just a small taste of the pain and suffering that you will be subject to should you remain with me. So I ask you again, please go home. I don’t want this for any of you. I don’t want you to be exposed to this.” While they were all very shaken by the sights of the pain around them, none of them backed away. In fact Twilight refused to even look away from the ponies on the stretchers. Her eyes became teary but her face adopted a steely resolve. She turned her attention back to me. “With all due respect Mr. Dresden, It’s not about what you want. There are ponies being hurt and we can do something about it. I will not simply leave and run home, not when I can do something to help those that need me!” I looked to the rest of the group, “Does she speak for all of you?” “You’d better believe it,” Applejack said, flicking her hat. “I’d never leave a pony hanging.” Rainbow puffed out her chest, and cast a sidelong look at the injured pegasus. “Oh please, my friends would fall to pieces without me,” Rarity teased. “I’ve got just the thing to liven up this place.” Pinkie started rummaging through her bag. Fluttershy squeaked a little, and then managed to pull herself together, “Y-yes, I w-want to help.” With that she darted off after Michael to help him tend to the wounded. I felt an immense sense of approval and pride at the six mares that were willing to fight to protect those that needed their help. I turned back around to Luna, who had walked over to stand next to me. I shrugged at her, “Well, I tried. I guess they’re here to stay.” “Very well then. Come on inside, we have much to discuss,” Luna said as she turned us towards the castle. We picked up Michael and Fluttershy as we walked past them then made a beeline for the front doors. I nudged Luna as we walked, “Say Luna, that looked like an extremely complicated healing spell back there. How’d you pull that off?” She merely shrugged, “Such has always been my talent. I do not possess my sister’s raw power, but I more than make up for it in fine control. I’ve always been talented in areas that require a careful touch and a keen mind, as opposed to raw strength. I am the Goddess of the Moon after all.” “What was all of that out there? How did those ponies get hurt?” Rarity asked. Luna shook her head wearily. “They are scouts. Celestia and I have been sending scout teams to try and get any information about the disappearances that they can. Some of the teams have been attacked. Others have even gone missing themselves. Whenever a team drops out of contact for too long we send a search and rescue team to bring them back here.” “Okay, so what exactly are we doing here anyway? I mean what’s the immediate plan?” I cut in. “Well normally we’d do introductions and exchange relevant information, but we have something that need your immediate attention,” Luna said as she lead us down a side hallway, and down a set of stairs. “What is it?” Rainbow asked from right above me. “We’ve captured one of them,” Luna replied. “You’ve already got them?” Applejack asked hopefully. “No, we just have one. Celestia and I were investigating some disappearances around Manehattan, and we managed to follow a lead back to an abandoned warehouse. We found several dead ponies and one of those things, just eating them.” She shuddered as she thought back to that image. Twilight and her friends all gasped at these words, heck so did I. Michael hung his head and muttered a soft prayer. “We managed to capture the thing,” Luna continued with her story. “I’ve never seen the like of it before. It managed to kill three of Celestia’s personal guard before we could subdue it. Here we are,” Luna said as we neared a large set of doors. We pushed through them and entered a large almost perfectly round room. There were several guards spaced around the walls of the room. In the center of the room was something that could only loosely be called a pony, chained to the floor. The Red Court vampire used to be a pegasus, it lost all of its fur to be replaced by a dark rubbery hide and its normally feathered wings were replaced by leathery bat-like wings. The most drastic changes were to its face and hooves. Each of its hooves were replaced with thick, and razor sharp, black bird of prey talons. Its teeth had become serrated fangs capable of ripping and tearing as easily as chewing. The most unsettling change were its eyes. Each of its eyes were completely black all around. The only reason I could tell where its skin ended and where its eyes began was because its eyes glistened slightly as it looked around the room at all the potential meals. “It truly is a disturbing sight, isn’t it?” a soft voice said from right behind me. I turned around and was faced with the Goddess of the Sun, Princess Celestia. Any reservations I had about her were instantly whipped away as I looked upon her. She practically radiated power and warmth. Everything around her seemed to be just a bit brighter, as though Celestia herself were emanating sunlight. Under normal circumstances I’d expect her to be the picture of kindness and caring, but the expression she wore on her face as she looked at the captive, was one of fury and revulsion. “There is no need for that,” she said as I bent my forelegs to bow without even realizing it. “You are the wizard Harry Dresden, Twilight wrote to me about correct?” “Yes, and I assume you are Princess Celestia,” I responded. “Yes there will be time for pleasantries later, but right now I need you to tell me what you can about this… What did Twilight call it in her letter, a Red Court vampire?” She looked quizzically between Twilight and me. I looked at the vampire in the center of the room and noticed how it had apparently lost all semblance of self-control. It was throwing itself to the end of its chains to try and get at the food just out of its reach. Normal vampires just wouldn’t do that, at least not in this situation. They are very much intelligent and love to use deception to trick their opponents. It should’ve been sitting there whispering lies and casting doubts, but instead it was acting like little more than a savage beast. “Yeah that’s what they’re called, and I can tell you one thing right now. You aren’t going to get any useful information out of it. That thing has gone completely feral,” I observed. Celestia looked disappointed at that. “Twilight mentioned that you were pursuing a few of these creatures through the veil. Is this one of the creatures that you were chasing after?” I could tell she was choosing her words carefully, so as to not suggest that I drove them here on purpose. I had the feeling I’d be beating myself up over my part in this later. I shook my head, “No, the ones I chased weren’t feral. They were intelligent enough to flee rather than to fight.” “Then where did this one come from? There weren’t any of these things in Equestria before you got here a few days ago. Do these Red Court vampires reproduce that quickly?” she asked me. This was a discussion I really didn’t want to have, but I they needed the information. It would change how they handled the situation and would therefore probably save a few lives. But I couldn’t answer her question, not without thinking about… I put a hoof over my chest as I felt a dull pain resurface. I paused for a few seconds before I began, “They don’t reproduce like you’d expect. The Red Court vampires create more vampires by capturing… Well here I guess it’d be ponies. They take the captured ponies back to their den, and then they turn them into Red Court vampires.” Everypony there froze at my words, trying to imagine the horror of what I just said. I pressed on, wanting to get this over with. “When the captured pony is infected, at first it’s still more or less itself, but they have an incredibly strong desire to kill and consume the life-blood of another pony. It’s only when they indulge this new craving that they become a Red Court vampire in full.” Twilight behind me decided to finally speak up, “S-so all those missing ponies are…” “They’ve either been eaten, or been turned into that.” I pointed a hoof at the captive vampire. Beside Celestia, Luna was starting to lose control of herself. She was muttering under her breath and was casting furious glances at the vampire. Her eyes began to glow and the air around her plummeted about thirty degrees in just a few seconds. Celestia put a hoof on her sister’s shoulder in an attempt to calm her, and then turned her attention back to me. “What about a cure? There must be some way to reverse the process. There must be some hope for those taken by these creatures.” She looked at me pleadingly, hoping for some silver lining. At these words, all of my past failings came to the forefront of my mind. Susan getting captured and becoming infected. Me not being strong enough to prevent it, and then the years I spent looking for a cure that I could never find. “I-I’ve searched for so long… Years of research… I couldn’t find… I couldn’t help…” I couldn’t continue. I felt like an ice sickle was being shoved into my heart. Equal amounts of pain and cold guilt flooded me. I started shaking a little, unable to hold back the painful memories. Without saying a word Michael appeared on my left. He placed a hoof on my shoulder and gave me a silent nod. To my right, Twilight did the same. She gave me a gentle reassuring smile. With that bit of support I managed to reorder my thoughts. “No, Celestia. Once they take the final step and become a full Red Court vampire, there is no hope left.” That answer had cost me something, but it probably would’ve been a lot worse without Michael’s and Twilight’s support. It’s always nice to know that you have friends to help share a burden. Celestia’s head drooped low to the ground, despair clear on her face. She regained her composure within a second or two and turned to face the captive vampire. “Very well then,” she said in a much colder tone than she’d used before. With a flicker of light from her horn, the vampire in the middle of the room became enveloped in a bonfire. It didn’t scream for long, only a second or two. A few seconds after that, it was reduced to a pile of smoldering ash. The heat of Celestia’s fire must’ve been extremely intense for it to have that much of an effect. It was at this point that several of the mares behind me let out gasps of shock. Perhaps they’d never seen their ruler act so violently before. Fluttershy couldn’t seem to take her eyes from the burning remains even as she tried to make herself as small as possible. Celestia and Luna moved a few feet away and began conversing in hushed whispers, giving us a few glances as they talked. After about a minute of them talking, during which Michael and I tried to comfort Fluttershy, they returned and focused their attention on me. Celestia spoke in a tone of absolute authority as she addressed me, “Mr. Dresden, you know more about these creatures than anypony else in Equestria. It is for this reason that’d I’d like to offer you a position within my military. Your job, should you choose to accept it, would be to teach my soldiers and guardsponies how best to combat this Red Court threat and to perform special strike missions as they become necessary. You would also be assigned a personal contingent of soldiers under your command.” I didn’t really know what to say to that. I’d been assigned to train warden recruits sure, but I’d never been offered an active position in a large military like this. Before I could say anything though, one of the mares behind me decided to remind us why they were there. “Now wait just a minute there. What about us?” Applejack interjected. “Yeah, we came here because we want to help!” Rainbow added. Celestia and Luna looked at each other again, and after a few more whispered words Celestia addressed the group as a whole. “If you all wish to assist, then I will assign the bearers of the Elements of Harmony as a special strike force under the direct command of Mr. Dresden, to be trained and dispatched as he sees fit. That is of course, assuming that you accept my offer,” Celestia said, shifting her attention from the group to me during the last statement. At that point all eyes in the immediate vicinity were on me. I shrugged to the group at large, “Well I am kinda stuck here, so what else am I gonna do. Yeah, I accept.”