Bloody Tears

by NintenES


Descent into madness

        Princess Luna walked across the hall, her wavy, magical miniature universe hair waving behind her. Her sister, Princess Celestia, had summoned her to see her at her room. Alone. This had better be something important. She nodded at the guards standing on the left and on the right side of the doorway. They responded by opening the door for her.

        “Dearest sister, I’m so glad that you responded so quickly. Please, come in.” Princess Celestia said, ushering her sister into the room. Luna noticed that the large royal bed’s curtains were down, obscuring who or whatever was on it.

        “I hope that this is important.” Luna said as the heavy doors closed behind her, followed by the sound of the guards leaving the doorway.

        “Always quick to get to business, so much like you.” Princess Celestia smiled. When Luna failed to respond likewise, the smile on Celestia’s face disappeared, “Right then. While I have been rather... trusting of you, I still need to be in the know of what is going on, what sort of progress do you have made, etcetera.”

        “Are you suggesting that I have been lacking in telling you something sister? I thought that my reports were thorough in the matters of the vampirism disease.”

        “Well... in a word, yes, but it’s more focused on a particular line that I haven’t been receiving updates about.”

        “Which would be...?”

        “A cure. I think we both know that keeping Twilight under watch in her home is a rather... temporary and risky solution to an otherwise long-term problem, but a necessary one if we hope to save her, rather than kill her outright, correct?”

        “Of course it is sister. But Twilight should be in a rather stable condition, so we do not-”

        “Stable!? You call that STABLE!?!?” shouted a third voice, coming from Celestia’s bed. In a flash, Rainbow Dash jumped out of the bed and landed next to Princess Celestia, her body was covered in scars from various cuts. “I was this close to getting myself eaten, with Twi wearing a creepy grin and saying, ‘I’m perfectly fine~.’” Rainbow Dash angrily stated.

        “When did she get here?” Luna asked her sister.

        “This afternoon, but when she arrived she was more... skittish. I’m surprised you didn’t see the Rainboom.” the solar sister replied.

        “What happened?”

        “Oh nothing much, I just crashed through a window, and the next thing I knew, I was almost Twilight’s next meal.” Rainbow Dash said rather pointedly.

        “Wait, you crashed through a window!? What were you thinking?”

        “Nothing except ‘OH CELESTIA SHE’S GOING TO KILL ME.’”

        “And when she came to see me, she asked if there was a cure. Me, believing of course that I wasn’t the most able bodied pony in the kingdom to answer such a question, summoned you to explain to her if there is a cure for this. Now then, Luna, is there a cure for vampirism?” Princess Celestia asked.

        “Look, this is exactly why I said that you should cover up any wounds you might have, and to avoid getting cuts in the first place, otherwise it would aggravate the-” Luna started.

        “Answer her question dang it! I didn’t fly across Equestria to sightsee while I was bleeding on a whim you know!” interrupted Rainbow Dash.

        Princess Luna took a deep breath. This answer was not going to be a crowd pleaser at all. “That’s the thing. I didn’t make vampirism with a cure in mind in the first place.” she admitted.

        “Excuse me?” Rainbow Dash said quietly.

        “I made vampirism on the assumption that this would be a one-way transformation. Sure, a cure would be an excellent weapon to use should they rebel against me, but why risk the chance that my sister discovers it and uses it against me?” Luna replied, “At best, I only have a handful of hypotheses, all of them a rather risky, and exceedingly difficult to test. In all likelihood though, any attempts to cure her in her present state right now would only kill her before it turns her back to normal.”

        “Not... not even the Elements can save her?” Rainbow Dash asked.

        “That is one of the few hypotheses to a cure that I thought would have the best chance of working, since it does dispel powerful dark magic. However, there is a problem with it due to how they work in the first place. Twilight Sparkle has to be united, in harmony, in a common goal with the other bearers for it to work. If she believes herself to be perfectly fine, or worse, starts to think that she doesn’t want to be normal at all, the Elements would have no power. And even if it does work, again, it’s likely to kill her since it destroys the very thing that’s keeping her ‘alive.’ I’m sorry.”

        A flurry of emotions running through Rainbow Dash’s face, like a slot machine spinning through the numbers. “She can’t be... There has to be...” Rainbow Dash vainly thought, her mind racing to find something that could save Twilight. She couldn’t think of anything at all. Twilight Sparkle, for lack of a better word, is a monster, and is likely to die one. Finally, all emotions except one all drained from her face. She looked up at Luna and glared at her with a fury of a thousand suns. “I’ll make you wish you had STAYED ON THE MOON!” she shouted, suddenly tackling Luna with the force of a equine-sized bullet before Princess Celestia could react.

Rainbow grabbed Luna and flew her through the heavy wooden doors, then through the doors just across the hall, into and through the stone walls. Now flying over the famed Canterlot Botanical Garden, Rainbow Dash let go of Luna briefly, bringing her front hooves together before slamming them on Luna’s face, sending her spiralling downward into the ground below. Rainbow then started to ascend higher and higher, into the upper limits of the atmosphere.

Luna landed in a patch of flowers, creating a rather decent sized crater in the middle of an otherwise peaceful garden. She groaned as she opened her eyes. While she didn’t entirely expect Rainbow Dash to act in such a brash manner, she understood her pain. She actually was rather impressed with Rainbow Dash, despite having caught her off guard (though catching her off guard in the first place was no easy feat either,) but it would take more than a simple maneuver like that to- wait, what was that whistling sound? She stared straight upward and saw a blue dot rapidly, and alarmingly, flying straight down towards her. Princess Celestia had told her one or two years ago about Rainbow Dash performing a “Sonic Rainboom,” breaking the sound barrier in a shockwave of light. She... she can’t be seriously trying to apply all that force on her, like a hammer to smash bug on an anvil... Right? Nope, she’s totally, honest to Father and Mother above, going to do it. This revelation managed to make Princess Luna, a being that almost everypony consider to be a god in pony form, utter a single curse that has not been heard in a thousand years.

In other news, that was the day Rainbow Dash managed to pull off her largest and most powerful Atomic Rainnuke yet. The multi-hued mushroom cloud could be seen from the Everfree Forest, and the ensuing shockwaves rippled even farther, all the way to Appaloosa. But even that was not enough for Rainbow Dash. Before the rainbow-colored dust had settled, Rainbow Dash started to beat Luna’s face in with her own bare hooves. “I. Want. Twilight. Sparkle. Back!!!” she screamed through her tears, her hooves punctuating her words as she slammed them on Luna’s face.

She would have beaten Luna unconsciousness if Celestia hadn’t intervened in time. “What the heck!?” Rainbow protested against the golden magical aura.

“Rainbow Dash, control yourself!” Princess Celestia sternly said, dragging Rainbow Dash away from the battered bloody mess that is Luna, “Trying to kill Luna will not magically turn Twilight Sparkle back to normal. In fact, she is our best chance we have of saving her at all.”

Rainbow Dash snorted as she glared at Princess Celestia, despite being completely helpless against the goddess. “Princess Celestia!” Shining Armor shouted, running from castle with two or three other knights, “We heard an explosion and-”

“Please take her to the dungeons to be detained, while I still have the patience to keep myself from trying to turn her into a pile ash.” Princess Celestia waved Rainbow Dash in front of Shining, “Also, I might need a few medics to be sent here as well.”

“O-of course, right away your Highness.” Shining said, taking Rainbow Dash, escorting her as she continued to cast a glare at the general direction of Luna.

Princess Celestia sighed as she walked towards her sister, passing the various trees and shrubberies that had caught on colorful fire, “On a scale of one to ten, with ten being ‘every bone is my body is broken’, how much pain are you feeling right now?”

“Eight,” Luna whimpered, “However, I think the list of bones she did break is still longer than the ones of which she hadn’t.

“I have to apologize, I didn’t expect her to behave in such a barbaric manner.”

“No no, I believe it was justified.”

Part 6: Descent into madness

        Dear Diary
        I think my friends are scared of me now. Well, more so than when I first became a vampire. When I woke up last night, Applejack wanted to ask me about what happened yesterday, when Rainbow Dash broke my window. Was it something I said? Because I didn’t quite understand what she was trying to get at. All I remember was that Rainbow Dash had cut herself and I tried to help, but when I try to think about the details... it seems almost like a blur. When I told Applejack, she only seemed to get even more worried.

        “Are you certain Twilight?” she asked me
.
        “Yes, why? Did something happen to Dash?” I asked back.

        Applejack just shook her head, “Don’t worry about it, she’s fine.”

        “No she isn’t fine!” I might have said it louder than I should have, “I mean, she got all those cuts, and Fluttershy also said that she wouldn’t be helping anymore. What happened to her?”

        Applejack had started to sweat a lot. “She, uh... decided to move to Canterlot?”

        That lie stank so bad, that it was insulting my intelligence. “For what reason?” I asked, “It’s not like her to drop everything and move somewhere.”

        Applejack stuttered for a moment before Spike shouted, “She flew off because she was afraid of you.”

        I stared at him, trying to figure out if he was being sarcastic. “You’re serious right? I mean, how would I scare her bad enough to make her abandon everything?”

        “How about going into a crazed bloodlust and then trying to eat her?” Spike replied.

        “Okay, that is a blatant lie! I didn’t try to kill her, I was just getting her to the bathroom to put bandages on her. Nothing more. Why don’t any of you believe me?!” I shouted. The accusations were really getting to me.

        “Woah there Twi, nobody said anything about us not believing you. Well, I didn’t at least.” Applejack said, defensively backing up slightly, “It’s just that I’m trying to get to the bottom of what happened. Pinkie Pie and Spike said that you were acting kinda... kooky, and that really freaked out Rainbow Dash.”

        “I’m FINE.” I stated, “I’m not some cruel heartless monster that crawled out of Everfree Forest. Okay, so I might seem a little off-putting when there’s blood around. But THATS. IT. I’m still me, and I’m still in control of this... thing.”

        “Okay Twi, I believe you, let’s just calm down a little bit. It’s nothing to get worked up about...” Applejack said. I would have nothing of that.

        “‘Nothing to get worked up about!?’ Yes it is! You are all probably thinking that one night I’m going to flip out and eat every single one of you in the middle of the night while you’re all sleeping or something!” In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have been so specific, because admittedly that might make some very nervous about sleeping tonight.

        “Hey now, let’s not jump to conclusions here Twi.” Applejack said, “Let’s stop before something gets said or done that everyone will regret later, okay? So Rainbow Dash might have misinterpreted what you were going to do, but the important thing is that we’re all okay.”

        I took a deep breath and let it out. “You’re right. I didn’t mean to scare her, or anybody for that matter.” I took a couple of books from the shelves to read in my room, “I’ll be in my room if you need me.” I walked up the stairs to my bedroom.


Twilight Sparkle put down the pen and sighed. "Well this became a huge mess rather quick." she mused to herself. Suddenly, the diary began to write itself, in blood red ink... or at least Twilight hoped it was written in ink. “Some ‘friends’ you have.” read the words on the page. Twilight stared in confusion at her diary, thinking “I didn’t write that... did I?” The diary continued, the words seemed to surface on the page, as if they were being written by an unseen pen, “I honestly expected a lot more from them to be perfectly honest. All she did right there is convince you that you somehow did something wrong.”

        Twilight looked at her diary in sheer horror. What manner of magic is this!? Was she dreaming? She picked up her quill again and wrote, “Who are you and what are you doing in my diary?”

        “Don’t remember me?” the diary wrote back, “Of course you don’t, where are my manners, the only memory I left on you was my voice in the night and a fake name. Allow me to properly introduce myself, I am Bleeding Heart. My closest friends have the honor of calling me Sanguine.”

        Twilight stared at the book, afraid to touch it. She then shut the book hastily with her magic, and carried it with her as she ran downstairs to the main room. “Applejack!!!” She shouted.

        “What? What happened?” Applejack asked.

        “It’s my diary! It’s Bleeding Heart, the vampire who attacked me, he possessed it, look!” Twilight said, opening her diary to the page where the blood red letters were.

        Applejack stared at the page for a moment before looking back at Twilight, “Are you okay sugarcube?” she said slowly, “‘Cause I don’t see what you’re talking about.”

        “What do you mean? See the red words? It’s right there, ‘I am Bleeding Heart!’” Twilight pointed.

        “I don’t see any words near where you’re pointing at Twi, red or otherwise. I just see a huge blank right there.” Applejack replied.

        “What!?” Twilight shouted. To her, the words where there, clear and crisp, written by someone who had practiced their penmanship to absolute perfection. However, Applejack wasn’t lying either, as to her the only words on the page she could see is the line “Who are you and what are you doing in my diary?” that Twilight had written.

        “I’m just telling you as it is sugarcube.” Applejack said, carefully and with concern towards her friend, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

        Twilight couldn’t believe it. She looked at her book and then to worried face of her friend. “I-I don’t know.” Twilight sputtered, unable to find any falsehood in Applejack’s face.

“Maybe I should tell Princess Celestia about this...” Applejack turned away.

“No! NO!” Twilight shouted, grabbing Applejack, trying to keep her from walking away. Embarrassment raising, Twilight pleaded, “She doesn’t need to know. Please.”

“No?” Applejack questioned, looking back at Twilight, “This sounds exactly the sort of thing that we should be telling the Princesses about in the first place. I only mean to help you Twilight. It might hurt a little, but if we don’t tell them, it will only get worse. Go and get some rest.”

Twilight collapsed onto her knees and hocks as she let go of Applejack. “Please.” Twilight pleaded again.

Applejack looked away. “I’m sorry sugarcube.” she replied as she walked away from Twilight.

Twilight looked on, before suddenly grabbing her diary and running back up the stairs to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. She dived into her bed and wept into the pillows and sheets. The black liquid that poured out from her eyes stained the cloth.

        She turned to the diary, vision blurred from both her anger and her tears, and glared at the accursed thing. She took it and scrawled, “WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?!?” on the page.

“Because I want to talk to you without exposing myself.” Had the diary spoke rather than write its response, Twilight suspected it would have been in a rather flat and nonchalant tone.

“About what? Your offer two weeks ago? My answer is still the same: NO.” Twilight wrote back.

“Hmm... Perhaps being a servant is too below a position for a unicorn of your talents. How about... Student? Yes, that should be very familiar to you.” The diary replied.

“And pray tell, what are you going to teach me? Or for that matter what can you give me at all?”

“Why I’ve given you everything Twilight, even what Princess Celestia herself cannot give: eternal life. Tell me this Twilight Sparkle, have you fallen to the seasonal allergies as of late?”

Twilight paused before writing, “No... no I haven’t.”

“I have lived for over ten centuries, and not a single one of those days have I spent sick or ill.” wrote the diary.

Twilight could not believe what she just read, “Wait, ten centuries... You were around when Luna became Nightmare Moon!? Is that why you’re a vampire?” she responded.

“Yes, in fact I was her first and most trusted servant. I was her noble steed, and she was my queen. In fact, I was a lot like you dear Sparkle; I did yet not realize what she had done to me, but I knew that I was different. I discovered what you have yet to learn about vampirism: it is not a curse, but a blessing!”

Twilight furrowed her eyebrows together as she wrote, “A blessing? To steal the life of others to sustain your own!? Are you mad?!?!”

“Oh no, I am completely of sound mind, I assure you. Besides, the payment of blood is but a trifling compared to the wonders one can accomplish with this power! Want to see for yourself? I assume you have some spellpaper, yes? The ones designed to measure magic potential? Take a piece and use it.”

Twilight got up from her bed. “What is he planning?” she thought to herself. She reached under her bed and pulled out a box. She opened it and pulled out a slip of paper. To the casual eye, it looks nothing more than a simple piece of parchment, no larger than an index card.  It had square with a small dot in the center and had the words “Concentrate Here” printed on it, along with a color line below, with instructions on what to do, and what each color signifies. It a way, the paper measures both potential power and control one has over magic. The idea is that the unicorn would focus all their magic on the dot in the center for ten seconds, then compare the color they made to the color line, and also compare the size of the impression that they have made. While Dragon eggs could absorb more magic than spellpaper, these are easier to use, create, and come by. Princess Celestia tracked Twilight’s progress during the early years of being her private protege by having Twilight use one of these papers every month, so naturally Twilight knew how to use one just from memory.

She closed her eyes and focused all her magic on the dot. The ten seconds hadn’t passed when she started to smell smoke. She opened her eyes to see that the paper had caught on fire in the center where the dot should be. Twilight yelped as she dropped the paper, and hastily stamped on it, trying to put out the fire before anyone else noticed. She hyperventilated for a moment before returning to her diary to write, “I just burned a hole in it. I... I didn’t mean to, I didn’t even see what color it was before I noticed it.”

“…You burned the spellpaper? Have they really lowered the threshold for resistance in spellpaper these days? You have just managed to lower my expectations of modern public magical education.” The diary responded.

“No no, these were Clever Clover’s top-quality spellpaper, ones that Princess Celestia herself recommends above all other brands.” wrote Twilight. The diary did not respond back. Taking a moment to reload her pen, Twilight wrote, “Hello? Are you still there?”

        “Yes, I just didn’t expect such staggering results.” the diary slowly wrote back, with a slight quiver in the lines.

        “It does explain why my books and my quills feel hot, now that I think about it.” Twilight wrote, feeling her pen again. She started to wonder if she was writing less in ink and more in controlled burns.

        “Well, I believe this as undeniable evidence that you need my help. There is much to learn of the powers of the vampire.”

        “How about no. You turned me into this, why should I trust you at all? Don’t answer that, it was a rhetorical question. Because I already know that there is no good reason for me to join you at all.”

        “So you blindly choose the path of death?”

        Twilight was taken aback, “What do you mean?” she wrote.

        “They didn’t tell you? Luna did not say a thing about a cure, did she? Or how about your oh so dear Princess Celestia? Do you think she would treat you like a monster if she knew about a method to reverse this?”

        “She doesn’t treat me like a monster! She knows me, she can’t believe that... I would...” Twilight wrote, angry that someone would accuse her teacher and guardian. But even as she wrote, the truth of the red words started to take hold as the diary continued to write on its own.

        “Oh she will. Even your ‘friends’ think you’re a horrible beast. Just think of what Princess Celestia will think of you now that one of your ‘friends’ flew off to her to tell her that horrible slander about you trying to eat your friends like some rabid animal.”

        Twilight’s eyes went wide. “How did he know that? How long has he been watching me?!” she thought. Twilight picked up the pen again, “No, no she would never... She can’t...” Words had began to fail her. “Princess Celestia wouldn’t be so rash as to just on the words of just one pony right?” Twilight thought, not noticing that the diary had responded again as she continued her train of thought, “No, she wouldn’t, but then there’s also Pinkie Pie and Spike’s input. And then on top of that, Applejack is going to report to her that I started to see things.”

        Twilight gazed down at her diary, “We’re talking about the same Princess Celestia that called vampires ‘Blood-sucking abominations of ponykind’, correct? Or how about the one that would banish her own sister to the moon for a thousand years, and then subsequently ruled as if she didn’t exist in that period?” the blood red letters accused.

        “Shut up! SHUT UP!!!” she scrawled, while trying to banish her own thoughts and evidence against Princess Celestia away.

        “Ignorance will not wipe away your bloody tears my dear, nor will it shield you from the harsh sting of truth. Believe me that in the end, I will be the only friend that you can trust in, my dear. When all others reveal themselves to be nothing more than a wretched and miserable pile of secrets and lies, you will crawl to me. This I can assure you.” the wretched thing wrote back.

        Twilight had enough of this. She slammed the book shut, opened a window in her bedroom and flung the diary as hard as she could, in the night, all the while screaming “SHUT UP!!!”

        A white persian cat yelped in pain from the sudden and completely unexpected missile, knocking her off her cozy spot in the moonlight...