For five days, Delta stopped. Every single thing in the town shut down unless it was focused on securing the town before Crystalline arrived or helping the ponies with the securing. Everypony worked like a madmare, rarely seeming to take breaks. After a just a few days, I was shocked by how much the town had been transformed. Several of the larger buildings had been cleared out of their contents, the better to fit those who couldn’t fight inside. I rapidly learned far more about shoring and building reinforcement than I had ever expected to in my life.
We were greatly aided by Delta’s central export of lumber and timber — which, I was repeatedly told by an increasingly-irritated foremare, were two different things. Trees were chopped down and hacked into rough boards so quickly I could barely follow it. The cleared buildings, which had once had sides of lath and plaster barely an inch deep, soon boasted crude, foot-thick bulwarks on all sides that even a unicorn would have trouble blasting through. Several of Delta’s own unicorns were called on to layer the walls with the best fireproofing spells they knew (which, unfortunately, wasn’t a lot, but it was better than nothing).
Palisades were set up, ready to block off some of Delta’s larger roads. We all knew they wouldn’t do much; even leaving aside vampirism, pegasi could fly over them, unicorns could move them. But it’d slow them down, and we needed all the help we could get.
Although most of the ideas came from Cascadia, she remained open to suggestion every step of the way. She shot some concepts down for this or that reason, but others she welcomed warmly. In particular, expanding the cellars of buildings to hold more ponies came from somepony I’d never met. I even heard something about mines. I couldn’t keep track of it all, but Cascadia seemed pleased.
To cover all of our bases, some ponies scooped up dirt from the forests and carried it back to town for use in sandbags. I heard something about them being used to block doors and windows where wood couldn’t, especially in sealing doors once Crystalline arrived. Thanks to magic, filling them went much more quickly than I’d expected.
In a few days, Delta resembled a fortification more than a town.
Four days remained until Crystalline arrived.
I was pulling a cart with a very large pile of thick planks from the sawmill. They were going to provide even more reinforcement towards a designated shelter, one of the few clubs in Delta. It was one of the heaviest things I’d ever moved, and even with my earth pony strength, I was panting and sweating. My eyes shut tight from the exertion, I dug my hooves in and heaved with all my might and the cart still barely moved.
“Want some help?” a stallion asked.
“Sure,” I said through clenched teeth. “Just give it a push, will you?”
A few seconds later, the cart lurched forward as somepony pushed on it from the back. I gasped in relief and opened my eyes. “Hey, thanks,” I said, looking over my shoulder.
“No problem,” said Pomeroy.
I quickly looked forward again. Pomeroy. Clearwater’s husband. I’d only talked with him that one night Clearwater had invited me over, but her death panged in my heart for him. I swallowed. “Hey, um,” I said, “I, I’m sorry about Clearwater. I only knew her for a few days, but she was a good pony.”
“Thanks,” said Pomeroy. “I- never expected- her to- Thanks.”
I ought to tell him the truth about what I’d known. I knew Cascadia and Homeguard had explained some things about vampire secrecy to Delta, but I didn’t know if he knew the specifics. “Um, when- when Clearwater died… I knew it was a vampire. I- wanted to tell you — to tell the whole town — but, but Homeguard said that I couldn’t. He wanted-”
“Yeah, I heard,” Pomeroy said quickly, “I don’t blame you, it sounds like it was a tough position to be in. I’m sorry for- for what you must’ve gone through.”
“Thanks.”
I pulled. He pushed.
“Is her killer dead?”
“Yeah. She tried to kill Levanta. I was tougher than she expected and I nailed her to a wall.”
“Good.” And it might’ve been my imagination, but I think he pushed harder after that.
One of the hardest parts was getting ponies willing to kill vampires. Regardless of whether the targets are monsters or not, it’s a lot harder to be willing to kill somepony than books make it sound. The ponies who volunteered to learn weapons looked like they were doing it because somepony had to and they’d like nothing more than to be able to shake their hooves at Crystalline and scold them for being bad, bad vampires. Unfortunately, according to folklore, that only worked on mearhwolves. Still, they took up the task they’d assigned themselves as best they could.
A vacant lot behind the police station was converted into a firing range for training crossbowmares. There had always been a few repeating crossbow harnesses sitting around, but they’d never been really used until now. Whenever I stopped into the station, I could hear the whistling of quarrels zipping through the air. The first day, many of the volunteers were lucky to hit the target at all. By the evening of the fourth, damn near everypony was hitting close to the bullseye every single time from further away.
Cascadia took particular interest in the crossbows. I often saw her pacing up and down the line, giving instructions or tips to the trainees. “Chew that trigger bit, don’t bite it.” “Lock your knees to keep the line-of-sight straight. Don’t worry about the recoil, there’s barely any.” “Hold your breath when firing, you’ll keep steady for longer.” “It doesn’t matter if you push out or down, but keep the direction constant when recocking the crossbow. And let me know if you want to have the reload loop connected to a rear hoof rather than a front hoof, it’s not too hard to modify.”
And when she wasn’t training ponies to use crossbows, she was often training them to use spears. Technically, the “spears” were just harded poles with sharpened points, but they proved to be capable weapons. They were harder to train on then the crossbows — less than half the number of ponies who took up crossbows went for spear training — but Cascadia seemed pleased with the results she was getting. Indeed, the few times I saw ponies sparring with each other, they were moving more quickly than I would’ve.
I was surprised to learn that shields weren’t a common ability among unicorns. Each and every unicorn ranger I’d worked with had demonstrated it at one point or another. Of course, rangers were hardly normal ponies. Fortunately, the fundamentals of shield creation were simple to grasp, and by the end of the first day, every single unicorn in Delta, even the foals, could put up at least a halfway-decent shield.
Cascadia wondered if we should set up an armory. That alone said a lot about the changes going through Delta.
Three days remained until Crystalline arrived.
It was just past noon and I was sitting in the middle of a downpour. I was grateful; I’d been working hard for hours and had been soaked with sweat. This was the closest I could get to a shower at the time. When I thought I’d been sufficiently washed, I waved at the weathermare. “I’m good, thanks.” She nodded and moved the cloud to the next pony in line.
I trotted away from the ponies waiting and shook myself off. Celestia, that felt good. I was about to dig into my lunch when Bay fluttered around a building. With Levanta around to actually be a friend to her — along with, from what I’d heard, some of the other young mares in Delta — she was at least adjusting well enough to hide her emotions; I suspected she was still torn up inside and putting on a brave face for us. She hadn’t even come close to attacking anypony on instinct, much to Homeguard’s relief. “Hi!” she chirped.
“Hey,” I said. Munch. “You feeling good?”
Bay was grinning. “I killed a bear allllll by myself!”
I shivered. Somepony that young shouldn’t be saying those words in that tone of voice. I took a bite of my sandwich to try to take my mind off that.
It didn’t work when Bay smacked her lips. “It was weird. He was charging me, then I… did something, I dunno, and he started ignoring me. I was actually poking him and he didn’t really mind.”
Suddenly, Homeguard was right next to me, frowning. “He started ignoring you?” he asked suspiciously. “What, precisely, did you do?”
“I- I said I dunno!” protested Bay, taking a step back. “It was- It was like a muscle in my head! Well, not my head, my mind. It’s…” She rubbed her forehead. “It’s real hard to explain. But I… I kinda go like…” She folded her ears back, grit her teeth, and… nothing happened. I didn’t hear, feel, or see anything change. Feeling a little awkward for Bay’s sake, I looked away.
After a second, Homeguard nudged me. “Come. We should help with-”
“What about Bay?” I asked. She held her position; from her posture, I expected her chest to be heaving, but she didn’t need to breathe anymore, did she?
Homeguard looked at Bay, then at me. “What about her?”
“You’re just gonna… leave her, mid-conversation?” For some reason, Bay was grinning.
“I fail to see why that matters,” Homeguard said, cocking his head.
I stared. What was his problem? “You can’t just-”
“I did that!” Bay said, jumping into the air. “I could never do that back when-”
Homeguard twitched and whirled on Bay, his mouth agape. “Did- Did you do that when… you were turned?” he asked. “When the other fledglings were killed?”
Bay immediately folded her ears back and looked down. “Yeah,” she whispered. “When the first- pony was killed, I- I just got so scared that I- I somehow did that and hid. I was sure they’d find me, but they never did. And I kept hiding, ’cause I didn’t know what to do. Then you and Hailey showed up, and you didn’t find me, so I stopping doing it, and-”
“That would explain much,” Homeguard said, nodding. “Bay, do you recall how I explained to you the way vampires often have access to magic beyond the norm of most ponies?”
“And you think this is mine?” squeaked Bay. “What is it what is it what is it?”
“Psychically-induced ignorance,” said Homeguard. “When you use your power, you become the least important thing in the surrounding area, and everypony — everything — simply pays you no mind.”
“So… I can… woooooooow. But, wait, then how come she wasn’t affected?” Bay pointed at me.
“Long story short,” I said, “immunity to mental magic.” Munch. “Maybe. That’s Homeguard’s and Hailey’s theory, anyway. You can’t affect me.”
“Perhaps it would be strengthened if she became a vampire,” added Homeguard. “I do not know how a va-”
“You get to have vampiric superpowers without being a vampire?” gasped Bay. “That’s cheating!”
“When I figure out how I’m doing it, I’ll let you know.”
“Experiment with your power,” said Homeguard. “You may be able to do far more with it than simply getting ponies and vampires to ignore you.”
Even with all the work and the degree to which we’d strengthened the town, it wasn’t hard to find ponies who worried that we wouldn’t be able to build up the town enough. It was hard to fault them for being pragmatic; vampires, after all. All we had to go on was what Homeguard and Hailey told us, and they admitted their knowledge could be incomplete. Oddly, nopony seemed to want to actually leave; this was their home.
Cascadia seized on the pessimism to make the town even stronger. Whenever somepony raised a complaint, she found a way to fix it as best she could. It was actually how we came up with the idea of building up thick wooden walls around the buildings; somepony complained that vampires were strong and could bust through walls, so Cascadia did her damnedest to make sure the walls were as unbustable as possible. Somehow, she had the patience to listen to almost everypony, even the ones with highly unlikely ideas of what vampires could do. At first I thought it was a fool’s errand, but I couldn’t miss the lower amount of complaints as the week wore on.
Hailey also managed to keep some of the tension down by constantly delivering updates on the precise time when Crystalline would arrive on the given day (which hadn’t moved forward at all, in spite of them definitely watching us; “Arrogance,” said Homeguard). At first, it was just before sundown, but as the days passed and we worked, it kept slipping later and later and later until finally it hovered around midnight. Hailey said it was a good thing: “They’re getting more and more nervous about their chances! See, they think that by moving it more and more into the night, we’ll be more tired, which, okay, is true, but honestly, the fact that a group like Crystalline is admitting that at all is pretty incredible!”
“And what if they’re planning to come at midnight,” I asked when she and I were alone, “only to move their arrival forward to six hours to throw you off?” Future sight was nice, but Hailey had always said it wasn’t infallible, so I didn’t want to rely too much on it.
Hailey tutted. “You can’t fake planning in this sitch. If they’re saying they’ll come at midnight but they’ll really come at six, then they’re planning to come at six, so I’ll see them coming at six. But, yeah, this sort of scry-vs-seer thing can get complicated because they know I know they know I know they know I know and la de dah de dah. Now, if it was five and they decided to come at six truly spontaneously, that’d be something else. But it still takes time for them to arrive, so we’ll have a fair warning.”
Fair warnings for times aside, nopony, not even Cascadia, had done something like this before. It was hard to know what to expect.
Two days remained until Crystalline arrived.
I was hammering some framework into place for a palisade when I heard somepony yell. At first, I paid it no mind. Ponies were always yelling about this or that. But when the yelling grew louder and I heard ponies running, I could help it: I dropped what I was doing and followed the crowd.
We came upon an ash-covered pony, still wide-eyed and shaking and clutching the spear she’d been training with, being escorted back to Delta. Hailey was apologizing, since she hadn’t seen that vampire making a decision like that. I was able to gather a lot of contradictory information before Homeguard cleared it up for me.
“As the sawmill is a not-inconsiderable distance from the rest of Delta, the millers were paranoid that they’d be snatched off one by one by any of Crystalline watching the town from afar,” he explained. “They took extra precautions, never going out in groups of less than three, never going out without weapons of some sort, and always going out with at least one unicorn to shield them. Now, everything that follows is speculation based on the memories of the pony involved. The current group was cutting up logs for planks. However, a member of Crystalline, who was probably tired of waiting for the chimera to be changed and had decided to attack Delta on her own, charged from the forest and, using her power, struck them all blind.”
I shivered. I’d been nearly blind in caves before, and the sensation was disturbing. And at least then, I had the advantage of a semi-controlled environment. “Let me guess,” I whispered. “The vampire walked in, killed the other ponies in the group, and-”
“Incredibly enough, no,” said Homeguard. “The vampires of Crystalline are nothing if not arrogant, remember. As the ponies stumbled blindly around, the vampire sauntered up and bragged that she was of a superior species, far above them, and could handicap them whenever she chose, leaving them helpless before her. To prove this, she laid a hoof on that pony, there.” He nodded at the shaken pony.
Reminded of Levanta’s own interaction with Speckle, I suspected I knew how this was going to go, but I kept quiet. No need to interrupt now.
“She blindly lashed out and struck the vampire,” continued Homeguard. “It disrupted her control, giving the ponies their sight back, and I imagine the shock of a pony — a pony! — hitting her meant she couldn’t react before the pony reflexively seized the nearby spear and impaled her with it. By luck, the blow struck the heart. Although I cannot deny I would rather it occur this way than any other, the pony is still adjusting to killing another sapient being.”
Of course she’d feel that way. It was only natural. I’d been unnerved by Homeguard killing Speckle, and she’d threatened Levanta.
After that, Homeguard started doing circuits of the town every hour (exactly when was random) or so to be sure that no vampires would try to sneak in again. None did. Maybe one of their own getting killed had scared off the other potential rebels.
Somewhere around noon on the last day, we collectively admitted that any further fortifying of Delta was just busywork. We’d covered every possible angle we could think of and done the best we could in the time available. At this point, we attempted to build walls even thicker before giving up and spending the next hour lying around.
I wasn’t tired so much as done. I’d worked almost nonstop for days. I couldn’t imagine what the rest of the town felt like. Following day after day of the sounds of labor, the near-silence of the entire town taking a break was eerie, like the quietness following a vampire attack. I couldn’t even relax properly, since it was entirely possible that Crystalline would break in, demolish what we’d built, and render all our work meaningless.
After all, the worst was yet to come.
Six hours remained until Crystalline arrived.
We couldn’t drink alcohol. We weren’t allowed to. What kind of town defense force would we be if we got drunk? A bartender — I think his name was Othello — loudly declared that if he was still alive when Crystalline had been exterminated, his bar would have a day where everything was free. It was hard to blame him. We got hopped up on coffee instead, for the caffeine. Some of us tried to nap so we’d be naturally well-rested, but nerves made that impossible.
I tried hanging out in a bar with some of Delta’s other ponies, but it didn’t feel right. I was reminded of Levanta’s earlier worries: I didn’t belong here. I didn’t know anypony and just couldn’t get in the same mood. Taking my mug, I headed outside.
Homeguard was sitting near the door, looking at… I wasn’t sure what. What did vampires do for fun? The same things ponies did? Was he thinking of anything I wouldn’t? Were a vampire’s thoughts even that different to begin with? In any case, I had a few questions I wanted to ask. I sat down next to him. “Homeguard?”
“Hmm?”
“Was Crystalline really the main reason you didn’t want to reveal yourself? Or was there something else?” I took a sip of my coffee.
Homeguard stared into the night for several long moments. Then he sighed. “You must remember,” he said, “I first became a vampire shortly after the princesses hunted down and killed many, many vampires. I… I admit, I first was irrational, since the legend had not yet spread. Perhaps I could have claimed that I was cursed. But later, a member of Crystalline came to me and told me stories of the backlash even peaceable vampires who had revealed themselves had faced. In hindsight, I suspect he had been lying so Crystalline could control me more easily, but at the time, it made quite an impression. And now…”
He sighed again. “You may recall that I thought myself soulless once. That Luna had convinced me otherwise. And although I believe her, I cannot deny that I have my doubts from time to time. And… should I have truly lost my soul, when I die…”
His voice trailed off, but he didn’t need to continue. It was one thing for there to be an afterlife, it was one thing for life to simply end. Either one of those, I’d be fine with. But for there to be an afterlife for everypony except you… Even somepony as worldly-minded as me found that disturbing. For somepony like Homeguard, a former preacher, it’d be like a vulture looming over them. The kind of thing you wanted to stave away at all costs. At least Homeguard ensured that he was the one paying the costs.
“Well, you were wrong,” I said, hoping it’d sound casual and not like a smug “I told you so.”
“And I have rarely been happier to be wrong.”
“After this is done, you wanna pop into Canterlot and let Celestia know you’re still alive? Maybe convince her to be more open about vampires?”
I honestly wondered if being a mind reader for so long meant Homeguard had forgotten what it was like to be surprised mid-conversation. He twitched and stared at me. “What?”
“Oh, come on,” I scoffed. “Do you really think you’re the only vampire who doesn’t like eating ponies? Who’s afraid of dying? You really think Delta’s the only town that’d be this understanding? I’m positive that if you just convinced some princess — if you’re nervous, let’s say Princess Twilight, she seems easy to approach — that vampires could be civilized, she’d be happy to put out a proclamation telling other vampires that it was safe to come out and ask for help.”
Homeguard gave me a strange look, then said, “Well, we must survive this night if that is to be our course of action.”
It was almost midnight.
Shortly after sunset, Hailey had painted a big sign and laid it out on the roof of the firehouse: Crystalline scriers: I know where you’re going to come from and I’m going to keep reorganizing them for the most protection so pick a direction and stick with it, nimrods. A few minutes later, she said that Crystalline was coming from the north.
At about nine, the bulk of the town went to the shelters. There were almost a dozen of them, clustered together as the buildings were available. They looked like near-solid blocks of wood with their walls and fortified doors. The ponies inside wouldn’t come out until all the vampires were killed or had fled. I’d broken down hugging Levanta before sending her inside. So had she.
I was on the roof of a building near the edge of town; it’d been flattened and battlemented to give us some height and protection, however slight. Other, similar setups were scattered around the edge of Delta. With me were Cascadia, Homeguard, Hailey, and half a dozen other ponies. The vampires and me were the only ones who didn’t have crossbows; I felt like a bit of a millstone, sitting around there, but Hailey reminded me of the chimera, “And this is where she’s most likely to come!” Technically, I had a flare gun strapped to my fetlock — several ponies here did, in case one group or another needed to signal for assistance — but I didn’t trust it as a weapon. So I sat and looked out into the forest and waited.
Seconds ticked past. The moon, so bright when I’d learned the truth about River, had waned to almost nothingness. Only a tiny sliver of silver remained. The weather pegasi had cleared the clouds away, but stars don’t provide that much light. The town was cloaked in near-darkness; sputtering lanterns and flickering light gems were hung around Delta to give us some semblance of vision.
Seconds ticked past. I wrapped my hooves around my spear. I already knew a little about polearms — armed combat was something most rangers learned in case the worst happened — and I wasn’t half bad with them, but in the end, it still felt like nothing more than a long, pointy stick.
Seconds ticked past. I could hear my heart pound away in my chest. It was strangely calm and even: Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Nopony said much of anything. Nopony made much sound at all. The silence was sacred; we didn’t want to break it. Breaking the silence meant Crystalline was here.
Seconds ticked past. I wished I had a watch.
Suddenly, Homeguard’s ears stood up and he raised his head. We all turned to watch him. His eyes narrowed and his lips peeled back. “They are almost upon us.”