Octavia's return to the world of the living was an agonizingly slow and confusing process.
She groaned and tried to shift her body, but everything felt heavy and mostly unresponsive. Her thoughts were slow to come and the mare found herself slipping in and out of wakefulness a few times before consciousness finally stuck and she managed to blink her bleary eyes open.
She blinked again, then several more times. She felt a frown cross her face as her groggy mind tried to puzzle out why everything was still pitch black. As if in response to her consternation, a faint tingling sensation started to build up behind her eyes and the world around her gradually brightened enough for her to get a grasp of her surroundings.
Her bafflement only grew as she looked out over the narrow rocky path before her. Everything was tinted a pale violet shade in her vision, but that phenomenon was quickly falling to the bottom of her list of things Octavia needed answers to. The rocky path in front of her was littered with small boulders and the withered husks of dead, leafless trees and other dried out foliage.
On either side of the path were cliff faces so high she couldn't see the ledges above. In short, the mare had woken up in some kind of ravine. The realization shocked the mare's addled mind into clarity and she hastily tried to scramble to her hooves, that strange sense of heaviness no long weighing her down. Memories came flooding back into her brain, adding panic to the confusion.
The Summer Sun Celebration.
Octavia recalled the events of that night. She remembered how it had all gone wrong—even before the world went mad. She remembered how the preparations for her performance had gone awry. Octavia thought back to how Vinyl Scratch had not only knocked her precious cello right out of her hooves during the reckless DJ's own preparations, but had stomped a hoof down on the neck, snapping it right off.
Octavia knew it had all been a tragic accident on Vinyl's part, but she couldn't hold back her roiling emotions at the time. The instrument had been a treasured family heirloom passed down the Melody family line for generations. The ensuing argument had nearly come to blows and in the end, the furious cellist had no choice but to commission some last minute repairs for her cello.
Because of that, she'd completely missed the opening ceremony to welcome the Princess to Ponyville. She hadn't been there to witness the absence of the Princess or the arrival of Nightmare Moon. She'd been close enough to hear the commotion and realize that something was wrong, but by the time she finally met back up with Vinyl Scratch, the world had already gone mad.
Her memory grew hazy from there. She remembered the endless screams, both equine and... not. She remembered feeling the earth tear itself apart beneath her. She remembered Vinyl galloping towards her, calling out her name. She remembered the sensation of falling down and down and down for what felt like forever. The last thing she could recall before everything went blank was horrendous, mind shattering pain as something inside of her warped and twisted and ripped itself out.
And now she was down here in a ravine, trying to make sense of it all. She was wide awake now, but the gears in her head continued to spin uselessly with no resolution or understanding in sight. The mare continued to stare out at the boulder strewn path in dumbstruck silence for another minute before another sensation finally distracted her.
She couldn't pinpoint what she was feeling at first, but slowly she began to realize... she was hungry. No, she wasn't just hungry, she was practically starving. It felt like she hadn't eaten in weeks, and the thirst. Suddenly well aware of her bone dry throat, she tried to swallow, but found there was no saliva. She licked lips as dry and cracked as an arid desert... and froze.
Octavia slowly ran her tongue over teeth again. Then again, and once more as a cold pit opened up in her stomach. Those... are not the teeth of an herbivore, she thought as she continued to press her tongue against the two massive fangs she could feel in her mouth. All of her teeth were wickedly sharp, but her canines had grown especially long and she could help poking and prodding at them in horrified fascination.
Octavia wanted to believe this was just a nightmare—that what happened during the Summer Sun Celebration was all in her mind. She wanted so desperately to deny her reality, but she couldn't. The overwhelming hunger and thirst, the ground beneath her hooves, the feel of the fangs in her mouth, they were all just too real. Cold dread settled over the fanged mare as she slowly came to grips with that reality.
Beyond the dire need for some kind of sustenance, she felt weak. The legs she stood on were shaky and it felt like a strong breeze could knock her over. Looking down at herself, the mare understood why and had to bite back a scream at what she saw.
Octavia was an earth pony, and like most earth ponies, her strength and constitution had been a cut above the other pony tribes. In contrast to her reckless and whimsical roommate, Octavia had been a very health minded mare. She made sure to eat properly and exercise each and every day. She wasn't vain, but she'd been fairly proud of her body and the work she put into it.
Now? Now she was quite literally nothing but skin and bones. Her legs were as thin as reeds and her ribcage shown prominently through her skin. Her once pristine grey fur had darkened to a shade just shy of black. Large patches were missing, exposing sallow, sickly brown skin beneath. Her mane and tail had become a much paler shade of grey. The hair was dry and wispy, visibly falling out as she moved about.
She had no way to see her own face, but Octavia couldn't imagine it looking much better than the rest of her.
I look like... like a corpse!
The thought and the sight of her own body made her feel sick, but the sensation was quickly swallowed up by the ever increasing need to feed on something. Anything really. The desire was enough to pull her eyes away from herself and toward her surroundings.
Realizing she might not be alone, she tried to call out to her unicorn roommate. The only thing that came out of her mouth was a dry, unintelligible rasp that barely reached her own ears. She swallowed and tried again, but the result was the same. She cursed inwardly, getting more and more frantic.
She was worried about Vinyl Scratch and the state of Ponyville but it was getting harder and harder to focus on anything other than the hunger and thirst. The two desires almost seemed to mix together into one gnawing, aching need. She'd begun gnashing her monstrous teeth without realizing it, looking around with wild eyes as she tried to keep a hold of her own mind.
Just when she thought she might go mad, a scent found its way into her nose, somehow carried on a breeze that didn't exist. The smell was unfamiliar but intoxicating. It wrapped around her, consumed her fraying thoughts, drove the unnatural hunger-thirst to new, horrendous heights. The emaciated mare whipped around, nearly tripping over her own hooves in the process.
There, standing behind her a short distance away, was a figure cloaked in shadow. No matter how she tried, Octavia couldn't make out the creature's form even in her violet tinted sight. The only thing she could see were two eyes that burned like bright red coals. They captured her, keeping her held in place and pressing down on her increasingly feral mind.
Fear, raw and unfiltered, coursed through her body. Fear, and a strange sense of familiarity. Before she could pinpoint where the feeling was coming from, that intoxicating scent hit her again, distracting her from the fear. She managed to lower her gaze slightly and there on the ground before the mysterious shadow, lay somethintg Octavia couldn't quite wrap her head around at the moment.
To her, it looked like a large lump of wet flesh, a dark pool of red slowly seeping out from beneath it. As she stared at it, trying to comprehend what she was seeing, the smell slammed into her again and that was enough to quash the last of her reason. All thought fled from her and instinct took over.
With the ferocity of a starving wolf, she shot forward and pounced on the lump of flesh. She paid no mind to the shadowy creature as she tore into the bloody meat. The shadow for its part, seemed content to watch the once prim and proper cellist rip chunks out of the fleshy mass and devour them whole.
The feast went on for some time, the night silent save for the grunts and growls and smacks and squelches of a carnivorous beast violently consuming its long awaited meal. Lost in the bliss of her grotesque feast, Octavia neither felt nor saw the physical changes that washed over her. She paid no mind as the wrinkled brown skin beneath her fur turned a healthy pinkish red. She didn't see the patches of missing fur on her body and her mane and tail gradually filling back in.
The color was still a dark, nearly black, grey but it grew in thick and glossy—more rich and voluminous than it had been even before Octavia's world had literally crumbled around her. Her skeletal frame began to fill out as well. It wasn't long before she'd regained her healthy earth pony body and then some.
Octavia's strength and senses surged far beyond that of a normal earth pony, but she remained oblivious, muzzle deep in the bloody meat laid out before her. She didn't bat an eye when the shadow patiently dropped another massive slab of unidentifiable flesh in front of her. She simply took it in stride, ripping into it once she was done with her prior meal.
This went on for another fifteen minutes or so, with Octavia having devoured another two massive slabs of flesh before sanity finally started to take control once again. Eventually the mare sat back on her haunches, closed her eyes, and let out a deep sigh of satisfaction. Octavia couldn't remember ever feeling this full. She was sated on a level that felt almost spiritual and it felt... good. She felt... good.
"Well, somepony certainly looks pleased. Enjoyed the meal that much, huh?"
Octavia's eyes snapped open and the mare nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of the voice. Despite her surprise and realization that she'd forgotten all about the shadowy creature, she'd recognize that voice anywhere. The mare refocused her attention on the shadow that had just spoken and, sure enough, she found not a shadow at all, but the familiar lackadaisical grin her housemate and long time friend, Vinyl Scratch.
As far as Octavia could tell, the unicorn mare looked the same as she ever did. Her white coat and wild electric blue mane and tail didn't have a single hair out of place. The only thing missing were her headphones and the violet shades she wore everywhere she went. Without them, Octavia had a full view of her eyes.
Octavia remembered the mare's eyes being a soft cerise color and though she never would've admitted it to Vinyl herself, she found them rather beautiful. The eyes of the mare she saw before her now had no such beauty. There was nothing soft about that crimson gaze. Those weren't the eyes of a pony, they were the eyes of a predator. They were the eyes of something alien and primal—something that stalked you in the dark.
Despite the instinctual terror those eyes invoked in Octavia, she found herself oddly drawn to them. For a long moment she forgot to breath. Her mind stalled as she took in the appearance of her friend of several years, the mare she thought she knew better than anypony else. The sound of awkward laughter brought her back to her senses.
"Aw, come on, Tavi," Vinyl said with a teasing chuckle, "you keep staring at me like that and I'm liable to start thinking you want more out of this little dinner date. Oh, speaking of which, you got a little something on your, uh... well..." she trailed off and gestured to her own muzzle, "...everywhere, actually."
Octavia blinked, then—without taking her eyes off of Vinyl—slowly raised a hoof to her face. The squelch of something wet and slimy met her hoof as she gently touched her cheek. She quickly pulled the hoof away with a yelp. She jerked back, causing something pink and ropy to fall from her muzzle and splat onto the small pile of entrails she'd left uneaten. She stared at the heap of viscera and shuddered in visible disgust.
"I... I think I'm going to be ill," she muttered. She felt sick but was in no danger of upending her recent feast despite her words. If anything, the sight was starting to make her hungry again. She shuddered again.
"Ah, you'll be fine," Vinyl replied as she walked around the pile to stand beside Octavia, "we should probably get you cleaned up though." She threw a foreleg around Octavia's withers and started to guide her down the rocky ravine, away from the remains of her meal. "Come on," she continued, "there's a small river a bit further down this way. We'll get that gunk off you and I can explain all the crazy details on the way, alright?"
Octavia just nodded numbly, not resisting as Vinyl Scratch dragged her along down the path. They walked together in silence for a time and Octavia was thankful. She desperately needed to collect her thoughts and Vinyl seemed to understood that. She didn't jump right into an explanation, instead waiting until Octavia was ready to talk first. After several minutes, Octavia finally did speak, her eyes focused on the seemingly endless cliffsides above and on either side of her.
"Vinyl... what are you?"
Vinyl Scratch winced at both the question and Octavia's resigned and borderline emotionless tone. She'd expected that question to come after asking about her own circumstances. But then again, the cellist had always managed to catch her off guard like that. "Oof, going right for the throat," Vinyl grumbled before letting out a soft, resigned sigh of her own. "That's, uh... not an easy question to answer, Tavi."
"Answer it anyway... please."
Vinyl sucked in a breath, held it for a second, then let it go as she replied. "Well... we don't really have a name for what we are, but I guess the closest approximation would be... a vampire?" She scowled thoughtfully, then shrugged, "Yeah, given what I've read about what they can do, that's the closest thing I could think of."
"A vampire. I'm friends with a vampire. Fancy that." Octavia chuckled humorlessly. She shook her head ruefully and lowered her gaze to the ground, catching sight of her dark grey hooves as they trotted along. "If that's the case, I suppose I have you to thank for my... current state? Made me one of your loyal thralls, did you?"
"Wh-wha—no, hold up," Vinyl sputtered, halting her easy gait as she rounded on her friend, "that is not how this works, okay?"
"Oh?" Octavia replied, raising a brow, "enlighten me then, Miss Not-Quite-a-Vampire. How does this work, exactly?"
"I... it's... ugh!" Vinyl Scratch groaned and slapped a hoof to her face, "Okay, look. Yes, I was the one who gave you the biological makeover and introduced you to your fancy new diet, but! I had my reasons." She looked Octavia in the eye, her exasperation melting away into something more serious, "Things would've gone very badly for you if I didn't do something. I'm talking death here—no, worse than that probably."
"Worse than..." Octavia paused as flashes of the Celebration crossed her mind. She recalled the sensation of falling endlessly and the horrible pain. A sudden realization struck her and she glanced upward, her stomach doing a flip as several things clicked into place in her mind, "...oh."
"Yeah, the world kinda went crazy." Vinyl replied with a grim nod. "This crazy evil alicorn showed up in Town Hall while you were gone and then a ton of monsters showed up after that. Then ponies started dying and the earth started shaking and Equestria pretty much just kind of tore itself apart."
She paused, then in a slightly quieter voice continued. "We'd just found each other when the ground opened up right under you and... well..." A look of guilt crossed her face, at odds with her predatory appearance. "I tried to save you, y'know? Jumped right in after you, but... didn't make it in time."
"I..." Octavia grimaced, not wanting to say it, but forcing herself to, "I died... didn't I?"
"Not quite," Vinyl said with a shake of her head. She gave the other mare a wry lopsided smile, "you hit the ground, but somehow you hung in there long enough for me to work my magic. Must've been more of that earth pony resilience or something, huh?"
Vinyl's grin faltered and died in the face of Octavia's unamused scowl. She coughed and looked away as she spoke. "So, uh... yeah. I survived because I'm not exactly equine and I sort of... turned you into what I am—not a thrall or anything, just... the same species, I guess."
"I see... so you did it to save my life," Octavia replied after a long, uncomfortable moment, "I suppose that would be as good a reason for making me an inequine abomination as any. Oh!" She caught herself and gave Vinyl an apologetic frown, "I'm sorry, Vinyl I didn't mean—"
"Nah, don't worry about it," the other mare replied with a wave of her hoof, "you totally did mean it, but I don't blame you and I won't fault you for it. From your perspective, that's exactly what we are."
Octavia's brows furrowed. "You keep saying we. Are there more of... your kind? Besides me, I mean?"
"Oh... well, not in Equestria, no—not that I know of, anyway," Vinyl answered, her tone somewhat more subdued. "Honestly, that question's a bit more complicated, y'see."
"How so?" Octavia pressed, her tone more curious than anything else. Despite everything, she found herself falling back into an old rhythm talking to Vinyl. Her personality, at the very least, hadn't changed in the slightest from what she could tell, and that did wonders to ease her mind.
"Okay, so... once I made sure you were stable, I did some looking around, see?" Vinyl explained, "there wasn't much to see down here but as it turns out, we're not exactly in Equestria anymore—well, we are... but we're also not." At the other mare's bemused and slightly irritated expression she hurried to clarify.
"I don't know all the specifics, but..." Vinyl paused to gather her thoughts, then continued, "alright, Equestria—well, this whole world really—straddles a dimensional line that separates it from another world called, Ayafern. You with me so far?"
"I'm familiar with the concept of alternate universes, yes," Octavia replied. Admittedly, she didn't know a whole lot about the subject but she'd heard a few things in passing. Frankly, she was surprised Vinyl knew so much about it, though given everything that'd happened thus far, she figured this was just another drop in the bucket of surprises.
"Cool," Vinyl continued, looking oddly relieved, "so this world, Ayafern? That's where I'm from. That's where my kind live. Or lived. I'm not sure, haven't been back in something like five hundred years or so. Maybe. Time can be weird between dimensions so it could've been much longer or shorter."
"Five hundred—just how old are you?" Octavia knew it was a rude question, but she couldn't help herself. Thankfully, Vinyl didn't seem too bothered.
"Honestly? No idea." She replied with a careless shrug, "Stopped counting after being trapped in a dimensional bubble for a few thousand years." She grimaced, "I'd tell you more about myself, but I can't remember a lot of my past. All I can tell you is that Ayafern is my home and that this—" she gestured to herself, "—isn't my original form."
"So.. most of your memories—"
"Are from Equestria, yeah," Vinyl finished with a soft smile, "like I said, I don't know exactly how long it's been, but I'm pretty sure I arrived here about five hundred years ago. Well, less 'arrived' and more 'got spat out'."
"Huh..." was all Octavia could say for a good minute or so. "I must say, that is... quite the tale, Vinyl. I'm surprised you managed to keep something like this hidden from me and the rest of Equestria for so long."
"Oh, it wasn't easy in the beginning," Vinyl replied with an amused chuckle, "I have a sneaking suspicion I might've been responsible for a folk tale or two. But yeah, years and years of practice and all that." Her smile turned guilty as she spoke, "And, uh... sorry about keeping this all on the down low. I wanted to tell you—tried a bunch of times actually, but in the end I just didn't have the guts."
Octavia thought about it for a long moment, trying to decide if she was upset or not. She found that she wasn't. She couldn't be. With her mind so preoccupied with all the other questions she still had, she didn't have the capacity to be angry about something so understandable. She likely would have done just as much to hide it if she was in Vinyl's horseshoes... which she supposed she now was.
"I won't hold it against you, Vinyl Scratch," she finally replied with a soft smile, "I completely understand your position and may have even done the same in your place." Vinyl gave a grateful smile of her own, but then Octavia had a though and continued, "By the by, did you happen to, ah... create any other of your—our kind?"
Vinyl Scratch blinked in surprise at her friend's correction, but quickly pushed past it. She felt strangely touched by the gesture, but didn't want to embarrass herself or Octavia by dwelling on it. Instead she shook her head and answered, "No, by the time I remembered I could, I already knew it would've been a bad idea."
"Ah, good. That's... good."
Another bout of silence fell over the two for a while but was quickly broken when they finally reached the river Vinyl had mentioned. From what Octavia could see, it was less a river nd more a small stream a few meters wide and only a few inches deep. It looked as though it had been part of a larger river that had long since dried up.
It wasn't much and the water was somewhat rancid looking, but it was enough to clear the rest of the blood and viscera from Octavia's face and neck. She took a moment to observe her own features in the stream. She couldn't see much of her face even with her apparent night vision, but the one thing that did stick were her eyes.
Like Vinyl, they burned with an inner light, bright and inequine—though hers shone a vibrant violet color rather than the red of Vinyl's irises. She found the change haunting, but felt the same kind of draw that she did from looking into Vinyl's eyes. As the mare washed herself of the bloody muck, she continued to ask Vinyl several questions.
When she asked about her fur and mane, Vinyl mentioned that the transformation shouldn't have done anything to change the color. It was only when the DJ continued where she'd left off regarding the current state of Equestria that she understood. Vinyl didn't have a concrete answer for what happened, but evidently she had a guess.
According to the mare, Equestria had somehow found itself consumed by her homeworld of Ayafern. Her theory on Octavia's altered mane and fur colors was that Ayafern's atmosphere had begun to change her in some way. The change hadn't fully taken hold due to Vinyl's intervention though, so the only change was her color.
The rest of the changes had been Vinyl's doing but after having thought about it some more, Octavia found she could cope with her new form for now. Vinyl's own concerns came mostly from the fact that she was still an equine. If they truly had been dropped into Ayafern then Vinyl would've reverted back to her true form... or so that's what she assumed.
It turned out that may not have been the case. Then again, neither Octavia nor Vinyl Scratch knew the reason behind their circumstances or even what their circumstances truly were. With that in mind, the only way to discover what was going on and what to do about it, was to make their way out of the pitch black ravine.
In the meantime, Octavia was content to listen to what Vinyl could remember of her past as they made their way further and further down that narrow, rocky path.