Dawn crept closer by the second.
Rarity still remained hopelessly lost.
Of all the places, she whined internally, and nearly tripped over a rock she swore she’d already tripped over an hour ago. And of all the times!
Because of course her stupidly calm and infuriatingly collected human had led the way into the Everfree, and of course the laces on Rarity’s boot had to have come undone at the same time a feral’s screech had pierced the air, and by the time she’d triple-knotted and straightened up—
—Twilight was already gone.
(Her human. Not that Twilight was anyone’s property, mind, but more that if anyone had any right to be a bit possessive, it was Rarity.
After all, they’d spent so much time together; more than any other unintentional pairing of their little clique. Perhaps some of the blame lay with Celestia’s missions—but no, Rarity couldn’t fool herself there. Missions didn’t make dinner plans every Thursday. Missions weren’t why she secretly suffered through another chapter of another incomprehensible magic textbook each evening before bed.
And, most glaringly, missions weren’t the reason Rarity’s guessing game had turned from mere interest to curiosity and then to something else.
Infatuation was a funny thing, she knew. She knew her own heart better than anyone else, and knew even more of its unfortunate tendency to slide from affectionate to affection before she could catch it. As a child she’d called them crushes. As an adult, she’d found “heartaches” and “headaches” more suitable descriptors.
Because infatuation was a funny, absolutely irritating thing—especially when its subject had the emotional range of a rock.)
It’s like you don’t care, she thought to herself. Then, either out of spite or exhaustion or both, Rarity cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted as loudly as she could, “It’s like you don’t care!”
Silence.
Scowling, Rarity lowered her hands. She’d stopped walking somewhere between her last thought and the one before, though wherever she was now was no more familiar than the rest of the damned forest. And even worse: the sky had lightened.
Time was running out.
Some level of physical attraction was necessary for romance, Rarity could admit, and her current heartache was certainly no exception.
She was beautiful in the way that men usually weren’t, and handsome in the way that women sometimes were. And though Twilight Sparkle wasn’t exactly the vampiric prince from her long-decided fantasies, Rarity didn’t think she minded much anymore.
Except... even as she’d felt her feelings shift, and even as she’d subtly switched a few pieces of herself from friendly to flirty in response—a hand lingering too long here, a suggestive remark there—her usual probing tactics had, for the first time, fallen completely flat.
No reaction. No response. Just calm, collected, controlled neutrality, with no sign of reciprocation anywhere in sight.
It boiled Rarity’s blood, it did; right in her non-magical veins. Forget romance—what kind of friend could act like that? What kind of being could act so indifferent to anything and everything? Was it even an act? Did she care for a single person outside of the scope of duty?
Was she capable of feeling at all?
Her soon-to-be-grave was the least muddy and most shady spot she could find on the forest floor: a leafy patch half-beneath a shallow outcropping of rock and tree roots. If Rarity curled her knees to her chest and pressed her back against the mossy stone, she could just barely manage to keep all of herself out of the rapidly-strengthening sun.
(In a rapidly-shrinking shadow, mind. But Rarity didn’t want to think too hard about that.)
It was a horribly ironic setup. Such a dense forest shouldn’t have let much sun through its canopy at all! But no, that made too much sense, and the Everfree absolutely couldn’t have any of that, could it?
“Could have had a bit of paper and ink at this point,” Rarity mumbled into her knees. “If we’re on about not making sense and all. Forgot to pen my last will and testament this morning, see; quite silly of me, I know.”
Her one hand fiddled absently with the latch of her satchel as she spoke—the same satchel she’d searched a dozen times for anything she should have packed but didn’t. Sunblock, blood packs, flares, water, a leash to keep herself tethered to the one person capable of fighting ferals alone in the forest at the expense of her designated mission partner and supposed friend—
“If I die out here,” she breathed, barely above a whisper, “I’ll haunt you. All of you.” Her throat felt more parched than hell itself, but Rarity didn’t have the strength to care. Talking was a nice distraction. Better than thinking. Easier than thinking. “Celestia first—I’ll finally get to see Canterlot in sunlight won’t I? I could make a whole day of it, even. Would take the edge off of being dead, I’d surely hope.”
Oh, where to begin with Canterlot?
With Celestia herself?
“Perhaps I’ll finally ask you why,” Rarity said. Her thoughts ran into each other at the back of her mind at that: why she’d sent Twilight to Ponyville; why she’d chosen Rarity to bear an element; why she’d sealed her sister only until that fateful night and no longer than that; why she hadn’t bothered to come down and kill her herself.
Why the moon lich had needed to die by the hand of harmony, and why the moon lich had even been able to die at all.
Rarity knew Celestia would take those secrets to her grave—her impossible, immortally distant grave—but it didn’t stop her from wanting to ask about them anyway.
“I’ll go back to Ponyville after that,” she decided. “Surely Pinkie would have planned my funeral by then. It’d be terribly rude to miss it.”
She took some time to cross off each acquaintance and friend and family member on a mental list, wondering which of them would show and which would not. An imaginary procession played behind her bleary eyes as she did—tears and flowers and speeches and black dresses and a human in pitch-black suit—
“You’re last,” she interrupted herself. Even the Twilight of her imagination was aggravatingly calm, calm, calm. “I’ve a lot to say to you, so wait your turn.”
Surprisingly, the imaginary Twilight dipped her head in a nod. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll wait.”
Rarity blinked. Once, twice.
…That was new.
Maybe I’m a little less lucid than I’d thought.
When the hallucination didn’t go away even after a minute of blinking and a few pinches to her thigh, Rarity gave up and gave in: “What do you want?” she grumbled. “Here to see me to the afterlife, are you?”
Twilight, in her all-black funeral attire, tipped her head to the side and echoed, “What do you want?”
“To go home,” Rarity replied immediately. She pulled herself further back against the rock, but even curled as small as she was, the sunlight still tickled the toes of her boots. “To not die.”
The hallucination crouched down beside her and rocked backward onto her heels. She looked far too put-together for the Everfree—she didn’t make sense, and so of course that made the most sense to the Everfree instead. “You won’t die,” Twilight said simply.
“You don’t know that.”
“But you do.”
“I certainly do not,” Rarity hissed.
“You know I’m out there looking for you,” the hallucination continued. “You know I’m at least capable of concern.”
“I—”
“You know it’s not my fault you’re lost.”
Rarity snapped her mouth shut and glared back down at her knees. Any protests and complaints she came up with immediately withered in her blood-dry mouth. The hallucination was right.
(She’d stopped to tie her boot the same time a feral had sounded off a warning screech only a little bit ahead. Before Rarity had even processed how close it had been, Twilight had turned down to her and shoved one open and glowing palm toward her face.
“Wait here,” she’d said.
And Rarity had heard a bit of her collected calmness splinter at the force behind those words.)
“I wanted to help you,” she argued. The sensation of her laces knotting beneath her trembling fingers played over and over against her skin. “I could have helped you! You’re not untouchable; if something like that bite happened again—”
“You’re not untouchable,” the hallucination repeated in Twilight’s voice. She leaned in closer to Rarity, her expression uncaring and unchanged. Rarity so badly wished that she could shove her away. “I’m not untouchable, but neither are you.”
(She’d scrambled to chase after Twilight’s rapidly retreating shadow as soon as she’d pulled the knot taut. Whatever amount of concern she’d imagined in Twilight’s voice paled in comparison to her concern that the feral ahead was as bad as the Ursa or worse.
“Hold on,” she’d yelled, desperate to have her voice catch up even if her body would not. “Don’t you dare just tell me to wait!”
And her legs had pounded and her arms had shoved branches out of her path and her words had landed before they’d reached Twilight’s ears, and she’d stumbled out of the underbrush and into a clearing suspiciously more open than anywhere else in the forest—
—and then one, two, three timberwolves had collided with the brilliant magenta bubble that appeared around her with an electric snap, and four, five, six timberwolves had immediately leapt at the human who’d switched from slaughtering to saving without a second thought, and in that brief moment before claws met skin Twilight Sparkle had met Rarity’s terrified gaze across the clearing and calmly ordered, “Run.”)
“What does it matter?” Rarity breathed. Her voice came barely above a rasp; parched and gratingly dry. “I’m dying either way.”
The world was dark now, despite the sun burning down like noon at dawn. An empty blackness ringed the edges of her vision—empty and cold, a stark contrast to the heat creeping over her toes she could feel even through the leather of her boots.
“You won’t die.” The hallucination spoke again. Rarity could hardly make it out anymore.
I’m just about to prove you wrong, she wanted to reply, but couldn’t.
Perhaps if she’d listened to Twilight’s orders the first time she’d have avoided this whole mess entirely. No, not perhaps—of course she’d have avoided it. Because Twilight didn’t need her help with missions any more than she needed help with tea or laundry or folding her towels, and even if Rarity could justify her stubbornness with worry, well—
I’ve only gone and made my worry worse.
She’d listened the second time. And though her immediate obedience meant she hadn’t seen what happened next, her ears had still caught what her panic-wide eyes had not.
Humans aren’t supposed to sound like that.
Laughter. Anger. Panic. Tears.
Despite any physical differences, all monsters bore the same emotions within their souls. Rarity could always feel them eventually and with time enough: some volatile and some tranquil; some freezing and some boiling; some muted and some deafeningly, ear-splittingly loud. Emotions were what made them monsters, after all. Without them—and ignoring little things like consciousness or sentience—a monster would be no different than a feral.
But then came lightning and ozone. Collected and calm. A hollow and magical void where emotions should have been, yet perhaps never were.
Rarity had only ever met two beings with such an absence.
One had once been human.
The other was still pretending that she was.
The taste of sun-spoiled blood pulled Rarity back to the waking world in an instant. It soured on her tongue in clumps, and by the time her eyes snapped back open her throat had already closed into a dry, heaving retch.
“What,” she coughed. Blood bubbled over the curve of her bottom lip, then dribbled down. “What the hell is—”
And then Twilight Sparkle was there—the real one, dressed for ferals instead of funerals. She knelt in front of a makeshift canopy made from propped up branches and her claw-shredded jacket, a half-empty blood pack in one outstretched hand and the other clumsily thumbing away the red from Rarity’s chin.
“Sorry,” Twilight said quietly, her face faintly backlit by the sun. “I thought it’d still be good.”
You’re alive, Rarity tried to voice. It came out as another cough instead.
“The other pack’s just as warm, but you can try that one if you think it’ll—”
Rarity immediately shook her head and pushed Twilight’s hands away. It’d be no use. Blood kept its potency outside of bodies only in absence of sun. Too much light and too much heat was as good to a vampire as stepping outside into the sunlight herself.
At least Twilight had been prepared, she thought, though perhaps more bitterly than was appropriate. Even if spoiled blood was as useful as rotten meat.
Twilight said something else to her, but in her deep delirium Rarity didn’t hear. Her eyes drifted downward from Twilight’s instead—across exposed tattoos beneath a shredded shirt, over the still-seeping wounds peeking out beneath makeshift cloth bandages, and along the clearly self-cauterized scorch mark seared into the flesh of her stomach.
For a human, Rarity decided, Twilight Sparkle wore blood better than most. No, not just for a human; as a human too. Even starving, such a scent as copper tasted more perfume than wine.
She swallowed hard. Her fangs pressed needy to her lip. When had those formed?
But before she could will them away Twilight leaned forward again, and suddenly the heady stench of human metal was all her tongue could taste. It bled through her nostrils and ran between her lips and twisted through her starving, empty guts—how wretched of her, Rarity despaired. What wicked being could so cruelly taunt the dying with a lifeline dangled just a heartbeat out of reach?
...It was so terribly hard to not think thoughts sometimes. Especially when starved out of her mind.
Because even though the rational part of Rarity knew Twilight was just trying to help, the rest of her thoughts so easily drowned it out: she’s a monster; she MUST be; and a demonic one at that—
A word—a guess—immediately popped into her mind.
Succubus.
Desire came in all forms, be it carnal or primal or something else and more. And the same way different kinds of monsters could still call themselves the same, succubi needed only share the same modus operandi between them:
Lure. Corner. Strike.
And, Rarity realized with dawning dread, I don’t believe I can get much more cornered than this.
Her voice didn’t work. Her back was quite literally up against a wall. There was nothing she could say and nowhere she could run, and now that she was at her most vulnerable and most helpless, all Twilight had to do was unveil her true demonic form and shed her human disguise and sink her claws into Rarity’s heart and— and, well—
And then her thoughts didn’t get much further than that, because a hand gently nudged her head forward, and Rarity suddenly found herself staring down at a canvas of pale and bare tattooed skin.
What.
“Are you still with me?” Twilight asked. Her voice rang an inch away from Rarity’s ear, the muscles of her neck shifting slightly as she spoke.
Rarity wondered if she’d perhaps forgotten how to breathe. Somehow, she managed a nod.
“Okay.” The hand on the back of Rarity’s head nudged again. This time, she also registered the arm wrapped tight around her waist. “Try and be careful with my veins if you can.” A pause. “Both sets of them, please.”
And oh, how badly Rarity wanted to taste her; how badly she needed to feel Twilight’s life against her tongue. But she couldn’t—she couldn’t—
Not without knowing—
“...Why?” she choked out.
A single word. Dry as ash and just as painful to force up through her throat.
Twilight hummed a thoughtful note. She remained so composed; so nonchalant and calm. “Where else am I going to find blood in the Everfree?”
She nudged Rarity again. This time, Rarity let her head dip until her nose met the curve of Twilight’s neck and her lips pressed against the hollow of her throat.
Trembling, she closed her eyes.
She could feel two heartbeats, then: her own, erratic and rapid and desperately pounding against her ribs, and Twilight’s.
Slow and steady and uncaring and unbothered and bored.
She tasted human. She should have been human.
But Rarity now knew for sure that she was not.
suc·cu·bus
1. a lesser carnivorous demon known for seducing prey with unfulfilled desire
2. not Twilight Sparkle