The pony walked slowly down a dark street, her hooves softly clicking against the cobblestone. No pony was in sight, all the windows of the adjacent houses were pitch black, and the bleak avenue seemed to stretch on forever into the darkness. She walked for what seemed like hours in this fashion. Every once in a while, a sound caught her attention, but when she turned to look, she found nothing. The pony just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was following her.
Suddenly, a light, rivaling Celestia’s sun shone out in front of her. The light burned its way into her eyes and she screwed them tight to avoid this sudden pain. As the light shined on, she found herself confronted with an uncontrollable urge to open her eyes. The pony hated that idea. She knew if she did, the light would blind her and it almost felt that this light itself was threatening to burn her away into nothingness, but only if she looked at it.
Yet she couldn’t resist. The pony opened her eyes to find the light was entirely gone. In its place stood a shadow, its entire form seeming to waiver with the slightest breeze. What was this thing and where had the light gone? The shadow moved slowly towards the pony, seeming to leave behind a bit of itself with every step. As it neared, the world appeared to darken. Everything besides this entity faded out of existence. The buildings, the road, the sky, everything disappeared. All that was left was the pony, this shadow, and the darkness around them.
The shadow’s surface seemed to bubble, as if somepony was boiling water. It writhed and contorted as shapes began to arise from its surface. First, hooves began to drop out from underneath it, and then a back arched out of the darkness, like a cat stretching. Soon, most of a pony was kneeling on the darkness that was the ground. All of it was formed but the writhing mass of darkness that still formed where its head should be.
The monstrosity’s “head” quickly began to shift between many different forms. It became a young filly, then an old colt with a white mane, then a beautiful mare with a look of pure terror on her face. It continued to rapidly shift between these faces, each one bore a look similar to the mare’s, a look of pure horror. Suddenly the pony understood what the faces were. They were the last thing the ponies had experienced before their deaths and the look was always the same: fear.
All of a sudden, the writhing stopped. The darkness had settled on a blank face. The creature lacked features. No eyes, no mouth, no mane, nothing. The shadow pony stared directly into the real pony’s eyes and she could almost begin to make out her own reflection in its face. Before she could see anything clearly however, the creature turned around. A horrible grating, echoing voice seemed to escape from the essence of the shadow.
“I give my gift to you. Use it wisely,”
~~~
The pony’s eyes flew open. Thank Celestia it was only a dream. The pony attempted to stretch the stiffness out of her joints, but before she even extender her fore legs halfway, they collided with something hard. What was going on here? What could she have hit? Once again, she lifted her fore legs up and once again she came into contact with something.
She slowly moved her hooves across its abrasive surface. Suddenly, a splitting pain shot through her hoof. She retracted it back in front of her face so she would be able to see what happened in the small amount of light that existed in the cramped space. Upon inspection, she found a splinter protruding from her hoof. She raised the shard of wood to her mouth and used her teeth to rip it out of her hoof. The pony shook out her wounded hoof, accidentally hitting it on the low roof a few times.
Wait a second, low roof, cramped walls, minimal light, made of wood… She was in a coffin! Why was she buried? Was she dead? What would she do? Her mind whirled with questions but she forced herself to think. She could figure all this out after she escaped.
Once again, she raised her hoof to the roof of the coffin. Slowly, so as not to get another splinter, the pony began to move her fore hooves along the coarse, wooden surface. There had to be something here, this coffin most defiantly wasn’t perfect, especially considering the thin layer of dirt that coated almost the entirety of the box’s interior. Finally she hit something. The pony slid her hoof across it several times, just to make certain. It was a rather large crack in the coffin’s roof where the pressure from the dirt above had caused it to cave in slightly. Apparently whoever had buried her had truly thought she was dead and so they hadn’t bothered to build the box very well.
She would only get one shot at this, so she would have to make every second count. The pony inhaled deeply and prepared herself for what she was about to do. In one swift motion, she drove her fore hoof into the cracked section of the casket. Instantly the sound of shattering wood assaulted her ears as splinters of the broken coffin rained down into the interior. Dirt quickly seeped in to fill what little space she had and threatened to fill the whole casket in that single instant.
Then, suddenly, the dirt stopped flowing. The loose earth formed a large mound that now dominated half the casket. She turned her head towards the mound and studied it for a minute. It was obviously dirt, but it hadn’t sat for very long. Evidently she hadn’t been buried for more than a week or two at the most, perhaps only a few days.
The “dead” pony would have started digging her way out if not for one small problem: The inflow of dirt had trapped her entire fore leg up to her shoulder under a mound of earth. She violently thrashed her arm about under the pile, but only succeeded in getting even further stuck. It was obvious that she wouldn’t be able to use that hoof to get out. There had to be some other way.
~~~
The vampire stood before a newly buried grave. He always hated this job. Why the Alpha would want to waste his considerable talent on welcoming new blood was certainly beyond him. For what seemed like the hundredth time that night, the colt looked up at the moon. The bright orb hadn’t moved much since the last time he checked, but that didn’t surprise the vampire, considering how often he had checked.
He groaned loudly. This pony was taking forever to get up. Why was this vampire so important anyways? Of course every new vampire always got somepony to welcome them into their new life, but why did this particular pony warrant such a high ranking vampire to welcome them?
That obnoxious Shadowbolt had tried to explain it to him before her left, but the vampire hadn’t paid much attention. Apparently, a vampire had been killed, not that that was anything too extremely strange, but it was the way she had died that was so unusual. Strangely, Octavia, one of the Alpha’s more trusted vampires, was found dead with a massive hole in her head, almost as if someone had murdered her. The colt scoffed at the idea that somepony had gotten the jump on Octavia. She was devious and preferred to deeply infiltrate towns and befriend their natives before savagely killing them all.
The Alpha was thoroughly convinced it was murder though. He even went so far as to believe that there was somepony who was hunting vampires now and that they were just laying low at the moment. As far as he remembered, the Alpha thought that the pony in this grave would prove to be a valuable asset against this hunter.
Suddenly, a movement from the grave caught the vampire’s eye. A hoof shot out of the dirt, quickly followed be a second, each one grabbing onto the surface grass as if they were hanging off the edge of a cliff. Slowly but surely, a mare’s head rose from the grave, her mane filled with dirt, panting as if this was the most difficult thing she had ever done in her life. It took the mare a few seconds before she noticed the vampire staring at her. Her empty white eyes, the signature characteristic of a vampire, stared directly at him, as if he was a threat to her newly returned life. The colt smiled widely, baring his fangs in the process. He extended his fore leg out to her.
“Come with me,” the vampire said, “There is somepony who would very much like to meet you.”