Fangs

by Sapphic

Instincts

I woke with a start, jolting upright fast enough to pain my back and twisting my head side to side fast enough to hurt my neck. I was looking to see if anyone had been watching me in my sleep. My eyes were wide as I looked over every charcoal nook and death black cranny of the hall, leaving no pillar or stone unchecked. Despite my suspicions, every search ended the same way with not a soul watching me.

I ended my search with a sigh of relief.

'This castle is starting to get to me.' I thought just before a rouge realization popped into my head, regarding my previous previous observation.

"Bigs?" I called, curious at the disappearance of the stallion that had been there when I had closed my eyes not too long ago. Or was it? Bigs was the one who was supposed to wake me up.

Thanks to that thought, another thought hit me.

"Vinyl!" The thoughts of her running rampant without me rushed through my head like running water.

My screaming was enough to wake my sister, who seemed less than happy to be woken up from her nap with the sound of my shouting voice. She rolled and grumbled, apparently not realizing what I was screaming about, and that we were missing the fight. I scrambled up, my muscles feeling relatively rested, and stumbled over to my sister, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her violently.

"Sis! We're missing it!" I shouted frantically.

"Missing what?" She grumbled quietly, peaking open an eye.

"The fight! Vinyl! Octavia! All of it!" I shouted, letting go of her shoulders to have her hit the ground unceremoniously while I bolted up, and sprinted over to the door with renewed speed.

I nearly crashed through the doors, or so I thought, but they were locked up tight and barely even budged.

I pushed as hard as I could on the doors, but they didn't even groan under the pressure I was putting out, so I and turned rammed my back up against the door, trying to use my legs to push while I barked at my sister again,

"Sis get the hell up!" I yelled in a growing annoyance. My sister finally pulled herself up with a groan and stepped up off the ground, taking plenty of time to stretch her front and hind legs and let out a satisfied sigh. She looked around both sides of her and asked the same question I had asked:

"Where's Bigs at?" I stopped pushing and turned to her,

"I dunno, he was gone when I woke up too," I turned back to face the doors, my head having to lean back to look at the tops of them,

"now help me get this damned door open. Vinyl's inside remember." I said, going back to pushing forwards.

My sister trotted up beside me and put her hooves up to the wood as well, pushing with all her might just as I was, but even together our strengths weren't enough to make the door budge. I was beginning to think that someone from the inside had locked the doors on us, specifically to keep anyone else out.

"Welcome to my little study Vinyl, quite a good place to come and cozy up with a good view don't you think?" The stallion behind me said in a smooth, and rather mocking, tone to a white mare that had burst through the doors with an explosion of a tar-like color. I assumed that, judging from what the stallion had said, that this was the Vinyl he had told me about.

The stallion had told me many things about her in a little amount of time: one being that she was intent on killing him and taking me away, but not to where. Why anyone would want to kill him was beyond me, but I certainly wasn't going to let a killer take me anywhere. He had asked of me 'one thing' and that was for me to protect him against his assassin. Something about his voice combined with the fact that he had shown me nothing but kindness so far gave me courage, so I accepted with confidence.

One might think that stupid, and I would be that one if it weren't for the feeling of strength coursing through my veins. It was odd, supernatural to say the least; my eyes seemed to notice the smallest of clues and somethings that would normally go completely unseen by me, even my ears picked up the smallest of sounds when I willed them to. I felt amazing even though I had never been much of a fighter, but something about this stallion just made him feel so worthy of being defended.

This 'Vinyl' had come in with a face of rage and anger, but it had dropped within seconds and turned to a softer look of shock. She seemed to be looking at me in a funny way, as if analyzing me like something was wrong.

"What did...What did you do to her?" She whispered in a shaky voice.

'Was she talking about me? And if so, what? Was it about my newly sharpened senses? What was she on about?' I questioned her violently in my mind, but only in my mind.

"Nothing really, just giving her the full extent of a gift." He said with a snicker that calmed me.

'A gift? How nice of him.' I thought soothingly, a smile drifting onto my face.

"You bastard." She muttered under her breath, barely reaching above a whisper while her hind legs began bending at the joint as she went down into a pouncing stance. I was still in a dopey thought, and didn't even notice her start a pounce aimed past me and at the stallion.

"Octavia," The soothing voice snapped me out of my thoughts, "this is where you come in." It finished.

I quickly readied myself and focused.

The world around me seemed to slow, everything slowing down to the point where a blink of an eye seemed to take a few minutes, myself included. I fastened my eyes on the in-air white mare, lining myself up and beginning to move on an intercept course for her in an effort to stop her from reaching the stallion. Said stallion had a cocky look on his face as he seemingly chose not to move out of the way.

Time began to return to its normal speed, everything slowly speeding up faster and faster as my chosen trajectory seemed to check out more and more with every waking second. The mare's eyes adjusted in on me and she seemed to try to twist and turn in midair in an effort to slow herself, and she did, but not completely. Despite her changes, I manged to readjust enough to push her completely off course and send her into the bookcases, which proceeded to topple one by one on top of her.

'That takes care of that.' I thought to myself as I turned and walked back over to the stallion.

The sound of broken wood being moved caught my ear and my eyes widened a bit.

"Still moving now, aren't we Vinyl?" The stallion asked the pile of bookcases in a mocking tone.

The only response was from the top bookcase being pushed off lightly and the white mare on the inside of the rubble climbing out lazily, stepping down the other bookcases like stairs until she was on the ground once more. She looked stoic, her purple sunglasses, which were somehow still unscathed despite having her thrown into a wall, hiding her emotions well.

I turned to face her once more and waited for her to make a move.

She didn't at first, taking at least a minute or two doing nothing but looking at me, from what I could tell behind her glasses, with her stoney expression. Despite her stoney looks, I held the gaze.

During that time, the stallion moved around slowly, circling her like a vulture, and eventually got right behind her at the door. He lifted his hoof and twisted some mechanism that made a locking thud soon after. Despite that, the white mare did nothing more than continue to stare at me, not bothering to watch him sneak around her.

"Wouldn't want anything interrupting this now would we?" He asked both rhetorically and cockily.

"You see Vinyl, I took that little analytical attribute about her and turned into so much more; speed is useless when you have someone that can read it faster than you can dish it out, as you can see." The stallion said darkly with his head held low.

"But," He looked up with a gleam in his eye. "your natural instincts are more than enough for you to win this fight Vinyl. Just give into them and you can win, you can kill me, all you have to do is simply give in." He said teasingly.

"I know your feeling them, that insatiable craving that gnaws at the back your head until you feed it something to get it off your shoulder for the time being, only to have inevitably come back with a hunger larger than before. I know that you just want it to quit, you even starved it for weeks but it got the better of you." He went on,

"So what will you do: Will you give in and finish the goal you made of killing me? Or will you push your luck against odds that lean only in my favor?"

She didn't respond with her words, instead bending down in another pouncing position as if readying for another jump.

'Is she really going to try this again?' I thought to myself, my eyes narrowing in on her while making sure to give her a condescending look.

"I know what you're trying to get me to do..." She mumbled to herself right before she pounced at me at a blistering speed.

Despite that speed, it only looked like she was floating slowly towards me with my keen eyesight. I raised a hoof back and sent it forwards on an intercept course with her head, only to have something odd happen.

She skidded to a stop right in front of me, just outside of my reach. The momentum of my punch sent me off balance and I stumbled forwards. It was then that she turned away from me and faced the stallion, who had thought himself sneaky when trying to sneak up behind her, only to pause with a slightly shocked look on his face. He hadn't expected it, and neither had I.

She charged at him, forcing him to make a quick jump to the side and having her graze him.

She went past him and land against the door on her hooves with a loud thump, sending shakes through the massive wooden door.

Me and my sister were still pushing against the door when something from the other side hit against it and sent us reeling back from the blow. It sent a headache shooting through out heads, even hitting us hard enough to force us to our rumps in an effort not fall over. I shook my head a bit, looking at the door with a raised brow at first, but it quickly faded with the thought of the white mare that was bound to be raising hell in there pretty soon.

"We've gotta get in there..." I grumbled.

"Sis, I honestly don't think that were going to get in there at this rate." My sister said sadly.

"I think I might have a solution for that." A familiar voice spoke from behind us.

I turned my head my head quickly to see Bigs coming out of a corridor from the side of the room, a smug smile on his face. The weak look in his eyes showed that he was a tired, but for what reason was unknown. I thought on that fact and linked it to the dirt that covered some of his hooves, but decided to push it aside for the time being and ask him about where he went rather than what he did.

"Well, you might have found this out the hard way," He began, "but somebody locked the door on the inside. I figured you two wouldn't want to be too late for the show, so I decided to go and try to find a side entrance."

"Side entrance?" I asked with hope.

"Yep, I've been in this castle for quite awhile now, don't think I haven't found out some of it's secrets." He said with a little chuckle,

"Anyways, there is a small tunnel up stairs that will lead you to the throne room, at first it's a little tight, but it opens up wide once you get a ways into it. At the end of it is a pair of loose bricks that I managed to pry out. Even got a glimpse of the fight going on." He said.

"Really?" I asked.

His head sunk down a bit.

"It's an ugly sight seeing those two fight, that crazed lunatic sure did change Octavia..." He trailed off and my eyes went wide.

At first, I had thought he meant it was an ugly sight to see Vinyl and his 'ex'-master fight, but when he mentioned Octavia, my gut twisted up. To think that that prick is willing to start stooping so low as to use Vinyl's emotions against her.

I could do little more than grind my teeth at the thought.

"Where's the hole at?" My sister asked while I fumed over the situation Vinyl was being put through. It was not only cruel, but it was also just evil.

"Up the stairs, we can go now if you want." He said nonchalantly.

"Show me." I spat.

He paused and gave me a look for a second, as if debating if he should actually show me or not, but he eventually just shrugged and started his way towards the corridor he had come from. As it turned out, there was a set of stairs tucked away inside the corridor, making them fairly easy to miss, and up those stairs was another floor of the castle entirely. I had guess that there was a second, but seeing it was another thing.

Bigs led us down a hall and took a sudden right turn towards a door that opened up into what looked like a closet. He manged to squeeze me, himself, and my sister into the closet, squeeze himself past me and my sister, and even move aside a couple rags and piles of cloth that turned out to be hiding a small hole that only lifted about a foot off the ground.

We stared at the hole for awhile, all three of us, silently questioning our body sizes.

"This is the hole?" My sister asked.

"Yeah...a bit small I know, but I figured you two could both squeeze inside if you took off the armor. " He said, pointing out we still had the armor on.

We, my sister and I, gave it some thought and took off the armor with a bit of help from one another and gave the hole try. Yes, we could fit inside the hole, and I could even bring the spear along too, but my sister was getting a bit claustrophobic at the idea.

"Will you be coming?" I asked Bigs after popping back out of the hole with my sister.

He shook his head, "I'll be back at the entrance of the castle just in case some of the guards catch word of their master getting attacked." He said with a smile.

I nodded and bent over, looking down the tunnel that seemed to curve up and down as you went further and further. I gave a gulp and started my crawl, my sister following me close behind.

"Don't worry about the end of the tunnel, like I said, I already cleared it out for you." He said from outside the hole, the next sound following suit was the sound of a door shutting.

I stood tall as I looked at the persistent white mare.

She was panting by now, having taken nearly all the blows dealt by both me and the stallion while dishing out none herself. I found it rather odd how she was fighting: she wasn't going on the offensive at all and seemed to prefer faking us out with speed. Most of the time it failed thanks to my keen eyes and the stallion's strikes from her blind side that were slowly corroding her ability to move as fast and fluent, but some of the times she managed to trip us up.

Another thing that struck me as a bit odd was the fact she hadn't used magic either, you'd think that a unicorn in a fight would be using all the magic they had, but she hadn't even charged her horn once.

'What an odd character.' I thought to myself as I watched her ready herself.

The stallion struck out at her once more, coming from behind her with a dark chuckle that made her jolt forwards by instinct. She wound up coming straight for me, where she finally managed to get tripped up.

I swiped my hoof at her legs, sending her tumbling to the ground in a panting heap. She tried to get up but I quickly jumped on her and pinned her to the ground, straddling her with my haunches and pushing her hooves above her head. She briefly struggled against my pin, the force she was putting was next to nothing, before simply giving up and going limp.

I heard the sound of steady hoof steps closing in from behind me and I knew it was the stallion approaching to presumably deliver the final blow.

Sure enough, he came into view and stood in front of me, looking down onto the white mare with a smile of joy and dominance. He bent down a bit, leaning closer to her until he was about nose to nose distance with her.

"You lost," He said simply, "but don't worry, I still have plans for you."

He turned to me, "Octavia?"

I looked up to him.

"Let her go, I don't think she has any plans of resisting anymore." He said.

I followed his orders and let up, and sure enough, she didn't even move. Not even I got up off of her and stood above her or even when the stallion leaned back down to get nose to nose with her again.

"You know what is really interesting about what I did to her Vinyl?" He asked but getting no response.

"It's that despite her having nearly all the abilities of one of our kind, she still retains one thing from before." He let that sink into her before scooting over and picking up a shard of wood from nearby, bringing it up and calling me near.

"I promise this won't hurt." He said in his soothing voice as he poked the wood at my hoof, pushing it in with a controlled force until it was enough pressure to pierce the skin and get a flinch out of me. The second I flinched he let up removed the shard of wood, then pushed around the wound so that droplets of blood bubbled up. Afterwards, he took the shard and scraped some of the blood from off my hoof and onto the wood.

He looked back to the white mare, bending down and dangling the shard in front of her with a sneer just before he licked the blood clean off in one go.

"Her blood Vinyl, it's just as delicious and alluring as before. Unchanged in fact. This is the reason I found you so interesting and wanted you so badly: you're an exception to the rule of the transformations." He decided to elaborate as he lifted up and away from her.

"Under normal circumstances, new vampires are rarely made. It takes the blood of a pure blood, untransformed, vampire to create another; and that process takes longer than most of them live with the hunters constantly after them," He bent back down.

"but you have a special attribute about the toxin you can create. It works as a substitute for the pure blood process: an alternative. They aren't nearly as strong as what a pure blood would be, but the speed at which they can be made is astounding. That's why I want you under my control, to help raise enough of them to get my kind, our kind, out of the clutches of those damned hunters and make more pure bloods."

I had no idea what he was on about, but it sounded like the 'hunters' kept him and his 'kind' in quite the position of submission and I could understand his yearning to break free of that submission.

"So just stay still, and we can help free ourselves from them." He said as bent down closer to her neck just in time for my ear twitched, the sound of something whistling reaching my ear and quickly rising in pitch.

I turned to face the noise, but I only got a quarter way through the turn before a blur of black flew by my nose and struck into the ground.

I jutted my eyes back towards the stallion to see that it was a spear that had flew past me and plunged in between the small gap between the stallion's teeth and the white mare's neck, effectively blocking him. It had struck with enough force to plow about a foot into the stone, quite the display of strength and accuracy if they were aiming for that tiny gap.

The sound of hooves hitting the ground drew my attention back towards the direction of where the spear had flown from.

"Oh me oh my, looks like we have some extra guests," The stallion lifted his head from the white mare, "uninvited ones too. The worst kind." He said, his tone turning sour at the end.

"Shut up." The lead mare said, her tone positively dripping with venom.

"Feisty aren't we?" The stallion said with a cocky smile just as a bolt of magic was fired, forcing him to duck and his smile to fade.

"She said shut up." Another voice chimed in as another set of hooves hit the ground.

The stallion recomposed himself and plastered his smile back on before addressing the two new mares.

"Well, if I had to guess, you two are Shakes and Sweeps? Here to rescue Vinyl aren't you?" He asked, watching as the unicorn's expression turned to slightly taken aback. The earth pony however, kept moving as if he hadn't said anything.

"Octavia, these two are the companions of Vinyl here, I believe you know what to do?" He asked, getting a nod out of me as I turned to face the approaching mare. I took a step over the collapsed body of 'Vinyl' and I faced who I assumed was Shakes if the itch in the back of my head was telling me the truth.

I waited until she was the perfect distance, a distance where she would have no room for reaction, then pounced at her, only to be met with a smack in the face with what seemed to be an invisible wall.

I staggered back, confused at first, but once my eyes caught glimpse and narrowed in on the unicorn's horn behind her, I realized what it was that I had bumped into. She was closing fast, her slow trot turning into a sprint as she gained foot after foot of distance.

I felt another hoof grab my shoulder and pull back, forcing my head to turn just in time to see the stallion bolting past me, using my shoulder as a sort of support to help him go faster. The glimpse I got of his face showed me that he was in slight panic and anger, but it was primarily stony, while he used me as leverage to go airborne.

He pushed on me hard enough to send me tumbling back, tripping over the body of Vinyl and sending me onto my rump. I felt my hoof, the same one that the stallion had pierced with the wood, hit something plastic while my other hit something soft and furry.

I lifted my head just in time to see the stallion smash the barrier with a single hoof hard enough to send it into pieces that faded into thin air, the unicorn mare that had been holding up the barrier reeled back and collapsed while her hooves reached up to cradle her horn. The other one however, used the stallion's airborne state to her advantage and slide underneath him and towards me.

She bolted past me and grabbed the spear with her mouth, giving it a firm test swing as a warning to any who dared to come close.

The stallion recovered from his jump and faced the mare immediately, but his eyes took a brief glimpse behind him, and a crooked smile formed on his face.

He turned and ran after towards the fallen unicorn, 'Sweeps' was her name I think.

The earth pony's eyes widened but quickly narrowed on him with rage. She jerked her head upwards and spat out the spear, sending up into the air where she caught it with her hoof and started to throw it at him.

I was quick to push off the ground and move in the way of the spear just as it left her hoof, my eyes focusing in on the spear and time beginning to slow just enough for me to catch the spear in mid throw. The force that she had used was strong enough to strain my teeth and neck, even forcing me to stumble back when I landed just to relieve them both of the pressure.

'Such a throw...' I thought, spitting the spear onto the ground and looking back up to see the thrower filled with anger.

Her eyes stared hard at me, but flicked off to the side for some reason, and then a smile began to form. I followed where I thought her gaze had went and saw that it had landed on the door.

When my eyes came back to meet her, she was already in full sprint and half way towards her exit.

I had started after her myself, but she had gotten too far of a lead for me to catch up to her. Thankfully, I didn't need to.

Her hoof hit the door just as the stallion spoke out.

"Don't open that door Shakes." He said, my eyes looking over to see him holding up the cringing unicorn by wrapping one hoof around her neck while his other was raised menacingly. The look in his eyes suggested that he wasn't bluffing about his implied intents.

"Now, just come over here, sit back, and enjoy the show you idiotic hunter," He snarled at her as he hoisted the unicorn further off the ground, smiling as he made her squirm, "unless, that is, you want to say goodbye to your sister here."

The mare at the door looked in horror, her eyes glimpsing back and forth between the door and the mare until her frustration reached its limits.

"Shit!" She yelled in anger, her hoof sliding off the door at the same time of her outburst before she reluctantly trudged over to the stallion, making sure to stare him hard in the eyes before she sat down.

"Let her go." She spat at him, getting only a devious grin before he shoved the unicorn unceremoniously onto the ground beside her sister where she was met with immediate attention.

"Now, where was-" He began, only to be interrupted by a speeding bolt of dark blue that hit him square in the side hard enough to send him back into the wall and even force cracks out around him in a perfect circle. His eyes were wide and his mouth agape as he gasped for the air that had been forced out of him through the sheer impact of the blow.

Every set of eyes turned to face where the blast had come from, and every set of eyes widened at the sight.

"You were right..." A deviously sultry voice cooed, "she does taste just as good."

The white mare that had been previously subdued was now standing tall with her hoof wiping the blood from her face and greedily licking off every drop she could get. Her glasses had fallen off her head and in there place were two piercing, half lidded, lusty eyes that gazed at me with hunger.