An Equestrian Girl needs a Doctor

by jidbrony

Prince of Darkness: Prologue

Doctor Who and the Prince of Darkness

Written by Doctor Grant

Prologue

The year was 1462.

After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, The Turkish armies invaded Europe with a vastly superior force, striking at various parts of southeastern europe, including the land between the Carpathian mountains that would eventually become Romania. From Wallachia and Transylvania arose a Knight from the Sacred Order of the Dragon, known as Vlad Tepes III, to defend the church. So great was his love for his God and his people that he even left his newly wed bride to fight for the Lord.

In battle, Vlad has the advantage, as the Turks spread thin. Thusly, after a long period of brutal conflict, Vlad was able to route them. However, only to return home, bursting through the doors, to a tragic loss.

His bride, Elizabeta, had perished. Her body looked much the same way it did when she was alive, one could almost assume her to be asleep. “Oh, you arrived!” his brother Radu said with forced cordiality. However, Vlad was already suspecting the truth.

Radu, the ambitious Viperu Neagru, or rather, the Black Adder, had sent the pig boy, Patrontas (a name which translates to “Baldrick”) to pretend to be a Turkish soldier who sent a letter to Elizabeta that claimed Vlad had perished. The Viperu Neagru’s scheme was to have him bed with Elizabeta so that Vlad would think her to be unfaithful to him. But the plan did not go as Radu intended. Elizabeta, in despair, threw herself into the river. She was pulled out, but it was far too late to save her. All of the Viperu Neagru’s efforts to make her seem alive were for naught, and the fact his only help came from Patrontas, who was easily paradoxically both the most and the least intelligent servant on the grounds, didn’t help. They had many a “cunning” plan, but nothing that could fool Vlad.

In the end, all they could do was preserve the body. Her body looked almost exactly as it did when she was alive, any malodorous aroma concealed by the spices, but the blood stain on the side of her mouth and the lack of breath indicated her true physical state. He found a letter upon her person, the note of suicide meant to be read after her passing. It said this:

“Vlad is dead. My Love is dead. My Dream is dead. I am forever lost without him. To join him in Heaven forever, I abandon this sorrowful Earth.”

The bearded castle priest seemed to immediately understand what Vlad was fearing, and he was not one without empathy, but he was also not one to mince words: “In her emotion, deprived us all of her own life. She cannot be saved. Raising his crucifix staff over her, he continused, “she is cursed, damned, and she will never reach the Kingdom of Heaven.” During this time period, suicide was generally considered one of the single most mortal sins of all time, and sometimes high emotionalism was greatly frowned upon.

Not that it would stop Vlad. No matter what, grief was the same for us all. The love of his life, Elizabeta, was gone. He could not accept this...no...he will not accept this!!

In rage, Vlad began to snarl, and pushed down a piller of holy water, the blood on his armored suit mixing with the water to create an eerie effect.

“Is this me reward for serving the Lord?” he asked demandingly, his eyes and face red with rage.

“No-nonsense!” protested the priest, “he- you were chosen, by him, to protect the Church and-”

“I renounce him!” Vlad screamed.

The robed priest looked mortified, and he took a step back, and he made the cross with his fingers. This was blasphemy, and this was the kind of talk that there was no going back from.

“I renounce him!” repeated Vlad, “and all of you hypocrites who serve him!”

The priests took a step back. Dracula continued:

“If my love burns in Hell, then I shall become one of the demons myself! I! Dracula! Voivode of Wallachia, will arise from the grave, and will wage war on the Church and on all of Christendom with the Darkness!”

Radu, terrified of his bother’s rage, decided to remain as obscure as possible, trying to hid in a nook of the sanctuary. His efforts were in vain.

“And you, brother!” Vlad spat. “You betrayed me! I know that you did! The little man Patrontas couldn’t hide it from me.”

Radu shot a dirty look at Patrontas. Patrontas gave him one of his usual half-hearted protests, “well, he was very insistent. And he’s really clever you know.”

Vlad ignored this and continued: “I curse you! Yes, I curse you!! I curse you to always be seeking power, but never to claim it! You and all of your descendants! I curse you all to misery and short lifespans! You shall never succeed in your goal to power until the end of the Millennium! And it will not be claimed by you, or in this Universe, but by a descendant who would surely hate you in another!! And you! Potrontas!!” he continued to rave, “you shall be doomed, in all lives you live, to serve him in misery!”

“But I serve him in misery now,” Patrontas replied plaintitively. “It won’t make much of a difference, would it?”

Vlad seemed to ignore this. Such details were irrelevant in his blind rage.

Realizing that this was perhaps all the consequences he was going to recieve, for a moment, Radu, the Viperu Neagru calmed down enough to default back to his usual smug self: “Oh yes? You and what powers?”

Vlad gave the Viperu Neagru a wild look. There was a long, tense moment. Once again, Radu lost all of his cool. Vlad was up to something. He knew something that even the wily Viperu Niagru didn’t. But what? Vlad then decided to show just what powers he meant.

Vlad rushed to the stone cross and stabbed it.

There was a silence. Nothing.

At that moment, Radu had laughed.

However, the laughter ended when, criously, the cross bled.

Radu’s eyes widened.

“The blood of God is the life!” declared Vlad. “And the life...shall be mine!” With that, he drank the blood from the cross.

A student of the Scholomance, Vlad had learned the dark arts, and discovered that otherworldly powers occurred naturally in his bloodline. There was even a legend that these powers came from an ancestor, said to be none other than Selene herself, whom his Roman ancestors dubbed “Luna”. But these abilities were long buried, unable to for him to reach, no matter how much he tried to will it...until he found help.

Having made contact with an outer but greater voice than his own, gifted with an intelligence above his own, whom Dracula believed must have been the Devil himself, he had already learned how to tap into this unreachable potential, and make himself immortal. He had completed all of the right steps, save for the very last one, which he refused to undergo, because he was a Knight of the Lord, and the final act to gain these powers would be an offense to God. As it stood, he also had intended to lead a natural lifespan and grow old with Elizabeta. His contract with this Devil, he had no intention of completing it. The immortality this Intelligence offered, he had no intention of using it.

Until now.

Elizabeta was dead. God had clearly forsaken him. He had nothing else to lose. He stabbed the cross in the castle sanctuary, which the voice told him contained the very flesh of the One-in-All and All-in-One himself, whom Vlad assumed was the Lord. The fact that it was bleeding had proven this claim was most likely true. The next step was to drink the blood, and thus gain the essence of the Intelligence in him.

Already, now, Vlad could feel something change within him. He could feel something different, something that would immerse after death, something that would ensure that his death would be nothing more than a metamorphosis. He would have to age into it, of course, but it was a guarantee of life. Already the Spirit, the Voice, was calling back to him, assuring him that what would be death for most would be change for him...but change into what?

Then the cross squirted blood on Vlad’s face, as a humiliating rebuke, and then he suddenly asked himself: What have I done? He made a decision he couldn’t back down from: In his pain and misery, he had cursed himself to many lifetimes of loneliness.

To be immortal, to be among the woes and failings of this world that caused him so much pain...he didn’t think this through...and without Elizabeta? Surely such a life would be even worse than to spend an eternity in Heaven without her, or in Hell with her. At this thought, he roared in rage and regret.

As the room flooded with blood, filling it with its bitterly sweet smell, Elizabeta’s body began to float…

Author's Note:

Fun Fact: This is actually quite similar to the opening to the 1995 version of Dracula

Comments

[Ze1a7in]

...I was not expecting to kick the adventures off with Dracula. Hope Sunset brought her chain whip!

[Paulon]

That was a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.

[Sixes_And_Sevens]

I'm torn between dread at the obviously threatening opening of this story and mad giggling at the return of the Black Adder.

[Big Brother is Watching]

9229776
The thing that I didn't care much for during the Eleventh's initial run was that much of the time, the scares were game-based rules (like "remember" or "don't blink"), rather than something more uncanny. I wanted to write a more Classic Who-styled story, and the Philip Hinchcliffe era, a favorite of mine, sometimes lifted a lot from existing horror stories. Because Dracula is public domain, a classic tale, and because I wanted to reserve my more original ideas for books I intend to write, I picked Dracula. More importantly, Dracula is a story about a vampiric aristocracy, which aligns well with what we were going for with Sunset Shimmer, and thus Dracula seemed to be a great fit to kick off for a scary start.

9229901
9230056
Black Adder! Black Adder!
With many a cunning plan!
Black Adder! Black Adder!
You Horrid Little Man!!