Fangs: The Order

by Sapphic

Walls

*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*...Maple...*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*

I let out a big sigh as I looked off into the distance, looking over the courtyard and at the small forms of all the hunters training heavily. I was leaned up against the cold cobblestone that made up the small room of the watchtower I was settled in, looking through a small arch that served as a window while the darkness covered the corners of the room. Moonlight came down plentifully from the clear sky above. A cool breeze flowed gently through the air.

It was pretty calm out here all things considered. After visiting General Care about my little visit by Vinyl, he said it'd be best if I was put as far away from her as possible, for both of our sakes.

Though, being posted on the watchtower wasn't exactly what I had in mind, it was definitely peaceful.

"You can't do that ya dumb brat!" An elderly voice prattled.

"Can so, old geezer." An agitated, much younger voice said back.

Well, it was definitely peaceful when the other two watchguards who were posted in the same tower as me weren't bickering at eachother. And oh did they bicker a lot.

One of them, the older one, was one of the oldest members in The Order. His name was Sour Puss, I laughed a bit when I first heard it, but a quick hit to the head from his cane was enough to fix that. All things considered though, it was about as fitting as names come when you looked at his demeanor. One of his most notable traits was his eyebrows, which somehow managed to be so big and bushy that they covered his eyes. How he still managed to see was beyond me.

The other one, ironically one of the newest members of the hunt, was Tall Tale. He had a bad habit of lying, though he said he used to write fairy tales before he joined, so I guess it could be expected. He was also an apparent magnet for Sour Puss's cane, because it found its way onto the back of his head more often than not.

The two also had major conflict in just about anything. For instance, they were currently playing a game of tic tac toe, and they somehow managed to make conflict on whether a move was "legal" or not.

Seriously.

I quickly found that the only way to get the two to stop arguing with one another, was to talk to them both.

"Hey Sour Puss."

The old brown stallion raised one of his craggy brows, both him and Tall Tale stopping their bickering in an instant, giving me their undivided attention.

They both also seemed to posses an oddly strong sense of manners towards mares, which was pretty much the only thing that the two could agree on.

"Hah? What is it miss?" He asked, turning the chair he was sat in towards myself and leaning on his cane.

I figured, with him being so old, he might be the best bet to learn a thing or two about Vinyl's legend since he might've been around when it first came up.

"Have you ever heard of Vinyl Scratch?"

He put a hoof up to his chin and hummed for a minute, trying to see if he could remember it I'd guess, though Tall Tale instantly lit up at the mention of it.

"Oh! The one with that-" He was silenced by the swift whack of a cane.

"I don't quite 'member her askin' you, youngster." Sour said, looking back to me.

"'Course I 'member it. Ta reason that old captain Shakes quit." He said.

I looked back at Tall Tale, who was rubbing the already swelling lump on his head. It was a bit odd that even one of the newest recruits would know the story by name, - maybe with her being captured and all - though that was supposed to be kept a secret from most all of the base until they managed to detain her well enough so that she would stop bursting from the cages.

"How do you know about it Tall Tale?" I asked, getting a similar set of bright eyes out of him.

"Well, I mean, I wrote fairy tales enough to know when I see a good one! I overheard my drill sergeant talking to one of the captains about it, saying something about a vampire who sent three ponies to the psych ward and left another three missing, even getting a famous captain to retire. I asked old Sour Puss about it and he told me about it-"

The sound of solid oak hitting skull rang out for the second time in a few minutes.

"T'aint no fairy tale, boy!" Sour said.

"Can you stop hitting me you old loon!" Tall said back, rubbing his head.

"Know well that that 'fairy tale' is more real than ya give credit." Sour said, backing off.

"Oh sure, like I'm supposed to believe something like that is real?"

I sighed as the two began to argue again, planning on attempting to settle it so they could be quiet and let me enjoy my peace, only to catch something a bit out of place in the corner of my eye.

Looking out at the forest, it looked like a strange red glow was coming from somewhere inside of it. It was close to the back wall of the fort, maybe a couple dozen meters from it. A gentle red colored some of the tops of the trees, giving it an almost ominous look in the dark of night.

I squinted my eyes and leaned forwards a little in an attempt to get a better look.

"What...is that?" I whispered to myself, leaning far enough for the fear of falling out to start to become a real problem.

A strange whistling came too, only furthering my perplexion. I finally managed to narrow in on some thin object around where the red glow was coming from.

'Now that I look at it...it kind of looks like it's getting...bigger?' I thought.

The sound of something going incredibly fast went by me, crashing straight through the stone wall of the watchtower with enough force to make me stagger backwards, which let me see just what had happened.

Something had came straight through one of the walls of the tower, leaving a hole maybe an inch wide in the wall that I had been leaning on. Looking past the hole, the object had apparently hit Sour's cane mid swing and broken it at the midsection, went past that and stopped only at the other wall.

The only reason I saw it was because of the molten glow it had from how fast it must have been going.

After a brief pause of shock from the sudden crash and staring at the glowering whatever it was, Tall Tale let out a chuckle as he pointed at the broken cane of Sour's, only to have the upper half of the cane still come down and hit him on the head.

I moved off of the wall and walked over to it, examining it closely.

My first assumption was that it had been a magic bolt or something like that, but looking now it was much different.

"Is that...a rock?"

*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*...Octavia...*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*

Vinyl's mother walked forwards still, red clumps of earth rising from the ground one after another as she walked, only to be pressed in on themselves with such force and heat to turn them into solid rock in an instant. She would then aim them forwards, the more narrow ends facing away from me and Sweeps. A pulse of magic would go off around them before they would seemingly disappear from sight. The only way I knew where they were heading was from the way the leaves would suddenly part in the trees ahead whenever they seemingly disappeared.

We had actually found a pretty clear part of the forest at this point, rather than having to walk over fallen logs and upraised roots like before, we were now in a place where there was nothing but grass on the ground. Even the trees were scarce, rather than there being multiple small trees to form a canopy, there were now large trees spaced maybe ten or twenty feet apart.

This only made it easier for Vinyl's mother to pluck up dirt to throw.

"And to think she said that her daughter was stronger." Sweeps murmured as we walked behind her, making sure to keep our distance from her as to not get hurt.

I shivered at the thought as well.

All thought Vinyl had arguably done more destructive feats than slinging rocks, what Vinyl's mother was doing was more impressive. Sweeps had noted it to me, but it typically took many years of constant heat and pressure to turn dirt and soil into solid rock, yet here was Vinyl's mother doing it in mere seconds.

Then again, though it was impressive, the actual impact that the shards of rock might have on the wall surrounding the base was questionable.

"Say, what do you think set her off so suddenly anyways?" Sweeps asked, looking to me.

I had no idea truly, only a few thoughts about it, though the one that I felt was probably correct put a sick feeling in my stomach.

"Possibly something with Vinyl." I suggested solemnly.

Sweeps twitched at that, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Vinyl's mother did too.

"What makes you say that?" Sweeps asked curiously, obviously sensing my feelings about the idea.

"Well, when I first met her, she had somehow managed to find her way to Canterlot from wherever she had been, without the use of any maps, or anything for that matter - and Vinyl from the way she acted, hadn't told her mother anything about where she was at."

As a mare who had trouble navigating her hometown at times, save for the three or four spots that I knew by heart, it was astounding to me that Vinyl's mother had found her way to Canterlot.

"Wow, really?" Sweeps asked, looking just as shocked by the fact before turning to Vinyl's mother. I noticed that her pace of attacking was slowly going down.

"You think that they have, like, some kind of link?" Sweeps asked, obviously feeling a bit silly with the idea, though at this point I considered it a real possibility myself.

"Possibly." I said, looking to Vinyl's mom just as she threw her last rock.

The glow of her horn died down gradually, the rocks in her magic's grasp falling, and a heavy sigh escaping her lips. Her head suddenly hung low, but not out of exhaustion, but what looked like sadness.

"You're right, this isn't going to get me anywhere." She said, still looking forwards.

Me and Sweeps looked to each other, confused as to who she was talking to, but not speaking. I had thought of that, though I hadn't spoke it at all, and as tempted as I was to ask who she was talking to, Sweeps and I were half scared she'd snap on us if we said something wrong.

She turned back to us.

"We're nearing the back wall." Was all she said before turning back and breaking out into a run, leaving me and Sweeps in a stunned silence.

We both looked to each other, me and Sweeps, before breaking into a run of our own in an attempt to catch up to the unnatural speeds of Vinyl's mom.

I had expected her to be fast, but it was still shocking to see just how fast she could move. I supposed that perhaps agility and speed ran in the family, as Vinyl really seemed to excel in it as well. Vinyl had been particularly fond of using it to play with people's heads, my own included considering the times where'd she'd quite literally run laps around me and confuse me. It looked like she was using magic, but without the flashes from the horn, and it was pretty much guaranteed to mess with anyone's head who didn't know the feats of vampires.

Not to mention the endurance they exhibited.

I was already breathing heavy, and though I knew I wasn't the fittest of people around, I could still consider myself "healthy". Though, at the same time, even Sweeps was breathing in a similar fashion as me - and I considered her to be much more fit than myself considering her sister's apparent previous occupation.

The wind stung a bit as I ran as quick as my hooves would carry me, though what hurt more was when I ran right into the hind of Vinyl's mother who had decided to stop conveniently just after a clearing of bushes that I had to go through.

All things considered, it was a pretty soft landing.

I looked ahead to see what had caused her to go full stop, and gasped myself as I saw it.

*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*

"Well...it's certainly...big." Sweeps said, wide eyed as she stared ahead intently.

"I've seen bigger." Vinyl's mother added.

"Well, it's the largest I've ever seen." Sweeps replied.

"It's the only one I've ever seen." I said, blushing at the conversation.

"Really? You haven't even seen the ones back in Canterlot?" Sweeps asked. "Even I've seen a couple back there."

"I...I don't get out much..." I blushed.

We all stared up at the massive wall in front of us, my neck having to crane completely back just to be able to see the top of it. It was a solid grey color, most likely concrete from what Sweeps said, and the way that the concrete jutted outwards at the top suggested that scaling the wall was out of the question.

"Yep, it's one big wall alright." Sweeps said.

"So, how are we gonna be getting through this thing?" She asked, looking back at us.

Vinyl's mother wordlessly walked up and pointed her horn at the wall, her brows furrowing and her face scrunching up in concentration as her horn began to glow to the point of being almost white in color. As soon as it was about to cause temporary blindness, she touched it to the wall and the color faded in an instant.

I blinked.

"W-What happened?"

It had appeared that her spell didn't work at first, though after a second or so, the wall she had touched with her horn began to glow a faint red in the shape of a large circle. I watched in amazement as she moved a hoof up to the glowing circle on the wall and leaned on it slightly, the hard concrete of the wall crumbling to the point where it looked like it was nothing but sand.

"Pretty simple really, just a bit of tugging on the stuff holding it together and most anything will crumble like sand. Brute force is one thing, but hitting everything lightly can get similar results."

"But that was solid concrete that was at least ten feet thick! Even if you did get rid of the cement holding it together, the concrete would still be there." Sweeps said, poking the pile of sand with her hoof.

Vinyl's mother giggled and put a hoof up to her chin.

"I never said the cement deary, you just have to pull apart the concrete bit by bit on the inside. Like melting an ice cube from the inside out." She said, blushing a bit.

"Ah-hem."

We all three turned at the sound of someone clearing their throat, looking into the hole Vinyl's mom had created to see that dozens of stallions and mares were looking at us with very unamused looks on their faces.

Not to mention the particularly sharp weapons they were holding, ranging anywhere from sword and spears to bolts for crossbows.

"Heh, h-hey there guys! Wouldn't you believe the trip we've had." Sweeps laughed nervously, treating the hunters as if they were old friends.

A bolt flew by her face as a response, shaving by the edge of her face and ruffling her mane at the same time, her face unchanged from its sheepish grin.

"No welcoming gifts then?" She asked meekly.

"Now watch closely deary-" Vinyl's mother said from behind us both, causing us to turn and see that she had plucked the bolt from flight.

"-and I can show you how that magic trick from earlier can serve multiple purposes." She said, floating the bolt over to the pile of concrete dust and burying it inside it.

Everyone, even the hunters in front of us, watched intensly as the bolt was put in the dirt with no immediate results.

"Ohhh, yeah," Sweeps said observantly. ", it can also serve as our graves once we get murdered in cold blood!" She shouted.

"Well, that is another purpose, but I was referring to this one." She said, pointing to the pile.

Slowly, the concrete began to shift and stir as it slowly reformed into something long and narrow. It seemed to be shaped like a cone at the front, yet ruffled in the back, and at about that time, I realized just what it was.

It was a replica of the bolt shot at Sweeps, though much, much bigger; not to mention it was made of concrete.

"It can pick things apart just as well as it builds things back up." She said, smiling widely at the group of hunters who were completely starstruck.

A red glow wrapped around the massive bolt fit for a ballista, the stone groaning as it lifted into the air and hovered there.

Vinyl's mother's smile widened significantly as the glow saturated in color just as the hunters quickly dispersed from the hole. They most likely got away from the wall in general as well, as they had already seen Vinyl's mother melt a portion of it.

Though it seemed as though the vampire wasn't aiming for them at all, and instead pulled the bolt backwards a bit before she sent the chunk of stone hurdling forwards.

"I told you I had a trick or two left for getting into the building." She giggled disturbingly.

"You also said that skillfully approaching something was better than brute force." Sweeps said, brushing some dust from off of her after she had hit the deck.

Vinyl's mother clicked her tongue.

"Ah ah ah, I said brute force was one thing, but skill is another. Both are effective in most situations." She corrected.

"You'd make a horrible teacher."

"I disagree." She said cheerfully, the sound of a huge crash in the distance following her claim.

*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*...Shakes...*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*

After calming down a bit, Care had recommended I take some time to walk around, and I agreed for both our sakes.

I had never really seen much of the upper floors of the building anyways, well, not since a couple years ago at least. I had mostly been too absorbed with Vinyl to really explore the place where she was held.

Admittedly, I had been associated with The Order at one time, though it was too long ago to remember too much. I joined them pretty quick when I first heard, excited at the idea of hunting vampires and the "saving society" mantra that they really pushed when they sent out recruiters. I don't know why they bothered to approach me, since I was still a barmare back then too, but I didn't question it at the time.

I was really nervous when they said I was leaving immediately, and had to go quit my job the second I said yes. I didn't even get to pack my bags, but they said I wouldn't need any. My biggest concern was Sweeps, and they let me at least say goodbye to her before I left.

She was surprisingly supportive with me leaving, saying she'd be fine and that I shouldn't worry about her. As long as I'd write, that is.

I rose through the ranks pretty fast from what they said, but that's mainly cause they sent me out a lot, and I gave them result. When you work in a bar, you learn how people think thanks to how much more open they can be if you pry. You also learn how to deal with that one guy who really wants to fight.

I was apparently the fastest rising recruit they had seen in a good time, so I got quite a lot of recognition.

Though that changed pretty quick.

It was when I got my first mission in Canterlot, that I got to see a real vampire; not the ones I had been facing before where a few good shots with a crossbow were enough to immobilize them.

They said that someone had given some kind of tips of a potential vampire, and since it was in the city of the sisters, I got assigned to it with a group of six others.

I shuddered a bit at the memory.

The place had changed a lot since I had last been here, to the point where it didn't even look or feel like the same building as before. They had added all kinds of new things, like bathrooms.

Though what I was really interested in was the break-room ahead of me with what looked like small sandwiches and drinks.

I hadn't expected to see anything that looked like actual food here, half expecting them to eat a healthy mix of rocks and nails or something. I guess the staffing here needed food just as much as the actual hunters. I always did wonder what exactly they did here, other than maybe taxes and paperwork.

Though what I really hadn't expected was a massive explosion to come through one of the walls while I was walking towards that breakroom.

Must've been some new kind of security. Man this place was high tech.

As the dust around me settled to the ground, I found that I was fortunately backed against the wall, as I had come face to face with what looked like a giant, stone arrow.

'Maybe one of the hunters had a misfired? Just what kind of things are they using these days if this is the kind of ammo needed to fire?' I thought to myself.

A secretary walked out of a room nearby, trotting over to the break room and taking a sandwich in hoof. The only acknowledgement of the massive arrow in the wall being a sigh.

"Hope they learn to not aim at the wall one of these days." She sighed, going back to her room.

This type of thing must happen a lot.

My ears perked up at the sound of something outside, or rather, someone.

"Sweet Celestia, you're crazy!" A familiar voice shouted.

My eyes widened as I recognized the voice.

"Sweeps?" I asked to myself, moving off the wall and going towards the gaping hole the arrow had left in the wall.

Looking outside, I saw dozens of hunters moving in on a group of three mares. I recognized all three of them save for the one that looked kind of like Vinyl; I remembered meeting her in Octavia's apartment, but I couldn't remember if we had been introduced. Probably not considering how quick I got out of there.

I gasped a little as a hunter tossed a spear at them, nearly hitting my sister.

I chuckled a bit to myself, stepping over and past the rubble of the wall and walking towards the group.

If they thought they could hurt any one of them, much less my sister, they had another thing coming from the "mare who brought in Vinyl Scratch".

If I had one guess on what it was, it was a bit of betrayal of my own.

Comments

[SteampunkBrony]

7381293

... my previous comment just became more relavent

[71M073J]

7397995
*relevant
Huehuehue
But really, the suspense of the last freaking 6 chapters is killing me

[Dream Dusk]

And the fight begins... for real this time pls.

[Bobby23]

Great chapter.