Tales of a Wizard: Flesh Masks

by Applechip

Chapter 15

I barreled down the hallway leading away from the balcony, with Twilight racing along right beside me.

“Where are the others?” I yelled over the sound of the screeches of the Red Court and of the panicked screams of the ponies of Canterlot as they became aware of their danger. My heart began pounding its way into my throat as, for the second time that day, a large amount of adrenaline hit my system.

“I think they’re in their rooms next to ours,” Twilight said in a panicked voice. “But Fluttershy told me that she’d taken the late shift in the hospital wing, so she’s probably still there.”

We rounded the corner and our individual rooms came into view. “Round them up, and then get your overcoat. Leave Fluttershy where she is, she’ll be busy soon enough.”

Twilight nodded at me and began hammering on her friends’ doors. I ignored them and charged into my room. After nearly breaking down my own door, I stood in the center of my room and looked around wildly for the little weave of silver and rubies that was my shield charm. I had removed it shortly after I had settled down on my bed and grabbed my mail. The small ring was an extremely useful tool, but it irritated the soft tissue near the base of my horn if I wore it for extended periods of time.

I spotted the silver ring sitting on my desk in plain sight. I immediately grabbed it in my telekinetic grip and slipped it onto my horn.

This doesn’t make any damn sense, I thought to myself as I made sure that the charm was snug against my horn. The Red Court isn’t this forward. This is the center of Equestria’s power and the Equestrian military, so why would they risk attacking it? What are they after?

I knew that Michael was getting increasingly twitchy as they day went on so I was expecting some kind of Red Court movement, but not this. I was expecting a scouting party, a sabotage scheme, or at worst an assassination attempt. The Red Court likes to make sure that their first big move is a lethal one, so they generally do prep work to ensure that it is. Though for all I knew they could’ve already done just that and we hadn’t noticed it.

No, that doesn’t add up. Michael would’ve noticed something if any vampires were near enough to Canterlot to do anything major. Then again all my experience is with the Red Court and its king back on Earth, this new Red King could have an entirely different method of operations. I shuddered at the thought. If that’s the case then my experience against them as a whole is worthless now.

Content that the charm wouldn’t slip of at an inopportune moment, I straightened the overcoat that I was still wearing and moved towards the door. As I left my room I found Twilight and her friends waiting for me. To my slight surprise most of them were already geared up and ready to go. Applejack, Rainbow, and Pinkie were standing outside of their respective rooms, already fully geared in their respective armors. Pinkie even had that war hammer I’d seen her use in Manehattan strapped to her back. Twilight and Rarity stood a few steps away and were struggling to slip into their overcoat and robes. As Rarity stuck her head through her dark robes, I noticed the bandolier of knives around her chest.

“Harry, what in tarnation is goin’ on?” Applejack demanded, her curling horned helmet adding several points to her intimidation factor as she spoke.

“You remember that bet you made with Rainbow?” I asked.

“About who could take down more vampires? Yeah,” she responded.

I swept my eyes over the rest of them to make sure that they were ready. “We’re about to put it to the test.”

Their faces turned several shades paler as my words sunk in.

Rarity, who had just finished putting her robes on, spoke up first, “The Red Court is here, in Canterlot?”

I opened my mouth to respond, but Twilight beat me to the punch. “Yes Rarity, they are. Now come on, they need us in the city,” she said right as she finished latching the last clasp of her overcoat.

Something odd drew my attention at this point. Pinkie was being unusually silent during all of the preparations. When I put her under closer scrutiny I noticed that she was looking at Twilight with a disturbing look on her face. Pinkie wore the sort of pained sympathy you’d show to a grieving friend. I didn’t like that look, I didn’t like it at all.

Before I could inquire further, I was interrupted by a shout coming from the stairs behinds us, “Commander!”

I turned around and saw a messenger in basic guard armor running towards us, slightly out of breath. “What is it?” I asked the messenger.

“I have word from your second, Michael. He has taken your battalion and the bulk of the castle’s garrison and is now sweeping through the city. He asks that you and your team follow and look for high value targets,” the messenger said, and then stopped to catch his breath.

“How’d he manage that so fast?” Rainbow asked as she finished fastening her crossbow to her foreleg. “The alarms have only just started going off.”

The messenger recomposed himself after a second. “He assembled the battalion in the sparing room. He was speaking with them when the alarms went off. It was pure luck that they were all there and prepared at the same time.”

I felt a massive smile spread across my muzzle, “That wasn’t luck, that was Michael.” I looked over my back at my team, “You all heard him, let’s get out there.” With that Pinkie, Rarity, Rainbow, Applejack, Twilight and I galloped as fast as we could for what promised to be nightmare fuel for many nights to come.

As we charged through Canterlot castle, I got to see how exactly the defenders of a relatively peaceful realm respond to an emergency. To my slight surprise, all of the soldiers and guardsponies left in the castle were responding the crisis with an ordered urgency. Fully armed and armored ponies moved to their respective assigned positions in tight formations, a slight contrast to me and my team barreling for the city as fast as we could.

As soon as we cleared the castle’s front gates, we ran into a slight problem. The citizens of Canterlot had all begun fleeing the city proper and retreating into the castle. Several hundred terrified ponies were galloping up the long stretch of road leading up to the castle. The entirety of the vampire forces seemed to still be trying to move through the city. Over all of the frightened yells of the citizens, I heard the unmistakable sounds of combat coming from Canterlot proper. Slowed as we were, trying to move through the crowd of fleeing ponies, we redoubled our efforts to push through them and to help fend off the vampires.

Soon enough we broke through the crowd and into the portion of the city nearest the castle. This particular portion had yet to be touched by the combat raging in the rest of the city. Which was just as well seeing as several stragglers could still be seen galloping towards the castle.

“Rainbow,” I shouted above me. “I need eyes in the air. Get up there and tell me what you see.”

Without hesitation she soared high enough into the sky to get a good look at the city, while still remaining within earshot. “Dresden, I see fighting throughout most of the city. Though it looks like they’re focusing on the main shopping street, and so are Michael and the battalion. But Harry… it’s not going well.”

“How not well are we talking?” Applejack shouted.

“Michael’s keeping their attention, but he’s losing ground.” Rainbow hesitated for a minute, her gaze going off to one side. “Hang on, something weird’s happening. It looks like a small group of them are breaking off and moving through the smaller streets. Are they running from the fight?”

I stomped my hoof into the street, “Damn it! They’re not running, they’re flanking. They’re going to circle around and hit Michael from behind.”

“Unless we get to them first,” Twilight spoke up. “I’d say a flanking team counts as a high value target.”

I nodded to Twilight, “Sounds good.” I looked up at Rainbow and shouted, “Lead the way.” Rainbow zoomed off, using her view to lead the rest of us on an intercept course with Red Court team.

While the majority of the vampires were in the central street fighting Michael, there were many scattered throughout Canterlot. These vampires were either driven feral by their blood thirst, or else were searching for any possible recruits that may have been to slow to flee the city. As we sped through the city we came across several scattered soldiers and guardsponies that had broken off from the main group to try and pick off the lone vampires before they could do too much damage.

We came across one of Celestia’s personal guard being slowly backed into a corner while trying to fend off a vampire unicorn. Applejack made quick work of the distracted vampire with the use of her chained scythe. After Applejack was finished severing the vampire’s spinal column, the guard thanked us and galloped off in the direction of Michael’s defending line.

Not long after that, we stumbled across a rather gruesome sight. We found two guardsponies and one of my battalion down one of the side alleyways. The poor bastards had been ripped to bloody shreds. On their remains were two vampires that had clearly gone completely feral, and were too distracted by their meal to notice the extremely pissed off wizard moving towards them. I left their smoldering corpses plastered against the alley wall.

After my slight tantrum, we continued down one of Canterlot’s side streets following Rainbow’s lead. About halfway down the street a sudden outcry made us all stop in our tracks. It sounded like children crying, and it was coming from somewhere on the other side of a nearby wall.

“Do you all hear that?” Rarity asked.

Rainbow, who hadn’t heard a thing, hovered above us and shifted from side to side impatiently. “What’s going on down there? The vampires are getting close.”

More muffled voices came through the wall as we stopped to listen. “Captain, they’re breaking through the doors!”

“Ready your spears! Keep them away from the foals!”

That was all I needed to hear to get involved. I moved to the wall and slammed my hoof against it as hard as I could. “This is Dresden. If you can hear me, move away from the wall!” I backed away from the building and my horn glowed as I started building pressure against the bricks in front of me. A round pane of red energy pressed against the wall, it grew in size and brightness as I channeled more and more energy into it. “Stand clear!” I shouted, and drove my will against the sheet of energy like a battering ram. The wall crumbled and a sizable hole large enough for several ponies to move through was made.

“Out the back! Let’s move!” yelled the same authoritative tone as before.

A small crowd of eight to ten foals ran crying out of the building and crowded around our hooves. Following them seven heavily armored guardsponies and one of my battalion rushed out of the same hole to stop in front of us.

Before anypony could start explaining about this or that, I had to make sure that whatever was breaking through the building’s doors couldn’t follow them through the same hole that I’d made. “Twilight, Rarity, cover their tracks,” I called over my shoulder.

Both unicorns nodded and pushed pass the trembling foals to block the vampires’ path. With a simple flicker of light, Twilight threw a small ball of fire into the building. The ball hit the floor inside and splashed what looked like lava over most everything nearby it. In short order the rest of the room caught fire and grew into an inferno. Then Rarity stepped forward to work her magic. With a slightly brighter flash of light, the raging inferno before me turned back into the makeshift barricade the guardsponies were using. To wrap up the illusion, Rarity cast another spell to make the wall look whole again, as though I had never broken it down. The vampires would eventually break through the door and would charge into the apparently empty and intact room. They wouldn’t realize that they were walking into a furnace until they already had all four clawed feet planted firmly in their graves.

The member of my battalion, the captain I assumed, snapped to attention and addressed me, “Commander, thanks for coming when you did. Michael was leading us towards the vampires when we heard about a group of foals holed up in this house. So I took some guards, found them, and immediately got trapped.”

“And got out alive,” I added. I looked up at Rainbow, who was still waiting impatiently a couple dozen feet in the air. “Rainbow, where are they?”

“One street over and getting closer,” she responded.

I got a slight sinking feeling in my stomach. The kind of feeling you get when you realize that you assumed something you shouldn’t have.

“Harry,” Twilight whispered right next to me. “If this was a flanking team, shouldn’t they have turned around by now?”

I nodded and whispered back, “Yes, which means that they’re probably after something specific.”

“Any idea what?” she asked.

From behind the wall and Rarity’s illusions, I heard the distinct sound of wood being strained and ripped apart. Shortly after, we heard several hoarse screams as the vampires moved into the building and realized their fatal mistake. Rarity dropped her illusions and the screams were soon drowned out by the roaring fire.

I sneered and looked in the direction that Rainbow had indicated, “No idea, but I do know who we can ask.” I turned back around to face the group of guardsponies. “If you’re free, I think I could use a few more hooves.”

The captain saluted, “Of course sir.” He turned around and began barking orders to the guardsponies, “You two take the foals and make for the castle. The rest of you are with the Commander.”

The guardsponies saluted the captain and began carrying out his orders. One of the unicorn guards took the foals by the simple expedient of lifting them all into the air and galloped off for the castle, followed closely by a pegasus guard. The rest numbered three heavily armored earth ponies, one unicorn, and two pegasi crossbowmen.

With the new reinforcements in tow, we wasted no time and cut in-between some buildings to get to the correct street that the vampires would soon be strolling down. The street in question was fairly typical of the name. It was wide enough to allow a great deal of movement for many ponies, so we would not be easily restricted. The far end of the street turned and vanished behind a few nondescript buildings. Around that corner, several shadows were being cast by the movement of forces just out of sight.

Without needing to be told we all made a standard defensive line in the street. The earth ponies formed an angry wall of meat and steel in front of us, with Applejack at the center and Pinkie slightly behind her. The unicorns, including me, lined up behind them and began running through preparations for our respective choices in spells. Rainbow and the other two pegasi took to a nearby rooftop overlooking the street.

For a brief couple of seconds we all just stood there, becoming increasingly tense. In front of me every muscle of Pinkie’s body suddenly tensed and she began shaking uncontrollably. She looked over her back to glance at Twilight, and then turned to look at me. The look of fear and despair on her face caused shards of ice to begin forming in my blood stream.

She knew something. Her innate power was telling her that either something horrible was about to happen or that something has happened. Given our current environment, it terrified me to think of what it was that had caught her attention.

Pinkie opened her mouth to say something, but couldn’t seem to find the right words. Instead she just looked meaningfully at Twilight and returned to her position next to Applejack. Twilight, whose eyes were shut as she ran through her practiced spells, didn’t notice a thing. I didn’t know what it was that she had felt, or how it was supposed to involve Twilight, but I didn’t care. I had promised Twilight’s parents that I would protect their daughter in her insane quest to help me, and some stupid twitches weren’t going to stop me.

At the end of the street the first of the vampires started rounding the corner and slowly walked toward us. They didn’t notice us at first. They were too busy conversing amongst themselves about whatever their plans were.

“Dresden, you got a plan?” Applejack whispered over her shoulder at me.

“Well first we need to get their attention on you,” I responded.

“How do you intend to pull that off?” Twilight asked.

I gave a side long look and a slight smile to Rarity, “I was thinking something flashy and over the top.”

She thought about that for a second before responding, “You get them looking over here, and I’ll make sure their attention is on them.” Rarity gestured at Applejack and the other earth ponies.

A wicked smile played over my face as I turned back to face the vampires still oblivious of us. “I think can handle that.”

I packed a substantial amount of energy into my horn before I launched my attack. I wanted it to be an eye catcher after all. When I was satisfied that it would do the job, I sent a fireball roughly the size and shape of my first car screaming down the street at the vampires. The fireball made contact with the front most vampire and very nearly disintegrated it. On impact the fireball detonated with a bright eye catching display of light and fire. One or two other vampires were near enough to receive some burns of their own, but most of them moved away at the last minute, and all of them were now looking right at us.

The moment I launched my attack, I felt Rarity work her magic on the environment around us. The shadows shifted to cover the unicorns’ line and the rooftop where the pegasi were waiting. While she was making us harder to see, she focused what little light there was to illuminate Applejack and the other earth ponies. The light playing off their armor was nothing short of blinding and demanded the attention of anything looking in their direction.

The vampires howled their challenge and charged at us, their claws leaving long gauges in the street beneath them.

Applejack shook herself slightly and loosened her chained scythe. “Okay I think we have their attention. What’s step two?”

I began drawing in more power for a second strike. “Step two?”

The first of the charging vampires came within jumping distance and threw itself almost twenty feet at the earth ponies, its claws and teeth ready to cause as much mayhem as they could. Around the apex of its leap Applejack’s scythe flashed across the street and buried itself into the vampire’s throat. With another twist Applejack used the vampire as an improvised flail to swat another out of the air, sending both of them sprawling across the street and left one of them bleeding out.

“I’m beginning to question your plan,” Applejack said as she drew back her weapon for another throw.

I felt a significant amount of energy leave me as I launched gout of flame at the charging vampires. This time I chose to form the spell as a wide wave of flame as opposed to the precise strike earlier, perhaps not quite as lethal but still annoying as hell to run through. “You can question all you want, just kill something while you do.”

“Will you two quit arguing, I’m trying to concentrate,” Twilight muttered. The air around her thrummed with power as she began throwing spell after spell at the vampires.

It took me a few seconds to notice that none of her spells were actually hitting, or even going near the front line of vampires. Instead her spells were landing further behind their line. Twilight’s spells were landing on and around a line of vampire unicorns further back. Twilight threw a wide variety of ammunition at the vampires. She threw balls of fire, bolts of lightning, bursts of raw force, and even chunks of stone ripped from the surrounding buildings. While each individual shot was relatively weak, there were a lot of them, and each the different kinds of ammunition required different defensive measures on the vampires’ part. The vampire unicorns had to keep a watch on the sky and conjure simple shields to protect themselves. With the wide variety of ordinance Twilight was using they had to continually retune their respective shields to better counter a specific strike, or else run the risk of being hit by an attack they weren’t prepared for.

While the act of bombarding was eating all of Twilight’s attention, preventing her from helping me with the standard vampires, she was forcing all of the enemy unicorns to fight defensively. The unicorns were too busy fending off Twilight’s barrage to try and create an opening in Applejack’s line, and because of Rarity’s haze they couldn’t get an accurate fix on her location to counterattack. Twilight was completely canceling the vampires’ ability to attack at us magically, and was doing so mostly by herself.

I gained a new appreciation of the difference between a casual practitioner of magic and a practitioner that centers their whole life on perfecting their talent.

While Twilight held the magic users at bay, the main body of the Red Court team hit our defensive line. Vampiric claws meet hardened steel as the earth ponies strove to push them back. I will say this, thick plated armor performs wonderfully against claws. The thick armor of the earth ponies allowed them to simply shrug off what would normally be crippling or even fatal hits, but as good as their armor was, simple numbers can overwhelm anything. The sheer number of the vampires and the ferocity of their attacks, soon wore on the earth ponies. We began losing ground as the guardsponies had to take a few steps backwards to avoid crippling blows. This affect was lessened somewhat by Pinkie and the pegasi archers.

To help counter the vampires’ overwhelming numbers, Pinkie was using her peculiar abilities much more defensively than in her last fight. Instead of trying to smash her way through the vampires she used her Pinkie Sense to detect the most dangerous attacks aimed at those near her and used her hammer to neatly counter them. Whenever a vampire staggered one of the guardsponies and moved in for the kill, they were soon faced with a very large, very blunt, and very pink instrument of war. Pinkie and her hammer offered the guardsponies the precious second or two they’d need to recover after being knocked off balance. But even with Pinkie’s extreme reflexes she couldn’t be everywhere at once, which is where Rainbow and the other pegasi came in.

The crossbow armed pegasi hidden atop the nearby building fired continually into the confused throng of vampires below them. Given that there were only three of them they had little hope of seriously wounding any of the vampires, so they aimed for the crippling or distracting shots instead. The pegasi prioritized targets that had broken through and posed an immediate threat to the defenders, but were too far from Pinkie for her to do anything.

Bolts buzzed through the air and found their marks in the joints and soft tissues of the vampires. On more than one occasion a vampire that got dangerously close to Applejack or one of the others had to disengage owing to the fact that the joint connecting a foreleg to their body had been destroyed by a steel tipped bolt. Or a far more common occurrence was that a vampire got too close, was staggered by a few bolts in rather painful looking locations, and then was immediately ushered from this world by the pony nearest it.

My actions were far more restricted than those of my friends or my reinforcements. I couldn’t directly attack the vampires immediately in front of the earth ponies because of the risk of my fire blowing back on them. So I had to push them away first. As the vampires charged the defensive line I chose points in the vampire horde where they were grouped closest together. I drew together my will and energy into a singular point at the tip of my horn, from that point I fired a concentrated beam of raw force into the horde and knocked them away like bowling pins. The vampires flew far enough from us that I no longer had to worry about accidently hurting my allies, and didn’t have to hold back. When they were safely away from my friends and still regaining their footing I lobbed several orbs of fire into the air above them, raining fiery hell down on their heads.

Like before, as they screamed and burned alive under my power, I only felt a certain sense of cold satisfaction. As far as I was concerned, these creatures deserved no mercy or sympathy from me and would receive none.

Against all odds, we were holding our ground. The vampires kept coming and we kept pushing them away. In a direct head-to-head confrontation, the vampires just couldn’t break through the Equestrian steel and our combined willpower. I felt genuine hope that we could and would beat them back into whatever hole they had crawled out of.

I should’ve known better. The Red Court will always find a way to tear into you, even if they die doing it. They will not leave you intact.

“Commander, they’re on the walls!” cried the unicorn guard beside me.

I looked around and sure enough, several vampires had begun clawing their way onto the walls and rooftops in order to get at us from different angles. The sudden change from head on assault to several miniature flanking maneuvers was a change in tactic that we simply couldn’t match.

With the earth ponies still busy keeping the forward vampires occupied, Pinkie now had to worry about the potential for vampires leaping off the walls and over the earth ponies to get at our unicorn line. One vampire in particular leapt from the roof of a nearby building, its trajectory would have landed it behind Applejack and within rending distance of me. Pinkie however matched its jump and met it in midair. Whatever happened next was over too fast for me to accurately recount, but the vampire wound up in a sizeable crater just behind one of the earth ponies with its head attempting to occupy the same space as its torso.

I diverted my attention from the forward mass to attempt to manage the flanking vampires. I swept waves of force and fire over the walls, sending some vampires sprawling into the street below, others simply dug in their claws and weathered my magic. I was making some progress but they were too spread out for me to counter them effectively. There were just too many, I simply couldn’t keep up with all of them.

“Get off of me!” Rainbow cried out through grunts of pain.

During all the confusion I hadn’t noticed that the crossbow bolts had stopped raining down. With a growing sense of dread I looked up to where the pegasi where perched. The vampires on the roof had managed to find the pegasi under Rarity’s haze. One of the pegasi guards was already dead. His body lay broken and bloody in the street below. The other guard wasn’t far from joining his former comrade. The same vampire that had killed his friend was now burying its razor sharp teeth into the remaining guard’s throat, even while he desperately fought the losing battle to get away.

Rainbow had heard the commotion next to her and managed to roll onto her back in time to begin kicking at her own assailant. The vampire attacking Rainbow, unable to get its teeth past her flailing hooves, began raking its claws in wide arches over her drawing several lines of blood from her unprotected face. She shouted a challenge in response and seized the small dagger in her harness with her teeth. She swung it wildly and sunk her dagger to the hilt into the vampire’s chest. It convulsed away from Rainbow in agony, wrenching the dagger from her grip as it flinched away. Rainbow took the opportunity and leapt from the roof, her wings flaring open as she angled herself to glide down and meet us on the ground.

The instant she hit the air, a pegasus vampire launched itself from the street and slammed into her midflight. I had begun gathering together my power the instant I saw the vampire take flight, and I loosed my power in a beam of force aimed at the creature about to rip Rainbow to shreds. My spell hit the vampire full in the face and smashed it into the building Rainbow had just jumped from, but not before it got in one nasty hit. The vampire brought down one clawed leg onto Rainbow’s right wing just as my spell hit it. The wing crumpled and broke with an audible snap and a cry of pain from the mare.

Rainbow abruptly dropped out of the sky and hurtled towards the street below. Before she impacted she became shrouded in a light blue aura and quickly drifted over towards us. Rarity carefully set her down behind us, with her injured wing facing the sky.

Robbed of its prize, the vampire I had hit launched itself at us mayhem intent in its features. Its leap was too short to allow it to try and reclaim Rainbow, so instead it landed on top of Twilight and swung a clawed leg at her. The strike hit Twilight’s spell layered overcoat and merely glanced off of it, but not without a loud thud of impact and a sharp cry of pain from Twilight. It raised its claws again for another more lethal strike, and was launched clean through the cinderblock wall next to us by my rage. At the sound of Twilight’s pain, a primal fury and power I couldn’t quite explain rose within me, power that I unleashed at the unfortunate vampire to have caused it.

Things only got worse from there. Without the pegasi to distract the vampires Pinkie couldn’t reach, the earth ponies began taking several hits and lost large amounts of ground. Applejack in particular began taking several hits as she swung her chained scythe from side to side. Her thick armor was visibly crumpling under the continued battering and was beginning to wear on her. The damaged armor restricted her movements and bit into her painfully as she struggled to hold off the vampires.

Beside Applejack one of the earth pony guards took a nasty swipe to his legs, throwing him of balance. Without the distraction necessary to allow the guard to recover, the vampire responsible seized the guard by his chest plate and pulled him forward into the confused mess of monsters. Another guard next to them jumped forward to try and drive off the creature and save his friend, but only wound up sharing his fate as the vampires took the opportunity to strike at the exposed guard.

Beside me Rarity abruptly vanished. Where she was I couldn’t see, but what I did see were several small diamond knives flying through the air. The razor sharp knives began slicing wide arcs in the nearest vampires in an attempt to push back the creatures the previous guards had held back.

There were just too many of them. The vampires had gained the foothold they needed and were now building momentum against us. If we didn’t end this soon, we would all die.

“Get near me!” I shouted as I built a mass of power within me. Twilight, Rarity, and the unicorn captain huddled near me. Twilight stopped her bombardment and drew Rainbow in closer to us. Applejack, Pinkie, and the remaining earth pony guard got together and gave an almighty forward shove against the vampires, buying the precious second they needed to fall back to me. As soon as they got close enough, I channeled all the energy I could manage through the shield charm on my horn.

In an instant a large dome of deep red energy sprung to life and enveloped us. Twilight, who knew the mechanics behind my shielding spell, immediately wormed her way into my spell and added her own power to mine. My shield became a blend of red and purple as the vampires reengaged us and hammered away at our shield.

Applejack panted heavily as she looked through the shield at the monsters literally throwing themselves at us. “What do we do? There’s just too many of ‘em. What do we do?”

“I-I don’t know,” I grunted as a struggled to keep the shield up. I looked around wildly searching, praying for some way out. I couldn’t find one. The odds of getting any kind of victory worth having just went from slim to none, but maybe I could still get my friends out alive. All I needed was a distraction. My voice shook slightly as I spoke again, “Guys, the shield will fail soon. When it does, I want you all to run as fast as you can.”

There was a short silence as they processed my order. Twilight was the first to fully understand my meaning and looked horrified at the implication. “Harry, no. I’m not leaving.”

I ignored her and pressed on, “Just head for the castle, they’ll have the necessary defenses.”

She puffed out her chest and looked my directly in my eyes, the same sense of iron hard stubbornness falling into place behind her eyes. “I don’t care. I’m in your shield spell, I won’t let it fall.”

“Twilight, I’m not seeing many options here!” I shot back. “If you have a better idea, I would absolutely love to hear it!”

“Commander, the castle!” The earth pony guard pointed his hoof past me at the castle.

We all turned around to see what it was that had startled the guard, and we all simply gaped at the sight before us. Even the vampires seemed to pause in their assault against our shield to have a look. Canterlot Castle seemed to be oozing a swirling dark energy from every possible opening. The mysterious fog was escaping from every doorway and window, collecting on the grounds, and then began moving into the city. My senses immediately screamed at me that it was a massive conjuration, and the fact that I could sense it from in the middle of the city meant that there was an unbelievable amount of energy behind it.

How did the vampires get into the castle? Did they already break through Michael’s line?

I didn’t want to think about that possibility, because I knew that the only way a vampire could get past Michael, would be over his corpse.

The swirling dark smoke hit the city and spread through it with an unnatural speed, as though a massive wind were constantly blowing on it to direct it towards the city. In a manner of seconds it had entered the mouth of our street and swept towards us. The dark smog hit my shield, and went right on through. Without any method of defense against whatever kind of magic this was I could only clamp my eyes shut as I felt a slight tingling sensation on my face. Convinced that I was about die choking on poisoned air, I gathered together my will for my death curse, the last spell that a wizard casts in life.

If I’m going down, I’m going to level this whole damn place with me.

Just as I wrapped up forming the spell that I thought would have destroyed everything within several hundred feet of me, I couldn’t help but notice a distinct lack of dying on my part. I tentatively cracked open my eyes to try and peer through the thick fog around us, but the fog was completely gone. In fact I could even see better, the moonlight shining down illuminated the city as though it were the sun in its peak position in the sky. There were absolutely no shadows on the street that could hide anything from my eyes.

I looked over my shoulder at Twilight, “What in Equestria was th-“ I froze in place when I caught sight of her eyes. Twilight’s eyes, normally a dark purple, had turned bright yellow and her pupils had become vertical slits like a cat’s. My heart skipped a few beats as I turned and saw my own faint reflection on the inside of my shield, and found that my eyes had been similarly altered. I looked past my reflection to the vampires still waiting outside my shield, and noticed that they had no such alteration. I could see them perfectly under the Moon's light, and was slightly confused by what I saw. The vampires were moving around and bumping into each other as though their sight had been robbed from them.

Then I managed to put two and two together. I reached out with my senses to confirm what I had suspected. I felt the distinctive sensation of Luna’s energy in the air around us. The dark fog was still there, we just couldn’t see it. The defenders of Canterlot had been blessed with Luna’s night vision while the vampires had to try and peer through the thick fog that was invisible to the rest of us. It wouldn’t stop the vampires, not completely anyway, vampires can see clearly on all but the blackest of nights. They would eventually adjust to the new environment, but that would take some time. During that time they would be completely defenseless, and in the middle of extremely hostile territory.

A bright white light shone over the rooftops and a loud leonine bellow sounded several streets away, “Forward! Strike down the foul demons, forward!” This cry was met with several more battle cries and the stomping of many hooves.

Evidently Luna’s intervention had given Michael what he needed to turn the tide in his own fight.

And why should he have all the fun?

Around me the mares and guards began piecing together what had just happened to us and the benefits of what Luna’s changes offered. Applejack and Pinkie readied their weapons again and crouched low to the ground, ready to pounce in an instant. Rarity began whirling her knives in a passable impersonation of a buzz saw. Even Twilight readied herself for battle and scowled at the vampires as smoke rose from her fur. I smiled a wide wicked smile at the blinded monsters before us. An excitement rose within me, a feeling that could only be defined as bloodlust.

“You heard him.” I lowered the shield from around us. Twilight didn’t try to resist its falling. “Go nuts.”

I can’t really remember the exact details of what happened next, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to. The remaining earth pony guard and unicorn captain remained behind to protect the unconscious Rainbow Dash, while the rest of us charged forward. Pure and uncontrolled rage urged us onward to wreak terrible vengeance on the creatures that had dared to come to here. Creatures that had terrified Canterlot’s citizens and had already destroyed the lives of so many innocents. We pushed forward to remind them that they should fear us, that we would not allow them to go unpunished.

Applejack’s weaponized lasso swept in wide arcs, carving a bloody swath as the scythe on the end cut into as many vampires as it could reach. Pinkie shot forward, almost too fast to be seen, and brought her hammer down onto the fragile bones and nerves of the vampires’ necks. With each impact she turned bone to powder, and flesh to a gooey paste. Rarity ran into the throng of vampires while her knives danced around her in wide quick motions. The knives whipped out seemingly of their own accord at any vampire she got near, slicing and dicing everything around her as she moved. Twilight shot large bolts of lightning from her horn and as they impacted with her target more bolts arced off into the surrounding vampires, cooking them all from the inside out. I jumped forward and started throwing around fire like I intended to burn down the entire city. Vampires burned and tried to scramble away in their blinded haze.

No vampire could stand before us and live to tell the tale. We swept through the street and didn’t stop until every vampire was dead, dying, or fleeing. We stopped our rampage and stood in the center of the street, catching our breath as some sense of sanity returned to us. The few vampires that had regained the use of their eyes in time to run could be still seen scrambling over nearby walls, running behind buildings, or else doing whatever it took to break line of sight with us.

“You’d better run!” I screamed at an earth pony vampire that had just managed to claw its way up a far building. “The next time I see you I’m going to start a fire inside your skull, you soulless freaks!”

“Soulless freaks? I assure you we do have souls, though probably not one that you’d recognize,” said a deep and well spoken masculine voice that came from the same end of the street that the vampires had originally walked down.

I looked over to find the source of the noise and saw a large unicorn calmly walking over to us. Now saying that this unicorn was simply tall wouldn’t do it justice, this unicorn was enormous. He stood head and shoulders over each of us. From his proportions he looked like a male version of Celestia, minus the wings and color scheme. His coat was a deep navy blue while his mane, tail, and fetlocks were all a dark blood red. His mane and tail looked like they had been meticulously cut and styled, giving him the look of a business pony or a lawyer. The smug self-satisfied look on his face was nudging him a bit closer to lawyer territory. On his flank was what looked like a vampire’s clawed limb for a cutie mark, colored to match his mane.

Behind him were two regularly sized vampires, one an earth pony and the other a pegasus. The two body guards had chosen to abandon the flesh mask their charge was wearing, and simply stared at us with black eyes and snarling teeth.

Beside me Applejack took a step forward and shouted at the vampire hidden under pony fur, “You come here, attack Canterlot, hurt and kill innocent ponies, and you just now want to start talking? You’ve got some nerve.”

“I wasn’t speaking to you, cattle!” He shifted to look me directly in the face. I averted my eyes slightly to avoid a soulgaze. I did not want to see what lay behind those cold eyes. “I was speaking to the warden.”

That piqued my interest. “You know who I am?”

The lead vampire smiled widely, revealing several pointed teeth. “But of course, I’ve heard about the supposed ‘vampire expert’ Celestia hired only days after we arrived here.” He pointed a hoof at my chest, “That and the silver pentacle amulet around your neck, marks you as the warden that chased me to this wonderful kingdom. Harry Dresden, the White Council’s black sheep.”

Twilight stepped next to me, “He chased you here?” Twilight began muttering aloud as she ran through the facts of I’d told her about the original three vampires I’d chased. “So you’re one of the original vampires, and Harry said there was only one magic user in among the first three. So that’d make you…”

“The Red King, yes,” he finished for her.

“I probably would’ve gone with ‘idiot leader that takes to the field in his very first major offensive’, but sure that works too,” I jeered at the Red King.

He chuckled slightly, “Believe me, I am in no immediate danger.”

I decided to fall back on my favorite pastime of doing my very best to just aggravate him. You’d be surprised how much information the dark lord of the hour just gives away when you insinuate some inferiority on his part. Or you could pretend like his plans just aren’t worth your attention, and most every two bit warlock and egomaniacal jerk would come running to prove just how important they are. “Did you have too much trouble when you were first turned into a pony? I know it was an interesting change of pace for me.”

The Red King just narrowed his eyes at me, a dull growling sound escaping from his throat.

I continued on as though I hadn’t noticed a thing, “The extra legs and no arms was definitely a shift, but the horn made up for the lack of hands. Oh, and the tail! I was a little dubious of it at first, but I’ve grown rather attached to the fluffy thing. It’s nice to always have something soft nearby if I ever have a tense day and need to pet something.” Twilight shot me a sidelong glance as though I had just lost my mind and started spouting gibberish.

He curled his lips at me, exposing his pointed teeth, “I would have thought that your time with the White Council would teach you more respect for a senior warden.”

Oh crap…

The senior wardens are the White Council’s elite. They are battle hardened wizards that have survived decades of relentless combat by being as cunning as they are powerful. Each senior warden has the base power necessary to call down fire of Biblical proportions, and the skill needed to create high quality shields and illusions from scratch at a moment’s notice. There’s an unspoken promise among all wardens, ‘Don’t let the Red Court take you alive’. Because if they do then you’ll likely be turned and give the Red Court one hell of a powerful new wizard, like the one in front of me. If he really was a turned senior warden, and if he was even half as good as he seemed to think he was, then trying to fight him head on would be an extremely bad idea.

A wide smile spread over his face as he saw my shocked expression, “Yes, Dresden. I am one of your former brothers in arms. I’ve come a long way since then and I grow stronger every passing day.” He swept a hoof to gesture at the city around him, “It doesn’t matter what meager defenses you’ve mustered, we will take this world and I will be like a god!”

While he was busy with his rant, I noticed something moving around behind the Red King’s guards just out of sight. I tried to get a better look without being too obvious, but before I could make out anything specific the vague shape vanished behind the earth pony vampire. A brown hoof wrapped around to cover the vampire’s mouth while a slender blade flashed across its throat. The vampire crumpled to reveal Silent Night standing behind it, his sword retracting back into his mechanical limb. At the same time Silent took down one guard, the other was being attacked by ten floating knives. Two of Rarity’s knives slammed into the top and bottom of the pegasus vampire’s muzzle, forcing its mouth closed. The remaining eight knives circled around its throat in circle right before they pierced it from all angles, nearly decapitating it. The truly impressive feat was that both assassinations were done completely silently, the Red King still focused intently on the rest of us in front of him.

I tracked the path of one of the diamond knives as they left the fallen vampire, and smiled as I realized Rarity's plan of attack. “So you topple Canterlot and take over all of Equestria. You create the perfect Red Court nation. But there’s still one very important question you haven’t answered.”

The Red King raised an impatient eyebrow, “And that is?”

“How do you feel about eye patches?”

Not half a second later he reared back in agony, shaking his head from side to side. When his face came back into view I could see the hilt of one of Rarity’s daggers sticking out of his left eye.

“Get clear!” I shouted in Silent’s and, I assumed, Rarity’s general direction.

Silent flared his normal and artificial wings open wide before driving them down as hard as he could. It couldn’t have been clearer that Silent’s flying days were over. Silent lurched shakily upward, his wings beating out of sync. While not enough to allow much more altitude, his wings did at least get him high enough to scramble onto a nearby rooftop. Beside me I sensed, rather than physically felt, an invisible presence run pass me.

Satisfied that the area around the Red King was cleared of allies, Twilight and I locked eyes and nodded at each other. We lowered our horns to point at the vampire leader, and began drawing in as much power as we could from the surrounding environment. As I’ve said before, magic comes from life and from emotions. Canterlot was a large bustling city with thousands of ponies coming and going, and otherwise living their lives every second of every day. There was magic in spades here.

We drew in as much power as our bodies could possibly take, and held it in to use for one massive burst. I could feel my body’s temperature skyrocket as I held in an increasingly large pool of energy. Smoke quickly began to rise from my fur, and I could feel my mane and tail start to blow in a nonexistent wind. Beside me Twilight was having similar issues. Her mane and tail were blowing in a nonexistent breeze as well. Small sparks began playing about her fur, making her look like she was glowing slightly. I don’t care what Luna says, or how magically attuned a unicorn’s mind and body are, no mortal body was meant to be able to hold the sheer magnitude of magical energy that we were drawing in.

Several feet away the Red King had finally managed to rip knife from his face. His right eye widened in surprise as he noticed the two of us readying an attack. Without missing a beat he threw himself forward at us with blinding speed. His fur fell away from him as his true vampiric features were exposed. He closed to distance to us in the space of a heartbeat. His claws were at full extension and a hair’s breadth from my face when Twilight and I couldn’t hold back the tide of energy any longer, and unleashed every single scrap we had at the Red King.

A massive cone of red and purple tinged flame erupted from a point in-between our two horns. The cone expanded rapidly to fill the entirety of the street before us and blew the vampire’s leader away. We didn’t let up when the he fell away. We kept the fire going for as long as we possibly could. My ears roared and my head felt like it was being pulled apart as energy screamed through my mind. We held the spell for a solid twenty seconds, at some point I started screaming at the pain of it all. The fire we created was extremely intense, it turned the street, the walls of the buildings, and everything in-between to glass.

Completely spent from controlling the torrent of energy, Twilight and I released control of the spell and collapsed to the ground. The cone of fire died away but the entirety of the street was still a raging inferno. The Red King’s remains, if there were any after that stunt, were still hidden among all the fire.

Twilight managed to get back to her hooves first. She stood, shaking slightly, and turned to look at me with a bewildered look on her face, “Tail?”

I began laughing, I couldn’t help it. Amidst all the death and destruction the night had given us, Twilight had chosen to comment on the bravado I’d shot at the Red King. Twilight’s fortitude was definitely something to be admired. I got up myself and wrestled my laughter until control. “Well it is a nice tail,” I responded and swished my tail from side to side for emphasis.

Rarity stepped forward to offer a steadying hoof to Twilight. “I’m just glad this nightmare is over, thank Celestia.”

Suddenly a ring of pure black energy wrapped around my neck, lifted me up, and threw me against the far wall. I heard several more sounds of impact as my team was thrown to the wall as well. Even the earth pony guard, unicorn captain, and the still unconscious Rainbow were held prisoner beside me. A tall gaunt figure stepped out of the inferno and turned towards us.

“That hurt,” the Red King growled at us. His flesh was burned and blackened to beyond recognition. In some places the flesh had been seared off entirely, revealing the bone beneath. But as I watched, I saw something that I wasn’t really prepared for. His flesh was repairing itself, muscles slithered together and reformed, and his leathery skin shifted and resealed gaping wounds. Even his ruined eye reformed itself in a process that would have had me losing my dinner under normal circumstances.

Red Court vampires do have the ability to recover from most any kind of wound, so long as they can crawl away long enough to do so. But this was different, this was active magical regeneration. The power required to repair a relatively minor cut or wound would be staggering and is extremely complex. The energy needed to repair almost every scrap of flesh on his body would have been immense, and he didn’t even seem to notice it happening.

I gathered together and threw my will against the bond around my throat. I couldn’t get it to budge even an inch. Even in my weakened state my power is not insubstantial, but it was like I was an ant trying to push a boulder up a mountain. In terms of raw power I’m on par with most of the senior wardens, what I lack is the fine control. The power this guy apparently had at his disposal was leagues beyond that of any senior warden. That scared the crap out of me.

How is he this powerful? No wizard could get this much power through normal means.

The Red King stood only inches away from me before he spoke, “You are an annoying little insect and you should’ve been killed a long time ago.”

I desperately tried to loosen the dark ring around through physical and metaphysical means, and was still having no luck. Beside me Twilight fought against her bonds as well, but her eyes were fixed on me and showed an intense fear.

“So what’s the plan? Are you just going to talk me to death?” I snarled at the vampire.

The band around my throat constricted slightly, forcing me to gasp my breaths.

A wicked smile played across his features, “I just wanted to say one last thing. None of this would have been possible without you. You are the one that sparked the White Council’s war with the Red Court. You are the one that lead us to Equestria. All of your friends in this world and on Earth will die, because of you.”

With that said he tightened the ring around my throat, cutting off my supply of oxygen entirely. My lungs instantly burned for air. My head began pounding in time with my heartbeat as blood was pumped up into it but was restricted from leaving my head by the force on my throat. My vision blurred and my thoughts became sluggish, I couldn’t even pull my will together to try and throw my death curse. I was about to die and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to prevent it.

Michael… where are… you…

A loud thunderous voice shook the air around us, “ENOUGH OF THIS!”

The grip on my throat loosened and I managed to breathe in precious oxygen. As soon as my vision cleared I looked up at the source of the noise, and saw Celestia flying high above the city. I couldn’t see her face from this distance but her ethereal mane and tail had both turned the shade of a bright fiery orange.

“There you are,” the Red King mumbled to himself.

All around us shouting cries could be heard as several vampires screeched to announce the arrival of the sun princess. Out of the corner of my eye I could see many more pegasi vampires fly up from the city and shot towards Celestia. Celestia’s only response to this was to raise her horn high in the air. Light flashed from her horn and I felt an intense surge of magic against my senses. A small red orb appeared above the city, and the orb seemed to be drawing in various pieces of loose debris and energy from the environment around it. After a second or two the orb reached some sort of critical mass and exploded, sending a massive wave of force over everything in the city. When the shockwave washed over us I was knocked senseless for a short time.

When my senses returned to me, the first thing that I noticed was that I was no longer being held against the wall by my throat. I looked back up and saw that the little orb had become a miniature sun hovering above Canterlot. The sun shone bright light into every nook and cranny of the city just like its full sized counterpart in the middle of the day. It was then that I noticed something else, screaming. All of the vampires in the city that were now being exposed to direct sunlight screamed as their flesh sizzled and burned. One particular scream clawed against my ears.

In front of me the Red King howled in pain and tried to flinch away from the sudden burst of sunlight, but since the thing was directly overhead there was nowhere for him to hide. He clawed at the ground and tried to hide his face under his legs. Then again, something happened that I wasn’t quite ready for. A thick black smoke rose from the Red King’s body and collected into a cloud above him. After a brief moment the smoke stopped rising from him and the cloud flew off into the distance, leaving Canterlot behind it. The body it left behind began shifting. The vampire’s body visibly shrunk until its proportions were similar to that of a normal unicorn’s, at least until it burst into flames under Celestia’s sun.

“We did it! We won!” Applejack shouted while hoping up and down, not unlike Pinkie.

“Oh thank Celestia, literally,” Rarity sighed.

There’s no way it was as simple as that. I highly doubted that it was over, but I didn’t want to spoil their moment of victory. So I just kept my mouth shut until I could tell my suspicions to Celestia. But for the time being the Red Court was defeated, the vampires that weren’t burning were fleeing over Canterlot’s walls and into the lands beyond. The night was ours.

“Now that was a show,” said a familiar voice from right above me.

I looked up and saw Silent lying on the roof above me with his head and forelegs carelessly draped over the side. “Hey, not that I’m ungrateful, but what are you doing here?”

He smiled and tilted his head, “Michael sent me. After Princess Luna’s mojo let us get the upper hoof on the reds, Michael told me to come and find you.” He turned his head to look at the many vampire bodies that were now burning under Celestia’s sun, “He seemed to think that you needed some help.”

“I think we’re good for now. Get back to him and help look for survivors.”

“Sure thing.” Silent’s head disappeared over the roof and loud hoof steps sounded as he galloped across the buildings.

Twilight, having only just recovered from nearly being strangled to death and from Celestia’s sudden intervention, hastily made her way over to me and tried to get me back to my hooves. “Harry, are you okay?”

I looked up directly into Twilight’s face, her eyes had reverted to her usual shade of dark purple, and by extension the rest of our eyes had returned to normal. I raised a shaking foreleg to massage my very sore neck, “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Is everypony else okay?”

Twilight looked away from me to check on her friends, “Uh, yeah we look good. Applejack and Rarity look fine, the guard and the captain are making a stretcher for Rainbow, and Pinkie… What is Pinkie doing?”

I craned my head to look over at where Pinkie sat, far away from the rest of us. Her appearance made me uncomfortable. Pinkie’s mane and tail were completely flat and void of her usual bouncy energy, even her colors seemed drained slightly. As she sat there her eyes had grown several sizes and looked like she might start crying at any moment. I followed her gaze to the same end of the street that the vampires had come from.

I shambled back to my feet and began walking in the direction Pinkie seemed focused on. “Twilight, help the guards get Rainbow to Fluttershy. I want to check on something.”

“Harry, what are you doing?” Twilight asked me as I limped away.

“Satisfying my curiosity,” I called back over my shoulder.

I left Twilight shaking her head at me in bewilderment. She turned away and levitated some salvageable rubble over to the guards for Rainbow’s stretcher. I reached the end of the street and rounded the corner to try and find what it was that had Pinkie worried. The street around the corner looked fine, a bit of tearing here and a little rubble there, but it looked more or less intact. I walked down the road and began checking the side alleys off of the main street. The first two alleys yielded nothing of interest, just some more slightly damaged buildings and a still smoldering vampire corpse. However the third alley hid something that will haunt me for a long while. I rounded the corner into the alley and my blood froze in my veins.

Oh please no…

Suddenly Pinkie’s vague fear for Twilight made much more sense. I had thought that Pinkie’s fear was for Twilight’s physical safety, but if that was the case then she could have prevented the forewarned danger by simply being there to protect Twilight. Pinkie’s fear was for Twilight but not for her safety, it was for her peace of mind.

“Harry, what are you up to?” Twilight called from the mouth of the alley. “Pinkie started crying after you left and just kept saying ‘I’m sorry’ over and over. What are you looking for?”

The sound of Twilight’s voice snapped me back to reality and my eyes widened in sudden fear for her.

No, she can’t see this. Not now.

I immediately turned my back on the alley and raised my forelegs to prevent her from moving any further forward. “Twilight, you need to leave, now. Go help Rainbow.”

She narrowed her eyes at me and ignored my wishes, craning her neck to try and get a look past me. “Harry, I’ve been through a lot tonight. While I’ll probably need some sleep aids in the near future, I can handle a little more tonight.”

I placed the hooves of my forelegs on her chest and began pushing her away, “No Twilight, you don’t understand.“

“What I understand is that Pinkie knows something and you’re trying to hide it.” She knocked my hooves aside and managed to get her head past my neck while I was distracted and got a look at what was down the alley. “Now what is it that… Mom? Dad? NOOO!”

She threw herself forward to try and get at the bodies of her parents that lay broken in the alley behind me. Her face was a tortured mixture of fear, pain, desperation, and tears. I planted my hooves and prevented her from moving forward. It wouldn’t do her any good to see them like this. “Twilight, we need to go.”

“No! They’re right there! Help them, please!” she cried in protest.

Tears began rolling down my own face as I continued to push her away from her parents. “I can’t. There’s nothing I can do, Twilight.”

“Then get Luna! She can heal them! They’re not dead, they just need Luna!”

“Luna can’t help, Twilight. Nopony can help them. I’m-I’m so sorry,” I stammered as I pushed her out into the street.

“But they’re right there! We can still help them! We can… I can… They…”

It was then that Twilight broke down entirely. She began screaming incoherent pain and flailed her forelegs at me. She hit me with her hooves, she bit me, she did whatever she could to try and get past me. I let every blow connect, I took every shouted insult, but I wouldn’t let her go. I just silently embraced her and let her vent her pain. After a minute of her doing her best to beat me senseless, she stopped moving and just started crying into the fur on my chest. I let go of her and levitated her into the air. With a little effort I managed to balance her on my back, her legs hung loosely on my either side and her face was buried in the back my neck.

“Let’s get you somewhere safe,” I muttered to the distraught Twilight. I moved as quickly as I could back up the street to where the rest of my team was waiting. When I made it back I saw that the earth pony guard and the unicorn captain had already departed with the injured Rainbow. Applejack and Rarity were sitting waiting for me, and casting worried looks at Pinkie. Pinkie sat where I had left her earlier and stared at me with knowing eyes.

“There ya’ll are.” Applejack got up and began moving towards us, “I was getting worried about you two. What were… Twilight, are you crying? Sugarcube, what’s wrong?”

At Applejack’s words Rarity stood up to inspect Twilight, “Oh Twilight dear, what’s wrong?”

“I’m taking her up to the castle. You should all go help Michael, I’m sure he could use a few more hooves,” I instructed as I passed by them.

Applejack stuck a hoof out to stop me. “Now wait a moment, what about Twilight?”

I looked directly at Applejack and gave her my best death glare, “I’m taking care of her. I will explain later. Now go help Michael.”

Applejack looked extremely unnerved and backed away a couple of steps, allowing me to pass. To my right Pinkie said the first words I’d heard her say all night. “I’m sorry, Harry.”

I shot her a quick glare and moved pass her. “It doesn’t help much now Pinkie,” I called over my shoulder.

The walk back to the castle was a slow one, but with my mind racing over recent events it seemed to pass rather quickly. On the way back I ran into several guards and members of my battalion. Many of them called out to me looking for some instruction. I told each of them the same thing, I told them to go and help Michael look for survivors. I really couldn’t care less about what the others around me did. I was walking around more or less in a haze. The only real thoughts going through my head were for Twilight and how I could possibly make things better or her.

The barracks was nearly empty with all of the soldiers in Canterlot and with all the citizens staying in other parts of the castle, so that a wandering foal wouldn’t get too curious about one of those shiny spears. With Twilight still lying on my back, I made my way carefully up the stairs to the second floor landing and pushed open the door to my room.

She can stay with me. Twilight shouldn’t be alone right now, I reasoned to myself.

I levitated her off of my back and carefully placed her on my bed. At some point during the long walk up here, she had fallen unconscious. The trials of the night had simply proven too much for her to handle. I used my telekinesis to carefully unclasp Twilight’s overcoat and removed it from her as gently as possible. I folded and placed her overcoat on my desk. With that out of the way I arranged her neatly onto my bed and drew the covers up over her.

As the covers ran over her fur, she breathed a few shuddering sobs and mumbled a few words under her breath, “My fault… All my fault…”

I could almost feel my heart shattering into pieces. I reached out and ran a hoof through her mane. “Shh, don’t think like that. It’s not your fault,” I whispered. “Just go to sleep, things will be better tomorrow.” Something in the back of my mind began poking at me and my eyes once again were drawn to my storage chest and what I had hidden inside it.

The doll… Maybe that could help her.

Throwing caution to the wind, I opened the chest and withdrew the Smarty Pants doll I’d hidden there. I took the doll and slipped it between Twilight’s forelegs. If she noticed at all, she didn’t show it. Not seeing any other way to help, I moved the large red cushion Twilight had brought in for her idea session and put it beside the bed. I placed my own overcoat next to Twilight’s, got on the cushion, curled up into a moderately comfortable position, and tried to calm my racing thoughts. I just lay there and desperately tried to will myself to sleep, but I couldn’t stop thinking on the Red King’s words.

What the Red King said about my guilt was both true and untrue. I had sparked the Red Court’s war when I attacked one of their nobles, but I was just the excuse. The Red Court had been amassing supplies and superior numbers long before the war ever started. I was just the excuse they used to justify their actions against the White Council. If I hadn’t started it all, then they would’ve found another spark to set it all off.

I’m not so headstrong as to claim that the entire thing was my fault, but neither can I call myself completely innocent. The cold fact of the matter was that I did play a key role in all of this death. Even if I wasn’t personally necessary to get things going, it was still me that supplied the spark. I had blood on me, gallons of it. But now some of that blood was on Twilight, a pony who, before I came along, had no experience with true pain and loss. I just didn’t know how to handle that.

I’m so sorry Twilight. I never should have chased after those damned vampires. I never should have come to Equestria. Wherever I go, only misery follows.

The Red Court will always find a way to tear into you, even if they die doing it. They will not leave you intact.

Comments

[Destructorspace]

Nooo Twi!

Dangit Pinkie, you know what self-fulfilling prophecies are, right?

Also, what the heck is this King hopped up on? Other vampires' souls? Geez, he's practically on magical steroids, and escaping the sun by letting your body burn? Yeesh.

[Obsidian]

The Red King probably got a boost from Nightmare Moon, or a spirit of some sort. The guy's probably dead, but the spirit escaped.

[Kaden]

I just... fuck, man... That was incredibly awesome, and incredibly sad at the same time.
More please!

[Gyvon]

Oh, damn!

[One-Of-Three-Names]

You don't update often, but when you do..

God damn man, that was intense. Wish I could do action scenes like you.

[Applechip]

1491848

I actually managed to write this chapter over the space of about two days, granted over those two days I did almost nothing else at all. It's just that college has been nightmarish lately. I swear I've had tests every other day for the past month. If it weren't for ponies, I'd probably be pulling out my hair

[dbanksischillin]

AWESOMENESS INCARNATE IS THIS CHAPTER. And the new book is set to come out November 27th. I assume you will put a hold the stories during that time?

[Applechip]

1524818

Don't really know, I mean I've been wanting to finish the last book in the Eragon book series, but I've never really got round to it. I've got the book, just haven't found the time to read it. Or if i really get into it i could go through the next book in a matter of days. I can go through a book really fast when I enjoy what I'm reading. It's really just a matter of what I feel like doing at the time.

[NaughtSought]

This was a great chapter. No major mood whiplash to spoil any of the moments and certainly a lot of strife.

Beware spoilers for the dresden files!!!... oh and FiM if you have never seen it. (which, except for me, should be no one)

This red king reminds me of the corpsetaker jumping from a body like that. That smoke reminds me of nightmare moons smoke thing from the second episode. Really, it seems like this new red king is a mix between major villains of both franchises yet it is done well enough that I couldn't care...

Now time for wonders... If it happened somehow, how would the ritual from changes affect these vampires? Would it traverse to Equestria? Also, I wonder if this guy has a personal vendetta against Harry or just knows of him... Also if HWWB is still after Harry in equestria too?

If you need this to be deleted then tell me! I just wanted to get my thoughts down somewhere before I forgot them.

[Vates Despero]

1483670

Also, what the heck is this King hopped up on? Other vampires' souls? Geez, he's practically on magical steroids, and escaping the sun by letting your body burn? Yeesh.

Pretty sure he is hopped up on the magic/souls he is draining from victims like the 10 corpse ponies in the shed... NOT FLUTTERSHY'S SHED!! The one in Manehattan.

[arachnidsGrip]

1534485 Presuma8ly, any of the three original Equestrian Red Court Vampires still alive would die, 8ut all others would survive, since it only goes up the tree, not down.

Also, what is HWW8, and that seems like exactly the kind of comment that Applechip leaves up.

~Vriska Serket

[Amethyst Blade]

For the ending of this chapter and probably the general atmostphere of the next chapter.

[A Wild Magikarp]

I redact my previous statement. My body was not ready. Oooh there will be hell to pay for this, and if it weren't for me sharing in Twi's sorrow right now, it would be making me giddy thinking about it.

[CaptainPipsqueak]

Ah, well; you can't make an omelette without killing some parents...