• Published 31st Jul 2018
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Gloaming - Rambling Writer



While investigating a series of vicious attacks on animals in an isolated town, a wildlife expert is plunged headlong into a hidden world of monsters.

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14 - Heart to Heart

“S-Sombra?” I asked. “King Sombra? Crystal Empire King Sombra? He was a vampire?”

“The oldest one I know of,” said Homeguard. “I do not know if he was the first one, but he had been around for a long time before he took over the Crystal Empire.”

“Look, I’m sorry,” I said, “but that’s ridiculous. The crystal ponies weren’t scared of him because he was a vampire, they were scared of him because he was a slave driver. He made them his slaves and-”

“Why?”

The question was so out-of-nowhere my train of thought derailed. I stared at Homeguard; he stared back. “Why what?” I asked.

“Why were they slaves?” Homeguard responded. “What were they constructing? For what purpose were they enslaved?”

“Well, they were- They…” I shut my mouth and thought. I’d read a lot on the Crystal Empire after its reappearance, but whatever books I’d found had always seemed to dance around what Sombra had done, resorting to vague generalities like “slave driver”. “I… I don’t know.” Heck, the guy had red eyes and fangs. If he was the first vampire, maybe that was where the image had come from.

“Because they were not slaves. They were food. Many were kept in chains and used as forced labor, true, but otherwise, Sombra kept the Empire under his sway solely so he wouldn’t have to worry about feeding ever again. If somepony ever angered him, he simply drained them in the middle of the night.” Homeguard went silent for a moment. “Having one’s foes turn into desiccated corpses overnight is a damn effective deterrent against rebellion. Why do you suppose he was turned to shadow rather than imprisoned or killed? The Princesses had already tried and failed to execute him. Myths of vampires were not yet well-known, so they thought they were dealing with something otherworldly. Given their knowledge, turning him to shadow was the best they could manage.”

“So, if… if Sombra was a vampire, why doesn’t everypony know this? Why’s he cast as just a powerful unicorn?”

“Tell me. Suppose a pony told everyone that they could have access to immortality, near-invulnerability, enhanced senses, powers beyond what normal magic could give them — even if they were just a pegasus or earth pony — and all they had to do was kill a pony every one or two weeks. What sort of following do you think he would gather?”

I didn’t want to think about that. I started chewing on another flower.

“The Princesses covered it up for the good of Equestria,” said Homeguard. “Indeed, as far as I can tell, Sombra was already in the process of amassing an army for the purpose of conquering the nation. When the Princesses destroyed him, his army was scattered, many of them hunted down, and any knowledge of the specifics of Sombra’s actions was suppressed. Granted, that was not hard. But their destruction of his army was not complete; Crystalline is made up of some of his most avid followers.”

Dang. Sombra, secretly a vampire, all tho- Realization overtook me and I started choking. I banged my chest a few times to clear my throat. I swallowed, took a few heaving breaths. Finally, I was able to gasp out, “You’re over a thousand years old?”

“Technically, I am thirty-four,” said Homeguard. He smirked. “But I have been thirty-four for well over a millennium.”

I barely managed to keep my jaw shut. One thousand years old. I… I couldn’t even wrap my mind around that. It was just too much. One thousand years old. It was easy to say Celestia and Luna were a thousand; I’d never seen them in the flesh and their alicornhood made them something… other. At that point, being immortal was practically to be expected. But Homeguard looked every inch a normal pony and he was over a thousand. I-

“Do you wish for me to continue?”

I swallowed, nodded, and nibbled on another flower.

Homeguard eyed me for a second, then continued. “It was over a thousand years ago. I was a preacher for the Path of Harmony, and I-”

It’s amazing how fast you can swallow something when you really want to. “You are a trained preacher! I thought your sermon on Saturday was good.”

“W-well, yes, but-”

“If you keep giving sermons during amateur hour, you’re kind of missing the point, you know. Everypony’s supposed to be able to relate their experiences, since harmony is everywhere, and a trained orator talking during time meant for the laypony is-”

“The Path has changed in the centuries since I first lived,” said Homeguard. “I… have adapted less than I ought.” A touch more testily, he added, “May I continue?”

I nodded and started nibbling on a particularly large flower. No more abrupt swallows for me.

Homeguard grunted. “I was traveling to the Crystal Empire shortly after Sombra took the throne. Although I had not the slightest inkling of his true nature, I had heard rumors, and I thought the crystal ponies needed a light in the darkness. As Equestria was not yet sending direct aid-”

“Wait, the Crystal Empire wasn’t part of Equestria then? I thought-”

“Do you desire a history lesson?” scowled Homeguard. “Or would you prefer me to explain just how I became who I am?”

“Sorry. Won’t happen again. I swear.” And I began devouring the nibbled flower to prove it.

Homeguard glared at me before continuing. “I headed for the Crystal Empire, aiming to provide what help a single pony could. At the gates, I was accosted by a guard who demanded to know my business. In my naïvety, I explained exactly why I was at the Empire. The guard said I was under arrest for treason and knocked me out. When I awoke, I… wish I hadn’t.”

He licked his lips. “The turn is not instantaneous. Far from it. Three days of paralysis and some of the worst pain of your life throughout your entire body. And… you are aware the whole time. I shall spare you the details.”

I shivered. Thank goodness for that. I’ve never been paralyzed, but I’m terrified of the idea. I’m even a little paranoid about anesthetics. And it was bad enough at the best of times, but three days of nonstop pain…

“When I finally regained control of myself,” said Homeguard, “I was in a cage, King Sombra himself on the other side of the bars. The thoughts of every pony around me were pounding on my head, although I knew not their source yet. Sombra explained my current state with a banal indifference, the detachment of a scientist. He was conducting an experiment, he said. He wished to know how long a vampire could be deprived of blood before instinct took over completely. I simply happened to be available. Then he had a pony chained up on the other side of the cage and watched.”

He massaged his throat. I didn’t think he knew he was doing it. “Vampires call it ‘thirst’,” he said, “but it is… more of a psychological need. Your throat burns, and you… know that blood would soothe the pain, if only for a short while. The pony on the other side of the room was more appealing at that moment than you could ever imagine. Yet my morals still remained, and perpetually hearing the pony’s terrified thoughts steeled me even more. The idea of taking the life of another, even to save my own, was… abhorrent on the deepest level you can imagine. It would go against every fiber of my being. And although my throat burned, it was not unbearable. I foolishly assumed I could live with it. Days passed. Vampires kept visiting, trying to persuade me to give in. And the burning grew worse and worse every hour.”

For maybe the first time in my life, I was acutely aware of food moving down my throat when I swallowed. I hadn’t chewed up part of the flower completely and a leaf tickled at my esophagus. I wanted a long drink.

“I should count myself lucky that only a few days later, the Princesses decided enough was enough and invaded. Nopony else imagined what I was, and after Sombra was destroyed-” Homeguard caught himself. “…was… thought destroyed, I was freed, apparently a victim. But over the few days in which I had been held captive, my thirst had grown, and every pony around me looked so… appetizing.” He cringed. “I needed to leave. I found myself daydreaming of simply walking up to a pony, snapping their neck, and partaking of their blood as one would a fine wine. When the Empire vanished, I took advantage of the confusion and fled into the trackless wastes of the Frozen North. There was not a pony for miles. And, left unquenched, my thirst began to take me over.”

He shuddered and folded his ears back. “The pain was beyond excruciating, far worse than I can describe. I imagined I could feel my sanity slipping away. I… cannot remember much of the later days. I know that I attempted suicide. Idiot. I was already dead. Sombra had explained as much to me.”

I didn’t know if vampires could cry, but he sounded pretty close to it. I leaned up against him and threw my leg across his shoulder. His body was cold, but I didn’t think of pulling away. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I know it’s a little late, but… Listen, if- If you don’t want to keep talking, I, I can-”

“No,” said Homeguard. His voice was firm again. “You- need to know this. I-” He looked me in the eye and smiled. It was somehow sad and warm at the same time. “But thank you.” He patted my hoof, then lightly pushed my leg away.

He took a deep breath and continued. “One day — I cannot remember how much later — I found myself crouching over the body of a wolf, sucking at one of its arteries. The… The taste…” He shuddered. “I have… heard it said that pony blood tastes better than animal blood. And considering the taste of the blood I was drinking, I can see how giving up pony blood would be difficult. To a vampire, blood is… ecstacy. A drug and a health drink, all in one. You feel like you can take on the world. Primarily because you can. Right then, I felt as if I was communing with harmony itself. Even though I had just butchered an animal and was lapping at its blood like a dog.” His voice was getting angrier, laced with acid. “But my mind was back. My thirst was being slaked. And so I drank.”

Hanging his head in his hooves, he said, “The greatest moment in my life was promptly followed by the lowest. The crash after a high. I… I was horrified. Appalled. Disgusted. My first victim was just an animal, but what if my second was a pony? I would never forgive myself. But then I realized that the pain was reduced. I had moved from a desert to a shower. Desperate for any semblance of respite, I hunted down another wolf, shocked at how effortless it was, and drained it. And, if only for a day, the pain was gone.”

Homeguard looked up again. “I could… I would not have to be a murderer. I could still coexist with ponies. And so I made a choice. I did not know how much the Princesses knew about vampires, so I decided to go to Canterlot and give them my own firsthoof information. Many of Sombra’s subordinates had escaped, and I imagined Celestia and Luna would desire every scrap of help they could find. Perhaps, in my new unlife, I could still be worth something. And so I made for Canterlot. I found the going to be much easier than it had been when I was alive.” He smiled for a moment.

“But as I traveled…” He began toying with a particularly long blade of grass. “I began to wonder. Just how much of a pony was I still? I preached that all things existed in harmony, and yet now my existence depended on violating that harmony. I had heard tales of black magic destroying the soul. Was that true of me?”

It was hard for me to think much of the soul; my thoughts tend to be very physical. But Homeguard, as a more religious pony, would think about that all the time. I was reminded vaguely of my own situation: unable to do my job for reasons out of my control. And no matter how bad I found it, he had it much, much worse. At least my problems weren’t existential.

“I swept the issue under the rug, I’ll admit,” said Homeguard, “perhaps believing the Sisters could cure me, and continued to Canterlot. I arrived and… To make a long story short, I eventually received an audience with the Princesses. I told them everything I knew. I know not how much it helped them, but they seemed grateful, even though they advised me to keep my condition a secret, at least until knowledge of Sombra and his followers had faded out of memory. But once that goal was done, I had nothing. Nothing but my own thoughts and fears. Doubts of soullessness crept up again. I sought another audience, but I… I avoided Celestia. I mean her no disrespect, she is a excellent princess, but sometimes I think she is too optimistic for her own good.”

“She’s right more often than not.”

“True, but optimism was not what I was looking for. I talked to Luna instead. She seemed more… pragmatic. Willing to be blunt. I poured my heart to her, told her the true depths of my situation, the things I had left out previously. I asked for honesty, but in my mind, I begged, pleaded for some kind of reassurance, no matter how slim.”

Homeguard paused. “Luna told me that if I was worried about losing my soul, I still had a soul left to lose.”

Another pause. “One rarely thinks of Luna as being the philosophical princess, but it makes a remarkable degree of sense. Every night, she assists ponies with their fears while delving into their dreams. She has a certain way of speaking to you. And those words were precisely what I needed.”

He looked up at the cloudy sky. “That night, I went out to look at the stars, the first time I had truly done so since my turning. And although I knew my senses had been bettered, I was left dumbstruck at the beauty of the sky.” His voice got quieter, and he started smiling. “There were so many stars I had not seen before. They had so many colors. So many patterns. And there were things that were not stars, yet had seemed to be; blurred clusters of miniscule dots, hazes of colored gas, even stars that were two stars spinning around each other. There was so much magnificence that my condition had not taken from me. So I decided.”

Homeguard’s voice became resolute for the first time since we’d started talking. “I was immortal, invincible. So why not use it? Not in the way Sombra was planning, to lord over other ponies. No, the way Luna and Celestia used it, still use it: for the betterment of others. For harmony. There was no limit to what I could do, for I now had all the time in the world to learn it. I already knew how to soothe the soul; why not the body? I began learning medicine. Eventually I was a doctor. And now, over a thousand years later…” He smiled. “Here I am.”

“Wow,” I said quietly. “That’s… something, alright. Dang.” I wanted to say I could’ve done it, but in all honesty, I wasn’t sure. I’d never really been tested just that much. One of the hardest times in my life was the first time I moved, for Celestia’s sake. And all that, more than a millennium ago. I wondered what else Homeguard had learned in that time. Forget being a Reinaissance mare; he might be a regular Reinaissance stallion, all by himself. It was a bit much to take in at once and my head was bursting with questions, but he’d be waiting for my story. So instead, I said, “Kinda wordy, aren’t you?”

Homeguard chucked. “Ponies were more verbose a thousand years ago. It is a habit I have not bothered to lose.”

A bird twittered somewhere. It sounded like a sparrow. I took a deep breath. “My turn?” I asked.

Homeguard nodded.

“Right.” I braced myself and said, “Several moons ago, my family had three people. Me, my daughter Levanta, and my husband Thunderhead. We lived out in Fawkes. Kind of out in the desert, you know. Real flat. The weather out there can build up and get nasty, with no changes in the land to disrupt it. Thunderhead was on the weather team. And… one day…” I blinked and wiped my eyes. “The storm he was helping to manage was a lot worse than expected. The wind was too much and he lost control of his flight and- and couldn’t pull up in time. And that was that.”

I shuddered as the memory of the following days sprang unbidden into my mind. He hadn’t been the only one to die that day, so I was brought in to help identify the body. Get that 99% certainty to 100%. And, somehow, when it was time to head to the hospital, I was worried about what to wear. I’d just finished work; my jacket? But it was dirty, and I didn’t want to dirty the hospital up. A dress was respectful. But it wasn’t a funeral yet and Thunderhead would’ve laughed at me in a dress. Just an everyday shirt, then. But I was going to look at my husband’s body. Who wears an everyday shirt to that? And for what must’ve been half an hour, I felt lost, simply staring into my closet and wondering what to wear.

“I- This probably sounds stupid to you, since you’re- immortal and all, but…” I blinked again and sniffed. “It’s- Death is so… weird. I said goodbye to him that morning, heard something about a bad storm that afternoon, and a little after I got home, my doorbell rang, there were two mares in black suits, and- and I knew I’d never see him again.”

When I finally went to the hospital, I was taken to a room — not the morgue, more like a waiting room. A counselor sat down with me and patiently explained what I’d be seeing. It’d be done with photos. I was given all the time I needed to prepare. Was this his face? It was terribly battered, but yes, it was. Was this his cutie mark? I’d looked past the ragged gash running straight through it. Yes, it was. And we were done. I was asked if I’d like to see the body. Yes, I would. It’s very damaged. I know. I still would like to see him.

“I was setting the table for dinner. Three spots: me, him, and my daughter. And- All of a sudden, one spot was pointless. That was the way my mind put it. Levanta was making green bean casserole, and- She didn’t know who the mares were. We’d never thought to tell her. He’d been a weatherpony for the past twenty years just fine. Why would anything go wrong now? And- then I had to tell her. It was better she hear it from me than some mare in black.”

In spite of all his injuries, somehow the worst one was that his jaw was broken. It doesn’t sound like much, but for a second, when I saw his face, I thought it wasn’t him. It just didn’t look like him. The picture was flat; it couldn’t capture how wrong his face was. I forced myself to stay, convinced myself it was him. It was his cutie mark on the body, after all. His injuries… They were… Celestia, I still don’t like to think about it. I’m completely certain seeing the body was the right thing, but we had a closed-casket funeral.

“And then, the world just kept going. One of the few ponies I’d poured my heart out to was gone, but nothing else changed. I just- went on, dealt with the bureaucracy, and got shipped here a few weeks later.” I sighed and kicked at a stone. “The bureaucracy really doesn’t give two shits about death.”

Levanta never saw his body. She’d had the option, but she said she didn’t want to. Even then, I wondered if she’d really wanted to but just couldn’t bring herself to do it. Still, she gave a eulogy at his funeral. It was… alright. Writing was never her strong suit. Except for the closing line: “He was like a father to me.” Why had it been so funny? Why hadn’t I cared that it was so funny during a funeral? It probably described Thunderhead better than anything else.

I stared out at the other side of the meadow. “At first, I thought I’d never get over it. But one week went by. And another. And another. And- I’ll never forget him, but- but I’m moving on.” I rubbed at my eyes. “It- I- That’s all there is to it.” I looked down, slightly embarrassed for some reason. “You… probably don’t want to listen to me ramble.” I started chewing on another flower.

The not-silence of nature reigned for a moment. Then Homeguard spoke up. “Death was something of a rarity in my life before I was turned. I was still young and healthy, as were my friends. I am sorry you had to experience it like that, so suddenly. I wish I had more than sympathy to offer you.”

“Sympathy’s fine,” I said. “It’s enough.”

“Still…”

“Look, don’t, don’t worry about it. Yeah, it’s, I’m sad, but I can’t wallow in misery forever. Sympathy’s fine. Thanks for listening.”

“…Very well.”

I needed to get back to the police station, sooner or later. But for now, I just sat and watched the meadow shine.