Heir To Darkness

by Leafdoggy

Chapter 29: One More Time

Fluttershy took a slow, deep breath.

She wasn’t sure if she actually needed to breathe still, but this was more an effort to calm her nerves than anything else. Even now, even though she was more confident than ever before, her heart pounded as she looked up at the heavy doors leading into the throne room. Her legs still turned to jelly, and a part of her mind still yelled at her to flee.

The breathing helped, though. She could focus on the mundanity of it, and it gave her back the slightest sense of normalcy. Not much, there was nothing normal in the castle, but enough.

Enough to let her push the doors open and walk inside.

Dracula was back on her throne, but for once she wasn’t lounging. She looked more serious than she ever had before. She sat tall and proud at the top of her world, her cloak wrapped around her and a murderous glare on her face that existed solely for Fluttershy.

Fluttershy barely even looked at Dracula, because next to the throne was somepony more important. She was lying on the floor, curled in on herself, and her long, straight pink hair was pulled down over her eyes. She didn’t so much as stir when the doors opened.

“Pinkie?” Fluttershy called out with equal parts fear and relief.

Pinkie Pie jerked awake and slowly rose her head to look. When she met her tired, dreary eyes with Fluttershy’s, they went wide and she shot up onto her hooves. “Fluttershy, you’re okay!” The shaky fragments of a smile tried to find their way onto her face, but she couldn’t quite manage it.

“Of co—” Fluttershy choked up, and tears came to her eyes. “Of course I’m okay, Pinkie, I’m just glad you are.”

Pinkie nodded vigorously. “B-But what happened to you, you lo—”

“Shut up.”

Pinkie and Fluttershy both glanced over at Dracula as she spoke up, and she stepped calmly off of her throne.

“Why are you back?” Dracula’s eyes were locked to Fluttershy’s, and Fluttershy couldn’t look away. “You should be dead.”

“You know we have a deal with The Visitor,” Fluttershy replied.

“I have a deal with The Visitor,” Dracula corrected. “You have nothing, and they have no right to make deals behind my back.”

“I think they can probably do whatever they want,” Fluttershy said.

“Nothing is above me.” Dracula swiped her hoof through the air dramatically as she spoke. “No creature, living or otherwise, has the power to stand against me. That thing is no exception.”

Fluttershy frowned. “Our line only got that privilege in the first place because we were friends with The Visitor. You shouldn’t talk about your friends like that.”

Dracula scoffed. “You think my father had friends? Or whatever came before him? Entire civilizations rose and were wiped from history in the time since my line had any friends. We have tools, servants, underlings that do as we command. That is all.”

“Your father had friends. I saw that hall of memories. Those displays were made with some kind of love, even if it was twisted and evil.” Fluttershy shook her head. “At the very least, he had your mother.”

Dracula bared her fangs. “I thought I told you not to speak of my mother.”

“Would she have wanted you to have friends?” Would she have—”

“Quiet!” Dracula spread her wings and leaped forward. She flew at Fluttershy full speed, then picked her up and slammed her against the wall above the door.

Fluttershy winced as she hit the wall and pain shot through her back. When Dracula pinned her there by pressing a leg to her neck, though, she didn’t struggle.

“Fluttershy!” Pinkie screamed out in horror and leaped down the stairs from the throne. She sprinted full speed over to them and stood nearby, staring up. “Let her go, you big bully!”

“I told you to shut up!” Dracula’s voice boiled with rage. “Do you want to lose that tongue?”

Fluttershy took a deep breath. Dracula had damaged her throat badly with the pin, but that didn’t matter anymore. Everything had a shadow, from her throat to her lungs to the air itself, and it was only a matter of finding the breath.

Then she looked down at Pinkie and tried, almost successfully, to smile reassuringly. “I’m okay, Pinkie,” she said. Her voice was as clear as ever, despite the pain Dracula continued to ravage her with. “She can’t hurt me.”

Dracula growled. “Don’t get cocky, girl. I might not be able to kill you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hurt you. The shadows are mine to command.”

Dracula pulled back her free hoof, then slammed it forward into Fluttershy’s chest.

It didn’t hit Fluttershy, though. At least, not the Fluttershy that was there at that moment. Everything had shadows, and Dracula saw them, too.

Dracula’s hoof slid into Fluttershy’s chest without any resistance, and Fluttershy felt every excruciating moment when it slammed into a shadow of her heart and crushed it against the wall.

It was over in a moment, but it felt like a lifetime. Fluttershy screamed out in agony and uselessly clutched at her chest as her hind legs flailed.

Pinkie gasped. “No, stop! Please!”

“Don’t give me commands!” Dracula wheeled back for another strike, and Fluttershy tried futilely to brace herself against what was coming.

She knew how shadows worked. She knew a shadow couldn’t actually be destroyed, because another shadow would just take its place. Even shadows can leave shadows.

So it was no surprise when, once again, Dracula’s hoof plunged into her chest and crushed her heart.

She screamed again. The pain was no lesser the second time.

“Fluttershy, do something!” Pinkie’s voice cracked as she started to cry. “Stop her!”

Fluttershy was breathing hard, trying to calm herself down from the overwhelming pain. “I don’t…” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

“See, Fluttershy, even she agrees.” Dracula leaned in close and pressed her hoof into Fluttershy’s chest again, this time far more slowly. It still hurt just as much when she squeezed Fluttershy’s heart, still made Fluttershy scream just as loudly, but this time the pain didn’t stop after an instant. “Hurt me. Kill me. So long as I still breathe, I’ll never allow you to take the throne, and so long as you still breathe, I’ll never stop trying to make you into what you need to be. There’s only one way out of this.”

“You—” Fluttershy coughed from trying to speak through the pain. “You’re wrong.”

Fluttershy knew she had to do something, though. She had to get away. As long as she was there, her shadow would be there, and Dracula would never run out of ways to torture her.

The only solution she saw was to stop being there, so that’s what she did.

Dracula jerked forward and struck the wall as Fluttershy vanished into a puff of smoky nothingness.

The world went dark around Fluttershy again. With no body, she couldn’t see the world around her, and she couldn’t risk forming even the shadow of a self, because Dracula could find that easily.

She needed a change of perspective.

She tried to rethink things. When she’d walked into the world of shadow before, she’d seen the world around her, but that didn’t mean she was only able to see the world. She was the darkness. She should be able to feel it.

She was surprised by how easy it was, but really, she’d been doing it all her life. It was no harder to feel the shape of the darkness than it was to feel where her legs were when she had a body. She only had to realize that the sense was there at all.

Back in the world of the existing, darkness started to swirl beside Pinkie. It found its shape quickly, and just like that Fluttershy stood there, completely uninjured.

Before either of the others could react, Fluttershy grabbed Pinkie and flapped her wings to shoot back away from Dracula.

“Don’t think you can run from me, child,” Dracula said once she noticed Fluttershy flying away. She pushed off the wall and swooped down to give chase.

Fluttershy put a hoof up defensively, and Dracula stopped in her tracks. A chain of shade had appeared, wrapped around one of her hid legs, and it tethered her to a single spot in the air.

When they landed, Fluttershy let go of Pinkie and stepped in front of her. “It’s time to talk, Dracula.”

Dracula snarled back. “What do you hope to accomplish by talking? Do you truly expect me to just step down from my title?”

“No,” Fluttershy said, shaking her head. “I expect you to keep it.”

Dracula surged back, startled. “After all this time, you wish to just give up?”

“I’m not the one who’s trying to give up. You keep saying the creatures of the night need a better Dracula, well, then be a better Dracula.”

“Look at me,” Dracula said. “Look at what I’ve done to you! It cannot be me!”

“That’s just an excuse,” Fluttershy said. “You say you took power from your father to stop his tyranny, well then prove it! Because all I’ve seen from you since I got here is the exact kind of evil I’ve been told he was. You lust after power, you refuse to change for the good of your subjects, you won’t even try to settle anything peacefully. You can’t just claim to be better. I came here expecting to stay with The Lady, but all I’ve seen is The Count.”

Fluttershy stomped on the ground to accentuate her final words, and then she glared at Dracula. Her chest heaved as she breathed quickly and heavily, and her head was spinning from the adrenaline that had pumped into her.

Dracula looked at her blankly for a moment.

Then she hissed and shot forward with enough speed and strength to shatter the chain that bound her.

“You’ll die for that!” Dracula’s screech was ear-piercing, both loud and forceful when it slammed against them.

Fluttershy’s cheeks started to turn red as she got more frustrated. “Stop it!” She yelled back desperately. “Just… Stop!”

She snapped her eyes open and Stared at Dracula.

Dracula stopped flying and slid to a stop on the floor.

Fluttershy took several deep breaths, trying to decide what to do. She felt light-headed, and it was getting tougher to think straight. She was getting too worked up.

Finally, she made a decision.

“Fine! You want me to make you stop, then I will.”

Fluttershy shot forward and flew at Dracula. She hardly even slowed down as she approached her target, and once she did she latched on and refused to let go.

Then she sank her teeth into Dracula’s neck.

Dracula gave her a strange, shocked look, because not only did it not hurt, she couldn’t even feel it.

Really, Fluttershy hadn’t bitten Dracula, but rather her shadow, and a very specific part of it. She didn’t want to hurt Dracula, or kill her, or steal her blood, so she didn’t bite any of the parts that would do that. She bit only what she wanted to.

Then she drank.

Overwhelming swathes of power washed into Fluttershy as she drank. The first sip dwarfed what little strength she had amassed for herself, and there was a lot to take in. The cracks in her eyes pulsed as she drank, and the tips of her mane and tail started to lose their color.

Still, she drank. She drank and drank until there was no more left to drink. Nearly half of her mane had turned gray by that point, and even her hooves were developing strips of white.

Once she was done, she pushed herself off of Dracula, landed back on the floor, and wiped her mouth with her leg. “There.” Her breath was slow and heavy, and a trickle of darkness drained from her mouth.

Dracula hadn’t changed much, but one change was readily apparent; her once vibrant, shining red eyes were now a humble silver.

Dracula’s voice was somewhat shaky when she spoke, and her eyes stayed wide. “W-What did you do to me?”

“I stopped you,” Fluttershy said. “Congratulations, Dracula. I’ve cured your vampirism.”

Comments

[NightmareDerp]

Did not see that coming...
Great work so far.
Thank you for this amazing story!

[Argentyros]

Well good for you Flutters, I'd say that definitely falls under the header of stopping her from doing things. And you still got to be kind in doing so.

[Ocea Lights]

Holy wow!!! Now that's an amazing turn of events! Loving this story so far!