This is from Seamus' point of view.

I shall not mince words. I shall not lie. I shall tell the entire truth to my master. I shall always ask permission before I engage in any activity. I shall respect the ground, the food, the will and all belongings of my master. I shall obey all commands of my master and all mares, for they are my superior

Just a few of the many, many lines burnt into the fabric of my skull, my mind, my skin. The tattoo in between my legs will always remind me of those monotonous, droning, false proverbs. Melody. Her very name was a lie, she was more of a disgusting screech, or the wail of a vile creature of the void. Her name, a lie. Her looks, a lie. All the nice, sweet expression she puts into her words, lies. She lied to me for years, she branded me, nearly neutered me, destroyed my will to live on more than one occasion. She gelded, neutered, maimed, raped, castrated and tortured thousands. So, I will not mince words, I shall tell the entire truth. I have done the work of karma, and I have neutered her. I am not proud of it, nor will I boast, nor shall I take any pleasure in knowing that I have done such a horrendous thing to her. I did as what needed to be done, no more, no less. Now, she rots in the Canterlot dungeons, fed a meal a day by the best, most well mannered, cultured and respectable stallions in the guard.

I laugh to think, every kind word, every compliment, every last moment of being catered to by those male guards will be hell to her. Her mantra, that all males are servants to females, that we were naturally evil and that all males needed to be controlled, that ideology shattered to pieces every day by the kind guards and the food that should be served to royalty, or at least those who deserve it. She now sits in a cell, very unlike all the others, cushy, lavish with decorations that should have gone in Celestia’s very own boudoir all around her. I almost laugh to think that every day she is visited by a male psychiatrist, another male psychologist, and finally a male counselor. Her mental and physical being is monitored to the last detail, and every word she says is documented by a scribe. She sometimes breaks down and screams her past sins to the world. It is sad, to hear the proud mare’s sanity crack and cry like that, but it is the price she must pay for her crimes. She shall deal with her past for the rest of her life.

I remember Amethyst Amore, her daughter. She now runs the North far more fairly. It is becoming almost like another Equestria. The gender discrimination is nearly non-existent now, both male female and the tiny, yet equally as important ‘others’ are all considered equal. I applaud this, I knew that Amethyst would make an amazing leader, and she is addressing religious freedom, the right to be independent and not have to owe anything to the current ruler ’The Lady’ at the time. Melody, if one had a son, would immediately have that son taken, have his entire genetic background checked, and if he wasn’t a pure-bred all the way down the lines of his gene pool, he was castrated, made to be her servant, or to decorate a repast for Jakben. Why I was spared such a fate… a couple of reasons.

First, I am an alicorn, and by that default I am at a genetic disposition to breed more of my race, just was Celestia has Cadence on her side. To  the best of my knowledge, Luna has no children. Second, I was  given the forbidden tattoo, the ‘Pulverum Neuterus‘, a magical brand that prevented all feeling in my extremities. I have since undone the enchantment, but the lines of ink still run in between my legs. Third, I was medically altered before I grew to be mature in my extremities, both by my diet and my medication structured to increase my size and girth. I was to be a sex slave to Melody, luckily Amethyst took me away before anything happened along such lines (although there is a few situations that I was forced into before pubescence, but I prefer not to talk about it). I guess I was just lucky I didn’t suffer the same fate as many others.

Now, at last my mind returns to the present. I forget my past and all the pain, the suffering and the injustice. I cast off my inhibitions, I am only now, this one, singular moment. I lay on the bed, the warm lamplight bathing me and my partner in her soft yellow glow. The curtains are drawn, the entire house quiet, Fluttershy is asleep two floors above us. The room we are in is a simple cottage room, the floor is a thickly woven dark green that swallowed the light, making us seem like we were alone on our own island of pure white sheets and blankets. The walls are an appealing eggshell, shaded a lovely copper-gold by the warm lamplight. The curtains to the bed are white, the pillows are white, the sheets are white, all of it is pure, unbelievably flawless fields of snow white.

Sky lay across from me, his eyes closed, his chest rising in gentle rhythm. I want to touch him, to kiss his lips and run my hooves through his mane, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t disturb him. As much as a I wanted to… he was too peaceful. He was adorable, his light blue mane that faded to silver near the end of the long strands drifting down into his mare-ish face. I watched as he spread is wings in an adorable yawn. My heart skips a beat and I feel a twinge in between my legs, desperate for relief. I was excited by the very mention of him, his mane, his face, his long, elegant wings and how they made his body seem small, delicate in comparison to their sleek, muscular length. I wish that there was a way to wake him without disturbing his tranquil rest, to bring him back to consciousness without corrupting the natural beauty, but alas there wasn’t, so I lay there and ponder our past.

He was amazing to me, no matter what. For so long, I have wondered why I was attracted to him, I have long been trying to figure out… why I loved him. Maybe it was one moment, one pure moment that made my love for him take root. Or maybe it was all the time I’ve spent with him, the endless hours we’ve been together. We’ve bathed, lived, worked together and slept in the same bed for three years. That may be part of it, that may be the entire reason, but it was something else. Like fate had twined us together. Like me and him were of the same mind and soul. I love him, and he loves me.  So I respected him, especially when it came to his sleep. So I gently sidle closer to him, his pine-scented breathe filling my nostrils and setting the hair on the back of my neck on end. I soon fall asleep, him a mere feathers-breadth from me.

I wake an hour later, the feeling of sweat trailing down my back and my wings. It had been the same dream again, with Jakben, the same night Silver died. I’d later figured out that Jakben had not only eaten her, but he kept her hooves as a trophy. They now hang in his dungeon, that fetid pit under the Lady of the North’s manor, gathering dust. I hated that he was so senselessly cruel, and I’m glad he’s dead… but was he truly dead? I had to know, I couldn’t believe that he, a sadistic, dark creature of the night, could possibly be so easily defeated. It wasn’t realistic, I’ve seen that… monster rip through diamonds like a skilled blacksmith tore through sheet metal. I’ve seen him disappear and reappear a mile away in the matter of a second, I’ve seen him… use necromancy, the most forbidden and blackest magic in the known universe besides soul-weaving, the artificial creation of the most sacred, impossible thing, life. I’m pretty sure he could, but was content to just stick to destroying life in the most brutal manner possible.

I get up, there is one thing I need to know, is that beast dead? Is the mysterious monstrous J really gone? I get the most sickening feeling that he isn’t, so I roll out of bed and look at the wall. It was a completely clear wall, the corner was perfect, crisp. I looked at it and cast a spell, one of the darker ones I found in the vampire’s black book, the one scribed in blood and bound in unicorn skin. The one I stole from him the day before my departure to Equestria, and it has served me strangely well. So now I’m casting a spell that locates a pony, no matter where they are and no matter what state they are in. It can even locate a soul if it still wanders this realm. So I cast the spell and grinned as the wall split into two, a portal right where the two corners met. It was pure black at first, I supposed that Jakben was dead, truly this time. Then, to my horror, I see him, sitting by a fire in the middle of a stone courtyard, stamping a hoof in impatience. I waste no time jumping through it, I was going to end him this time, even if it meant my own death. For Silver, these nightmares had to stop, I needed to sleep one night without my past haunting me, I needed closure. In a flash of pitch black, I disappear.

I integrate right next to a massive fire and back away, the hot cinders burning my hooves.

“ Well hello, hello, hello.” Jakben chuckled, then stood up. The walls of the courtyard are gray with soot and ash, the sky is black and clouded with the smoke given off by the burning and burnt dead. “I knew you would come. So, what do you want, seeing as how I can’t hurt you and you cannot hurt me, we may as well talk. Unless you came here for something else?” He arches a brow.

I try for magic, but some invisible barrier stops me, like a wall I just hit face-first.

“Curious, isn’t it? You know, little foal, that I’m not really here? This is my soul. And that is yours, you are, in fact, standing in the exact same spot you cast this spell.” He chuckled. “Now, I need you to know one little detail. I’m not dead..”

My pupils shrink to pinpoints, he wasn’t dead, he was just temporarily suspended from his body. He was guaranteed to come back.  

“Yes, foal. I am not dead. Now, my body should be along any moment to be burned. Ah, there it is.” He spoke as if the situation was completely normal, like he had done this all before. “Of all my deaths, burning has always taken the longest to return from.”

A guard dragged the motionless body of the vampire out into the courtyard and threw it nonchalantly, almost like he was bored, into the inferno. Jakben sighed and tapped his hoof again, appearing almost stymied by the flames licking up around his body, still impaled on the silver spike.

“Well… did you want something? Say, I wonder…” A sudden, brutal backhoof scored over my face and lights popped in my eyes.  “Hm, I can hurt you , but I can’t kill you…” He grins. “You are going to regret coming here, boy.”

“No, I won’t. You are nothing more than a bully and a disgusting creature of the night. Whatever hole you crawled out of, you deserve to be put back in and have the entrance sealed off forever.” I spat, staring indignantly up at him. “You’re going to pay for what you did to Silver.”

“Oh, am I? That is interesting. Now, another thing you need to know.”

He stops suddenly, his eyes begin to grow opaque, lusterless and the whites swallow all hints of the iris and cornea. He stares at me sightlessly, swaying too and fro, chanting an incantation in the long dead language of the Before Ages, when strange apes and other such creatures inhabited this earth.. I’m about to run, or maybe muster some sort of defense, when all at once he speaks in a thundering bellow that echoed in my skull like the remnants cymbal clash. It hurts my ears and burns my mouth and my eyes water like I was being pepper sprayed. He laughs and roars.

“Come the night before the solar eclipse that The one who was Vanquished has his vengeance on the Venus  through his Firstborn by the taking of The Venus’s love.” The vampire recited the prophetic lines. “And so The Venus shall make the decision to harness his potential or follow down the road of The Vanquished himself, the result of either ultimatum shall determine the fate of the known world, for the freedom and good of all, or the death and destruction of all that is held dear to both The Venus and the world.”

The vampire cleared hi throat and looked at me with his usual elegant, yet mischievous grin. “Any questions? No? Then get out of my face!” He turned and walked away from me, disappearing like he had such a bad habit of doing, leaving me in the stone courtyard.

“Wait I-” He was gone and I was alone.

I sigh. What had that meant ‘The Venus’? or ‘The Vanquished’  shall enact revenge through his ‘Firstborn’? What had any of that meant? He mentioned an eclipse and the fate of the known world in there, but he was so brief and it was worded to be meandering and to cause confusion, like a riddle. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. So with a heavy heart I cast the counter-spell and return to my room, jump up next to Sky and resume my sleep. The nightmare doesn’t come to this time, much to my relief.

Third Person P.O.V

Rainbow rubs her partner’s chest with her hoof, stroking his muscular shoulders and dreaming in the only way she could of what she would try with him once he woke up. Her next idea was experimenting with a trick she had come across when she was reading and old dirty novel. She wanted to try saddles, maybe bridles and bits, just to test it out. This would be fun. There was one saddle she had heard of that was a saddle that doubled as a strap-on. She wondered, was he into such things? Maybe he was, if so she would have to try it out. Her plan formulated that she would warm him up by first putting the saddle on him, put the bit in between his teeth, mount him, then when he was nice and desperate for her, she would finish by clopping him. She grinned and let her hoof wander down and tweak his nipple, causing him to mumble and roll over in his sleep. She arranged him into the correct positions and settled over him, curling around his sleeping form, pressing every inch of herself over him, draping her leg over his flank and placing her wing over him protectively. Soarin’ was hers now, like a falcon protecting her smaller mate, she put her hooves around him, counting his every last heartbeat.

Something interrupted her longing, though, some odd scuffling noise. Her ultra-sensitive ears perked and swiveled around to locate the sound, it was the sound of hoof steps, but so fast that she was sure it wasn’t natural. It was getting closer… closer… she leapt out of bed and threw out her hoof out, crushing somepony’s nose with a sickening (*!crack!*) as the bone broke. She put her hoof down on the intruders neck, just to get her entire leg swept out from under her. She yelped as she was put on the floor a hoof pressed to her own neck. Strange how her situation was changed. At first she was happy and rather content, but then she was forced to injure somepony. Then the tables were turned on her and she was the one being assaulted.

“Who the buck are you! Get out of my colt-friend’s room, you creep!” She yelled up from the floor.

Suddenly she felt a hoof on her flank, enraging her beyond anything I can legally write. A voice hissed in her ear, her blood chilled and her ears flattened to her head, her now snake-like eyes shrink to slits.

“Jakben, at your services. I know you, mare. I made you. You owe me a favor. Now get up and don’t even bother to run. Stay your tongue and I’ll stay my hoof from killing you, as I do know the way, it is hard, but It is possible.” He released. she scurried to the corner, where she crouched in terror; he smirked and looked at Soarin’, who was still snoring. “I need you to give your word on your life that you must take a certain pony out of existence for me. He is a blue pegasus, short, about five years old, just on the cusp of stallion-hood and has a gilded lily as a Cutie Mark.”

Her eyes were just tiny slits of black in her sanguine eyes. “You mean Sky?” She squeaked, scared witless. “But he’s Seamus’ best friend…”

“Don’t care, explain that I made you do it, the little puss won’t do anything to you.” He rolled his vampiric eyes and ran his hoof down Soarin’s side, grinning. “You’re lover here is so loyal, he would do anything for you, I wonder if he would die for you…”

She leapt at him, snarling, feral and wild,  just to be caught by her neck. “You lay one hoof on him and I’ll kill you! I don’t care if I don’t know how you die! I’ll keep killing you until I figure it out!” She hissed through her teeth, still being held in the air.

He just rolled his eyes again. “I can tell right now you’re too stupid to do this on your own, and even if I coerce you, you won’t do it. You’re just too loyal.”

He tossed her to the floor and put his hoof on her forehead, a small mark appearing, meandering down one side of her face and out onto her neck. He grins madly at his handiwork, the long black leafing tattoo twisting like a serpent under her skin, magical runes in between the lines of  ink. He leaned down and whispered to her, raising his wing to block her view of Soarin’.

“You have two choices, kill your dearest star-crossed lover, or kill the whelp.” He grinned. “If you see him, you kill him, if you see the whelp, you kill him. If you make up your mind to just avoid both, you kill them both almost instantly. Make up your mind.”

With that, the vampire was gone, his haunting ultimatum still hanging in the air.

Okay, any other questions on foreshadowing? No, class? Fine, leave your comments on this chapter in the box, please.

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