Dracula wrenched his head back and stabbed his fangs deep inside of one of the Silverblades. Dracula tasted the blood on his tongue. It was not as sweet as it usually was, it had more of an iron like taste to it. He felt his strength increase.

All around him he heard the sound of battle. Cries of fury. Clashing steel. Dying screams. Crackling flames. The sounds that he has come to memorize and know by heart. Like the lines of a symphony-he knew them well. The pitch of cries. Swords falling to the ground. Strikes of vengeance and of survival. All parts of the symphony of battle. With Dracula as the composer.

He sucked the pony dry until he was nothing but a lifeless sack of dried meat. Dracula tossed him aside and stood in the flurry of tumultuous sounds filling his eardrums. But a sound brought forth his attention, breaking the walls of battle around him. A voice called out to him and it said, “Dracula!”

Dracula turned and saw the tall stoic form of his brother Dragomir. Dragomir had made quite a name for himself amongst the Equine Empire. Dragomir personally stomped out an invasion of ogre tribes to the west, leading decisive victories each and every battle. Dracula had seen his brother on the field. It was almost inspirational to see him like that.

Dracula said turning towards his brother, “Have you abandoned all sanity to follow Celestia as well?”

Dragomir stepped down and replied lowering his sword, “No. But I am not exactly joining your side of this war either.”

Dracula knit an eyebrow and said, “Then you are my enemy?”

Dragomir sheathed his sword and responded, “Not exactly.”

Dragomir flashed his magic and in a bright light Dracula closed his eyes and when he opened them he was standing atop a tower overlooking Canterlot. The injured wound of Equestria and the capital being the weakest city within the Equestrian Empire. It was saddening, knowing that the capital city of the Equestrian Empire has still not repaired itself. It did however make sense, Celestia had spent most of the taxes on building forts strategically placed around Equestria, creating requisitions for the new army, and trying to improve relations with foreign nations.

Dracula analyzed where he was. He stood atop one of the towers in Canterlot. It looked like a makeshift war room. Maps and papers strewn around the room in disarray and chaos. Plastered either on wooden boards standing upright or on a large table in the center. Standing there was Rainbow Dash and Dragomir. Dracula stepped in and wiped the blood from Kal’Drae, he asked, “What is this place?”

Dragomir looked up and said, “This is the war room of the Equestrian Rebellion. I have put up wards to protect this tower and keep it nearly invisible to Celestia’s blind eye. We can meet here when I have something to report that’s big.”

Dracula looked over the papers and skimmed over the scrawls. He shuffled through and asked keeping his attention to the pages, “Are these the tactics of the new Equestrian Military?”

Rainbow Dash leaned on the table and responded, “She is starting to call it the Solar Empire. And yes, we have been forging copies of them for the past year now.”

Dracula’s voice was filled with a sense of longing as he inquired further, “Why did you not come back? You could have returned.”

Rainbow Dash looked downcast as she responded, “I-I didn’t want to hurt anypony. I had no idea that the Orb of Darkness would do that to me. It saved you didn’t it?”

Dracula mulled over the event. He mused, “While at the time it was handy to jump in with the Orb of Darkness, I did not want you facing the side effects. You could have been killed, you are my responsibility now. As your friend and as your ruler.”

There was silence in between the next words spoken, a numb silence of mixed feelings. Of worry and of newfound respect. Dracula continued to lean against the war table. He observed some of the plans that lied on the table. They were papers that had the different positions and tactics of the new Solar Empire.

It had finally set in that this war would tear apart Equestria. Eastern and Southern Equestria are already at Luna’s back. Brothers would fight brothers. Sons would fight fathers. Families torn. It finally set in on the gravity of the entire situation. Celestia was more mobilized than any other country, so she would make her first move soon. Dracula heard the dying sound of the battle slowly evening out and a silence fell on Canterlot.

Dragomir asked crossing his hooves over his chest, “So. What will you do now, Prince?”

The Vampire Lord thought carefully and responded quickly, “I will have to meet with the Originals to discuss if we are even joining the civil war or not. Then we will see if the Crystal Empire will join. I would suspect not considering the amount of damage they suffered from recent attacks. My apprentices should return soon. For now...see what you can find about anything Celestia might be hiding up her sleeve.”

Dracula saw the look on his brother’s face. He showed great strife, something that Dracula had not seen in a long time. Dracula focused back on his task at hoof. He had to escape Canterlot. If any of the Solar Loyalists even see him they will try to kill him. With his recent change of abilities he is more susceptible to both fire and solar attacks. He would be the shadow now.

Dracula clutched the hilt of Kal’Drae, he could feel the primal energy itching to harvest souls to become stronger. He felt the same craving but for blood. If there was one thing that was certain. It was that Vampires are perfect for warfare. They feed off of blood and become stronger from it. If there was any army that strives from conflict, it was his.

Dracula said to Rainbow and Dragomir without turning his head, “Tread carefully, brother and sister. For the paths of the enemy lay before. Be careful you do not terry from your path.”

Dracula spread his wings and lifted off into the sky. His eyes bright red and primal with hunger. He scanned the city and looked for a capable meal. A well known noble. A degenerate, nopony would miss her. Or perhaps a royal guard. Decisions. Decisions.

Dracula set his eyes on the mare that spoke loudly in his ears. He listened carefully and heard her say, “I don’t care what the costs are, I need this home rebuilt.”

Dracula landed silently on the top of a building looking down covered in shadows to hide his form. He gazed down with the eyes of a dragon. He saw a tall standing mare, her coat as red as blood. Her mane as white as the clouds. And her eyes a bright orange of the morning rays of dawn. Dracula studied her for a long time. She had the build of a lady but also had a hidden warrior gait about her, hidden beneath her facade of snoodiness and blueblood.

Dracula had a cruel smile cross across his lips and he said, “Perfect.”

He listened closely as she talked to what looked like the foreman of a construction site. The foreman said, “I’m sorry mam, but we have too much to build already. The Princess has been pushing these artillery towers like it was nothing. If you wait a month or two then-”

The scarlet mare toughened her skin and growled at him, “That’s not good enough! I don’t have a place to live until then! Where am I going to go?”

The foreman bared threateningly down upon her and said, “Figure something out. I have a job to do.”

The foreman walked on back to the construction zone. Dracula watched with anxiousness welling up inside of him. Canterlot was filled with ponies just like her, but her. There was something about her that seemed so familiar. It seemed like he had seen before. She had a certain warrior walk about her, hidden as she walked through the streets. The cold wind piercing and her thin satin dress doing nothing to hold back the chilling temperatures. Dracula had an opportunity. Dracula’s fangs unsheathed and he said, “A meal and an ally. Two for one. Now that is a deal that I can’t refuse.”

She rounded a corner and turned down a darker part of Canterlot, the place hit the most by the raid three years ago. Dracula changed his solid form into a mistform and travelled quickly over the rooftops and down into an alley a few feet ahead of the mare. Now he would do everything to try and convince this mare to join him as a fellow child of the night.

Scarlet held her hooves close to her. To try and keep the chilling winds from fully engulfing her and to try and bring comfort to her for the situation she is in. Not able to fix her home. She thought that maybe there was even a shred of a chance that she could get what she wanted she could have it. But she was proven wrong. Like so many times before.

She walked on. Into the black abyss of nothingness. The Onyx Oblivion, the section of Canterlot that got hit the most in the raid that took place three years ago. It was more than a strike at her heart with her home gone. But also a strike at her very soul. Her home was destroyed and she felt powerless to save it. She was herded away to a place she had never seen or heard of before. And for a month she was faced with sitting there in a damp and dark cellar to wait for it to be clear for her to return to Canterlot.

And to make matters worse she had a terrible mark burned onto her shoulder two years ago. She felt like she was on the verge of death. And she went through it by herself because she had no idea who her family was. All she knew was that Luna would come by sometimes to keep her company. To help her through her times as a dressmaker in Canterlot. The levels of stress and the levels of tension that carried with it. But it progressed and as their friendship grew, so did something else.

Scarlet grew to love the Princess of the Night. And she grew to love Scarlet. She was told that Luna knew very well Scarlet’s father, she had been with him at one point. But that did not matter to Scarlet. What mattered to her was Luna. It had always been Luna. She would throw herself out of her way to treat Luna with the utmost respect and love. And she received the same in return. She knew about her former husband, Midnight, had left a few months from that night and she did not take it very well. Scarlet heaved out a heavy sigh, she had gone through so much pain in so little time. She could barely fathom the feeling.

She nearly jumped out of her coat when she heard the sound of a can scraping against the stone ground. Scarlet turned to the alley it came from. The shadowed hallway not easing on its stinging darkness. Scarlet’s heart beat increased in tempo as she stared down the tube of shadows. She felt fear and dread fill her but she as well felt slightly intrigued. Like something was pulling her in and telling her to check out what that sound was. The source of the feeling was devoid and almost completely invisible to her. But she walked down the tube with intrigue and curiosity filling her troubled mind.

Her hoof falls echoing off of the pavement and vibrating loudly off of the walls. She gulped down a large lump in her throat. Her actions and her mind were uncertain from that moment on. Silence almost ripping her apart. She moved her gaze left and right, her silken dress slightly billowing in the breeze. She found nothing in the shadows, other than discarded trash. She was at the back and she looked up. A streetlamp lit a small radius around her, not large but large enough for her to stand there and think for a moment. Streetlamps were something new that Princess Celestia enforced.

Scarlet did not mind the new regulations that the solar sister had in mind, as long as things got done. Scarlet stood there looking around for what seemed like an eternity. Looking at familiar shadows, she felt her skin jump as she looked around. The buildings rose higher in the sky for her. The shadows twisted and turned. She could feel somepony else nearby. She froze when she heard a voice that cut through her like a knife, “Destitute. Broken. In need of help yet nopony is willing to help you. I must ask you where you expect to go?”

Scarlet briskly turned to the source of the voice. Standing tall was a cloaked figure, his front hidden behind the cloak curtain. An alicorn it looked like, he stood a head taller than Scarlet and his head was lifted up, bright red eyes set with a hunter’s gaze. She froze looking into his eyes. She responded shakily, “I-I w-was going-”

“To the castle? No doubt you seek the comfort of your secret lover, Princess Luna, I will have you know that she is no longer allowed to set a hoof in that castle without being attacked.”

The figure advanced to Scarlet, each stride Scarlet stepped back. As he advanced towards her he asked, “There is no doubt that you wish to help your lover. Yes?”

Scarlet braced against the wall and said her voice rising in fear, “W-what are you g-going to do to me?”

The figure leaned in and as he did the light above them blew out, a cruel smile curled on his lips and he said revealing long fangs, “I’m here to offer you a gift. You abandon this life, in exchange for another. I have looked at your heart and I see power, beyond imagining. I am here to offer you this power.”

Fear somewhat lifted from her as she asked trembling, “What kind of power?”

The figure seized her in his hooves and lifted his head to the sky, his fangs extending and he said, “A Vampire Lord.”

Faster than the bite of a snake his head fell and his fangs stabbed inside her neck, thrust deep within her jugular. She groaned and moaned as her lifeforce was leaking out of her and sucked into this Vampire. Her life felt as if it was at the edge. Before her eyes closed getting ready to sleep she whispered in the vampire’s ears, “Dracula…”

“Hmm…” Scarlet felt her voice awaken before she could. Her muscles ached under her skin and her eyelids like bags of stone. She felt lighter than before, she felt airy and like she could ride the wind. She rose a hoof to her head and felt a splitting pain run through her mind. She groaned as she attempted to awaken, that was an experience she did not want to go through again. Scarlet went to sit up but was stopped by a hoof. She heard an aged voice and it casually said, “Easy, young mistress. You must take it easier.”

Scarlet opened her eyes and saw she was laying on some sort of stone deus. Standing over her was a well dressed earth pony, he looked old but very well aged. She looked past him and saw the large chamber of stone she was in. Filled around her were various bodies and disregarded bones. Normally she would be repulsed at the sight but she felt okay with the macabre scene she laid in. Scarlet looked all around, the colors intensified and were brighter than she could normally handle and it flared. She hissed with an animalistic cry and the earth pony consuled, “Easy young mistress. You must ease into your vampiric ab-”

Scarlet felt a animalistic feeling rise within herself. She seized the earth pony in her hooves, much like Dracula did, and opened her mouth wide. Revealing fangs of white daggers ready to pierce through mortal flesh. She hissed as her bite connected. She expected it to have some sort of taste but she just felt acid fill her mouth. Her tongue and mouth boiled and stung as she tried to draw the lifeforce from this earth pony. She hissed once more and knocked the earth pony to the ground. She was about to pounce on him and finish the kill when she stopped as she heard a piercing and commanding voice that echoed off of the walls, “Scarlet! That is enough!”

Scarlet felt her move away from the earth pony and she looked at her hooves and said to the earth pony with ragged breaths, “I...I am so sorry.”

The pony stood back up and dusted himself off and replied with a nasally and accented voice that she knew well about, “That’s quite alright young mistress. I have to become used to such actions. I do serve my Lord faithfully.”

Scarlet collected herself. Her animalistic thoughts escaping her, returning her other memories and civilised thoughts. She looked down at herself and saw she was wearing torn rags stained with blood. She looked back at the earth pony and said, “So you are his servant?”

The earth pony straightened his form and replied with a Trottingham accent, “Well, I’d hardly call myself a servant. More of a faithful follower and advisor. I am Eusef, faithful advisor of my lord Dracula Belmont. I serve him to fetch his meals, protect the castle, give him messages, and on occasions I watch the Fallen Masses.”

“Fallen Masses?” Scarlet knit an eyebrow, Eusef bowed and stood back up tall.

Eusef added, “The chambers that we are now standing in. The Fallen Masses they are called. Potential vampires or death knights. Their souls are judged here and reborn. There are many ghouls like myself that must take care of the bodies. Those that are not worthy...well...let’s just say that I get my lunch early.”

A smile curled on his lips. Scarlet looked at Eusef and said, “So you are a ghoul? How come you aren’t-”

“Rotting and frothing with disease?” Eusef answered, Scarlet looking away briefly ashamed of herself asking, “Well, I will have you know that we ghouls are very functional. We can’t have the masses returning with our rituals and techniques.”

“He is still a pony,” Dracula said stepping next to Scarlet. He wore long flowing black silk clothing, his shirt a large V shape revealing a bit of his pale white and jet black coat. His hooves folded behind his back. His voice stern and of a deep reverberation. He had a commanding presence that could inflict fear, but she did not feel such fear. She felt groveling at his hooves. He was so beautiful. All the features about him are just filled with youth and rugged handsomeness. She felt unworthy to be near him. Dracula moved his gaze to her, his long flowing cloak wisping like smoky shadows, and explained, “Ghouls are very much their pony counterparts. Ghouls are just very rare born ponies that have a craving for meat. They serve us so that they do not go grave robbing or capturing ponies in the night. They serve as our watchers and as our guardians during the day, so that we may rest peacefully and with no worries that the castle will be robbed.”

Scarlet felt his gaze on her and she shrunk under it. She bowed low and said, “I understand, my lord.”

Dracula turned towards Scarlet and said, “You are a vampire. You do not serve on your knees. You serve to protect and defend the ideals of the Ebonmanes. What do you know about us?”

Dracula shifted his stance, spreading his hooves shoulder width apart and his hooves still folded behind his back. Scarlet stood back up and thought for a moment and replied, “Um...you are a recent addition to the Equine Empire right? Three years ago? Luna did not tell me much about you.”

Dracula moved his gaze down and said, “No doubt because she was still grieving after the loss of her eldest son. Me.”

Dracula looked to Eusef and said, “That will be all Eusef. I will come for you when I need something else.”

Eusef bowed low and said, “Yes my master.”

Eusef walked past Scarlet and his hoof steps echoed as he descended from the raised platform. They were eight or ten feet off the ground. A stone deus with various scratches and marks over the altar in the center. A sea of bodies filled her vision, but she was mystified to find out what lied on the back wall. On the large back wall lied a large stone face. A gargoyle face carved from stone, a hunger in its lifeless eyes. His mouth was agape and spilling out endlessly was bright red liquid. It poured into a large pool. Scarlet felt oddly hypnotized by the sight of it and asked, “What is that?”

Dracula looked and said, “That is the Falls of Del’Lathras. The Vampire Lord. Before me there was only one other vampire lord, Del’Lathras. The origins of nightmares and dark magic itself. When I became a vampire student I studied all I could. Del’Lathras lead armies of undead minions against the two brothers. Cerberus, Father of the Night, created Del’Lathras to serve as a humble protector of the night. But Del’Lathras craved power and drew in more than he could imagine. But he wanted more, so he asked Prince Horrus to grant him powers over the damned and the shadows. Horrus would grant him this one blessing in exchange for something else.

“Horrus told him that he would never be satisfied.His hunger never satiated, until he was swimming in a pool of blood from his most hated enemy. Once he would find and drink the blood of this pony then would his hunger be satiated. Del’Lathras hungered power but not forever more power. So he scoured all of Acros finding his one true enemy. He butchered and killed millions to find his enemy. But with an agenda such as his he needed to be stopped. The two brothers, Cerberus and Faximas sent out and hunted down Del’Lathras. Del’Lathras even delved into Cervidia for a time, becoming their scourge. The Archdruid Kal’Rodan, imprisoned Del’Lathras in the earth. Forced to remain there for all eternity. Del’Lathras could not face an eternity of being imprisoned in the earth so he took his own life.

“It was in that moment that he realized he was his own enemy and for once he felt anger rise through him and he lashed out at the earth around him. So he created these falls, to one day pass on his curse to another so that he might find eternal rest.”

Scarlet looked at the large face and asked, “So, he is not dead?”

Dracula nodded and responded, “Vampires are never truly dead. There is only one weapon on Ketos that can be rid of Vampires forever and that is the Whiteash. But that is a story for another time. For now you must have many questions. I am here to answer.”

Scarlet kept her gaze on all that she saw. She felt an insatiable hunger and a fury rising in her veins. She wanted to tear the throat out of ponies and drink their blood, shouting in the satisfaction. The lights intensified and she said, “Why...me?”

Dracula looked out and leaned his hooves on the altar she once laid on and replied, “I do not often change other ponies unless I see a certain spark with them. I have a knack for finding the right ponies to be my apprentice.”

“Apprentice?”

“Yes,” Dracula said running his hoof over a blood stain, “For we have entered a war that I think we will need every capable vampire to hold a blade. A war of family against family. Luna versus Celestia. And Sanguinaria caught in the middle. I do not know if word has reached the Crystal Empire but I fear they are not prepared for such a war. I chose you because I believe that you will be my temporary heir to the Onyx Throne. Until I give birth to a son or daughter. I have faith that with the right training you will become an unstoppable force of the night.”

Dracula turned towards Scarlet and he asked, “Are you ready to be a faithful servant of the night? A student of blood?”

Scarlet looked down and thought. She knew that if she refused she would be eaten by the ghouls or worse. But what would have been worse was not living in a home. Celestia abandoned her old ideals with raving and warmongering ideals. The peaceful Equestria Scarlet once knew was gone. With these new powers she could do some good, perhaps make it the Equestria she once knew. Then she thought about getting directly involved and fighting alongside Luna. Scarlet looked up at Dracula who waited patiently.

Scarlet bowed low and said, “When do I start master?”

Author's Notes:

Yes another update for Rondo. A little bit of explanation before we go into Mobilization of Nations. the next chapter name. Let me know what you think of it so far, so far I have been very proud of it. Now that Dracula is a real vampire it spans my horizons as a writer of where he needs to be as a leader and as a character.

See you all next chapter!
~Sylus~