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Life was easy when your Goddess was your Master. She told me to do things and I would do them. It was easy.

I was a doppelganger, you see. As far as I knew I was the only one. When I first visited Everglow no pony talked about ponies that could do the things I did. She told me what to look like, mostly Herself, or another pony. I would do that, though it sometimes grated to don Her visage. It wasn't that being female was hard, it was acting like Her that felt strange but, the more you do something the easier it becomes to do.

Which was of course how I got into this whole mess.

Hiding behind the magic of my ring, a very fine gift from Her, I was accompanying Her latest project. It had astounded my Master, you see, that she could spend a whole night with a single pony and they would not be... well, dead.

I guess I would need to explain this more, but how do you explain Misty Tail to somepony who hasn't seen her before?

Perfection.

The way her features flowed from strong shoulders to the finest flank you would ever stare at. She was a succubus, you understand, comparing her to a regular mare was at best a challenge and at worst simply unthinkable.

She was terrible. She killed those she had no use for. She drained the strong for fun. She enslaved the weak. She saved a child.

Growing up in Her court had been hard, of course. Demons have a pecking order and a young colt, even one that wore their master's collar, was a fine target for the lesser beasts to play with. They just couldn't leave physical marks.

But she gave me powers. She threaded her magics through me, she told me secrets of the planes that other demons and researchers would strive a lifetime to learn. She bent me to a future that was, if nothing else, useful.

Doppelganger. The word had been told to me by some new friends. They would call me an oracle, likely as a curse if they knew truly who I served.

I had failed Her. The party had accepted me, sometimes a little too well, disguised as a succubus. Most of them were curious of why I wasn't just trying to screw them to death. While a lesser demon of lust might well have done that, Misty Tail certainly always had secondary or even tertiary motives, in and out of bed.

"He is interesting, why doesn't he die from my... attentions?" I had told them, smiling and clearly offering such attentions to all present. Thankfully they were bright enough not to take me up on it. "I just want to stick around, try and work out what makes him tick, maybe see if I can breed more."

Lies always came easy, my very body was a lie. I was escorting them because Master had seen that they had a lacking in their little troupe and so here I was. Did she honestly expect that I could keep them alive? Probably not, healing gifts were mine to administer, but they were not my forte.

So I had helped the silly ponies. They had bumbled around and, at last, seemed to actually have a task, set for them by their own master, a Queen.

Intrigued with the notion of espionage and deceit that this mortal pony planned, I helped these new strangers, sometimes to exclusion of my other mission. It was on the journey deep into human lands that they revealed their nature to me.

Doppelgangers.

I was so stunned when the first pony revealed himself that I actually dropped Misty's form. I could almost be looking in a mirror. "What... what are you, what am I?" I asked.

"We are doppelgangers. How could you not know this? Didn't your parents teach you?" he asks, stepping to the side to find the red wing on my flank.

My voice was almost trembling. "I wasn't raised he... here... I didn't know my parents." For once it was truth, but a lie by omission. "Another raised me, helped keep me hidden."

The stallion raised an eyebrow at this. His companions were keeping the rest of my party distracted while we chatted. "Then it is doubly fortunate that we found you. We are the Queen's elite. The mission is as you were told, we are heading to the human lands to infiltrate their more... xenophobic city-states." His explanation is accompanied by the pony shifting to look human, then back.

"Your Queen and my Master's wishes seem to coincide for the moment." I was careful with my words. Mortals were rarely thrilled to have the servant of a demon at their side. "But... I feel a kinship with you, I will see you to your destination, even if they," I gestured to my companions in the distance with one bat-like wing, "seem a little more focused on fortune and glory."

The words had seemed fairly binding at the time, but loosely so. I could always fall back on Misty Tail's commands as an 'out'. They helped me learn new tricks with my shifting and, when it seemed quite obvious that I was going to be the only pony they could rely on with their own mission they opened up more to me.

"Why are we going in here again?" I asked, feigning disinterest with the mission and more on the stallion's hindquarters. It was always easy to drop back into this mindset when challenged. Typically it left ponies uncomfortable when one of the most desirable mares they have ever seen seems focused on trying to screw them, but knowing that if they give in they won't live to really enjoy it.

"We took a mission for here, helping the locals will mean we can move easier through their lands." His reply lacked real conviction. Maybe I should teach them how to lie properly. They had been offered a large sum of gold to chase the nasties from this place, while I had helped to install one of my kin in the city's elite mage guilds.

A long suffering sigh and a swish of Misty's perfect tail was the last they saw of me, the magic of one of my rings flowing out to conceal me from their sight. Spreading Her wings I raised up into the air and with the silence of a bat on the wing I tagged along. Bugbears. Insects. Young dragons who, apparently, were responsible for all the traps in the place, were all either paid off or vanquished. The former was the easier option in my estimation, wealth was nothing if not used to get your way.

As I followed the party into a new room, I got an inkling that something was not, quite, right. But until a party member was grabbed and two bright red marks appeared on their throat I wasn't prepared to act on it. I was safe after all.

Quickly realising that something rather less than good was happening I gave up my sanctuary of invisibility to quickly cast a spell that was the bane of such. Channelling my magic inwards I let out a constant burst of energy that would suppress hiding magics.

The human that had grabbed our companion was visible, his fangs dripping with the pony's blood still. "Vampire!" The call rang out from one of the more knowledgeable ponies, the same stallion quickly adding a short list of dos and don'ts.

The undead turned to the one thing I was actually meant to protect and I could sense the flow of magic and that companion turned, murder in his eyes.

Reacting quickly, I tried to first blind my ally but the damn pony was just a little too enraged for that and as I watched he beat one of our number to death.

The battle grew hectic, I had trouble keeping track of who did what. Flying up to keep out of the way of my charge, I reached out with part of Misty's gift, twisting his mind and distracting him most well.

Panic spread through the ranks, ponies cast spells left and right, some actually had the insight to engage the vampire. Summoning illusions of attackers around the dominated pony, I was keeping him mostly out of the fight.

Until somepony ran smack into him.

The fog in his mind cleared enough that he reacted to the blunder with deadly force. With his mind once more focused on killing I was at a loss as to how to stop him pulping the others, so I left him to it. Swooping down to the vampire, calling white divine magic to my hooves I struck at it again and again. It evaded my strikes as often as it was hit and, before I could finish the job it seemed to melt into a fog!

Slipping out of my sight, I no longer had a target and turned back, seeing my companion had already dispatched another ally and more were pulling back from the room. This wasn't going quite as intended and as I heard a familiar chant start behind me I turned in time to see the healthier-looking undead casting what was obviously a fireball.

I crashed out of the air as the flames boiled around me for a split second. The heat burnt my throat and I watched from the ground as it seemed only one of my erstwhile group of adventurers made it away. More fireballs were sent to chase them well out of his lair as the undead sorcerer turned, "Well well well, I only wanted one new pet..."

The world became a blur. Misty's commands, her focus, was lost to me. But I still had her magics.

My new master was cruel, but I could not deny his power over me. I was stronger than I ever was. Body burning with new necromantic energies, he used me as a blade to cut at those in his tomb that he wished gone.

A tear opened in reality, a familiar heat and vision peeked through the gap between worlds. She walked out, her legs so perfect, her wings folded so that her flank was not hidden by them one bit. And that tail...

"Where is my pet? I know he is here, I can feel him." Her words boomed, I heard not the usual promises and desires wrought in them. They carried only fury.

"Intruder! Kill it!" My master's hissing voice banished the fond memories Her arrival awoke. Baring fangs and channelling my powers I prepared to hurl them.

Popping sounds, smaller rifts, opening to disgorge demons and then closing behind them. My master, my former companions, we were strong but the beasts of the pit could take everything we could throw at them and they dog-piled us.

Uttering foul curses to restrain our abilities, the demons kept us held while Misty Tail approached my master. "You stole from me. That one is greater than you ever were in life, or tried to be in undeath." The words burned with scorn and anger, her eyes alight and seeming brighter even than the fires of the abyss.

The flames that crept from Her portal trailed slowly along the floor, toward the terrified vampire. They seemed so small, but when balefire is wrought by the daughter of a Demon Lord there is not a single thing short of an angel that could stay it.

My master burned, it started at his legs, working slowly as it licked up his body. A quick death would have been had were it to fully engulf him, but Misty Tail made very sure it burned slow, taking the less-vital parts first. At last the flame fed completely on the undead and returned to circle around Her. "What of my child?" the word astounded me. The link broken to that old pile of dust, I looked up at Her.

Some might hesitate. The power granted by the necromancy that fuelled me meant that her mind-assaults would not work. The demons holding me were lifted, shoved as I sprang toward her, my forelegs folding as I nuzzled against her shoulder. She was back, my Master, whom some might call my mother, hadn't left me to my fate.

"And what of these others? Vampires in their own right now." Her words carried the offer she was making to them. She had come for her property, but new servants were always welcome. We numbered three when she freed us, but only two of us entered her service. She didn't destroy the last, he hadn't done anything to displease her, and she certainly couldn't force him.

"Master, I have a task I must do, here, before I return," I told Her, rising back up to my hooves, "there are ponies outside, doppelgangers like me. They have some things to teach me still, if you would permit me to learn some more of their tricks?" it was bold, but I knew She liked bold stallions.

The mare's wing reached out, curling over my back. I felt a heat flow from her that an undead shouldn't. "Of course you can play with your friends, but Fractured, do be back soon." Her words got softer but louder at the same time, so that I knew her head was getting closer. The bite at my neck was symbolic, she was my Master again. Released, I had a vague sense of vertigo as all those other demons withdrew back to the abyss and my final sight of Her was her rump, as I knew she intended it.

"Well, that is going to make this mission a little more interesting..." I murmured, leaving the other undead to his crypt. I could see the almost blinding light outside but, pulling Her form over myself again it seemed to fade to tolerable, the first step back into the light was also my first with a beating heart again.