There was a rustling. Restless smoke and whispers shifted as one in response to the ringing of metal being forced through metal. A tiny figure was struggling alone on a ledge of obsidian slag, trussed within an iron-ribbed box, and all the unaging intent of the surrounding fog bore down on it in delight.

A word was fighting to be freed from the prisoner’s muzzled mouth. It fizzed through the drool that trailed from her clenching jaw, repeating like a riddle’s answer being borne to a sphinx lest it be forgotten, and everything lost. The thing that watched knew the word. With false urgings it called for it, only to suffocate it with a flood of denials.

Somewhere on the ledge, an angry hum grew, then faded. Light had broken the immanent reverie; one star in an empty universe. A voice began to speak above the cage.

"Hmm. It appears as though your bindings have loosened. You have been straining much since my last visit." A light blue cloud of magic enveloped the steel cord attached to the bar that had been forced through Cozy’s teeth as a bit. "Allow me to remedy that."

The tension in the cable grew in ticks as each new braided segment slipped through its fastener. By degrees it pulled Cozy's head backward, strangling her groans into desperate, puling gasps. The stream of saliva leaking from her ruined mouth turned pink, then red.

"What's the trouble?" Luna asked, sitting back on her haunches. "Only our third ... appointment ... and already you seek other engagements?" She chuckled, and was silent for a time, letting the child’s cries drown in the ageless void.

"Well now. As I have matters of my own to attend to, why don't we begin?" She stood, and began to channel her magic through the spiral of her horn. Cozy twitched in her tightened snare, jerking her head from side to side as if to refuse what was coming.

“You spent your short life a restive spirit, contriving to fly harder than your wings could carry you. To run faster than your legs could bear, ever jealous of magic you were not born to; trapped inside the dainty carriage of a foal. So, you may be surprised to hear that the immortality you sought has been granted. For none perish in the Womb of Tartarus. Here, it is the spirit that imprisons the flesh.”

The whispers coincided for a moment, weaving through the voluptuous curls of fog in vague assent. Luna lowered her voice. “Can you hear her, all around, and within? She is so pleased to have adopted you. She holds you as her own, and will never relinquish you.” The soundscape fell back to chaos once more.

“But perhaps you still hold out hope for rescue. It happened once before, did it not? Although, I would remind you that your impulsive saviour merely sought to use you as a pawn in a much larger game. Be assured, henceforth you shall never be free. It was I who sang the Song of Perdition that sundered you from the world of the living; I who wove the unbreakable chain that tethers you to her—here—your new mother, and I made no misstep.”

Cozy’s chest heaved. Her hind legs, bent the wrong way above her back, pulled at her makeshift rein. She rocked on her belly, going nowhere.

Luna watched her from above. “Not a single voice asked for mercy on your behalf,” she continued. “Indeed, we considered that Discord’s escape from his stone prison was all too easy, and that your case required a more permanent solution. What was it that sister said, on the day of your defeat? ‘There isn’t a punishment worthy of all you’ve done.’ I wholeheartedly agreed. And so, when all was said and done we recalled this place, lost to memory before the time of Alicorns came to an end, ages upon ages ago.”

She breathed in, immune to the half-spoken wordplay and caresses of the mist. The stream of light had reached the tip of her horn. It hung there above her cross-swept mane, a droplet of icy water poised to fall in the midnight haze.

“For children, the stars are just stars, and the Princesses are distant features of the horizon. Yet, here we are. Was that truly your dream? To be a Princess? To show us all how great you could become?”

Cozy had begun to cry.

“Of what value was your conquest? No, I know you have no answer. Every empire in history has fallen, and the same fate will meet every empire to come, until the sun burns out, and the moon drifts away. All are held together by the same faulty thread, so all come apart in the same predictable ways.” She kicked pebbles of black glass off the ledge, one by one. “Domination. Corruption. The will to harm. To power.”

Luna sat once more, unable to drive the sneer from her face. “Eventually you will come to understand that your life, such as you led it, had neither meaning nor value. You have heard of the shared fate of the King and the Pawn, I trust? The pieces have all been put away, back on their shelf.” She flourished a hoof over the depthless cliffside.

“If suffering begets wisdom, then you will be wiser than the greatest sages among our kind. For with your scant few years, wisdom was what you sorely lacked! Had you used your power to create, rather than destroy, mayhap sister and I would have embraced you, and let Twilight take second place. What you desired was always within your grasp!”

Bright drops welled at the edge of the band that clamped Cozy’s eyes shut. They shone in the dim illumination like fireflies following their leader to the end of a summer’s night. The fog called to them, too, and as they slipped downward, they drifted away.

“Fear not. Though you live on, your mind will not fail, for you lost it long before you came here. I admit, I worried that even all of this would fail to reach you. But some things all ponies have in common, from the youngest filly adjusting to her new life at school, to the most hardened stallion of the Royal Guard. Should what you experience here still inspire no remorse, I say that you will be known. I will share every detail of your innermost fears with Princess Twilight, whom, I have no doubt, will transcribe and catalogue every detail. She is, as you know, very thorough. I expect every library in the land will have record of the dysfunctional machinery of your soul, so that there will be no chance of another like you rising to prominence.”

The livid light at the point of her horn flared bright white. “Keep fighting, child. Now receive what you deserve.”

Cozy started to twist, until she felt the grinding of the shattered bones of her forelegs. She screamed through her constricted throat.

A glowing white thread of magic wormed downward into the cage, and dug its way through her grime-caked, tangled mane. In an instant she was asleep and dreaming, and her dreams were of immolation; of living death within a blazing furnace; of burrowing leeches throbbing in vermicular joy beneath her coat, infecting her with hot fetid pestilence as they engorged on her blood; of her parents raging, beating her unconscious again and again and again, shutting her in a crate and casting her into the sea; of all the ponies of Equestria rejecting her, spitting on her, calling for her execution and damnation to Tartarus where all of the world's filth collects and burns; of aeons alone in boundless space, yearning for a single word, yearning to be able to feel, yearning even for unbearable suffering so long as she was able to feel.

When the uncountable years of the nightmares had passed, Luna spoke. "Fascinating, is it not? How so much time can seem to pass in dreams, while in the waking world only a few moments have slipped away." She lowered her head to Cozy's level, her great, sea-green eye burning with cold hatred.

"One might say, an eternity."

Luna said no more. Time passed; an hour, or a year.

Exhausted in the void, Cozy fought to speak the last sane thought left to her.

Papa.

Author's Note

Thank you for reading.

Chapter 3 was heavily influenced by one of the final scenes of Hellraiser: Inferno.