Discord in Hell (Not Literally)
Discord In Hell (Not Literally)
I'm afraid I have to admit it, this is entirely my own fault. Now I'm told that many individuals in a situation such as the one I find myself in might engage in a bit of unproductive self-blame, such as "If only I'd been stronger" or "If only I'd noticed that my drink was spiked" or "If only I'd gone to the mountains and become a hermit, far far from any ponies anywhere," but rest assured, I'm not one for self-blame where it's nonsensical and unwarranted. I mean, I'm a fan of nonsense, but believing that you're at fault for being a victim because you went to a party or trusted a co-worker is not the sort of nonsense I have any tolerance for. So when I say this is entirely my own fault, it's because I'm under a spell that compels me, whenever I describe a situation, to detail in excruciating detail everything that I might have done to possibly provoke or cause that situation, and in this case, as little as I like admitting it, it's warranted. I was overconfident, I wasn't paying attention, and I was trying to get away with something, and I'm paying the price for it now.
It's such an unjustified price, though. If you knew...
...well, if you knew, you probably wouldn't care. In fact I'm having a hard time believing I should bother mustering up what little energy I have to write this message, because I'm almost entirely certain you won't care and might even laugh and certainly won't lift a hoof to try to rescue me, in part because this is all my fault and in part because you despise me and will probably enjoy hearing about how I have been humiliated here... but on the other hand I have very few options, and if I'm going to rot in this place I want to at least know I tried everything I could to get out. I'd much prefer to blame you for not bothering to try to rescue me than blame myself for never calling for help.
I'm also under a spell that compels me to tell the truth. Funny, I wouldn't have thought it would apply to writing, but there you go.
So before I start going into convulsions or being overwhelmed with nausea, neither which are at all pleasant, I'd better satisfy my geas by telling you exactly why this is my fault. Which will almost certainly doom me because you won't bother to do anything to help me once you know and I'm repeating myself. Damn this spell to the deepest depths of Tartarus. Where it can keep me company because that's where I am. Not literally. If I were literally in Tartarus I could probably get myself free; I used to give Cerberus doggie treats back in the day, and I bet he'd still play fetch with me. Literally I am in the basement of an alternate universe version of Fluttershy, chained to the floor, scraping together what very little magic I am able to use to transform the bark off tree roots and loose-hanging flaps of my own skin into parchment, which is why some of these pages will be part vellum, part wood paper. I'm not deliberately doing that to be chaotic, though I confess the visual effect is pleasing and maybe when I get home I'll make all my paper look like this, except probably not because it will probably remind me of being chained in the basement of a parody of my best friend using dirt and my own blood to write an overly verbose cry for help because I can't stop telling the truth.
The truth is please help me.
The truth is usually anything I said or wrote would be full of jokes but I don't know if I have it in me to be funny anymore.
The truth is, I was a bad bad colt and that's how I ended up here. Also criminally stupid. That's not literal either, if Celestia threw anyone in jail for being stupid she'd have to start with that fluff-brained nephew of hers. I used to jail ponies for being stupid on occasion but the jails were generally made of crackers back in my day so they could gnaw their way out without much difficulty. I tried gnawing my way out of the basement but there are spells on the dirt walls and I'm too weak to dig a deep hole to get around them. Also if evil goateed Fluttershy caught me I don't even want to imagine what she'd do to me. She doesn't really have a goatee, that's a reference to a joke you won't get, but she really is evil. I shall henceforth call her Fluttercruel because I am trying very very very hard to separate her in my mind from my dear friend, which is hard because they look exactly alike. I mean, if Fluttercruel were all gray this would be easier for me to deal with. Literally, because I know exactly where to poke to unravel that spell, but unfortunately the idiot who used to live in this dimension used a different one I've never tried, and it turns out I was wise! I just wish he was the one suffering the price for his stupidity and not me. Well, I suppose he did, seeing that he is a pile of rubble, but I almost think I'd rather be—
No.
No, I'm not going to say that, I'm not going to believe that. I am not better off dead. Once I start thinking that way I've lost. Where there's life there's hope and all that. I got out of that damned statue, I can get out of this.
Maybe.
Probably not.
But if I let the despair overwhelm me and I stop fighting, then definitely not.
So I have been trying desperately to avoid saying this but I really would rather not puke my guts out again; I don't get nearly enough to eat that I can waste it pushing the limits of this spell like that, so I'll just get to the point. I wanted to misbehave. I knew that if I made it rain fish in Canterlot Fluttershy would be furious with me, and when you have only one friend she has quite a lot of psychological leverage. Also, I am starting, occasionally, in tiny ways, to feel a certain amount of... ugh, sympathy for ponies that I know. Making my Celestia deal with fish all over (especially if they're still swimming in the air as they rain down) is... less appealing than it used to be. I mean it's still hilarious but now I also feel bad about it because it would make work and stress for her.
Whereas I don't have to have the slightest such concern about a different Celestia! So I had the brilliant idea, which is sarcasm, to find a cognate universe and go wreak some entertaining havoc. Nothing worse than you've seen me do, you understand, and nothing as harsh as discording the Element Bearers or trying to declare anyplace the Chaos Capital of Equestria (nopony got my joke there, and I'm still disappointed... chaos cannot have a capital. A capital implies organization, a government, structure. It's an oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp or pony intelligence.) I just wanted to cut loose and have some fun. Rain fish, float pies, make gravity into surface-sticky so ponies could stroll up the sides of buildings if they wanted to, make it rain in Cloudsdale upward from the clouds they walk on, you know, that kind of thing. Nothing so awful as to deserve this.
Good. I can still say that. I still believe it. I still believe I don't deserve this. The day I can't say that anymore, because the truth telling spell keeps me from saying things I don't believe to be true, I'm done for.
They're trying to break me and I am terrified of what happens if they succeed. Fluttercruel's only the instrument. This, I believe, is their version of "reforming" me, and if this is what they do to make me reform I am fairly certain that this version of Celestia has no good intentions for me once I've been broken to willing servitude. I can't rule out that she'll try to use me to conquer other dimensions, such as our home, or other worlds, or... I don't even know. I've only met this Celestia twice. Her eyes are so very cold... I miss my Celestia. I miss all of you. I want to go home. I hate it here. I'd hate it here even if I weren't chained up in a basement being routinely beaten with diamond-studded whips.
They think I'm native to this dimension. They think that when Spike killed the other me, and then half a year later I showed up, it means that breaking my statue with a sledgehammer freed me rather than killing me. So far they have never actually asked me about it, and I'll be compelled to tell the truth if they do, but I've done my best to pretend that I'm the one that belongs here, even though I'm under a truth spell and it's very hard not just to lie, which is actually impossible, but to not spill my guts entirely. Holding back information is so, so hard. It helps that usually when I'm around ponies Fluttercruel has a gag in my mouth, or something else, but this world's Twilight Sparkle does actually routinely interrogate me. Sooner or later I expect she'll find out. I don't know what will happen then.
Oh. Oh, that's nasty.
I apologize for the vomit stains. I took too long to write about everything I did wrong that led me here and the spell just made me upchuck everything in my guts, which isn't much given that I'm starving but is quite awful given how awful it was going down. Fluttercruel... I think maybe she is trying to make me associate terrible tastes and nausea with chaos, because she smiles cheerfully as she brings me the most disgusting things possible to feed me, tells me I should like it because it's not what any normal pony would want to eat and therefore it's chaotic and different, and then orders me to eat it and I have to. The obedience spell keeps me from disobeying a direct order. Have you ever eaten something that is so awful, your gut is heaving even as you put it in your mouth and you're actually crying from how unbelievably awful it tastes but if you don't eat it you'll lose control of your muscles and they'll start just eating it without your input, and at least if you can control your muscles you can keep your tongue out of the way of the food so you don't have to taste it so much? No, of course you haven't, because no one in our Equestria is sadistic enough to make you do such a thing.
You're probably wondering how it is that anything tastes disgusting to me when I do things like drink glasses. The answer is, that drinking glass tasted like spun sugar flavored with the delicacy and depth of a well-aged red wine but without bitterness, or alcohol, because drinking and chaos don't mix (this is not actually true, they mix much much too well, but I've never wanted to approach my chaos in a state of impairment and if I'm going to have no idea what the repercussions are of what I'm doing I want it to be because I'm a leaf floating breezily on the winds of chaos and not because I'm drunk off my flank.) With my magic, I could make anything taste like anything I want. Without it, bird shit tastes exactly like bird shit and maggots taste exactly like maggots.
You have to believe that I don't deserve this. You can't be this cruel. You belong to my world, not this world of sadistic monsters. You can't believe that because I wanted to be a little bit bad and make it rain fish for a day or two before coming home, that I deserve to be chained in a basement, stripped of all but the most minimal level of my magic, being forced to eat the most disgusting substances imaginable and no, compulsion spells, I will get to it, I intend to disclose the full truth, just... be patient. I'm working my way up to it.
Anyway. I was bad, I think I already covered that. I was also unutterably stupid. You see, I didn't want to have to deal with a cognate. A cognate is an alternate universe version of you, and being that I am Chaos, I actually have a much wider spread of cognates than the average pony does. I could run into the guy who thinks torture and genocide are a fun way to spend a Saturday night, or the guy who wants us all to be impressed by his angst because he fell to the dark side when Celestia called him a total uglypants, or the guy who's married to Celestia, with six foals, all of whom emo about the fact that they have Chaos powers or they look like me and seriously, why does he let them get away with that? Not that I'd have any foals with anyone, much less Celestia, but if I did, I would make damn sure that they embrace their individuality and demand that the rest of ponykind make way for them and their nature, not shrivel up and cry because ponies think they look funny. I ask you how could something like that ever come from my DNA?
And the problem for me, in encountering these very different and very annoying, dangerous or nauseating cognates, is that they're all as powerful as I am. So I avoid them. If I knew for a fact that my cognate in a particular universe was very much like me, I'd probably think he was a great guy and we'd hang out and come up with the best chaos ever, but most of them aren't and I don't like playing those odds. (I have, occasionally, gone looking for the female version of me. They don't tend to be unutterably evil. Found one one time and we had a great time until she started demanding that I propose marriage to her, which immediately made it obvious that she was much much more different from me than I imagined, so I ran away really really fast and while it took jumping through five different universes to finally lose her, eventually I did.)
But it turns out that I have a profound impact on Equestria. Yes, yes, I know, I'm stating the obvious and it's not as if I ever doubted it for a minute, but I have objective proof. Universes where I never existed in the first place tend to be... unpleasant. For me. Even you would probably be appalled at the nauseating levels of sweetness and light, black and white mentality, and excruciatingly bad dialogue that mark these universes. So I can't go to a universe where I never existed and I can't go to a universe where I currently exist; even going somewhere that my cognate is stone won't help because of course I'll generate so much chaos that he'll break free tout suite and then I have a cognate of unknown nature to deal with, and if I have to hear "BOW BEFORE THE MIGHT OF KING DISCORD" one more time... I mean seriously, I never called myself a king! Grand High Poobah, Great Dalmuti, Dauphin du Pantalones, Marquis of Carabas, El Presidente and the Superdave, yes, but never a king. What was the point of overthrowing the royalty if I was just going to install myself as royalty? But I digress.
My brilliant idea, which is still sarcasm so no, I do not have to start puking again or having seizures, was to go to a universe where I am dead.
Yeah, in retrospect the problems with this are obvious, but... you possibly might have noticed a small character flaw I possess, in that I often don't notice really obvious problems right away? Like that the Elements of Harmony weren't gray anymore when they lined up to zap me? Or that a universe where I'm dead has something in it that can kill me and has had motivation to do so? I mean, when you're the God of Chaos, you don't die from slipping on the soap in the bathtub and cracking your skull. Universes where I am dead usually got to be that way because someone murdered me.
In this universe it was Spike. Yes, little Spikey Wikey. He took a sledgehammer to me. A sledgehammer that doesn't exist in our universe because when I found a weapon lying around that could destroy gods, I turned it into a sword and chucked it into another dimension where it very nearly landed on and killed some poor lake naiad, who fortunately then stepped up to the plate to guard it so only heroes could get their paws, or hooves, or hands, on it, and not bratty little dragons who want to prove how manly they are, or something. I don't actually know why he did it, because he thinks I already know, given that he thinks I am the same guy he took a sledgehammer to and he apparently monologued about his intent for some time before doing it (which by the way talk about your Fridge Horror, maybe you can't comprehend this because when you got turned to stone it was a cockatrice and cockatrice stoning knocks the victim unconscious, but when I was in stone I could hear everything, so I'm just imagining being there trapped listening to this pathetic little dragon monologuing about why he is going to kill me and being completely unable to move or escape or even speak to defend myself and thinking SWEET CELESTIA'S FLANK JUST SHUT UP AND DO IT ALREADY, LISTENING TO YOU GO ON AND ON IS SHEER TORTURE!)
It... is possible that his actions were justified.
Whatever the other me did to the Elements of Harmony in this universe... I am paying for it. I think if he weren't dead already I'd want to take the sledgehammer to him.
See, when I discord ponies it doesn’t last. A few months, tops. Most of my magic wears off, because really, the same magical effect every single day? How boring. Change is fun! Besides when ponies remember what utter jerks they were under my influence their reactions are just priceless.
But whatever he did to the Elements of Harmony... it lasted. It didn't stop them from harmonizing, it didn't keep them from synchronizing with their elements... it seems like it changed the elements. All of them have a yin/yang effect going on now, where part of the gem is dark and part is light.
So Fluttershy, excuse me, Fluttercruel, still takes care of stray animals. Still feeds and cares for a wide variety of pets. Still serves as a better veterinarian than the actual unicorn veterinarian working in Ponyville, despite the fact that he has healing magic and she doesn't.
And sometimes she...
I don't care about the convulsions, I'm not going to write about that because then I'll start crying and great job, I just admitted to someone who will probably find it hilarious that I've been broken to the point where I cry. Sometimes over nothing. Well, nothing besides the fact that I'm a prisoner and I'm being tortured and most of my magic is sapped from me and what I do have, I'm compelled to use on behalf of my captors and I'm hungry and I hurt all the time and somepony who looks and sounds exactly like my best friend, my first and closest friend, the pony who taught me the value of love and friendship, is raping me on a regular basis.
I actually didn't mean to write that.
I hate this spell.
At least I managed not to write the thing I didn't want to write about above, but at the expense of telling you something I thought I'd rather die than tell you, but blood doesn't erase worth a damn and it turns out that when you go into convulsions when you try to tear up your own paper because you want to not reveal something you've just stupidly put down on the paper due to a compulsion to tell the truth, you decide that the humiliation of admitting things like that is more bearable than the alternative.
Anyway. The point I was trying to make is that Fluttercruel is still Fluttershy when she wants to be. Which hurts more than you can possibly imagine when she changes midstream from one to the other, because you can't tell the difference. They don't sound different, they don't look different. When I discorded Fluttershy she just ran around insulting ponies and shouting at them. This one can sound like she's feeding a baby foal here comes the choo-choo train while she's making me eat dead creatures she found in the forest that had been rotting for three or four days before she found the body, and cheerily telling me I'm an obligate omnivore and I need to keep my protein levels up. Yes, biologically I know I'm more predator than not, that doesn't mean I eat animals. I'm chaotic but I'm not a monster. Also. Rotting for three or four days.
I don't think she's figured out how badly it would affect me if she forced me to kill and eat something, because she's still enough Fluttershy to not want me to kill something to eat. That being said I think I have been broken to the level where I'd prefer to violate the few morals I hold sacred and kill something to eat than to be forced to eat any more rotting carcasses. Not that I'll get a choice.
I haven’t had nearly as much exposure to the others, but they are different. I've been forced to be a slave for Rarity often enough that I've seen her transformation; she still gives away her time and attention, she still showers her friends with absurd numbers of gifts, but she's also avaricious, much more ambitious, and keeps the gems she finds, or sells them for large sums. Also she has no problem having the former God of Chaos as a slave. The things she tells me to do are stupid and demeaning, but at least they're not painful and when Rarity wants me to work for her, Fluttercruel has to let me heal myself because Rarity would never consider me presentable enough to be in her boutique if I had open wounds.
Fluttercruel once left me with Pinkie Pie watching over me. I thought this might be the opportunity I needed, that I might be able to play on her sense of fun to win her trust and get her to free me. It turns out whatever other me did to her has given her a very, very, very warped idea of what "fun" consists of... about the equivalent of some of my nastier cognates, though fortunately with less power. Once Fluttercruel revived me and transfused enough blood into me that she could release some of my magic to me and I wouldn't be too weak to use it, I was able to regenerate the limbs she took, but I'm never going to get the taste of those cupcakes out of my mouth. I am... actually not as ashamed as I thought I'd be to admit that I broke down crying, groveled, begged, and performed various obscene acts for my captor to get her to agree to never set Pinkie Pie on me again.
Applejack is a little more imaginative than Rarity when I'm forced to work on her farm. She doesn't seem to be a liar so much as the kind of pony who sets you up to fail, which is kind of like lying. She'll give me a task that is literally impossible for me, like sorting apples into ten different bins based on really, really tiny variations in their shape and color, without my powers, and then whipping me when I fail. Sometimes she uses a tree branch. Most of the time she uses the same tool Fluttercruel does, a hemp rope knotted around and through very, very sharp, very hard gems. See, I'm part dragon, so a lot of my body is simply impervious to the kind of things that would hurt ponies. A mere knotted hemp rope? I won't even feel it. I do feel the leather one, especially after I ask Applejack who she killed to get the leather, but she goes for the pony parts of my body with that one. The one Rarity and Applejack worked up together is designed to cut through dragon skin. I think they are not sufficiently monstrous to have come up with this before imprisoning me, which would imply that they thought of it as a means of controlling little Spikey Wikey. I hope. I hope they're not that monstrous. I hope they came up with it just to torture me. Applejack has one and Fluttercruel has one. Thankfully, Rarity, despite obviously having helped build the things, thinks whippings are utterly uncouth and uncivilized and won't deliver them herself. If she's dissatisfied with me, she'll just tell Fluttercruel.
Although honestly, given the choice between Applejack punishing me herself and Rarity tattling on me to Fluttercruel so she'll do it... I prefer Applejack. Applejack's much stronger and it hurts more but it's just pain. Fluttercruel... can sometimes, for a few minutes, make me believe I deserve it.
I never see Rainbow Dash, I have no idea what other me might have done to her. But I know he had more success than I did with his Twilight Sparkle... and, in the end, much less success.
The Twilight Sparkle of this world is cold, cruel and rigid. She's like what if you stripped out the insecurity and nervousness from our Twilight and made her totally self-righteous and convinced that she is an angel and a superior being and everything she says is right. Okay, she doesn't literally claim to be an angel or a superior being, she just acts that way.
Whatever other me did to the Elements, it didn't save him. Twilight found a way to harmonize anyway. Possibly by turning herself evil? I don't know much about harmony, except for how to break it. So they put him in stone. And when I turned up, forewarned and forearmed so they wouldn't be able to put me in stone, because I'm not that stupid, I saw it coming... I was not at all prepared for what Twilight did.
Maybe I shouldn't have stayed three days. Originally I was only going to stay two. But I was having so much fun.
I'm sure that with other me a pile of rubble Twilight hadn't spent a lot of time coming up with this previously, so I think it says something about her that she only took three days to come up with it. She came up with a spell that feeds on Chaos and outputs attractive illusions. I think maybe she modified some kind of crowd control calming spell, because what it does is, it takes someone who is generating Chaos and makes them see what makes them the happiest and calmest, and while they are in their dreamworld illusion they are basically catatonic in the real world. Most spells don't work on me because I block them easily, but a spell that feeds on Chaos got through because, well, it was really well fed.
And while I was in la la land, she added the other spells. So when she released me from the Sweet Dream spell (that is exactly what she calls it), I found myself in hell. Not Tartarus, that's a real place. Hell.
You don't know what that is. There are dimensions where they believe that after an evildoer dies, he is cast into a pit even deeper within the earth than Tartarus is, which is really kind of metaphorically deep because they actually perceive it as being like another dimension or something, and there he is tortured eternally. Not until he dies, redeems himself, serves his sentence, or goes catatonic or feral, like in Tartarus. Eternal torture, of the most horrible kind they could think of, and believe me, the creatures that invented this concept are great at thinking of horrible things. I'm not, of course, literally in hell any more than I'm literally in Tartarus, but it's a metaphor so I was hoping my geas wouldn't force me to spell that out. Apparently not.
There's an obedience spell. I think that's actually the biggest one, and the worst. When I am given an order I have to carry it out. I have about five seconds to choose to do it myself, in the way I see fit; if I haven't started the task within five seconds, the spell takes over and my body moves of its own volition. It's much, much worse when that happens; I'm meant to be a puppeteer, not a puppet. Which, ironically, is conditioning me to voluntarily choose to obey, quickly, without thinking about it, because I know if I resist more than a few seconds I'll lose any control I might have had whatsoever.
I'm terrified that if she takes the spell off I'll still obey.
I try to defy the spell, every so often, just to prove I still can want to.
There's a collar, and cuffs on all my limbs. The one on the lion paw is painfully tight because I don't have a place where the bones narrow and then spread out, like I do with the eagle talon and the dragon leg, so they just made it really tight. The goat leg, they didn't actually cuff; they pierced it. There's a ring in my hoof now, suitable for tying rope to. There are rings in my wings as well, and they're usually tied to a harness I'm forced to wear around my body, so I can't spread them. The collar is the main thing that blocks my magic. It's tied to the obedience spell; I'm allowed to use magic when I'm given a direct order to do so, and I'm allowed to keep a tiny bit of transformation magic all the time because it's what I use to heal my body, and they want me alive and in pain, not dead and free of them forever. So they let me heal magically, much more slowly than I would have otherwise but at least it's healing faster than nature would warrant, but mostly so that they can torture me more often without my passing out or dying on them. The transformation magic is how I'm making paper to write on out of wood scrapings and my own skin.
The cuffs are just for tying me up. They have a ring in my tail, too.
There's an honesty spell. This forces me to basically say everything that comes into my head if I even try to speak. The only way to get around the spell is to be silent as often as I can. Hasn't worked so far; apparently no matter how many times they humiliate me I can't get it through my head not to make sarcastic comments that lead to my being forced to admit to things I never wanted to admit to, like that I'm afraid and I hurt so much I'd do almost anything to make it stop.
There's a "loyalty" spell. In practice this means I cannot hurt any of the Bearers. Twilight tested this by ordering me to attack her. I nearly died from the resulting seizures. I literally cannot perform an action that I think could reasonably lead to death or pain for one of the Bearers of the Elements, but I also can't disobey an order, and when the two of them conflict I end up collapsing, foaming at the mouth and nearly biting my tongue in half. The same thing happens if I hold out too long on disclosing a truth that I'm expected to provide. First comes the nausea, and then the vomiting, and then eventually seizures. Twilight also ordered me to tell lies and to disobey Rarity, who was helping her with the tests. Same thing. I quite possibly have brain damage now, but then, given who I am, how could you tell?
And these things are powered by the Elements of Harmony. So I can't break them, any more than I could break out of the stone. She tied these spells into the Elements and had the six of them cast them on me when I was trapped in a beautiful illusion. The collar isn't, but I have been ordered not to remove or damage the collar, and they reinforce the order frequently.
They then handed me over to Fluttercruel for obedience training.
I'm not sure if they know about her fetishes or not.
I am hoping the other me caused the sadistic dominatrix parts of Fluttercruel to come into existence, not that they are suppressed within her. When I discorded her I basically had to just overwrite the top of her personality via brute force, rather than bringing something out that was already within, so I'm pretty confident that this is the case and there is no part of my Fluttershy that would enjoy tying me down on my back with my limbs spread-eagled and my tail chained to the floor and my wings pulled open so far it feels like they're going to tear loose, whipping me (on my chest and belly, given that I'm tied on my back) with a diamond-studded hemp rope, and then ordering me to perform sexual acts on her. Pretty confident.
I know what they're trying to do. I know they're conditioning me to immediate obedience, to terror of failure at the tasks I've been given, to be silent... maybe Fluttercruel knows what's going on, or maybe she thinks she's just being allowed to indulge her fetishes, but it’s obvious to me that they're trying to break me into being a tool. Not a mindless tool – they already have that, the obedience spell will force me to do whatever they want without my mind having anything to say about it, but there are a lot of spells they can't make me perform that way because they can't compel me to think what I don't want to think—but an unquestioning one. Maybe Celestia's going to come in and play Good Cop and "rescue" me and then I'll have to be her servant or something. What they ask me to do with my magic, here, is trivial; what they ask me to do with my body instead of magic is usually almost entirely pointless. I imagine they don't want to ask me to do the things they really want me to do until they can safely release the constraints on my magic and allow me to "voluntarily" do as they wish.
It hasn't happened yet. I'm fighting it, tooth and claw. I'm not going to let it happen.
But after Fluttercruel hurts me and uses me for her own depraved purposes... then she tends my wounds. Then she's kind, and sweet, and behaves like Fluttershy, and I'm so alone and I miss my friend and sometimes I close my eyes and pretend. And this is the absolute worst thing I can do because seriously, Stockholm Syndrome anyone? If I don't want to be broken I have to remember at all times, I hate her. She's not Fluttershy. She's hurting me and I don't deserve it.
But if I did deserve it I could make it stop by not doing the things that make me deserve it.
And I hurt so much and it's all you ponies' fault that I'm vulnerable to the emotional manipulation, that I want a friend so badly in my time of need that I pretend my captor is my friend, I let her pleasure me (not that I have a choice in what activities I have to let her perform, but I can resist in my mind, if I'm not so worn out that I just don't bother), I let her hug me and pet me and tell me I'm doing so much better, I'm being such a good colt... and I fall for it. I know it isn't real but I want it to be and honestly I'm used to making the things I want to be real become so and I admit I know that won't work here but I'm sorry, all right? I'm weak. I've never been tortured like this before. I've certainly never been tortured before while I had any psychological dependency whatsoever on another sentient being.
I need someone to care about the fact that I'm hurting. I'm fairly sure it's not going to be you. But if I give in and pretend that it's her, she'll break me. I'm trying not to break, I'm trying. But it's so hard.
I can use the full range of my Chaos magic but only on command. Sometimes she makes me size myself down to the proportions of a rabbit, and ties me down that way, on my back or on my belly with my tail pulled back and fastened over my head, and then she calls her evil rabbit pet in.
He hasn't changed. He's evil in our universe and he's still evil here.
It's also true, what they say about rabbits.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it doesn't mean I'm broken if I admit I'd rather be dead. Maybe I still have some hope even though I just admitted that to myself.
Maybe I need to finish writing this damned letter.
I've been storing up magic in rocks I swallow. The basement is a crawlspace dug out under the roots of a tree, of course there are rocks, and I'm expected to clean up my own wastes, I'm allowed to use magic to clean my cell twice a day, so when the rocks go through, I'm able to retrieve them and swallow them again. Given where they've been this is horribly disgusting but given what Fluttercruel makes me eat on a regular basis, they're practically cotton candy.
I miss cotton candy so much. I dream about it. You'd think I'd dream of taking bloody revenge or something, but no, I dream about floating on a cloud of cotton candy, nibbling at it.
The point to the rocks is to store up just a little bit of Chaos magic. They are not technically part of my body, therefore even when they are saturated with my magic from passing through me repeatedly, it's not actually my magic because they're not my body parts. Therefore the part of the binding that keeps me from using my own magic doesn't apply to them. But it's within me, so the bindings that keep me from drawing on ambient Chaos in the environment also don't apply. I can't store very much... rocks are not very chaotic. But it might be enough.
Spike feels guilty over killing me. He doesn't seem to feel that guilty over the fact that I'm being tortured, although he's oblivious enough that he might just not know. But he was so relieved when it turned out that I was still alive. Imagine his reaction when I tell him that no, I'm from another universe, that he really did murder Discord in ice cold blood and now he's participating in the torture of a being who is wholly innocent of doing anything to his friends.
I'm not wholly innocent of doing anything to his friends' cognates, but these creatures are not the same ponies as the Elements I know. It's not a lie to say I did nothing to them. They are nothing like mine, and the spell other me cast on them is nothing like anything I'd have used.
I can cast a spell on Spike so his fire redirects, one time, to his cognate in my universe. I think I can guilt him into letting me send this letter. He's going to think he's sending it to Celestia. It's going to be really really hard but I think I can possibly manage to not tell him I'm casting that spell. I don't trust the Celestia of this universe, I think she knows exactly what's going on and she approves of it. I want it to go to my universe.
I want it to go to you, Twilight.
I mean I don't. I want it to go to Fluttershy, or my Celestia, or somepony who might actually give a damn. But that's not an option. Sending it via this Spike to your Spike and therefore to you is my only available choice, therefore I want it to go to you, because the alternative is, I just don't send it. And if you cared, if you had any interest whatsoever in saving me, I think you could easily find the gateway I left near the Everfree Forest. It's not actively open, I'm not totally stupid, but you ought to be able to activate it.
If you care.
Which you almost certainly don't.
Why would you risk yourself or your friends for me? You might have to take on a cognate who's much colder, harder and more ruthless than you in order to save me. Why would you want to do that? I brought this on myself and now that I'm here your Equestria is safe from me and blah blah blah. I don't think you're going to do anything to save me. I'm almost certain of it.
But I've underestimated you before. I got turned to stone because I didn't really understand you and your capabilities and motivations. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you can muster up some compassion for me.
Gods of sun and sky, Twilight, she makes me use my own magic to let her rabbit rape me. You can't believe I deserve this. Not for fish rain in Canterlot. Please, please, you can't believe this is fair.
Please, before I forget the difference between my Fluttershy and this one.
Please, before they turn me into an obedient weapon of mass destruction and unleash me somewhere. You can't want that. Even if you're snickering at the thought of my pain (diamond studded rope. My skin's in ribbons right now, Twilight, you can tell because the composition of this sheet of paper is mostly vellum and not wood pulp. I have a lot of skin to work with), you still can't possibly want that to happen to whatever innocents they unleash me on, if they break me.
I don't think you'll do anything to save me. But I am praying to every god that is higher on the totem pole than me, and some of the ones that are usually lower, that I'm wrong.
Please help me.
Author's Note
So. This happened.
This is not the darkest thing I've ever written, but it's the darkest thing I've written in this fandom. I tried to avoid it, but the damn thing grabbed me by the brain and wouldn't let me go.
Sources that fed into this monstrosity include:
Variables by The Descendant, is where I got the fate of the cognate from, although in that story, it's not an evil goateed universe so Spike didn't go through with it.
Reha-Bilit-8-Ion by Akumokagetsu was where I first started having evil ideas about obedience spells. Also where commenters talking about Discord being chained up in someone's basement started me thinking about this.
While I really enjoy the fanfics of Cryssy-miu, the embrace of corporal punishment as a tool that's appropriate to use on adults, even totally irresponsible adults, bothers the crap out of me, and while I realize it's probably a fetish thing, that went into this as well. Beating a grown adult to punish them and then kissing the boo-boos and giving them affection is not cute and sweet. It's a form of brainwashing torture and probably more effective than most, and I wanted to present it as such.
I actually have never read, nor do I know where to find, the fanfic "Cupcakes", only fannish references to it, but yes, I threw in a reference to a story I haven't read. :-)
Fluttershy the secret dominatrix was a horrible idea given to me by my housemate.
The truth telling spell is a stunt I've pulled on Q in a TNG fanfic called "The Truth And Nothing But The Truth", and the spell that traps you in illusions of your heart's desire is something I inflicted on Magneto in a fanfic called "Heart's Desire". They're both available on fanfiction dot net if anyone wants to see.
Everything else is mine and unique for this story, which I guess just means my mind hasn't gotten less sick and twisted over the years.
I'm... going to try to avoid doing anything quite like this again any time soon.
Edited to add: OMG I had no idea that other people adding your story to a group you aren't a part of is a thing. I was kind of shocked to see all the groups I'd never even heard of that people are adding this to. If you think this story has been inappropriately added to some group or other, it's not my fault, because I didn't add it to *any* of them (though I would have gotten around to adding it to Followers of Discord eventually.)
