Tenmei lay on the floor, all legs splayed wide and bound in chains. He shook, his body aching--no, burning--with pain. His eyes were closed tight, another series of tears leaking from them. All he could do was groan in agony at this point.

His body was bruised, as though beaten by hooves for five straight minutes. There were cuts here and there, the blood that had leaked from them dried and further staining his pelt along with a sickly crusted white splotch here and there. The blood leaking from his nose also dried, and his eyes were marred by thick rings of bruises. His tail had much of the hair torn clean out, and only meager strands remained. His captors, looming over him with wicked grins and limp dicks that were retracting, still stood proud and tall like the cocky bastards they were.

“Looks like he couldn’t take much today. Little wretch really was fragile today.” Baki taunted, a chuckle that sounded like it should’ve come from a demon’s throat escaping his lips soon after he made the remark.

“They never do, which is a pity. Oh well, we could try again in a few hours. I'm starting to miss the purple brat; she lasted a good while.” Maki agreed, turning away and making his way to the cell door. His leader followed, and the two stepped out and simply trotted away, leaving just the battered prisoner in the darkness.

Tenmei tried to raise his head, only for it to defy him and land on the floor after mere inches. Another grunt of pain came soon after, more tears still trickling down his face. He tried to rise his head again, and it yielded the same result as the first attempt.

“Why…?” He murmured, his voice nothing but a sob-racked whisper. His body soon became numb after all the pain he had taken today, and each time he tried to move, an electrical impulse would run through whatever limb he wanted to shift. It didn’t hurt on its own, but the bruises and cuts did. It was especially worse for his back legs, as the feeling of being stretched like a tiny rubber band accompanied the anguish from the other wounds whilst amplifying them.

The stallion lay there in the darkness, eyes still closed tight. A sleep filled with agony and nightmares clutched him in its invisible claw, and there was no stopping it.

There were demons surrounding him in the shape of ponies, and they were quite literally everywhere. In the air, in the floor, in the bloody walls; not one nook or cranny went unmolested by the fiends.

They jeered at him, much like the beasts from Hell, mocking him for failing to defend himself at this hour. All sorts of insults--weak, dirty, filthy, repulsive colt--were thrown all over the place, the owners shouting in such a way it sounded as though the insults came from but one voice. He couldn't keep track of how many times they chanted their slurs; his mind was still racing from the recent trauma.

The fiends pawed at him nonstop, a few holding his legs apart in firm grasps to keep him from struggling. They slowly, surely, began to rip chunks of flesh from his body, their teeth hot as branding irons, and he howled and screeched in unbearable agony. His cries only encouraged the foul-mouthed fiends to rip him apart further.

Tenmei awoke, very much shrieking, only to find himself still laying on the floor, chained like a beast. His heart beat rapidly, as if threatening to jump out his mouth, and his lungs burned in a pain akin to fire. His eyes opened, and with a shaky head, he glanced around.

The room he was in was unchanged, at least for the moment. He sighed weakly, then laid his head back down like an obedient dog. His ears fell flat, and he tried tugging his limbs free of the accursed bonds again.

No dice. The metal held firm as ever.

The lone stallion sighed again, ears perking upright to catch the sound of hooves hitting something above his current prison. Whatever it was, and who or what may have been causing it, though, was of no concern to him at this time. His ears fell flat again, the silence once more taking precedence in the area.

“No wonder Yuuki had screamed--” Tenmei murmured, and he stopped himself before finishing that sentence. A pang of guilt made itself known at his half-finished remark, his gut twisting and causing jolts of pain to run rampant as if agreeing with the guilt.

Irregardless, he fully understood the magnitude of his friend's suffering when she found herself in more or less of the same predicament. Something in the back of his mind screamed, wishing he didn’t understand.

Like he had a choice at this point. He sighed once more, head still on the cold floor, and much of his body went numb again.

For a few hours, he lay there in the bleak black room, doing nothing but attempt to sleep and occasionally either think aloud or try to jerk his limbs again. It was beginning to drive him mad, but there wasn’t much he could do about it other than fling curse words at nothing in particular.

Every attempt to sleep seemed to have summoned forth those wretched demon-ponies, which would wake him up after he screamed in protest to their tortuous methods. He always woke up shrieking louder than a banshee, and so sleep lasted what he could've sworn was only a few moments at best.

In this darkness, in his current condition, he felt like he was losing himself. If anything, he was broken at this point; anything beyond what had transpired this morning would not only do greater damage to his physical form, but also his very mind, on account of how sleep-deprived he was.

Something greatly bugged him about one of his captors’ earlier remarks, and his lips parted to think aloud once more: “had this been what they meant when they said they would break me?”

Author's Note

Another short chapter. Hope it doesn't break pacing too much.

~Dragon