Diamond In The Darkness
By Sharaloth
It wasn't fair. She had been a good girl, hadn't she? She'd loved her father and done well in school and had the best friends and threw the best parties. So why was this happening to her? What had she done to deserve this? It wasn't fair.
The thoughts repeated themselves over and over in Diamond Tiara's head as she trudged step after weary step down the muddy road. Rain plastered her mane to her head. The strands tangled in her namesake to the point where it was completely hidden in the mess of her hair. She would have to cut it out, if she ever had the opportunity to remove it at all. It had been raining for days, as near as she could tell. Though all she had to go by was the hungry ache in her belly and how many times she had fallen into an exhausted sleep. It wasn't normal rain, either. This rain was not something carefully put together by pegasi, planned and scheduled to the exact amount of water needed. This rain was wild. Mad.
She'd passed other travellers on the road. Fellow refugees, though from where they were fleeing and to where they were going was always in flux and often contradictory. The disaster was everywhere, there was no safety to be found in Equestria anymore.
Some of those refugees had wagons full of possessions. They had been blessed with enough forewarning to pack up their lives. Many more were like her: without even saddlebags to their name. Once, she had accepted a ride in one of the wagons. The kind farmer pulling it had promised to take care of her until they could find out if any of her family had survived. That ride had been a mistake, and she had barely escaped the dragon that had carried off wagon and owner both. Ever since then she avoided the other travellers, walking the long road alone.
She didn't know where she was going. ‘Away’ had been fine at first, but without some destination she was beginning to realize that no matter how far she got from the remains of Ponyville, all that would wait for her was the same fate she had fled. Yet there was no answer, no promised kingdom or castle to take her in. So she walked on. She walked until she was so weary she couldn't even raise her head to look down the path ahead of her. She walked, putting one hoof in front of another in an endless, pointless cycle. With every plodding step her mind circled itself, silently wondering what she had done to deserve any of this.
So it was that she didn't see the campsite until she was already on top of it. She stumbled between tents, blind to anything but the warmth and light ahead of her. She fell down next to a small cook fire that seemed to hold all the warmth left in the world. Distantly, she heard the cries of surprise and the yelps of anger –not the voices of ponies– but she was too tired to care. She barely had time to register a wide, flat face and a mouth filled with sharp canine teeth before empty sleep claimed her.
***
"Wake, pony," someone said, roughly shoving at her.
Diamond Tiara opened her eyes, her sleep having done very little to ease the weight of exhaustion and hunger. She looked up and saw a heavy canine form looming above her. She couldn't tell whether it was male or female, and its high, screeching voice did not help. She said nothing, not knowing what this creature wanted with her.
"Stand up, little pony," the dog said. "We go now, you go with us."
"Why?" she managed to ask. While the fire was out, the rain had let up some and her aching body did not want to move.
"Because little pony is lost and needs help, yes?" Diamond Tiara blinked slowly at the creature, working out that she was supposed to respond somehow. She nodded, the motion making her dizzy as her stomach growled for food. "Then little pony comes with diamond dogs. So the little pony must stand up."
She understood that much at least. A memory of the dragon taking the farmer and his wagon flashed across her mind, but she was so tired and so lonely that she couldn’t bring herself to rebuke the dog. She slowly got to her hooves, feeling the screaming pain in them that the cold and the endless journey had numbed before she went to sleep. She stumbled as she stood, nearly falling down, but the diamond dog reached out and steadied her.
"Good. Pony can stand. Now pony walks."
"I'm hungry," she said. Her tongue felt like sandpaper scraping across her teeth. It was too large, and she couldn't seem to work up any spit to whet it. “Give me something to eat.”
The dog shrugged. "All the food has gone bad. Except the meat, and ponies do not eat meat, yes?"
"I don't care," she rasped. "I'm hungry."
"Meat is bad for ponies," the dog said, grinning in a way that she would have found frightening if she weren't so very tired of fear. "It makes them sick. Little pony does not want to be sick, yes?"
She would have argued –she wanted to– but in that moment she didn't have the energy to try. "Water?” she asked instead.
"Ha! Yes. Water, pony can have." The dog slung a large leather skin from his back and held it out to her. "Open mouth, little pony." She did as asked and was rewarded with a stream of warm water squirted into her mouth. It tasted wonderful and she swallowed it quickly. Too quickly, as she began to choke and sputter immediately. The dog laughed at her, but held off on the water until she was able to take some more in without choking. "There. Pony has water. Now we walk, yes?"
She didn't want to walk. She just wanted to lie down and go back to sleep until this horrible dream was over and she was back in her bed in Ponyville.
Ponyville... the thought of that place made her body clench in a rush of terror. The burst of fear brought new strength to her tired limbs, enough to move with. She began walking at the dog's direction, barely paying attention enough not to trip over roots and stones. Her mind was taken entirely with the task of pushing away the memory of her last sight of Ponyville. The red sky, the ground slick with blood, the screams and the laughter and cold eyes that stared right into her soul as the body of her father fell, broken into...
No! She would not remember! It was gone. It was all gone.
It wasn't fair.
When she regained enough of herself to take notice of the world she found that she was travelling with a long, shambling line of hunched figures carrying heavy-looking sacks. Diamond dogs. From the easy way they walked and the jokes they bantered back and forth in their guttural, uncouth voices, she could tell that they weren't refugees. Curiosity wasn't something she could feel much of through the fatigue and the hunger, but she worked up enough of it to speak to the dog who had given her water.
"Where are we going?"
"New caves," the dog answered. "New mine. Magic pony came to old caves. Said she boss now, said to go to new caves and mine there. Promised gems, yes. Many gems."
"Magic pony?"
The dog nodded vigorously. "Magic pony."
If that was the answer she was getting, she would have to live with it, at least until she had the energy to insist on something that made sense.
They broke for lunch at some point, the rain still falling made it impossible to tell if it was actually noon or not. Diamond Tiara collapsed as soon as she was told to stop. The dog helping her actually had to pick her up to move her out of the way of the road. She didn't truly sleep, but rather fell into a kind of waking slumber where she wasn't aware of the world around her, but wasn't properly resting either. She was brought out of it by something being pressed against her lips. She opened her eyes and saw a shrivelled brown thing being shoved into her mouth by the dog. She tried to pull back, but her body wouldn’t respond, and she could do no more than a weak flinch.
"Eat, little pony," the dog said. "Fresh fruit is good for you, yes?"
Fruit? If this thing was fruit it was the most ancient, rotten fruit she had ever seen. Still, her stomach was screaming for something so she let the dog slip the strange fruit into her mouth and she bit down. Immediately she could taste that it was an apple. The texture, the crisp way it crunched under her teeth, all pointed to that. The taste, however, was all wrong. Instead of the delicious sweetness of a real apple, this was a dull, joyless flavor. It felt dead on her tongue, as if all that had made apples good had been sucked out of it, leaving only empty nutrition. It was still recognizably apple, but such a weak specimen barely deserved the name.
Still, she ate it all, swallowing everything, seeds and core included. Her stomach hurt almost as much having something in it as it had when it was empty, but it was something at least. When she was done the the dog pushed another withered apple into her mouth, just as bad as the first, and she made quick work of that one too.
"Where did you get these?" She asked after a while, feeling some measure of strength return to her. "They're awful."
"Heh, little pony did not notice?" the dog laughed. "We stop in orchard. Much fruit for growing ponies, yes?"
Diamond Tiara lifted her head and saw that they were, indeed in a carefully cultivated grove of trees. They were even recognizable as apple trees –she'd seen the like often enough when her father would drag her to Sweet Apple Acres– but the apples hanging from these trees bore little resemblance to the large, beautiful fruit of her memory. These apples were barely half the size of the apples she knew, their skins wrinkled and colored shades of brown and sickly yellow. "Why?"
The dog sat down next to her. "Is new boss ponies. One took all good food with her and left. Or so travellers say. Diamond dogs don't mind. Diamond dogs eat meat. Meat still good. Little pony must eat ugly apples, though. Sad for little pony."
"It's not fair," she whimpered.
"Ha! No. Life not fair. Come, little pony. I give you more water and we walk again."
***
Days passed, and the pilgrimage of dogs and one pony made their way north. The rain eventually let up, but the appearance of the sun did not improve Diamond Tiara’s mood any. The food they found for her gave her the strength to keep up, but every bland, tasteless bite was a reminder of all that had been lost. She got no sympathy from her travelling companions. The dogs found her tears funny, unless they made her slow down, in which case they found them annoying and wasted no time in pushing her to keep up.
She wanted desperately to go home, but there was no home to go to anymore. It had been swallowed by the earth. She wanted to lie down and cry until somepony came to make it better, but the dogs would not let her. They goaded her on, giving her water and leading her with food so that it was her aching stomach that drove her on as much as their cajoling voices.
Eventually, they came to a sheltered valley in the shadow of two great mountains, and there found the mine.
The mine had been made by ponies, that was easy enough to see. The outbuildings, the steel cart tracks, the careful, polished look of everything, all of it was something that spoke more of the refined sensibilities of the equine species than the brutish tastes of the dogs. It was abandoned, though. Doors stood open, equipment lay scattered about. Even Diamond Tiara could see that this place had been evacuated in a hurry.
“What happened here?” she asked her guide.
“Madpony came north,” the dog said, nostrils flaring, taking in the scents of the mine. “She made stone go bad. Ate many ponies. Crunch-crunch-crunch!” Diamond Tiara shivered, unable to keep herself from imagining what that might have been like. “Magic pony says is safe now. Gives it to us. Ha! Pony mine is Diamond Dog mine now.” The dog squatted down and picked up a paw full of dirt, bringing it up and sniffing deeply. “Good, good. Many gems in this place, yes. Many gems. You will see, little pony. Such beauties down there.”
“Down… there?” Diamond Tiara looked towards the entrance to the mine. A moment before it had looked almost stylish, in the robust fashion of earth pony structures. Now she noticed the darkness within it, and a new fear began crawling its way up her throat. “No… I don’t want to go down there!”
“Diamond dogs rescued pony from dying on road,” the dog said, grinning at her. “Now little pony owes life to diamond dogs. For her life, little pony will work.”
“No!” Diamond Tiara shrieked. “I’m not going down there! You can’t make me!”
The dogs around her laughed as if she had just told the funniest joke they had ever heard. The one who had given her water and food placed a paw on her shoulder, and she could not mistake the way the claws dug into her for anything but the threat it was. “Little pony will work,” the dog repeated, voice dropping to a soft growl. “For her life. Yes?”
She opened her mouth to scream, but the claws dug into her. Her coat, dirty as it was from the days of hard travel, was suddenly stained with thin streams of red. Her heart pounded and her voice vanished. It seemed the return of her strength was accompanied by a return of her ability to fear. The dog looked on expectantly, and Diamond Tiara nodded, swallowing until she found her voice again. “Y-yes,” she said.
“Good little pony,” the dog said, then took its paw from her shoulder to pat her on the head. “Ah! What is in little pony's hair?” the dog asked, reaching for the tiara that had been so tangled in her mane as to have become invisible.
Diamond Tiara reared back. “No!” she shrieked, a new, deeper panic taking hold.
The dog growled, showing its claws to her, stained red with her blood. “Sit down, little pony. You belong to diamond dogs, all you have belongs to diamond dogs!”
“No, please!” she cried, tears welling up. “Please don’t take it! It’s the only thing I have! It’s all that’s left of my family! Please!”
The dog regarded her for a long moment. She could see the indecision in its eyes, the tiny spark of sympathy. She cowered before the dog, trying to look pathetic, trying to make that spark flare up. But then the dog looked to its fellows, who watched Diamond Tiara with a greedy gleam to their eyes. That settled the decision more than all the cute faces she ever could have made. “No. Sit down and be still, or little pony will be punished.”
She fought them. She kicked and screamed and bit, but in the end she was a starved, weak filly, and they were a gang of hardened miners. The outcome was never in doubt.
It wasn’t fair.
***
Diamond Tiara worked, and worked hard.
The tunnels of the mine were endless, twisting labyrinth of utter darkness. Especially so because the dogs were always adding new shafts and chambers, expanding their search for precious gemstones and their cramped living spaces. To Diamond Tiara’s horror, they preferred to live underground in their warrens rather than in the pony-built outbuildings, and so she had to live down here as well. Locked in with them and the darkness, the stale air, the dust, and the sweat. It was shocking how quickly she got used to not seeing the sun. Frightening how fast it had become the new normal.
She couldn’t even remember how long she had been there anymore. She had tried counting her sleeps at first, but soon she had lost track, and now was hopelessly confused. It had been at least a few months, but it felt like years. All she had to mark the passage of time was her growing body and the length her hair got before the dogs cut it all off again.
It was a good thing that the dogs kept her mane and tail shorn. They would have only collected dirt and grime down in the mine. She certainly would never have been able to keep them up to her former standards. She whispered this to herself over and over, every time she tossed her head or flicked her tail at some insect or bit of dust that fell on her, only to find nothing there to brush the offender away. She hoped that if she repeated it often enough, she might even come to believe it.
The tasks the dogs set her to were not mentally taxing, but they were endless and exhausting. Mostly she was set to dragging tools from the upper levels down to the expanding lower reaches of the mine. She wasn’t yet strong enough to haul away the waste rock, and was not trusted with the loads of gems. She knew, though, that such labor would eventually be her life. The dogs had been sure to make that abundantly clear. To them, all a pony was good for was hauling rocks from one end of a mine to the other.
The worst part for her wasn’t the work, or the constant harassment of the dogs who saw her as the perfect punching bag to take out their frustrations and aggression on. It was the darkness and the solitude. She walked endless corridors of stone, where not even the sounds of claw and pick could be heard until she was close. The lanterns they gave her barely illuminated the ground at her hooves. Sometimes it would go out while she was in the deeps, and she would be forced to find her way back to the warrens by memory and feel.
In that quiet darkness, the memories would come. Memories of her family and happy times. Memories of how those times had ended. It was enough that she was grateful to finally hear the rough voices and smell the rank stench of the diamond dogs as she came back to the warrens.
The warrens were the uppermost portion of the mines, which had already been stripped of any valuable gemstones and minerals. The main areas were leftovers from the pony miners who originally created the mine, and so were wide, well-engineered places. Practically sculpted out of the rock. The dogs had taken these main rooms and tunnels, and each then carved out their own den. Unlike the pony-made chambers, these were built strictly to diamond dog specifications; which meant they were tight little rough-edged holes filled with the detritus that stank of rotting meat and unwashed diamond dog.
Since Diamond Tiara had neither the ability nor the desire to carve out her own little space, she was given a pallet in a dingy corner of one of the main chambers under the dim glow of the communal lights. Those sparse lanterns seemed to cause more shadows than they removed; but it was a stark difference from the unending black of the tunnels, so she gloried in that bitter light.
She has halfway to her pallet, leaving a wagon of broken and unneeded tools to the side of the chamber’s entrance, when she noticed how busy the place was. There were diamond dogs rushing back and forth, carrying loads of items deeper into the tunnels. She stopped by her bed to observe the commotion.
Sometimes, in her first life, she had kicked at anthills and watched as the industrious little insects scurried around in a mad panic, trying to fix their home. The dogs here reminder her of those ants, though instead of the feeling of gleeful power she’d had then, all she could conjure up now was a vague curiosity. It took a long few minutes of watching in dull interest before she began to realize that they were cleaning up. A few more to wonder why now, and why in such a rush?
“Pony!” a familiar voice called out to her. She turned to regard the dog who was stalking at her. The tiara he had taken dangled on a string around his neck. She flinched at the sight of him. From the other dogs she had learned that his name was Gunther, though he had never bothered to introduce himself to her. None of the dogs did, it didn’t matter if she knew what to call them. All she had to do was obey.
She didn’t leap to attention, the dogs didn’t require that. She did watch as Gunther came up to her, his eyes wide and his nostrils flaring as he took in the smell of frightened dog all around them. “Pony is not going to be trouble, yes?”
“Yes,” she said, essentially on automatic. “I won’t be any trouble.”
“Good, good,” Gunther nodded, stroking the tiara absently.
That one motion sparked Diamond Tiara’s blood to life. It reminded her that the little silver crown was hers by right, that he’d had no cause to take it from her. It fanned a surge of petulant rebellion. One that she was too naive to hide, and he was too distracted to see. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Visitor,” Gunther replied. “Magic pony sends visitor to our mine. Wants to know about production, yes. Diamond dogs work hard. Diamond dogs work fast. Maybe not fast enough for magic pony, though.”
She didn’t respond. She knew who he was talking about. Knew her real name and how cruel and fickle she could be. The thought of that pony coming here cooled the nascent flame in her, smothering all thought but running as deep into the tunnels as she could and hiding. She looked to the dark entrance to the deeper mines, and that empty darkness suddenly didn’t seem so bad. She almost went, almost started galloping away, but it was too late. The bustle of the dogs stopped as word spread that the visitor was there, and soon they were lining up in rows, eager to please their distinguished visitor.
The pony that walked into the warrens was a tall, lithe unicorn stallion with an immaculately coiffed silver mane. He was old, but he moved with easy grace and he looked around at the dogs with a cool disdain that bordered on contempt. He wore a uniform of blue and black that had a distinctive military cut to it, silver chains hanging from what was probably a badge of office on his breast. Around his neck, though, there was a seamless collar of sand-brown stone, completely at odds with the rest of him.
One of the diamond dog leaders, their alpha, stepped up to meet the stallion. He looked back at the dog with a profoundly unimpressed gaze. “The Sorceress sends her regards,” the stallion began. He sounded disinterested with the warren of dogs waiting to meet him. Every word was delivered with a cold monotone that spoke very clearly of how little he cared for what he was seeing. “I am Noble Intercessor, one of her Chosen, and I will represent her to you and the other settlers in this region. I will hear your petitions, and I will mete out swift and harsh punishment for any transgression.” He paused for a moment to let that sink in, then continued. “The Sorceress hopes you have found her generous gift of this mine to be a fitting home for you and yours.”
“Yes, magic pony is good to diamond dogs,” the alpha said. He gave an obsequious bow, his nasal voice squeaking into the higher registers as he simpered. “Happy to have magic pony’s friend as a guest, yes.”
Intercessor snorted at that. “I won’t be staying. I will be inspecting what you’ve already been able to dig up, though. And..." he paused, his eyes finding Diamond Tiara and narrowing. “Is that a pony you have with you?”
The question was asked in the same dead voice he’d said everything else with, but still a sudden surge of hope and fear tightened her chest. There was a long silence as the alpha looked over to where she stood, anger tightening his face until his teeth began to show. “Yes?” the alpha ventured.
She didn’t know what to do. A part of her wanted to call out to the stallion, to beg him to take her away from these brutish creatures, to punish them for hurting her and taking what was hers. A greater part of her was remembering the sickening crunch as her father was killed. She knew who this stallion served, the evil that he called the Sorceress. In his eyes there was no hint of worry or warmth, only cold calculation. She didn’t call out. She didn’t make any sound at all. Her eyes darted to the tunnels again, a new yearning for the deep solitude of the mines opening up in her.
“She’s a filly still,” the stallion mused, his voice taking on the first hints of personality she’d heard from him.
“Little pony works for diamond dogs,” Gunther spoke up, earning himself a glare from the alpha. He cringed, but continued. “Diamond dogs save little pony’s life. Little pony pays her debt.”
She wanted to scream out. That would never convince the stallion to leave her here, and while she would love be far away from the abuse of the diamond dogs, she did not want to be leaving with him. The stallion considered for a tense moment. “She’ll have to go to school,” he said, nodding as if that was decided.
“School?” Gunther asked.
“The Sorceress is particular about the education of the young,” the stallion said. “All fillies and colts below a certain age will be attending one of her schools. I will be running the local one until a suitable tutor can be found. You will send her there for six hours every day.”
“But… but little pony works for diamond dogs!” the alpha protested.
“Nevertheless, she will attend school for six hours a day. I suggest you get what use you can from her in the other eighteen,” he said, and like that she knew her life in the mines had just gotten even harder.
It wasn’t fair.
***
Intercessor’s school was barely worth the name. Let alone the fact that it was held in a ramshackle abandoned cottage with a half-dozen other children forced from their families, or that it was so regimented that there was no time to even get to know the other ponies being taught. The worst was that the Chosen was an inept teacher. He was as cold as the stone collar he wore. His manners were unfailingly formal, but he responded to every hint of youthful rebelliousness with swift and brutal punishments. Already acquainted with despair, exhaustion and overworked muscles from the mines, in the Sorceress’s school she learned whole new horizons of pain.
The lessons themselves revolved around a mish-mash of etiquette, art appreciation and economics. Gone were the fun projects, the interesting lessons, the soul she remembered from before the world had fallen. Replaced with endless elocution drills and rote repetition of empty facts and numbers. In the beginning, she longed for Cheerilee. Her one-time teacher had been a phenomenal mentor, even if she hadn’t appreciated it at the time. It wasn’t long before, to her horror, she realized that she couldn’t so much as remember Cheerilee’s face.
Still, it was something other than the endless tunnels and work of the mines. But time wears on, and eventually she became old enough that the Chosen didn’t demand her attendance. When she was told not to come back she wept for the first time since her early days in the mine. From that day she never saw the sky at all. Her whole world was the dark and the stone, and she forgot the sun.
She forgot the smell of fresh air and the taste of rain on the wind. She forgot the laughter of friends and the joy of a song. She blocked them from her memory, knowing only horror lay in the light of those fading recollections. Soon, all too soon, she put aside even her name. The dogs didn’t care what her name was, anyway. She was ‘pony’ to them, nothing else. So Pony she became. It only made sense. The diamond tiara belonged to Gunther, and the mark on her flank couldn’t be seen beneath the layers of dirt and dust that caked on and were simply never washed off.
Months blurred into years, marked by the growth of her body and the fading of her dreams. The diamond dogs worked her harder as she got stronger, never letting her forget her place with them. She was the pony among dogs, only good for hauling heavy loads.
Pony didn’t care. Pony wasn’t a person. Pony belonged to the whole pack. Pony was to be worked until she dropped. Then fed, watered, and worked again.
Pony rarely talked. When she did, it was a few words at a time, only what was necessary, spoken in in the steady, high-class accent that had been drilled into her in the school.
Thus was her life. Dragging stone and tools up and down the endless labyrinth of darkness beneath the earth, with dogs heaping abuse on her the whole way. She didn’t hear their words anymore. Only their orders. The darkness, once a place of terror and pain, became her home, and she let it flood through her with increasing eagerness. The future didn’t exist for Pony, and neither, blissfully, did the past. She forgot all that she had been, all that she had known. The despair, the death, none of it mattered in the mines. None of it could haunt her so long as all she could see were the rock walls illuminated by her one pale lantern.
It was solace, of a sort.
It couldn’t last.
***
Pony didn’t understand what was happening, but she was in the darkness, and so did not have to care. The dogs were in a panic, their fear giving their actions a jerky quickness. She had seen them scramble to make ready for important visitors before, usually a visit from Noble Intercessor, but something about this seemed different.
They ignored her, as they always did. She stood by her filthy pallet, ready to stand to attention, lie down and sleep or be set to hauling another load of rock. Whatever her masters commanded. Their hurry didn’t touch her. But their fear did.
A memory sparked in her of the first time one of the Chosen had visited. They had been scared like this then. The dogs had quickly learned that the Chosen only cared that they were producing, not whether their mine was up to a pony’s standards. They had stopped fearing the Chosen then, though they still showed him a great deal of deference and respect. While they did try to look good for their benefactors and those that traded with them for supplies, they had never feared a visitor since.
She snuffed the memory as it came, enfolding herself in the empty darkness lest more thoughts from the dead past were drawn up from their graves.
There was a scream from the entrance tunnel, the one leading up to the surface, and every dog froze in their place. A moment later a light invaded the dim confines of the warrens, a brilliant blue glow that scoured away the shadows and sent a wave of fear ahead of it like a tsunami. It opened a pit in Pony’s stomach, like she was about to be sick. She refused to understand, burrowing deeper into her darkness to escape the thoughts that light conjured. Dogs dropped low to the ground, many falling into quiet whimpers as the source of the light stepped into the chamber.
She was beautiful. Her white coat shone like a diamond, the cleanest thing Pony had seen in a decade. She wore a cloak of jewelled fabric that trailed wisps of shimmering cloth that floated ethereally as she moved, as if they were underwater. Her mane and tail were held in a net of sapphire and pearl, and her eyes were lined with a dark mascara that made their blue seem to burn as brightly as the glow around her elegantly spiralled horn. An incongruously simple gold necklace held a purple diamond gem at her throat.
She hadn’t aged a day.
The thought struck through Pony hard, making her chest seize with the power of her fear. The Sorceress, the mare who had destroyed the life and dreams of the filly who Pony had once been, was here.
“Mighty pony!” the aged alpha dog cried out, practically crawling to greet the ruler of the Heartland. “Diamond dogs were not expecting you. Please! Forgive diamond dogs for not knowing.”
The Sorceress smiled, and there was enough genuine warmth and understanding in that smile that Pony could feel her gorge rise. “Of course, dear. This is a surprise inspection after all. You’ve been producing such wonderful jewels for me that I just had to come down and see where they came from.” She leaned down to the cringing dog and gave him a sly wink. “I used to be a fair hoof at gem-finding myself, you know. Other duties have taken precedence, of course, but I think this will be a wonderful reminder of simpler days.”
“Yes, yes!” the alpha squeaked. “Mine is very simple. Yes. Goes very deep.”
“Oh, I can tell,” the Sorceress said with a smirk. She looked up to survey the grovelling dogs, and her eyes fell on Pony.
Pony felt her legs go weak. The darkness was being burned away by the blue light of the Sorceress’ magic. The layers of time and emptiness were stripped away, and the memories so long buried leapt out to the fore. Pony let out a soft cry, barely more than a breathy squeak, but the Sorceress heard, and she cocked her head in thought.
“Ah, the pony Noble told me about! I’m surprised to see you still living with these rough sorts.” Pony couldn’t respond, it felt like her throat was squeezing closed around her breath. “Actually, now that I see you with my own eyes, you look familiar. Do I know you?” she asked, stepping towards Pony. Dogs scrambled to clear a path. One wasn’t fast enough and the Sorceress stepped on his paw. He lashed out on reflex, and the arm he struck with shattered like it was made from glass the moment it made contact. The Sorceress didn’t even notice attack or the injured dog, except to frown as he began to wail in agony. “Do keep him quiet, will you darlings? I’d like to have a conversation.” Dogs rushed to fulfill her command, grabbing at their screaming fellow, clamping down on his muzzle and choking him into silence.
Pony barely noted it, her eyes locked on the approaching ruler. She saw again the destruction of her hometown. The death of her father. She remembered the long march to the mine, and the name that had been stolen from her. She remembered her fear, and her endless despair.
“Yes. I remember you! Oh, my. You have grown, darling, and into quite the strapping specimen!” The Sorceress said, reaching out and cupping Pony’s face with a hoof. “I had wondered if you managed to get away. I even spent some time looking for you. To think you were here all along, in my domain. Ah, well, I’ve found you now, haven’t I, Diamond Tiara?”
Pony wanted to go back into the darkness, into the endless, empty tunnels. She didn’t want to remember. She didn’t want to know. To have nothing is to lose nothing, and that was fine with her. To have had everything, and to have it stolen away, piece by piece, that was agony unbearable.
She fled into what darkness was left in her mind, but she knew that it would not last. She’d been found. The Sorceress was going to take even the solace of emptiness from her.
It wasn’t fair.
***
She came back to consciousness slowly. There was a strange feeling beneath her. A softness that reminded her of her childhood bed. That memory only led to others, though, and the entire horror of her life came back to her one terrifying, humiliating moment after another.
She wept. She curled up on the soft bed and cried until she became aware of the gentle arms holding her and the warm scent of another pony.
“Sshh,” a voice whispered in her ear. Calming, caring, almost motherly. “It’s alright, darling. I’m here.” The Sorceress tightened her hug, and Diamond Tiara cried harder.
Eventually her tears ran out, and she was left shivering in the comforting grip of the greatest evil she had ever known. Time passed, though she had long ago lost the ability to tell how much. She knew that something would have to give eventually, so when her sobs were done she swallowed hard and spoke: “Why?”
“Excuse me, dear, but what are you asking about?” the Sorceress’ voice was unlike any she had heard since the world had fallen. Soft, emotive, casual. It had the same refined accent that had been drilled into her at the Chosen’s school, but without the forced nature. It sounded beautiful.
“Why... did you kill them?” she asked, finding it difficult to voice so many words at once after such long disuse.
There was a pause, and then the Sorceress chuckled. “Because they were mine to kill.”
“I don’t…” she trailed off in a choking sob.
“Yes, hardly comforting, is it, dear?” the Sorceress mused, stroking at Diamond Tiara’s short mane. “I’m afraid the full explanation isn’t any more helpful. Suffice it to say there were difficulties transitioning between who I used to be and who I am. A butterfly has to break its cocoon to be born, after all.” She shifted, letting Diamond Tiara go.
She opened her eyes and found herself still in the mines. She recognized the room as a small side chamber in the warrens. Normally it was used for storage. Everything had been moved out, and a large four-posted bed put in its place. Diamond Tiara wondered for a moment how it had been brought in, it looked too wide to have been carted in as one piece. Other than herself and the Sorceress, there was no one else in the room, the door firmly closed on the rest of the warrens. The Sorceress stood by the bed, looking at her with an inscrutable expression. There was no reason for her to give any comfort, and Diamond Tiara had a sickening suspicion that this could all just be a mind game. Something to grind salt into the wounds first opened so long ago. “You ruined my life,” she said.
“I suppose I did,” the Sorceress replied without a hint of guilt. “Will that be all you can think of, or are you able to move on?”
The blunt question was like a slap in the face. Diamond Tiara felt a hot rage rise in her. She wanted to scream at the unicorn. She wanted to attack her. She was strong now, strong enough to crush rocks with her hooves. She didn’t move, remembering what had happened to the dog who had unthinkingly struck out at the Sorceress. She knew that she would fare no better. The rulers were immortal, untouchable. As immune to her wrath as the diamond dogs had been when she was a filly. She was helpless still. The rage froze and familiar fear took its place. She looked down at the bed. “I…” She stopped, working up some spit in a mouth gone dry. She tried to speak again, but words failed her, and she just nodded.
The Sorceress smiled on her, like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. “You have been treated terribly, haven’t you, dear? I was once kidnapped by diamond dogs, too. I did much better than you, of course. They are simple creatures, and will respond to anyone with a strong personality and a high-pitched voice. You didn’t try whining at them, did you?” She didn’t wait for a response. “No, clearly not. Suffice it to say, I understand what you’ve been through. I’m not given to interfering overmuch in the lives of my subjects. I prefer to be generous in allowing them their freedoms, including the freedom to be enslaved to a pack of uncouth ruffians in a dingy old mine, if you so desire.”
Diamond Tiara blinked at her. She hadn’t used her mind to its potential in a long, long time, and the thoughts were slow in coming now, but she recognized at least part of what the Sorceress was saying. “What… what else can I do?”
“Well, I do have an opening in my personal guard.” Diamond Tiara recoiled, partially from fear and partially from how much the idea actually appealed to her. The thought of becoming one of her Chosen, of putting a stone collar around her neck and having to be near this abomination for the rest of her life should have made her sick. Yet, despite her memories, the Sorceress wasn’t a terrifying beast now. She seemed, if anything, warm. She made no excuses for the evil that she’d done, and clearly didn’t feel any sort of guilt over the lives she’d taken. But she was being nice, and she had held Diamond Tiara as she’d cried. That was a moment of equine warmth that she hadn’t felt in so, so very long, and it had ignited in her a longing so strong that it was overwhelming the fear inside her.
“Why me?”
“Because I am generous,” the Sorceress said. “And it seems fair.”
“Fair,” Diamond Tiara repeated. The word tasted like ashes in her mouth.
“Well, fair enough, at least.”
“Will I… Have to work?”
“Oh, yes!” the Sorceress said, laughing. “My, yes. As hard as you’ve worked down here. Harder perhaps. But you’ll do it with the sky above you and friends around you.”
Diamond Tiara nodded. Work, she understood. “Friends. Will you… be my friend?”
“No,” the rejection was bright as any other thing she’d said. “I have friends, darling, and you do not want to be one of them. But I assure you, there will be others. Many others who will want to be your friend, some who you may even want to be friends with back. I will give you a place. I will give you power, Diamond Tiara, and purpose to go with it. I will make all these years down here worth the pain. Think about that. All this terrible hardship will actually mean something, and that is a prize of great worth.”
“How?”
“Say yes and find out. All you will have to do is swear yourself to me. Utterly. Everything you are, everything you’ve been and everything you ever become will be mine. Mine. Do this, and I swear that I will be generous with you in turn.”
“If I say no?” She knew already, but still had to ask.
The Sorceress’ smile remained steady, but a sad look entered her eyes. “Then you stay down here, with the dirt and the dogs, and it was all for nothing.”
A part of her wanted the darkness. The comforting emptiness of the tunnels. But nothing breeds only more nothing, and that mindless numbness was only enticing when the alternative was endless pain. The comfort of a few minutes in the Sorceress’ embrace blew that emptiness away. The thought of making friends conjured even more memories, flashes of a forgotten world where she had known how to laugh. Where she had shared everything with a gray filly whose name she could no longer recall.
She looked at the Sorceress, pulling herself up from the bed. “I want one thing.”
The Sorceress laughed. “I’m offering more than you could ever hope for already, dear. Don’t push your luck.”
“Just one thing, please, and then everything else is yours.”
“Hmm,” the Sorceress tapped a hoof on her chin as she considered it. “What is this one thing?”
“My tiara. Everything else can be yours, but please, That… that’s mine.”
“Oh!” The Sorceress gasped. “Of course! You’re practically not yourself without it, are you?” Diamond Tiara shook her head. “Well, then. If I let you have your crown, will you be my Chosen?”
“I… I will.”
“How did you lose it?”
“The dogs… they… they took it.”
“Did you let them?” Diamond Tiara shook her head. The Sorceress pursed her lips and shook her head. “Poor soul. Well, let’s make this right.” Her horn pulsed, sending a flash of power through the stone. “Come with me.”
She obeyed, following the unicorn out of the supply room into the main chambers of the warrens, where the diamond dogs were waiting with trepidation on the fickle demands of the ruler of the Heartland. The Sorceress barely looked at them, striding with a quick, confidant walk through their ranks. They were even faster to move out of her way now, having seen the results of not being quick enough. She made a beeline for Gunther, magic drawing her to him like a lodestone. He tried to move away with the other Dogs, but when she altered her course to intercept him, everyone understood very quickly who her target was.
He dropped, grovelling, to the floor as she stopped in front of him, Diamond Tiara in tow. “Well, well, is this your tiara, darling?”
“Y-yes,” she replied. Gunther was lifted into the air by the Sorceress’ magic, the tiara pulled from the string around his neck and gently placed on Diamond Tiara’s head.
“It will require a bit of repair and polish, I’m afraid,” the Sorceress said as she examined the battered and dirty crown. She was still holding on to Gunther as well, and he began letting out a keening whine. “But it’s back where it belongs.”
Almost unbelieving, she reached up to touch the cold metal weight on her head. A flood of gratitude for the monster she was swearing herself to took hold of her. New tears burned in her eyes. “I swear. Everything to you. Everything for you,” she said in a hoarse whisper. A new weight settled on her, and she looked down to find a ring of molten stone being pulled from the walls of the warrens and set into a collar around her neck. Fear almost took her, but it didn’t burn. In fact, it felt cool. Soothing. A blanket of calm settled on her and she hear the Sorceress’ voice. Not in her ears, but in her head.
You won’t need fear anymore. Nor sadness, or loneliness or despair. You are mine Diamond Tiara. Now and forever.
She straightened, her joints popping as she pulled herself to her full height and rolled her shoulders. She could feel the strength in her muscles, could sense the power in them she had ignored in favor of emptiness. She looked over the sea of dogs around her, and they stared back at her with fear and wonder. For the first time she did not shrink back from their gaze. They didn’t seem nearly as terrible now. So small, really. Beneath her.
“Now, you have a duty, dear,” the Sorceress said. “I’d like you to get to it so I can continue the tour of my mines.”
“Duty?” she didn’t understand
“Of course. I don’t tolerate thieves in my Heartland, and this dog did steal from you.”
“Yes.” Diamond Tiara looked at the dog paralyzed by magic in front of her. “What do I do?”
“Well, you could drag it out, I suppose. But it’s probably better if you kill him quickly.”
“Killl… him,” Diamond Tiara felt the idea settle on her, and found that she was nowhere near as revolted by it as she expected.
“Yes, darling. Kill him.” The Sorceress forced Gunther face-up onto the floor, spread out and squealing in fear. “Cleanly, if you please. Heaven knows getting your coat back to its old luster is going to be hard enough without having to wash blood out of it as well.”
Gunther looked up at her, his eyes pleading. She remembered how she had done the same with him, and how he had looked to his fellows. She did so now, and did not see anything but fear in their faces. They would not come to his aid this time. She set a hoof on his neck, feeling the surging earth pony strength in muscles toned by fifteen years of the hardest work the dogs could put her to. Then she stomped down. One clean blow. She didn’t feel the sickness she had expected at the act, nor did she question why she had done it. The Sorceress had commanded it, so she did it.
She had taken a life. She had done evil, no matter how justified it was. Yet she smiled, and in a day of firsts, this felt the best.
No, it wasn’t right.
But it was fair.
