“I know exactly what became of him. I know what it is like to love somepony who doesn’t deserve it. Because they are all you have. In our isolation, any attention is better than no attention. Even if that attention is from our personal nightmare, we rush to embrace it. This understanding, this familiarity, perhaps, is why I of all of us spare him the most sympathy.” - Princess Luna

City of Canterlot, Valiant Manor, Chambers of Ryler Valiant

Ponies live in a kind of utopia with wonderful alicorn princesses, a magical land defended by the Elements of Harmony, filled with sunny days and moonlit nights. That's also their problem. Most ponies have no idea how to grieve properly. They don’t know the consequences of mental or physical abuse or how to cope with pain. Loss comes so infrequently to ponies they don't know how to deal with it.

Celestia looked down from her alicorn-sized height at Ryler and spoke to him in her soft matronly voice, imparting a lesson to the young noble. “Ponies are the prisoners of their personal history, Ryler. Everypony believes that their main aim in life is to follow a plan. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other pony's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.”

She waved one of her long swan-like wings in Ryler’s direction as she spoke. “You all live lives of pretty lies that are mostly true. Mostly. If you dream it you can be it! It's never too late! Reality is what you make it. We all have a special destiny." Celestia sneered. Ryler had never seen Celestia sneer because Celestia simply did not sneer. It was very off-putting on such a saintly face.

“None of these are true for everypony. In our little world of magical perfection they are mostly true, but not always. If everypony has a destiny, then every victim of Nightmare Moon was one by the whim of some cosmic force. Every mare that lost a foal in childbirth, every soldier that died on the field of battle to a septic wound. Everypony who was burned to death, snatched by a dragon, or frozen to death in the winter cold. I prefer the comfort of an uncaring universe to one where some sick monster felt those things were necessary. It seems like ponies are afraid of that. They are terrified of the notion that they are common, unexceptional, or just plain not special. That being said, special or not is not a matter purely of destiny, my little pony. If destiny will not oblige you, then you have two choices, Ryler. You can accept a life of mediocrity, or choose to bend the world to your will.”

Celestia laughed softly. “Actually, well, in your case… you really don’t have a choice. I’m no agent of destiny, but I am going to make you bend the world to your will.” She beamed a smile at the young stallion and laughed sardonically.

Ryler jumped up from his place on the bed, his face full of rage and indignation. “HOW DARE YOU! How dare you impersonate our princess! Have you no respect, sir, for anything?” On all fours and standing his ground, the stallion glared up at Celestia. A low snarl came from him as he spoke to her. “Spare me the theatrics. I’m a noblepony. I know court. I know theater and monologues. Just be on with it. You can lecture me to death in your normal form, Rasp.” Ryler spat the words sharply, holding his expression and steeling his jaw with resolve.

“Righteous indignation wears on you even worse than that dress you tried on, Ryler. You should discard both in favor of more appropriate garb,” Celestia snapped.

Green flame short across Celestia’s body. The dark flames roared as they engulfed her and Rasp was returned in a flash of magic. After a shake of his mane, the dark red pony sneered at Ryler and pounced on him before the flames had fully dissipated. The larger stallion collided with the smaller one and pushed him back onto the bed he had just left. Knocking him onto his back Rasp moved over him in an assertion of dominance.

“I’m done lecturing, pony,” Rasp hissed out. He starred Ryler down for a moment and then forced him to roll over onto his belly, keeping him pinned down. “I did come to thank you, after a fashion, no pontificate.”

Rasp clenched his legs down on the stallion, keeping him held tight. He ground into Ryler slowly with a firming purpose. Hooves started to stroke Ryler’s body, and Rasp’s barrel crested over the pegasus’s croup and moved along his back. “As I said… you’ve sustained me and I’ve a mind to reward you for that, pony.”

Words didn’t come to Ryler. In some vague fashion in the back of his mind, Ryler did wonder what Rasp was getting at.. All that came out, though, was a feminine whimpering moan of desire. Fear raced through him, but it was an arousing fear that he welcomed. Everything in his life’s education told him this was wrong, a foul violation. That knowledge caused an almost inevitable reaction. Ryler raised his rear and flicked his tail aside, giving out a submissive whine.

Both of them began breathing faster and moving against each other with a shared purpose. Rasp was as he always was, but Ryler became something else. The mare that was inside of him was now released and unrestrained by self-consciousness or hesitation. She moved like a mare, sounded like one, ached for the stallion over her as one in an autumnal heat. Rasp began kissing the back of her neck, biting up and down it after. He nipped at the pony’s ear, flicked his tongue tongue against the sensitive inner flesh, and made her more and more aware of a still-growing desire as monstrous as his personality seemed was.

“How have I,” Ryler at last managed to whimper out, “sustained you?” Such a simple question took more effort than Ryler would have anticipated. Most of the effort of making words was spent overcoming the arousal that left her wanting to do nothing more than moan loudly and beg for the moment to never end. She pressed up into Rasp with her back arching and rear legs spreading out, releasing a sob of want as one of her ears was bitten and suckled upon.

Grinding against her from behind, Rasp bit from Ryler’s ear down to her neck, nipping with teeth that were sharper than they ought to have been for a normal pony. Up the other side of the neck and then over to the other ear. He moved his head down again, biting into the axillaries and margins of Ryler’s wings, moving back up to hiss softly against her ear. “Friendship is magic my little pony… and so is misery…” Hissing loudly, Rasp thrust himself against Ryler and into her. The smaller pony let out a wailing cry of youthful violation and found her head thrust down into the bed by one of Rasp’s hooves to muffle the sound.

“So is pain and depression, so too with lust, with anger and hate,” growled Rasp as he began to take Ryler more aggressively. As much as Ryler’s attempts as personal self gratification had prepared her somewhat for being taken in this fashion, she was unprepared for both the size and ferocity of Rasp’s attentions. Each spearing of her depths left her aching in pain but craving more all the same. Each moment of release from the pressure of Rasp left her wanting that void filled once again. “Like any good noblepony, Ryler, you’re such a perfect blend of repression and self-entitled angst. You live in plenty with a warm bed, solid meals, and a roaring hearth. You are educated, protected, and oppressed by the very shelter you live in. Every need in your life met, you have nothing but time on your hooves to contemplate how miserable you are, and you don’t care a damn about the suffering of the poor, the weak, or the ignorant, do you? All you care about is that Ryler isn’t the mare she wants to be.”

He was right, of course. Somehow it was more complicated that Rasp was making it out to be, but it was also true. Ryler had never spared more than a passing thought for those less fortunate than him. His thoughts were entirely inward-turning on his own oppressed life. It was true, so terribly true. He didn’t care about anypony else nor did he truly wish to. He regretted if only for a moment that he did not regret that fact. Terribly, it aroused her.

“No! No I don’t care about them!” She cried out between her moans, raising her hips up, and pushing back against Rasp’s next intrusion into her. “You don’t know what it’s like to have everything and be nothing, to spend your life buried and entombed in this damned cage!”

Rasp slammed her down as he drove into her, snarling back his response. “Still justifying yourself, Ryler… still such a long way to go for you. Some day you’ll realize what you are and how naked and selfish your pain is. That is what makes you so exquisite, so perfect for my needs, Ryler. You’re not just in pain, it’s pain without an ounce or thought of empathy for others. Your noble upbringing gave you that. Your unhappiness isn’t tainted by generous thoughts about others, with caring or empathy for anyone but yourself. You are so intensely and so narcissistically broken that your emotional energy is like a feast to me. It sustains me and powers my magic. I don’t need food or drink, Ryler. I merely need you to suffer. All I have to do to feed is let it happen.”

All through his angry speech, Rasp continued to take Ryler and the pegasus continued to thrill to every mistreatment of her body. The pain was something real she could cling to and the pleasure was deliciously shameful, inducing both guilt and desire. Some last bit of innocence within Ryler was being corrupted by what they were doing and Ryler welcomed it. She threw her head back and cried out in wild release, clenching her muscles and bucking her body in spasms of pleasure. “What are you?” she wailed out loudly through the sounds of her climax.

“I am not a pony,” Rasp said. “I am anything I wish to be. And you are mine.”

Ryler’s own release did nothing to encourage Rasp’s or to slow him down. He did not pause or offer the smaller pony a moment’s respite from the constant aggression being visited upon her. It was a reminder they were not lovers or partners. Rasp was using her as he always had. There was something about the raw naked truth of that which thrilled Ryler to her core. It was honest, straightforward, and so very brutally masculine. He was using her, taking her. Making carnal use of her and degrading her like she wanted to be degraded. She wanted to beg to be used, to be defiled, to be possessed by him. Instead of feeding upon her emotions for his sustenance, he was using her body for his pleasure. She should have found this horrible, but instead found that she craved it. Her lip trembled as she contemplated if she dared give further voice to her fantasy and to cry out what she wanted to. She trembled to admit the terrible thing that demanded to be said.

“Say it,” Rasp hissed, as if already knowing what was in her mind. It wasn’t a question, nor was it encouragement. It was a command to be obeyed, and she could not help but comply to him. It was also permission. At long last it was permission for Ryler to let herself go.

“Master… master… MASTER!” She cried out the word again and again. Each time brought an even more potent lunge from the creature taking her. Rasp knew with the certainty of his empathic power that Ryler meant every repeated word. Each cry contained within it a litany of begging. Take me. Claim me. Own me. Use me. Drag me away from this. I don’t care what you do to me, just take me!

Desperation will drive a pony to make choices they know will never make them whole again and even to lose the very thing they were so in need of. Physically, considering the very bad things about to happen in the next day, they had done nothing truly wicked. Such considerations have no yardstick for the greatest of all the sins of the soul, though. That kind of wickedness happens before body touches body, before a mild craving turns to yearning, and that yearning in turn becomes a desperation so intense that the pony is never fully satisfied until the light in them has been banished to darkness. For Ryler, that time had come and gone quite some time ago. Tonight was not about making a choice, it was about an opportunity for that choice to find expression.

Rasp hissed out against Ryler’s ear, “We’re going to destroy your kingdom, Ryler. We’re going to drain every pony in Canterlot until they are nothing but discarded husks.”

The young pony shivered down her spine, the words resonated in time with the terrible, wonderful, thrusting of Rasp into her. “What about me?”

The question brought a laugh from deep within Rasp’s throat. It came out husky and low. “All you care about is yourself… I relish that about you. I’m going to make you one of us.”

Ryler nodded her head and whimpered in acquiescence. Voicing a worry through her moans of pleasure, she said, “But I’m not a unicorn, I cannot cast spells like you have.”

Against her ear Rasp’s hot breath came in answer to him. “I am not a unicorn, not an earth pony, not a pegasus. I am anything I wish to be, and when you are one of us, magic will come as easy as flight does now.”

Ryler leaned her head up and nuzzled the back of her head against Rasp’s in an expression of needy submission. “What will I be?”

The roughness of Rasp’s violent taking of the small pegasus had grown in steady intensity. Hard, driving, firm intrusions that repeated over and over until Ryler herself was once again nearing release. “You will become a creature without a heart, without hope, without love. You will become numb to heartache, immune to caring. You will never dream again.”

Finally, Rasp succumbed to his own building arousal and threw back his head and released the sounds of his pleasure in a loud hissing groan of satisfaction. His body shuddered and his essence flooded into Ryler. In her turn, Ryler’s whimpering moans reached a crescendo and she sang out her agonized pleasure. Behind her, the dark red stallion who was taking her was again engulfed in green flame. When the flame had passed, Rasp’s natural form came crashing down atop Ryler, still locked solidly inside of her.

As they both panted their exhaustion out, Ryler managed to push up on her hooves and look over her shoulder at the creature that had claimed her. She found herself staring into the unblinking eyes of the insectoid creature that held her down.

You will never dream again.

“Do you promise?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

Weakly, Ryler turned her body as best as she could and reached out a hoof to draw Rasp’s face down towards hers.

Author's Note

Tonight, myself, Korenav, WellaWeiss, and several others declared tonight a "writing night", and hunkered down to do work on our respective stories. Please note writing night, and not "editing night". This chapter I attempted to self-edit, and I hope it doesn't show too badly! Any input on obvious mistakes or pratfalls is welcomed.

I tried, and managed I think, to keep the scene in this story fitting for the tags, without venturing into clop territory. I wanted it to be heated without being about the sex. Sexual seduction was an element of the story, but the dialog and the emotions were just as important.