Wine Press

Sweetie Drops rubbed her teeth on her lower lip to gnawing red as she looked at the sobbing Silver Spoon leaking blood all over the dirt creating a thick, sticky mud. Rumble was crying as well, his face buried in the ground. A flowing river of crimson started to seep around his arm and he pulled up, looking down at the growing puddle.

Sweetie Drops leaned close to the filly’s face. “I need both hooves. Promise you won’t sob and cry too loud.”

Silver Spoon coughed and nodded. The agent removed her hoof and Silver Spoon looked at her with tears streaking down her cheeks. She tugged on Redeye’s saddle bag and he unclipped it allowing her to slip it off of him.

“We need a distraction. Redeye, Swift Blade, can you two hold them off?”

Swift Blade rose an eyebrow and pointed at his cutie mark. “I earned this battling Changelings.”

Redeye nodded firmly.

“Alright, see what you can do. I hope for the best of you two.” She saluted. The two battle ponies crawled out and crept their way through the forest. Sweetie Drops turned back to the bleeding filly. “Silver Spoon, is it?” She began digging through the saddle bag.

The rich filly sniffed hard as she rubbed a hoof under her glasses and nodded. “Yes,” she dryly squeaked.

Rumble wasn’t paying attention to what was being said. He just backed away and scrunched himself tightly against the roots trying to stay away from the growing puddle of Silver’s blood.

“I believe you had an uncle pass away last year, Gold Mine? Alright now listen to me.” She pulled out some wires, a spring, tape, and a hoof-sized army green capsule. Silver Spoon didn’t understand medical things, but she knew enough that the agent was doing something unusual to help her missing leg if that was her intent. Sweetie Drops opened up the capsule and began moving some components around while twisting wires to metallic rings inside.

“I need you to be a very, very brave filly.” Sweetie Drops then pulled out a grenade and carefully threaded one of the wires around it. She put it beside the cylinder and propped it by Silver’s side. Silver Spoon felt the explosive nestle right next to her good right leg. The agent picked up the filly’s front right hoof and placed it on a bundle of the wires. She took a deep breath.

It was then that Silver Spoon realized what she was doing. But she desperately tried to deny it. Push the strongest probability from her mind. She began to quietly quiver, shaking and whimpering. Rumble looked at the two when he realized the bleeding wasn’t stopping, and nothing was being done for it. When he saw the grenade by her side, his eyes widened.

Sweetie Drops tipped her hoof under Silver Spoon’s chin. “Silver—you aren’t going to make it.” Silver Spoon squinted her eyes as tears poured from her even more. “We don’t have a way to stop the bleeding, and you are showing signs of extreme shock, which might kill you if we reach Ponyville.” She looked away and lowered her eyes. “Even if not, Changelings will smell your blood and track us. And I’m sure you don’t want to be subject to that machine down there.”

With her head shivering and glasses rattling, Silver dared to look down at the sloppy, red strings of her upper thigh. She trembled as adrenaline was surging through her to keep her from fainting from pain, sharpening her focus though her tears made it hard to clearly see it all. And she looked back at Sweetie Drops’ face awash in a dreamy waterscape.

Sweetie Drops leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. “It will be quick and painless. You have to do this, for your family and for your friends.” Visions and memories of Diamond Tiara crept into Silver’s mind. Laughter, fun, anger, and many regrets she had yet to atone for. “When they find you, pull on these. The grenade and the mine will go off. You won’t feel a thing. Take as many of them with you as you can.”

Sweetie Drops grabbed Rumble, tugged him out of the roots, and put him on her back. The agent turned. “Say hello to your Uncle Gold Mine for me.” After she wiped her face, the last thing Silver Spoon saw was Rumble drooping his lips and waving her goodbye.

She was alone in the quiet darkness. Silver Spoon gulped, doing her best to try and stay quiet, but it was so hard. A coiling, thumping pain seized her chest. She began looking around, trying to distract herself from her bleeding left leg and the explosive by her right. Surely she could somehow get out of this. She pulled her right hoof safely away from the wide loop of cords and with a moan, she rolled to her stomach and began to crawl away.

As she emerged from the roots, she heard snapping and hissing. She held her breath and dared not move. She pleaded inaudible prayers, closing her eyes. She felt a new wave of warmth around her legs. For a moment, she forgot everything and wondered where the tingling sensation and wetting fur was coming from, but then she realized she was peeing herself. The hot steaming urine pumping out of her innocent vagina trickled in spreading patterns down her legs and getting her fine grey, curled tail sopping wet. It felt like she was bathing the sticky blood off of her tail and legs. She could hear Diamond Tiara’s voice. Get up, Silver! Come on, we’ve gotta go! You have to make it back to me somehow!

Then she felt imprints of hoof-steps around her. She felt a tap by her broken leg and tsking. “They left you behind,” Berry Punch said.

Silver Spoon barely opened her eyes. It was over. She cursed herself for not staying where she was, unable to think clearly through the loss of blood. After a few seconds, she tightened her face with dread determination. She began crawling back to the roots of the tree. She could see, under the small light emanating from Ruby Pinch’s horn, the explosives that the two ponies and Changelings could not see.

Berry Punch started laughing. “Oh, you are just the cutest thing. Looks like you have some spirit after all.”

Silver Spoon crawled harder and faster, dragging herself in bloody mud and through the warm stench of her own urine, her lips getting a stinging, acidic, and metallic taste of soggy dirt, and she realized she was still emptying her bladder, producing a warm, flowing sensation across her chest and stomach.

“You can crawl, but you can’t hide,” Berry said.

“Mom, look at her,” Ruby giggled. “She’s soaking, dirty wet! Ewwu! Shouldn’t we clean her before putting her in?”

“We don’t have time for that. I don’t think she’s really going to make it, either. And she’s lost so much needed blood already. Oh well, we can test the new concoction for its purpose.”

Silver Spoon was close. She was so close. She reached out and the cleft of her hoof was rubbing the coiling edge of the wires. She was getting her hoof through the loop when her tail raised and she was being dragged away which caused slurping noises as she was pulled through the mud of her body fluids. The wire tugged and she saw the canister move, but then her grip was lost.

Silver dug her front hooves into the mud of her warm blood and piss, her chin like a plow raking across it as she tried to keep her progress but soon she was fully exposed out in the open. She was surrounded by two dozen Changelings.

“Mockingbird Changelings,” Berry said as she stepping back. “Lap up every bit of blood you can, eat everything.”

After a second of hesitation, Silver Spoon disappeared under the horde. She screamed as one of the first Changelings ripped its fangs into her shoulder. They were gnashing her, ripping patches of fur, peeling her skin, and pulling her mane and tail. Two of them clamped down on her right arm and with a forceful tug-of-war with her body, broke her shoulder with a thunderous snap, broke her elbow, and soon the skin and body were losing the battle as the other Changelings were pulling opposite, turning her body into a filly-sized wishbone. Her arm broke free, and Silver’s glasses were doused in blood and a moment later they came off her nose and were stepped on.

A dozen different forms of pain were gang raping her nerves, molesting her sensations as the Changelings devoured their way into her organs. With an open mouth and her other arm outstretched, the roots of the tree visible the in the sea of Changelings, she mumbled. “U-u-uncle Gold Mine—I’m coming.”

Her head lowered as she gave in to her fate, even as she felt her ribs crack through her stomach and the filthy, hole-punched hooves dug around on the inner lining of her body. She nonchalantly coughed up blood, her eyes droopy as her body was shaking and convulsing under the Changeling swarm’s feast like hyenas on prey, knowing it would be over soon. Her life was over. Maybe she deserved it the way she had lived.

“I wish I were with you, Dia—Diamond—T—Tia…”